| |
Whiskyfun
Home
(Current
entries)
Concert
Review
Index
(All Reviews
Since 2004)
Leave
feedback
 |
Copyright
Nick Morgan and crew
|
|
|
Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
|
 |
 |
CONCERT
REVIEW - SCOTTY MOORE
Jazz Café, London,
15th August, 2005
by Nick Morgan
If
you’d have asked me about Scotty
Moore two or three years ago then
I would probably have told you that he was dead,
and as you can read in a painful amount of detail
on his website, I wouldn’t have been too
far from the truth. Then a chum handed me a CD
with the instruction, “listen to it, tell
me who it is …”. About a week later,
having thoroughly enjoyed the music but floundered
in my guesswork, I was told it was All the King’s
Men, a 1997 tribute album to Scotty Moore and
his sidekick D J Fontana, featuring notables such
as Keith Richards, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Jeff
Beck and Ronnie Wood. |
| And
shortly after that I became aware of a frenzy of
Scotty activity – a concert in London last
year that we missed, and four albums on which he
plays: Scotty Moore and Friends, Alvin Lee’s
In Tennessee (recorded when Scotty was unwell and
only able to appear on a couple of tracks), Liam
Grundy and Pete Pritchard’s Western Union
and Paul Ansell’s No9 Live at Sun. So much
for being dead. But when the chance came to see
him this year we leapt at it…just in case. |
| Now
for those of you who don’t remember Winfield
Scott Moore was the hillbilly guitarist brought
in (with bass player Bill Black) by Sam Philips
on the fateful day in 1954 to back a young singer,
Elvis Aaron
Presley – who Philips believed
might be able to realise his dream of a crossover
artiste – a white boy who sounded black. The
session went badly until the threesome started ‘fooling
around’ with an Arthur ‘Big Boy’
Crudup song – ‘That’s all right’.
The rest, as they say, is history. Well almost.
Joined by D J Fontana on drums, Scotty played with
Elvis through the early Sun days (when he briefly
became his manager), the RCA years and the lost
times in Hollywood. In 1968 he was there playing
the old tunes live with Elvis for the famous TV
Special (get the DVD if you don’t have it)
and was then, at least as it seems to me, unceremoniously
dumped – without, it should be noted, a word
of complaint – as Elvis moved to the bigger
and undoubtedly more sophisticated setup of the
American Sound Studios in Memphis. |
Scotty Moore autobiography, 1997 |
Not
to say that Scotty didn’t continue working
– as you can read elsewhere. But in that little
crudely soundproofed room on a street corner in
Memphis Scotty created a sound that would last forever,
and in the course inspired generations of musicians.
“Everyone else wanted to be Elvis” said
Keith Richards, “I wanted to be Scotty”.
And if you get the chance you should go to the reconstructed
and now working again Sun
Studios (after it first closed down it was used
as a garage store and a barber’s shop) and
do the tour. It’s one of those “and
this is probably where…”, “I like
to believe that what happened next was ..”,
“and I’m sure if he was here today he’d
say that…” experiences, but nothing
can take away from the atmosphere in the studio
itself – and if you’re a ‘being
there’ sort of person, then this is one you
should tick off the list – a bit like going
to see Scotty if you get the chance.
So we’re sitting upstairs at the Jazz
Café, sharing a table with a couple of
Elvis nuts (average age 32) who are on the Atkins
diet (no burger jokes please). Around the balcony
is a United Nations of young and old, downstairs
is heaving and similarly mixed (including the German
guy who stand transfixed in front of the stage taking
notes of every Scotty lick), and somewhere there’s
the drunk woman from Colchester (intelligence gained
at the start of the evening by the Photographer
in the cloakroom) who staggers alarmingly onto the
stage half way through the set with a rucksack on
her back. Phew! But our shared apprehension is not
about her, it’s whether Scotty can hack it.
We shouldn’t have worried. |
 |
And
then there’s the quite excellent band. Pianist,
composer, vocalist, session man Liam
Grundy; bass player to the stars (including
the Photographer’s favourite, Alvin Lee) Pete
Pritchard; drummer Jimmy
Russell (ex Curved Air, Elmer Gantry etc. etc.
etc.); ‘guitar legend’ Dave Briggs (ex
pioneer R&B band from the 70’s Red Beans
‘n Rice) who among other things teams up with
Barcodes Glenn and Coccia in the Incredible Blues
Puppies; guest guitarist and former Roy Orbison
sidekick Bucky
Barrett; and on vocals and guitar Paul
Ansell, with a superb rockabilly voice (and
I should stress not an Elvis impersonator) and a
great way of dealing with drunken ladies with rucksacks.
From what I gather these good old boys are at the
forefront of what is called a ‘roots music’
revival – in fact my in-the-know daughter
tells me that roots rockabilly is going to be the
next big thing, but bad news chaps, you’ll
only get a big signing if you’re “young
and beautiful”. |
| Scotty
stands to the left, at the back of a crowded stage.
He grins, chats a little with the band, but says
not a word to us all night – his speaking
is done by his “very good friend and companion”
the gracious and delightful Gail from Nashville,
who tells us all how pleased Scotty is to be here.
And he looks happy enough. And after a shaky start
he really warms up, picking (with a big thumb pick)
at his gorgeous personalised Gibson (and it’s
not often I say that) ES-295, as the band move through
(among others) ‘Mystery train’, ‘That’s
alright’, ‘Blue moon’, ‘Heartbreak
hotel’, ‘Milk cow’, ‘My
baby left me’ (my notes say a particularly
impressive Scotty solo here) ‘Kid Creole’,
‘Blue suede shoes’ and finally ‘Mystery
train’ again. Now I should say that Scotty
never was the best guitarist in the world –
that’s rarely the point – and technically
he would be blown away by today’s School of
Rock hot shot Stratocaster merchants. But it’s
that picking sliding riff style (think ‘Heartbreak
hotel’) and the sound he achieves from guitar
and amplifier (I’m told he still uses his
original Ray Butt’s amp that dates back to
1955, ‘though I can’t swear he had it
with him on Monday) that is just electric. |
 |
The hand that touched Scotty Moore |
And
you could see everyone slowly lighting up with smiles
as Scotty got into his stride and hit those notes.
Quite how a quiet, unassuming, and rather frail
old man in his mid-seventies managed it I don’t
know, but even the 14 year old boy at the next table
put down his Gameboy and started to watch (much
to the delight of Mum and Dad, and everyone else
in the place). Oh yes – and as he had to walk
along the balcony to get back to his dressing room
at the end of the gig, I did that thing, gently
held his arm and said “Thank you Scotty”,
on behalf of Serge, Mike, and all you Whiskyfun
rock and rollers out there. - Nick Morgan (photos
by Kate and Nick except Gibson Scotty Moore signature
ES 295). |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
|
|
|
|
|
There's nothing more down there... |
|
|
|
|
