MONTPELIER Jerry Fessenden feels that he was born for the pedal steel guitar. "It was something about the way my mother carried me in the womb," said the 62-year-old musician and instrument builder.

Buddy Emmons, who died yesterday in Nashville at age 78, achieved the kind of exalted position among musicians and listeners that few instrumentalists in the history of country music have equaled. In ...

An anchor of the classic mid-century Nashville sound, the pedal steel guitar has been a trusted part of the broader pop palette at least since Jerry Garcia added affable, if primitive, pedal steel to ...

As the sound of country music has shifted, the emotive whir of its classic instrument has often been sidelined. The complicated antique has found new life in surprising forms. By Grayson Haver Currin ...