Pedal Steel Guitarist Susan Alcorn Dies at 71

By DownBeat I Feb. 18, 2025

Alcorn took the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music.
(Photo: David Lobato)

Pedal steel guitarist and composer Susan Alcorn died Jan. 31 in Baltimore, Maryland, due to natural causes.

One of the world’s premiere exponents of her instrument, Alcorn took the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music. She was born on April 4, 1953, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and began playing music at age 3, when she sat underneath her mother’s spinet piano and pressed the foot pedals. In school she played viola, cornet and guitar; at age 21 she found the pedal steel guitar.

Having first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands, she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of 20th century classical music, visionary jazz and world musics. Though known for her solo work, she collaborated with numerous artists including Pauline Oliveros, Eugene Chadbourne, Chris Cutler, the London Improvisors Orchestra, the Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley, Ingrid Laubrock and Leila Bourdreuil, George Burt, Evan Parker, Caroline Kraabel, Michael Formanek, Catherine Sikora Mingus, Zane Campbell and Mary Halvorson, among others. In 2016 she was voted best Miscellaneous Instrument in the DownBeat International Critics Poll. In 2017 she was a recipient of the Baker Artist Award and in 2018, along with saxophonist Joe McPhee, the Instant Award in Improvised Music.

Alcorn released more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums as a leader/co-leader including, most recently, Filament with Catherine Sikora.

“I view the instrument I play, the pedal steel guitar, not as an object to be mastered, but as a partner with which to share with the listener a meaning, depth, and hopefully profound awareness of each fragile moment we’re together,” Alcorn wrote on her website. “It is this dynamic of which I try to be cognizant in both my writing and performance.” DB