Link Wray - "Rawhide"

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- Saturday Night Beech-Nut TV Show. March 21, 1959.
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- Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr. (May 2, 1929 – Nov. 5, 2005) was an American rock & roll guitarist, songwriter, & vocalist who became popular in the late 1950s. Rolling Stone placed Wray at No. 45 of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. In 2013 & 2017 he was a nominee for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Though he began in country music, his musical style went on to consist primarily of rock & roll, rockabilly, & instrumental rock.

Wray was born in Dunn, North Carolina, to Fred Lincoln Wray, Sr. (1894-1978), who was born in Indiana, & his wife, Lillian Mae Wray (née Coats) (1900-1975), born in N.C. whom her son identified as being Shawnee. Wray & his family experienced discrimination as a result of being Indigenous, including times when they had to hide from the Ku Klux Klan. Wray later said: "The cops, the sheriff, the drugstore owner—they were all Ku Klux Klan. They put the masks on &, if you did something wrong, they'd tie you to a tree & whip you or kill you."

3 songs Wray performed during his career were named for Indigenous peoples: "Shawnee", "Apache", & "Comanche".

Wray served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War (1950–53). He contracted tuberculosis, was hospitalized for a year & had a lung removed which doctors predicted would mean he would never be able to sing again. Not so. Building on the distorted electric guitar sound of early records, Wray's 1st hit was the 1958 instrumental "Rumble". It popularized "the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists," facilitating the emergence of "punk & heavy rock". The record was 1st released as by "Link Wray & His Ray Men".

"Rumble" was banned in New York & Boston for fear that it would incite teenage gang violence, "rumble" being slang for a gang fight...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Wray