Sunday Night Music
Jonathan Rowe on Apr 27th 2008
Guitar connoisseur Billy Beck inspires this post where he leaves a comment discussing his past work with the late Stevie Ray Vaughn. Most of us have never been so lucky. Vaughn was a blues guitar virtuoso. He wasn’t one of those shredders who played scale like licks and patterns until he was faster than anyone else, but his playing could be just as challenging and virtuostic. Many of the electric guitar virtuosos play relatively thin gauge strings, much easier on your tendons than acoustic guitar strings; many of them can’t razzle or dazzle playing acoustic. Some fusion guitarists like John McLaughlin, Al Dimeola and Steve Morse have outstanding acoustic chops as well. Vaughn apparently played with really heavy gauge electric strings (for the tone), very muscular. His physical power over the instrument shows in this 12 string acoustic version of Pride and Joy. And be sure to check out this one as well.
Filed in The Bistro
Jon, I don’t know if I ever told you this story, but my former roommate, Don Schneider, was a guitar maker. He was the guy who designed the Les Paul custom series for Gibson. He designed guitars to the specs of most of the great guitarists in the world and had a photo album full of pictures of him presenting those guitars to them. His brother Richard was the founder of the Lookout Mountain Center for the Guitar and built what many considered to be the finest classical acoustic guitars in the world. He had also been Andre Segovia’ personal luthier for many years prior to that. They had some great stories to tell around a bonfire.
I’d imagine. No you never told me!