His mileage varied, but two of his live solos put him at the top of my list: “In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed”, and “Stormy Monday”, both from the “At The Fillmore East” (black cover) album.
With pleasure.
Overview:
Short but sweet video sample:
I first learned of DB through Bob Brozman’s recordings with him.
Highly recommended listens:
go to Amazon, find DB’s album “Mahima”; download mp3 of Track 6 “Bana Mali.” It will be 99¢ very well-spent.
“Sunrise” (also with Brozman), which was an impossibly obscure cd until it was finally re-released a year or two ago, although the extensive and terrific liner notes from the original cd are missing. Probably my favorite non-classical recording of the past 15 years. Also at Amazon.
Oh, don’t get me wrong - I love Duane. I was merely saying that, love him or hate him, his name is regularly mentioned as one of the greats…
Well, I consider my ignorance fought. Never heard of the guy - or of Calcutta Slide Guitar. Basically sounds like variations on standard Indian instrumentation - and that’s a very good thing. Fascinating - thanks for sharing…
Thanks to WordMan for pointing me, a member of all of two days’ standing, to this thread.
My view is that – be it artists, albums, songs or instrumentalists – “best” arguments are meaningless (and “most representative” ones too limiting, given the diversity of styles). Yes, that some are “better” than others may be obvious, but I don’t see a point to pitting greatness against greatness and looking for a “winner” to emerge. Not that this can’t engender some very interesting conversation…I just don’t like to phrase things in those terms.
All anyone can realistically speak of are the representatives of the above categories that move you personally…and it would be just as difficult to limit the choices to only one.
I’m also very much an “in the service of the song” kind of guy, rather than one who focuses on individual players’ skills divorced from the context of their setting. So while it’s a no-brainer for me to put Hendrix in the most rarefied of categories, I would never say this if I didn’t like his music as a whole as much as I do.
As I’m not really following the “rules” of this thread, I’ll make my comments brief and mention a couple of guitarists not cited so far whose work moves me:
1950s
• Willie Johnson (Howlin’ Wolf’s original Memphis guitarist)
• Hubert Sumlin (Wolf’s principal guitarist in Chicago)
• Cliff Gallup (Gene Vincent)
• Paul Burlison (Johnny Burnette’s Rock and Roll Trio) 1960s
• Roger McGuinn
• Lou Reed (with The Velvet Underground)
• Jeff Beck (with The Yardbirds – my love for Beck is based almost solely on this work…as great as it is, his later strictly instrumental stuff is not enough on its own for me. I still rate him higher than Page, though) 1970s
• Neil Young (the poster child for “feel” over “technique.” I would rather hear Neil play two notes than most other guitarists play 20)
• Tom Verlaine (Television…the glaring exception to my usual antipathy toward guitar slingers. There is just something about the way he plays that is so…different from others, and so emotional, that he gets to me.)
Hope no one minds me reviving this thread and taking it in a slightly different direction. I’m always glad to find others who want to explore these topics to the depth that I do.
Good lord are we going to get along. I have to get a link to the second issue of our Doper ‘zine, ***teemings ***- I have an article on Cliff Gallup in it - I can’t believe I didn’t save a link; I have asked the mods to send me one; I will post it. And I love Burlison and have contemplated doing a breakdown of the different versions of Train Kept a Rollin’ as another *teemings *article.
Jeff Beck is freakin’ god (Clapton lovers had it wrong back in the day) - you will see my effusive gushing over Beck in some of the threads I link to back in Post 33 of this thread…
and Verlaine and Lloyd’s work in Television is just great…
Glad to hear we have so much in common. I look forward to seeing the Cliff Gallup article…didn’t Jeff Beck actually seek out his widow in the backwoods of Appalachia or something like that?
The “Train” article would be great…it’s especially interesting to me how The Yardbirds got from the Rock and Roll Trio version to theirs, which is really quite different. They basically conflated two R&RT tracks, stealing the riff from their version of “Honey Hush” and superimposing it on “Train.”
(P.S.: The song’s originator, Tiny Bradshaw, was from my home town!)
+1.
Not to knock Clapton, who is obviously very good in his particular back yard, but I always felt the whole “God” thing was a result of an idea taking hold and being repeated, rather than being based on the reality of his playing.
Stuck in an all-day meeting on BBerry - but I just remembered: there should be a link to the Gallup column in the GOGT (great ongoing guitar thread) on the last page or next to last…
As a guitar player for over 30 years I’ve always detested these questions. I mean, by what stardards, style, influence, etc. are we talking?
I mean even personally my opinion changes from week to week or year to year. Too many of the greats are during the same 2 or 3 decades anyway.
How do you compare SRV to Eddie? Or Clapton to Page or Hendrix?
IMO, one of the worst things is for music to become a competition over who is better, faster, more technical, etc. Personally, I’d rather jam than compete.
Yes, exactly the sentiment I expressed in this post – particularly my “pitting greatness against greatness” comment.
It’s really all in how you frame the discussion. A lot of interesting conversation can come out of it. And that should be the goal, rather than making any kind of definitive declarations about who’s better/best…or even “most representative.” I really don’t think such determinations are possible.
1910s: Johnny St. Cyr
1920s: Charlie Patton
1930s: Robert Johnson
1940s: Charlie Christian
1950s: kind of a pick 'em, so I’ll cheat and take Andres Segovia
1960s: Jimi Hendrix
1970s: Brian May
1980s: Eddie Van Halen, followed closely by Stanley Jordan and Joe Satriani
1990s: I admit being ignorant of my own time. What the hell–Kurt Cobain, or Eric Johnson if I care about credibility
2000s: I haven’t mentioned Ralph Towner yet, so I’ll slot him here
WordMan, GREAT article on Cliff Gallup! I really appreciated it.
My only minor quibble would be you citing the influence of the pedal steel guitar on Cliff’s playing. I would think it would be more proper to speak of its predecessor, the lap steel.
While there was experimentation going on before it, the pedal steel didn’t really take off in earnest until Bud Isaacs played that iconic intro to Webb Pierce’s “Slowly” in early 1954. So it’s a fairly short interval between that and Cliff coming to prominence with Gene Vincent. Cliff had probably been listening to the great lap steel players for years prior to that.
Whatever the type of instrument, it’s good to see you bringing up the influence of the steel. After growing up a stone rock ‘n’ roller (which I still am), I discovered the Golden Age of Country Music (roughly 1948-57) when I was in my early 20s, and I’ve had a sort of parallel universe love affair going on with it ever since.
One of the great injustices is that so few people realize that so many of those country cats could REALLY play. (There are persistent rumors that members of the Drifting Cowboys and other hot country bands of the 50s would hit the jazz nightclubs after their shows and sit in with some of the leading luminaries of that field.) Have you ever heard Carl Smith’s “Go Boy Go”? There’s an absolutely KILLER steel/guitar/steel break in that one, for example.
And with the steel in particular, you can get amazing chord intervals that you simply can’t get on any other instrument. It’s a sound I dearly love.
Hey thanks - very cool of you. And as for lap steel vs. pedal steel - excellent; I consider my ignorance fought. That’s what I get for writing my columns off the top of my head during breaks in my workday
Here’s a Youtube of Go Boy Go. Wish the cameramen followed the players, I wish they weren’t wearing those pink shirts and neckerchiefs and I wish I had that early 50’s Strat the lead guitarist is playing!
Ah yes, the classic and indispensable Albert Gannaway color films made in Nashville ca. 1954-56. A treasure trove of some of the best country music ever made.
I’m not sure who Carl’s lead guitarist was at this time (though it’s quite easy to work out who his steel player was!), but he looks even more like a psycho serial killer in some of the other clips from this show!
The studio version of “Go Boy Go” enables you to hear the steel and guitar breaks a little more clearly. A great, great record, and among the very first pure country recordings (not counting Western Swing) to feature drums.
Meanwhile, be sure to follow the link on this page for Webb Pierce’s “Teenage Boogie.” He actually did this one twice on the Gannaway shows, but the version linked here (with Webb in his lighter-colored Nudie suit) is the better of the two. Both of them slay the two studio versions, which are kind of tame by comparison.
Nice Telecaster break on this one, and it captures country music at a crucial juncture…knowing it has to react to rock ‘n’ roll in some fashion, but not sure how. In Webb’s case, he simply updated his “Hayride Boogie,” which he had been doing at the Louisiana Hayride side he got his start there around 1950.
I incorporated this song into my own rockabilly repertoire when I first discovered it on a mid-70s 8-track tape issue of Webb’s Gannaway appearances. Always great fun to do.
For 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, you gotta include Tommy Tedesco, arguably the most sought after Hollywood session cat of that time. He was a great guitar player, but suggested that in the studio he was often an inveterate faker (when faced with a daunting chart). Anything to get the job done. Not a detriment, but a testament to his ability to think quickly and tastefully in a stressful or time-sensitive situation (unions, remember?). He probably got a lot of mileage out of adding what he called a “hip chord”*, to the turnaround of a standard ii-V-I progression. Not a guy in the limelight, but probably one of the most listened-to guitarists in that he played on a TON of movie and TV tracks.
*anything crazy with, like, a flat 5 in the bass (or something), possibly played with the thumb.
I know the lap steel isn’t dead. For country, I actually prefer the sound of the lap steel over pedal. It’s more “pure” somehow.
Though in this video and others I’ve taken a quick look at, looks like Robert has a pedal steel. Don’t know to what extent he actually uses the pedals, though.
Didn’t he start out in the “sacred steel” tradition?
I’m going to have to second a nomination for Joe Satriani for the 80s. Not only is he one of the most talented and influential in his own right, but if you include those under his tutelage (Vai, Hammet, and Skolnick being the most well known), you have an even bigger influence. Then you through in the huge number of people he’s worked with and his G3 concerts, and he’s had an enormous impact and virtually any aspiring guitarist will name him as an influence. Yngwie is pretty influential too, but I don’t think on the same level as Satch. Plus, I had the displeasure of meeting him, and he’s such a huge ass that I couldn’t nominate him and not feel sick.
For the 90s, if you interpret “best” kind of loosely, I might nominate Kurt Cobain because, despite not being very talented, his work was incredibly influential and I often hear people citing him as an influence. John Petrucci might work pretty well here too, certainly enormously talented and probably best known for his work in the '90s.
And I’m going to nominate Jeff Loomis for the '00s. He’s easily one of the best technically, and considering that I’m already hearing a lot of people claiming him as an influence, I imagine that in 5-10 years, he’ll be reasonably well known and probably best remembered for his work during that decade.
