Link Wray

Link Wray stands little chance of induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, yet his shaping of the rock guitar vocabulary would remain monumental even had he ended his recording career immediately after completing the instrumental “Rumble.” In the most literal sense he created the power chord that serves as the primary vocabulary for contemporary rock guitarists. Any selection of the pieces he cut from that 1958 landmark through his Swan sides of the early 1960s reveals the foundational plans for heavy metal, thrash, and every subsequent variant. Although historians routinely draw an unbroken trajectory from the overdriven guitar tones heard on early blues discs straight to the late-1960s cohort of Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, Page, and Townshend, a single spin of the sides Wray cut in his prime decade demolishes that timeline at once. Should a straight path be drawn from Black blues players who drove their amplifiers hard and attacked their strings with raw force to the young white musicians who adapted the same attitude, the route leads directly to Link Wray without dispute. Pete Townshend summarized the debt for countless players when he declared, “He is the king; if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and ‘Rumble,’ I would have never picked up a guitar.”

All that later passed to the present generation of headbangers from Led Zeppelin and the Who originates with the musician of Shawnee Native American heritage born in Dunn, North Carolina, who began recording in 1955 for Starday as part of Lucky Wray & the Palomino Ranch Hands. In the early 1950s the commercial terrain differed sharply. Rock & roll had not yet become a nationwide phenomenon, so a young performer seeking success had essentially two established routes: emulate a pop crooner such as Perry Como or adopt the hillbilly style of the recently deceased Hank Williams. Surrounded by country music in his North Carolina youth, Wray chose the latter path and teamed with brothers Vernon and Doug to form Lucky Wray & the Lazy Pine Wranglers, later renaming the group the Palomino Ranch Hands. By late 1955 the band had moved to the Washington, D.C., area and recruited Shorty Horton on bass. With Link, Horton, Doug, and Vernon (“Lucky,” nicknamed for his gambling luck) handling drums and lead vocals respectively, they aligned with local songwriters; the resulting tracks appeared first as an EP on the regional Kay label before additional sides were leased to Starday Records in Texas.

By 1958 both the musical climate and Wray’s personal circumstances had shifted. Having lost a lung to tuberculosis contracted during his Korean War service, Link was instructed by his physician to leave singing to Vernon. He therefore expanded his instrumental role, generating a steady stream of guitar-focused recordings. The group had by then reduced to a trio and adopted the name the Ray Men. After a short-lived attempt to market the third brother as teen idol Ray Vernon, that sibling assumed production and management duties. Equipped with a 1953 Gibson Les Paul, a modest Premier amplifier, an Elvis sneer, and a black leather jacket, Link began performing at local record hops alongside disc jockey Milt Grant, who functioned as an informal manager. During one such performance, Link recalled, “They wanted me to play a stroll. I didn’t know any, so I made one up. I made up ‘Rumble.’”

“Rumble” first appeared on Archie Bleyer’s Cadence label in 1958. Bleyer had intended to reject the primitive instrumental until his daughter voiced enthusiasm, noting its evocation of the rumble scenes in West Side Story. He supplied the title (any earlier name is lost), and the track reached number 16 on the national charts even though several markets, including New York City, banned it from radio, establishing it as Wray’s enduring signature piece. Despite its impact, the single remained his sole Cadence release. Under pressure for issuing a record accused of “promoting teenage gang warfare,” Bleyer sought to refine the group’s image by sending them to Nashville for a session supervised by the Everly Brothers’ production team. The Wrays declined and instead signed with Epic Records. Link’s immediate follow-up, the driving uptempo “Rawhide,” replaced the Les Paul with a Danelectro Longhorn whose “lipstick tube” pickups lent every power chord the clang of a tin-can lid. The track climbed to number 23 nationally, becoming an essential acquisition for any leather-jacketed hot-rod enthusiast.

A recurring pattern soon surfaced: producers and executives repeatedly attempted to soften Wray’s sound and repackage his image in hopes of broader sales. They overlooked the essential distinction that while Duane Eddy supplied twang for mainstream white teenagers, Link Wray supplied menace for juvenile-delinquent hoods. By the close of 1960 he found himself constrained to orchestral arrangements of material such as “Danny Boy” and “Claire de Lune.” When those efforts also failed to chart, Epic ended the association; Link and Vernon promptly established their own Rumble Records imprint.

The label’s three releases included the original version of Wray’s subsequent hit “Jack the Ripper.” Where “Rumble” evoked gang conflict, “Jack the Ripper” suggested a high-speed pursuit, later serving as the soundtrack to exactly such a scene in the Richard Gere film Breathless. Link positioned his amplifier at the foot of a hotel stairwell to intensify the echo while feeding riffs that would seed countless metal compositions. After generating regional excitement for several years, renewed disc-jockey interest prompted Swan Records of Philadelphia to acquire the master and secure nationwide exposure. Wray proved most prolific during his Swan tenure; label president Bernie Binnick granted Link and Vernon near-total autonomy. Converting the family chicken coop into a rudimentary three-track facility, the Wrays spent the ensuing decade experimenting with sounds and styles.

At minimum they could now succeed or fail according to their own choices. Most of these recordings were licensed as one-off deals to countless small labels under assorted pseudonyms such as the Moon Men, the Spiders, and the Fender Benders. The impetus behind this burst of creativity remains open to discussion, though much of it stemmed from the band’s regular performances in some of the roughest venues imaginable while the tracks were being made. When Binnick was asked how he could release such unrestrained material, he would shrug and reply, “What can you do with an animal like that?”

With the arrival of the new decade, Wray’s sound and public image were recalibrated for the hippie audience. His commercial fortunes fluctuated through the 1970s as a series of laid-back albums did little to restore his standing. Following a period supporting 1970s rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, Wray resumed solo work, retaining most of Gordon’s band, including drummer Anton Fig. Although the studio recordings remained inconsistent, his live performances retained their force, and occasional appearances worldwide reaffirmed that rock & roll’s original untamed guitarist still possessed abundant energy. Wray married and relocated to Denmark in 1980, issuing occasional albums for overseas markets. Throughout the 1990s he remained able to strap on a guitar and produce tones more ferocious than most players half his age. The grunge movement brought renewed attention to his catalog as several younger guitarists acknowledged his influence, and his early recordings continued to be reissued on various labels. He completed two albums for Ace Records—Shadowman in 1997 and Barbed Wire in 2000—and continued touring until his death in Copenhagen on November 5, 2005.