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April 16, 2009
Numerology: Wray (Neither Fay nor Fey)
“Ain’t you the guy who used to set the paces
Riding up in front of a hundred faces
I don’t suppose you would remember me
But I used to follow you back in ’63”
--“Bell Boy,” The Who
Any school kid will tell you that when a donkey and a horse mate, the result is a creature with 63 chromosomes, but thus far songwriters have steered clear of this phenomenon. As the above passage from Quadrophenia indicates, our climb up the numerical ladder has reached the point where the numbers have begun to coincide with the years of the rock era. By a wide margin, 63 songs deal with 1963, sandwiched halfway between rock’s breakout year of 1957 and the universally acknowledged death of the ‘60s at Altamont in December of ‘69. The most inescapable of these ’63-centric songs is the horrifically catchy “December 1963 (Oh What a Night),” by Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, a late-career hit for a man whose string of falsetto-laden hits in the early ‘60s earned the Four Seasons a place in rock’s hall of fame. While the song can still cause palpitations among the mom-jeans set, it is suffused with a cloying nostalgia and devoid of any suggestion of the lust that one assumes made the night in question so special. And the piano riff is so jaunty-cheesy it makes Billy Joel sound like Arnold Schoenberg. Clearly more palatable is New Order’s “1963,” which takes the year’s central tragedy—the Kennedy assassination—as its subject matter. In spite of those cheerful, high-fretted Peter Hook bass lines and Bernard Sumner’s sugary vocals, this is a dark tale of a woman killed by her husband, based on Sumner’s half-baked theory that the bullets that day in Dallas were meant for Jackie Kennedy in order that JFK could marry Marilyn Monroe. Of course, many of New Order’s lyrics amount to sheer poppycock in service of transcendent song-craft, and indeed, Marilyn had died a year earlier, but all this conjecture is moot—the song is not eligible for top honors because 63 does not appear as a stand-alone number in its title. Thus far, I have disallowed “19_ _” type titles, and I’m going to stick to that ruling (until such time that I find I simply have no choice).
So, what about the pre-’63 world? Well, there’s “Pre 63,” an instrumental by Groove Armada, leading lights of chill-out music after the genre became a brief global smash in the wake of the late-90s ascendancy of Massive Attack, KLF, and Morcheeba. To my ears, much of this music now sounds interchangeable, and “Pre 63” is no exception. Just a funky bass groove built around an insistent flute hook and fleshed out with an extended muted trumpet solo, it feels formulaic and leaves little lasting impression. I wonder what we were all on back then that made the urge to chill out so universal. (Ten years from now, people might be saying the same about the work of DJs like Roman Frolikoff, whose “63 Model Subjects” sticks close to the familiar house/techno blueprint.) Several decades pre-“Pre 63,” Teresa Brewer ruled the charts. A singer for whom the word spunky was tailor-made, Brewer was blessed with the ability to be heard in the back row of the theater, which was in those days considered a vital asset. Hence, on “Sixty Three Sailors in Grand Central Station,” Ms. Brewer’s searing pipes could penetrate one of the fallout shelters that would proliferate in the early part of the next decade. In this O Henry-like tale of missed connections, Ms. Brewer goes to surprise her naval beau, but finds him missing—because he somehow slipped out and headed to her place—to surprise her! Oh, the irony. And speaking of the good old days, let’s not forget 1863. J. Rawls, a rapper and producer for the likes of Mos Def and Talib Kweli, titled “Sixty-Three is the Jubilee” after a negro spiritual of Civil War era that features the kind of lyrics you just don’t see anymore: “Oh, de Jubilee is coming/Don’t ye sniff it in the air/And sixty-three is the jubilee/for de darkeys eb’ry where!” Rawls was probably wise to make his song an instrumental.
If all this smacks of the musty past, hang on—we’re not through yet. Being 63 years old is a condition most people would rather not sing about, but Victoria Williams assures us that it’s never too late. Her stirring “Century Plant” tells of a sexagenarian who “went back to college, at the age of sixty-three/Graduated with honors, with an agricultural degree.” Koko Taylor would certainly applaud this achievement. Ms. Taylor, born Cora Walton and better known as the Queen of the Chicago Blues, has already topped this count-up, nabbing the coveted 29 spot for “Twenty-Nine Ways to My Baby’s Door,” a song she recorded when she was in her 30s. In her “63-Year-Old Mama”—a defiant boast with an automotive bent—Ms. Taylor proclaims she’s still got it and never lost it: “The young mens call me a Mercedes but the old mens say I’m a Jaguar, and their engine don’t run cold.” Similarly automotive-minded is “My ’63,” an obscure B-side by Neko Case & the Sadies. This love song to an old car has proved difficult to track down, but being that Ms. Case herself has dismissed it due to her own overwrought vocals, we can safely assume that “My ‘63” is no “Ol’ 55.”
Mick Jones of the Clash produced Westworld, the first full-length release by Theatre of Hate, on which the gloomy, plodding “63” appears. Though they were a short-lived presence in the British goth-rock scene of the early ‘80s, Theatre of Hate made an impression on the UK charts in ’82 with “Do You Believe in the Westworld,” as well as endeared itself to radio titan John Peel. The band broke up soon thereafter, when guitarist Billy Duffy bailed to start the Cult with Ian Astbury, whose keening vocals are not too far from those of T.O.H lead singer, Kirk Brandon. Danny Elfman, composer of The Simpsons theme and countless of top-notch movie soundtracks, first honed his estimable gift for film scoring with Forbidden Zone, a slab of oddball cinema circa 1982 starring Herve Villechaize of Fantasy Island fame. “Cell 63,” is a perplexing mash-up of styles that mirrors this wacky film (Elfman also appeared in it, in the role of Satan), which veered from sci-fi to sex farce and featured lines like this: “Flash, be sure and tie your grandfather up and check the knots real good.” Although it sounds like a tribute to an atomic alien from a B-movie, “Ballad of 63 Eyes” by a West Virginia band called Moon (who describe themselves as Hüsker Dü meets the Monkees) is actually a crunchy, tuneful shout-out to their fellow West Virginian rockers—you guessed it: 63 Eyes (not to be confused with 63 Crayons, of plain old Virginia).
Once again, this quest has produced an eclectic cavalcade of also-rans and thankfully, a single choice of unimpeachable aptness. “Rawhide ’63” is a retooled version of a 1959 single by the great Link Wray, a half-Shawnee Indian who grew up poor in Dunn, NC, (not “white-man poor” like Elvis, but “Shawnee-poor” as Wray put it) and who is widely credited with inventing the power chord, which as its name implies, is a blunt, forceful blast of sound created by playing only the low strings of a guitar, usually combined with overdrive and distortion. As a child, Wray lived in fear of raids by the KKK, went to work at the age of 10, and learned guitar from a black man named Hambone. Although he came to admire the virtuosity of elegant, clean-toned players like Chet Atkins and Tal Farlow, he lacked the chops to emulate them. So he came up with something raw, visceral, and damaged. His sound is best captured on his signature song, “Rumble,” (1958), one of rock’s greatest and most influential singles. With its fuzzed-out minor chords slow-strummed over a creeping drumbeat, bringing to mind the gait of a leather-clad hood heading to a gang fight, “Rumble” is the very embodiment of early rock ‘n’ roll’s menace. And Wray—hunched from childhood illnesses, minus one lung from a bout of TB acquired in the Army—performed in a black leather jacket, dark shades, and a beaded headband, looking every bit as badass as the sound he made. “Rumble” was an instant smash, even though radio stations refused to play it simply because of its title and the belief that it might incite impressionable youths to commit real violence. This is doubtless the only instance of a song being banned simply for its sonic implications, as opposed to lyrical transgressions, either real or imagined.
Link Wray - "Rumble"
(live, 1978)
Over the next few years, Wray devised numerous singles that traded in the same overdrive and distortion (initially achieved by poking a pencil through the cone of his amplifier). “Rawhide ’63” exemplifies the sound of the late-‘50s-early-‘60s heyday of the rock instrumental, when a flip of the radio dial might turn up wordless gems in any number of genres, from sweaty Latin-tinged garage rock like the Champs’ “Tequila” to surf music classics like the Chantays’ “Pipleline” to the soulful swing of “Green Onions” by Booker T & the MGs. Built around simple blues chord changes, “Rawhide ‘63” is a brisk, tight number featuring the surf-style drumming of Wray’s brother Vernon, a pumping keyboard, and Wray’s inimitable licks, combining a touch of Chuck Berry and Duane Eddy but adding up to a sound all his own.
Wray never reached the upper reaches of the charts again. After “Rumble,” he bounced around from label to label, eventually retiring to his family’s farm in the early ‘70s and recording his own records in a homemade studio there. He achieved a bit of a comeback in ‘77 backing up neo-rockabillyist Robert Gordon, and spent his final years in Copenhagen living with his wife, raising a son, and playing the occasional gig. But his legacy is secure. His embrace of feedback, noise, and distortion can be felt to this day. Every notable guitarist in rock, from Clapton, Page, Hendrix and Townshend on through Jack White of the White Stripes, has incorporated these elements. Moreover, every major stylistic permutation of rock, from the heavy metal and punk of the ‘70s through college rock and hair metal of the ‘80s through the grunge of the ‘90s, and onward owes a debt to the sound of a blasted-out guitar chord, made famous by the man born Fred Lincoln Wray Jr. His music has been prominently featured in film, including Pulp Fiction and Pink Flamingos, and the tributes to his singular influence are legion. I’ll leave you with these:
“If I could return in time and see one band live, it would be Link Wray and the Ray Men.” – Neil Young
“He is the king; if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and ‘Rumble,’ I would have never picked up a guitar.” – Pete Townshend
Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. We hear 60 is the new 40, and now we're not even that impressed by his progress.
Previously: No. 1, 2 (redux), 3, 4 (redux), 5-7, 6 (redux), 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Footnotes, 57, 58, 59 , 60, 61, 62
Posted by David Klein at April 16, 2009 04:11 PM
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