This week, the family of session musician and Gene Autry and Frank Sinatra collaborator Del Casher announced that he had died on Oct. 1 at the age of 88. But Casher was not just a musician who played on several records with iconic artists: he was also the inventor of the wah-wah pedal, one of the most significant technical innovations in electric guitar history.
The story goes that Casher
, who had created the pedal and its instantly-recognizable tone shifter, showed off the pedal to Frank Zappa during a jam session with the Mothers of Invention in 1966; Zappa subsequently gave one to Jimi Hendrix, who made it the centerpiece of his guitar virtuosity across his short but wildly influential career. And Hendrix was hardly alone. From the late 1960s onward, hundreds, if not thousands, of rock guitarists utilized the pedal, either to craft distinctive riffs or to enhance and distort their solos, creating some of the most iconic recordings in recorded music history along the way.
And lest anyone think the pedal’s use was limited to the classic rock set, it’s been used across a wide variety of different genres, from blues to funk to soul to heavy metal to hip-hop to hair metal to jam bands to grunge, and just about everything in between, with guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Eddie Hazel, Trey Anastasio, Jerry Cantrell, Kirk Hammett, Mike McCready and so many more all using it to twist and turn their tone around. (Famed Motown guitarist Melvin Ragin even earned the nickname “Wah Wah Watson” for — well, you can work that out.)
In honor of Casher’s death and the impact his great invention had, here are 15 great songs that utilized the wah-wah pedal over the years.
