It’s not that fucking hard to play 3 or 4 notes, ala Grady or Jimmy, instead of 162 notes, which fills a much needed gap. It’s all cool to play 40 notes a bar on “Rocky Top” or “The Fireman”, but when the singer calls “Make the World Go Away” I wish the guitar player would go away if he can’t or won’t change his attitude. I worked with a drummer once who didn’t know the difference between a pair of brushes and his ass, and I put a picture of Buddy Harman on his snare before the gig one time and he walked around all night asking who it was. I wonder if they’ve ever listened to Grady Martin or Jimmy Capps. It didn’t go real well, but I wasn’t afraid of nuthin’ back then.Ī lot of guitar players have hot licks up the ass, and the attendant volume, but can’t play two notes in a row that sound pretty. I dragged my stuff in and sat in on a few songs. I played a little with Leon Rhodes when he was working a gig at a hotel by the new Opry with Little Roy Wiggins. I did a gig with Lenny Breau when I was too green to do much, but it was fun anyway, listening to him. I worked a few gigs with Pete Wade, clubs and sessions, and he’d holler at me to play what Lloyd played on some session they’d been on, which had me scratching my temporal lobe trying to play a cheap Japanese knockoff of what I could remember. But, hell, it was work and a little money, like digging a ditch or unloading trucks, and I had to get my roast out of layaway at Kroger. But most of the others made me wish I’d stayed home and watched “Saturday Night Live”, at least up until the 90’s. Pete Mitchell – Texas Troubadour PassesOther fine guitar players I’ve worked with were Roy Melton, Marc Rogers, Richard Bass, Dan Drilling, Redd Voelkaert, Cliff Parker, and more recently Lyndell East, Bebo Whitehead, Chris Logan, Luther Lewis, Clyde Sutton and Bill Hullett. He moved to Texas a few years ago and got kidnapped by Herb Steiner and I never saw him again.
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He knew how to comp, play tic-tac or just lay out when it was my turn to play. Pete was the tastiest player in the world, and had more empathy and reciprocity with a steel guitar player than anybody.
I had the good fortune to work with Pete Mitchell from the late 70’s up until on gigs ranging from Ernest Tubb to Broadway to skull orchards on Dickerson Pike, and it was always a pleasure. He was a Lloyd Green fan, and I learned a bunch of licks from him.īuddy and me at the Silver Dollar Saloon in South Bend The first one of any note was Buddy Williams, from Michigan City, IN. Man, I’ve worked as a steel guitar player with a passel of guitar players.