What happened to the guitarist who recorded the guitar solo in 'Rock Around The Clock' with Bill Haley?

Marshall Lytle, whose snappy bass work anchored Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock," died Saturday at his home in New Port Richie, Florida. He was 79. According to The New York Times, Lytle died of lung cancer.
Lytle was a teenage guitar player working at a Chester, Pennsylvania, radio station when Haley, who worked at another station, recruited him to play bass. Lytle notably didn't play the instrument, but Haley taught him the rudiments of slap-bass in a 30-minute session. The technique was key for country music, which was the focus of Haley's band – then known as Bill Haley and His Saddlemen.
"He got this old bass fiddle out, started slapping it, with a shuffle beat, and showed me the basic three notes you need on a little bass run to get started with," Lytle said in a 2011 radio interview. "I gave it a try and I said, 'Hell, I can do that.'"
Haley's band changed their name to Bill Haley and the Comets in 1952, and Lytle played on memorable tracks including "Crazy, Man, Crazy" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll." The bassist developed a lively stage presence, throwing his bass into the air, lifting it over his shoulder and riding it like a horse. The group landed their biggest hit in 1955 after a version of their classic recording of "Rock Around the Clock" appeared in the opening credits of the movie Blackboard Jungle.
Lytle and two other band members left Bill Haley and the Comets in 1955 after a salary dispute, branching off into their own group, the Jodimars. The band would become a popular Las Vegas lounge act. Lytle changed his name to Tommy Page in the 1960s at the suggestion of a booking agent, who said his name was too closely connected to his stint with Bill Haley and the Comets.
Though Haley died in 1981, Lytle and other Comets reunited in 1987 and performed off and on until 2009. Lytle, along with other Comets, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year.
Lytle was born on September 1st, 1933, in Old Fort, North Carolina, before his father moved the family to Pennsylvania.

Duane Eddy (born April 26, 1938) is a Grammy Award-winning American early rock and roll guitarist famous for his "twangy guitar" style. He produced a streak of hit singles in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "Rebel Rouser," "Forty Miles of Bad Road," "Because They're Young," and "The Lonely One."
Eddy's 1959 debut album, Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel, stayed on the charts for a record 82 weeks. He recorded more than 25 albums with wide-ranging themes, including his 1986 collaboration with Art of Noise that featured a reworking of his 1960 hit, "Peter Gunn." The single became top-ten hit worldwide and won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental. His playing influenced a generation of musicians, including George Harrison, Dave Davies (of the The Kinks), Bruce Springsteen, and Mark Knopfler.
Eddy was the first rock-and-roll guitarist to have a signature model guitar. In 2004, he received the Guitar Player Magazine "Legend Award." Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, he is often acclaimed as the most successful rock-and-roll instrumentalist of all time.
Born in Corning, New York in 1938, Eddy began playing guitar at age five, emulating his cowboy hero, Gene Autry. His family moved west to Arizona in 1951. In early 1954, Eddy met local disc jockey Lee Hazlewood in the town of Coolidge. Hazlewood would become his longtime partner, co-writer, and producer. Together, they created a successful formula based upon Eddy's unique style and approach to the guitar and Hazelwood's experimental vision with sound in the recording studio.
Elements of country, blues, jazz, and gospel infused Eddy's instrumentals, which had memorable musical "hooks" and evocative titles like "Rebel Rouser," "Forty Miles of Bad Road," "Cannonball," "The Lonely One," "Shazam," and "Some Kind-a Earthquake." The latter has the distinction of being the shortest song to ever break into the Top 40, at 1 minute, 17 seconds. Eddy's records were often punctuated with rebel yells and saxophone breaks.

Scotty Moore, Rock Pioneer and Elvis Presley’s Guitarist, Dies at 84
Scotty Moore, the pioneering rock ‘n’ roll guitarist whose fluid picking propelled Elvis Presley’s first recordings for Sun Records, died Tuesday in Nashville, according to Memphis newspaper the Commercial Appeal. He was 84.
Moore was a member of a local country combo in Memphis when he was drafted by Sun owner Sam Phillips to support with the young, untested teenage singer on his debut recordings.
His crisp, flowing, melodic guitar lines, heavily influenced by Chet Atkins’ early work but also infused with deep blues feeling, highlighted the singles issued by Sun during Presley’s rise to fame in 1954-55.
Moore went on to work behind Presley after he moved to major label RCA in 1956, appearing on such major hits as “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Blue Suede Shoes.” He also took supporting roles in several of Presley’s early feature films, and took a key instrumental role in his 1968 “comeback special.”
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
Born Winfield Scott Moore III on Dec. 27, 1931, on a farm outside Gasden, TN, Moore, the youngest of 14 children, began playing guitar at 8. He enlisted in the Navy and served in Korea from 1948-52.
Moore founded the Starlite Wranglers shortly after his release from the service; the sextet also included the comedic bass player Bill Black. The band had recorded a single for the young, blues-oriented label Sun in May 1954.
At the suggestion of Sun office manager Marion Keisker, Moore called up Presley – whose name, he later said, sounded like “a name out of science fiction.” After Moore and Black had rehearsed with the vocalist, they entered the studio on July 5, 1954. After running down several tunes they knew in common, at Phillips’ urging the trio cut a version of Arthur Crudup’s blues “That’s All Right.”
Released as a single later that month, the song took off regionally and jump-started Presley’s career.

Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as "essentially ... an Elvis Presley construction": "the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country". In "That's All Right", the Presley trio's first record, Moore's guitar solo, "a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion."
Many popular guitarists cite Moore as the performer that brought the lead guitarist to a dominant role in a rock 'n' roll band.[cita requerida] Although some lead guitarists and vocalists, such as Chuck Berry and the blues legend BB King, had gained popularity by the 1950s, Presley rarely played his own lead while performing, instead providing rhythm guitar and leaving the lead duties to Moore. As a guitarist, Moore was a noticeable presence in Presley's performances, despite his introverted demeanor. He became an inspiration to many subsequent popular guitarists, including George Harrison, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. While Moore was working on his memoir with co-author James L. Dickerson, Richards told Dickerson, "Everyone else wanted to be Elvis—I wanted to be Scotty.":xiii Richards has stated many times (in Rolling Stone magazine and in his autobiography, Life) that he could never figure out how to play the "stop time" break and figure that Moore played on "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" (Sun), and that he hopes it will remain a mystery.[cita requerida]
One of the key pieces of equipment in Moore's sound on many of the recordings with Presley, besides his guitars, was the Ray Butts EchoSonic, first used by Chet Atkins, a guitar amplifier with a tape echo built in, which allowed him to take his trademark slapback echo on the road.
Últimos años y muerte[editar]
Scotty Moore co-wrote the songs "My Kind of Carrying On" and "Now She Cares No More" which were released as Sun 202 on Sun Records in 1954 when he was a member of the group Doug Poindexter and the Starlite Wranglers with Bill Black as the bassist.

In ’52, Roberts scored his first record date, the obscure “Jam Session No. 10” with reed man Gerry Mulligan and pianist Jimmy Rowles. Later that year, he recorded Live at the Haig with the Wardell Grey Quintet, then a Bobby Troup album for Capitol in ’53.
By ’55, he was working with drummer Chico Hamilton and bassist George Duvivier. They recorded an album for the Pacific Jazz label entitled The Chico Hamilton Trio, a recording that netted Roberts the Downbeat New Star Award.
In ’56, Bobby Troup signed Roberts to Verve, a label where Kessel had an artist-and-repertoire position. Kessel produced Mr. Roberts Plays Guitar featuring arrangements by three of Hollywood’s best – Jack Marshall, Marty Paich, and Bill Holman. Another album for Verve, Good Pickin’s, followed in ’59. Roberts was becoming a success.
One of his session dates became a legendary Hollywood studio story. In May of ’58, he was hired for a Peggy Lee record date. When it was time to lay down the track for what would become Lee’s huge hit, “Fever,” producer Jack Marshall decided to lose the guitar part. Consequently, that’s Howard snapping his fingers along with Max Bennett’s bass line and Lee’s vocals. Some still wonder if he got paid what session players call a “double”; he made the date with his guitar, but ended up appearing with another “instrument” – snapping his fingers.
In ’59, Marshall was composing hip background scores for a western TV series entitled “The Deputy,” which starred Henry Fonda. Marshall wanted to feature jazz guitar on the scores, and hired Howard to improvise over many of the action sequences. Having a jazz guitar line complement a scene with cowboys riding at full gallop was a fresh and distinctive approach.
“Jack Marshall let Howard just blow as much as he wanted to,” studio vet Bill Pitman said of the sessions.
The “Black Guitar” was Howard Roberts’ trademark guitar of the 1960s-’70s. “H.R.” preferred this highly modified instrument during his most active years, playing it on countless studio dates. It can be heard on many of his recordings, including Color Him Funky, H.R.

STILL ALIVE AND WONDERING WHY?
SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2009
Rene Hall, as an arranger and session guitarist was one of the most influential men behind the scenes of rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues for over twenty years, yet he has been ignored and/or written out of history to such an extreme that I can't even find one photo of him to go with this posting. He gave one interview in his life, to the U.K. collector's mag New Kommotion in 1980.
Hall had a long career and was in demand constantly, he never seemed to lack for work, mostly as an arranger. Today's posting however will examine only a small part of that career, his work as a session guitarist, and from there we will focus on the years 1957-60 when he recorded the records that best fit my own personal definition of what great rock'n'roll is. After all, it's my blog.
Rene Hall was born in New Orleans in 1912 and began his musical career picking six string banjo in Papa Celestin's Orchestra, playing traditional New Orleans jazz. He worked on the riverboats in the 1940's with Sam Morgan's Orchestra and later with Sydney's Southern Syncopaters. Somehow he ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma where he switched to guitar and played with Ernie Fields' band (he'd record with Fields in the fifties). With Fields he moved to St. Louis where he got a job writing arrangements, conducting and playing trombone with jazz piano giant Earth "Fatha" Hines. For an example of Hines genius find a copy of Louis Armstrong's Weather Bird.
Hall hit New York City in 1945 where he got arranging work at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, working with acts like Roy Milton and Louis Jordan. At the Apollo he discovered Billy Ward and the Dominos, with their incredible lead singer Clyde McPhatter and got them their first record deal with Federal Records out of Cincinnati, a subsidiary of the R&B/C&W giant King. He appeared playing guitar on many of their early hits including Do Something For Me, the 1951 smash. He toured with the Dominos, making it as far as England where they played army bases, then moved with them to Las Vegas when they settled in for a long term job at the Dunes Hotel.

Guitar/mandolin custom built by Paul Bigsby for Grady Martin, 1952.
It is Martin who plays the memorable riff on Roy Orbison's "Oh Pretty Woman." That alone makes him candidate for Rock'n'Roll sainthood. However, he also helped invent 'guitar distortion.' A tube was blown in the middle of a take at a Marty Robbins session and the resulting fuzz-toned solo was left in the song, the 1961 smash hit "Don't Worry."
Besides Chet Atkins, Martin was the only studio musician to play with both Hank Williams AND Elvis Presley.
with Anita Carter & Hank Williams
Copacabana Club, NYC 3-26-52
From the Country Music Foundation's "Encyclopedia of Country Music" (1998):
b. Chapel Hill, Tennessee, January 17, 1929
Grady Martin is one of the true legends of Nashville's original "A-Team" of studio musicians; his greatest strength was his versatility. Whether playing the fiddle or guitar - electric, acoustic, or six-string electric bass - his creativity helped to make hits of many records from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Thomas Grady Martin was just fifteen when he joined Big Jeff & His Radio Playboys as their fiddler in 1944. In 1946 he joined Paul Howard's western swing-oriented Arkansas Cotton Pickers as half of Howard's "twin guitar" ensemble, along with Robert "Jabbo" Arrington. After Howard left the Grand Ole Opry, Opry newcomer Little Jimmy Dickens hired several former Cotton Pickers, including Martin, as his original Country Boys road band.
Off the road, Martin began working recording sessions. He led Red Foley's band on the ABC-TV show Ozark Jubilee. Paying service to a strong business relationship with Decca A&R man Paul Cohen and his successor, Owen Bradley, Martin began to record instrumental singles and LPs for Decca, including a country-jazz instrumental LP as part of Decca's Country and Western Dance-O-Rama series. Martin recorded many more Decca recordings as lead for the Nashville pop band the Slew Foot Five.
Martin's role as studio guitarist yielded numerous memorable moments.

The great Mickey “Guitar” Baker has left this mortal coil. Those who don’t know the name have almost certainly heard him sing and play on Mickey & Sylvia’s 1956 hit “Love is Strange,” and amongst numerous other accomplishments, that song endures as the breakthrough for which he is best known. It’s a glorious combination of sophistication and sexiness, and spinning it with the volume up loud is a fine memorial to a crucial and undersung figure in the formulation of rock ‘n’ roll.
To a large extent, the lasting appeal of the 1950’s rock ‘n’ roll explosion is defined in contemporary terms by a widely celebrated handful of originators and the subsequent explosion of wildcats who reacted to the sound of sweetly broken ground with worthwhile recordings of their own. One thread finds a bunch of unkempt, well-intentioned hicks succumbing to the potency of uncut rhythm and blues and combining it with the essence of their own tradition to fuse a new music that conquered the world.
Another storyline finds scores of African-American musicians perfecting the everlasting beauty of R&B to big sales figures but little cultural fanfare; that is until a burgeoning and restless youth culture discovered it, adapted it, and in some cases diluted it for a wider marketplace, with a few savvy black musicians making the shrewd adjustments necessary to become stars themselves.
The reality of both narratives, one the tale of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, the other the story of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard, is indeed the bulk of the original rock ‘n’ roll impulse. But it’s not the entirety of the situation, and considering it the whole of the thing is how an enormously important figure like Bill Haley gets unfairly saddled with the reputation of being perhaps rock music’s biggest square.
In the service of conciseness and clarity, history has tidied up the birth of r ‘n’ r a little too much, for it was a considerably messier conception than is generally related. Indeed, rock’s genesis encompassed hard-working dudes like Haley, weaned on Western Swing and playing countess low-paying gigs, and adapting material from the likes of Big Joe Turner in hopes of scoring a hit single and pocketing an increase in spending cash.

"T-Bone Walker single-handedly developed the style and way to play blues on electric guitar that was totally different than anything that had been done before," says Robillard. "He used a lot of double timing in his soloing, which at that time was something only horn players did, you never heard a guitar player do it — very unusual and very innovative. He'd be playing actually twice as many notes per beat."
Walker Bridged Blues, Jazz
The guitarist and singer made his first recording — a blues 78 — when he was 19. He didn't record again for more than a decade, and by that time, he was playing in the Les Hite and Freddie Slack orchestras.
Walker had already met a young man who would do for jazz guitar what Walker did for blues — electrify it. Charlie Christian was six years younger than Walker. The two played shows together and Christian influenced Walker's approach to the blues. In the March 1977 issue of Guitar Player Magazine, the late Jimmy Witherspoon compared Walker to another jazz great.
"All I can say is that he's the Charlie Parker of guitars when it comes to blues," Witherspoon said. "And in jazz guitarists, he's right with Charlie Christian. No one else can touch T-Bone in the blues on guitar."
Walker went on to perform and record with the likes of Johnny Hodges, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie, among many others.
The Roots Of Rock
Walker held the guitar differently — perpendicular to his body and parallel with the stage floor. He also played it behind his head long before Jimi Hendrix took that stunt mainstream. That wasn't the only Walker influence on rock 'n' roll.
"Chuck Berry just took T-Bone's style and put it to a different beat," says Robillard. "And a lot of the technique and the little T-Bone phrases that define his style, Chuck Berry, when he rearranged the beat, they became rock 'n roll guitar licks. So in essence, T-Bone was not only the first electric blues guitar player, but he was the first electric rock 'n roll guitar player, really."
But it was Walker's "Stormy Monday" blues that became his signature. Robillard says it's a different kind of blues.
"The guitar chord line, it's a little guitar ninth chord figure. That was a unique thing and it became T-Bone's signature.

He was Elvis’s guitar player on all the Sun Records stuff. He’s on “Mystery Train”, he’s on “Baby Let’s Play House”. Now I know the man, I’ve played with him. I know the band. But back then, just being able to get through “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone”, that was the epitome of guitar playing. And then “Mystery Train” and “Money Honey”. I’d have died and gone to heaven just to play like that.” How the hell was that done? That’s the stuff I first brought to the johns at Sidcup, playing a borrowed f-hole archtop Höfner. That was before the music led me back into the roots of Elvis and Buddy – back to the blues.
To this day there’s a Scotty Moore lick I still can’t get down and he won’t tell me. Forty-nine years it’s eluded me. He claims he can’t remember the one I’m talking about. It’s not that he won’t show me; he says, “I don’t know which one you mean.” It’s on “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone.” I think it’s in E major. He has a rundown when it hits the 5 chord, the B down to the A down to the E, which is like a yodeling sort of thing, which I’ve never been quite able to figure. It’s also on “Baby Let’s Play House.” When you get to “But don’t you be nobody’s fool / Now baby, come back, baby …” and right at that last line, the lick is in there. It’s probably some simple trick. But it goes too fast, and also there’s a bunch of notes involved: which finger moves and which one doesn’t? I’ve never heard anybody else pull it off. Creedence Clearwater got a version of this song down, but when it comes to that move, no. And Scotty’s a sly dog. He’s very dry. “Hey, youngster, you’ve got time to figure it out.” Every time I see him, it’s “Learnt that lick yet?”

Early rock 'n' roll guitar wizard Bo Diddley died near Jacksonville, Florida, Monday, 2 June, of heart failure. He was 79 years old. One of the most primitive of the early rockers, Bo took the blues and folk music of his native Mississippi and combined them with Latin American and African rhythms to come up with his trademark "hambone" beat. VOA's Doug Levine tells us more about the career of Bo Diddley.
Along with the legendary Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley was considered one of the most influential guitarists of the early rock era. His powerful rhythm, which became known as the "Bo Diddley beat" has been imitated by countless musicians.
Born Otha Ellas Bates in Mississippi in 1928, Bo was sent to Chicago to live with an aunt, Gussie McDaniel, who later adopted him. He dropped his first and last names to become Ellas McDaniel. His stage name Bo Diddley came from two sources; the diddley bow, an African stringed instrument, and the slang expression for a mischievous boy.
Bo studied violin at age seven and became a virtuoso. In the early-1940s, while he was in his teens, he taught himself to play guitar, drawing on the influences of jazz artist Louis Jordan and bluesman John Lee Hooker. Bo explained how he developed his trademark sound after his sister bought him his own guitar.
"I took it home and learned how to play on one string, 'When The Saints Go Marching In.' The other strings didn't make a difference," he said. "Then I accidentally tuned it one day the way that I'm tuning it now. I say I'm playing backwards. I don't play like the average guitar player, the cats [musicians] who move their fingers all around like this. I do it in chords, and basically, do almost the same thing."
At age 13, Bo Diddley became a street musician, eventually joining with others to form a street corner band. Driven by maracas, congas and bass, Bo played his infectious, hypnotic guitar phrases. When the band was ready to perform in Chicago nightclubs, he bought an electric guitar so he could get more volume.

Legendary jazz guitarist Les Paul, known for his contributions to guitar design and recording technology, has died at the age of 94, according to a joint statement released by Gibson Guitar, the company that produced his iconic Gibson Les Paul guitar, and New York's Iridium jazz club, where he continued to play weekly gigs almost until the end of his life.
Paul's reputation as a guitarist and recording artist are overshadowed by his contributions to music technology. He pioneered many sound recording techniques still in use today, and was also instrumental in developing the modern solid-body electric guitar, which formed the backbone of decades of popular music.
In the mid-1930s, Paul experimented with building an amplified guitar, using a plank of lumber as the starting point, and adding a pickup connected to an external amplifier (both Leo Fender and Adolph Rickenbacker developed similar designs for solid-body electric guitars around the same time). The Gibson Guitar Corporation eventually designed a solid-body electric guitar based on Paul's concepts and signed him to a long-term endorsement deal.
Perhaps more important, Les Paul was among the first musicians to employ multitrack recording--the basis for nearly all modern recorded music. His 1947 recording of, "Lover (When You're Near Me)," was made from eight separate guitar parts, dubbed over each other. While this early experiment was done with acetate disks, the technique moved onto magnetic tape and today's nonlinear hard-drive recording.
His work on multitracking also led to popular recording techniques such as phasing and delay, which were achieved by manipulating the actual magnetic tape used in the recording process.
While he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame, and the Grammy Hall of Fame, it was his work on the solid-body electric guitar and multitrack recording that earned him a spot in the National Inventors Hall of Fame--not the usual place you'd find a jazz guitarist.

Although I 'discovered' Roy Buchanan when I was a blues-loving kid in the mid-80s, his first brush with something resembling fame came in 1971, when a documentary, The Best Unknown Guitarist in the World, aired on public TV.
The documentary was, of course, about Buchanan, a Washington, D.C.-based blues-rock virtuoso whose gritty sound and distinctive technique inspired scores of guitarists, including Jeff Beck.
Sadly, Buchanan is still fairly unknown to the general public (including scores of guitarists).
Buchanan had a distinctive tone, as can be heard in the live video below. He played his vintage Fender Telecaster through a Fender Vibrolux amp with the tone all the way up (and then some, it seems), using the guitar's volume knob mid-solo to create mesmerizing, keyboard-style effects. Buchanan could play harmonics at will and mute individual strings with his free right-hand fingers while picking or pinching others. He was best known for his gut-wrenching bends and incredibly 'pointy' sound. He committed suicide in 1988 at age 48 while in jail for public drunkenness.
Below, check out Buchanan's undated performance of When a Guitar Plays the Blues, the title track from his 1985 album on Alligator Records (This is a good one to own, by the way). There's a solo intro section at the beginning of the video, and the actual solo begins at around 5:25. Note that there's another extended solo section around 8:18. Enjoy!

Then Ronnie said, “Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes?” so I came up with those three chords at the end and Allen played over them, then I soloed and then he soloed… it all evolved out of a jam one night. So, we started playing it that way, but Ronnie kept saying, “It’s not long enough. Make it longer.”
On the studio version, “Collins played the entire solo himself on his Gibson Explorer.” Says Rossington, “He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad… the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! He just did it once and did it again and it was done.” And there you have it.
If this list didn’t have any Clapton on it, I’d probably get death threats. Luckily we have an isolated Clapton track, but not from a Clapton band. Instead, above, hear his guest work on the George Harrison-penned and -sung Beatles’ song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” from 1968. In a previous post on this masterfully iconic recording, Mike Springer described Clapton’s technique and gear: “For the impression of a person weeping and wailing, Clapton used the fingers on his fretting hand to bend the strings deeply, in a highly expressive descending vibrato. He was playing a 1957 Gibson Les Paul, a guitar he had once owned but had given to Harrison, who nicknamed it ‘Lucy.’”
I’ll admit, I grew up assuming that Harrison played the leads in this song, an assumption that colored my assessment of Harrison’s playing in general. But while he’s certainly no slouch, even he admitted that this was better left to the man they call “Slowhand” (a nickname, by the way, that has nothing to do with his playing). Typically humble and understated, Harrison described to Guitar World in 1987 how Clapton came to guest on the song:
No, my ego would rather have Eric play on it. I’ll tell you, I worked on that song with John, Paul, and Ringo one day, and they were not interested in it at all. And I knew inside of me that it was a nice song.

It was he who played the throbbing leads on Johnny Horton's 1956 hit "Honky Tonk Man," the exquisite nylon string guitar on Marty Robbins's 1959 crossover smash "El Paso," and Lefty Frizzell's 1964 "Saginaw Michigan." One of the most famous sessions was an accidental malfunction in mid-take when Grady played the distorted "fuzz" guitar solo on Robbins's 1960 hit "Don't Worry." Though studio musicians in those days rarely received credit for their work, Martin's efforts didn't go unnoticed. Producers often designated him "session leader," which meant he led the musicians and directed the impromptu arrangements that became a landmark of Nashville sessions. In other words, he often became the de-facto producer in the process.
Martin continued to play sessions through the 1970s, working extensively with Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, and produced the country-rock band Brush Arbor. His funky leads helped to make a hit of Jeanne Pruett's 1973 "Satin Sheets." Martin eventually returned to performing, first with Jerry Reed and then with Willie Nelson's band, with whom he worked from 1980 to 1994. Martin became the first recipient of Nashville Music Association's Masters Award in 1983.
Recorded April 7, 1959, Bradley Studios,
16th Ave S., Nashville, Tennessee
Released September 1959
"Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs" LP (Columbia)
Single released on October 26, 1959 - #1 (2 wks)
Marty Robbins - Vocals, Guitar
Grady Martin - Lead Guitar
Jack Pruett - Guitar
Bob Moore - Bass
Produced by Don Law and Frank Jones
Grady Martin, a guitarist for many of country music's top stars, died last week. He is remembered as a member of Nashville's "A-team" of session musicians, backing artists such as Willie Nelson, Joan Baez and Johnny Cash. Noah Adams talks with Bob Moore, a long time friend of Martin's and a fellow musician. (5:45)
Hear Bob's NPR Interview now (RealAudio).
O B I T U A R Y
Tennessean.Com Obit†††††Country.Com Obit
Son Josh Martin (right) with Bob Moore and Hargus "Pig" Robbins, Nov. 2000

I hope I’m not the only person that has this problem. Sometimes a piece of music will get in my head and I can’t rest until I have tracked it to its source and listened to it enough times to expunge the demon. And it’s always some arcane scrap of song that generally has no relevance to the here and now. The latest such invasion came from listening to Connie Francis’ Lipstick on Your Collar on an oldies station, and really for the first time appreciating a wild guitar solo in the middle of what is more or less a nonsense song. For those who remember it, Lipstick starts out with a chorus of nasty female voices chanting Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah, at one of their friends who has just learned her boyfriend has two-timed her, But almost immediately a guitarist breaks in with a short musical phrase that suggests there may be an adult in the room. The guitar fades into the background until just about the one minute mark when Connie sings:
Bet your bottom dollar you and I are through,
Cuz lipstick on your collar told a tale on you…
And then follows 25 seconds of pure guitar heaven as the soloist punches out what has been described as one of the great guitar solos of the era and one that stands up well today despite the juvenile tune that surrounds it.
Who was the virtuoso? Well it turns out it was George Barnes—almost forgotten today, but in his day was in the same league or better than the Charlie Christians, the Les Pauls, the Django Reinhardt’s and the rest of those great jazz guitar pioneers of the 30’s and 40’s . It is believed Barnes made the first electric guitar recording ever around 1933. He can be heard accompanying Big Bill Broonzy around the same time. At age 14 he has his own band. He recorded prolifically through the early 40’s and quickly became a hot item on the New York and Chicago jazz scene playing with the top artists of the day. As the 50’s came along George Barnes was working with Decca records both as a recording artist and a session man. But like many of his fellow jazz musicians Barnes also supplemented his living as a New York studio musician, playing on hundreds of albums and jingles from the early 1950s through the late 1960s.

In his first Rolling Stone interview, published in March 1968, Jimi Hendrix described the moment that changed his life forever: "The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I heard one of his old records when I was a little boy, and it scared me to death . . . 'Wow, what is that all about?'"
The history of rock & roll guitar is writ large and loud in its signature licks, riffs and solos: the barnyard bounce and pink-Cadillac shine of Scotty Moore's epochal break in Elvis Presley's "That's All Right"; Keith Richards' distorted three-note stomp in the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"; Kurt Cobain's fireball power chords in Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
But rock & roll's infinite capacity for renewal and surprise is packed into the lightning-bolt impact of those Great Guitar Moments – the way a simple hook, a feedback squeal, even a cocksure pose can send a kid over the moon and then reaching for his or her own instrument. The following pages are a celebration of those flashes of discovery, related by more than thirty-five master players in rock, blues, folk, punk and hip-hop – an extraordinary testament to the enduring power and magic of the electric guitar.
The instrument is a lot older than rock & roll itself. Les Paul, a pioneer in guitar design and multitrack recording, was playing a primitive electric guitar as early as 1928, using his parents' radio as an amplifier. In 1937, Eldon Shamblin of Bob Wills' Texas Playboys was the first country musician to play a solid-body model, a bantam-size Rickenbacker Electro Spanish – until his boss told him to stop, claiming that the damn thing didn't look like a proper guitar.
But in rock & roll, the whole point of the guitar is to be anything but proper. Everything you need to know about the implicit sexuality of the guitar, and its potential for exuberant violence, can be seen in 1950s stage photos and footage of Presley – his guitar hanging over his waist like a tommy gun, banging into his pelvis with rhythmic authority. Amplification liberated the instrument from the rich, warm but literal sound of wire resonating against wood.

Artist: The Beatles
Who played it: George Harrison
UK chart position: 1
Why it rocks: George Harrison’s genius lay in his ability to supply the perfect solo for the song. Never flashy, Harrison’s speciality was the ‘song within a song’ style of solo that typifies his outing on one of the rare Harrison tunes that Lennon and McCartney allowed as a single. Although not technically difficult, Something’s solo features tricky bends and fretboard positions that don’t fall instantly under the fingers.
Notice how the solo finishes by reiterating the song’s opening lick. Here’s how shredmeister Paul Gilbert describes Something: “This is my favourite ‘feel’ solo ever. George Harrison did a masterful job playing those notes, and they are STUNNING notes.”
Find it on: Abbey Road
Did you know? George Harrison admitted that he got the idea for Something from Apple’s first signing, singer-songwriter James Taylor. Harrison created his song’s opening line from the title of Taylor’s own song, Something In The Way She Moves.
Track: All Right Now
Who played it: Paul Kossoff
UK chart position: 1
Why it rocks: It’s all about the climax. Every great guitar solo should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the classically trained Paul Kossoff understood this. The solo opens with a hammer-on from the open third string to the second fret and builds gradually up the fretboard from there. The whole solo is played on the top three strings and the majority of it on the top two. Could you be that creative and memorable with such a restricted palette? Kossoff echoes the solo’s repetitive triplet lick at his Les Paul’s 17th fret for a stunning crescendo to one of rock’s greatest ever guitar solos.
Find it on: Fire And Water
Did you know? Paul Kossoff worked as a guitar salesman for Selmer’s in Charing Cross Road at the same time as another budding six-stringer, Mahavishnu Orchestra’s John McLaughlin!
Track: Johnny B Goode
Artist: Chuck Berry
Who played it: Chuck Berry
UK chart position: 8
Why it rocks: Berry was the guitar star of his day and Johnny B Goode the twinkling jewel in his crown.

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A rock ‘n’ roll pioneer and musical innovator, Holly’s rhythmic guitar style owes much to the fact that he grew up playing a banjo, evinced on galloping anthems like Not Fade Away and Peggy Sue.
But he was a master at sweet, minimalist leads, too, such as the one heard on Words Of Love.
Conventional in appearance, he made his mark with the then way-out-looking Stratocaster. His first record featured a mid-‘50s Strat (seen here), bought with money borrowed from his brother Larry. It was stolen on tour in 1957.
His last Strat, a ’58 three-tone sunburst, played but an hour before he died, is currently on display at The Buddy Holly Center.

Rene Hall also cut a solo single for Del-Fi, The Untouchables, a pretty good record but lacking the fire of the Valens and Romero discs.
All through the late fifties Rene Hall kept busy free lancing, he did arrangements for Patience and Prudence, Jan & Arnie (Gas Money), Bumble B. & the Stingers (Nut Rocker) and others. As a guitarist he showed up on all of Googie Rene's Class sides including this killer that Bob Quine turned me on to-- Side Tracked. One of my favorite discs to feature a Rene Hall guitar solo is this raucous piece of slop by Earl Palmer & the Partytimers with the Jayhawks-- Johnny's House Party Part One which appeared on Aladdin around '58. Everything about this record is great, in fact they all sound drunk, but it's the guitar solo that gives it the extra push over the edge into what we can call genius.
Rene Hall would spend the early sixties doing all sorts of studio work, mostly as an arranger but his main meal ticket was Sam Cooke. As an arranger his greatest moment was probably A Change Gonna Come, Cooke's last and greatest record. When Sam Cooke died he went back to free lancing, he never lacked for arranging work. He even returned to Specialty to play bass on a Little Richard session (Bama Lama Loo b/w Annie's back, which also featured Don and Dewey on guitars). In the early 70's he signed on as Marvin Gaye's musical director, working on all of Gaye's classic hits-- Let's Get It On, What's Goin' On, etc. When Gaye died he found himself one of the most in demand arrangers in the business and worked constantly until his death in 1988.
It's not like Rene Hall was unsung in the industry, he was a highly paid professional, and a successful one at that. Rock'n'roll guitar playing was only a small part of his career, but one that should surely be acknowledged since he was so brilliant at it. So I guess it's up to me, since nobody else seems to give a hoot. Rene Hall-- I salute you.
POSTED BY THE HOUND AT 11:19 PM
LABELS: CHAN ROMERO, EARL PALMER, RENE HALL, RITCHIE VALENS

G), but let’s face it, Rumble don’t need no harmonica. Mostly he stepped out of the spotlight, only in his mid-twenties he was already embittered by lack of success, and found a regular gig backing Danny Denver, playing country bars, far from the limelight. With the introduction of wah wah pedals, fuzztones, etc. he felt lost, tricks he’d spent years learning to do were now available for a small price at your local guitar shop. The emergence of Jimi Hendrix in ’67 must have shook him because he told an interviewer later: “when you play at that volume the amps and guitar plays you, I like to use the smallest amp possible, it gives you maximum control”. Roy was feeling the heat, and competing was against his reclusive nature, he would shun the limelight for the rest of his life. Sometimes he appeared with his own band– Roy Buchanan and the Poor Boys but mostly he backed up Danny Denver until a Rolling Stone magazine article in 1969 proclaimed him “the greatest guitar player alive you never heard of” which led a path of rock stars to the crappy clubs Denver was playing to herald Buchanan’s talent. He claims the Rolling Stones asked him to replace Brian Jones but he turned them down because he didn’t want to learn their repertoire. This is most likely bullshit.
Still, players like George Harrison and Jeff Beck sung him praises and soon a PBS documentary brought him to fame’s doorstep, kicking and screaming. He was signed by Polydor and cut a series of boring ass records. He retired and came back several times, the last on Alligator Records in the late 80’s. Unfortunately the fire had gone out. Unlike our previous subject, Charlie Christian, given the freedom to stretch out, Buchanan had become a bore. Under the tight restraints of the three minute 45, and with a strong band leader like Dale Hawkins or producers like Leiber and Stoller, he was great, but as heard on his LP’s, twenty minute solos on standards like Green Onions were duller than dishwater. He became hugely popular in an era that worshipped “chops” and “tasty riffs”, even selling out Carnegie Hall at one point.

This is an excerpt from Play It Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound & Revolution of the Electric Guitar (opens in new tab) by Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna.
In 1954, at the age of 41, blues musician Muddy Waters had finally made it to the top. Or so it seemed.
Hoochie Coochie Man and I Just Want to Make Love to You, released that year, became his biggest sellers and remained in the Top 10 R&B charts for more than three months. But the winds of change were blowing, and that summer blues record sales suddenly plummeted, dropping by a dramatic 25 percent and sending shock waves through the Chicago music industry.
Record execs blamed the poor economy, but a fresh and more youth-oriented brand of music was starting to sweep the airwaves, one that was built on the bones of the very R&B, blues and country that they had so carefully nurtured. As Waters would later sing, “the blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll.”
In ’54, Elvis Presley paired the country tune Blue Moon of Kentucky with That’s All Right, a song originally performed by blues singer Arthur Crudup, and the single sold an impressive 20,000 copies. That same year, Bill Haley & His Comets sold millions with Shake, Rattle and Roll and Rock Around the Clock. In response, Leonard Chess of Chess Records sniffed out and signed two young electric guitar–playing rockers of his own.
Bo Diddley and his rectangular guitar would become an enormous commercial success; but it was Chuck Berry’s crossover to the white teenage market that would make him a legend.
Charles Edward Anderson Berry, born to a middle-class family in St. Louis in 1926, was a brown-eyed charmer who loved the blues and poetry with almost equal fervor. After winning a high school talent contest with a guitar-and-vocal rendition of Jay McShann’s Confessin’ the Blues, he became serious about making music and started working the local East St. Louis club scene, where he put all of his skills to good use.
While Berry excelled at playing the blues of Muddy Waters and crooning in the suave manner of Nat King Cole, it was his ability to play “white music” that would eventually make him a star.
“The music played most around St. Louis was country-western and swing,” Berry said in his autobiography.

The following content is related to the September 2013 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store.
By the late Forties, electric guitar was firmly established as an important instrumental voice in down-home blues, but in the realm of uptown rhythm and blues, with the exception of T-Bone Walker and a few of his disciples, guitar solos were still relatively rare. Saxophone was king, and no saxophonist of the era was more popular than Louis Jordan, a.k.a. “Mr. Jukebox.”
In addition to his witty vocals and swinging arrangements on classics like “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town,” “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Caldonia,” and many others, Jordan’s wailing, bluesy alto solos foreshadowed the dynamic string stretching of a new generation of electric guitar heroes.

We were saddened to hear of the passing of the great guitarist Johnny Smith the other day and he will be greatly missed by the worldwide guitar community. Smith was a highly diverse musician and was equally at home playing jazz as he was sight-reading complex scores with the New York Philharmonic.
His unique guitar playing was characterised by intricate close position chord voicings and rapidly ascending melodic lines which drew much praise and admiration from fellow guitarists. His most famous and critically acclaimed album was Moonlight in Vermont (one of Down Beat magazine’s top two jazz records for 1952, also featuring saxophonist Stan Getz).
He also wrote the popular composition “Walk Don’t Run“, which was written for a 1954 recording session as a counter melody to the harmony of the famous jazz standard “Softly, As in the Morning Sunrise”. Chet Atkins also covered this song.
A group of musicians who eventually became The Ventures heard the Chet Atkins version, simplified it for their own sound [and sped it up] and eventually recorded it in 1960. The Ventures’ version went to No. 2 on the Billboard Top 100 for a week in September of that year.
Smith moved from the public eye in the 1960’s to concentrate on teaching and to run a music store, however he remained as one of the most influential masters of ‘Cool Jazz’ inspiring a whole new generation of guitarists with his fluid and intricate playing.

Danny Gatton was truly the guitarist's guitarist. Hailed by Guitar Player as the 'World's Greatest Unknown Guitar Player' he was cherished by the likes of Les Paul, Joe Perry, Steve Vai, Joe Pass, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Vince Gill, Albert Lee and countless other guitar luminaries. Until his tragic and untimely death in 1994 he was every guitar players best resource for a treasure of 'hot licks'. Never one to tour he remains an underground treasure for those 'in the know'. If you play the guitar, you owe it to yourself to check out this great instrumental genius.

Les Paul Biography
Died 13 August 2009 in White Plains, New York, USA
Jazz, blues and country guitarist, songwriter, luthier, recording engineer and inventor. He designed one of the first solid body guitars, which made the sound of rock and roll possible. In the 1940s he made early experiments with overdubbing, delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording.
He recorded in the 1950s with his wife Mary Ford on vocals.
Inducted into Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 (Early Influence).

He played with Gene Vincent's Blue Caps and he's kind of the first rock & roll guitar player, really. He wasn't afraid to mix all sorts of different styles: You can hear country in there, there's swing in there, you can hear this new sound called rockabilly. I think he played with the Blue Caps for less than a year, but he made such an impact. It's just the way he crafted his solos. A lot of guitar players jump in on the first solo like they're playing for the back row. But Cliff would build them up. He's so distinct. He would use a flat pick and three-finger picks, like a banjo player. That's totally a unique way of playing; I've never heard that from anyone else.
I was down in Virginia about six years ago, and I set it up to meet him. Someone calls me that morning and says, "Well, you're not gonna believe it, but Cliff had a heart attack onstage last night." So I missed him by one day.
Keith Richards (The Rolling Stones)
To me, Chuck Berry always was the epitome of rhythm & blues playing, rock & roll playing. It was beautiful, effortless, and his timing was perfection. He is rhythm man supreme. He plays that lovely double-string stuff, which I got down a long time ago but I'm still getting the hang of. Later I realized why he played that way – because of the sheer physical size of the guy. I mean, he makes one of those big Gibsons look like a ukulele!
Everybody has to adapt their own physical possibilities to the instrument. Some guys have tiny little hands that can zip all over the thing. If you don't, you find another way. So given the size of his hands, it's not surprising that Chuck figured out a style where you didn't have to just nimbly pick one string at a time. He got harmonies down so that every note has another note behind it, which gives it that really strong, broad sound. It's fascinating. He's playing half-chords all the time.
I mean, those records Chuck made in the Fifties still basically stand out as your rock & roll guitar playing to the max. Especially when you add it to the songwriting and the singing and everything else. There's your package.

The first to arrive, Big Bill Broonzy in 1951, managed to convince many concert-goers that he was “the last American bluesman,” but Lonnie Johnson’s breakthrough solo set at Royal Festival Hall the following year put an end to that publicity stunt, as did appearances by Josh White, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. These artists became musical touchstones for Britain’s first pop guitar stars, Big Jim Sullivan and Hank Marvin. Idolized by young Jimmy Page, studio legend Sullivan was steeped in records by Lead Belly and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. “When I was starting the guitar,” Sullivan recalled, “we used to go out on the Thames in a big riverboat with people like Sonny and Brownie and Big Bill Broonzy. They would be playing, and I’d just sit there watching them. That was the highlight for me.” Instrumental star Hank Marvin, who formed the Shadows with Cliff Richard in 1958, cited Broonzy and Lead Belly as his main influences.
In Chicago, Big Bill Broonzy usually played electric guitar with a small ensemble, but in England he stuck to traditional solo acoustic blues. Before his death in 1958, Broonzy recommended that Chris Barber bring over Muddy Waters, the reigning king of Chicago blues. Just back from a tour of raucous clubs in the American South, Muddy flew over with his pianist, Otis Spann. Unaware that Broonzy had presented himself as a country blues artist, Muddy opened his first British show with his Fender Telecaster and amp at full throttle. Aghast purists retreated from the venue. “I didn’t have no idea what was going on,” Waters explained to writer James Rooney. “I was touring with Chris Barber – a Dixieland band. They thought I was a Big Bill Broonzy, which I wasn’t. I had my amplifier, and Spann and I was going to do a Chicago thing. We opened up in Leeds, England. I was definitely too loud for them. The next morning we were in the headlines of the paper – ‘Screaming Guitar and Howling Piano.’ That was when they were into the folk thing before the Rolling Stones.” Muddy lowered his settings for the rest of the tour, which reportedly went well.

Although the record only made it to the mid-20s on the Billboard pop chart, its influence was massive in scope.
Here was a black rock-and-roll record with across-the-board appeal, embraced by white teenagers and Southern hillbilly musicians alike (including Elvis Presley, who added it to his stage show). And it was fortunate for the electric guitar that one of its earliest champions was not only an extraordinary musician and showman, but also one of pop music’s greatest and most enduring singer-songwriters.
With monster hits such as Roll Over Beethoven (1956), Rock and Roll Music (1957) and Sweet Little Sixteen (1958), Chuck Berry did much to forge the genre. His formula was ingenious: write lethally funny lyrics about the teenage experience, strap them into a high-octane groove, add a little country twang, shake it up with a showstopping guitar solo, and then watch the acclaim pour in.
It was a recipe that would dominate popular music for decades to come. And if early listeners didn’t understand how important his guitar was to the mix, Chuck soon made the connection explicit.
In his 1958 masterpiece Johnny B. Goode, Berry created the ultimate rock-and-roll folk hero in just a few snappy verses. As we all know, Goode wasn’t pounding a piano, singing into a microphone, or blowing a sax. In his choice of the electric guitar, something sleek and of the moment, the fictional character of Goode would forge an image of the archetypal rocker, doing as much to shape the history of the instrument as any real-life figure ever has.
The song’s opening riff is a clarion call – perhaps the greatest intro in rock-and-roll history. It was played by Berry on an electric Gibson ES-350T, and it indeed sounded “just like a-ringin’ a bell.”
The tale begins “deep down in Louisiana,” where a country boy from a poor household is doing his best to get by. Johnny, we discover, “never ever learned to read or write so well,” but he has something better than a formal education or a diploma – he has talent, street smarts, and a guitar.
Johnny’s Gibson is his instrument and also his ticket out of the backwoods. After introducing our hero, the anthem turns to his guitar.

Posted by themusicsover on January 10, 2010
July 22, 1929 – January 10, 2009
Billy Brown was an American rockabilly guitarist and singer who launched his career upon his return from the Korean War. Brown released a handful of singles before he was signed by Columbia Records in 1957. A young Jerry Reed played on a few of those early Columbia recordings. None of his releases sold particularly well. Billy Brown was 79 when he passed away on January 10, 2009.

Nashville guitarists, a group that included Ray Edenton and later Reggie Young, could usually play in any style required.
Though Rickenbacker had introduced a solid body model in the 1930's, it never caught on. In 1950 Leo Fender introduced the Fender broadcaster (changed to Telecaster), the first successful solid body guitar, and its success largely come from country pickers. Other gifted soloists also appeared, including Jimmy Bryant, who played dazzlingly fast country jazz and whose playing was much in demand in L.A. recording studios in the 50's, and Joe Maphis, a pioneer in flatpicking fiddle tunes on guitar, who played the first doubleneck "Mosrite" brand electric guitar made by Semie Moseley. Gretsch's Chet Atkins line and Gibson's Byrdland, designed by Billy Byrd and Hank Garland, also caught on.
But acoustic stylists hadn't stagnated during this period. Lester Flatt, building on the styles of earlier players like Roy Harvey, created a punchy guitar style combining chords and bass runs that he used with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys and then with his partner, Earl Scruggs. Other fine bluegrass guitarists included The Stanley Brothers' George Shuffler, who "crosspicked" his instrument like a mandolin, as did guitarist Bill Napier. Blind guitarist Doc Watson also picked up the idea of finger picking fiddle tunes as Joe Maphis had. Hank Snow, who often soloed on his records, showed the influence of Karl Farr. Like Snow, singer Billy Grammer was another superb guitar soloist.
In the 60's, the Fender Telecaster stylings of country-rockabilly guitarist James Burton, singer Buck Owens (who played guitar on many Capitol rock and country released), Owens' lead guitarist don rich and Merle Haggard's guitarist Roy Nichols all had considerable impact, as did the nylon string playing of Jerry Reed, who expanded the Travis-Atkins style to use all the fingers of the right hand. Owens, Reed, Roy Clark and Glen Campbell were among the best known singers of the 60's who were also formidable guitarists. In the 70's, telecasters symbolized the Outlaw movement through Waylon Jennings' prominent use of the instrument.

He does appear on Jerry Hawkins’ rockabilly classic Swing Daddy Swing on Ebb (one of his best solos ever), as well appearing on several Dale Hawkins Checker 45’s, the best, guitar playing-wise being his rendition of My Babe (here’s an alternate take ), I Want To Love You, and Liza Jane. While touring with Dale Hawkins he found time for some session work and can be heard on two excellent rockabilly singles on Imperial from that same year– Al Jones’ Loretta (written by Merle Kilgore who penned Ring Of Fire) and Bobby Jay’s So Lonely, a nice Gene Vincent sounding rocker.
Meanwhile, back at the Hayride, Buchanan, following in James Burton’s footsteps moved from Dale Hawkins’ band to Bob Luman’s outfit, recording with four songs with Luman issued by Warner Brothers in 1959, the most interesting of these discs is My Baby Walks All Over Me.
Rockabilly is all about guitar playing, and especially on the Dale Hawkins sides Buchanan is really in his element. Dale was (and is) a great band leader, and he knew how to get the best of of his guitarists.
With the Hawkins band, young Roy Buchanan was touring constantly. He finally left Dale in Toronto and joined his cousin Ronnie Hawkins’ Hawks briefly around 1960, his only recording with them however was on bass. He soon settled in the greater Washington D.C./Maryland/Virginia area where he would spend the rest of his life. There was plenty of work for a guitar player, mostly in rough biker and cowboy joints (remember this is the time and place where Link Wray & the Rayman ruled the roost), and Buchanan soon made a name for himself as far north as Philadelphia where he started doing session work. It’s these Phili recordings that I’d call Buchanan’s best.
Again, it’s almost impossible to figure out the exact order these discs were released but the first record under his own name was After Hours b/w Whiskers (Bomarc) in 1961. I’ve already blogged about the a-side (see Feb. 6 entry), the b-side (actually a retitled version of Johnny Heartsman’s Johnnie’s House Party) is just as great, capturing Buchanan in top form, take a listen and and ask has a white guy ever bent strings so soulfully?

In spring, 1997, Eddy was inducted into the Rockwalk on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard, placing his handprints and signature into the cement along with his friends Chet Atkins, Scotty Moore, and James Burton. In 2004 he was presented with the Guitar Player Magazine "Legend Award." Eddy was the second recipient of the award, the first having been presented to Eddy's own guitar hero, Les Paul.
Eddy popularized the hard-driving, twangy sound that became part of the musical culture of rock-and-roll guitar. Combining strong, dramatic, single-note melodies, bending the low strings, and a combination of echo, vibrato bar, and tremolo effects, he produced a signature sound that would be featured on an unprecedented string of 34 chart singles, 15 of which made the top 40, with sales of over 100 million worldwide.
His playing also influenced generations of new musicians. Among those who acknowledge his influence are The Ventures, George Harrison, Dave Davies (The Kinks), Hank Marvin (The Shadows), Ry Cooder, John Entwistle (The Who), Bruce Springsteen, and Mark Knopfler. Eddy was also the first rock-and-roll guitarist to have a signature model guitar. In 1960, Guild Guitars introduced the Duane Eddy Models DE-400 and the deluxe DE-500. A limited edition of the DE-500 model was reissued briefly in 1983 to mark Eddy's twenty-fifth anniversary in the recording industry. The Gretsch "Chet Atkins 6120" model has long been associated with Eddy. In 1997, Gretsch Guitars started production of the Duane Eddy Signature Model, DE-6120. In 2004, The Gibson Custom Art and Historic Division introduced the new Duane Eddy Signature Gibson guitar.

"Be-Bop-a-Lula" was used in the film The Girl Can't Help It. But for some reason, Cliff wasn't in it. Nobody really knows why. Maybe he didn't look the part. You have to listen to Vincent's album [Bluejean Bop] Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps. It's almost barbaric. It's like a barroom brawl or a punch-up in a swimming pool. You can hear this echo going, and it's just amazing. Among all the screaming and the shouting, you can hear this guitar. It sounds like someone was being impaled on a spit. Maybe it was Cliff's way of saying, "You barbaric bastards. I'm a jazz player. But if this is the sort of thing you want, I'm only doing this once." He never did anything like that again. Anyone with an affinity for rockabilly will know that there was never anybody so explicit in their guitar playing. This is quadruple-X-rated guitar playing.
Django reinhardt was the best there ever was. His technique, his playing ability and his tone were all incredible. A friend of mine, Johnny Gimble, who plays fiddle, was a big fan of his – and also Stephane Grappelli, who played fiddle in the Django Reinhardt band – and he gave me a tape of Django and Stephane playing together. That was back when I was twenty years old, I guess, and I've been a big fan ever since. He has so many great songs, it's just his style. It's like Sinatra, you know. The voice is there – and it wouldn't matter what he played. He could play scales and it'd be beautiful. I really like everything he's played, and I still listen to his records a lot. There's other great guitar players that I like: Grady Martin, who played guitar out of Nashville for so many years, was a fantastic guitar player, and Chet Atkins. I grew up listening to the music of all these guys, but Django is the one that's done the most for me than anybody.
Eddie Van Halen
I think the whole guitar-god thing is funny. To be a legend, don't you have to be dead? Call me a legend when I'm gone. How about just a guitar player?

What can you say about Les Paul that hasn’t been said? The guy changed the course of rock and roll and, therefore, the course of popular music itself. He played frequently up to this year, and died Thursday at age 94. One of the staple guitars in music – the Gibson Les Paul – is named for him, designed for him.
That commercially available guitar will perhaps be his most visible legacy – most every kid who dreams of being a rock and roller and every garage guitar geek longs for a Les Paul, and vintage models are already selling for tens of thousands of dollars. Paul’s own hits may not be heard so much on radio any more, and though we all hear the effects that he created in just about every song on the radio every day, we probably don’t realize that he did it first, that he showed the rest of us how.
Here’s a hilarious video of him later in his career, and it shows his sense of humor, his ease on stage and his consummate talent on the guitar.

Monday, June 27, 2011
It's occurred to me that I could probably expand my readership here and my DJ profile in general if I would focus a bit more on a particular style. I guess that's always been one of my issues in life - I just like too many damn things! Right, so today it's a straight Blues record from a giant figure in that genre - Lightnin' Hopkins. I've been in a particularly Blues kinda mood lately since I decided to finally try to learn how to use the harmonica I've got laying around. My poor neighbors!
Peep this clip from the '67 documentary "The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins".
Hopkins died of esophageal cancer in Houston January 30, 1982 at the age of 69. His New York Times obituary named him as "one of the great county blues and perhaps the greatest single influence on rock guitar players."
|Some other ol' LP I got layin' around...|
I believe Jewel was active well into the 90s.
And of course, the clip!
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Duane Eddy managed to become a guitar god in the late 50's putting together simple yet rocking little tunes like this one. Born in Corning, NY in 1938, he was already playing guitar at 5. His sonic guise was that of a twangmaster extraordinaire, playing leads on the bass strings of his guitar to great effect. Weird factoid: a 20,000 gallon water tank was used as an echo chamber on one of his early records, "Moovin' and Groovin'" to accentuate his sound.
His follow-up, "Rebel Rouser" was the big hit, getting all the way up to #6 on the charts. Why don't we have instrumental hits anymore? Get cracking musicians!
The man has worked with everyone from Ravi Shankar to Waylon Jennings, and he just keeps cranking out the tunes. He was also the first guitarist to have a signature model, and was inducted into the Rock hall of fame in '94. He's still kicking around God bless him, doing his twang thang.

Happy Birthday Scotty Moore!!!!!!!!!!!
The man who played guitar on Elvis's "That's alright," has inspired millions to pick up the guitar and play it. His finger picking style was gleaned from Chet Atkins. Scotty Moore is listed by Rolling Stone magazine as #44 of the all time guitarists! Scotty's role in Elvis Presley's band help bring the guitar as a lead instrument to the forefront of the band. Scotty played Gibson ES-295's, Gibson L-5, and then Gibson Super 400's. He employed slapback echo (Ray Butts echosonic) that has become a standard among many players including Brian Setzer.

In the early '30s, Walker had a street act with Charlie Christian, an ex-Dallasite living in Oklahoma City, who would be immortalized as jazz's first great electric guitarist. Let that settle in: The two greatest guitar pioneers of the 20th century were a pair of Texans who played together for tips on street corners in Oklahoma City. But after being prodded by friends to relocate to L.A. for more musical opportunities, Walker left his musical partner, his wife and everything else behind in late '35 and took off on Route 66.
His first gig on the vaunted Central Avenue of black nightclubs was as a dancer and emcee with Big Jim Wynn's band. But even though he wasn't playing guitar onstage, Walker was tinkering with amplification techniques. Hugh Gregory's Roadhouse Blues book, which meticulously explores the roots of Stevie Ray Vaughan, quotes Wynn as saying that Walker "had a funny little box ...a contraption he'd made himself."
It wasn't until July 1942, however, that Walker played electric guitar on a record. Hired as a rhythm player for a session by Freddie Slack, Walker was given two spotlight turns on "Mean Old World" and "I Got a Break Baby." When Walker's crisply pronounced notes interspersed with trumpet-like slurs and whelps, the guitar lost its secondary status.
Before Walker, the blues was a solo acoustic form. With amplification bringing the guitar up front, no longer to be drowned out by horns or drums, T-Bone laid the full-band framework that would rule R&B in the post-war decade and eventually spin off into the rock 'n' roll combo.
1947-'48 would prove to be Walker's landmark period. After signing with the Black & White label, led by "music first" mogul Ralph Bass, Walker and his topflight band recorded more than 50 titles in 18 months, ranging from the raucous "T-Bone Boogie" to the pop ballad "I'm Still in Love With You" to the slow blues classic "Call It Stormy Monday."
Fifteen years later, a 12-year-old white kid, sitting in his bedroom in T-Bone's old neighborhood, was trying to make Walker's riffs part of his own musical lexicon. "I'd try to get into his head when I listened to his records," Jimmie Vaughan says.

When Charlie Gillett published “The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” the genre’s first formal history, in 1970, he identified five early forms of the music, the first of which was “Northern band rock ‘n’ roll, exemplified by Bill Haley and His Comets.” Just last year, in “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé,” Bob Stanley didn’t just toss Haley into his subtitle, he went all in. “Haley invented rock ‘n’ roll,” he writes. “No one had blended country & R&B before Haley wrote and recorded ‘Rock the Joint’; no one hit the Billboard Top 20 with something that could be safely labeled rock ‘n’ roll before ‘Crazy Man Crazy’; no one scored a rocking number before ‘Rock around the Clock’ turned the music world upside down.”
That “invented” overstates the case, but it serves as a corrective, too, spotlighting the essential-to-the-form contributions of an artist who is usually mentioned only in passing. There are a number of reasons why Haley gets overlooked. He was only a year older than Chuck Berry but seemed more like twenty years older. He looked like a puffy George Reeves, right down to the Superman spit curl, and he favored loud, checked sport jackets, normally associated with vacationing appliance salesmen. (When Jerry Lewis parodied the rock craze in his 1958 film “Rock-a-Bye Baby,” his band was costumed the same way, in mimicry of the Comets.) Onstage, Haley lacked the charisma and energy of other early rockers. He wasn’t a new teen idol but a familiar type: the bandleader. His Comets were a rockin’ band, but one only as good as its material, and after “Shake, Rattle and Roll” (the first rock-and-roll record to go top ten, in 1954) and “Rock Around the Clock,” the quality of their work dropped precipitously. Even Haley’s most thrilling performances were sexless. In “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” when Haley sings “I’m like a one-eyed cat peepin’ in a seafood store,” we imagine a cat, with one eye, looking hungrily into the window of a seafood shop.

After that Van Eps joined Freddie Martin, who had the most popular sweet dance band after Guy Lombardo's, from 1931 to 1933. He began to solo on jazz records in 1934, by which time he had joined Benny Goodman's band, and he can be heard playing confidently with Jack Teagarden and Goodman on Adrian Rollini's "Somebody Loves Me" of that year. A few months later he soloed between Bunny Berigan and Teddy Wilson on Red Norvo's recording of "Bug House".
Goodman was about to move on to greater things, but Van Eps left him to join Ray Noble's band for a year before moving to Hollywood in 1936. His work as a studio musician there gave him security but kept him out of the public eye. It was at this time that he wrote a guitarist's manual and designed the seven-stringed instrument.
After a further period with Noble in 1941, Van Eps abandoned music professionally (although he continued to practise on his instrument for nine hours a day, as he always did when not working) and joined his father in his sound laboratory for two years.
When the war ended Van Eps returned to Hollywood as a freelance in the film and recording studios, and it was here that he spent most of the rest of his career. He recorded an outstanding trio session with the pianist Jess Stacy in 1951 and also soloed on some of Paul Weston's LPs.
In 1955 he had a role in the film Pete Kelly's Blues backing Peggy Lee as a member of the fine band led by the trumpeter Dick Cathcart. He continued the role in the television series that followed in 1959. He made jazz albums on his own (Mellow Guitar for Columbia in 1956) and with other studio musicians, notably in Matty Matlock's Rampart Street Paraders.
Further albums under his own name followed for Capitol in the Sixties, but serious ill-health curtailed his appearances at the beginning of the Seventies, although he appeared at jazz festivals until he broke three fingers in 1977. He toured Europe with the clarinettist Peanuts Hucko in 1986 and in 1991 made the first of the exquisite albums for Concord Jazz with Howard Alden.

He stayed with Billy Ward and the Dominos two and a half years. He also had started a solo recording career before leaving New York, his earliest sides appeared on the Jubilee label in 1950-- Blue Creek Hop (sorry about the messed up beginning, it's the only copy I could find)
was his first release. Jubilee issued a second single -- Rene's Boogie later that year, but I've never heard it. He also recorded for Decca and Victor in 1952-3, these sides are very rare, and are in the same light jazzy R&B style as Blue Creek Hop. Well executed, but lacking the spark of true genius that would mark his playing a few short years later.
Pardon the digression, back in Vegas, Hall was growing bored with the Dominos and soon headed for Los Angeles where he found a job at club at 42 Street and Western but trouble with the musician's union forced him to give it up (they required a six month residency in state, so as a new comer he was shut out of any steady gigs) so on the recommendation of a friend-- Carl Peterson at Universal Attractions he approached Art Rupe the owner of Specialty Records, then flying high on the success of Little Richard, for a job, which he got. Rupe immediately put him to work with Bumps Blackwell working on a Little Richard session cutting Hey Hey Hey. Hall told New Kommotion's Stu Coleman "That was my first experience with hard rock", a style to which he would adapt well. He was sent to Bakersfield where Richard was appearing in a club, then worked out some arrangements for sessions that were later cut in L.A.. Rupe was so pleased with Rene's arranging abilities that he put him in charge of his latest discovery-- Larry Williams a pimp turned rocker being groomed by Rupe as the next Little Richard. Working with producer Sonny Bono and using many of the same musicians that appeared on Richard's sides (Earl Palmer on drums, Plas Johnson on sax, Roy Montrell on guitar) they soon produced three hits with Larry Williams-- Slow Down b/w Dizzie Miss Lizzy, Short Fat Fannie b/w High School Dance, and Bad Boy b/w She Said Yeah, tunes that would later be recorded by everyone from the Beatles and Rolling Stones to the Flamin' Groovies. On some of these session Hall played guitar along with Roy Montrell.

On the album Hello Dolly, Louis says “Take it, Big Chief,” as Moore launches into a trombone solo of the song “Someday You’ll be Sorry.”
He freelanced when the orchestra broke up, performing at venues such as Jimmy Ryan’s in New York City and throughout Europe. During the 1970s, he led his own Dixieland band and recorded his first albums, Russell ‘Big Chief’ Moore Powwow Jazz Band (1973) and ’Big Chief’ Russell Moore and Joe Licari with the Galvanized Jazz Band (1976).
Moore has played the International Jazz Festival in Paris, France, the Kennedy Center for the Arts in New York City, and many places in between. He has performed at inaugural balls for Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and has played one of the receptions for the marriage Prince Charles and Diana. One of his favorite venues, however, was at the Gila River Indian Community, where he frequently gave concerts. In March, 1982, Moore was honored on the broadcast “First Americans in the Arts.” He died from diabetes in 1983 at age of 70.
Duane Eddy, Lee Hazlewood, and Sanford Clark
Duane Eddy put the twang in rock and roll. His signature sound brought a new dimension to rock music and popularized the electric guitar. He is considered the most successful instrumentalist in rock history, influencing future rock artists throughout the world. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Eddy in 1994, refers to Eddy as “one of the earliest guitar heroes.”
Eddy (born in 1938) moved to Phoenix from Corning, New York with his family when he was a teenager. A guitar player since age five (he was enthralled with cowboy songs Eddy dropped out of high school at sixteen and began playing with Al Casey in 1955. Eddy started experimenting with “twang” by playing lead on the bass strings of his guitar, a Chet Atkins-model Gretsch 6120 hollowbody. This sound matured into unabashed, gut-pulling reverberation when Eddy met Lee Hazlewood in 1957. Hazlewood, a Phoenix disk jockey and songwriter, helped Eddy develop low, haunting sounds by picking single-note melodies on the low strings of his guitar.

Legendary studio and live guitarist Reggie Young, who played on classic songs by Waylon Jennings, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Jr. and more, died Thursday (Jan. 18) in Nashville. He was 82.
Young was born in Caruthersville, Mo. in 1936. He was raised in Osceola, Ark. and moved to Memphis at the age of 14. The Memphis Commercial-Appeal reports that Young began playing guitar professionally at the age of 15.
After serving in the Army (and turning down an offer to join the CIA), Young returned to Memphis in the mid-1960s. There he worked at American Studios as part of the legendary house band The Memphis Boys. The Memphis Boys played a pivotal role in late '60s music, performing on Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man," Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" and more. The band played on over 100 hit pop, country, rock and soul singles.
Throughout his career Young played with a variety of country artists, including Carl Perkins, Johnny Horton, Waylon Jennings, Kenny Rogers, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Guy Clark. Among the country songs Young lent his talent to are Willie Nelson's "Always On My Mind," Hank Williams, Jr.'s "Family Tradition" and Jennings' "Luckenbach, Texas." He also toured with The Highwaymen for several years.
Young released his solo album Forever Young in 2017.

The doors to the club were open and you could hear everything outside and there was a crowd out in the street listening to them. And the crowd outside drew a crowd. They caused quite a stir. It was obvious ‘Rock Around the Clock’ was going to be popular."
Nearly a year after at the band debuted "Rock Around the Clock" in New Jersey, the song got a boost from Hollywood. It played during the opening titles of the drama "Blackboard Jungle," a movie about teen delinquents. Decca re-released it and the single vaulted to the top of the pop chart in the summer of 1955, remaining number one for nearly two months. Haley and His Comets also had hits with covers of R&B tunes, "See You Later, Alligator" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll."
Haley, who grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, successfully reinvented himself after years of struggling as a country crooner. His group, the Saddlemen, was the house band at the Twin Bar, a Gloucester City tavern. When Haley hired Richards and Ambrose, he segued from twang to rock, commercializing songs by blues artists.
"I always thought that Bill would have been happier if he had made it in the country field rather than rock ‘n’ roll," said Richards. "Bill was a champion yodeler. The Saddlemen worked as just four guys doing cowboy and hillbilly stuff. They didn’t have a drummer. After I came into the band and they added the saxophone, that started a tremendous transition. They changed the name to the Comets and they took off the cowboy suits."
When Haley and His Comets returned to Wildwood for a Labor Day concert in 1955, thousands of screaming fans packed an amusement pier for outdoor show, according to Richards.
"Wildwood was an entertainment mecca during the 1950s," he said. "In the summertime, it was better than New York City. It was the top spot on the East Coast. At every corner, there was great entertainment. When they started taking down the old clubs, they ruined it. If they were smart, they’d put the place back like it used to be and bring the entertainment back."
Wildwood was once nicknamed "Little Las Vegas" for its glitzy nightlife.

Paul never stopped tinkering with electronics, and after Crosby gave him an early audiotape recorder, Paul went to work changing it. It eventually led to multitrack recording; on Paul and Ford's hits, he plays many of the guitar parts, and Ford harmonizes with herself. Multitrack recording is now the industry standard.
But Paul likely will be best remembered for the Gibson Les Paul, a variation on the solid-body guitar he built in the late 1930s and offered to the guitar company.
"For 10 years, I was a laugh," he told CNN in an interview. "[But] kept pounding at them and pounding at them saying hey, here's where it's at. Here's where tomorrow, this is it. You can drown out anybody with it. And you can make all these different sounds that you can't do with a regular guitar."
Gibson, spurred by rival Fender, finally took Paul up on his offer and introduced the model in 1952. It has since become the go-to guitar for such performers as Eric Clapton.
Paul is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Inventors Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
He admired the places guitarists and engineers took his inventions, but he said there was nothing to replace good, old-fashioned elbow grease and soul.
"I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it's the right one," he said in 2002, "and it will probably whip the guy with 20 notes."

Guy interacting with the audience in a live performance
|Birth name||George Guy|
July 30, 1936|
Lettsworth, Louisiana, US
|Genres||Blues, Chicago blues, electric blues, blues rock|
|Labels||RCA, Cobra, Chess, Delmark, Silvertone, MCA, Atlantic, MPS, Charly, Zomba Group, Jive, Vanguard, JSP, Rhino Records, Purple Pyramid, Flyright, AIM Recording Co., Alligator Records, Blues Ball Records|
Sonny Boy Williamson II
Stevie Ray Vaughan
The Damn Right Blues Band
|Fender Buddy Guy Signature Stratocaster|
George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He is an exponent of Chicago blues and has influenced guitarists including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In the 1960s, Guy played with Muddy Waters as a house guitarist at Chess Records and began a musical partnership with the harmonica player Junior Wells.
Guy was ranked 30th in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. His song "Stone Crazy" was ranked 78th in Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time. Clapton once described him as "the best guitar player alive".
Guy was born and raised in Lettsworth, Louisiana. He began learning to play the guitar using a two-string diddley bow he made. Later he was given a Harmony acoustic guitar, which, decades later in Guy's lengthy career, was donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Soon after moving to Chicago on September 25, 1957, Guy fell under the influence of Muddy Waters. In 1958, a competition with West Side guitarists Magic Sam and Otis Rush gave Guy a record contract. Soon afterwards he recorded for Cobra Records. He recorded sessions with Junior Wells for Delmark Records under the pseudonym Friendly Chap in 1965 and 1966.
Guy’s early career was impeded by conservative business choices made by his record company (Chess Records) Chess, his record label from 1959 to 1968, refused to record Guy playing in the novel style of his live shows. Leonard Chess, Chess Records founder, denounced Guy’s playing as "noise".

“I know when he got ‘Winchester Cathedral.’ He was thinking, ‘What am I gonna do with this piece of crap?’ But he worked it up to have an old-timey banjo sound, and it became a masterpiece.” It, and several other meticulous H.R. transcriptions, are included in Holder’s book.
Hollywood studio guitar doyen Bob Bain laughed, “Howard would pull all-nighters before those sessions. He’d stay up arranging, then go straight to the studio to record. Jack [Marshall] and Howard would come to my place and stay up writing charts and arrangements for the next day’s session. Even if I wasn’t there, my wife, Judy, would give them the run of the place. Sometimes, I’d be on the date with them the next day… though I had enough sense to get some sleep!”
The Capitol albums brought Roberts major visibility among guitarists and jazz fans. He was, however, paid only scale for the dates, and never got a dime on the back end.
The Studio Years
Holder recalls Roberts’ reaction to much of L.A.’s jazz scene moving to New York in the early ’60s. “Many of the L.A. jazz musicians consequently turned to the film and TV studios for their livelihoods,” he said. That’s when Roberts quickly became a first-call session player who would eventually, and later routinely, log more than 900 sessions per year. That includes playing on nearly 400 film scores. Howard said between 1966 and ’76, he played on more than 2,000 record albums.
In addition to “The Deputy,” Roberts’ TV work included playing the eerie theme for “The Twilight Zone,” working on the scores for “The Munsters,” “The Flintstones,” “The Addams Family,” “Gilligan’s Island” and hundreds more. He even played scene-transition cues on the plectrum banjo for “The Beverly Hillbillies.” On his record dates, he lent his talent to such artists as Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Bobby Darin, Duane Eddy, The Monkees, Jimmy Smith, The Beach Boys, Rick Nelson, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, The Electric Prunes, and even Chet Atkins.
One story commonly passed along illuminates Roberts’ iconoclastic and colorful nature.

I thought that I was listening to Waylon play guitar, only to find out later that those early records featured Wayne Moss on electric… the early Haggard stuff was James Burton. It added more to the mystique of “session players” in my mind.
A few years later in the early seventies, before moving to town, I became a big Reggie Young fan. I would buy any record regardless of who the artists were, as long as Reggie played guitar on it. When I finally moved to town and got to know him as a friend it was the absolute best! My hero became my friend.

|Nombre real||Winfield Scott Moore III|
|Nacimiento||27 de diciembre de 1931 Gadsden, Estados Unidos|
|Muerte||28 de junio de 2016 (84 años) Nashville, Estados Unidos|
|Ocupación||Músico, Ingeniero de sonido|
|Género(s)||Rock and roll, rockabilly|
|Período de actividad||1950–2009|
Winfield Scott "Scotty" Moore III (Gadsden, 27 de diciembre de 1931–Nashville, 28 de junio de 2016) fue un músico y compositor estadounidense. Conocido mundialmente por tocar junto a Elvis Presley en la primera parte de su carrera, entre 1954 y los primeros años de Elvis en Hollywood.
El crítico de rock Dave Marsh acredita a Moore con la invención de la canción de poder, en la canción de 1957 de Presley "Jailhouse Rock", la introducción de la cual Moore y el baterista D.J. Fontana, según este último, "copió de una versión de swing de los años 40 de 'The Anvil Chorus'". Moore ocupó el puesto 29 en la lista de la revista Rolling Stone de los 100 Mejores Guitarristas de Todos los Tiempos en 2011. Fue incluido en el Salón de la Fama del Rock and Roll en 2000 y en el Salón de la Fama de la Música de Memphis en 2015. El guitarrista principal de los Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, ha dicho de Moore,
When I heard "Heartbreak Hotel", I knew what I wanted to do in life. It was as plain as day. All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like that. Everyone else wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty.
Winfield Scott Moore III was born near Gadsden, Tennessee, to Mattie (née Hefley) as the youngest of four boys by fourteen years. He learned to play the guitar from family and friends at age eight. Although underage when he enlisted, Moore served in the United States Navy in China and Korea from 1948 through January 1952.

As the electric guitar began to take on its signature shape in the Fifties – almost indistinguishable from the guitars of today – it bears noting how conspicuously sexy that design had become.
With curves that cartoonishly mimicked the lines of a woman’s hips, and an undeniably phallic neck, the guitar may have preceded the sexual revolution of the Sixties, but it would become a perfect visual complement to it. Its provocative design was something Berry was one of the first to acknowledge, and that he rarely failed to exploit in his live shows.
While he had to be careful with how far he went – Chuck was one of the first black crossover rock-and-roll artists in a very racially charged time – he wasn’t that careful. He often played to predominately white audiences at rock-and-roll stage shows booked by DJ/promoter Alan Freed, or in Hollywood films such as Rock, Rock, Rock!, Go, Johnny Go! and Mister Rock and Roll.
During each appearance, Berry would kiss his Gibson or Gretsch on the neck, wrestling with it as he made it scream and swoon during his wild solos, jutting it lasciviously from his waist as he did splits. The Gibson ES-350T was particularly well suited to Berry’s gyrations.
In the mid Fifties, electric guitar players had two choices: either a full hollow-body or a compact solid-body. Gibson had been receiving requests from players for something in-between the two styles, so in 1955 their first “thinline” electrics were developed.
The guitar’s medium build was a perfect fit for Chuck’s high-energy stage presentation. Chuck’s guitar antics and wild gyrations were provocative stuff for suburban kids, who were used to gently swaying crooners such as Frank Sinatra or Rosemary Clooney. And while they might not have understood all the implications of his act, one thing was clear: the electric guitar presented a seriously dangerous, sexy alternative to the comparatively staid piano or the sax.
At the end of the Fifties, dozens of guitar-playing Johnny B. Goodes appeared, irrevocably changing the musical landscape, all playing in small electric combos resembling those pioneered by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.
As for Waters, he had a few more hits, including Mannish Boy in 1956 and She’s Nineteen Years Old in 1958.

I know it's not piano, but anybody who has been in the music business for a while knows and respects Les Paul...
CNN) -- Les Paul, whose innovations with the electric guitar and studio technology made him one of the most important figures in recorded music, has died, according to a statement from his publicists. Paul was 94.
Paul died in White Plains, New York, from complications of severe pneumonia, according to the statement.
Paul was a guitar and electronics mastermind whose creations -- such as multitrack recording, tape delay and the solid-body guitar that bears his name, the Gibson Les Paul -- helped give rise to modern popular music, including rock 'n' roll. No slouch on the guitar himself, he continued playing at clubs into his 90s despite being hampered by arthritis.
"If you only have two fingers [to work with], you have to think, how will you play that chord?" he told CNN.com in a 2002 phone interview. "So you think of how to replace that chord with several notes, and it gives the illusion of sounding like a chord."
Lester William Polfuss was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. Even as a child he showed an aptitude for tinkering, taking apart electric appliances to see what made them tick.
"I had to build it, make it and perfect it," Paul said in 2002. He was nicknamed the "Wizard of Waukesha."
In the 1930s and '40s, he played with several big band singers, including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the Andrews Sisters, as well as with his own Les Paul Trio. In the early 1950s, he had a handful of huge hits with his then-wife, Mary Ford, such as "How High the Moon" and "Vaya Con Dios."
His guitar style, heavily influenced by jazzman Django Reinhardt, featured lightning-quick runs and double-time rhythms. In 1948, after being involved in a severe car accident, he asked the doctor to set his arm permanently in a guitar-playing position.
Paul also credited Crosby for teaching him about timing, phrasing and preparation.
Crosby "didn't say it, he did it -- one time only. Unless he blew the lyrics, he did one take."

There are a lot of great guitarists that have recorded music over the years. There’s just something about a player who is one with his instrument, like it’s an extension of his or body. Many of these great guitar performances are lost to time because the technology to record them wasn’t available widely in the early 1900s. Luckily for us recoding technology has improved over the years and hundreds of great concerts have been committed to tape.
Cream – Crossroads
Crossroads was originally called Crossroad Blues, written and recorded in 1936 by the legendary Robert Johnson. Many of Johnson’s songs have been covered over the years but Cream’s live version from the 1968 double album Wheels of Fire is the most famous. Why? Because of the way Clapton restructured the song. He turned it into a standard tuning twelve bar blues rocker. And to make the song even better Clapton played not one, but two guitar solos on the track. The first solo is a pretty straightforward blues solo but the second, while remaining a bluesy feel, is a blazing solo that proves once and for all why his nickname was God in the 1960s. If you get have a moment look up other live performances online to see and hear for yourself.
Eddie Van Halen – Live Solo
Eddie Van Halen burst onto the scene and into the consciousness of guitarists everywhere with the short but blistering solo Eruption on Van Halen’s first album. He went on to record an instrumental on two other albums, the flamenco inspired Spanish Fly on Van Halen II and the organ sounding Cathedral on Diver Down. In 1986, during Van Halen’s first tour with new singer Sammy Hagar, the band recorded and released a live concert video. The eleventh track on the tape is merely called Guitar Solo. It starts out with Edward playing a clean little ditty that was later recorded as 316 (his son’s birthday). After that he blasts off for eleven minutes of pure rock n roll guitar soloing as only the best guitarist of his era can. He shreds melodically (as is his style) and during the course of the solo he fits in parts of Eruption, Spanish Fly, and Cathedral. This is probably the greatest guitar solo of Eddie Van Halen’s ever caught on tape and must be heard to be fully appreciated.

Some have tried playing the guitar with their teeth, behind their back, with their feet, etc. And then there was the inventive guitarist who, many decades ago, decided to slip a bottle over his finger and slide it along his guitar's strings (He probably emptied the bottle himself, if you know what I mean).
Duane Allman had three primary Les Pauls during his time with the Allman Brothers Band. The 1957 goldtop that he played on the band’s first two albums as well as most of the Derek and the Dominos Layla sessions has been on display at the Big House Museum in Macon, Georgia.
In honor of the expansive new box set from Rounder Records, Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective, we focused on his single-note soloing on classic Allman Brothers’ cuts like “Stormy Monday” and “Whipping Post.” This month’s column is dedicated to Duane’s mastery of the art of slide guitar.
"I remember hearing 'Hey Jude' by Wilson Pickett and calling either Ahmet Ertegun or Tom Dowd and saying, 'Who's that guitar player?'" says Eric Clapton in the top video below. It turns out the guitar player was a 22-year-old Duane Allman, aka "Skydog."
Now in paperback, Randy Poe's Skydog: The Duane Allman Story (Backbeat Books) is revised and expanded, with a new afterword by the author, plus a foreword by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. It's the definitive biography of Duane Allman, one of the most revered guitarists of his generation.
The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East has been considered rock’s best live album since its 1971 release. Recorded March 12 and 13, 1971, at the New York club, the album captured the original Allman Brothers Band at the peak of their powers, playing with verve, grace, intensity and seemingly telepathic communication.
The Allman Brothers Band was largely Duane’s conception, and it was his unflagging energy and incredible guitar playing that drove them to mesmerizing heights as they blended rock, jazz, blues and country in new and exciting ways. Unfortunately, the guitarist was killed in a motorcycle accident in October of ’71 just as the band was achieving large-scale commercial recognition.

—Matt Blackett
Alonzo “Lonnie” Johnson is best known to guitarists for his groundbreaking acoustic six- and 12-string work in the late Twenties, including his celebrated duets with jazz guitarist Eddie Lang in 1929, and his 1927 recording “6/88 Glide,” featuring what is now widely considered to be the first flatpicked single-note guitar solo. But Johnson’s career continued for decades after that, and in 1947 he began playing electric. You’ll find great electric solos scattered throughout his subsequent tunes, but the brief but rocking romp on 1949’s “Playing Around” notably foreshadows moves that early rockers such as Eddie Cochran, Cliff Gallup, and Scotty Moore will explore a few years later. —Barry Cleveland
Like Hendrix, to whom he is overly, if not unfairly, compared, Robin Trower’s blues roots run deep. Forty years into his solo career he still makes records worth listening to, these days filled with more classic blues tunes than ever. Still, the best example of his rooted playing might be “Whisky Train,” a tune he wrote for Procol Harum’s fourth album, Home. The song could be considered one long cowbell-driven guitar solo, with Trower riding one of the great guitar riffs over and over, occasionally answering brief Gary Booker vocal sections with short modern blues excursions that preview his style as a solo artist. —Michael Ross
It’s no easy task to choose a favorite Rory Gallagher blues solo, but his slide work on “Bullfrog Blues” is a serious contender. Leaving his trademark Strat behind (several YouTube videos show him playing a Gretsch Corvette), Gallagher gets to work in open-A tuning, with a capo on the second fret. The solo itself uses licks in the I, IV, and V chord positions at the fifth, seventh, and 12th frets, and it isn’t unlike Gallagher’s acoustic bottleneck work—though a ferocious amount of gain yields one of the meanest electric slide tones that you’ll ever encounter. –Teja Gerken
“Ball and Biscuit”
Jack White kicked the blues straight in the nuts on “Ball and Biscuit” utilizing a bizarre, ferocious sound the likes of which had never before been heard in the history of America’s senior guitar genre.

As it is, Dolan's sides -- cut with the likes of Jimmy Bryant, Speedy West, Billy Strange, and Cliffie Stone, among other renowned session players and country virtuosi -- continued to attract a country audience well into the mid-'50s, treading a fine line between Western swing, honky tonk, and traditional country, with the occasional novelty song thrown in. "I'll Hate Myself Tomorrow" and "Wham Bam Thank You Mam" seem like two sides of the same set of soiled sheets as presented on the A- and B-side of a 45 single, respectively. Also worth mentioning is Dolan's connection to the fascinating subject of people getting whacked over the heads with guitars. The song "Playin' Dominoes and Shootin' Dice," another of Dolan's efforts on the outer edges of rockabilly, is a description of a "guitar picker (who) lived a life of wine and liquor." This doesn't suit his girlfriend, who retaliates with an "el kabong." These passages written by Dolan should make him a favorite among guitarists: "Then his old guitar, she swung it/For his head, she really hung it/Bruises, knots, and bumps began to rise."
He enjoyed a fairly lucrative stage career on the West Coast, marred only by some of his more boisterous and overbearing behavior at clubs. According to those who knew him, the primary reason for Dolan's problems stemmed from a severe lack of confidence in his appeal and talent. He was, at best, a limited guitarist, which was sometimes a virtue in his earlier sides, and his vocal delivery developed a weightiness and ponderousness as his career progressed -- with a little flexibility and imagination (and especially with his background as an announcer), he might have slipped into a recording career similar to that of J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson, with the right songs and producer to work with. Evidently, he lacked the impetus and ambition, and it was no accident that Dolan gave up his singing career when rock & roll came along, perhaps recognizing that, much more than the over-30 Bill Haley, he would never be able to find a niche among younger listeners.

When Big Joe Turner, a blues shouter who had an R. & B. hit with the song, sings the same line, we see something different.
Haley died in 1981, at the age of fifty-five, a year or so before John Swenson published his biography, “Bill Haley: The Daddy of Rock and Roll_._” The Stray Cats were about to become famous by updating much of Haley’s sound. He is little known today compared to Berry, Presley, Little Richard, and the other early kings of rock and roll, for whom he helped cut a path. But “Rock Around the Clock” has remained intermittently iconic. It’s a youthful grandfather to any number of rock party anthems: “Rock and Roll Music,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “I Love Rock and Roll.” And when something of the early rebellious rock spirit is sought, it’s Haley’s record that people often reach for. In 1987, LL Cool J tied his hip hop to rock and roll by egging on his d.j.—“Go Cut Creator Go”—instead of that noted guitarist Johnny B. Goode, and by kicking off the track with “One, two, THREE o’clock, four o’clock ROCK!”
“Rock Around the Clock” climbed to number one in large part because it was the theme music to “Blackboard Jungle,” the 1955 Glenn Ford film that linked rock and roll to a whole range of juvenile delinquencies, from the smashing of jazz albums to attempted rape. During a nineteen-fifties revival, nearly twenty years later, “Rock Around the Clock” was chosen to be the first track on the “American Graffiti” soundtrack, was the theme song for the first two seasons of “Happy Days” and, in 1974, briefly returned to the Billboard Top 40. This nostalgic, early-nineteen-seventies moment presented rock and roll, and Haley’s record in particular, as good, clean fun, a flashback to music now devoid of its former ability to scare as well as to delight.
That was nothing new.

Kessel responded, “The only thing I can teach you is that there’s nothing I can teach you.”
This is a1937 Epiphone Broadway, but it has a Deluxe-style neck and fingerboard. I bought it about five years ago from a guitar player named John Hannam, who lives in Oregon and hung out with Howard when he lived there. John acquired the guitar from Howard’s widow, Patty, and my understanding is that Howard got the guitar from George Van Eps. I recently showed the guitar to Bob Bain, who played a lot with George Van Eps, and Bob instantly remembered George playing this guitar before George went to the seven-string.As far as I know, the guitar was built by Epiphone with this neck, and blond finish. John had it refinished by a luthier named Saul Koll, who did a beautiful job. John Carruthers built and installed the floating pickup for me. The guitar sounds incredible, and plays great!
There’s an old Epiphone ad that shows Howard Roberts playing what looks like this guitar. – Tim May
Spector and H.R. – Oil and Water
Holder also recalls how Roberts told him about one day becoming so aggravated after a studio date that he smashed his Martin nylon-string in the fireplace. “It was because of a Phil Spector session,” Holder said.
H.R.’s relationship with the producer was indeed strained. Often, Spector’s sessions called for Roberts to play a barre chord on a 12-string for hours at a time. It was typical of Spector to slavishly rehearse his musicians for hours. Consequently, Howard developed hand problems. “I had to get a specialist from Canada to come down and straighten me out,” he said.
Holder related another dissonant episode between Roberts and Spector, when the producer had a penchant for packing heat at his sessions. Roberts, an avid outdoorsman with a fervent respect for firearms, recoiled on a date when Spector’s pistol fired into the ceiling. H.R. left the session, telling Spector, “I just can’t do this. I can’t stay here.

The famously fickle and laborious Strat cat played a ’59 Les Paul Standard dubbed “Buddy” through a Fuzz Face and a 100-watt Marshall on the solo—a first-take monster in the moment. Brandishing a sizzling tone and feeding off of Miller’s vocal set up, Johnson’s searing first solo soars to the heavens. Perfectly timed major thirds sound surprisingly blue, and EJ incorporates just enough diminished and chromatic runs to add spice without pushing too far beyond the boundaries of the blues. —Jimmy Leslie
“I’m Going Home”
It’s hard to think of Alvin Lee without taking note of his solo in Ten Years After’s “I’m Going Home.” The band first recorded the song on its 1968 release Undead, and it upped the fast shuffle’s octane level during its performance at the Woodstock festival. Playing his iconic “Big Red” 1959 Gibson ES-335, Lee takes the unusual step to start his solo accompanied only by drums for a full 24 bars, playing without the comfort of harmonic guidance from the band. He then proceeds to play one of the most blistering and fluid, Chuck Berry-influenced solos you’ll ever come across. –Teja Gerken
Released on Mick Taylor’s first post-Rolling Stones solo album Mick Taylor, “Slow Blues” is a study in how to avoid mere noodling while essentially blowing for the entire duration of an instrumental track. The fact that “Slow Blues” uses a very cool, modified, 12-bar progression with a distinctive bass line and chorused-sounding 13th chords taking the place of an actual melody certainly helps in keeping the tune engaging, but Taylor’s throaty, reverb-drenched tone and dynamic playing keep the tune moving forward in a way that is not to be taken for granted in such an extended solo exploration. –Teja Gerken
“Call It Stormy Monday”
Chances are, you’re not old enough to remember the impact this song made when it was originally released in 1947. (By way of perspective—Clapton was only two years old then, and the first Stratocaster was still seven years off.) So you may listen now and find yourself thinking, “What’s the big whoop? I’ve heard other guitarists play that stuff.” The big whoop is: Walker invented that stuff. Without his influence, there might’ve been no B.B.

Greetings my friend and fellow strummers in this months column I will discuss that in my opinion that Artist recognition is one of the most important aspect of guitar marketing. That is a statement I truly believe, and in this column I will trace the popularity of certain guitars and the artists that I believe are responsible for their success. I will also list some guitar players and the guitars I found to be intriguing. I will list the guitars first and the artists that were associated with it. Remember my friends knowing what guitars your favorite players play is part of getting a sound similar to them, but it is only a small part of it.
Eddie Cochran was only 21 years old when he died in an auto accident while on tour in England on April 17th 1960. In his brief but illustrious career Eddie recorded some of the most influential early rock and roll, tunes like, Twenty Flight Rock, C’mon Everybody, Too Much Monkey Business, and Something Else, but Eddie’s Summertime Blues was a monster hit. Summertime Blues was also covered by Blue Cheer (a Billboard Top 40 hit) and the Who (Live at Leeds) but neither version could match the magic and originality of Eddie’s version.
This is the story of a personal journey through the world of music that begins humbly and ends just as humbly as it started. The fact that your reporter (should I say “moi”?) has experienced it at all is amazing enough, for under any other circumstances I might not have found myself in circumstances that presented so ripe an opportunity to learn and understand that most sensuous, invigorating, physically challenging and just plain righteous of musical instruments: the guitar.
Mike Stern is one of those lucky few: a guitarist who can do it all. Though he’s known for the depth and precision of his jazzy ballads and rip-snortin’ fusion instrumentals, he’s equally respected for the woozy bends and woody tone of his paeans to the greats of blues and rock. Listen to any of his many excellent releases (all of which remain active in the Atlantic catalog), and you’ll caught by the power of his deceivingly subtle blend.
Last month guitar legend Link Wray passed away at his Copenhagen home at the age of seventy-six. A master of raw tone and minimalist riffs, Link Wray was the great grandfather of the power chord.

Elvis Guitar Collection All Elvis Owned Gibson Guitars – Elvis Guitars has become synonymous with rock n rock. The preferred musical instrument for a legend of rock icons Throughout the years, Elvis had a string of Gibson guitars he used on stage
Scotty Moores 82-year-old fingers have no more music left in them. Arthritis has invaded the hands of the man Rolling Stone magazine rated 29th in its 2011 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of all time, ahead of legends such as Mark Knopfler, Joe Walsh, Muddy Waters, Slash, Dickey Betts, Bonnie Raitt, Carl Perkins, Roger McGuinn and Paul Simon. Scotty Moore was Elvis Presleys original lead guitar player who laid down the licks on classic early hits such as Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock. He was also Elvis close friend and worked as his manager for a short time. Its been about seven or eight years since I was able to play, Moore says by phone from his secluded home outside Nashville. I had stopped playing professionally several years before that, but Id still play once in a while for my own enjoyment … just whatever song came to mind, really. Sure, I miss it. But the arthritis came on gradually, so I knew the day would come that I had to deal with it.
Les Paul, guitarist had Gibson Guitar brand named in his honor. The Les Paul Guitar is the most sought after guitar by most famous rock bands
Elvis Presley’s Gibson Doveguitar was played by ‘The King’ during a performance at the Las Vegas Hilton in December 1976. Elvis gave the instrument to his bodyguard Sam Thompson in January 1977. On the back of the guitar is some plastic residue where the belt on Elvis’s jumpsuit melted because of the heat of the stage lighting. Described as ‘one of the most significant guitars to ever reach the market’, the Elvis guitar expected to sell for up to US$500,000.
Les Paul, guitarist who had Gibson Guitar named in his honor and who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multi-track recording and had a string of hits, died August 13, 2009. He was 94.

Usually when you say "solos," I picture Steve Vai up there – like, ten feet tall and hideous.
I also like Mick Ronson. He's not the best guitarist ever, but he's the coolest – ever. He looked cool, played cool, everything was just so cool. And, of course, he played guitar on "Jack and Diane," too.
I think Steve Howe from Yes is the best. He's not a typical math-rock guitarist. He never used distortion but he still thrashed, which I could never figure out. And who isn't a fan of Eddie Van Halen? When that first record came out, I wanted to fucking kill myself! I said, "I'm wasting my fuckin' time, aren't I?"
There aren't any guitarists anymore who are going to light the world on fire. Maybe everything's been done. Once Eddie Van Halen hit the scene, he did everything that hadn't been done – and that was it. I started liking the emotional guitarists, like Kurt [Cobain] and the punk-rock guitarists. I thought they were more like it.
Leslie West [of Mountain] never gets any recognition. I've always been a big fan of his, since back when he was a fat kid dropping out of high school in Forest Hills [Queens]. He was, to me, one of the top five guitar players of his era. His playing is so soulful and tasteful. His break in "Theme for an Imaginary Western" is the best thing I've ever heard. It builds so me-lodically. The last note in the break – he hits one of those notes that just shoots up the octave, this harmonic jump. The whole solo is a thing of beauty.
Joe Perry (Aerosmith)
My favorite guitarist is Steve Rose. He was the first guy I ever saw actually play an electric guitar onstage. He was arguably the best guitar player for a few towns around [Boston], and he gave guitar lessons. You talk about guitar heroes – I can remember seeing him and his band, the Wildcats, at a high school dance. I was like, "Shit!" It wasn't just something coming out of the radio; it wasn't the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I didn't dance with anybody; I just watched him play guitar.

He used to record himself playing on his portable Grundig tape recorder, and listening to that over and over until he felt he got it right.In October 1963 Clapton joined The Yardbirds, and stayed with them until March 1965.
That got me into the band, and then we started making money, I found I had nothing else to spend it on but guitars, so maybe once a month I bought a guitar.
Influenced by guitarists like Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and B. King, Clapton developed a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked about guitarists in the British music scene. During this time, Clapton really began to develop as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Their hits include “Sunshine of Your Love”, “White Room” and “Crossroads”.
Cream had sold a millions of records and have played throughout the U. Clapton’s next band was Blind Faith (1969), and later on Derek and the Dominos which he formed in 1970 together with keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon.
If you Google a photo of a vintage Jazz II, you’ll probably notice that almost every single guitar has uniquely shaped inlays, while Eric’s Kay has simple block inlays.
Next to that, you’ll also notice that Eric’s guitar is fitted with a black round pickguard, while every other Kay Jazz II features a very distinctively shaped pickguard mostly in white.

Roy Nichols: 1932 to 2001
West Coast guitarist Roy Nichols was one of the most influential axemen in country music. Though he was best known for his long run as a member of Merle Haggard’s band the Strangers, Nichols was already a seasoned pro by the time he began playing with Merle, having performed with such legends as Rose Maddox, Wynn Stewart, the Farmer Boys, and Johnny Cash. Still, it’s with Bakersfield that Nichols is most strongly identified: His sharp-edged Telecaster leads became an identifying mark of the honky-tonk music coming out of that working-class California city during the 1950s and ’60s.
Nichols was born October 21, 1932, in Chandler, Arizona; his family moved to California shortly afterward. At age 16 he landed an impressive gig as lead guitarist with the Maddox Brothers & Rose, one of California’s top country acts at the time. In 1953 he played with Lefty Frizzell onstage and on a handful of recordings. A couple years later, Nichols settled in Bakersfield, where he worked in the house band of Cousin Herb Henson’s popular “Trading Post” TV show. He also played with Wynn Stewart into the early 1960s.
Nichols joined Haggard’s band in 1965. His strong, confident guitar leads, alternately punchy, playful, and moody, were a prominent and distinct element of Merle’s recordings and performances. The Strangers also released instrumental albums that showed off their tremendous talents. Nichols eventually tired of life on the road, however, quitting the Strangers in 1987 and going into semi-retirement.
In 1996, Nichols had a serious stroke. To help defray his medical costs, Los Angeles country singer Kathy Robertson, with help from Bonnie Owens, released two tribute CDs under the banner To Roy Nichols With Love. Nichols died July 3. His influence, and his powerful picking, will ring in the ears of country fans for generations to come.

In the 1980's Specialty issued two LP's of Larry Williams outtakes (Unreleased Larry Williams and Hocus Pocus), recordings much rawer then the issued sides. These discs went out of print fast and much of the material has never appeared on CD, but one of these included a version of Bad Boy where Rene Hall plays what must be one of the most out of control guitar solos of all time. You can practially smell the smoke coming from the tubes in his amp.
While at Specialty, Rene Hall also cut three solo 45's, only one was a guitar instrumental, and he only played on one side, but it's quite a classic-- Twitchy b/w Flippin'. The a-side features Willie Joe Duncan, who played a Unitar (one string guitar), and the tune is basically a re-recording of Unitar Rock, which had appeared on the b-side of Bob Froggy Landers' Cherokee Dance a year earlier. Duncan not only had one string on his guitar, he seems to have known only one tune, but a hell of a tune it is. Flippin' features Hall's guitar and is a pretty good rocker in it's own right. His next Specialty 45, also issued in 1957 was a version of venerable wino classic Thunderbird b/w When The Saints Go Marching In. For more on the Thunderbird connection see my April posting on the subject. His final Specialty 45 came in early '57, a slice of novelty exotica that I've always loved-- Cleo, it was backed with an instrumental version of Frankie & Johnny that featured Plas Johnson's blaring tenor.
Bumps Blackwell, with Rene Hall as arranger had taken Specialty gospel star Sam Cooke of the Soul Stirrers and recorded a pop tune, complete with white back up singers, called You Send Me, which Rupe hated and refused to release, fearing it would offend the gospel fans. Blackwell was sure he had a hit record and a future star in Cooke and worked out a deal with Rupe where in exchange for back royalties he was owed he could have Cooke's contract and take You Send Me elsewhere. They took it to Bob Keane who issued it on the Keen label and of course it was a huge hit. Hall stayed on with Cooke as his guitarist and arranger until his death, but that's away from our subject today.

There wouldn’t be a second rock-and-roll Billboard chart-topper until The Platters’ “The Great Pretender,” in early 1956, or a third until Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” that spring. By then, though, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins and, again, Haley (with “See You Later, Alligator”) had all invaded the top ten. Predictably, several acts, including Pat Boone and Gale Storm, landed major pop hits during the same period with conventional covers of less commercially successful rock-and-roll hits.
Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” was by no means the first rock-and-roll record. Nominees for that title are largely dependent upon how a particular nominator values the music. If you think of rock and roll as what white people called a certain form of energetic, black Rhythm & Blues after stealing the style, you might choose “Rocket 88,” the 1951 R. & B. hit released by Jackie Brenston, the vocalist in Ike Turner’s band. (Haley and his group, then still going as the Saddlemen, cut a version of the song that same year.) On the other hand, if you think rock and roll mostly marks an integrationist cultural shift among young white teenagers, who weren’t thieves but knew what they liked, then you might go with something like Haley’s minor 1952 hit “Rock the Joint,” a twanged-up, proto-rockabilly take on a 1949 R. & B. hit from Jimmy Preston.* The Haley biographer John Swenson has identified “Rock the Joint” as “the beginning of the age of rock & roll,” a regional success that “became an anthem for [white] school kids who refused to make the limited choice of listening to segregated music.” Then again, if you define rock and roll as a combination of R. & B. with a smaller but essential portion taken from country music, with plenty of black gospel and some white pop mixed in as well, perhaps you think that it’s all far too complicated to reduce to any specific first record.
No matter which way you look at it, though, Bill Haley is a foundational figure.

He co-wrote the instrumental "Have Guitar Will Travel" in 1958 with Bill Black, which was released as a 45 single, 107, on the Fernwood Records label.
- Moore, Scotty; Dickerson, James L. (1997). That's Alright, Elvis: The Untold Story of Elvis's First Guitarist and Manager, Scotty Moore. Schirmer Books. ISBN 978-0028645995.
- Moore, Scotty; Dickerson, James L. (2013). Scotty and Elvis: Aboard the Mystery Train. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1617038181.
- Grimes, William (28 de junio de 2016). «Scotty Moore, Hard-Driving Guitarist Who Backed Elvis Presley, Dies at 84». The New York Times (en inglés estadounidense). ISSN 0362-4331. Consultado el 7 de julio de 2017.
- Ernst Jorgensen, Elvis Presley: A Life in Music. The Complete Recording Sessions. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998, p. 92. ISBN 0312263155
- «100 Greatest Guitarists: Scotty Moore». Rolling Stone. ISSN 0035-791X. Consultado el 1 de enero de 2015.
- «Elvis guitarist Scotty Moore dies aged 84». BBC News. 29 de junio de 2016. Consultado el 14 de noviembre de 2016.
- Sweeting, Adam (30 de junio de 2016). «Scotty Moore obituary». The Guardian. Consultado el 15 de noviembre de 2016.
- «Scotty Moore 1931–2016: The Guitarist Who Made ‘the King’ Rock». Daily Express. 2 de julio de 2016. Consultado el 15 de noviembre de 2016.
- Rubin, Dave (1 de noviembre de 2015). Inside Rock Guitar: Four Decades of the Greatest Electric Rock Guitarists. Hal Leonard. pp. 25-26. ISBN 978-1-4950-5639-0.

The first three releases were all done on the West coast and published by Capitol records, the big California concern.Then at the end of the selection, here are more Little Richard tunes, some very rare. Enjoy!
The multi-session guitar player BILLY STRANGE (1930-2012) sang a truck driver’s song in 1952, « Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves », complete with truck honkers effects, braking grinding sounds and woman’s yellings, which goes faster and faster until the final break. (Capitol 2032).
Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves
Jump Rope Boogie
Then the ubiquitous CLIFFIE STONE, bass player, bandleader and entertainer (Hometown Jamboree) for the jumping, jiving « Jump Rope Boogie » (Capitol 1496).
Third Capitol exposure goes with OLE RASMUSSEN, leader of the Nebraska Corn Hunters. Defintely a Western flavoured Hillbilly. Medium paced « Gonna See My Sunday Baby Tonight ».(Capitol 1323). lazy vocal with yells to the backing musicians.
Gonna See My Sunday Baby Tonight
Hoyt Scoggins & The Georgia Boys
On a Starday Custom serie # 606 (from January 1957), the very nice, fast « What’s The Price (To, Set Me Free » by HOYT SCOGGINS & His Georgia Boys. An agile guitar, on a very fast Hillbilly boogie. A splendid track..
What's The Price (To Set Me Free)
Rock'n'Roll Fever Ain't Got Me
Jim Harless & the Lonesome Valley Boys
JIM HARLESS next one, from Bristol, TN in a mix-up of Hillbilly and Bluegrass (good banjo all through) for « Rock’n’Roll Fever Ain’t Got Me ». A bit of fiddle and a strong rhythm guitar.(Shadow 104, unknown date).
It’s impossible to fix which version came first on of « The Hot Guitar », either by Eddie Hill on Mercury 6374 (backed by MM. Chet Atkins and Hank Garland) or by TED BROOKS (Vocal by Henry Kimbrell) on Decca 46374, both issued in October 1951. Guitar tour-de-force in both cases.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will pay tribute to the “father of the electric guitar” this fall.
Les Paul will be honored at the annual American Music Masters series, a weeklong event that begins Nov. 10, Rock Hall officials said Tuesday. A tribute concert – artists will be named later – is scheduled Nov. 15 at Cleveland’s State Theater.
Paul, 93, is hoping to attend, said Rock Hall President and CEO Terry Stewart.
“You have an inductee who in some ways maybe has had one of the biggest influences of all our inductees with the creation of his solid-body guitar, overdubbing … not to mention his musical styling and his ability to play,” Stewart said. “He’s become an idol and an icon to people in the rock world, as well as people in jazz and popular music.”
Paul began playing guitar as a child and by 13 was performing semiprofessionally as a country-music guitarist. He later made his mark as a jazz-pop musician, recording hits like “How High the Moon” with his wife, singer Colleen Summers.
He built a solid-body electric guitar in 1941 – an invention born from his frustration that audiences were unable to hear him play.
In 1952, Gibson introduced the Les Paul model, which became the instrument of choice for musicians such as Duane Allman, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.
“It’s not just his innovation and his musical playing, but sort of the residual effects of that guitar,” Stewart said. “It’s become the beginning point for so many people in music, particularly rock music.”
Paul still performs weekly at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City. He was inducted into the early influence category of the Rock Hall in 1988.
Paul is only the second living recipient of the annual American Music Masters award, which began in 1996 to pay tribute to artists who helped change American culture. Jerry Lee Lewis was the first living recipient in 2007. Past recipients include Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters and Sam Cooke.

was working at the Louisiana Hayride and working clubs in and around
Shreveport with all the Hayride acts and we met him when we went down
there. I don't think he played with us the first time we appeared.
The best I can remember, he played with somebody else on the show and we heard
and liked him and asked if he would like to play with us the next time.
And he did. He would speed up or slow down just like we would and we said,
"Boy, this is great". And he started working with us every time
there was money to include him on the dates. D.J. actually went on the
payroll in December, 1955.
So this was getting into the RCA period.
A lot of people may also not know that Elvis actually played your guitar or
Bill's bass on some songs.
Yeah, Elvis played my guitar on "One Night". He also played
Bill's bass on "You're So Square". And although he played fairly
good piano and good rhythm, he wasn't an accomplished musician by any
means. But he had a real uncanny sense of rhythm, and I think that's what
made him such a great singer. That rhythm just seem to come out of him,
especially on up-tempo things.
Approximately how many songs did you record throughout the years?
I don't have any idea. Somebody told me one time it was over 500.
I've never tried to count.
So that would be 1954-67?
1968. The "Comeback Special" was the last thing I worked with
Do you have a few favorite tunes?
Oh (pause) yeah. I have a lot of favorites. The one I like best on
the ballad side is "Don't". I always really liked that
one. Up-tempo, there were just several of them. A lot of the early
things like "Mystery Train" and "Good-Rockin Tonight".
I always thought that lick on the front of "Don't Be Cruel" was a
Yeah, I believe I got paid for that one. I believe it was a bout 8 notes
on the front and a chord on the end.
Alright, it's time for some guitar talk. Around 1954 you were seen
playing a ES-295, correct?
Was this your first good guitar?

Who can actually say when the notion of vagabond outlaw, crackshot guitarist-as-superhero first entered into the rock idiom? If it was the end of the 60’s, when single performers were rapidly losing ground to the ‘groops’, and we all felt comfortable enough with our musical extravagances to heap such gleaming status upon an individual, then it was natural that, in nearly all cases, the bulk of attention inevitably fell on who plays the guitar. That is, the guitarist as quarterback or pitcher, center of attraction, focal point, el comandante. The physical presence of a gunfighter guitarist within a group—American, British, Indian, Redneck, City-Black, Hire-the-Handicapped—always insured at least moderate interest in what the group was up to. So just about anything above and beyond the traditional role of accompanist that set any rootin’-tootin’ guitarist apart from everybody else, and that usually fell under the category of brains/ability/taste, meant instant immortality.
The first hotshots whose names became household words, as far as high-quality blues-bred rock ‘n roll was concerned (that, at least, is the genre we're limited to here) were Jimmy Page, Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Peter Townshend, Keith Richard and, if you lived east of the Mississippi, the Blues Project's Danny Kalb. The next solid wave of machine-gunners included Johnny Winter, Larry Coryell, Jorma Kaukonen, Robbie Robertson, Bert Jansch and, finally discovered by most, John Fahey. Without elaborating on the latter “experimental” phase or the former “early primitive” phase, suffice to say that the last great flowering of guitarists whose names assumed that “household word” status included the likes of Jerry Garcia, John Fogerty, John McLaughlin, Carlos Santana, J. Geils, and the last American to say something new on the guitar, Duane Allman.
Household words. When you hear the name you immediately visualize the gaunt stranger with the ax.

Peter Frampton Reunited with His Lost 1954 Gibson Les Paul After 31 Years
A 1954 Gibson Les Paul that Peter Frampton played during his Humble Pie and solo days has been found after investigation by two Frampton fans, according to Gibson.com. The guitar had been presumed lost in a 1980 cargo plane crash.
The Curaçao Tourist Board acquired the guitar, and experts from Gibson Guitar confirmed it was, indeed, the missing guitar, long missing from Frampton’s collection.
Frampton was given the guitar in 1970 by a man named Mark Mariana at a Humble Pie gig at the Fillmore West. Frampton borrowed Mariana’s guitar for the show and afterward tried to buy it from him. “But to my surprise he said he couldn’t sell it to me, he wanted to give it to me!” he said.
Frampton played the guitar exclusively on Humble Pie’s Rock On and Rocking the Fillmore albums and his own seminal Frampton Comes Alive!, one of the top-selling live records of all time.
Frampton was recently reunited with the guitar in Nashville, Tennessee.
“I am still in a state of shock, first off, that the guitar even exists, let alone that it has been returned to me. I know I have my guitar back, but I will never forget the lives that were lost in this crash. I am so thankful for the efforts of those who made this possible … and, now that it is back I am going insure it for 2 million dollars and it’s never going out of my sight again! It was always my No. 1 guitar and it will be reinstated there as soon as possible. Some minor repairs are needed. And, I just can’t wait to get Mark Mariana on the phone.”

The great rock guitarist Link Wray died on Friday. In the 1997 edition of the All Music Guide to Rock, the late Cub Koda had this to say about him: "Quite simply, Link Wray invented the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists. Listen to any of the tracks he recorded between that landmark instrumental (Rumble--Lee) in 1958 through his Swan recordings in the early 1960s and you'll hear the blueprints for heavy metal, thrash, you name it. Though rock historians always like to draw a nice, clean line between the distorted electric guitar work that fuels early blues records to the late-'60s Hendrix-Clapton-Beck-Page-Townshend mob, with no stops in between, a quick spin of any of the sides Link recorded during his golden decade punches holes in that theory right quick. If a direct line from a black blues musician crankin' up his amp and playing with a ton of violence and aggression can be traced to a young, white guy doing a mutated form of same, the line points straight to Link Wray, no contest."
RIP Link (No Pun Intended...)

Atkins sometimes
joked that early on his playing sounded ''like two guitarists playing
During the 1940s he toured with many acts, including Red Foley, The Carter
Family and Kitty Wells. RCA executive Steve Sholes took Atkins on as a
protege in the 1950s, using him as the house guitarist on recording
RCA began issuing instrumental albums by Atkins in 1953. George Harrison,
whose guitar work on early Beatles records is heavily influenced by Atkins,
wrote the liner notes for ''Chet Atkins Picks on the Beatles.''
Sholes put Atkins in charge of RCA Nashville when he was promoted in 1957.
There, he helped Nashville survive the challenge of rock 'n' roll with the
Nashville Sound. The lavish sound has been criticized by purists who prefer
their country music raw and unadorned.
Atkins was unrepentant, saying that at the time his goal was simply ''to
keep my job.''
''And the way you do that is you make a hit record once in a while,'' he
said in 1993. ''And the way you do that is you give the audience something
Atkins quit his job as an executive in the 1970s and concentrated on playing
his guitar. He's collaborated with a wide range of artists on solo albums,
including Mark Knopfler, Paul McCartney, Eric Johnson, George Benson, Susie
Bogguss and Earl Klugh.
At the time he became ill, Atkins had just released a CD, ''The Day Finger
Pickers took over the World.'' He also had begun regular Monday night
performances at a Nashville club.
''If I know I've got to go do a show, I practice quite a bit, because you
can't get out there and embarrass yourself.'' Atkins said in 1996.
''So I thought, if I play every week I won't be so rusty and I'll play a lot
Survivors include his wife of more than 50 years, Leona Johnson Atkins, and
a daughter, Merle Atkins.
The funeral is Tuesday morning at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, the former
home of the Grand Ole Opry.

This guy hopped out of his car, knowing he was late, but stopping to light a cigarette and shoot the breeze with us for a few minutes. He had his work uniform on, but was sporting a fairly impressive afro billowing out from underneath his headgear. While he was smoking, I asked him what he was listening to when he pulled up. He looked down at me and said, really he sneered, "Johnny 'Guitar,' 'Real Mutha F'Ya," then he strolled into the back of the store like he was fifteen minutes early instead of fifteen minutes late.
Watson was, like many, influenced by the great T-Bone Walker. He started out playing with such future blues legends as Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland in Houston, but migrated to Los Angeles as a 15-year-old, where he hooked up with sax man Chuck Higgins' band, playing piano and singing on the original "Motor Head Baby," cut by Higgins on the Combo label in 1952. He later cut a livelier version the next year for Federal Records, billed as Young John Watson....this time playing guitar, along with Wayne Bennett, who would later play on many of Bobby "Blue" Bland's Duke recordings.
During this time, Watson would travel to New Orleans and hang out with Guitar Slim, whose wild act included hooking up a long power cord to his guitar to allow him to play in the audience and even into the street, along with wild suits of many colors (with matching hair and shoes). Watson took it a step further.
"I saw what Slim was up to and figured I could do the same. Liked his fire and flash. Truth is, it got to a point where we'd gig together and march into the club with me carrying him on my shoulders, both of us firing away on our guitars like World War III. But I did Slim one better. Got me a 200-foot cord, so when I played auditoriums, I'd start in the back of the balcony and work my way down. I could see rock 'n' roll coming, and could see that when it came in, it'd be riding on the back of some flame-eating guitar. Well, hell, by then 'Guitar' was my middle name."
"I'd play with my teeth. I'd play standing on my hands, play it over my head and under my legs. See the technology was changing.

business of old, when the rock guitar gods of the youth movement were Eric
Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, one American blues guitarist in particular was
held in similar esteem. Sadly, today, as reported by American Blues Scene, that
great musician, Johnny Winter, the
white haired, wild
|Johnny Winter. As most of us remember him|
from Beaumont, Texas, has passed on. Johnny, 70, died in Zurich, Switzerland, during a European tour.
Johnny Winter, in the 1970s,
outshone even such great contemporaries as Gerry Garcia and Mike Bloomfield,
when it came to American electric blues guitar-playing status in the 1970s. Jimi
Hendrix, of course, had died at the turn of the decade, just down the road from
where I lived in South Kensington, although I couldn’t afford to live in South
Kensington today. Only rich rock musicians and foreign mega-rich can afford to
live there today.
Unlike today, hardly anyone outside of black America was aware of Muddy Waters in the early 70s, either. (It
took Johnny Winter to reintroduce Muddy Waters to the world, when Johnny
persuaded his record company to sign Muddy in 1977. With Johnny Winter at the
control desk, Muddy Waters returned to the 1950s Chicago sound we now know and
love so well.)
|Two rock legends, sadly now both gone. Johnny Winter with Janis Joplin|
become the new torchbearer for American blues-rock (was there any other type of
rock in those days?) although Johnny, himself, always claimed he was a blues,
not a rock, artist.
Fortuitously, Johnny Winter was
with CBS Records in England, where I worked in the press office, parent
Columbia having signed him in 1968, after seeing Johnny open for another of
their acts, Mike Bloomfield.
|Brothers: Edgar and Johnny|
catalogue and, immediately, I was hooked on his absolute mastery of electric
blues guitar. Younger brother, Edgar Winter, was just coming into the frame,
and I remember a particularly strong track they did together, with Johnny’s searing
guitar-playing imprinted on my mind to this day. When my sons were boys they
would play this track over and over.

In spite of this, a lot of guitarists have flown a Jet during their careers – players as diverse as Diddley, Cliff Gallup, Atkins, George Harrison, Thumbs Carlille, Hank Garland, Billy Zoom, Jeff Beck, Joe Perry, Tom Keifer, and Dan Fogelberg. The next time you’re at a guitar show, if you see a squadron of Gretsch Jets, check ‘em out. And if there’s a cool-looking red one, take it for a test flight.
This article originally appeared in Vintage Guitar Classics No. 3. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
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“I had my Fender Vibro-King, and stomped on all of my pedals for that solo.” It peaks when Clark launches into a Chuck Berry-like lick at the 12th fret, and then starts incorporating the G at the 15th fret and the F# at the 14th fret on the high E string. “I’d been experimenting in that range,” revealed Clark. “I played that lick over and over to build momentum. We were eager to prove ourselves, and there was an overwhelming sense of ‘Let’s go for it!’” —Jimmy Leslie
Jimmie Vaughan (The Fabulous Thunderbirds)
The other Vaughan is as cool as the other side of the pillow, especially compared to his fire-spitting brother. They both favor Strats, but the similarities pretty much end there. Jimmie rarely plays fast or dirty, and is never flash. He mostly sticks to stabbing single notes within a traditional framework giving them plenty of space to breathe. Jimmie Vaughan reminds us that less notes can certainly mean more, and solo on the title track from the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ 1986 album Tuff Enuff is a shining example. Vaughan doesn’t usually do effects, but in this instance shimmering reverb and delay add remarkable depth to his sparse phrasing. It’s hard to find better evidence of a pure blues solo building a perfect bridge to a crossover hit. —Jimmy Leslie
Hound Dog Taylor
“Wild About You Baby”
Famously called “The Ramones of the blues” by the Village Voice, Hound Dog Taylor and his band the House Rockers played a ferociously raw kind of boogie blues. Based on the familiar “Dust My Broom” slide riff, “Wild About You Baby” (from Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers) is all about a game of call-and-response between the vocals and the guitar. When the time comes for Taylor to solo, he doesn’t stray far from the main riff, and his note choices are perfect examples of a solo taking the place of a vocal line. –Teja Gerken
Although he’s known for his monstrous chops, Greg Koch displays tasty restraint for most of this slow blues, and the results are simply delicious.

In my humble opinion, one of the best post-60s onward rock guitar players of all time passed away.
Jeff Beck had a technique that stood out, to say the least. He had the ability to play any music style with expertise, yet his signature playing was hard to duplicate by other great players. It made him a stand-alone giant!
In his later concert days, it was beautiful how he introduced many bass players on tour, especially outstanding women bass players… Tal Wilkenson as one example comes to mind.
Beck died Tuesday, January 10, 2023, at the age of 78.
Jeff will be missed by a ton of fans. Yet, we’ve been privileged enough to have many of his recordings and videos to enjoy for the rest of the time we each remain on this planet.
Credit is given: Rolling Stone .com article: Hall of Fame musician and former Yardbird guitarist [Jeff Beck] dies following a short bout with bacterial meningitis… By: Daniel Kreps, Kory Grow
As noted in this RS press release…
“Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Beck’s Yardbirds bandmate who inducted the guitarist into the Rock Hall in 2009, wrote on social media Wednesday, “The six stringed Warrior is no longer here for us to admire the spell he could weave around our mortal emotions. Jeff could channel music from the ethereal. His technique unique. His imaginations apparently limitless. Jeff I will miss you along with your millions of fans. Jeff Beck Rest in Peace.”
It further mentioned…
In 2009, 17 years after Beck was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Yardbirds, he delivered one of the greatest induction speeches of all time when he reentered the Rock Hall for his solo work. “Someone told me I should be proud tonight. But I’m not, because they kicked me out. They did. Fuck them,” he quipped at the 1992 ceremony. “I couldn’t believe I was even nominated,” Beck told Rolling Stone at the time. “I thought the Yardbirds was as close as I’d get to getting in. I’ve gone on long after that and gone through different musical changes. It’s very nice to hear that people have been listening.”
Jazz-rock legacy of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, John McLaughlin (age 75 at the time of this blog post) is retiring from touring.

Guitarist Jim Hall, an understated yet profoundly influential presence on jazz guitar, died in his sleep Tuesday morning at his New York City home. He was 83.
Hall, whose career began in the '50s as part of the West Coast jazz scene with Jimmy Giuffre and Chico Hamilton, recorded with wealth of jazz royalty over his career, including Ben Webster, Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Evans and Sonny Rollins, who worked with Hall on his landmark 1962 album "The Bridge" as well as his celebrated 2011 live release, "Road Shows Vol 2."
The guitarist led his own trio since the '60s, and continued to maintain a busy recording and touring schedule. He appeared at this year's Newport Jazz Festival (joined by fellow guitarist Julian Lage) and was reportedly planning a duo tour of Japan with his frequent collaborator Ron Carter for January 2014.
Among his memorable recent recordings include 2008's "Hemispheres," a lush collaboration with Bill Frisell, and the 2010 album "Conversations," recorded with drummer Joey Baron.
Avant garde-leaning guitarist Nels Cline, writing in JazzTimes in 2011, described Hall as "a paragon of taste, tone, creativity and inventiveness. These qualities have kept Hall’s music pushing forward: never stale, often surprising."
Tributes and remembrances have been flowing through Twitter much of the day. Saxophonist Charles Lloyd described Hall's death as "A personal loss of a kindred spirit whose sensitivity and humor buoyed my spirit," and local guitarist Anthony Wilson wrote, "You were all inspiration & elegance. A true master."
There are a wealth of recordings available that act as prime examples of Hall's mastery, but below you can hear his performance with Rollins on "Without a Song" from "The Bridge."
A full obituary will appear at www.latimes.com/obituaries.
Twitter: @chrisbartonCopyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times

Allison became one of the most sought after drummers and as a session musician played on recordings with Bobby Vee, Johnny Burnette, Eddie Cochran, Johnny Rivers, Waylon Jennings, Paul McCartney and many others. His drumming style can be heard on Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” and The Everly Brothers’ “Till I Kissed You”. Phil Everly once spoke of Allison as “the most creative drummer in rock and roll.” On Rolling Stone magazine’s “Book Of Lists” J.I. Allison is rated as one of the top three drummers in rock and roll history. Allison also wrote, or co-wrote, “That’ll Be The Day”, “Peggy Sue” and “More Than I Can say”. In 2013 J.I. Allison House opened in Lubbock, Texas, in tribute to Allison’s legacy of music-making.
Bassist Joe. B. Mauldin is widely regarded in the rock music industry as one of the top rock ‘n roll bass players. He was a recording engineer at Gold Star Studios in LA. He was recording engineer for many stars including Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Phil Spector, Leon Russell and Maureen McGovern. Mauldin wrote a number of songs recorded by Buddy Holly and The Crickets including “I’m Gonna Love You Too” and “Well All Right”. He has toured with The Everly Brothers, Johnny Burnette and Waylon Jennings.
Sonny Curtis, also a native Texan, played lead guitar on Buddy Holly’s first Decca sessions. Curtis was born in a dugout in 1937 in Meadow, Texas. His parents were cotton farmers contending with the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression. He was a teenage pal and lead guitarist with Buddy Holly in Lubbock, Texas, in a pre-Crickets band called The Three Tunes. Sonny is his actual first name, not a nickname. His fluid guitar playing style was a major influence on Waylon Jennings. In addition to his work with the Crickets, Sonny has enjoyed enormous success as a solo recording artist and as one of Nashville’s most respected songwriters. His songs have been recorded by artists from Bing Crosby to the Bear on the Andy Williams Show.

It fell into the hands of a musician on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, who owned it for many years before a local guitar collector spotted it and contacted Frampton. After some negotiation, the guitar was returned to Frampton last month.
"It's sort of a matte black now — it's not shiny so much anymore. The binding needs a little bit of work on the neck; the electronics need replacing," Frampton says. He adds, though, that he'll limit repairs on the instrument to "whatever needs to be replaced on it to make it just playable. But it must retain its battle scars."
Frampton says he knows his diehard fans will be clamoring to see him play the unique guitar again, and he's more than happy to comply.
"Oh, it's got to go on the road," he says. "For it to be given back to me ... It's not something I'm going to hide in the closet."
GUY RAZ, HOST:
Here's another story about detective work, though this one doesn't include dogs or whales, but rather, Peter Frampton's guitar. Actually, the guitar he played on his mega-selling record, "Frampton Comes Alive."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RAZ: In 1980, the guitar was lost in a plane crash in Venezuela, or so Peter Frampton thought. But before we get to that part of the story, a little background on the guitar in question. It was 1970. Frampton was playing with a band called Humble Pie at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. He wasn't playing well, so another musician lent Frampton his spare 1954 customized Gibson Les Paul.
PETER FRAMPTON: I said, well, I've never really had much luck with Les Pauls, but you know what? At this point, I'll try anything. I used it that night for both sets. I don't think my feet touched the ground the whole night.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BABY, I LOVE YOUR WAY")
FRAMPTON: (Singing) Ooh, baby, I love your way every day...
RAZ: This becomes your guitar.
RAZ: This is the guitar on the famous cover of "Frampton Comes Alive."

Peter Frampton sold millions of records with the help of a customized Gibson guitar. Three decades ago, that guitar was destroyed in a plane crash ... or so he thought.
The story begins in 1970, when Frampton and his old band Humble Pie scored a gig playing two sets a night at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. Frampton says the first night was a rough go: The guitar he was using fed back at loud volumes and
made soloing a chore. After the show, an audience member approached him and offered to help.
"He said, 'Well, look, I have a Les Paul that I've sort of modified myself a little. Would you like to try it tomorrow?'"
Frampton tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "I said, 'Well, I've never really had much luck with Les Pauls, but you know what? At this point, I'll try anything.'"
The arrangement turned
out to be love at first strum. "I used it that night, and for both sets, I don't think my feet touched the ground the whole time," Frampton says. "I mean, I levitated."
That guitar — a shiny black number
with an added pickup — became Frampton's signature instrument. He continued to use it with Humble Pie, and in his solo material, played it almost exclusively for years. It even made the cover of his classic 1976 live album, Frampton Comes Alive!
In 1980, while Frampton was on tour in South America, the guitar was put on a cargo plane in Venezuela, en route to Panama. The plane crashed right after takeoff.
I'm thinking, 'It's gone,'" Frampton recalls. "But the thing is, I'm also sitting in a restaurant where I can see the pilot's wife. She's waiting in the hotel for her husband, who, unfortunately, didn't make it. So we were all overcome, because people lost
their lives as well as our complete stage of gear."
What Frampton didn't know is that the guitar had survived, albeit with some bumps and bruises. It fell into the hands of a musician on the Caribbean island
of Curaçao, who owned it for many years before a local guitar collector spotted it and contacted Frampton. After some negotiation, the guitar was returned to Frampton last month.

I just thought, this is more like it! Also, his solos weren't restricted to a three-minute pop format; they were long and really developed."
Clapton has stated that he got the idea for a blues-rock power trio while watching Guy's trio perform in England in 1965. Clapton later formed the rock band Cream, "the first rock supergroup to become superstars" and "the first top group to truly exploit the power-trio format, in the process laying the foundation for much blues-rock and hard rock of the 1960s and 1970s."
Clapton said that "Buddy Guy was to me what Elvis was for others." In a 1985 article in Musician magazine, he was quoted as saying that "Buddy Guy is by far and without a doubt the best guitar player alive...if you see him in person, the way he plays is beyond anyone. Total freedom of spirit, I guess. He really changed the course of rock and roll blues." In inducting Guy into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Clapton said, "No matter how great the song, or performance, my ear would always find him out. He stood out in the mix, simply by virtue of the originality and vitality of his playing."
Recalls Guy, "Eric Clapton and I are the best of friends and I like the tune "Strange Brew" and we were sitting and having a drink one day and I said 'Man, that "Strange Brew" ... you just cracked me up with that note.' And he said 'You should...cause it's your licks ...' " As soon as Clapton completed his sessions with Derek & the Dominos in October 1970, he co-produced (with Ahmet Ertegün and Tom Dowd) the album Buddy Guy & Junior Wells Play the Blues, with Guy's longtime harp and vocal companion, Junior Wells. The record, released in 1972, is regarded by some critics as among the finest electric blues recordings of the modern era.
In recognition of Guy's influence on the career of Jimi Hendrix, the Hendrix family invited him to headline all-star casts at several tribute concerts they organized, "calling on a legend to celebrate a legend." Hendrix himself once said that "Heaven is lying at Buddy Guy’s feet while listening to him play guitar."

His was praised in print by critics and guitar players everywhere, toured the world, had his own signature model guitar marketed by Fender, and was doing quite well despite his inability to make an interesting album.
Each time he reached a commercial peak however, he’d bore audiences to tears and end up back on the Maryland/Virginia/D.C. bar circuit, but even there the competition was nipping at his heals. His friend and student Danny Gatton had become his main competitor, and made records that were much more interesting than Buchanan’s. He was a depressed man in his final years. On August 14, 1988 he was arrested in Fairfax, Virginia for public intoxication, and that night was found hanging in his cell, a suicide according to the police (murdered by the police according to some of his friends).
Sad fuckin’ story, no? But not unique. There’s a million tragic stories in rock’n’roll: Lafayette “The Thing ” Thomas, who made Jimmy McCracklin’s The Walk a hit ended life working as a hose fitter, Pete “Guitar” Lewis of the Johnny Otis Show died a homeless wino, Kenny Paulson, star of Freddie Cannon’s Tallahassee Lassie and Buzz Buzz A Diddle It (and one time Dale Hawkins side man) was almost murdered in prison, and died of an overdose, utterly forgotten, in 1972, and oddly enough, Buchanan’s one time pal and student Danny Gatton, who would commit suicide, shooting himself in his garage, Robert Quine, committed suicide in 2004 had not recorded commercially in four years at the time of his death. Buchanan did better for himself than any of those guys. Hell, he made a living at music, which is more than most musicians do.
In 1989 the U.K. Krazy Kat label released an LP Roy Buchanan: The Early Years, I’m not sure if it ever made it to CD but it had fourteen of the above tracks and is well worth looking for.
As far as his Polydor and Alligator output, I find them unlistenable and recommend them only for students and collectors.

Graham Reid | | 5 min read
Mention the name “Link Wray” these days and most people will draw a blank. A few might confidently say, “Rumble” – the gang-fight title of his raw, distorted guitar instrument from '58 – but after that things might get murky.
Link Wray – born Fred Lincoln Wray -- died in late 2005 age 76, and is frequently confused with other guitar twangers of his era like Duane Eddy (Rebel Rouser, the theme to Peter Gunn) and Dick “King of the Surf Guitar” Dale whose biggest hit was Misirlou in '62.
But Link Wray was cut from a very different cloth.
He was born poor to a family in rural North Carolina in '24 (his mother a full-blood Shawnee raised in Klan territory, but who some believed possessed special powers) and he got an acoustic guitar from his father at 14.
He learned from a black one-man-band guy called Hambone who taught him how to tune the damn thing, and how to play with a knife. He grew up with the blues, and of course country music.
When he was 16 the family moved to Portsmouth in Virginia and Link got himself – briefly – a job as a messenger boy in the dockyards where his father and older brother worked as fitters.
Once he'd saved enough he bought an electric guitar from a Sears and Roebuck catalogue then, after a stint in the army (Germany then Korea) he got more serious about music.
By the mid Fifties he and brother Doug (on drums) were gigging around local clubs playing country music, they moved to Washington where they cut some sides but at age 27 and married with two children everything came to a halt for Link.
He was hospitalised with tuberculosis and had his left lung removed.
By the time he recovered the music culture had changed.
The Wrays literally changed their tune – Link adopting some weird exaggeration of Presley's vocal mannerisms – but the break came when he recorded an instrumental called Oddball.
It was loosely based on the slow and somewhat dull instrumental The Stroll but Wray added his own touch: he took a pen and punched holes in his tweeters to get a dirty and buzzing sound.
Unfortunately no one was much interested in it . . . except the teenage step-daughter of record exec Archie Bleyer of New York's Cadence label.

Long before he became king of the blues bar bores, Roy Buchanan was actually a great rock’n’roll guitar player. His best recordings unfortunately are spread out over a handful of obscure 45’s on small labels, coast to coast. By the time he’d made a name for himself the fire had pretty much gone out of his playing, and while he was always a great technician, he simply was not a much of a band leader, so his LP’s are dreadfully dull affairs.
Today, however, we will give a listen to those early sides, and these records I believe more than justify his reputation as one of the all time greats.
Buchanan was born in Ozark, Arkansas, September 23, 1939, and raised in Pixley, California which is in the Central Valley, south of Fresno. I think the Joads end up there at the end of Grapes of Wrath. His father was a Pentecostal preacher. Roy Nicholas, the country guitar great, star of the best Maddox Brothers & Rose 4-Star recordings and later Merle Haggard’s band lived ten miles away and was an early influence. Another influence was Jimmy Nolen of the Johnny Otis Show who Buchanan claims to have met at age 15, more likely he saw him on Otis’ TV Show (Buchanan was known for, lets call it, stretching the truth).
He would site Nolen’s Federal recording of After Hours as his favorite record through out his life.
Roy Buchanan left home as a teenager and in 1958 he hooked up with Dale Hawkins’ band in Tulsa, traveling with them to Shreveport, Louisiana, home of the Louisiana Hayride radio show (where Elvis started) and a hotbed of guitar playing talent– James Burton, Scotty Moore, Carl Adams, and dozens of other six string hotshits passed through Shreveport where Dale Hawkins and his brother Jerry were both based, Buchanan cut his some of his earliest sides with the Hawkins brothers.
It’s hard to figure out what order his earliest sides appeared, but in 1958 he may have recorded with Alis Lesley on Era, a moot point since I don’t have that particular record.

He added a sax player (first Percy France, from 1955 Clifford Scott) and recruited a new guitarist, Billy Butler, a Philadelphia session musician. Technically, Doggett was not a great organist, but when it came to setting a danceable groove, he was superb. He soloed on occasions, but mainly concentrated on the rhythm and the groove and left the heavy lifting for Clifford Scott and Billy Butler. Doggett, Scott and Butler made a formidable trio. Add drummer Berisford 'Shep' Shepherd and bass player Carl Pruitt or Edwyn Conley, and it was among the best R&B bands of the decade.
King had already released 24 non-charting singles by Doggett when his chart luck finally changed, and in a big way too. "Honky Tonk (Parts 1 & 2)" is one of the all-time great R&B and rock instrumentals. It topped the R&B charts for 13 weeks, also reached # 2 on the pop charts and sold a staggering 1.5 million copies by the end of 1956. For the most part, "Honky Tonk" was improvised during a Sunday-night dance in Lima, Ohio. Audience reaction was such that Doggett's band had to do the new song at least nine times again. Doggett knew he had a smash and recorded the song in New York on June 16, 1956 (in one take, according to Bill himself). With a duration of 5 minutes and 22 seconds, the song had to be divided between the two sides. Part 1 is dominated by Billy Butler's guitar and side 2 by Clifford Scott's saxophone.
In general, "Honky Tonk" is not regarded as the beginning of instrumental rock n roll as a genre of its own, as it was more R&B than R&R. It was Bill Justis's "Raunchy", one year later, that really set the instrumental ball rolling.
"Honky Tonk" was followed in the charts by a Doggett cover of "Slow Walk" (# 4 R&B, # 26 pop), though the original by Sil Austin was a slightly bigger hit.

In his prime, Howard Roberts played more than 900 studio dates annually and recorded the hippest guitar records of the era. His legion of fans still revere his incalculable influence and musical legacy.
Vesta Roberts, who grew up in a family of lumberjacks, gave birth to Howard just three weeks before the Wall Street Crash in October of 1929. Howard’s dad, a cowboy, wasn’t happy about the boy’s affinity for music.
But his mother prayed for her baby to be a musician. And Howard Roberts often told the story about, “When I was about eight years old, I fell asleep in the back seat of my parents’ car one very hot summer afternoon. When I woke up I just blurted out, ‘I have to play the guitar!’” So when his dad saw the youngster’s attempt to build one from a board and bailing wire, he acquiesced. For Christmas, he bought young Howard an $18 Kalamazoo student-model acoustic manufactured by Gibson.
By age 15, Roberts’ guitar teacher, Horace Hatchett, told the boy’s dad, “Howard has his own style of playing and there’s nothing else I can show him. He plays better than I do.” Howard was already playing club dates in their hometown Phoenix area – usually blues and jazz gigs on which he would gain playing experience and develop his improvising skills. He was receiving an extensive education in the blues from a number of black musicians, one of whom was the brilliant trumpeter Art Farmer. Journalist Steve Voce, in his 1992 article in The Independent Newsletter, quoted Roberts on those nightclub gigs, “I came out of the blues. I started in that scene when I was 15 and it was the most valuable experience in the world for me.”
Roberts had created an heroic practice regimen with his roommate, guitarist Howard Heitmeyer. The two would practice three or four hours in the morning, catch an afternoon movie, then return to practice until it was time to hit the clubs, gig or not. Heitmeyer would remain Roberts’ lifelong friend, and someone with a comprehensive talent Roberts found staggering.
At age 17, Roberts was drawn to a class created by composer/theorist Joseph Schillinger, whose students included George Gershwin, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Oscar Levant.

Roy Buchanan (September 23, 1939 – August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan worked as both a sideman and solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career, and two later solo albums that made it on to the Billboard chart. Despite never having achieved stardom, he is still considered a highly influential guitar player. Guitar Player praised him as having one of the "50 Greatest Tones of all Time." He appeared on the PBS music program Austin City Limits in 1977 during Season 2.

In the film, Jet and the Jetblacks played “Man From Nowhere”, whilst the duo performed “(Doin’ The) Hully Gully”, a vocal track released as the flipside of their hit “Scarlett O’Hara”.
Harris was declared bankrupt in 1988. The BBC reported that it took Harris 30 years of heavy drinking before he finally admitted to being an alcoholic and sought help. For many years Harris made a point in his stage shows of saying how long it had been since he quit drinking, winning applause from audiences who knew how it had wrecked his career in the 60s. Harris still played occasionally, with backing band the Diamonds or as a guest with the Rapiers, and guested with Tony Meehan at Cliff Richard’s 1989 ‘The Event’ concerts.
In 1998, he was awarded a Fender Lifetime Achievement Award for his role in popularising the bass guitar in Britain. He appeared annually at Bruce Welch’s ‘Shadowmania’ and toured backed by the Rapiers (a Shadows tribute band). He recorded continuously from the late 1980s with a variety of collaborators including Tangent, Alan Jones (also an ex-Shadows bassist), Bobby Graham and the Local Heroes. His previous problems with stage nerves had seemingly disappeared, and 2006 saw Harris’s first single release in over forty years, “San Antonio”. In 2010, Harris chose to begin appearing with the Shadowers. Regular tour dates and studio recordings with the Shadowers, Brian “Licorice” Locking (Harris’ successor in the Shadows) and Alan Jones, though discussed, never materialised due to Harris’ poor health.
In 2007, Harris was invited by UK singer Marty Wilde to be a special guest on his 50th Anniversary tour. This culminated in an evening at the London Palladium with other guests including Wilde’s daughters Kim and Roxanne, Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, members of the original Wildcats – Big Jim Sullivan, Licorice Locking and Brian Bennett, who also joined Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch of the Shadows on stage with Wilde and his band the Wildcats (Neville Marten and Eddie Allen on guitar, Roger Newell bass, and Bryan Fitzpatrick, drums).

Since his remarkable range of talent defies distinct categorization, the best in the business call upon him when they want the best-- studio musician, sideman, songwriter, author, teacher, bandleader, film consultant, or to go on tour. He also produces his own, and other artists' music.
Every step of the way, since his first solo recording in 1978, Arlen Roth has received accolades and earned the highest acclaim. Vintage Guitar magazine ranked him One of the Top 100 Influential Guitarists of the Century, and he's also on their list for having performed one of The Top 10 Greatest Recorded Guitar Sounds. He recently was a contributing artist on Guitar Harvest , a compilation release featuring world-class guitarists, voted one of the Top Ten All-Time Best Guitar Recordings by Rolling Stone magazine.
Several best-selling guitars bear his name, with three more in production: a new Arlen Roth Archtop model by Curtis Guitars, the innovative Terraplane, a steel-bodied resonator guitar inspired by the classic Hudson Terraplane car, by Simon Guitars, and Warren Guitars' popular Arlen Roth Signature model.
His first of eight solo releases, Arlen Roth: Guitarist, won the Critics Award for "Best Instrumental Album" at Montreaux in 1978. Hot Pickups was No. 2 on the U.K. charts in 1979. His Toolin' Around CD (1993) has become a hard-to-find classic, and is being re-released in 2005 due to ongoing demand. On Toolin' Around , Arlen plays duets with legends such as Danny Gatton, Brian Setzer, Albert Lee, Duane Eddy, Duke Robillard, Jerry Douglas, and Sam Bush, as well as several solo pieces. A big bonus for fans is The Making of Toolin' Around, a film (recorded on DVD) available for the first time. He also contributed to Incarnation, a tribute to legendary blues man Robert Johnson , and performed on two recent Jimi Hendrix tribute CDs. .

Electric Guitar Heroes
Oklahoma and the enhancement of an instrument
Bob Dunn, who toured between the World Wars with the Panhandle Cowboys and Indians, was an early adapter and virtuoso of the electric steel guitar. His Jan. 27, 1935, studio recording of the tune “Taking Off” with Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies is considered the first recording to use an electrically amplified instrument. Vintage Guitar magazine credits him as “the amplified guitar’s first stylist,” noting that, “In a way, Dunn was a sort of Jeff Beck of the steel guitar; his solos were often otherworldly, with cascades of arpeggios, jarring staccato notes and Hawaiian chime effects blasting through the mix of instruments.”
THE CLAIM: Robert Lee Dunn, born Feb. 8, 1908, in Braggs, Okla., invented the electric steel guitar.
THE SOURCE: The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, published by the Oklahoma Historical Society.
THE TRUTH: Dunn did not, however, invent the instrument. Credit goes to Texas-born George Delmetia Beauchamp — a vaudeville performer who experimented with ways to have his guitar heard above an orchestra — for creating the first string-driven, electro- magnetic guitar. Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna, authors of the 2016 Random House book Play It Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound and Revolution of the Electric Guitar, note that the Beauchamp design became the basis of the first commercially produced electric guitar, the RO-PAT-IN A-25 “Frying Pan,” which hit the market in 1932. RO-PAT-IN (inspired by the term ElectRO-PAtent-INstruments) would evolve into Rickenbacker International, which continues manufacturing instruments today.
In an unexpected twist, the first documented public performance of an electric guitar does have an Oklahoma connection. According to Guitar Aficionado magazine, the first-ever concert to feature the instrument occurred in Kansas on Oct. 31, 1932, at Wichita’s Shadowland Pavilion. The performer, guitarist Gage Kelso Brewer, was born in 1904 in Gage, Oklahoma Territory.
Brewer’s pioneering performance featured two RO-PAT-IN prototypes – the electric Spanish prototype and the A-25 Frying Pan – that he had obtained from his friend George Beauchamp. An Oct.