Link Wray
The man who turned one menacing chord into rock's blueprint
Fred Lincoln Wray Jr. grew up poor in rural North Carolina, the son of a mother with Shawnee roots, and his family faced harassment from the Ku Klux Klan. In 1942 the Wrays relocated to Portsmouth, Virginia, where Link and his brothers Vernon and Doug began playing country and western music. His plans were interrupted by Army service during the Korean War, where he contracted tuberculosis. Doctors removed one of his lungs, and the damage to his breathing pushed him away from singing and toward the guitar as his main voice.
With his brothers he worked the Portsmouth and Washington-area dance circuit, first as Lucky Wray and the Palomino Ranch Gang. At a 1958 dance, while the band was trying to play a slow stroll, Wray improvised a brooding, heavily distorted riff built from crude chords that stopped the room. Released on Cadence Records as Rumble, the instrumental climbed into the national top twenty. Its air of danger alarmed programmers, and it was kept off the radio in New York and Boston, an extraordinary fate for a record with no words at all.
Wray followed with Raw-Hide on Epic in 1959, then moved to Swan Records, where singles such as Jack the Ripper kept his reputation alive through the early 1960s. As the British Invasion changed the charts, he retreated to a farm property in Maryland and recorded rough, soulful material in a converted outbuilding using a three-track machine. The resulting self-titled album of 1971 revealed a swampy, gospel-tinged songwriter and became a cult favorite among critics who had only known him for instrumentals.
In the late 1970s he found a new audience backing rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon on two albums and in energetic tours, which connected him with the punk and new wave scenes. He settled in Denmark in the early 1980s and kept recording, releasing Shadowman in 1997 and Barbed Wire in 2000. Rumble reached a new generation through the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Wray died in Copenhagen in 2005; the Native American Music Hall of Fame honored him in 2007 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame followed in 2023.
The 10 greatest Link Wray solos
- 1Link Wray & His Ray Men · solo by Link Wray · 1959
- 2Link Wray & His Ray Men · solo by Link Wray · 1963
- 3Link Wray · solo by Link Wray · 1971
- 4Robert Gordon with Link Wray · solo by Link Wray · 1977
- 5Link Wray & His Ray Men · solo by Link Wray · 1959
- 6Link Wray · solo by Link Wray · 1958
- 7Link Wray & the Wraymen · solo by Link Wray · 1959
- 8Link Wray & the Wraymen · solo by Link Wray · 1961
- 9Link Wray & the Raymen · solo by Link Wray · 1965
- 10Link Wray & the Wraymen · solo by Link Wray · 1959
The sound
Wray played rock guitar as a blunt instrument of mood. Instead of fast single-note runs, he leaned on loud, slashing chords, often stripped to roots and fifths, which is why he is widely credited with inventing the power chord. He chased distortion long before pedals existed, abusing amplifiers and speakers to get a torn, buzzing sound, and he used tremolo to make sustained chords shimmer ominously. His phrasing is slow and deliberate, full of space and sudden crashing strums, so each chord lands like a threat. The result sounds primitive by design and anticipates garage rock, punk and heavy metal.
- Gibson Les Paul (guitar) Associated with his late-1950s breakthrough period and early instrumental hits.
- Danelectro electric guitars (guitar) Inexpensive, twangy instruments that suited his raw 1960s sound.
- Small tube amplifier with damaged speaker (amp) He famously roughed up his speaker cone to coax out the fuzzy, torn tone heard on Rumble.
- Amplifier tremolo (effect) Used to make his sustained chords pulse and waver ominously.
- Overdriven amplifier distortion (effect) Cranked amps were central to his sound years before commercial fuzz boxes caught on.
- Three-track home studio rig (amp) The modest setup in his Maryland outbuilding captured the loose, gritty 1971 album sessions.
Covers
- Batman Theme, originally by Neal Hefti He turned the TV theme into a fuzzy garage-rock stomp.
- Red Hot, originally by Billy 'The Kid' Emerson His raw guitar pushed the old Sun-era tune toward punk energy.
- Flyin' Saucers Rock & Roll, originally by Billy Lee Riley A wild, twangy reading of a Sun Records rockabilly classic.
- The Way I Walk, originally by Jack Scott Wray's crunching chords add swagger beneath Gordon's baritone.
- Fire, originally by Bruce Springsteen He helped recast a new song as moody, old-school rockabilly.
Timeline
- 1929 Born in Dunn, North Carolina
- 1942 Family moves to Portsmouth, Virginia
- 1950 Enters the US Army during the Korean War; later loses a lung to tuberculosis
- 1958 Rumble released on Cadence and banned from radio in New York and Boston
- 1959 Raw-Hide becomes another hit instrumental on Epic
- 1963 Jack the Ripper gains wide release on Swan Records
- 1971 Self-titled album recorded in a Maryland outbuilding earns critical acclaim
- 1977 Teams with Robert Gordon for the first of two albums
- 1994 Rumble featured on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack
- 2023 Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for Musical Influence
Facts
- Rumble is one of very few instrumentals ever to be kept off the radio, because programmers feared it glorified gang violence.
- His mother was of Shawnee descent, and he was later inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame.
- He had a lung removed after contracting tuberculosis during his Army years.
- Losing a lung limited his singing for years, which helped make the guitar his primary means of expression.
- He is widely credited with popularizing, if not inventing, the power chord.
- His brothers Vernon and Doug played in his early bands.
- His acclaimed 1971 album was cut on a three-track machine in a converted farm building in Maryland.
- He moved to Denmark in the early 1980s and lived there until his death.
- Rolling Stone placed him at number 45 on its list of the greatest guitarists.
- He waited until 2023, years after his death, for his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.