White Lightning: Lost Cadence Sessions '58

by Steve LeggettLink Wray's huge rattling guitar sound was partially due to various health problems. A childhood bout with measles left him partially deaf so that when he took up the guitar he had to play the instrument extremely loud to hear it properly. Then as a young man he contracted TB and lost a lung, which meant he couldn't sing, so he turned to guitar instrumentals as his musical stock in trade. But Wray was no typical 1950s guitar player. His relentless search for edgier, dirtier guitar tones made him the Godfather of modern rock guitar, and his rumbling, careening and decidedly electric guitar playing still sounds stunningly alive and fresh even five decades on from his first recordings. The song that jump-started Wray's recording career, the left-field instrumental "Rumble," was released by Archie Bleyer's Cadence Records in 1955, and even though Bleyer had nothing but disgust for Wray's sound and approach, he set him up in Edgewood Studio in Washington, D.C. to record material for a projected LP, finally dropping Wray's contract altogether early in 1959, and then shelved the master tapes from the D.C. sessions. Wray went on to sign with Epic Records and further refine (a word that doesn't seem to fit comfortably in a sentence with the name Link Wray) his cone-rattling guitar sound, and all concerned forgot about the Cadence album sessions. Now nearly fifty years later, and a year after Wray's death, Sundazed has finally released them. It would be wonderful to say that White Lightning: Lost Cadence Sessions '58 comprises a lost masterpiece, but that isn't the case. This is the sound of a young and innovative guitar player trying to find his way, but falling just short of finding it. There are flashes of vintage Wray here, certainly, including the intriguing "Pancho Villa" (re-recorded for Epic as "Guitar Cha-Cha"), an early version of "Rawhide," and a kinetic take on Duane Eddy's classic "Rebel Rouser," but most of the tracks feel more like sketches than completed takes, and Wray's trademark ear-blasting guitar tone is seldom present, although one can sense it just around the corner. Truthfully, Wray was a victim of the day's technology at these sessions. Guitars then were manufactured to deliver a clean, clear sound, as were amplifiers, and certainly recording engineers and studios were geared to eliminate anything that popped the needle into the red, and in the red was exactly where Wray was trying to go. It wasn't until Wray and his brother Vernon took over their own production that Wray was actually able to finally realize the sound he was after. In the end, White Lightning is an important historical recording but it doesn't really add much to Wray's body of work beyond revealing a starting point.