Unsung (or little sung) musical heroes

Cafe Society
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Reading threads recently in Cafe Society about best guitarists/bassists/name-your-instrument-here, I’ve been thinking about performers who are a little quieter about their skills. What about the pianist who just find THE perfect note at the right time, the vocalist who finds a harmony that makes your hair stand on end, the guitarist who plays an unorthodox chord that somehow “fits?”

I’m not looking for the obvious “Eric Clapton/Jimi Hendrix/Eddie Van Halen is the greatest guitarist of all time” answers here… what I’m curious about is the low-key approach, the people who get missed in magazine polls because maybe they’re a little too subtle, a little too arranged to fit into the whole. So, name your faves, and provide examples of their gifts in action.

To illustrate, Brian Wilson may not be the best bass player in the history of music, but his choice of notes, especially on Pet Sounds, is what makes him a vital part of the instrument’s history. By picking the occasional note that was not in the root of a given chord, he helped push rock in a more complex direction and helped the music gain respectability.

I’ll take Page Hamilton, guitarist for Helmet. On the Aftertaste album, he meshes his instrumental lines so perfectly that there are moments where you can’t separate his parts from one another without intense listening to the mix in headphones. You can’t get a lock on how many parts he’s overdubbed because so much is going on…here’s a lead part, low in the mix, flitting from channel to channel, and here’s a rhythm part shadowing the bass, and here are two rhythm guitars battling in the left speaker, etc. When you do get them figured out, you realize that he’s not always playing conventional chords in a given place, but augmenting in a way that might sound horrible on its own but perfect in the context of the song.

Overall, what I may be thinking about is more about instrumental arrangement than musicians proper, but still…what are your faves?

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A couple of additional artists and examples:

Bruce Cockburn on guitar…very interesting chord choices, drones and use of capo/open tunings. From the newest album, You’ve Never Seen Everything, “Don’t Forget About Delight” has a fairly unusual series of chords to navigate; it sounds “conventional” for about four measures and then takes an odd progression, somewhat reminiscent of Nick Drake’s “River Man” in terms of structure.

I’ll also take his fingerpicking on practically any version of “Wondering Where The Lions Are.”

Emmylou Harris on harmony vocals…borrowing from the same Cockburn album as above, there’s a song called “All Our Dark Tomorrows” that finds her stepping outside her normal voice, and sounding not unpleasantly like Stevie Nicks in places.

Neil Finn on guitar…great use of harmonics on acoustic guitar at the end of “Weather With You” from Woodface. Coupled with the percussion, the feel of this section of the song makes me think of standing in a forest, early morning, in the summer…

Tchad Blake on guitar…Blake is normally known as an engineer, but his guitar “atmosphere” on the Suzanne Vega song “99.9F” is amazing (he appears on the bridge sections of the song, where Vega sings “something cool against the skin”). He does similar work on the Latin Playboys’ albums.

Jools Holland on organ/piano…practically any Squeeze song benefits from his presence, but his organ solo on “I Learnt How To Pray” (from Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti) and the piano solo on “Pulling Mussels From The Shell” are perfect choices of notes for those songs; I can’t picture anything else working as well in those spaces, try as I might.

Levon Helm on drums…he does for the trap kit what B.B. King does for guitar, in that he tends to play his complicated fills at the end of a vocal line (think of his work on “Up On Cripple Creek” or “The Shape I’m In,” specifically). No vocalist can be better served by a drummer, unless you count…

Al Jackson, Jr. on drums…anything on an Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, or early Albert King song that makes your hair stand on end is probably him. He conjured up the perfect rhythm track for all these guys, and some of his best work before his death appeared on Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s The Night album (I haven’t seen individual song credits, but I think he plays on “The Balltrap” and “Pretty Flamingo”).

Specific examples: what sound like one-handed fills on King’s “Crosscut Saw,” the barrelling intro on Redding’s “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and explosive transitions on “Love Man,” and the full-on stomp of “Wrap It Up” for Sam and Dave.

Elvis Presley on guitar…only on the early Sun sessions, though. A lack of techical finesse drove him to play the guitar as if it was another drum, making his acoustic a true rhythm instrument. Specific example: the jangling percussiveness of Presley’s playing on “That’s All Right, Mama.” Elvis later said he didn’t make it on playing guitar, which is true in the conventional sense…but not so much here.