Guitar Heroes Who Didn't Use a Joystik, Part 1: The Oldest Skool

Let me mention just a few guitar players who go way back into history. The latest two were early 60's or late 50's, and the others go back quite a bit farther than that. I'll talk about how to get some of their work and what exactly it sounds like, and then you can kind of figure things out yourself - and that is most often the best way to figure anything out.

1. Leadbelly
2. Robert Johnson
3. Bo Diddley
4. Chuck Berry

Leadbelly and Robert Johnson were both "gut-blues," players, meaning they played on homespun gut-string guitars, and played a very old form of African American folk music that is usually called the blues. Leadbelly played a twelve string, 6 strings tuned in pairs of octaves, and as I remember Johnson played an 8-string, 4 strings tuned in pairs of octaves. Most people's first impression on turning on Leadbelly or Johnson is that they are just wanking nonsense, and there is a bit of a point to that, but trying to emulate the sounds they got is so difficult that "a bit of a point," is all you get.

The thing was that Leadbelly and Johnson both came from terrible backgrounds. In fact, it is pretty likely that in both cases, both of their mothers made their living through prostitution. They had no musical education at all, and they pretty much sat down with this homespun guitar and made it all up based on all of the diverse sounds they were hearing around them. That is the "bit of a point," with this "wanking nonsense," phrase.

The lyrics were drawn from traditional folk-songs, and in many cases they are racier than hip-hop lyrics. Johnson in particular had a wife who had burned him real bad, and half of his catalogue of recordings is of songs about killing an adulterous wife. "16 shells from a 30 ought six," is the name of one of his signature recordings.

Both Leadbelly and Johnson are available on those Smithsonian compilations I mentioned, and it is not a bad idea as a guitar player to sit down with these roots recordings and at least let the sounds hit your ears some. What they are doing is deceptively like "wanking," and in actuality is quite complex. You can also get other compilations specifically directed at people interested in roots-blues, but you need to do your homework, because all of these recordings were done as field recordings. In many cases, you could wind up with an unlistenable recording.

Digital remastering can only save a field recording this old (1910 or 1920 something) to a certain degree, but a good remaster is the only way you are going to be able to hear what these players are playing at all. With roots-blues guitar, you almost never hear someone who is playing a proper instrument. The people were just too poor to be able to afford that kind of instrument.

The thing is also - yeah - Johnson was not an admirable man, but you have to imagine being raised starving most of the time by a prostitute and then having some woman running off with just about everything you owned to top it off. It's not an excuse, but it might put things into a bit of perspective for some people. I've been burned real bad by some women, but I've never been burned in that way. And I like some racy stuff, but I don't think I'll be covering the 30 ought six. That is a bit much, to understate the problem more than just a little.

Bo Diddley is another piece of work, but we'll just talk about his instrument and his music. Diddley hand-built one of the first true electric guitars. This is hilarious, although it isn't hilarious that he was so poor. So what he does, he steals a cello neck from some cello factory in the city, cuts it down and sands it off, applies some scrap metal for frets, and then builds a bridge to a plywood slat. He then takes a set of steel wires, and puts a rusty nail (no joke!) with a copper wire wrapped around it and some kind of battery attachment to make an active pickup underneath the mess, and voila! - the first true electric guitar!

You can grab one or two Diddley tracks off of Gnutella, and it is something else to allow to hit the ears a bit. The thing was, that Diddley wasn't recording traditional rock and roll. He forced his bands to play these jagged polyrhythms, and then he'd chop on his homespun electric and then use a lot of dirty lingo. "Underground," would be a pretty good term. Not many people knew about Diddley.

Chuck Berry was the big hero that sparked off the white version of rock and roll, and Berry liked to jive, but he also had manners when he wanted. Berry was able to have a lucrative career because he would play ball that way - at least in the public eye. The best Berry track on recording is called "Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll." It's a song about sock-stomping at the corn shacks. It's racy, but it's fun-racy, and it is true Nawlin's-style Rock and Roll, which is pretty durned hard to find in recording.

The funny thing about Berry to me is that it's a form of rock and roll where you never lose the blues feel, but I'm always inclined to think "Mr. Berry, that ain't a chord!" - whenever I hear Chuck Berry playing rock and roll. I don't know how he tuned his puppy, but he mostly just jams tone clusters seemingly at random. Still, you never lose the blues feel. Berry also liked to play mostly in Bb because he said it was his best key, which makes other guitar players in your band - far less than happy.

Berry also admitted later in his life that if a night - or even a tune - wasn't going all so well, that he'd glam and show off to keep the show from falling through. Another great thing about Berry was that when it would be his time to feature, he didn't play individual lines, which would have been normal for rock and roll at that time, or even squeal on blue notes very often. Those would be the two normal blues-rock options, but Berry would show off during his feature instead with some kind of tone-cluster arrangement. I don't think anyone will ever figure out even one of his guitar features.

He was a real mischief-maker. However, I get the impression that he might have been a racy guy, but that he was also a pretty good man. That can happen, and I think that is the truth with good ol' Mr. Berry.

I'll be back with more - MORE - MORE! Who needs sleep? LOL!