UNSUNG PICKERS- GENE SLONE W/DON GIBSON

Excellent solo and fills by Gene Slone. I saw a post where some know-it-all wrote that Hank Garland would have played a better solo, but he guessed Gene Slone did all right. What a bunch of horseshit! No-one digs Hank Garland more than I do; he was arguably the best Nashville guitar picker ever. That doesn't take anything away from Slone's great solo here-- interestingly, he plays a bunch of Hank Garland/Grady Martin single-note fills early on, then plays a solo with pedal steel-like phrasing and tone. The fills later in the song sound like they could be a steel player-- but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it's Slone again. (note for non-players-- it's not easy to get that steel sound on guitar.) It's fun to obsess about the legends like Garland and Martin, and search around for their work, but it's important to remember that for every hot A-list guy, there were hundreds of great pickers yapping at their heels. The fact that producers chose to use the same players on session after session doesn't mean there weren't tons of also-rans that could play "clean as country water," and I'm happy to learn from 'em-- in Nashville, a fourth string guy is often better than the first string in any normal town.