Link Wray

[rostasi]

I noticed that Wikipedia shows
that Link Wray passed away on Friday,
but I've not seen anything in the media on this.
Anyone with more info?

Link link

[Derek Taylor]

Shit! Is this for real?

[Root Doctor]

I don't think so. Norton Records would have gotten the word out if it were.

[Mingus]

Originally Posted by Root Doctor

I don't think so. Norton Records would have gotten the word out if it were.

(unsubstantiated) but found this blog entry:
http://mannsworld.blogspot.com/2005/...-wray-via.html

[Mingus]

found this rockabilly site along the way...

http://www.rockabillyhall.com/LinkWray.html

[LeMo]

Seen him in the seventies in sort of rock revival festival.
It was quite a characteer.
Sad if he has past away.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

I don't believe it. It's not credible that none of the mainstream media or rock legends indebted to him have noted this.

They're probably confusing him with Kenny Rodgers.

Originally Posted by Squaredancecalling Steve

They're probably confusing him with Kenny Rodgers.

C'mon, Steve. When a great man leaves this mortal coil, have the
decency to spell his name right. It's Kenny Rogers.

And his music and television movies will live on forever and ever and beyond
even what any of those weird and unsettling Heston movies could imagine
for us.

RIP, Kenny.

Link, I hope you're still with us.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Originally Posted by rostasi

OK, I'm confused...
Does this mean that a person is really dead
only when it's reported in the American press?

Also, I might add...he lived in Denmark these last few years.

No, but there has to be more corroboration than this for me to believe it.

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by rostasi

OK, I'm confused...
Does this mean that a person is really dead
only when it's reported in the American press?

Absolutely not, the American press is a huge collection of dumbfucks. But Wikipedia is pretty useless also.

Originally Posted by rostasi

Also, I might add...he lived in Denmark these last few years.

Wasn't it on a remote island off the coast of Denmark? I hope Link isn't dead; I had the chance to see him a couple years ago and didn't go. Not to mention growing up in Laurel, Md where Link used to play at the American Legion hall every now and then as part of Buddy Dean (the model for John Waters' Corny Cornelius in Hairspray) hops and if a skinny (then) geek like me would've shown up I'd have gotten my ass kicked by the standard group of hoods that hung out there.

The Hillbilly Wolf has lasted a long time on one lung; I bet he's still kicking.

I *did* miss plenty of chances to see Kenny.

[Captain Hate]

Remote island off the coast of Denmark == Denmark.

[Lenny D.Guitarist]

You guys are thinking of Fay Wray, who starred in the movie "King Kong". She died in 2004 or so at age 96.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Originally Posted by rostasi

Spanish and Danish obits. Apparently, two outside-of-America media bits don't mean a thing until we hear from English-speaking press (preferably US, I suppose?).

It's not that they're not in English, but that there are only two of them, and I don't know those papers and their credibility. I hope he's not dead.

[Mingus]

Venezuelan and Australian press say so. So it must be true :-(

"Buried last week"

http://www.thedailyjournalonline.com...tegoryId=13003

http://www.undercover.com.au/news/20..._linkwray.html

[Mingus]

Originally Posted by Mingus

Venezuelan and Australian press say so. So it must be true :-(

"Buried last week"

http://www.thedailyjournalonline.com...tegoryId=13003

http://www.undercover.com.au/news/20..._linkwray.html

World News Australia

http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/...25734&region=4

[Captain Hate]

It really blows that this received no coverage in the US; my already low opinion of the media continues to drop. I wonder how Pinch Shitberger likes being scooped by Wikipedia.

RIP Link.

[Mingus]

Originally Posted by Captain Hate

It really blows that this received no coverage in the US; my already low opinion of the media continues to drop. I wonder how Pinch Shitberger likes being scooped by Wikipedia.

RIP Link.

thought the Venezuelan/Australian scoop would get a charge out of you. ;-)

Shame on Ruppert Murdoch/Gannett and the rest...

-Rose Bud

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by Mingus

thought the Venezuelan/Australian scoop would get a charge out of you. ;-)

Those obits were about as boilerplate as you can get with nary a shred of insight. Recent pictures of Link didn't exactly fill you with optimism regarding an extended lifespan. Still you'd think there'd be more coverage than this.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Google news is now showing 6 papers reporting this, including from Cananda and England.

Mindblowing that no US papers have reported it yet! Mind-blowing that none of the musicians have commented yet.

I loved his work. R.I.P.

[Deadlift]

Rolling Stone Article

[Captain Hate]

Finally a worthy obit.

"In 1971, Polydor released a self-titled album from those gutbucket sessions to critical acclaim, if disappointing sales. (Link Wray and two subsequent albums were recently reissued on a two-CD set called Wray's Three Track Shack.) Featuring swampy guitar, gospel-style choruses and Wray's own soulful singing, the albums marked a surprising new phase; there are appealing, Americana-style echoes of the Band, Van Morrison's pastoral period and the Rolling Stones circa Exile on Main Street."

Does anybody have this? I remember when it first came out and not being too impressed with what I heard on the local "underground" station. But then again I was expecting a return to "Rumble" type fare. I sure as hell wouldn't have compared it to the Band, Van Morrison or the Stones, but that was a long time ago.

[chuckyd4]

I first saw this on a number of sites yesterday, which can often be as good a source for this kind of thing as the traditional media. I do believe it to be a true thing, and very sad. Though apparently this has been cleared up. Still, sad, considering the fact that we had to discuss the fact itself, because it received so little "legitimate" coverage.

[Dr Dave]

I had the album but it is long gone. All I remember now is The Ballad of Jimmy Stokes ("Jimmy Stokes came from Alabam' with just a shirt on his back"). On that cut, and on a few other cuts, the rhythm was provided by somebody banging a can of nails. That's about as down home as it gets, I think.

I was only 7 years old when "Rumble" was released, and it wasn't until the late '60s that I realized who he was and what he'd done, which was invent fuzztone and the whole notion of "power chords."

My favorite Link recording was "Live At The Paradiso" recorded in Amsterdam in, jeez, musta been 1978. I remember Anton Fig was the drummer, and he and the bassist provided punky double-time behind Link's titanic riffing. Tracks included awesome versions of Rumble, Rawhide, and Run Chicken Run. Lotsa crunching chords and outta control feedback.

[Fred K]

Washington Post article

[Surfer]

It's true, there's an obit in the Merc today.

[Mingus]

Originally Posted by Fred K

Washington Post article

Bob Dylan called "Rumble" " the greatest instrumental ever"; on Sunday, Dylan opened his concert at London's Brixton Academy with a cover of the song.

[Cem]

Damn! Selfish & moot, I know, but here's another reason why one should catch a legend coming through town any chance one can get. Wray just attempted to play the Yale here, a blues club, in July. He never did, due to border hassles for one of the Raymen... The point is, I was too busy to miss a (cancelled) show.

Garth Cartwright
Tuesday November 22, 2005
The Guardian

Link Wray, the original master blaster of rock'n'roll guitar, has died at his home in Copenhagen, aged 76. He enjoyed little mainstream success but his primal music guaranteed him a cult following that kept him working right up to this year. Indeed, the last 15 years found him enjoying a higher profile than at any time since his initial hits, with such films as Pulp Fiction and Independence Day employing his music.

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Wray's talent was a limited one, but in his ability to employ distortion and push the electric guitar to places that it had never been before, he was a 20th-century innovator. His best recordings retain their original menace and raw power, and his influence on rock music cannot be overestimated: the Who's Pete Townshend acknowledged, "He is the king; if it hadn't been for Link Wray and Rumble, I would have never picked up a guitar."
Wray was born in Dunn, North Carolina, to semi-literate Shawnee Native American parents. His father suffered from shell shock as a result of his experience in the first world war. The family lived an itinerant life, often sleeping rough, earning a meagre living from farm work and street preaching. "Elvis, he grew up white-man poor; I was growing up Shawnee poor," Wray told an interviewer. He recalled that his family lived in fear of the Ku Klux Klan.

Wray started playing the guitar as a child. While serving in the Korean war, he contacted tuberculosis and had a lung removed. With his brothers, Vernon and Doug, he recorded country songs as the Palomino Ranch Hands in 1955. Changing their name to the Ray-Men, they jumped aboard the rock'n'roll juggernaut then under way.

Wray claimed that his lack of musical ability forced him to invent sounds. He effectively did this by punching holes in his amplifier and running a major chord up and down the fret board, thus creating the thundering sound known as the power chord. "I was looking for something Chet Atkins wasn't doing, that all the jazz kings wasn't doing. I was looking for my own sound," he said.

In 1958, Cadence, a small record company in Washington DC, approved a primitive instrumental recorded by Wray. The label's owner, Archie Bleyer, declined to issue it, until he found his teenage daughter expressing enthusiasm for the work, and saying that it reminded her of the rumble scenes in West Side Story. Bleyer named the instrumental Rumble, and duly released it. The record became a controversial US hit - several radio stations banned it for fear of inciting teenage violence.

Bleyer panicked and told Wray he had to clean up his act. Instead, he signed with Epic Records, where he scored with the instrumental Rawhide. Epic also tried to clean up Wray, forcing him to record standards when his appeal was about creating the crudest sounding music ever recorded.

Wray and his brothers left Epic and briefly formed Rumble Records, issuing three singles, including an instrumental called Jack the Ripper, which was picked up by Philadelphia's Swan Records and gave Wray his final US hit. The years at Swan found Wray at his most productive, as the label allowed him the freedom to record his instrumentals unhindered by executive decisions. He turned the family chicken coop into a crude recording studio and produced wild, experimental guitar instrumentals, while continuing to play in many of America's grimmest bars and clubs. But the British invasion by the likes of the Beatles rendered Wray obsolete. The fact that John Lennon and other British guitarists loved his work was an irony that passed him by.

Wray's fortunes waxed and waned throughout the 1970s. Many celebrated rock musicians championed him as an unsung pioneer. He was brought to England to record for Virgin Records, then produced two high-profile albums with retro-rockabilly singer Robert Gordon. If he never enjoyed mainstream success, at least his talent was acknowledged and Europe gave him a new audience.

In 1979, Wray married Olive Julie Povlsen, a Danish student of Native American culture; the following year, they settled in Copenhagen. Povlsen began managing Wray in 1981. The 1980s rockabilly revival raised his profile, while the inclusion of Jack the Ripper in Richard Gere's 1983 film, Breathless, proved how cinematic his music was. He is survived by his wife and son.

Frederick Lincoln Wray Jr, musician, born May 2 1929; died November 5 2005