It takes a lot of swag­ger and con­fi­dence to play a cou­ple of barre chords on a gui­tar, look like the coolest cat doing so, and rev­o­lu­tion­ize rock music while doing so. That’s Link Wray we’re talk­ing about, and the song is the 1958 instru­men­tal hit “Rum­ble.” It still sounds fresh today for the same rea­sons it was con­tro­ver­sial at the time. It sounds sleazy, grungy, dirty. This is a song for a pool hall, or a bik­er bar, and just reeks of cig­a­rettes and liquor. And from Pulp Fic­tion onwards, the song has popped up in many movies and TV shows, giv­ing a scene a bit of cool dan­ger.

The above video is from a one-hour gig that Wray and his band per­formed at the Win­ter­land Ball­room in San Fran­cis­co, 1974, the for­mer ice skat­ing rink that pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham turned into one of the pri­mo music venues of its day. And Link Wray play­ing was like one of the gods of rock descend­ing to anoint the crowd. Presley–though Wray defend­ed him dur­ing his act–had dropped out of main­stream cul­ture. The orig­i­nal rock and rollers, Wray’s peers, were either dead or nos­tal­gia acts. So this appear­ance is mag­i­cal, rock spir­it made flesh, look­ing dan­ger­ous and sex­u­al in all his swag­ger.

That swag­ger was well earned. Fred Lin­coln Wray was born in North Car­oli­na to a Shawnee moth­er, as a Chero­kee and White father had returned from WWI with PTSD. In the most­ly Black neigh­bor­hood where he grew up, he would hide under­neath the bed when the Ku Klux Klan would come through on a ter­ror cam­paign. “Elvis, he grew up — I don’t want to sound racist when I say this — he grew up white man poor,” Wray said in an inter­view. “I was grow­ing up Shawnee poor.”

He suf­fered weak eye­sight and bad hear­ing from child­hood measles, and lat­er when he served time in the army, he’d con­tract tuber­cu­lo­sis, lose one lung, and was told he wouldn’t have a singing career.

But he did have his gui­tar skills, which he’d learned as a child from a trav­el­ing Black gui­tarist called Ham­bone. Back from the army he formed a group with his broth­ers Ver­non and Doug, and was going by the name Lucky. They gigged around Vir­ginia and Wash­ing­ton, DC, and were asked by a local pro­mot­er to come up with a song sim­i­lar to The Dia­monds’ “The Stroll.” What they came up with was an instru­men­tal called “Odd­ball.” It was a hit played live but when they went into a stu­dio to record a demo, it just didn’t have “that sound”. Wray start­ed punch­ing holes in his speak­ers with a pen­cil and in one stroke cre­at­ed the fuz­ztone gui­tar sound.

The big labels wouldn’t bite, but Cadence Records’ Milt Grant said yes. Or rather, his teenage step­daugh­ter and her friends said yes, and Milt put aside his own dis­taste. Juve­nile delin­quents were at once both a “prob­lem” and a way to sell prod­uct, espe­cial­ly with the hit musi­cal and movie West Side Sto­ry. “Rum­ble” was a much bet­ter name than “Odd­ball,” and, on March 31, 1958, it was released.

Some DJs refused to play the sin­gle in cities where teenage gang vio­lence was a prob­lem. When Wray and his band played Amer­i­can Band­stand, Dick Clark didn’t men­tion the title. It didn’t stop the sin­gle from being a hit.

And it was influ­en­tial. Wray pret­ty much invent­ed pow­er-chord riff­ing, and influ­enced Jimi Hen­drix, Jeff Beck, Neil Young, Jim­my Page, Pete Town­shend, and count­less oth­ers. Cur­mud­geon-genius Mark E. Smith of the Fall named him as one of the only two musi­cians he respect­ed (the oth­er was Iggy Pop).

Link Wray’s Chero­kee and Shawnee her­itage was not well known among the gen­er­al pub­lic, but the recent doc­u­men­tary Rum­ble: The Indi­ans Who Rocked the World brought the influ­ence of Native Amer­i­can musi­cians out into the open for cel­e­bra­tion, con­nect­ing Link Wray with Rob­bie Robert­son, Char­lie Pat­ton, Mil­dred Bai­ley, and Ste­vie Salas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Only Instru­men­tal Ever Banned from the Radio: Link Wray’s Seduc­tive, Raunchy Song, “Rum­ble” (1958)

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

The Sto­ry of “Wipe Out,” the Clas­sic Surf Rock Instru­men­tal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

It’s fit­ting for the day, even though it was record­ed long ago (1990). The footage above fea­tures Pat­ti Smith and her depart­ed hus­band Fred “Son­ic” Smith per­form­ing a stripped-down, acoustic ver­sion of her clas­sic “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er.” A rare record­ing of Smith and Son­ic per­form­ing togeth­er, this is a lit­tle trea­sure. Savor the moment.

Peo­ple have the pow­er
The pow­er to dream, to rule
To wres­tle the world from fools
It’s decreed: the peo­ple rule
It’s decreed: the peo­ple rule
Lis­ten. I believe every­thing we dream
Can come to pass through our union
We can turn the world around
We can turn the earth­’s rev­o­lu­tion
We have the pow­er!

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Hear Pat­ti Smith’s First Poet­ry Read­ing, Accom­pa­nied by Her Long­time Gui­tarist Lenny Kaye (St. Mark’s Church, 1971)

If Neil Young proved any­thing in his feud with Lynyrd Skynyrd (actu­al­ly “more like a spir­it­ed debate between respect­ful friends,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock), it’s that Cana­di­ans could play south­ern rock just as well as the South­ern Man, an argu­ment more or less also won at the same time by The Band’s Music from Big Pink. Young’s song­writ­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the tra­di­tion are just as well rec­og­nized as “The Weight.” Fore­most among them, we must place “Pow­derfin­ger,” cov­ered by every­one from Band of Hors­es to Cow­boy Junkies (below) to Rust­ed Root to Phish, and which Young sent to Ron­nie Van Zant, who might have record­ed it for the next Skynyrd album had he not died in 1977.

South­ern rock stal­warts Dri­ve-By Truck­ers, who’ve cov­ered “Pow­derfin­ger” fre­quent­ly, often sound like the son­ic equiv­a­lent of the Young-Skynyrd debate (they even wrote a song about it), chan­nel­ing their Alaba­ma roots and Skynyrd obses­sions through the sen­si­tive, sharply observed, char­ac­ter-dri­ven nar­ra­tives Young wrote so well. “Pow­derfin­ger” was penned dur­ing the Zuma era, when Young and Crazy Horse rede­fined psy­che­del­ic Amer­i­cana with bar­room weep­ers like “Don’t Cry No Tears” and “Barstool Blues,” and wan­der­ing gui­tar epics like “Cortez the Killer” and “Dan­ger Bird.”

The com­bi­na­tion of beau­ti­ful­ly loose, sham­bling gui­tars, lop­ing rhythms, and “bizarre and bril­liant” twists on Amer­i­cana themes defined what many con­sid­er to be Young’s great­est peri­od. “Between 1969’s Every­body Knows This is Nowhere and 1978’s Rust Nev­er Sleeps Young reached a lev­el of genius that few song­writ­ers have ever topped,” Rolling Stone writes.

“Pow­derfin­ger” rou­tine­ly tops best-of-Neil-Young lists. Though intend­ed for Zuma, the song did not actu­al­ly appear until four years lat­er, open­ing the elec­tric side of the live clas­sic Rust Nev­er Sleeps. Now we can cel­e­brate the unre­leased ver­sion at the top, record­ed dur­ing the Zuma ses­sions and just post­ed to the Neil Young Archives Insta­gram page.

Not only does “Pow­derfin­ger” show Neil Young and Crazy Horse at their duel­ing gui­tar best; it is a lyri­cal mas­ter­piece of lit­er­ary com­pres­sion, with a nar­ra­tive fans have often strug­gled to piece togeth­er, and have seen as rep­re­sent­ing every­thing from the Civ­il War to Viet­nam. But the gen­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the folk-poet­ic vers­es goes some­thing like this, notes Rolling Stone:

It’s about a fam­i­ly of boot­leg­gers (or some oth­er kind of back­woods crim­i­nals) some­where up in the moun­tains. They’ve been through many tragedies, and now the author­i­ties are mov­ing in on them – explain­ing why the approach­ing boat has “num­bers on the side.” The 22-year-old son has been forced to deal with the sit­u­a­tion because “Dad­dy’s gone,” “broth­er’s out hunt­ing in the moun­tains” and “Big John’s been drink­ing since the riv­er took Emmy-Lou.” The young man is stand­ing on the dock with a rifle in his hand when the boat begins fir­ing, so he rais­es the gun to return fire – but it back­fires and blows his head off. 

It’s a cin­e­mat­ic, dark­ly com­ic scene con­veyed with haunt­ing pathos and con­fused urgency. The track will appear on Disc 8, Dume, of the upcom­ing box set Neil Young Archives Vol­ume II, which cov­ers the pro­lif­ic peri­od between 1972 and 1976. “This 1975 ver­sion of the song was pro­duced by Young and David Brig­gs,” Brock Theis­sen writes at Exclaim!, and fea­tures all the orig­i­nal mem­bers of Crazy Horse. You can also stream the unre­leased ear­ly “Pow­derfin­ger” at the Neil Young Archives site. Fur­ther up, see an ani­mat­ed video for an acoustic ver­sion of the clas­sic Neil Young track and hear the orig­i­nal live record­ing from Rust Nev­er Sleeps below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Is Neil Young?: A Video Essay Explores the Two Sides of the Ver­sa­tile Musician–Folk Icon and Father of Grunge

Neil Young Per­forms Clas­sic Songs in 1971 Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

The Time Neil Young Met Charles Man­son, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness