LINK WRAY -THE FATHER OF FUZZ GUITAR and POWER ...
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The Link Wray Story as told by Link Himself
Follow the journey of Link as he moves up the path from below Welfare to Rock Pioneer.The man who invented Heavy Metal. He's the Father of Fuzz guitar,Rave up guitar and Power Chords.
Wray was born 5/2/29 in Dunn, North Carolina to Lillie M. Coats and Frederick ("Fred") Lincoln Wray.It was there that Link first heard slide guitar at age eight from a traveling carnival worker, a black man named "Hambone". Link and his family later moved to Norfolk, Virginia as his father got work in the Navy shipyards. Link served a hitch in the US Army and was a Korean War Veteran. In 1956, his family later moved to Washington, D.C., and from there, they moved to a farm in Accokeek, Maryland. Link relocated to Arizona with his brother Vernon in the very early 1970s, and later moved to San Francisco in the mid 1970s.
Wray was a veteran of the Korean war, where he contracted tuberculosis that ultimately cost him a lung. His doctors told him that he would never sing again. So Link concentrated on his heavy guitar work. Despite this, on his rare vocal numbers he displays a strong voice and a range equivalent to Clarence "Frogman" Henry.
After discharge from the Army, Wray and his brothers Doug and Vernon Wray, with friends Shorty Horton and Dixie Neal, formed Lucky Wray and the Lazy Pine Wranglers, later known as Lucky Wray and the Palomino Ranch Hands. They had been playing country music and Western swing for several years when they took a gig as the house band on the daily live TV show Milt Grant's House Party, a Washington, D.C. version of American Bandstand. The band made their first recordings in 1956 as Lucky Wray and the Palomino Ranch Hands for Starday Records.
For the TV show, they also backed many performers, from Fats Domino to Ricky Nelson. In 1958, at a live gig of the D.C.-based Milt Grant's House Party (the regional version of American Bandstand) in Fredericksburg, VA, attempting—at the urging of the local crowd—to work up a cover sound-alike for The Diamonds' hit, "The Stroll", they came up with the stately, powerful 12-bar blues instrumental "Rumble", which they originally called "Oddball". The song was an instant hit with the live audience, which demanded four repeats that night. Eventually the song came to the attention of record producer Archie Bleyer of Cadence Records, who hated it, particularly after Wray poked holes in his amplifier's speakers to make the recording sound more like the live version (see "Rocket 88" for Ike Turner's similar story). However, Bleyer's stepdaughter loved it and it was released despite his protest. She was the one who suggested renaming the song "Rumble", because it reminded her of West Side Story. Rumble is slang for a "gang fight".
The menacing sound of "Rumble" (and its title) led to a ban on several radio stations, a rare feat for a song with no lyrics, on the grounds that it glorified juvenile delinquency. Nevertheless it became a huge hit, not only in the United States, but also Great Britain, where it has been cited as an influence on The Kinks and The Who, among others. Pete Townshend stated in unpublished liner notes for the 1970 comeback album, "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble,' I would have never picked up a guitar." In other liner notes in 1974, Townshend said, of "Rumble": "I remember being made very uneasy the first time I heard it, and yet excited by the savage guitar sounds."
Jeff Beck, Duff McKagan, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan, Neil Young and Bob Dylan have all cited Wray as an influence. The 1980 Adam and the Ants song "Killer in the Home" (from their Kings of the Wild Frontier album) is based on the same ominous, descending three-chord glissando riff that is featured in "Rumble" (Ants' guitarist Marco Pirroni, an avid Wray fan, has described the song as "Link Wray meets Col. Kurtz" — the latter being a reference to Apocalypse Now). Mark E. Smith of The Fall sang the line "I used to have this thing about Link Wray, I used to play him every Saturday, God bless Saturday" in the song "Neighbourhood of Infinity" on the album Perverted By Language.
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About LINK WRAY -THE FATHER OF FUZZ GUITAR and POWER CHORDS
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Check out other Link Wray videos on You Tube here http://www.youtube.com/artist?a=GxdCwVVULXcGIPGYdOXmk-ROgVAM
Buy all your Link Wray music from Amazon here http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3...
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