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Video and Audio Title: Unknown Geniuses (Studio Musicians) The Wrecking Crew changed popular music in the 1960's. The only member who ever made it big as a solo performer was Glen Campbell. These musicians were the music behind the Beach Boys, including "Good Vibrations" (as well as The Byrds, The Mamas & the Papas, Johnny Rivers, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Neil Diamond, The Grass Roots and numerous other acts). There is a great documentary on them on Netflix. My review of the documentary is here. In Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the Swampers did the same thing in the late 1960's . . . and beyond. If they had not existed, Aretha Franklin would still not be getting any respect. JAMES BURTON The most famous back-up guitarist was, and still is, James Burton. He was a teenager in Shreveport when Ozzie Nelson heard about him in 1957. Ozzie brought him to California to back up his son Ricky. I wrote about him here: "Play It, James." The phrase comes from Elvis. He hired the best for his return to Las Vegas in 1969 and thereafter. He had Burton assemble the band. It was some band. After Elvis died, Emmylou Harris hired Burton to play in her Hot Band. Here is my favorite Burton performance, backing up the Killer on a 1958 Chuck Berry classic. Jerry Lee let him close it. What a close it is! CLARENCE WHITE Then there was Clarence White. He was part of a family bluegrass band, the Kentucky Colonels. As an introduction, watch this montage of guitar masters playing A. P. Carter's "Wildwood Flower." It begins with Maybelle Carter, Johnny Cash's mother-in law. Then we get Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Tony Rice, and the legendary Doc Watson. You will be impressed. The person who put this video together was leading up to Clarence White -- sucking us in, you might say. Impossible, right? Nope. Normal. It was instinctive. When he played as a studio musician, the producers would sometimes ask him to pick fewer notes. There was just too much guitar. It came naturally to him. In 1968, he helped made pop music history. He joined a famous rock band, the Byrds. He and the new performers transformed the band, which had become famous for "Turn, Turn, Turn" (1965) and "Eight Miles High" (1966). They created a new form of music, which soon became known as country rock. Their breakthrough album was "Sweetheart of the Rodeo." I was a disk jockey in 1968. I played country music and bluegrass. I was blown away by "Sweetheart." This was something new: a fusion of styles. In 1967, the year before "Sweetheart," someone recorded White practicing Buck Owens' "Buckaroo." He played an electric guitar. This is one guitar, one take -- not for public consumption. Impossible, right? How did he do it? He and the Byrds' drummer Gene Parsons had just invented a new kind of guitar. It became known as the B-bender. Here is a short demo video by one of the truly great studio musicians, Albert Lee. In July 1973, White was run over by a drunk driver outside a western music tavern where he had dropped in to play a set with brother Roland's band, the New Kentucky Colonels. He was 29 years old. By then, the B-bender had made country rock a pop music phenomenon. The full story of the B-bender is here. BOB WARFORD The article points out that the second guitarist to adopt the B-bender was Bob Warford. Warford had been one of the most accomplished bluegrass banjo players on the West Coast. He played with the Kentucky Colonels in 1966-1967. In mid-1967, at the urging of White, he decided to take up the electric guitar. It took him maybe a year of practice. His style was similar to White's, but not a knock-off. Unlike most guitar players, he and his engineer-father designed his. It was a variant of White’s original B-bender. The blueprints are here. By 1970, he was lead guitarist for the Everly Brothers. After White joined the Byrds on a full-time basis, he recommended Warford for studio sessions that White did not have the time to play. After White’s death, additional performers who had used White began to ask Warford to play for them. This included Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou. He toured with Emmylou in 1975, after leaving Ronstadt's band to start law school a year earlier. Today, he is one of the most respected trial lawyers in the country. He has been in the courtroom for over a hundred trials. This rarely happens. He also advanced all the way to the Ph.D. in physiological psychology/biochemistry. He even wrote his dissertation, but then quit after he defended it, when a postdoctoral position in neuropathology was unfunded. He went into law. It was a wise decision. When he passed the bar exam, he cut his hair, but continued to work occasionally as a studio player, playing on albums for artists such as Chris Hillman, Herb Pedersen, Gene Parsons, and others. For years, there was a terrific YouTube video of Ronstadt singing "Silver Threads and Golden Needles," which featured Warford. Recently, it was taken down for copyright reasons. How dumb was that? I have known him for 50 years. I contacted him about the missing Ronstadt video. He sent me an MP3. I wish I could legally post it. He also sent me an audio clip where he and James Burton played together behind Emmylou in 1975. FRANK RECKARD I end with this. Here is Emmylou with a studio musician who never got the renown that he deserved, even within the narrow circle of studio musician fanatics. He, too, was a master of the B-bender. He takes two solos. The first one is amazing. The second is unbelievable. She gave half the song to him. I have never seen another headliner do this. She closed the show with his solo. The crowd went wild. Emmylou also used a young Albert Lee on the same song. Lee was very good, but not in the same league with Reckard on this performance. CONCLUSION Without these artists, pop music culture would be far less creative. Yet most of them were never recognized by the fans of the stars up front. As another great documentary says, they were 20 feet from stardom. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Deckard (#0)
Thanks for posting Deck. I saw the " Wrecking Crew " on Netflix. It was fascinating . Thanks again.
#2. To: Stoner (#1)
I saw it a while ago and was really impressed with the quality of the studio musicians. Being a bass player myself, I was inspired by the bass playing of Carol Kane. The bass line she came up with for "The Beat Goes On" was masterful. Another thing I didn't know before reading this article was the B-bender guitar - I always wondered how some of those guys got that steel guitar sound from a Fender.
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