Steve Ripley, leader of the country-rock band The Tractors, died peacefully at his home Thursday, January 3 in Pawnee, at the age of 69, surrounded by his family. He had been suffering from cancer.
In addition to his work as a recording artist, Ripley was also a songwriter, producer, engineer, studio owner, radio host and inventor of the “stereo guitar” favored by such fellow musicians as Eddie Van Halen, Ry Cooder and Dweezil Zappa.
Owner of The Church Studio in Tulsa for 19 years, Ripley additionally distinguished himself by playing guitar with Bob Dylan and producing and/or engineering projects for Leon Russell, J. J, Cale, Roy Clark, Johnnie Lee Wills, and many others.
Born Paul Steven Ripley on January 1, 1950 during his parents’ brief residency in Idaho, Ripley grew up on the family’s Oklahoma Land Run homestead in Pawnee County. On his radio show, he recalled his earliest musical memory came when he was only three years old while listening to his dad enthusiastically singing along to Bob Wills’ “Roly Poly” in the family car. He said his “most impactful” musical memory was hearing Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” blasting from his Aunt Babe’s radio when he was six. “It just slayed me,” he marveled. “Nothing would ever be the same.” Seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show was yet another “cosmic moment.”
Ripley played in bands from junior high through college and continued to work nearly full-time as a musician while attending Oklahoma State University, where he earned a degree in communications. He discovered his love for recording in the 1960s, recording in Gene Sullivan’s Hi Fi Studio in Oklahoma City, the same venue where Tulsans J.J. Cale, Leon Russell, and David Gates made some of their first recordings. He opened his first studio, Stillwater Sound, in the early 1970s.
Ripley was a friend and confidante of many luminaries of rock, country, and Americana music, and was respected throughout the industry for his gifts as an artist and producer, and for his technical innovations in the world of guitars, microphones and sonic design. Once, while sitting at George Harrison’s recording console at Friar Park, Ringo Starr asked Steve, “Do you know how to run this thing?” To which Steve replied, “Well yeah, I guess I do. You know, it’s what I do.”
His lifelong interest in modern musicology was highlighted by his radio series, Oklahoma Rock & Roll, which explored Oklahoma’s vast contributions to music and American pop culture; and most recently, his successful efforts to rescue and preserve the musical archives of his friend and mentor, Leon Russell.