The guitarist who turned down a personal invitation from Elvis Presley went on to help build the pedal that made rock guitars sound like voices.
Del Casher, the session guitarist and inventor credited with bringing the wah-wah pedal to the electric guitar, died Oct. 1, 2026, after a battle with cancer. He was 88. His death was reported in early November, after family friends posted a GoFundMe campaign Oct. 29 seeking help for his widow, Eiko Casher.
Paramount Pictures hired Casher in 1964 to appear in the Presley film “Roustabout.” Presley was immediately enamored with him and personally invited him to play future gigs. Casher turned him down. He also appeared opposite Jerry Lewis in the comedy “The Patsy,” and later worked with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and with Frank Sinatra.
Born Delton Kacher in Hammond, Ind., he headed to Hollywood once he had his degree from the University of Pittsburgh. His first big break came on “The Lawrence Welk Show,” which he parlayed into a touring role with the Three Suns, the pop group behind “Twilight Time.” On the road with them he built the Ecco-Fonic, a portable tape device that let performers use echo effects in concert. He played with the Wrecking Crew, the session collective that recorded with Sinatra, The Beach Boys and The Monkees, and cut sessions with Presley, Gene Autry and Sonny & Cher.
Vox Thought It Was for Trumpets
The invention started by accident in 1966, while Casher was working as a consultant for Thomas Organ, which handled the British amp brand Vox in the U.S. He heard engineer Brad Plunkett rolling the Control knob on a Vox Super Beatle amplifier back and forth. The sound was uncanny, almost a human voice.
In 1967 the two took a volume control from a Vox Continental organ and married it to the amp’s control circuit, turning the effect into something a player could shape with one foot. With the Thomas Organ Co., he and Plunkett developed the first “Cry Baby” pedal, which works by sweeping a filter across frequencies as the player rocks it up and down.
He had pitched the idea to the Vox engineering team while performing with the Thomas Organ Company’s Vox Ampliphonic Orchestra, asking for a tone that could hold its own against brass. Vox had no plans to release the device for guitarists, believing it better suited to horn players such as trumpeters.
“Nobody saw any future for the guitar being used with this device,” Casher said years later.
He talked the company into letting him release a promotional recording made with the prototype, then traveled to instrument stores to demonstrate it. The commercial interest never came. He recalled pitching the pedal to James Brown, who told him he thought it would not last. Vox put the first wah pedal on the market a year after the 1967 breakthrough.
Zappa Handed One to Hendrix
What the store demos could not do, Frank Zappa did. Casher sat in with the Mothers of Invention, and the pedal’s sound caught Zappa’s ear; he gave one to Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix used it throughout his 1968 album “Electric Ladyland,” including on “Voodoo Child” and “All Along the Watchtower.”
Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi and David Gilmour all took it up. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Rage Against the Machine made it a fixture in their rigs, and funk musicians worked it into R&B playing. The pedal’s most recognizable use is probably Isaac Hayes’ theme from “Shaft,” a top-selling record that won an Oscar.
His Guitar on the Nightly News
In 1985, Casher’s guitar featured in the theme for “NBC Nightly News,” John Williams’ “The Mission,” described as the longest-running TV news theme in history. He was music director for the 1970s children’s show “The New Zoo Revue” and scored the 1987 slasher film “Terror Night.” His composing credits also included “Chico & the Man” and, under a pseudonym, the score for “Italian Stallion,” the cult softcore film starring Sylvester Stallone.
His other inventions included the Fender Electronic Echo Chamber, and he helped introduce the Roland Guitar Synthesizer for Roland Corporation.
A Studio Hit by the Pandemic
He also ran CDP Sound, a Burbank recording studio that began in Hollywood in 1967. The COVID-19 pandemic devastated that business.
The GoFundMe for Eiko Casher says donations will help her pay down credit card debt and move into assisted living. No details about the cause or location of Casher’s death have been released beyond the cancer cited on the page.
“I would just like guitar players to think of me once in a while,” Casher once said.