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Editor's Note: This article is part of the Utah Inventions series, which features all kinds of inventors and inventions with Utah ties. Tips for future articles can be sent to ncrofts@ksl.com. SALT LAKE CITY — Alvin Henry McBurney — better known as Alvino Rey —lived quite the life between his birth in 1908 in Oakland and his death in 2004 in Salt Lake City.
With beginnings as a ham operator, he later became a famous musician during America’s Big Band Era and was dubbed the “father of the pedal steel guitar.”
While many people besides Alvino Rey deserve credit for first electrifying the guitar, Rey was the first to amplify the pedal steel guitar specifically. In fact, he invented the instrument — as his son Jon Rey explained. Formerly, the lap steel guitar was primarily used for Hawaiian, country and Western music, and did not have any pedals. Alvino Rey added the pedals and amplified it.
While he wasn’t necessarily the first to amplify a regular guitar, he was the first to play it on the radio, performing on NBC in 1933. Alvino Rey even added a pickup to his own banjo to amplify it. When Gibson Guitar Corporation needed to make its own electric guitar, Alvino Rey was on the creation team. Their work led to the ES-150, which today sits in the Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle.
Alvino Rey even had a talking pedal steel guitar. To make it talk, someone backstage would place a sonovox on their vocal cords, attaching the other end of the device to the guitar. When the person spoke it would make the guitar “talk” or “sing” very clearly as Alvino Rey played the guitar with the bar on the strings. He had a puppet named Stringy that he would place on the steel guitar to add to the effect.
Knowing these facts alone, it’s evident Alvino Rey was quite the engineer. According to the Big Band Library, Alvino Rey said, “That was going to be my ambition, to be an electronics engineer, and I just applied the amplification of that to the guitar and string instruments.”
With his inventions and instrumental skills, Alvino Rey made a big name for himself. In 1942, he was named America’s best guitar player by the Metronome All-Star Band, and in 1978 he was the very first person instated into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. But let’s go back to the beginning.
Some might say Alvin McBurney was an engineer from the womb. He built a radio when he was only 8 years old! In her autobiography titled "Those Swinging Years," his wife, Luise, explains that his interest in radios began when he heard a conversation between a radio operator and his cousin.

Young Alvin convinced his mother to get him a booked called "How to Build a Wireless Set," and from there he began constructing short wave radios. His very first was simply a coil wrapped around a Quaker Oats box, but it actually received a radio station called NPG, located on Goat Island.
Alvino Rey began studying radio theory. Before he turned 9, he passed the ham operator test, thus becoming the youngest Amateur Radio Operator in the U.S. up to that time.
Then, one year his parents gave him a banjo. By 1927 he was so good at it he played for Ev Jones’ and Phil Spitalny’s bands. With the latter orchestra, he performed in New York’s Pennsylvania Hotel.
It was at this time his show name, Alvino Rey, was created — chosen in response to New York’s love of Latin music (“Rey” meaning “king” in Spanish).
Eventually, Rey joined up with Horace Heidt’s Musical Knights in San Francisco, with whom he performed around the country and on national radio. It was while with this band that he met his future wife, Luise King, one of the King Sisters.

In her autobiography Luise wrote, “After we had been with Horace about a month, a tall, shy guitarist who called himself Alvino Rey joined the band. Horace had been raving to us about this fine guitarist. He said the guitarist could stop the show cold with his sensational playing and that was pretty hard for an instrumentalist to do. It generally took a singer to say an audience.”
She later stated, “Horace arranged a date between Alvino and me although I wasn’t sure I would like Alvino.”
Well, despite the fact that she erroneously saw him as “too sophisticated and slick” at first, she fell in love with him.
“I began to know the real Alvino and to appreciate him as a marvelous human being," she wrote. "... He turned out to be a sweet, loving, humble interesting, exciting, romantic ... A young man with a multi-faceted talent bordering on genius.”
They dated for five years and were finally married in May 1937, during a two-week vacation from touring.
The King Sisters and Alvino Rey decided to move on from Heidt’s orchestra in 1938 and form their own band with Rey leading, Frank DeVol arranging, and the King Sisters singing. Members of their band included “Skeets” Herfurt, Icki Morgan, Frankie Strassek, and Sandy Block. After a lot of disappointments, they somehow found themselves performing at Paramount.
The band had great success and even performed in Hollywood films such as "Sing Your Worries Away," which starred Buddy Ebson and June Haver.
Unfortunately, WWII transformed the Big Band scene. Alvino Rey broke the band up to serve in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 and when he returned, it just wasn’t the same. He tried in vain to get the band rolling again, but the country had changed too much. Alvino Rey had to settle for performing in clubs with a small band.
In the 1960s, however, the King family name came back strong in “The King Family Show.” It all started when Yvonne King, one of the King Sisters, invited her sisters and their families to perform at a fundraiser for her LDS ward in Orinda, California. Afterwards, they also performed for fundraisers in Los Angeles and at Brigham Young University.
ABC saw their BYU performance and suddenly the King family found themselves under contract with the company. During the 1960s, over 30 members of the King family were featured in “The King Family Show,” which Alvino Rey directed. It aired for eight years. During this time and even after, the family toured the country.

Jon Rey, Alvino Rey's son, remembers going to places like Canada, Hawaii and the New York World’s Fair. He said of the experience, “Every town we were in, [my dad] knew the best restaurant to go to. It was amazing. I love good foods too and I really got that from him.”
Alvino Rey’s wife could attest to that. In her autobiography she wrote, “He loved gourmet food and was a master chef. He could have written a book on the culinary arts. It was said that his wanting to explore the restaurants of the United States may have been his real reason for agreeing to do so many one-nighters. I suspect there is an element of truth in that. I learned about food, and so did my sisters, thanks to Alvino.”
Jon Rey has many memories of those days, and of his father, who “had friends all over—everywhere we went.” Jon Rey remembers that his father would often take his children with him when he performed at hotels and Army bases throughout the country. He related, “Every time we were somewhere working, he’d find something fun to do too.”
But music wasn’t everything. He loved camping and fishing, and Jon Rey recollected their many pack trips as a family.
Alvino Rey continued to perform, alone or with family, up until just before he died in 2004. Of his father, Jon Rey said, “He really enjoyed life. Life was kind of a party.” Right to the very end, it seems.
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Katrina Lynn Corbridge Hawkins is a graduate of Brigham Young University, a Utah native, and a freelance writer. You can contact her at katrina.hawkins21@gmail.com.
