Amusingly; I had been thinking about the question of my favorite musician who doesn't sing, and it took a while but my tentative answer would be Grey Larsen (a flautist): https://kalletlarsen.com/about/grey-larsen/
Another home run with your latest Substack essay. (Or whatever you call them)
I agree with everything you said. I remember when I was about 20 or 21 or 22 that I took lessons from this jazz guy in West Orange named “Mickey West.”
At the time he was in his later years (60s? Early 70s?) and he always wore a (very old) suit and tie at the lessons, he was very disciplined and expected the same and it was pretty obvious that he had really been somebody in his day. You actually had to audition to get lessons from him.
This guy used to have me playing the violin Sitt studies which basically amounted to ridiculously difficult violin lines that were being sight read in multiple positions over the entire neck of the guitar. In Mickey‘s opinion, you had to know every single facet of how to sight read, anywhere and at any time. Multiple time signatures, positions, changing meters, insane chord, voicings, 64th notes, all of it. He would sometimes get exasperated and say to me “you young guys with your Led Zeppelin! When you get up there on the bandstand, you have no idea what music the bandleader is going to be throwing at you!”
His argument was betraying his age of course, much less the reality of music as it existed at the time I was having lessons with him versus his historical reference point of reference regarding what playing guitar back then was like and what it took to succeed. But in an odd way, I really respected him and hung in there for a good year or two, he was quirky with a narrow bandwidth, but very cool in a special kind of way. I definitely respected him and I did learn a lot, although it didn’t expand my range of chops by 1%, I would always be asking about “can we improvise today?” And he would always give me this sour look and mutter “you’re not ready yet.”
My point in telling you this kind of odd and humorous story is that I definitely came to realize that a lot of the band leaders who mentioned in your piece didn’t necessarily have the same band members as they traveled from city to city - not like a modern band who has the same drummer, bass player, keyboard player, etc. listening to Mickey tell his stories of the old days, it became obvious that the band leaders often picked up new musicians in every city because it was too expensive to travel with them all but more importantly that the sheer number of musicians were musicians who could play their ass off, and were basically dropping out of the trees.
Very interesting post! It made me think about all of the instrumentalists that made the Billboard Top Ten back in the 1970s and 80s such as Chuck Mangione, Herb Alpert, Kenny G, Frank Mills, etc. I can't think of one from the 21st Century (although there may well be at least one.) I wonder what it would take for that to happen today.
70s was the last dying breath of the instrumental hit. Only number one instrumental in the 80s was the chariots of fire theme. Since then the only other is the Harlem Shake which technically has like 5 words but it’s 99.9% instrumental so I count it
I don't entirely agree. I'm dreadfully afraid that tons of music fans HAVE heard of Kenny G. In folk, country music and blues many singers are also excellent players. Bela Fleck, to my knowledge, doesn't sing. Ditto for Chet Atkins. Jerry Reed sang, but as they say in Nashville, it didn't seem to hurt his playing any. Same for Doc Watson and Merle Travis. And many others.
At least not on his records. There are a bunch of excellent post-bluegrass pickers.
About the AFM strike. Part of the settlement of the strike was the creation of a bonus fund for people who play on recordings. There are now similar funds for those who play on commercials and on movie scores. Many musicians have never heard of these funds, and have no idea what the union actually does. Not that the union does a great job of explaining all this.
Don’t forget about surf music. It had a big influence on punk and new wave. I believe Dick Dale was the only guitarist who got top billing in this genre.
As Rick Beato has pointed out, especially in his conversations with Jim Barber: People don’t know the names of band members anymore. They may know the singer. But without music packaging, magazines, active MTV-type coverage, etc, no one knows who the guitarist or other non-singing instrumentalists are on the songs they like.
This is great. From the mic allowing for vocal crooning to the picture allowing for facial crooning. I guess I think the people want stories, and singers tell the stories. As for instrumentalists, Lizzo tells the stories and plays the flute and she’s doing all right.
THIS IS SO GOOD.
It really is. I had a vague sense of some pieces of that story; but the post does a great job of tying a bunch of different threads together.
Best sub-header ever: "When flautists got the girls" LOL
Amusingly; I had been thinking about the question of my favorite musician who doesn't sing, and it took a while but my tentative answer would be Grey Larsen (a flautist): https://kalletlarsen.com/about/grey-larsen/
For example, he plays flute on this track (which does have vocals but not words): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93r14h3zqg8
Another home run with your latest Substack essay. (Or whatever you call them)
I agree with everything you said. I remember when I was about 20 or 21 or 22 that I took lessons from this jazz guy in West Orange named “Mickey West.”
At the time he was in his later years (60s? Early 70s?) and he always wore a (very old) suit and tie at the lessons, he was very disciplined and expected the same and it was pretty obvious that he had really been somebody in his day. You actually had to audition to get lessons from him.
This guy used to have me playing the violin Sitt studies which basically amounted to ridiculously difficult violin lines that were being sight read in multiple positions over the entire neck of the guitar. In Mickey‘s opinion, you had to know every single facet of how to sight read, anywhere and at any time. Multiple time signatures, positions, changing meters, insane chord, voicings, 64th notes, all of it. He would sometimes get exasperated and say to me “you young guys with your Led Zeppelin! When you get up there on the bandstand, you have no idea what music the bandleader is going to be throwing at you!”
His argument was betraying his age of course, much less the reality of music as it existed at the time I was having lessons with him versus his historical reference point of reference regarding what playing guitar back then was like and what it took to succeed. But in an odd way, I really respected him and hung in there for a good year or two, he was quirky with a narrow bandwidth, but very cool in a special kind of way. I definitely respected him and I did learn a lot, although it didn’t expand my range of chops by 1%, I would always be asking about “can we improvise today?” And he would always give me this sour look and mutter “you’re not ready yet.”
My point in telling you this kind of odd and humorous story is that I definitely came to realize that a lot of the band leaders who mentioned in your piece didn’t necessarily have the same band members as they traveled from city to city - not like a modern band who has the same drummer, bass player, keyboard player, etc. listening to Mickey tell his stories of the old days, it became obvious that the band leaders often picked up new musicians in every city because it was too expensive to travel with them all but more importantly that the sheer number of musicians were musicians who could play their ass off, and were basically dropping out of the trees.
Very interesting post! It made me think about all of the instrumentalists that made the Billboard Top Ten back in the 1970s and 80s such as Chuck Mangione, Herb Alpert, Kenny G, Frank Mills, etc. I can't think of one from the 21st Century (although there may well be at least one.) I wonder what it would take for that to happen today.
70s was the last dying breath of the instrumental hit. Only number one instrumental in the 80s was the chariots of fire theme. Since then the only other is the Harlem Shake which technically has like 5 words but it’s 99.9% instrumental so I count it
Lyndsey Stirling
I don't entirely agree. I'm dreadfully afraid that tons of music fans HAVE heard of Kenny G. In folk, country music and blues many singers are also excellent players. Bela Fleck, to my knowledge, doesn't sing. Ditto for Chet Atkins. Jerry Reed sang, but as they say in Nashville, it didn't seem to hurt his playing any. Same for Doc Watson and Merle Travis. And many others.
At least not on his records. There are a bunch of excellent post-bluegrass pickers.
About the AFM strike. Part of the settlement of the strike was the creation of a bonus fund for people who play on recordings. There are now similar funds for those who play on commercials and on movie scores. Many musicians have never heard of these funds, and have no idea what the union actually does. Not that the union does a great job of explaining all this.
Don’t forget about surf music. It had a big influence on punk and new wave. I believe Dick Dale was the only guitarist who got top billing in this genre.
I love a good instrumental. Reading this brought a bunch to mind.
As Rick Beato has pointed out, especially in his conversations with Jim Barber: People don’t know the names of band members anymore. They may know the singer. But without music packaging, magazines, active MTV-type coverage, etc, no one knows who the guitarist or other non-singing instrumentalists are on the songs they like.
Congratulations. This is a work of 3 weeks?
This is great. From the mic allowing for vocal crooning to the picture allowing for facial crooning. I guess I think the people want stories, and singers tell the stories. As for instrumentalists, Lizzo tells the stories and plays the flute and she’s doing all right.
Interesting