MEGA-RARE CLASSIC LINK WRAY 78 "RUMBLE" / "THE SWAG" EX

	£		24
	$		28

AN EXCELLENT COPY OF THIS MEGA RARE 78 FROM LINK WRAY ON THE UK LONDON LABEL

RUMBLE

AMAZINGLY THIS CLASSIC FAILED TO MAKE IT INTO THE CHART AND IS VERY HARD TO FIND!!

  In 1957, six years after Willie Kizart's monumental guitar work using an accidentally broken speaker, Link Wray made the bold move of purposely breaking his speaker.

During the late-fifties one of the most popular dance crazes was the stroll. Link Wray did not have a stroll tune in his repertoire but invented one to satisfy a request at a live show. For that tune he used a pencil to punch holes in the speaker of his amp so as to get the Willie Kizart sound. The resulting tune "Rumble" had a mid-tempo rhythm that was pure stroll and ominous guttural guitar chords that sounded like thunder.

By 1958 Link Wray had perfected "Rumble" and had cut a demo which he presented to the Cadence label which issued the record that spring. It is difficult to imagine how an instrumental could be offensive enough to get banned from radio play but "Rumble" did get banned in some areas of the country.

Many critics claimed that the ominous mood of "Rumble" was putting teenagers in the mood to start fights. The term "rumble" in fact was a slang term for a gang fight in some areas of the country such as New York City which was one of the places that banned the record.

Link Wray has since claimed that it had been his original intention to depict the mood of a fight that he had witnessed at one of his live shows. The Cadence executive who produced the record has since claimed that it was his daughter who had made the gang fight connection because she had seen the Broadway play "West Side Story" which had included a gang fight scene, and which incidentally had not been banned.

In spite of the ban "Rumble" reached the top twenty on the US pop chart and the rhythm'n'blues chart but the staid executives at Cadence had been intimidated by the controversy and refused to produce any more Link Wray records.   That caused a delay of several months before Wray could get another record released on a different label. That record "Raw Hide" hit the pop chart but the delay had caused him to loose the momentum that the "Rumble" controversy had given him and subsequent records did well in the regional market but did not chart.

Consequently Epic tried to smooth out his rough edges and mold him into an innocuous pop star. Ultimately he walked out on Epic and struggled in obscurity for several years. Nonetheless the impact of "Rumble" was historic. There were numerous spin-offs including: "Rumble Tumble" by Mad Man Taylor, "Rumble Rock" by Kip Taylor, "Twistin' Rumble" by Ronny Kae, "Mumblin'" by Bo Diddley, "Scraunch" by The Links, and even the Cadence label ended up trying to duplicate the sound with such tunes as "Tough Chick" by The Rockbusters.

But more importantly guitar manufacturers began introducing electronic devices that were designed to duplicate the sound of a mutilated speaker. Originally known as distortion pedals these devices are now known as fuzz-boxes. Also a string stretching device called a tremolo bar that had been around for years but had received little notice, because it was prone to breaking strings, was finally perfected.

Virtually overnight "Rumble" had changed the face of rock'n'roll by opening the door for distortion pedals and tremolo bars. By 1959 such devices were standard equipment for rock'n'-roll bands and instrumental rock'n'roll had become the medium for advancing the way that electric guitars were played.
    DISC DETAILS:-   UK LONDON HLA 8623  10" 78 rpm SHELLAC   LINK WRAY AND HIS RAY MEN   A SIDE:  RUMBLE    B SIDE:- THE SWAG

CONDITION = EXCELLENT       HERE'S YOUR CHANCE TO PICK UP THIS MEGA RARE ROCK CLASSIC 78    

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