Something 4 The Weekend # 121

Roy Clark: The Lightning Fingers Of Roy Clark: "Chicken Wire" [mp3]

My dad loves guitar slingers, especially those from his formative years in the 1950's and '60's...Guys like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Duane Eddy, Scotty Moore, Chet Atkins, Eddie Cochran...And this guy, Roy Clark...

Roy seemed to hold a special place in our house...Not just with my dad, but also with my mom, and I always figured it was because my dad looks a fair bit like Roy Clark...

Roy was so beloved in our house, in fact, that I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've probably seen 99% of all the Hee-Haw episodes ever made...Every Sunday evening after dinner on the PBS station in Milwaukee, good ol' Channel 10...

Whatever...Circa 1963, when this album was released, Roy Clark did have lightning fingers, even in a town like Nashville, which has always been full of fast cats...What's great about this particular song, which is otherwise a fairly unremarkable Roots Rock song, is his imitation of a chicken at the beginning of his solo...Roy was always a pretty funny guy...So is my dad, or at least how I remembered him back then...

Nowadays he watches alot of Shirley Temple movies (WTF?!?!?!?) and plays bingo at Indian casinos...

But this album still cooks - bluegrass, rock, polka, swing, twist, surf - it's all here, and most of it's played lightning fast...

Hotcha! Hank