Steel guitar is a type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument. Developed in Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use of a bar or slide called a steel (generally made of metal, but also of glass or other materials). The term steel guitar is often mistakenly used to describe any metal body resophonic guitar.

Steel guitar can describe:

Steel guitar refers to a method of playing on a guitar held horizontally, with the strings uppermost and the bass strings towards the player, and using a type of slide called a steel above the fingerboard rather than fretting the strings with the fingers. This may be done with any guitar, but is most common on instruments designed and produced for this style of play.

The technique was invented and popularized in Hawaii. Thus, the lap steel guitar is sometimes known as the Hawaiian guitar, particularly in documents from the early 20th century, and today any steel guitar is frequently called a Hawaiian steel guitar. However, in Hawaiian music, Hawaiian guitar means slack string guitar, played in the conventional or Spanish position.

Gary Edmund Carter (April 8, 1954 – February 16, 2012) was an American professional baseball catcher whose 21-year career was spent primarily with the Montreal Expos and New York Mets. Nicknamed "Kid" for his youthful exuberance, Carter was named an All-Star 11 times, and was a member of one World Series championship team.

Known throughout his career for his hard hitting as well has his excellent defense behind the plate, Carter made a major contribution to the Mets' World Series championship in 1986, including a 12th-inning single against the Houston Astros that won Game 5 of the NLCS and a 10th-inning single against the Boston Red Sox to start the fabled comeback rally in Game 6 of the World Series. He is one of only three people ever to be named captain of the Mets, and he had his number retired by the Expos.

After retiring from baseball, Carter coached baseball at the college and minor-league level. He was inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003.

Carter was born in Culver City, California in 1954 to Jim Carter, an aircraft worker, and his wife, Inge. When Gary was 12, Inge died of leukemia. He attended high school at Sunny Hills High School, in Fullerton, CA, where he played football as a quarterback and baseball as an infielder. After receiving more than 100 scholarships for athletics, Carter signed a letter of intent to play football at University of California, Los Angeles, but instead signed with the Montreal Expos after they drafted him in the 1972 Major League Baseball Draft.

Sarah Jory (born Sarah Elizabeth Jory, 20 November 1969, Reading, Berkshire, England) is an English musician and vocalist.

Sarah Jory began to learn to play musical instruments at the age of five, when she obtained her first steel guitar.

In 1978, she was backed by the group Poacher when she was featured on the BBC Radio 2's Live from Golder's. Also at the age of nine, she joined the band Colorado Country after her father, Arthur Jory, secured her an audition. Jory played with the band for four years while completing her schooling. During this time, the band changed their name to Sarah and the Colorado Country. Jory's first album, Sarah's Steel Line, which she recorded with the band Poacher, was released by Crow Records in 1980, when she was eleven years old. After the album's release, she was asked to play at the Petersborough Festival of Music, having appeared earlier at Neil Coppendale's British Country Music Festival at the Brighton Centre.

At thirteen, Jory first visited the United States of America where she played at the Steel Guitar Convention in St. Louis with Buddy Emmons.

John Hughey (born December 27, 1933 in Elaine, Arkansas; died November 18, 2007 in Hendersonville, Tennessee) was an American musician. He was known for his work as a session pedal steel guitar player for various country music acts, most notably Vince Gill and Conway Twitty. A member of the Pedal Steel Guitar Hall of Fame, Hughey was known for a distinctive playing style called "crying steel", which focused primarily on the higher range of the guitar.

John Hughey was born December 27, 1933 in Elaine, Arkansas. He began playing guitar at age nine, when his parents bought him an acoustic guitar from Sears. In the seventh grade, he befriended a classmate named Harold Jenkins, who would later become a prominent country singer under his stage name Conway Twitty. (Hughey and Jenkins also attended high school together.)

Influenced by Eddy Arnold's steel guitarist, Little Roy Wiggins, Hughey asked his father to buy him a lap steel guitar. Along with Jenkins and other high school friends, Hughey performed in a local band called the Phillips County Ramblers. Hughey first played professionally as a member of Slim Rhodes and The Mother's Best Mountaineers, a Memphis, Tennessee-based band. After leaving this band, Hughey joined Twitty on the road as his pedal steel guitarist, and backed Twitty from 1968 to 1988. He also recorded with various other acts, such as Marty Stuart, Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, and Dickey Betts. By the 1980s, he began playing for Loretta Lynn, then moved on to play steel for Vince Gill for twelve years. Hughey was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1996. In the 2000s, he and several other Nashville musicians formed a Western swing band called The Time Jumpers, who performed every Monday at a club in Nashville.

Leon McAuliffe (January 3, 1917–August 20, 1988), born William Leon McAuliffe, was an American Western swing musician from Houston, Texas. He is famous for his steel guitar solos with Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys, inspiring Wills's phrase, "Take it away, Leon."

McAuliffe, at age 16, first played with the Light Crust Doughboys, playing both rhythm guitar and steel guitar. In 1935, at age 18, he went on to play with Bob Wills in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He stayed with Wills until World War II. While with Wills he helped compose "San Antonio Rose". He is more noted, however, for his most famous composition, "Steel Guitar Rag", and his playing, along with that of [Bob Dunn (musician)|Robert Lee Dunn] (Milton Brown's Musical Brownies), that popularized the steel guitar in the United States. His playing (and Dunn's) is also credited with inspiring the rhythm and blues electric guitar style occurring some twenty years later.

After the war, McAuliffe returned to Tulsa, forming his Western swing band and releasing a number of recordings, including "Panhandle Rag" (Columbia 20546) which reached number six in 1949. McAuliffe soon opened his Cimarron Ballroom in the remodeled Akdar Shrine Mosque in Tulsa. He and his band, Leon McAuliffe and His Cimarron Boys, named for the ballroom, recorded several songs. He also opened a recording studio, Cimarron Records.