One Hit Wonder: Link Wray

Welcome to the One Hit Wonders Series on Rock and Roll Flashback!  In 2018 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introduced a new Singles category.  Two of the six songs inducted that year were "Rumble" and "A Whiter Shade of Pale".  I'm Jumpin' John, and in this episode I will discuss Link Wray's influential 1958 hit, "Rumble"!  I will review "A Whiter Shade of Pale" in a separate podcast episode .

Fred Lincoln Wray, Jr. (whose last name was spelled W-R-A-Y) was born in 1929 in Dunn, North Carolina and grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia.  Link Wray's mother was of Shawnee descent, and three songs he performed during his career were named for Indigenous peoples: "Shawnee", "Apache", and "Comanche".   Wray served in the U.S. Army for two years during the Korean War, where he lost a lung to tuberculosis.  After his hospital discharge he joined his brother Vernon's country and western band, Lucky Wray and the Palomino Ranch Hands.  Relocating the band to Washington, D.C., Vernon landed a deal with Starday Records in 1956.  After recording a few country singles, in 1957 Vernon Wray was among the first to sign with Philadelphia's Cameo Records.  The label's owners tried to market him as a teen idol, changing his name to Ray (spelled R-A-Y) Vernon.  Performing as Ray Vernon, he recorded four singles for Cameo, however, it was his younger brother Link who would go on to musical fame.  While backing his brother Vernon on those singles, Link on guitar, another brother Doug Wray on drums, and Shorty Horton on bass supported themselves doing local shows as The Ray Men (with Ray spelled R-A-Y).  Here is the story behind the song "Rumble" - a song that would ignite Link Wray's career and set a rock benchmark.

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Transcript

Welcome to the One Hit Wonders Series on Rock and Roll Flashback!  In 2018 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introduced a new Singles category.  Two of the six songs inducted that year were "Rumble" and "A Whiter Shade of Pale".  I'm Jumpin' John, and in this episode I will discuss Link Wray's influential 1958 hit, "Rumble"!  I will review "A Whiter Shade of Pale" in a separate podcast episode .

Fred Lincoln Wray, Jr. (whose last name was spelled W-R-A-Y) was born in 1929 in Dunn, North Carolina and grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia.  Link Wray's mother was of Shawnee descent, and three songs he performed during his career were named for Indigenous peoples: "Shawnee", "Apache", and "Comanche".   Wray served in the U.S. Army for two years during the Korean War, where he lost a lung to tuberculosis.  After his hospital discharge he joined his brother Vernon's country and western band, Lucky Wray and the Palomino Ranch Hands.  Relocating the band to Washington, D.C., Vernon landed a deal with Starday Records in 1956.  After recording a few country singles, in 1957 Vernon Wray was among the first to sign with Philadelphia's Cameo Records.  The label's owners tried to market him as a teen idol, changing his name to Ray (spelled R-A-Y) Vernon.  Performing as Ray Vernon, he recorded four singles for Cameo, however, it was his younger brother Link who would go on to musical fame.  While backing his brother Vernon on those singles, Link on guitar, another brother Doug Wray on drums, and Shorty Horton on bass supported themselves doing local shows as The Ray Men (with Ray spelled R-A-Y).  Here is the story behind the song "Rumble" - a song that would ignite Link Wray's career and set a rock benchmark.

Back on December 2nd, 1957, the Diamonds released a new single called "The Stroll".  The single quickly climbed the charts, and in 1958 "The Stroll" reached #1 on the Cashbox chart, #4 on the U.S. pop chart, and #5 on the U.S. R&B chart.  "The Stroll" spun off a nationwide dance craze.  In early 1958 Link and his Ray Men were playing a gig at a Fredericksburg, Virginia record hop.  The announcer asked the band to play something that the audience could stroll to.  To appease the crowd, Link Wray took his Gibson Les Paul guitar and ad-libbed his own instrumental take on the shuffle-beat structure of the Diamonds' song.  It was an instant hit with the audience, which demanded four repeats that night.

Prominent Washington, D.C. disc jockey Milt Grant was the host of that gig.  Grant invited the band to record a demo of the untitled song.  The crunching riffs of the song's distorted electric guitar were run through a hole-punctured Premier amp.  The end result was a single that Link sometimes called "Oddball".  Songwriting credit for the tune would go to Milt Grant and Link Wray.  Grant then took the recording to Cadence Records.  Cadence owner Archie Bleyer was not impressed with a song that sounded to him like a jumbled mess.  The song was unlike anything else on the Cadence label.  The song utilized the techniques of distortion and tremolo, then largely unexplored in rock and roll.  However, Bleyer's stepdaughter, 17 year old Jacqueline Ertel liked the tune.  There is some disagreement as to the origin of the song title.  Jackie Ertel supposedly said that "It sounds like a rumble!," referring to the street fights between the Jets and the Sharks of West Side Story.  It has also been suggested that perhaps Jackie's future husband, Phil Everly, may have came up with the "Rumble" title.  Phil and his brother Don had signed with Cadence the year before.  At any rate, Bleyer took Jackie's advice and released the single with the title "Rumble", backed with another instrumental called "The Swag".

"Rumble" was banned in several US radio markets, because the term 'rumble' was a slang term for a gang fight.  Some feared that the piece's harsh sound glorified juvenile delinquency and would incite teenage gang violence.  As such, the record is the only instrumental single ever banned from radio in the United States.  Nevertheless, "Rumble" was a hit in the United States, where it climbed to #16 on the pop charts and #11 on the R&B chart in the summer of 1958.  In Canada the song also reached #16.  Although he would later have other successful recordings, "Rumble" would forever be known as Link Wray's signature hit.  In 2008, "Rumble" would be inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.  As mentioned in my podcast intro, in 2018 the song was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a new category for singles.  “Rumble,” as well as Link Wray and His Ray Men were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame on February 10th, 2019.  "Rumble" has continued to be used in TV shows and movies, including movies like Pulp Fiction, Top Gear, Independence Day, and Blow, as well as in the pilot episode of The Sopranos.

Cadence owner Bleyer was baffled by the song's popularity, and there was no follow-up song produced at Cadence.  So, armed with a new Danelectro Longhorn guitar, Link Wray and his Ray Men moved to Epic Records.  In 1959 Epic released a Top 40 instrumental by Link Wray called "Raw-Hide".  By 1962 Link had moved on again, this time to the Swan label, resulting in the 1963 release of a single called "Jack the Ripper".   Before, during, and after his stints with Epic and Swan, Wray released 45s under many names.  Tiring of the corporate music machine, he began recording albums using a three-track studio he converted from an outbuilding on his brother's property in Accokeek, Maryland.  Link Wray would continue to write and perform music into the 21st Century.  His style would range from surf-influenced garage rock in the 1960's to swamp rock and country rock in the early 1970's to hard rock in the late 1970's and onward.  In the early 1980's, Wray relocated to Denmark and married his fourth wife Olive Poulsen, who became his manager.  Link Wray died of heart failure at his home in Copenhagen, on November 5th, 2005, at the age of 76.

The list of artists that credit Link Wray as an influence is staggering.  Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Neil Young, Slash, and Bob Dylan are just a few.  Both Dylan and Bruce Springsteen performed Wray's tune "Rumble" in concert as a tribute to the influential musician upon his 2005 death.  In 2007, musician Steven Van Zandt inducted Link Wray into the Native American Music Hall of Fame.  Rolling Stone magazine ranked Wray at #45 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.  Many guitarists cite Wray's recordings from "Rumble" through his Swan recordings in the early 1960's as evidence of Link Wray inventing the power chord.

Thank you for listening to another episode in the One Hit Wonders Series on Rock and Roll Flashback.  I'm Jumpin' John McDermott, and at the end of this podcast I will play Link Wray's classic rendition of "Rumble".  Link Wray was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.  At that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on November 3rd, 2023, former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page came out of self-imposed hibernation and performed a cover of Link Wray's instrumental "Rumble”.  I can best summarize this podcast by quoting directly from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's website.  The listing for Link Wray says [and I quote] "Link Wray was the original punk, the inventor of the power chord, and the architect of a sound that laid the foundation for metal, punk, and every genre that relies on raw, untamed noise to convey its message.  Every young rebel who has donned a leather jacket and slashed away at an electric guitar with loud, distorted abandon owes a significant debt to Wray" [end quote].  And until next time...Rock On!