Remembering Link Wray on his birthday

Raising a glass to the amazing Link Wray on his birthday with a couple of vintage rippers you may have missed. 

Happy Birthday Link Wray!

Remembering guitar great Link Wray with a few TV appearances, including some footage shot at Toronto's El Mocambo. 

Link Wray inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame by Jimmy Page

Hugely influential guitarist Link Wray is finally in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame! Jimmy Page played "Rumble" at the ceremony. 

Somewhere, Norton Records mainman Billy Miller and Link are smiling. 

That time Link Wray was interviewed by JD Roberts for The New Music

Years prior to joining Fox News, John Roberts grilled Link Wray for The New Music which included some El Mocambo footage.

Tex Perkins takes inspiration from Link Wray's 3-Track Shack sessions

Tex Perkins and his Fat Rubber Band used Link Wray's Beans and Fatback album as a template for their latest recording.  

Here's the scoop...

The latest thrilling incarnation of master rock'n'roll storyteller Tex Perkins and the Fat Rubber Band began with a Link Wray record. 

Perkins and his respected musician, songwriter, producer and bandmate Matt Walker share a mutual admiration of the American electric guitar innovator, whose iconic power chords in his signature 50s rock’n’roll instrumentals, had a profound influence on the evolution of rock guitar. The pair have enjoyed countless musical conversations over the decade while hanging out backstage and on the road with Perkins' award-winning The Man In Black - The Johnny Cash Story, with Walker playing guitar in the Tennessee Four band for the theatrical production. When Perkins enthused about his partner finding him a rare vinyl copy of Link Wray's Beans and Fatback album, recorded in 1971, Walker's response initiated a flurry of creative endeavour which would ultimately result in the formation of the Fat Rubber Band. 

"There’s a couple of albums he recorded in a chicken shack on his brother Vernon’s farm, known as the Three Track Shack recordings - one was a self-titled album and the follow-up called Beans and Fatback, which is a little more rare.  My partner Kristyna knew I was a fan of that record and she's an ebay ninja and she found a vinyl copy. After I immediately hugged and thanked her for it, I took a picture of it and sent it to Matt Walker. And the fateful words came back: 'Awesome, let's make an album like that.' And that was it. We were on!” 

Throughout his four-decade career as a captivating performer, compelling songwriter and dexterous vocalist, Perkins has sought collaborators who both shared his passion for music and challenged his creativity. From his first band Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums, through the fertile tension of Beasts of Bourbon and chart-slaying The Cruel Sea, his musical bromances with Tex, Don and Charlie and TnT side hustle with Tim Rogers, and myriad bands - Thug, Dark Horses, The Band of Gold, The Ape and yes, the Ladyboyz - Perkins extraordinary adaptability has allowed him to explore and push the boundaries of traditional music forms from hard rock and heavy noise to country folk balladry and blues grooves. All with his unmistakable baritone and sly sense of humour. 

But the Fat Rubber Band was clearly destined, with Perkins and Walker quickly trading songs for the project like a song-writing tennis match perpetually swinging back to deuce. Walker offered the debut album's opening track, the wide-screen drama of Pay The Devil's Due; Perkins responded with the plaintive blues of My Philosophy. Walker replied with the album's fuzz driven debut single Danger Has Been Kind and Perkins countered with the glacially-paced, intimate Poor Simple Minded Fool. The pair road-tested their works in progress as a duo before enlisting bassist Steve Hadley, drummer Roger Bergodaz and Evan Richards on percussion to complete the Fat Rubber Band line-up to record the album's ten tracks at Walker's Stovepipe Studios in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges. 

“At Matt's studio - you open the door to the studio and nature floods in," Perkins says. “We wanted it to sound rural, to feel the dirt and the grass and the leaves." 

Even after all these decades, when you think you know that gravelly baritone inside out, Perkins finds new emotional tones in the service of the Fat Rubber Band's songs vivid narratives, with their characters wrestling, but sometimes dancing, with the tougher, darker qualities of the human condition. This is truly existential blues. Bubbling underneath those upfront vocals and raw harmonies are intricately entwined guitar conversations and unexpected percussive flourishes. 

"Another aspect that we wanted was for the sound to be sometimes a collision and sometimes a marriage of acoustic and electric instruments. We wanted that tension between mandolins and bouzoukis meeting fuzz guitars. We also considered percussion to be a vital element of the sound we were going for; we noticed in the recordings we loved from the 50s and 60s that often the tamborine hit, or the maracas, or whatever percussion, was right up there in the mix, right next to the vocal," Perkins says. The last characteristic of the music we wanted to pursue was harmonies, vocal harmonies. Not only have Matt and I discovered we can weave instinctively around each other’s singing, really well, we also have three other great vocalists in the group, so five part harmonies is what we end up with on songs like Love Long Gone and Trouble Goodbye, it can be breath-taking…literally.” 

This is end times existential electric country funk folk rock swamp witch blues, its way out there, but it’s here right now.  

Get a copy of Tex Perkins and the Fat Rubber Band album via Bandcamp right here. Watch Tex and crew perform "Place In The Sun" followed by their version of Lee Dorsey's "Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky" below and the Jim Ford inspired "I Must Be In A Good Place Now."

Billy Childish vs. Link Wray

Wild Billy Childish & his CTMF crew cut loose on Link Wray's Comananche as a closer at BBmix in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. 

Blind Matty Band opening for The Sadies @ The Great Hall, Friday

Toronto's own Blind Matty and his rag-tag bunch of country outsiders heat things up for The Sadies at The Great Hall.

Happy Birthday Link Wray!

Remembering the great Link Wray on his day with a 1959 performance of Rawhide. 

One For The Weekend: Link Wray

The previously unreleased "Son Of Rumble" b/w "Whole Lotta Talking" single is available for pre-order from Easy Eye Sound. 

Link Wray vs. Ray Charles

Ray Charles is always tough to top but Link Wray may have done it with his rippin' run through "Mary Ann."

Blind Matty opening for the Dead Boys @ Velvet Underground, Friday

Check out Blind Matty's cover of Link Wray's Take Me Home Jesus which you can get right here.

Happy Birthday Link Wray!

Here's a German television clip from 1978. The Rumble documentary screens at TIFF Bell Lightbox Tuesday at 1:45pm.  

Happy Birthday Link Wray!

Remembering the great Link Wray with his "lost" Cadence recordings from 1958.

Link Wray's 3-Track Shack sessions from early 70s reissued by Ace using original tapes

Ace UK's fab new two-disc set Link Wray's 3-Track Shack is due August 31. Read all about it.

As the 60s came to a close, Link Wray, his brother Vernon Wray and band decamped to his farm in Accokeek, Maryland where Vernon set up a three-track recorder in an outhouse – the eponymous three-track shack. Three albums resulted from the recording sessions: 1971’s “Link Wray” was originally mooted for release on the Apple label but eventually came out on Polydor, as did “Mordicai Jones” a pseudonymous title that featured pianist Bobby Howard on vocals. “Beans and Fatback” was released by UK Virgin in 1973.

The music was radically different to what Link had previously recorded – raw and basic, but with vocals and acoustic instruments. Many Swan-era fans hoping for yet more rockin' instros for which Link had become famous didn’t quite know what to make of the rootsy detour into gospel, blues and back-porch country. Consequently, sales weren't great at the time which resulted in all three LPs becoming sought-after collectibles that seemed to foreshadow the Americana scare of the early 90s. In recent years, Mark Lanegan covered the song Fire and Brimstone (from 71's Link Wray album) for Nick Cave's Lawless soundtrack of 2012 while Calexico revised the song Fallin' Rain for a bonus track accompanying the European release of 2003's Feast Of Wire album on City Slang.

These three albums have previously been reissued by Acadia/Evangeline via Universal as a 2 CD set dubbed from vinyl sources and the Beans and Fatback closer "Take My Hand (Precious Lord)" was oddly replaced by a cover of Tony Joe White's Backwoods Preacher Man off 1974's Link Wray's Rumble album. For the new Link Wray's 3-Track Shack compendium, Ace has corrected the track listing and returned to the original master tapes for all three albums to present these unjustly overlooked classics in the finest sound possible. Time to find out what you've been missing.

One For The Weekend: The Woodchucks

Lee Hazlewood is behind The Woodchucks' Angry Generation – an ace rip of Link Wray's Rumble. 

Watch Link Wray @ Winterland in 1974

Remembering Link Wray on his day

Hearing Link Wray's Rumble in high school changed the course of Jim Osterberg's life.

Happy Birthday Link Wray!