Travis Wammack

Listen/Download – Travis Wammack – Night Train MP3

Greetings all.

It behooves me to warn you that listening to the 45 you see before you may cause heart palpitations, nervous collapse or both, depending on how much coffee and or sugar you have ingested.

Travis Wammack is one of those names that keeps popping up on compilations of instrumental hits, due to his 1964 hit ‘Scratchy’.

Wammack was born in Mississippi but made his name playing in Memphis as a leader, sideman and working as a hired gun for giants like Little Richard (he was Mr Penniman’s bandleader for a decade).

Today’s selection, a cover of the strip club perennial ‘Night Train’. Written and performed by Jimmy Forrest in 1951, ‘Night Train’ was covered countless times by R&B, soul, jazz and rock performers, including the mighty James Brown.

Wammack’s version of the song is one of those instances of source material taken out back, draped over a pile of hand grenades, soaked in nitroglycerine and then blowed up (real good).

I mean, hot damn if this isn’t two and a half minutes of pure, unadulterated insanity. Wammack’s guitar sounds as if it’s being pumped through a Leslie speaker, and the band (just guitar, bass and drums) is recorded in as raw a fashion as I have ever heard on a major-label 45.

Ostensibly a showcase for Wammack’s guitar bad-assery, it serves more as a vivid example of what will happen when intoxicated people are let loose on musical instruments and recording equipment.

The flipside, ‘Karate Time’ is infinitely more subdued, but also quite groovy.

I hope you dig the sounds, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Keep the faith

Larry

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PS Head over to Iron Leg too.

One Response to “Travis Wammack – Night Train”

1. porky says:

   April 19, 2016 at 10:59 am

   I got turned on to Travis years ago with “Scratchy” and picked up everything I could find by him. His records get a little “samey” but the picking is phenomenal. Poor producer Roland Janes gets his name misspelled again…..Travis cut a cool version of Jimi’s “Fire” on M.O.C. 668 as the Bad & Good Boys with live crowd noise. Look for it!