Music, Pop Culture

Renaissance Man

How a Red Dirt Kid Blossomed into an Oklahoma Cultural Treasure

Steve Ripley wore many hats: musician, singer, songwriter, guitar maker, inventor, radio host, producer extraordinaire…and they all fit him perfectly. Equal parts eccentric studio wizard, prolific song smith, laid back Okie and devout family man, Ripley’s lengthy list of friends and collaborators included some of the most famous musicians on the planet. And, as if all that wasn’t enough, his band The Tractors was responsible for creating the highest selling album ever recorded in the state of Oklahoma.

 

 

But decades before Steve Ripley was a platinum selling country musician and producer, he was just a kid growing up in rural 1960s Oklahoma…a kid who dearly loved The Beatles and Elvis.

Oh sure, like most young Okies at the time, Ripley was steeped in the country music of his rural upbringing, and he loved it. But there was just something about the Fab Four and The King—and rock music in general—that profoundly clicked in his soul. The joyful rebellion, the musical experimentation…it all struck a chord deep within Ripley that would resound for the rest of his life. Ripley knew early on that what he needed was a guitar. And when his parents got him his first one, a Stella acoustic six string at age 7, it changed his life forever.

Born Jan. 1, 1950, in Boise, ID, to Robert and Mary Ripley, Steve grew up on a farm near Pawnee, OK. His deep, abiding fascination with music, however, proved much more alluring for young Ripley than farm life. He joined his first rock combo in junior high school and he never looked back…playing from then on in various bands throughout his college years at Oklahoma State University, where he eventually graduated with a degree in communications.

In the early ’70s, Ripley co-founded Moses, the Stillwater-based band credited with tying the term “Red Dirt” to music when they dubbed their independent record label Red Dirt Records. They used this label to release their rare, self-published live album, Moses Live, in 1974. During this period, Ripley also opened his first recording studio, Stillwater Sound, and married his longtime sweetheart, Charlene Grant, a few years later in 1976. They remained constant companions for the rest of Ripley’s life.

 

 

After a short stint in Nashville, Ripley found work as a live sound engineer for Leon Russell…the beginning of a lifelong friendship for the two. After moving back to Oklahoma, Ripley worked for the Jim Halsey Company and produced critically acclaimed records for Roy Clark, Gatemouth Brown and Johnnie Lee Wills. He eventually moved out to Burbank, CA, to work as a studio engineer for Leon Russell’s label, Paradise Records.

While there, Ripley invented the stereo guitar…an electric guitar designed to be played through two amplifiers, allowing the player to route the sound of each individual string anywhere in the stereo field of the amps. This led to an endorsement deal with Kramer Guitars and an enduring friendship with Eddie Van Halen, who owned and played Ripley guitars. Other notable guitarists who played Ripley gear were John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, Jimmy Buffett, Steve Lukather and JJ Cale, among others.

In the late ’70s, fellow Okie (and drumming legend) Jim Keltner introduced Ripley to Bob Dylan. Not long afterward, Dylan invited Ripley to play guitar on his next album, Shot of Love (1980), and subsequently go out on tour with him. In a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan recalled Ripley as one of his favorite guitarist bandmates.

In 1987, Ripley moved his family to Tulsa, OK, and acquired the legendary recording facility The Church Studio, once owned by Leon Russell in the ’70s as a home base for his label, Shelter Records. It was from this studio, Ripley’s second home, that he would launch himself into his career as a country artist, joining forces with four talented Okie musicians—Walt Richmond, Jamie Oldaker, Casey Van Beek and Ron Getman. All of them had previously worked with major recording artists, including Linda Ronstadt, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt and Leonard Cohen.

With this stellar line-up of talent The Tractors sparked to life in 1988, eventually inking a deal with Arista Nashville in 1994. Their style was unconventional for country music at the time…smashing together Bob Wills style western swing with Chuck Berry tinged rock’n’roll and a generous helping of boogie-woogie 12-bar blues.

Though the music industry didn’t have high hopes for The Tractors’ self-titled 1994 debut album, the band proved everyone wrong. It rocketed up the sales charts, led by the massive, runaway success of their lead single, “Baby Likes to Rock It.” In fact, The Tractors went platinum faster than any debut album by a country group, eventually topping two million in sales. It was also nominated for two Grammys, while “Baby Likes to Rock It” won the CMT Video of the Year Award. Between 1994 and 1999, the band charted eight singles, all written or co-written by Ripley.

The band would go on to release three albums while signed to Arista Nashville. Following their 1995 holiday album (Have Yourself a Tractors Christmas) and 1998’s truly excellent Farmers in a Changing World, the original five-piece lineup splintered. Soon after, Arista Nashville and The Tractors parted ways.

From that point forward, Steve Ripley operated The Tractors as an independent “state of mind,” rather than a traditional band. Utilizing a rotating door of elite roots-rock and Tulsa Sound session players, Ripley went on to release an impressive mix of solo work and new Tractors projects from 2001-2009, mostly through Audium/Koch Records or his own independent imprint, Boy Rocking Records.

In 2007, the Oklahoma Historical Society reached out to Ripley during the development of Another Hot Oklahoma Night—their exhibit about the history of rock’n’roll in the Sooner State. As part of the public programming for this exhibit, the OHS contracted with Ripley to produce and host a series of 20 one-hour radio shows about Oklahoma’s amazingly deep and varied historical connections to rock music. The episodes were broadcast on all the NPR affiliates in Oklahoma. Overwhelming public enthusiasm for both the exhibit and Ripley’s radio show is what eventually sparked the OHS to begin developing plans for a museum devoted to Oklahoma’s pop cultural heritage…OKPOP.

 

 

In 2013, Ripley was hired by OKPOP as an audio archivist, working with the organization to restore a collection of unreleased Bob Wills recordings which was later made available to the public on vinyl. In 2016, OKPOP acquired the Leon Russell Archive, including more than 2,000 audio tapes covering most of Russell’s studio recordings from the ’70s and ’80s. Ripley subsequently became the official Curator of the Leon Russell Collection. Though suffering from cancer at the time, Ripley carefully cleaned, stabilized and digitized hundreds of songs recorded by Russell.

Steve Ripley passed away Jan. 3, 2019, at his home in Pawnee, OK. He was 69. Besides the remarkable legacy of music, kindness and generosity he left the world, he also gifted us all with this profound bit of Ripley-esque advice…his sign-off for every episode of his beloved radio show: “Don’t forget, family is what’s important. Tell your mama you love her. Kiss your babies. We’re all in this together.”