Link Wray - (self-titled) 1971

To most people, Link Wray is only known for his early tremolo-drenched surf rock material. For some reason, this LP has largely been forgotten. In 1971, Wray recorded this sharp & bluesy country rock album for Polydor in his studio/shack ("Wray's Shack 3-Tracks", as painted on the side). The sound owes a clear debt to The Rolling Stones, with Wray obviously modeling his vocals after the Jagger template. On the other hand, Link Wray sounds the most like Sticky Fingers, which came out only 4 months earlier, and it actually beat the Stones to the punch as far as the simplified "roots" vamping of Exile on Main St.. I have to say, this album is much tighter than anything The Stones did. Link Wray can really play a guitar (and a bass, apparently - his bass playing is unusually high in the mix), and the album is drizzled with creamy fuzz solos that will make you vintage pedalheads out there cry. Wray pushed the envelope early in his career with fuzz tone, reverb and tremolo, and his awareness of tone (even with a largely acoustic album) is still evident. His songwriting is a bit shakier, but the top-notch playing & the clarity and warmth of the production make even the less engaging tracks enjoyable. And the good tracks are real knock-outs, especially the B-side opening stomp, "Fire and Brimstone". In all, this is one of those "could've been" major label releases that failed to connect with a clearly established audience (in this case, Neil Young fans) through no apparent fault of its own. This record's definitely an all-time favorite bargain bin find and comes highly recommended to fans of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Willie Nelson, Black Oak Arkensas, and Savoy Brown.

320 kbps mp3 format provided in title link - lossless wav format here.

Stefan Grossman - Yazoo Basin Boogie (1974)

Stefan Grossman is a Berkley-area fingerstyle guitarist, longtime friend of the legendary John Fahey, student of the ragtime blues master Rev. Gary Davis, and staple of the American and European folk blues revival of the sixties. He is better known as a pedagogue than as a performer, having published a hugely successful series of instructional LPs on how to play fingerstyle blues guitar (complete with tunings and tablature) through his label, Kicking Mule Records. His knowledge of the craft behind the blues and ragtime he emulates shows itself vivdly on this record. He's much less prone to lockstep arpeggiation and repetitive fingerings than the Takoma school of fingerpicking; his arrangements are more fully polyphonic, with distinct bass, tenor and alto voices.

A word of warning: Grossman has apparently often fallen prey to Davey Graham Disease - that is, the delusion that people want to hear him sing while he's playing guitar. While this album is entirely instrumental and quite solid, other albums of his I've checked out are a bit embarrassing. Though I can't claim to have explored his whole discography, my sense is this record is as good as it gets.