Link Wray by Patrick Carr for Crawdaddy (1972) - Photos by Richard Adler

Link Wray by Patrick Carr for Crawdaddy (1972)

Photos by Richard Adler

"You can hear everything in his music—heavy premonitions of Hendrix and a whole generation of others (Link was using a homemade wah-wah box way back in ‘53), pure sweet old country blues he learned on his porch at Hambone’s feet, slow soft haunting ballads with shades of Gospel and Delta and all manner of folk and rock and blues. He switches from a 1910 Gibson dobro to an acoustic six-string to a screaming scarlet electric Yamaha he found in a pawnshop, building up the excitement with tumbling bursts of fast ‘n stomping hard ‘n heavy jive. Oh my, oh dearie, what a nice noise. And don’t they ever love it, those lucky New York City souls who can sit right there and get it straight from the master.

There he is in 1972, 42 years old with seven kids and two wives behind him: he’s as old as my father-in-law, but he’s a musician. He’s an Indian, half Shawnee. He’s an outcast. He only has one lung. He’s been screwed over by the Biz with regularity comparable to clockwork. And back then when white teenage America was only just beginning to clue in on what them thar black boys used to have all to themselves, Link Wray was a rock and roll man through and through, player of the metal-stringed monster, electric rock and roll speedster guitar."