Gripsweat is shutting down. Starting on February 1st, 2025 the site will no longer be doing daily updates, adding any new items, or accepting new memberships. The site will continue to run in this "historical" mode until January 1st, 2026, when the site will go offline. More information is available here.
LINK WRAY (Self-titled) - 1971 LP VG++ Vinyl
Sold Date:
November 16, 2014
Start Date:
November 9, 2014
Final Price:
$27.00
(USD)
Bid Count:
10
Seller Feedback:
4187
Buyer Feedback:
51
This item is not for sale. Gripsweat is an archive of past sales and auctions, none of the items are available for purchase.
LINK WRAY is a 1971 LP release on the Polydor label # 24-4064.
Link Wray was one of rock & roll's first bone fide guitar heroes, and his speaker-shredding buzzy chords were as distinctive a sound as anyone conjured up in rock's early years. So Link's old fans were thrown for a loop when, in 1971, the man made a comeback after several years along the margins with a self-titled album that set aside his big slabs of fretboard fuzz in favor of a loosely tight fusion of country, blues, and roughshod folk-rock. Recorded in a homemade three-track studio fashioned in an abandoned chicken coop on Wray's Maryland farm, Link Wray utilizes acoustic guitar, piano, and mandolin anchoring these sides as often as Link's electric, and there's a down-home mood. But the rough passion certainly carries through here, albeit in a different form; the plaintive howl of Wray's vocals isn't always pretty, but it certainly communicates (Wray lost a lung to TB in 1953), the best songs speak eloquently of the hard facts of Wray's early life as a poor Shawnee child in the Deep South, and there's a humble back-porch stomp in this music that's heartfelt and immediate. (And Wray does serve up some primal hoodoo guitar on the closing cut, "Tail Dragger.") Link Wray is an honest and passionate piece of music that's a fascinating detour from the music that has largely defined his career, and has aged better than the vast majority of the country-rock product of the early '70s.
The album includes the original Polydor inner sleeve, which is split. The die-cut gatefold jacket shows wear on the front & back; has a tear on the right edge; has a stain in the bottom right corner of the front; has a small corner cut out in the bottom left & creasing on the die cut front. The record is in VG++ condition. High bidder agrees to pay $4.00 shipping in the U.S.
On Sep-09-06 at 14:27:46 PDT, seller added the following information:
On Jun-07-08 at 14:48:28 PDT, seller added the following information:
On Nov-22-08 at 22:20:06 PST, seller added the following information: