Parade Of Great Guitarists: Link Wray
Happy Thanksgiving! Congratulations to The Father Of The Powerchord on his recent Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction. Why didn’t they nominate him the first year?
At approximately 10:30PM, Friday, November 3, 2023, at Brooklyn’s Barclay Center, Link Wray was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. He should have been included in the Hall’s first class of inductees in 1986 – Elvis Presley, James Brown, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Those are his contemporaries.
Then again, part of the problem — the reason why he never made it in — is because this institution isn’t the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame. It’s the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, with an ampersand. And Link Wray IS rock ‘n’ roll, the way Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, Johnny Thunders, Iggy Pop and Joan Jett are – a walking, talking, guitar-slinging definition.
Again, this is the Rock Ampersand Roll Hall Of Fame. Hence, very good musicians such as Willie Nelson and various others who are not rock ‘n’ roll get in. Because this academy just isn’t about rock ‘n’ roll. Link Wray is, even nearly 25 years after his death.
Even worse, on one of the YouTube clips of Jimmy Page inducting Link with a faithful recreation of “Rumble,” accompanied by one-time Wray drummer Anton Fig and jazz bassist Tim Givens, all any of Page’s fans can do is flood the comments with inanities like, “JIMMY PAGE IS THE GREATEST GUITARIST WHO EVER LIVED!!!” Nothing about the man to whom the ex-Yardbird/Led Zeppelinite was paying note-and-nuance-perfect homage, who was, after all, the one being inducted. And whom Page has continually cited as a major influence.
They clearly did not recall Page’s enthusiasm for Wray and “Rumble” in Davis Guggenheim’s 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud. (“That was something that had so much profound attitude to it!”) They also must have missed his impassioned speech at the end of Wray’s induction video: “In those days, there were many guitar instrumentals, but as a 14-year-old kid who could barely play the guitar, it really had an effect on me,” he recalled of hearing “Rumble” for the first time on a jukebox. “The vigor and the strength and the power in it. And you know something else? It was fearless. It was just phenomenal.” Page added that the song is the “essence of cool.”
But really, all those misguided souls needed was a blast of this:
Dig the swagger, the black leather cool, the sheer menace. Dig, most of all, those four distorted powerchords, perfectly executed, like precision-thrown daggers or missiles, causing all kinds of cool destruction. They are a threat to parents, police, teachers and authority figures of every sort. Link Wray’s guitar could bring down governments. It could bring world peace. It makes all political systems redundant.
Link Wray was The Father Of The Powerchord. He perfected the art of amplifier distortion and overdrive. And like most good things, it was a happy accident.
Born in Dunn, North Carolina in 1929, Fred Lincoln Wray, Jr. was the son of Fred, Sr. and his wife Lillian Mae Wray. Born of a Native American mother, Wray was half Shawnee and experienced harsh poverty throughout his childhood. He recalled living in mud huts, with no electricity or heat, attending school without shoes or proper clothing. Though the family listed themselves as white on census records, he still recalled harassment by the KKK: "The cops, the sheriff, the drugstore owner—they were all Ku Klux Klan. They put the masks on and, if you did something wrong, they'd tie you to a tree and whip you or kill you."
Link credited a Black man named Hambone for teaching him the guitar. “He was raised…in the circus,” he explained in a 1984 interview. “He never knew his parents….He could play everything, and he taught me how to play the blues.” In 1942, the family relocated to Portsmouth, Virginia, where Link performed in his first bands, all Western Swing and country groups. They had names like The Lucky Wray Band and The Palomino Ranch Gang, and also featured his brothers Ray, Doug, and Vernon.
During the Korean War, Wray served in the U.S. Army. He contracted tuberculosis, which resulted in a year-long hospitalization. It ended with the removal of a lung, which doctors predicted would prevent him from ever singing again.
After his Army stint, the Wray brothers visited their mother back in Portsmouth, when Doug took Link to see Elvis Presley open for Slim Whitman (yeah, the guy who sold more records than Elvis or The Beatles in Zimbabwe, or whatever those commercials used to claim) in Norfolk. “He said, ‘You just wait ‘til you see him!’” he recalled years later. “‘It’s gonna knock your socks off!’” From that point, Link and the Wray brothers were all confirmed rock ‘n’ rollers, playing all over the D.C. area, Link concentrating on lead guitar. In 1958, the group opened a record hop in Fredericksburg, Virginia, hosted by local DJ Milt Grant. They were asked to work up a backing for headliners The Diamonds, famous for their hit “Little Darlin’.” Their new smash was “The Stroll.”
Doug, the drummer, knew the basic beat. Told the elemental chords, the Wray brothers improvised what turned out to be a new song. Singer Ray put his vocal mic on Link’s Premier amp, which he had already cranked wide open. This was not standard operating procedure in the ‘50s. Doug began using the butt ends of his drumsticks to hammer the beat even harder.
“A fight broke out,” Wray recalled, “and I started playing instrumental to the fight! Everybody started saying, ‘Hey man! Play that song again!’ And I didn't know what I was doing, because I was just making fun of the fight! And the kids said, ‘Hey, play it again! So I said, ‘Oh, maybe I got something!’”
Those kids forgot about The Diamonds and were focused on the guitarist thrashing out those four chords, soundtracking a brawl. Grant saw dollar signs and paid for the Wray brothers to record Link’s dangerous “stroll.”
“We went to a studio – a one-track Grundig [tape recorder], that's all I had — and recorded it,” he continued. “It was just me and my brother Doug, he played drums. My brother Ray played rhythm guitar, and my cousin Shorty played bass — it was a family [band]. We cut it three times, and we did another song on the other side, called ‘The Swag.’”
In the studio, Link’s amp was not letting the notes sing or hang as long as he desired. The stories vary as far as his solution, whether he punctured his speaker cones with a pencil, or sliced them with a razor blade or stiletto. Whatever the case, he discovered a vicious tonal quality blues guitarists such as Pat Hare and Paul Burlison, rockabilly Telecaster operator with Johnny Burnette’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio, were already exploiting. But no one articulated and refined tube amp distortion and two-finger powerchords like Link Wray, until he cut what he was calling “Oddball” at that point. Then three-quarters of the way through, he switched on the amp’s tremolo circuit, manually adjusting as he goes along, making his guitar throb out loud.
In 2:28, Link Wray revolutionized how rock ‘n’ roll guitar was played. It would be thus, forevermore.
“Then I tried to sell it to all the major labels, and they said it was a piece of crap, they didn't even like it.” Archie Bleyer at Cadence Records, then riding high on the success of The Everly Brothers, had one of the tapes of “Oddball.” His teenage daughter played it at a party held in their home in New York City, and her friends went nuts for it.
“So she took it to her dad, and she said, ‘Dad, what's this?’” laughed Wray. “He said, ‘It's just a piece of crap I picked up in DC!’ She said, ‘Well, I think this crap is going to be a hit!’” Retitled “Rumble,” due to its ability to start fights, it was likely the first instrumental in history to get banned from radio, for its perceived threat to the social order. It sold a mullion copies un 1958.
Link and his brothers ripping through “Rawhide,” on Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show. March 21, 1959.
He had more hits, mostly instrumentals such as “Rawhide,” all sounding as dangerous and slashing as “Rumble.” It’s pretty obvious players like Page, Dave Davies of The Kinks, Pete Townshend (who reportedly dropped to his knees and kissed Link’s feet upon being introduced to him) all owed the man for his innovations. You hear Link Wray’s influence all over The Sonics. There are moments when Wray sounds like pre-historic Johnny Thunders, so it would not be surprising if at least a copy of “Rumble” was in his older sister’s singles collection. He invented heavy metal and punk guitar, and understood the beauty in simple, loud rock ‘n’ roll. And when former punk singer Robert Gordon left the Tuff Darts to reinvent himself as the prototype modern day rockabilly, he hired Link Wray as his lead guitarist for authenticity’s sake, giving the man equal billing on their two albums together and in their live shows.
I was fortunate enough to see the man live twice – first in the late ‘90s here in Austin at the Electric Lounge, then again in the early ‘00s when I lived in New York City. Both were jaw-dropping affairs, but the first time was the best, by far. He stalked the front of the stage, shoving his chords down the gaping maw of every person in the front row at the Electric Lounge, looking like Iggy Pop if he were a guitar player. He kept riding Archie the soundman during the vocal numbers: “Archie, gimme Sun Records echo…SUN RECORDS ECHO, ARCHIE!!” And his wife Olive stood RIGHT BEHIND HIM, whipping Link’s ponytail around or shaking a tambourine.
Later, she wrapped herself around him as he emerged from the dressing room, staring at me with pure hate like I owed her money. And Link Wray, who was surprisingly slight, stopped to shake my hand, grasping my elbow with his other hand.
“You, sir, are my hero,” I gasped. “Fuck Guitar Wolf – you are GOD!!”
Olive Wray’s eye daggers got more intense. Link laughed and gave me a thumbs up: “HA HA! ALL RIGHT!!”
Best of all, he had a 100 watt Marshall half-stack on the stage, every knob on ten, turned away from the audience. Then mic’ed through the PA. That’s how we should all do it.
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