Talking Guitar

Conversations with Musicians Who Shaped Twentieth-Century American Music

Jas Obrecht

• Editorial: The University of North Carolina Press
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781469631653
• Categoría: Médias et arts de la scène
• Categoría: Musique de guitare

In this lively collection of interviews, storied music writer Jas Obrecht presents a celebration of the world's most popular instrument as seen through the words, lives, and artistry of some of its most beloved players. Readers will read--and hear--accounts of the first guitarists on record, pioneering bluesmen, gospel greats, jazz innovators, country pickers, rocking rebels, psychedelic shape-shifters, singer-songwriters, and other movers and shakers. In their own words, these guitar players reveal how they found their inspirations, mastered their instruments, crafted classic songs, and created enduring solos. Highlights include Nick Lucas's recollections of waxing the first noteworthy guitar records; Ry Cooder's exploration of prewar blues musicians; Carole Kaye and Ricky Nelson on the early years of rock and roll; Stevie Ray Vaughan on Jimi Hendrix; Gregg Allman on his brother, Duane Allman; Carlos Santana, Eric Johnson, and Pops Staples on spirituality in music; Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, and Tom Petty on songwriting and creativity; and early interviews with Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, and Ben Harper.

1
Guitarchaeology: Setting the Stage

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the guitar was mainly used as a “parlor” instrument suitable for small-group entertainment and serenading. The instrument was typically found in saloons, pool halls, grange lodges, barbershops, and at church services. Even then, the guitar’s popularity extended across social, class, and gender boundaries.¹ While guitars were readily available through music stores and mail-order catalogs, few recordings of guitar music were available during the first decade of the 1900s, when most players learned from teachers and sheet music.

In rural areas, many young players started out on homemade stringed instruments. The most common of these, the diddley bow, probably originated in Africa. A diddley bow was typically fashioned by attaching broom or baling wire to nails in a wall or doorframe and using bottles or rocks as bridges. One hand plucked the wire, while the other fretted or glissed the string with a bottle. Many outstanding blues guitarists—Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Buddy Guy, and Johnny Winter among them—began this way. Others fashioned primitive guitars by attaching a tin can or cigar box to a rough-hewn neck. Those who could save enough money ordered guitars by mail-order catalog. These guitars, in turn, may offer a clue about how European-influenced parlor music came to exert an influence on the development of American blues, folk, jazz, and country music.

During the latter 1800s, the Lyon & Healy company in Chicago pioneered the mass production of acoustic guitars. By the turn of the century, their many models were sold under various names in catalogs issued by companies such as Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward. Many of these catalog-bought guitars arrived with a tutorial pamphlet featuring tuning instructions and music for rudimentary instrumentals. Two of the most common of these instructive instrumentals, “Spanish Fandango” and “The Siege of Sebastopol,” predated the Civil War. The music for “Spanish Fandango” required that the guitar’s strings be tuned to an open-G chord (the strings tuned DGDGBD, from low to high), while “The Siege of Sebastopol” was in open D (DADF#AD). “Spanish Fandango” in particular served as a starting point for countless rural players. Its harmonic content, voice-leading chords, and fingerpicking pattern echoed in the repertoires of old-time blues, folk, and country musicians such as Bo Carter, Son House, Furry Lewis, Frank Hutchison, Sam McGee, John Dilleshaw, Mance Lipscomb, and Elizabeth Cotten. To this day, the word “Spanish” is sometimes used to describe open-G tuning, while “Sebastopol” refers to open D.

John Renbourn, the esteemed British fingerstyle guitarist and an expert on the origins of American guitar music, developed a theory of how these instructional booklets contributed to the creation of the blues in particular: “If you can imagine a field hand sitting down after work and trying to fit an arhoolie [field song] across the basic chords of ‘Spanish Fandango,’ then you would be close to the moment of transformation, in my opinion. In the early recorded blues of Charley Patton and his school, the harmonic language, right down to specific chord shapes but with bluesy modification usually of one finger only, is straight from parlor music. The same is true for early blues in open D compared to ‘Sebastopol.’ This is fascinating stuff and fairly controversial, but it fills in the missing gap between the steel-string guitar coming into circulation and the highly developed styles that appeared on recordings in the 1920s.”² The 1897 Lyon & Healy catalog featured a budget-priced line of steel-string and gut-string guitars. In its 1902 catalog, the Gibson company listed guitars that could be strung with steel or gut strings.

Still, during the first decades of the new century, the banjo was far more popular than the guitar. Since the Civil War, the banjo had been the instrument of choice for solo performers, blackface minstrel troupes, and string bands. With its bright, penetrating sound and lack of sustain, the banjo could hold its own in orchestral settings. The warm, deep resonance of the guitar was better suited for adagios and blues and country songs, and its sustaining notes could be bent or bottlenecked. One fact was inescapable: during the era of the acoustic recording process, when musicians played into recording horns, banjos and mandolins were much easier to record than classical or steel-string guitars. This held true until the mid-1920s, when Western Electric’s innovative new electrical recording process and microphones came into widespread use.

THE FIRST NORTH AMERICAN GUITAR RECORDINGS

The first North American guitar recordings were most likely made in Mexico City in 1904, when singer Rafael Herrera Robinson was accompanied by a guitarist on Edison cylinders. By year’s end, the Victor and Columbia companies had also made forays into Mexico and recorded singers accompanied by guitar. In 1905, the Edison Phonograph Monthly credited “An Autumn Evening,” a mandolin-guitar instrumental played by Samuel Siegel and M. Lloyd Wolfe, as “the first record ever made by this combination of instruments. It is one that, we think, will please all admirers of both instruments. The music is of a serenade character.”³

Dick Spottswood, an expert on early recorded music, cites the Edison company’s sessions in Havana, Cuba, during the winter of 1905–1906 as another key event: “Of particular interest are two solos by guitarist Sebastian Hidalgo, who recorded a polka, ‘Selva Negra,’ and the popular ‘Miserere’ from Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Hidalgo’s two Edison cylinders (18941 and 19062) are unknown today; nevertheless, they are most likely the earliest recorded guitar solos, at least in the New World.”⁴ In January 1906 the Ossman-Dudley Trio recorded a half-dozen instrumentals for Victor featuring Vess L. Ossman on banjo, Audley Dudley on mandolin, and his brother George N. Dudley on harp guitar; during the ensuing months, the trio recorded three more sides for Columbia.⁵

Octaviano Yañes, promoted by the Edison company as “the acknowledged champion guitarist of Mexico,” recorded his solo guitar instrumental “Habaneras” on October 19, 1908.⁶ A copy of this performance survives as a Victor Grand Prize 78. Tim Gracyk, founding editor of the Victrola and 78 Journal, observed that “Yañes plays an instrument with at least seven strings. From low to high, it is tuned BEADGBE. Yañes keeps returning to a thunderous, unfretted low-B note, while his low-E notes are also played on an open string. He may have used a seven-string instrument of Mexican or Russian origin (the standard Russian-made import guitar in those days was the seven-string), or a converted eleven-string guitar, many of which had been produced in Andalusia since the 1890s. The bright tone suggests he is playing with his nails very close to the bridge.”⁷ While we may never ascertain who made the first solo guitar recording in North America, Hidalgo and Yañes deserve credit for their pioneering efforts. During the next few years, many more cylinders and 78s of guitar-based classical, flamenco, and mariachi music were recorded in Cuba, Mexico, and South America.

The next important influx of guitar cylinders and 78s came via Hawaiian musicians, who made the earliest known recordings of slide guitar. Introduced by missionaries, guitars had been popular in Hawaii since the mid-1800s. The first players of note—Joseph Kekuku, James Hoa, and Gabriel Davion—originally used materials such as bolts, pocketknives, combs, and tumblers to gliss the strings with their fretting hands; eventually they settled on steel bars as the slider of choice. Hawaiian guitarists typically held guitars flat on their laps, strings skyward. This lap-style technique came to be known as “steel guitar.” Toots Paka’s Hawaiians, a popular turn-of-the-century vaudeville act, recorded Edison cylinders in 1909 with Kekuku on steel guitar. These are the first known recordings of Hawaiian slide guitar.⁸ In an instructional leaflet, Kekuku claimed that he “originated the Hawaiian Steel Guitar method of playing in the year 1885, at the age of eleven.”⁹

Frank Ferera, the most popular and influential Hawaiian steel guitarist, made more recordings between 1915 and 1925 than any other guitarist. “Ferera was the first guitarist to enjoy success as a recording artist,” Tim Gracyk explained. “His name was a familiar one in the catalogs of virtually all record companies of the World War I era and 1920s. . . . His popular records must have influenced many generations of guitarists.”¹⁰ The December 1916 issue of Edison Phonograph Monthly credited Ferera as “the one who introduced the Hawaiian-style of playing the guitar into the United States.” The issue also described how Ferera had brought the first ukulele to the United States in 1900.¹¹

Hawaiian steel guitar enjoyed a boost in popularity in 1912, thanks to the Broadway sensation The Bird of Paradise, with its “weirdly sensual music” played by the Hawaiian Quintette. This guitar-and-ukulele ensemble featuring Walter Kolomoku on steel guitar made twenty-four recordings for Victor during April 1913.¹² Three years later, performances by Hawaiian musicians at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco provided another important catalyst for the mainland’s Hawaiian music craze. The Royal Hawaiian Quartette, with George E. K. Awai front and center on steel guitar, served as the Hawaiian Pavilion’s house band. Guest steelers Pale K. Lua, Frank Ferera, and Joseph Kekuku sat in with the group. More than 17 million people visited the seven-month exhibition, and with several shows per day, the Hawaiian Pavilion was considered a must-see. In our interview, Ry Cooder, one of the finest living proponents of slide guitar, describes the impact of these musicians had at the time.

By 1916, most major record companies offered extensive listings of Hawaiian fare. Hawaiian musicians—particularly duos and trios featuring a steel guitarist—became steady draws in North American hotels, theaters, and especially Chinese restaurants. A headline in the September 1916 issue of Edison Phonograph Monthly proclaimed “Hawaiian Music Universally Popular,” and described how the style has “taken the United States by storm.”¹³ Sales of guitars boomed, hundreds of Hawaiian 78s were issued, and music stores displayed Hawaiian-themed sheet music and instructional books. The Hawaiian music fad would continue well into the 1920s, when more advanced guitarists such as Sol Hoopii and King Bennie Nawahi began using metal-bodied National resophonic guitars and flavoring their repertoires with blues, pop, and Tin Pan Alley.

THE ROARING TWENTIES

America’s first popular non-Hawaiian guitarist, Nick Lucas, emerged in 1922 with his recordings of “Pickin’ the Guitar” and “Teasin’ the Frets.” Issued as a Pathé 78, these have long been considered the first “hot” guitar solos recorded in the United States.¹⁴ In our interview, Nick describes how he was able to overcome the limits of recording technology to etch these performances onto wax. Sylvester Weaver, the first blues guitarist on record, doubtlessly used the same technology the following year when he played on Sara Martin’s “Longing for Daddy Blues,” the first recording of a singer accompanied by blues guitar. A few days later, Weaver featured the steel guitar slide technique on “Guitar Rag” and “Guitar Blues,” the first blues instrumentals on record. While he’s lesser-known today than Lucas and Weaver, Sam Moore deserves a standing ovation for his 1921 recording of “Laughing Rag.” On this jaunty instrumental, Moore seamlessly blended a ragtime progression with hints of Hawaiian and country influences as he played steel guitar on an unusual—and short-lived—eight-string instrument called an octo-chorda.¹⁵ “Laughing Rag” was covered later by Roy Smeck and recast by Darby and Tarlton, with words, as “Mexican Rag.”

As the decade progressed, dozens of groundbreaking guitarists emerged in the genres of popular, blues, jazz, and country music. While Nick Lucas was the most widely known of the 1920s guitar stars, among the most stylistically advanced were Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, and Roy Smeck. Lang made his mark as New York’s top studio guitarist, playing expertly on hundreds of records by a who’s who of celebrated bandleaders and singers. Lang popularized the Gibson L-5 archtop, which came out circa 1923, and was the catalyst for a major shift in the rhythm section of jazz bands. George Van Eps, who knew Eddie Lang, explained, “He was a natural talent who made love to his guitar instead of beating it to death, which is what most guitarists tried to do. Banjo players had to switch to the guitar after hearing Eddie. There were a bunch of die-hards who tuned the guitar like a banjo, but he forced the issue and changed the sound of the rhythm section.”¹⁶ Lonnie Johnson, who often recorded with a twelve-string, worked his magic in the areas of urbane blues and jazz, becoming, as Ry Cooder so aptly put it, “one of the transcendental people who influenced everybody. You can see people copying him right and left.”¹⁷ By a stroke of genius, T. J. Rockwell, an artist manager at OKeh Records, arranged for Lang, who had a profound understanding of harmony, and Johnson, who had the finest technique in blues, to record a series of groundbreaking guitar duets. These records still stand as high-water marks of jazz guitar. Roy Smeck, who idolized Lang, performed in vaudeville as the “Wizard of the Strings.” Smeck’s uncanny skill on guitar, banjo, steel guitar, and ukulele was on full display on dozens of 78s and two of the earliest sound-on-film theatrical releases.

Beginning in the mid-1920s Paramount Records was responsible for many enduring blues guitar recordings, such as those of Texas country bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake, the Southeast’s master of ragtime-influenced fingerpicking. Tampa Red, the superlative Chicago slider, worked his magic for Vocalion Records. The OKeh Records roster included Lonnie Johnson, Sylvester Weaver, and songster Mississippi John Hurt, who’d reemerge in the 1960s, his considerable skills intact. Columbia Records issued Blind Willie Johnson’s sublime slide-driven gospel 78s. Blind Willie McTell, one of the finest bluesman of any era, recorded for Victor, Columbia, OKeh, Decca, Vocalion, and the Library of Congress. In the years before World War II, many regions of the South—especially those around Atlanta, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; and the Mississippi Delta—had their own distinctive blues styles.¹⁸

Many white country artists emerged during the 1920s. Two acts who’d exert an enduring influence on country guitar—Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family—were discovered in 1927, when Ralph Peer, a Victor and former OKeh executive, made a series of field recordings in Bristol, Tennessee. The guitar-strumming Rodgers, the foremost country star of the Roaring Twenties, recorded the earliest versions of several country-music standards, as well as memorable 12-bar blues such as 1929’s “Blue Yodel No. 5” and “Jimmie’s Texas Blue...