History > 2005 > USA > Arts > Music

Frederick Lincoln Wray Jr    1929-2005

Link Wray’s raw guitar sound

influenced the invading British groups who took his fans

Photograph: Dave Ellis/Redferns

Influential rock'n'roll pioneer with a raw, primal sound

G

22 November 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/nov/22/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/obituary/0,12723,1647734,00.html

Obituary

Link Wray

Influential rock'n'roll pioneer

with a raw, primal sound

Tuesday November 22, 2005
The Guardian
Garth Cartwright

Link Wray, the original master blaster of rock'n'roll guitar, has died at his home in Copenhagen, aged 76. He enjoyed little mainstream success but his primal music guaranteed him a cult following that kept him working right up to this year. Indeed, the last 15 years found him enjoying a higher profile than at any time since his initial hits, with such films as Pulp Fiction and Independence Day employing his music.

Wray's talent was a limited one, but in his ability to employ distortion and push the electric guitar to places that it had never been before, he was a 20th-century innovator. His best recordings retain their original menace and raw power, and his influence on rock music cannot be overestimated: the Who's Pete Townshend acknowledged, "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and Rumble, I would have never picked up a guitar."

Wray was born in Dunn, North Carolina, to semi-literate Shawnee Native American parents. His father suffered from shell shock as a result of his experience in the first world war. The family lived an itinerant life, often sleeping rough, earning a meagre living from farm work and street preaching. "Elvis, he grew up white-man poor; I was growing up Shawnee poor," Wray told an interviewer. He recalled that his family lived in fear of the Ku Klux Klan.

Wray started playing the guitar as a child. While serving in the Korean war, he contacted tuberculosis and had a lung removed. With his brothers, Vernon and Doug, he recorded country songs as the Palomino Ranch Hands in 1955. Changing their name to the Ray-Men, they jumped aboard the rock'n'roll juggernaut then under way.

Wray claimed that his lack of musical ability forced him to invent sounds. He effectively did this by punching holes in his amplifier and running a major chord up and down the fret board, thus creating the thundering sound known as the power chord. "I was looking for something Chet Atkins wasn't doing, that all the jazz kings wasn't doing. I was looking for my own sound," he said.

In 1958, Cadence, a small record company in Washington DC, approved a primitive instrumental recorded by Wray. The label's owner, Archie Bleyer, declined to issue it, until he found his teenage daughter expressing enthusiasm for the work, and saying that it reminded her of the rumble scenes in West Side Story. Bleyer named the instrumental Rumble, and duly released it. The record became a controversial US hit - several radio stations banned it for fear of inciting teenage violence.

Bleyer panicked and told Wray he had to clean up his act. Instead, he signed with Epic Records, where he scored with the instrumental Rawhide. Epic also tried to clean up Wray, forcing him to record standards when his appeal was about creating the crudest sounding music ever recorded.

Wray and his brothers left Epic and briefly formed Rumble Records, issuing three singles, including an instrumental called Jack the Ripper, which was picked up by Philadelphia's Swan Records and gave Wray his final US hit. The years at Swan found Wray at his most productive, as the label allowed him the freedom to record his instrumentals unhindered by executive decisions. He turned the family chicken coop into a crude recording studio and produced wild, experimental guitar instrumentals, while continuing to play in many of America's grimmest bars and clubs. But the British invasion by the likes of the Beatles rendered Wray obsolete. The fact that John Lennon and other British guitarists loved his work was an irony that passed him by.

Wray's fortunes waxed and waned throughout the 1970s. Many celebrated rock musicians championed him as an unsung pioneer. He was brought to England to record for Virgin Records, then produced two high-profile albums with retro-rockabilly singer Robert Gordon. If he never enjoyed mainstream success, at least his talent was acknowledged and Europe gave him a new audience.

In 1979, Wray married Olive Julie Povlsen, a Danish student of Native American culture; the following year, they settled in Copenhagen. Povlsen began managing Wray in 1981. The 1980s rockabilly revival raised his profile, while the inclusion of Jack the Ripper in Richard Gere's 1983 film, Breathless, proved how cinematic his music was. He is survived by his wife and son.

· Frederick Lincoln Wray Jr, musician, born May 2 1929; died November 5 2005

    Influential rock'n'roll pioneer with a raw, primal sound, G, 22.11.2005,http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/obituary/0,12723,1647734,00.html

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown,

musician,

born April 18 1924; died September 11 2005

Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown

An 'American musician'

long before the eclectic label became fashionable

G

p. 32        20.9.2005

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/sep/20/
guardianobituaries.usa 

New Orleans artists

busy with benefit albums

Sat Oct 8, 2005 9:58 PM ET
Reuters
By Melinda Newman

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Their houses may be torn and tattered after Hurricane Katrina, but their spirits are beautifully unbowed.

A wide range of New Orleans musicians, many of whom have played numerous benefit concerts, are now contributing their talents to albums that are donating proceeds to a number of charities.

Leading the charge is Irma Thomas, whose strong, steady, soulful vocals appear on four projects.

"For me, this is therapy," she says. "I'd rather be busy doing what I love to do than sitting at home contemplating what I need to do. I'll get to that point." Like many artists, Katrina left Thomas with no home to return to.

First up is "I Believe to My Soul," which came out October 4 via Work Song/Rhino/Starbucks Hear Music and is available through the coffee retailer and at traditional retail stores throughout the United States and Canada.

Produced by Joe Henry, the album features new tracks from New Orleans patron saints Allen Toussaint and Thomas, as well as from Ann Peebles, Billy Preston and Mavis Staples. The project, recorded in June, was always slated to come out in October, but after Katrina hit, the involved labels decided to donate $10 from every copy purchased at Starbucks and $3 from those sold through other retailers to the American and Canadian arms of the Red Cross.

Henry says more volumes are planned. Additionally, a show featuring Thomas, Toussaint, Peebles and Staples will take place October 25 at New York's Town Hall.

Rounder Records will release "A Celebration of New Orleans: Music to Benefit MusiCares Hurricane Relief 2005." The set features liner notes by Crescent City native son Branford Marsalis and includes tracks spanning 65 years of recordings from New Orleans acts including Professor Longhair, Harry Connick Jr., the Wild Magnolias and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

HABITAT FUNDRAISER

Nonesuch's November 22 release, "Our New Orleans," will be the first benefit album to feature all new recordings made after the hurricane. A number of New Orleans artists, including Thomas and Toussaint, headed into studios in New York after their appearance at a September 20 Madison Square Garden benefit. The label asked the artists to record songs that best described their feelings about New Orleans or the tragedy. Thomas recorded "Backwater Blues," while Toussaint picked "Yes We Can Can." Among the other acts on the set are Randy Newman, Dr. John and Buckwheat Zydeco. Proceeds go to Habitat for Humanity.

Still to come is "Sing Me Back Home: Songs of Faith & Funk -- A Benefit to Renew Orleans." The album, which is being recorded in Austin, Texas, through October 12, features Thomas, members of the Meters and the Neville Brothers, the Subdudes and Willie Tee, who gave a stirring performance September 24 at a Musi-Cares benefit.

Leo Sacks, who is producing the project with Grammy Award-winning engineer Ray Bardani, says he has met with a number of interested labels and expects to announce distribution plans shortly.

"Almost all the artists on our record were directly impacted by the storm," Sacks says. "Many of them still haven't seen their homes; they're still underwater."

Proceeds will go to a number of causes, ranging from regional food banks to restoration of Louisiana's wetlands.

Having lost so much, Thomas and Toussaint have seen the blessings through the sorrows. "So many people have reached out in wonderful ways," Toussaint says. "New York has been wonderful." He is living in New York until he can return home.

He adds that for comfort, "I've been able to turn to the pen. It's quite an inspiring time, the balancing act of tragedy and kindness. I've taken hand to pen daily and am inspired in many directions."

In other words, if music fans are lucky, some of Toussaint's compositions will show up on future volumes of "I Believe to My Soul."

Reuters/Billboard

    New Orleans artists busy with benefit albums, R, 8.10.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2005-10-09T015832Z_01_FOR907006_RTRUKOC_0_US-FUNDRAISERS.xml

B.B. King looks back at 80 years of blues

Thu Sep 15, 2005 8:11 AM ET
Reuters
By Steve James

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J (Reuters) - Now that he's a beloved musical icon, turning 80 and embraced by both blacks and whites, it's difficult to understand that B.B. King comes from a time when there were two Americas.

Before the 13 Grammys, induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Kennedy Center honors, the eponymous night clubs, even before he picked up a guitar, the blues singer picked cotton, drove tractors and sawed wood. He never finished high school.

And despite all the fame, the worldwide accolades and the records with rock kings like Eric Clapton and Bono, he has never forgotten growing up in the segregated South, where they just opened the B.B. King museum in Indianola, Mississippi, near his birthplace on a plantation.

"We went through some hard times," King, who turns 80 on Friday, recalled. "Let me tell you this, if we didn't have good white friends during that era when I was growing up, there would be no blacks in Mississippi. At that time, a white person could kill you any time they wished and nothing would ever be done about it.

"But there was a lot of white people who didn't believe in that and wouldn't allow it. So I was lucky."

Sitting in his tour bus before a House of Blues gig in Atlantic City, King talked in an interview about life on the road, of his 30 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, of his love of flying and nature and old cowboy movies. But mostly, he talked about the blues, that music, which like King himself, grew out of the suffering and hardships of plantation labor.

"I think of blues this way: It's life as we've lived it in the past, life as we're living it today and life I believe we will live tomorrow. Because, to me, it has to do with people, places and things," he said.

BEETHOVEN AND BRAHMS

"Now this old bus here may be OK, but 10 years from now there's no telling what buses will look like, it's the same with blues."

But considering that a majority of his audiences are boomer-generation whites and young blacks have turned their back on the blues for rap, isn't the music irrelevant now?

"No," he said. "I don't think it's the same as it was and ever will be because each generation bring their own people.

"Think of it this way: Beethoven and Brahms and all those guys, the music hasn't changed, the people have. But you still hear it and it's still good. I think of the blues the same way."

Asked about his punishing 300-plus days-a-year touring schedule, King said: "I only had three months off in 60 years.

"I haven't been lucky like some of the rock 'n roll players. A lot of them go out for three or four months and then they stop for two or three years. I've never been able to do that, I'm a blues singer.

"Blues singers, blues players, we haven't been popular," said King, a bear of a man laid low now by diabetes that forces him to sit on stage with his guitar "Lucille" across his lap.

But it is obvious that King, who had a big hit in 1970 with "The Thrill is Gone," still gets a thrill from performing.

At age 80, doesn't he ever consider retiring? "I couldn't afford to do it," King laughed. "I have days off, but we don't get airplay like other styles of music, so I learned at an early age that unless I go out and carry music to the people, it sure don't come to them by air."

He harks back to the plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, where he was born on September 16, 1925. "I never thought I'd make 80 years, even 50 seemed very old, because where I grew up in the country there, we didn't have the medicines, the doctors, the hospitals, like people in the city have.

"YOU SURVIVE"

"The Bible says three score and ten and here I am a bit older than that," he giggled. "I've been in 18 automobile accidents, but I've never had one myself ... it was always someone else!"

King said he was driving at age 13. "I was a truck driver, a tractor driver. I picked cotton, I plowed (with) mules. I did most of the stuff people do on a plantation, your work is never done. You survive."

And survive, he has, to become probably the last of the blues greats after the deaths of two Mississippi contemporaries -- R.L Burnside this month and John Lee Hooker in 2001.

The break came after the war when King hitch-hiked to Memphis and got a job as a disc-jockey at radio station WDIA. People heard his guitar-playing and singing and he recorded with the legendary Sam Phillips, who later founded Sun Records.

It was in Memphis where Riley King won the nickname "The Beale Street Blues Boy," which was shortened to just "Blues Boy" and then B.B.

King's first record was cut with the Nashville label, Bullet, and typically for a musical pro, he remembers the tracks. "There were four sides. I was married at the time -- so one was called 'Miss Martha King,' the second was 'How Do You Feel when Your Baby Packs Up to Go,' the third was 'Take a Swing with Me' and the fourth 'I've Got the Blues."'

Hundreds of recordings later, King's career is being feted, with Virgin putting out a double album of his early hits and Geffen/Universal releasing "B.B. King and Friends - 80," which features him playing with the likes of Clapton, Van Morrison, Mark Knopfler, Elton John and Sheryl Crow.

Also there is a book, "The B.B. King Treasures," from Bullfich Press, which is full of facsimiles of memorabilia -- notes, photos, programs -- from King's life.

As for his 80th birthday, what was King doing to celebrate at his home in Las Vegas? "I haven't planned to do anything. Not a thing at all." he said.

B.B. King looks back at 80 years of blues, R, 15.9.2005, http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=uri:2005-09-15T121022Z_01_EIC543771_RTRIDST_0_ENTERTAINMENT-LEISURE-KING-DC.XML&pageNumber=2&summit=