JIMMY WYBLE WITH RED NORVO

Jimmy Wyble is one of my favorite guitarists, even though I'm sure I haven't heard
more than five minutes of his playing, and maybe not that much.

This is because of Wyble's bizarrely eclectic career-- he authored many fascinating solo guitar etudes that mixed jazz and classical idioms, and sometimes included
interesting 20th century classical dissonances, but he also played with Bob Wills.
I've got a book of Jimmy's etudes, and they are deadly.

This clip, featuring nowhere nearly enough Wyble, is with Red Norvo, another terrific but often neglected musician who combined accessible swing music with a very advanced
dissonant language. And if that ain't hip, I don't know what hip is.
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GLEN CAMPBELL, "MY WINDOW FACES THE SOUTH"

Sometimes it seems I spend half my life listening to this song. (I've done some woodshedding recently with versions of "Window" by Willie Nelson with the Texas Troubadours and Leon Rhodes, Bob Wills with Junior Barnard, Red Foley with Grady Martin, and Grady Martin's Slewfoot Five.)

This version is a humdinger, with a young Glen Campbell doing an intro and a solo, plus some intriguing dance moves. It's more evidence of my theory that Glen did some of his hottest picking before he was famous.

THANKS TO CHARLIE MCCARDELL FOR SENDING ME THIS CLIP. Charlie seems to spend hours a day searching for hip stuff online, and we're all the better for it.
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HANK GARLAND AND CHET ATKINS, "THE HOT GUITAR" WITH EDDIE HILL

I think this is the hot cut I heard a dj play once almost thirty years ago, and have been searching for ever since. It's one of those songs where the singer acts as an announcer, and guitarists ape a bunch of other great pickers. But this one features the stellar lineup of Hank Garland, Chet Atkins, and steel guitarist Jerry Byrd trading breaks-- killer.

You have to guess who plays which break, but I'm assuming Chet plays the Chet and Merle stuff, plus some Chet-like hot licks. (We hear so much melodic Chet-style playing that it's easy to forget that Chet played hot licks too!)

Then I think Hank Garland probably handled the other imitations. He has a slippery way of picking that you don't hear in Chet's playing. Although it often seems that Chet can do anything, even virtuoso and versatile players usually run to form, and where Chet's playing usually has a prim consistency, Hank's looser phrasing and articulation can help you tell the two apart. (Unless I'm wrong!) At any rate, Chet was the guy who told the young Hank Garland about Django Reinhardt, probably the source of that bubbly and hell-bent quality in his sound.
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GUITAR WORKSHOP WITH KARL STRAUB--TEN IDEAS TO MAKE YOU A BETTER GUITAR PLAYER

TEN IDEAS TO MAKE YOU A BETTER GUITAR PLAYER
OPEN TO PLAYERS OF ALL LEVELS
Karl Straub's Guitar Workshop is Thursday, Jan. 19, 7 pm at NOVA Music, 12704 CHAPEL ROAD, CLIFTON, VA 20124

http://www.novamusiccenter.com/categories/Workshops/

"BROKE DOWN GUITAR," A SHORT ROCKABILLY PIECE.


KARL STRAUB'S HIGHLIGHT REEL, A FEW DIFFERENT STYLES OF GUITAR PLAYING


The purpose of the workshop is to show you how to be a better guitar player. Most guitar instructional books and DVD's show you how to play specific licks and songs, but without knowledge of certain fundamentals, many guitarists stay at the same level regardless of how many licks and songs they learn.

This workshop will give you a pile of practicing and playing techniques that will improve your playing right away, and keep you improving from now on. Straub will pass along tips about technique and practicing he has learned in 27 years of professional experience playing rock and roll, country, jazz, classical, blues, and folk guitar.

among the topics discussed--

HOW TO PRACTICE FOR MAXIMUM BENEFIT

BUILDING SPEED WITHOUT BUILDING SLOPPINESS

PLAYING IN DIFFERENT KEYS

PLAYING ALL OVER THE GUITAR, NOT JUST THE FIRST THREE FRETS

EAR TRAINING-- IF YOU CAN'T HEAR IT, YOU CAN'T PLAY IT
CLEANING UP YOUR LEFT AND RIGHT HANDS

HOW TO TURN SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS INTO ACTUAL MUSIC

HOW EVEN A LITTLE MUSIC THEORY CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER PLAYER

Karl Straub has a Music Education degree, and almost 30 years professionally performing, recording, and writing. His songs have been recorded by numerous local artists, and he has played guitar with Last Train Home, Eric Brace, the Grandsons, the Graverobbers, the Kennedys, Little Pink, and Exit 10.
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GRADY MARTIN WITH ARLIE DUFF, "ALLIGATOR, COME ACROSS"

Once again I find myself apologizing about not posting for a good long spell-- but ladies and gentlemen, I've been recording, writing, and practicing! These things take time.

Every time I feel like taking a break from practicing, I listen to Grady Martin, and it's back to the woodshed again. I saw something about this cut in a post from Deke Dickerson on the Grady Martin tribute site-- Deke was right, as usual. It's a killer, and interesting because it has a couple short breaks in Grady's fiddle-influenced "oblique counterpoint" style (heard sometimes on cuts with Red Foley) and then a more boppin' and manic solo later on the record, after it kicks into high gear.
If there's a recording that more handily illustrates how country guitar mutated from hillbilly to rockabilly, I haven't come across it. And I suppose this is as good a place as any to say it-- as great as Carl Perkins, James Burton, Cliff Gallup, and Scotty Moore are, Grady may be the hottest rockabilly lead guitarist of all.
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GLEN CAMPBELL, "GALVESTON" SOLO

Glen tears it up on "Galveston."

Nice changes on this tune, one of Campbell's most lyrical numbers, and an interesting solo. We only have Glen around for a little while longer, sadly, but let's not forget how great his picking is. Even if you ignore his many hits, I say he's for the ages just on the basis of his playing. (I'd even be willing to put him in the pantheon for his twelve-string playing alone.)
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DANNY GATTON, "HEARTACHES BY THE NUMBER"

There's tons of bootleg Gatton floating around, but this clip got my attention because I particularly love hearing Danny on classic country shuffles-- in this kind of vein, he's less likely to drift into the face-melting "warp factor ten" mode that everyone seemed to want from him all the time.

Good lord, has it really been almost a year since I've posted here? Sorry about that, but unfortunately life got in the way of my continued blogging. Just wanted to remind everyone I'm still here.

(At least some of my excuse is many months of woodshedding and various recording projects-- one of these days I'll have news about the recordings I've been doing.)
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