JAMES BURTON w/RICKY NELSON, "STRING ALONG"

My colleague Alex McCullough says this is his favorite Burton solo.
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JAMES BURTON, WITH THE SHINDOGS AND PATTY DUKE, "I'M HENRY THE VIIITH I AM"

James plays a hot solo here, a great example of how he could take a pretty stale song and breathe some life into it with his twangy rock and roll sound. Burton's country playing is generally my favorite stuff by him, but it's always interesting to see how he approaches a melody, no matter how generic the track is otherwise. Burton's work from this period shows how he was a master of the same skill I associate with Nokie Edwards from the Ventures-- the ability to take virtually any tune and attack it from a surf/trash/twang perspective.
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JAMES BURTON FEATURE ON SHINDIG

I would guess there's lots of James Burton pickin' on old Shindig clips. I haven't been able to find much more than this one so far, though.
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JAMES BURTON "TRUCK DRIVIN' MAN"

Here's a cool clip of Ricky Nelson on the "Ozzie and Harriet" show. A bit of tasteful "steel guitar style" backup from James on the first number (a ballad), but on "Truck Drivin' Man" you get to hear some of the earliest examples of Burton's chicken pickin' style. Unfortunately, there's some dated sitcom dialog obscuring part of Burton's solo, but plenty of great fills.

Here's my two cents-- if James Burton ever released a followup to his excellent first instructional dvd, and he demonstrated more of this kind of playing, I'd buy a copy and talk about it ad nauseam on this blog. If it will help, I'll buy two copies.
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