Albert Lee influences
'Essential Listening' by Albert Lee
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Lonnie Donegan started me playing guitar, I suppose. To be able
to reproduce Skiffle all you needed was a flat-top guitar and three
chords, and you were off. It seemed easier in those days than I imagine
it would be for a kid who wants to start playing guitar today. Now he
would be totally overwhelmed with what he'd hear. |
Lonnie had a great guitar player called Denny Wright, who still
plays. He's very much in the Django Reinhardt vein. But I think
the first really good guitarist I heard who just floored me - I thought
I'd give anything to play like him - was Cliff Gallup with Gene
Vincent's Blue Caps. Their first couple of albums just blew me
away; songs like "Blue Jean Bop", "Jumps, Giggles, And
Shouts", "Pink Thunderbird" - real intelligent themes
[laughs]. There was a single that wasn't on an album then, "Race
With The Devil" [available on The Bop That Just Won't Stop],
that had an absolute killer solo where Cliff jumps from E to F.
That is a real tough solo; it's so clean. I got as close to it as I
could. |
Gallup was my favorite guitar player in the late '50s, and I think it
really helped me a lot, trying to work out his solos, because they were
very jazzy. They used lots of scales all over the fingerboard. He was
the one guy that really made me sit down and work on solos. And Buddy
Holly as well, of course. His solos were a lot simpler, but I
suppose everybody was knocked out with the sound of his guitar -
that great bell-like tone. I particularly liked his solos on
"That'll Be The Day" and "Looking For Someone To
Love." They were obviously a lot easier to work out that the Cliff
Gallup things, you know. |
I didn't have an electric guitar at that time; I had an acoustic
[arch-top] Hofner President. Then I got a Grazzioso, which was a copy of
a Fender, and then a Les Paul Custom with a Bigsby on it. I was trying
to get close to that Cliff Gallup sound, and there were quite a few echo
units on the market in England in the early '60s. I got an Echolette
tape echo made by Hohner in Germany, which had repeat and vibrato - so
it was pretty close to that sound. |
I found the James Burton sound very appealing, but it seemed
totally alien to me, because I couldn't figure out how he was doing it.
I'd started to learn how to play like Cliff Gallup, and it was with a
wound third string. Burton was a different approach altogether - all
that string bending with an unwound G. My favorite record with
him was "My Babe" by Ricky Nelson - pretty magical
guitar sounds throughout the whole of that record. All the early Ricky
Nelson albums were great from Burton's point of view, although some of
the songs were pretty schmaltzy. I put up with a lot of schmaltz just
for the occasional solo that might creep through. "Just A Little
Too Much" [by Nelson] is another classic example of the way Burton
played then, and "It's Late." It's such a simple solo - he
plays so few notes - but it has an incredible feel. It's really hard to
get that feel that he had. |
During the early '60s, I was playing alongside all the English guitar
players, and we had the same influences. A guy I used to run into very
often then was Jimmy Page. He'd come over to my place, and then
we'd go over to his place, and we'd go through records and just be
rolling on the floor listening to that stuff. He was a big James
Burton fan. He used to carry a picture of James Burton in his
wallet. |
I was also heavily influenced by Scotty Moore on all of the early
Presley records, like the stuff on The Sun Sessions [including
"That's All Right", "Mystery train", "Just
Because" and other classic Elvis sides]. I spent hours figuring out
those solos; it was a good place to start. He was closely related to
what Gallup was doing, in a way. |
Another important phase of my listening career came in 1960 or '61, when
somebody laid a record on me that totally blew me away - still does to
this day: Johnny Burnette And The Rock 'N' Roll Trio. I
could put that record on now and get so enthusiastic over it and play
along with it. There's just so much energy and a really rawness about the
guitar. I've heard conflicting stories as to who played on it - some say
it was Grady
Martin. [Note: According to Rock 'N' Roll Trio lead
guitarist Paul Burlison, Martin appeared only on a session or two done
in Nashville (most of the material was recrorded in New York), and
played only rhythm to Burlison's lead.] "Honey Hush" has a
great solo, and "Lonesome Train" where he does pull-offs on
the first and second strings. I've got about four copies of that album -
re-issues from various countries - because I'm in danger of wearing my
original one out. |
You couldn't get Chet Atkins albums in England at all. The first
one they released there was probably Teensville, a pop record,
and then they followed that up with one that was all gut-string flamenco
stuff. Which was...nice, you know. But we didn't have all that essential
stuff when he was doing all those breakdowns - the stuff he was famous
for. The album that really knocked me out was Mister Guitar. [Note:
An excellent cross section of Atkin's early (and later) recordings is
available on his album Now And Then.] |
I tried to figure out Chet's style, and persevered with a thumbpick, but
I didn't get very far. It didn't seem compatible with other styles I
wanted to play. It seemed to get in the way and was very stiff and
stilted. So I kind of evolved a way of playing with a flatpic and my
fingers together. There were guys around London who were doing Chet's
style better, but they seemed to get stuck in a rut. They couldn't play
along with anybody. They could only play what they had gotten from his
records - mistakes and all. |
I had a few Duane Eddy records around the same time, which I
still have. Especially For Your, with "Peter Gunn", was
one of my favourites. I loved the sound of it. They just got such great
sounds on records back then, and they don't seem to get them now - and
they certainly weren't getting those sounds in England in the early
'60s. I also liked the Everly Brothers because I liked their
singing, but I was very much influenced by Don Everly's rhythm playing.
He's very much neglected as a guitar player. I think he's very unique in
the way he plays his rhythms. [Note: Several early Everly Brothers
hits, such as "Wake Up, Little Suzie" and "Bye, Bye
Love", featured Nashville session Ray Edenton on acoustic rhythm in
tandem with Don Everly.] |
Finally, in '61 or '62, I stumbled across Jimmy Bryant and [steel
guitarist] Speedy West. I heard a cut on a BBC radio show called Saturday
Club. They played "Arkansas Traveler", and I guess at
that point the record was already seven or eight years old. I thought,
"God, this guy is absolutely the best!" It wasn't until '68 or
'69 that I eventually tracked down the album: a 10" version of Two
Guitars, Country Style. I still remember: it was Capitol, T-520 -
I'll never forget it. I find that Jimmy Bryant and Cliff Gallup were
closely related. It was like a bop/swing style - I don't know what you'd
call it. Gene Vincent called it bop; that was his expression for it.
It's not what the jazzers would call bebop, but it was related. I
suppose it was just swing guitar. |
I was never really dedicated enough to sit down and figure everything
out note-for-note, except for Cliff Gallup, where I did work everything
out and could play it even now. It's still logged in the back of the
brain. I remember each break. But I never figured out the Jimmy Bryant
solos. I just kind of took it all in by osmosis or whatever - just the
general feel of it, his approach. I recently found another great album
by him called Country Cabin Jazz, which has a lot of swing tunes. |
 Around
1963 or '64, I got Jazz Winds From A New Direction by Hank
Garland [a landmark, influential LP featuring the Nashville
studio legend playing progressive jazz backed by vibraphonist Gary
Burton, drummer Joe Morello, and bassist Joe Benjamin]. That was a big
influence, too. I got a lot of enjoyment from it, but never really sat
down and figured it all out exactly. |
 I
used to buy a lot of country records throughout the '60s - not really
for the guitar playing; I just bought anything that looked good. I
really got turned on by Buck Owens, because it seemed like he was doing
a new type of country music. It had that James Burton sound, with a lot
of string bending by Don Rich. He was great. His solos, like on
"Act Naturally" and "Tiger By The Tail", were real
simple, but they had a real good sound. It was the overall sound of
those records that appealed to me. It was very fresh-sounding at the
time. I even joined the Buck Owens Fan Club; I'd get little newsletters
from his mother. |
I found over the years that a lot of the guitar players that I really
liked also played fiddle - such as Jimmy Bryant, Don Rich and Roy Clark.
I think that really had a big influence on the way they played. I wish I
had learned to play fiddle. My style tends to be an amalgam of all these
guys I've been talking about. I can hear it. I know when I play with
different bands - a rock group or a country band or whatever - I always
play the same style. It sort of fits in the middle somewhere. |
When I first met the Everly Brothers, when they came to England in '61
or '62, I met their guitar player, Don Peak. He was really good. He told
me about B.B.King and Howard
Roberts. I'd never heard all this vibrato
stuff that B.B. was doing. There was on Howard Roberts album in
particular called Color Him Funky. I suppose I was influenced by
that from a jazz point of view. I've never really been a jazz player,
but I did like to listen to those records. Les Paul, of course,
was a big influence, but there was only one record that you could find
in England then - Hits By Les And Mary. He and Mary Ford are both
on the cover in evening clothes, and he's holding a black [Les Paul]
Custom. I love him. |
These were definite landmarks in my listening career. Another one was Jerry
Reed's first two or three albums. He was playing acoustic, and it
just floored me. It was like it was with Chet, and I could get an
approximation of it, but I couldn't actually do it all. But I certainly
learned a lot from that guy. I was headed along those lines anyway. He
just reinforced what I was trying to do. |
I should also mention Roy Buchanan. That was another milestone.
There was a bootleg called Buck And The Snake Stretchers that
came in a burlap bag. I've got a very bad copy of it. He just played
great on there, did a blinding intro to "Johnny B. Goode" -
real psychedelic. It wasn't totally different, but it kind of took you
off on another tangent. He took the James Burton thing and really souped
it up. Buchanan's first album [Roy Buchanan] was a big influence
too. |
One non-guitar player I really liked was Buck Trent, with his
solid body electric banjo. He did a lot of things that sounded like a
cross between guitar, steel and banjo. He recorded on some obscure
label; I've got one called Give Me Five. Just an incredible
sound. I guess he influenced me quite a bit in my pull-string playing,
as did Clarence White -(Some
C White Tabs) the master. [Note: Albert uses a
Parsons/White String Bender, or "pull-string", which raises
the B string a whole-step to simulate pedal steel sounds.] I
heard Clarence's albums with The Byrds [including Sweetheart
Of The Rodeo, Untitled, Dr. Rider], and he did some really good
solos on Linda Ronstadt's album Silk Purse. That's where I first
heard the pull-string - didn't take me long to figure out that he had
some kind of gizmo on there to get those notes. |
The only guy I like to listen to at the moment, really, is Steve
Morse. Only about two years ago did I become aware of him - after he
won the Guitar Player poll [ as Best Overall Guitarist in 1982].
I bought two or three Dregs albums, and he just killed me. I
particularly like the country cuts, like "Pride O' The Farm" [Dregs
Of The Earth]. That just took country playing in another direction
yet again. |
Courtesy of the Albert Lee Web site. |
