AFter listening closely to a few Monkees and Ricky Nelson records, I have become fascinated with the guitar work of James Burton. As a result, I wanted to start buying recordings he’s played on.
I went to his official Web site to look for his recording history and it seems that his credits are listed on an album-by-album basis.
I know for a fact that on the Monkees albums, he actually played on one or two tracks for each album, so I’m looking for his credits on a track-by-track basis. Does anyone know if such a thing is available anywhere?
I’m sorry, I’m just not finding anything more useful than the list you already have. I’ll check if there’s anything at the music library when I’m there later this week.
[soapbox] This is why we need to create a musician’s equivalent to the IMDB - you can track the complete career of any actor, even if they’ve never had more than six lines in a movie. Why can’t we track the complete career of studio musicians and sidemen? Especially someone major and interesting like James Burton. [/soapbox]
I have to assume there are versions of this, **Le Ministre **- but I haven’t tried to hunt them down or vet them for accuracy. Either way, I could not agree more.
**Burton **is one of those journeyman masters who was part of so much music and the evolution of rock, country rock and other classic genres that I don’t know if there is one source of his discography. There are some huge Burton fanatics out there, as well as (obviously) huge fans of Elvis, Rickey Nelson and all of the artists he did session work with, so you can check there…
…and yes, he is one of the original masters of the Telecaster…here’s a quick clip from the Ozzie & Harriet show where he’s backing Ricky on It’s Late - you can see the Tele and his hybrid flatpick-and-fingers picking style, just like that other thread where I posted a link to a lesson for his Suzie Q lick…
I’ve been working on that lick, by the way. I’ve got all the notes in, but I still haven’t figured out how to do the straight beat with the bass while synchopating the rest of it. My bass tends to follow the lead.
Tell me about it - it’s a pain, but a fun one! I am trying to build in lead breaks, like Arlen Roth does in that lesson, but realistic ones based on what I can do ;). Oy. I got to play a little unplugged Tele in front of a muted baseball game on tv yesterday (in between soccer games for my kids) - now my pick-hand middle and ring fingers are sore from working on those hybrid licks…those fingers haven’t gotten 30-year-old calluses on them like my fretting hands since this hybrid stuff is still new to me…
I have no idea where Allmusic gets its information, but I have found it to be shockingly incomplete – I mean, if I have an album on CD, then it can’t be so rare that it should be missing an entry. Also, I have found it to be unreliable regarding release dates of albums (especially compilations), and incomplete or inaccurate with many composer listings (I have found it very common for it not to know a composer’s full name). As a result, anything I find on Allmusic, I try to confirm with other sources. It never occurs to me to look for anything comprehensive on Allmusic.
Should I view the credits on Allmusic as more reliable than the other things, perhaps? Anyway, it doesn’t seem to me that Allmusic offers track-by-track credits.
Oh, and Allmusic is one of the slowest Web sites in the world.
I run James’ website and I have been working on a session database, but it’s far from complete. It will be online some time this summer. One of the resources I have used is this blog: http://countrydiscography.blogspot.com/
Dude (or Dudette!) That is SO cool! I look forward to checking it out!!
For non-Burton-focused Dopers, the username **pinkpaisley **is a reference to Burton’s famous late-60’s Telecaster that has a pink paisley finish - Brad Paisley now plays one (well, duh!).
How did you find out about the SDMB and this thread??
Picture of a Pink Paisley Tele here- They were made with wallpaper, attached to the body and lacquered over.
…and we guitar geeks worry about all this stuff and its affect on tone, and Burton plays a wallpapered guitar - clearly, pretty much all good tone come from your hands!!
And yes, I have been using the name pinkpaisley for a long time, because of the gorgeous paisley telecaster James used to play.