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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GRADY MARTIN WITH RED FOLEY, "CRAWDAD HOLE"

Here's another great clip, unearthed by Deke Dickerson for his site, www.youtube.com/user/KoolKlipsFromDeke

Grady Martin takes a solo here with his Bigsby doubleneck.
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GRADY MARTIN, "Y'ALL COME" WITH ARLIE DUFF AND RED FOLEY'S BAND

There's precious little Grady Martin on this clip, unfortunately. We only get a brief glimpse of him standing up to play a hot solo on what appears to be a Bigsby doubleneck, before the camera cuts away to a closeup of Arlie Duff's shoes. (The shoes are pretty striking, it must be said.) Mostly, when we see Grady, he's not soloing, and when he's soloing, we don't see him. Still, any footage of him is essential.
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GRADY MARTIN ON 78, "HOT LIPS"

The guitar playing on this corny arrangement is pretty hot-- but if you can't take tinny sound, and warped vinyl warbling, you might want to move along to the next post.
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GRADY MARTIN, "FREIGHT TRAIN BOOGIE," WITH RED FOLEY

Grady Martin's on a ton of records, but this is the first clip I ever saw where you can actually see him play. He plays a hot hillbilly boogie figure around :37, (notated here) and danged if he isn't playing it on a Bigsby double-neck. A few nice licks at the top really nail that fifties country guitar sound, and he plays some nice backup double-stop figures at 1:08.

If anyone else has found any other Grady Martin clips, let me know!
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DON'T COME HOME A'DRINKIN' (GUITAR SOLO)

The guitar solo on "Don't Come Home A'Drinkin' " comes in at 1:01. here's the link.
www.last.fm/music/Loretta+Lynn/_/Don't+Come+Home+A-Drinkin'+(With+Lovin'+on+Your+Mind)?autostart

In an allmusicguide review, Eugene Chadbourne said this about the album this track came from.
"The series of lead guitar/pedal steel interchanges that run through this album are certainly more attractive than the Nashville freeway system, and definitely contributed more to 20th century civilization." Well put.

This guitar solo, probably played by Grady Martin, (although it may have been Johnny Russell) is a perfect illustration of how a country solo should be played.

The basic vocabulary is a mixture of major scale and major pentatonic ideas, plus a bent blue note or two. This analysis could describe what many rock and "alt-country" players have done on records, but the solo on the Loretta Lynn record has something those many "almost country" solos and fills don't have-- country phrasing. Notes are syncopated through the use of ties, pre-bent strings enable the player to "unbend" to a note, and the articulation throughout is mostly staccato. These are all things that rock players often omit when they are trying to play country. On top of that, the solo begins in a pickup measure, i.e. before beat one of the next section. This is a valuable technique for adding excitement to a solo.

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