Is Link Wray rock?

In fact I've never purchased a Buddy holly or stones record. I just heard a track or two on the radio (in the case of Buddy Holly I actually heard the songs in a movie abt his life which were sung by an actor, so there) but I think that might be enough to answer the questions.

But I don't think Link Wray are rock, though.

There are no taco bells in here.

Is the Hard Rock Cafe rock?

link wray vs dick dale ?

Link Wray= punk rock!

Crikey man, who else can get an instrumental song banned for being "too suggestive"

Yet Wray was always a step off the main drag: "Rumble" ain’t R&B, and calling it "rock&roll" is mostly chronological convenience – it was made in the ERA of rock&roll hence blah blah. And though "Rumble" by title seems perfectly to fit the teensploitation zeitgeist, it DOESN’T actually feed off the Child->Adult energy of most 50s rock’n’roll (where zit- hormonal frenzy is perversely and brilliantly celebrated as a mark of the Coming of Age). 1: Wray always looked as spectral as he does today: thin, mean, unjustified and ancient. 2: "Rumble" is about violence: as music, it plays at BEING violence, sinister and brooding, glamorous and promising. But its promise is self-evidently ridiculous: if you’re 15 and a virgin, your first fuck is a step into an adulthood of seamless access to similar (or so you sensibly convince yrself). But yr first KNIFEFIGHT? As a lure, this is gaunt and self-mocking, the ugly shiver beneath the bubbly come- on of Wild Age.

Hence (precisely because of the timeflip anachronism) Wray = rock

Pulp Fiction et al would have killed a lesser career, but Link Wray's too baaaad to die.

I saw him about five years ago down south somewhere...loud fucking guitar. The oldsters loved him and we children were in awe. This question is unecessary.

I got a link wray CD a while back but am only now working through some of the tracks, and its one of those that I can't make it to the end, I'm kinda stuck on the first 7 tracks...too good.

I was struck by how little he does at times, just letting the finger slide through the strings and letting it resonate and how often he seems to do it, his guitar picking at the beginning of 'run chicken run' made me think of him as a psycho.

anyone lets have more recommendations: what about those country albs he recorded in the 70s? any live albums? anyone who was doing something as wild with amps at that time?

I love Link, I can't even talk about him. Seen him a bunch live, religious experiences. If he comes your way, do not miss him. And watch the weird onstage interplay between him and wife Olive-Juuuuuuulie.

"Jack the Ripper" almost convinces me Link Wray is better than Dick Dale. Almost.

Some of the sludgiest, nastiest shit I've ever heard.

SEARCH.

Anyway, yeah, Howlin' Wolf's guitarist was distorting there in West Memphis in 1951, and Chester Burnett...more rock than Link, or just about anyone. But Wray's early stuff is great.

what a great thread!

mostly for the sake one one amazing mark s post

If you have seen the concert film of him doing his thing that has been round for a while, dressed head to toe in leather and wildly unhinged throughout, there is no doubt about the answer to this question.

oh man i do love the supposed pencil stabbing story re: rumble referenced upthread, but i just listened to it like 8 times in a row, and thats just the sound of a premier (brand name for non geetar geeks) amp turned up loud imo

I love everything this guy did, 70's albums included.
The s/t from 1971 is great, Deep South swamp country at its best: it's all there, ruined shacks, cotton fields and water sepents, plus a couple of crunchy voodoo stompers.

anyone know anything about this likely compliation disc from link wray and his rey-men? given the title of one song -- "rumble 65" -- i know these aren't the originals. but they sound raw and restless. thinking of downloading it, but i can't find anything about it anywhere online.

where is mark sinker now?

Daniel, they seem to have added more link wray original stuff, e.g.

http://www.emusic.com/album/Link-Wray-Link-Wray-Slinky-The-Epic-Sessions-1958-1960-MP3-Download/12238354.html

Long (& flawed) but informative piece (esp. on the Shack years) in the Oxford American:

https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/1630-mystic-chords

Thanks! Good comments and links also here:
Link Wray R.I.P. (?)

Hard to read the beginning of that Oxford American article. Assuming it gets better.

What... "hairless navel" didn't draw you in?

Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dg8Ag6yi7o

1964, holy shit.

What a sound!

There are some good live versions of that song out there.

were Angus and Malcolm Young fans of his? I wonder

good q

1962:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBvj3NkVp4M

where is mark sinker now?

― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 16 July 2011 20:25 (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

good thread though

Where were you?

right here ffs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvxA-NXGOr8

kind of crazy that acdc formed only 9 years after deuces wild came out

Or is it?

This thread does not seem to mention the Robert Gordon collabo.

Collabos even

Cool thread but this *might* be the most informative: Link Wray R.I.P. (?)

this guy was the fucking bomb!

As I said on there: Worth tracking down:The Link Wray Rumble , ca. 1974, on Epic, https://www.discogs.com/Link-Wray-The-Link-Wray-Rumble/master/169620 "> https://www.discogs.com/Link-Wray-The-Link-Wray-Rumble/master/169620 *with good liner notes by Pete Townsend: as the Creem 'viewer pointed out, he matched several 70s titans at their own game. "Country Boy" is like the best of Duane Allman and Van Morrison at once (let's not forget Link could be one soulful vocalist); "Goodtime Joe" is as good as the best Who, while being Link as hell;his cover of Tony Joe's "Backwoods Preacher Man" shows that being acoustic doesn't have to mean unplugged, "She's That Kind Of Woman" is where Sly Stone should've gone after There's A Riot Goin' On, and (oh. Shit.)
* Never on legit CD as a whole, although that discogs page links to several tracks on YouTube, and some are incl. on the 2-CD Link comp Guitar Preacher, and in his mighty archive.org stash, if it's still there.
Be What You Want To seems a bit overproduced, as Thomas Jefferson Kaye goes for Leon Russell's Mad Dogs and Englishmen cast-of-thousands effect, but some of it's ace, the smaller ensemble tracks, the smaller, cooler combo tracks, like "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (and this platter may have been one of the last albums to feature Garcia on pedal steel).

Link rules, but idk if it is "rock"

Rocks as a verb?
I said this on Rockabilly - essentials?
Yeah, what I've heard of Gordon & Wray (mostly remember "Mah gal is redd hot/Yore gal ain't Doodley squat," so popular around here on South AL that the local Top 40 giant presented them in free concert)does not sound much like the Cramps---but several on Wray's volume of the xpost Rocks series do make me think of the Cramps--and these are from the late 50s, early 60s (1960 chop and channel of Ray Charles hit "Mary Ann" struts and minces and cuts around corners in a way that the Beatles and Kinks might have learned from, even covered).
Trenchant posts---gotta be thin alright, and Link does pull thin wild mercury sounds even out of dated, clunky intros, then brothers Doug and Vernon and accomplices often (not always) shift into cannier combo support---it's always about the total effect, not just Hee-yum. But stylistic shifts still fit: the marachi horns on "El Toro" play crisp, metallic (well they are metal instruments) notes, just like the basic guitar lines, and when they fanfare, so does he, in his Wray way, without hogging the mic (sounds like there might have been one mic). Annotator Bill Dahl says this is the same song as "Pancho Villa," minus the horns, but if so it's been transformed into a rippling circular saw, heading toward the Caribbean (easy there Pancho), in a way that might impress the dungarees off the Clash, as it certainly does me. Closer to rockabilly per se incl. emented bird sounds of guitar and sometimes vocals (Dahl says the TB came back, Link's left lung had to go, but remaining voice used effectively here, and certainly full and soulful by 70s comeback).
The Rocks series ranges pretty far afield, seems like (Connie Francis maybe, but is it true that Pat Boone Rocks). Would like to check the Wanda Jackson for sure, and btw Omnivore's 2013 The Best of The Classic Capitol Singles does bring back a bunch of her best, though also some country weepers that sound like they may have been recorded at gunpoint, mandated apologies for being a nasty gal (who just can't hep it, there she goes again). Also a volume of Louis Prima, pron w San Butera and the Witnesses, bumrushing rock & roll when it was still new (for parents and others, in Vegas, LA, and New Orleans especially, when the non-cat-clothes audiences didn't feel like settling for Sinatra's Adult Pop, nossir).

― dow, Monday, December 30, 2019 10:42 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Link Wray Rocks is 34 tracks, just over 77 minutes, like it oughta be--b-but wait, come back, "Dueces Wild"! Whirls through the fade---oh well, always leave 'em wanting more. Will have to play this mentholated sandwich "Ace of Spades" (1965, credited to F.L. Wray Sr, like so many here, among other Dahl-noted copyright capers) next to Mötörhead's.

― dow, Monday, December 30, 2019 10:53 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

At least come back long enough to be spelled right, "Deuces Wild"! (! does go outside the quote marks dont it?)

― dow

There seem to be some live recordings of the Gordon & Wray band out there which, per Xgau, are the real deal.

xp Might be more than one of that title or similar---this is the one I'm talkin about:
https://www.discogs.com/Link-Wray-Rocks/release/14254396

Okay found this thing called Live Fast, Love Hard! the first (lengthy) half of which is Gordon/Wray the second half being Gordon/Spedding. Enjoying so far.

There is also Cleveland ‘78

This is the one you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8HU3GMNa_I

Cool, thanks.

I think I agree with that journalist that I am a little underwhelmed by “Rumble.”

He re-recorded it several times over the years, sometimes w considerably diff audio effect.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEOZBYUv6oB/?igsh=czEwb283M2llOG9o

Bro chewing gum on stage

Yes.

Yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kedhUBbv3RI