Link Wray
Original LP release: 1971
This CD released: 2006
Label: Hip-O Select / Polydor
Catalog #: 00034002
Comes in a die-cut gatefold package that replicates the original vinyl release.
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From Hip-O Select:
CD Edition limited to 5000 non-numbered limited edition copies.
Don’t let the cover fool you. This ain’t no Redbone, this ain’t no Willie Nelson (good though those two artists may be). Link Wray’s Polydor debut from 1971 sounds kinda like The Band meets The Rolling Stones, with a healthy side of Van Morrison playing gospel blues somewhere in the Mississippi Delta. Recorded in his converted chicken coop studio, Wray took a breather from his earlier electric guitar instrumentals to lay down a raw and intense album.
If you are unfamiliar with Wray’s work, he is probably best known for his 1958 hit "Rumble". Though it only got to #16 on the charts, its influence is staggering. The late critic Cub Koda said that Wray invented the power chord. Pete Townshend of the Who said that he probably would never have picked up a guitar had it not been for the tune. Much of his early work from the Fifties may seem pretty tame now, but he was breaking ground for the likes of Dick Dale and a whole crop of guitarists that would come during the British Invasion, such as Clapton, Beck, and Page, all of whom have paid homage to Wray’s talent.
By most accounts, Link turned 75 this year (though it might be 73 or 68, depending on what you read), and he’s about as far as one can be from the rock mainstream: Denmark. He moved there in 1978, and lives on an island where Hans Christian Andersen once made his home. And though his life has been far from a fairytale, Wray still manages to get out on the road from time to time, showing the kids how it’s done, comfortable in his status as one of the pioneers of rock.
The album was remastered from the original master tapes in 2004 by the Grammy-winning engineer Gavin Lurssen, and it comes in a die-cut gatefold package that replicates the original vinyl release.
Did You Know? Wray’s "Rumble" was banned on stations across America because it was thought to promote juvenile delinquency. It was an instrumental. Go fig.
AMG review by Mark Deming:
Link Wray was one of rock & roll's first bone fide guitar heroes, and his speaker-shredding buzzy chords were as distinctive a sound as anyone conjured up in rock's early years. So Link's old fans were thrown for a loop when, in 1971, the man made a comeback after several years along the margins with a self-titled album that set aside his big slabs of fretboard fuzz in favor of a loosely tight fusion of country, blues, and roughshod folk-rock. Recorded in a homemade three-track studio fashioned in an abandoned chicken coop on Wray's Maryland farm, Link Wray lacks the muscle of the man's legendary instrumental sides, with acoustic guitar, piano, and mandolin anchoring these sides as often as Link's electric, and there's a down-home mood here that lacks the switchblade intensity of Wray's most famous music. But the rough passion of "Rumble" and "Rawhide" certainly carries through here, albeit in a different form; the plaintive howl of Wray's vocals isn't always pretty, but it certainly communicates (Wray lost a lung to TB in 1953), the best songs speak eloquently of the hard facts of Wray's early life as a poor Shawnee child in the Deep South, and there's a humble back-porch stomp in this music that's heartfelt and immediate. (And Wray does serve up some primal hoodoo guitar on the closing cut, "Tail Dragger.") Link Wray didn't go over big with the man's old fans and failed to win him many new ones, but it's an honest and passionate piece of music that's a fascinating detour from the music that has largely defined his career, and has aged better than the vast majority of the country-rock product of the early '70s. Link Wray was later reissued as part of the collections Guitar Preacher: The Polydor Years and Wray's Three Track Shack.
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01. La De Da [4:04]
02. Take Me Home Jesus [3:20]
03. Juke Box Mama [4:28]
04. Rise And Fall Of Jimmy Stokes [4:02]
05. Fallin' Rain [3:45]
06. Fire And Brimstone [4:20]
07. Ice People [3:03]
08. God Out West [3:53]
09. Crowbar [4:47]
10. Black River Swamp [3:59]
11. Tail Dragger [4:29]
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