DUNN – Dunn native and rock guitarist legend Link Wray was named to this year’s inductees in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He will be posthumously honored with the Musical Influence Award at a ceremony in Brooklyn Nov. 3.
“Link Wray was one of the most influential rock guitarists of the 1950s,” according to his biography on the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame website. “His recording of ‘Rumble,’ with distortion, fuzz tone and power chords had a profound influence on rock guitarists during that time and is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
A new mural commemorating this homegrown legend was recently unveiled on the side of a building at 207 E. Broad St. The mural is known as the 10th stop in the North Carolina Musician Murals Trail depicting state-born stars who left indelible marks on the world of music.
“Link Wray was born May 2, 1929, in Dunn,” states his biography. “As a youth, he learned bottle neck guitar after moving with his family to Arizona. In his late teen years he formed a country band with his brothers Doug and Vernon, ‘Lucky Wray and the Lazy Pine Wrangers.’
“His career was interrupted by military service during the Korean War, where he contracted tuberculosis, which led to the loss of a lung and an inability to sing.
“After his discharge from the service, Link Wray re-formed his group as The Palomino Ranch Hands, comprised to Doug Wray on drums and Shorty Horton on bass; his brother, Vernon produced their recordings and occasionally played rhythm guitar and piano. They made their first recordings for Starday in 1955,” according to his North Carolina Music Hall of Fame biography.
One of his greatest hits, “Rumble,” was written by Wray and Washington, D.C. area disc jockey Milt Grant in “an attempt to have a guitar instrumental sound like a dance hall brawl. The fuzz tone distortion was created by Wray puncturing his amplifier speaker with a pencil,” his biography states.
Link Wray and the Ray Men’s “Rumble,” on the Cadence label, entered Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and rose to No. 16 in April 1958. It remained on the chart for 14 weeks and sold over a million copies, according to his biography.
“Link Wray and the Ray Men’s next single, ‘Raw-Hide’ was released on Epic and entered the Hot 100 Chart in January, 1959; it became a top 25 single and also sold a million copies.
“During the mid-1960s, Link Wray retired to a family farm in Maryland, turned a chicken coop into a studio and recorded a number of songs, performing only occasionally in local bars. Those sessions were collected and released on the album Link Wray on Polydor,” his biography states.
Other songs that made the Hot 100 charts included “Jack the Ripper” in 1963 and “Red Hot” with “retro-rockabilly singer Robert Gordon” in 1977.
“Link Wray was part Shawnee and three of the songs he recorded have Native American titles: Shawnee, Apache and Comanche,” according to his biography. “During the 1980s, Link Wray married a Danish student studying Native American culture and moved with her to Denmark, where he lived the remainder of his life.
“Link Wray died in Copenhagen on November 5, 2005 at the age of 76.”
-Dunn Daily Record
