Category Archives: Birthdays

Birthdays, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Guitarist Paul Deano Williams

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Guitarist Paul Deano Williams

Happy birthday
July 12, 1946
Guitarist Paul Deano Williams
Richie and Paul Deano Williams on The Mike Douglas Show, March 5, 1969 (with Rodney Dangerfield and Edie Adams). Richie was invited back again 11 days after Woodstock
Guitarist Paul Deano Williams

Richie Havens

The Facebook page, Live Music Head wrote in a July 12, 2013 entry, “For better or worse, some musical careers are defined by a single searing moment in time and for Richie Havens, who died on April 22 [2013], his career will forever be linked to his appearance as the opener for the Woodstock Festival in 1969. Because the band Sweetwater, who were supposed to open, was caught in traffic, it was Havens, percussionist Daniel Ben Zebulon and guitarist Paul ‘Deano’ Williams who went on at Max Yasgur’s farm near Bethel, New York, at 5 pm on Friday, August 15th 1969. It was Haven’s improvised number, ‘Freedom,’ which he interspersed with bits from the tune ‘Motherless Child,’ with sweat staining his tunic and his feet keeping rhythm, all of it captured on the film of the festival, which will forever be his shining moment in music history.” Watch out for Paul ‘Deano’ Williams flashing the peace sign in this video [at approx 34 seconds]…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcRWWC8wD-A

Guitarist Paul Deano Williams

Woodstock

Guitarist Paul Deano Williams
Daniel Ben Zebulon and Deano on Woodstock field

Paul Williams is one of those many Woodstock Music and Art Fair musicians whose life story the internet has seemingly and surprisingly not included.  A google search reiterates what we already know: Williams was an integral part of Richie Havens’s early music.

And I suppose that is enough.

The West Virginia Surf Report site had a what-ever-happened-to type of piece in which  a “Tilt” replied in 2013 to another reply: About 8 years ago, I was transporting a tractor on my ramp truck to Vermont from Maryland. On my way home, I stopped at a rest stop in upstate New York. An old black guy decked out in a country/cowboy getup, had the hood of his van up. His van was packed with musical equipment. I loaded up his van on my truck and hauled him to eastern New York, somewhere above New Your City. (I may be able to find it – He gave me an address and phone number, which I can’t find at the moment..) Along the trip, he explained that he was Paul Williams, and that he now plays bass in a two piece band, playing country music in bars. He was rather old (60’s or 70’s) and I don’t know if he is still kicking or not. He told me to look him up if ever in the area again, but I haven’t been back that way since then.

Guitarist Paul Deano Williams
Birthdays, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Percussionist Bobby Torres

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Percussionist Bobby Torres

How do you get your ticket punched for Woodstock?  Many ways. For Bobby Torres it was to begin by growing up in New York City, the child of parents from Puerto Rico, and to love playing the congas.

OK, but what about becoming part of Joe Cocker’s Grease Band?

Percussionist Bobby Torres

Grease Band

Well, in 1969 [in an interview with Mike Walker] Bobby relates: I saw him in 1969 playing at Fillmore East, playing with Rod Stewart and the Faces. He had the hit “Feelin’ Alright,” which was recorded with a conga player, but when he played it live he didn’t have a conga player. So he was billed at the Fillmore East, and he went to Ungano’s where I was playing on a Monday night, and asked me if I could sit in. And I said, “Sure.””

Percussionist Bobby Torres

LA > Portland > Tom Jones

The Grease Band disbanded soon after Joe Cocker left them and Bobby Torres moved to Los Angeles for the 70s where he became a key session player and then in the 80s he moved to Portland, Oregon but was often on the road as part of singer Tom Jones’s band.

Percussionist Bobby Torres

Bobby Torres Ensemble

Percussionist Bobby Torres

By the 90s, Bobby Torres was back full time in Portland and became in integral part of that city’s musical scene, both jazz and Latin, with his Bobby Torres Ensemble.

Mike Walker of Portland’s McMenamins Crystal Ballroom says that, “Bobby’s ensemble has been a monthly feature of the Crystal Ballroom’s Salsa con Sabor program, staged weekly in Lola’s Room on the building’s second floor. “

Percussionist Bobby Torres

Tito Puente

Bobby Torres wants everyone to know that his musical hero is musician, songwriter and record producer, the The King of Latin Music Tito Puente. Puente was based in New York City and Torres went to hear him play whenever given the chance.

Percussionist Bobby Torres

More recently

2009
  • inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame
  • performed for Archbishop Desmond Tutu
  • Time Magazine published “Woodstock, How Does it Sound 40 Years Later?” an article which included a photo of Bobby in performance on stage with Joe Cocker at Woodstock
2015
  • Bobby performed with the Tadeschi Trucks band to a crowd of over 25,000 people at the Lockin’ Festival in Virginia. This concert was a tribute to Joe Cocker and featured many of the original members of Mad Dogs & Englishmen.
2016

Bobby was given the Jazz Journalist’s Association Jazz Hero Award. This award is given to advocates, altruists, activists, aiders and abettors of jazz who have had significant impact in their local communities.

Percussionist Bobby Torres

Nowadays

He’s still busy…just as he’s been for decades.

Percussionist Bobby Torres

Percussionist Bobby Torres

The Letter

Percussionist Bobby Torres
Birthdays, Music et al

Fred Link Wray Rumble

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Fred Link Wray Rumble

Fred Lincoln Link Wray Rumble

Contributed the power chord to rock and roll

Native Americans Rock

May 2, 1929 – November 5, 2005

When speaking about “Dark Star,” members of the Grateful Dead said that the song is always playing and they simply wade into its river, swim in it, and wade back out after awhile. Put another Grateful Dead way: the music never stopped.

I recently had the good fortune to watch RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World, a feature documentary about the role of Native Americans in popular music history.

Among the Native Americans featured in this excellent film is Link Wray.

I sometimes fool myself into thinking that I know a lot about rock and roll. After all I’ve been listening to it my whole life, but like any interest, there is always something new to find.

Link Wray was, much to my embarrassment, something new to find.

Fred Link Wray Rumble

Link Wray

Wray was born in North Carolina. Both his parents were Shawnee. He served in the US Army during the Korean War. He lost a lung  there to tuberculosis and  doctors said he’d never sing again.

Perhaps he didn’t sing that much, but he did play.  In 1955 recording for the Starday label as a member of Lucky Wray & the Palomino Ranch Hands.  Brother Vernon sang, brother Doug played drums, and Link played guitar. Hillbilly rock.

According to a Guardian article, Wray said, “I was looking for something Chet Atkins wasn’t doing, that all the jazz kings wasn’t doing. I was looking for my own sound.”

Fred Link Wray Rumble

Fuzz tone

“According to a Rolling Stone magazine article, “…legend has it, [that] Wray poked a pencil through the cone of his amplifier to achieve the …groundbreaking fuzz tone. 

In 1958, challenged to play a “stroll” for a teenage audience, his drummer began the beat and Wray improvised and began to fuzz tone. Initially referred to as “Oddball,” the song eventually took on the threat of the times and became “Rumble.”

Fred Link Wray Rumble

Fear of Youth

In 1958, American adults feared two things: Communism and juvenile delinquents.  Perhaps “JD”s even more with their duck-tail haircuts, knives, and rumbles. Many radio stations, fearful that the song rumble might actually incite a riot, banned the song. One of the only times that an instrumental was banned. Keep in mind the hit play,  West Side Story, that reigned on Broadway at that time with it’s Jets and Sharks.

Rumble’s chords are the fountainhead of heavy rock.  Pete Townshend stated about Wray, “”He is the king; if it hadn’t been for Link Wray and “‘Rumble,‘” I would have never picked up a guitar.”

The follow-up to Rumble was, what else, Rawhide. More distortion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCUaXuvrbFc

Fred Link Wray Rumble

Sanitized…temporarily

As young musicians with a hit have always found, the companies that surrounded them wanted to find a way to monetize their music.  Add strings and a classic tune like Moonlight Love (Claire de Lune)

Fred Link Wray Rumble

Rumble Records

It didn’t sell because Wray’s audience didn’t want it. Link and his brother Vern formed Rumble Records.

Jack the Ripper came out of that venture.  The 1983 movie Breathless with Richard Gere featured the song. John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, and  Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction also used Wray’s music.

Fred Link Wray Rumble

Lifer

Wray continued to play, but the backwaters of rock music and never got the recognition that so many guitarists like Townshend said he deserved. Just look at Jimmy Page’s face as he listens to Rumble.

Wray married and moved to Denmark in 1980. He did not find much success there. The world of rock occasionally woke up, realized the gem Wray was in rock’s crown, but fell back asleep.

As Cub Koda wrote in an AllMusic bio of Wray, “Link Wray may never get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but his contribution to the language of rockin’ guitar would still be a major one, even if he had never walked into another studio after cutting “Rumble.”

Fred Link Wray Rumble

Reprise

In the 2000s, he returned to live playing and had performed forty North American dates before he returned home and died in Copenhagen.  He was seventy-six. Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen both performed “Rumble” onstage in tribute

Link Wray discography via All Music 

Fred Link Wray Rumble