Sneaky Pete Kleinow

Peter E. "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow (August 20, 1934 – January 6, 2007) was an American country-rock musician and animator. He was a member of the band the Flying Burrito Brothers, and worked extensively as a session musician, playing pedal steel guitar for Joan Baez, Jackson Browne, The Byrds, Leonard Cohen, Joe Cocker, Rita Coolidge, Eagles, The Everly Brothers, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, The Steve Miller Band, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Spencer Davis, Little Richard, Linda Ronstadt, Jimmie Spheeris and many others. He is a member of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame.

Kleinow is also noteworthy for having composed the Gumby theme song as well as being an animator on the 1960s iteration of the show.

Biography Kleinow was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana; inspired by Jerry Byrd, he took up the pedal steel guitar in high school. Following graduation, he was employed for over a decade as a maintenance worker at the Michigan Department of Transportation. In 1963, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he began a career as a visual effects artist and stop motion animator in the film and television industry. After uncredited work on The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), The Outer Limits (1963–1965), and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), Kleinow became closely associated with the long-running children's series Gumby and Davey and Goliath while moonlighting in the city's country-oriented nightclubs as a member of Smokey Rogers & the Western Caravan (from which his distinctive nickname originated) and the Detours (often deputizing for bandleader Red Rhodes, then frequently employed as a session musician).

Flying Burrito Brothers (Amsterdam, 1970). From left to right: Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Rick Roberts, Chris Hillman, Michael Clarke, Bernie Leadon Through this scene he became acquainted with Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons of the Byrds in 1968, helping the group to replicate their newly country-infused sound onstage with banjoist Doug Dillard on several local club dates. Guitarist Roger McGuinn later alleged that Hillman and Parsons intended to replace Dillard with Kleinow and did not countenance Kleinow's inclusion alongside Dillard in an upcoming European tour, a decision that hastened Hillman and Parsons' departure from the band. After signing to A&M Records and briefly considering Lloyd Green (who, as per Hillman, "would have never left a lucrative career as a session man to go out with us"), Parsons and Hillman invited Kleinow to join their new project: the Flying Burrito Brothers. For Kleinow, the opportunity was the culmination of his desire to "finally make a living with music," and he would work for much of the next decade as a professional musician. Never paragons of commercial success (the band's first album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, peaked at #164 on the Billboard album chart), the Flying Burrito Brothers would go on to influence generations of popular musicians.

One of the first pedal steel players to work in a rock context, Kleinow favored the outmoded Fender 400, a cable-operated eight-string model. According to bandmate Bernie Leadon, "Sneaky uniquely played an eight-string Fender cable pull steel tuned to B6 instead of the more common C6. He played a usually more jazz or swing tuning in a style that most other players use an E9 tuning for. His rationale was [that] B is the 'five chord,' or dominant chord, to the key of E. This resulted in absolutely-to-Pete steel licks. And no one else thinks like him anyway." In addition to favoring atypical tunings, Kleinow liberally incorporated such electronic accoutrements as the fuzzbox, the Leslie speaker and the Echoplex into his style. His unorthodox style of playing would immediately influence a number of second-generation country rock pedal steel players, including Jerry Garcia, Buddy Cage of the New Riders of the Purple Sage and his eventual replacement in the Burrito Brothers, session musician Al Perkins. The nudie suit worn by Kleinow on the cover of 1969's The Gilded Palace of Sin, along with his Fender 400 pedal steel guitar, displayed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Favoring a relatively abstemious and reclusive lifestyle in comparison to some of his bandmates (nevertheless, according to bassist Chris Ethridge, he "loved to drink wine" and frequently exhibited science fiction films at the "Burrito Manor" shared by Parsons and Hillman in Reseda throughout 1968); intolerant of the group's infamously erratic live performances; and increasingly disenchanted by his exclusion from the creative process—including the diminution of his parts in released mixes and the summary rejection of his songwriting efforts—Kleinow eventually left the Flying Burrito Brothers in 1971. He also animated stop motion puppets for the 1994 arcade fighter Primal Rage for Atari and Time Warner Interactive.

In 2000, Kleinow formed a group called Burrito Deluxe (also the name of a 1970 Flying Burrito Brothers album) with Garth Hudson, former organist of The Band, Carlton Moody of the Moody Brothers on lead vocals and guitars, bassist Jeff "Stick" Davis of Amazing Rhythm Aces and drummer Rick Lonow, a latter-day drummer for Poco since 1989 and session player. The group recorded three albums, Georgia Peach, The Whole Enchilada and 2007's Disciples of the Truth, which feature his last studio recordings. Kleinow's last performance was at a 2005 Gram Parsons tribute "Gram Fest" concert in Joshua Tree, California, the town in which Gram Parsons had died.

Personal life and death Kleinow was married to Ernestine Kleinow for 54 years until his death. They had three sons and two daughters together. - The Rave-Ups (1985) I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen (1988) Don't Explain - Robert Palmer (1990) Beth Nielsen Chapman'' - Beth Nielsen Chapman (1990)