Bob Dunn

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Robert Lee "Bob" Dunn (born February 5, 1908 in Fort Gibson , Oklahoma , † May 27, 1971 in Houston , Texas ) was an American western swing and jazz guitarist . As "probably the first electrically amplified steel guitarist", Dunn made the steel guitar an "essential part of the Western Swing Band."

Live and act

Dunn, whose father played fiddle, became interested in playing the Hawaiian guitar in his early years and played steel guitar as a teenager ; from 1927 he toured with the touring company Panhandle Cowboys and Indians . Influenced by the jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden , from then on he combined jazz with influences from Hawaiian music in his playing and used a horn-like phrasing that was contrary to the Hawaiian style of the time. Kevin Coffrey described the sound of Dunn's game:

“[Dunn's] tone and phrasing was very much like a trumpet, and when he went into the higher registers he sounded striking at moments, as if Louis Armstrong was being replicated on the Steel; in others he sounded more like a trombonist . "

In 1934, Dunn played with various local jazz and blues bands in Fort Worth . There he met Milton Brown , who invited him to a studio session. Then Dunn became a member of the band Browns, Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies . In 1935, Dunn constructed a pickup for his Gibson guitar and was the first to use the electric guitar in Brown's band , as in the country- influenced song Takin 'Off, which became Brown and Dunn's signature tune, and in more jazz-oriented numbers like Chinatown, My Chinatown (1935), I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You (1935) and Yes Sir! (1936).

In the following years Dunn increasingly played western swing with an electrically amplified steel guitar. Until Brown's death in 1936, he made a number of recordings with the Brownies. A year later Dunn worked with Roy Newman , then with the ex-Brownie musician Cliff Bruner and his band, the Musical Wanderers, also with Roy Newman, Buddy Jones , Leon Selph and his Blue Ridge Playboys (1939) and with Bill Mounce and the Sons of the South . During this time Dunn recorded titles like It Makes No Difference Now, When You're Smiling , I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate and I'll Keep on Loving You with Bruner .

In 1938 Dunn founded The Vagabonds (with pianist and singer Moon Mullican and Leo Raley, who played an electrically amplified mandolin , among others ), with whom he played titles such as Basin 'Street Blues, You Don't Know My Mind and for Decca Records It Must Be Love (1939). For Robert Palmer , Bob Dunn's horn-like melodic phrasing is reminiscent of Django Reinhardt ; Jeffrey J. Lange wrote:

“Bob Dunn's Vagabonds produced some of the most sophisticated string band sounds of the time that had little of the niceness of a country band. The musical interplay between Mullican's bluesy vocals and piano playing, Raley's amplified playing on a single string and Dunn's jazzy outbursts on the steel guitar created a sound that was a decade ahead of its time. "

Dunn's group played music that appealed to a more urban audience, a mix of blues (Mean Mistreater), jazz (It Must Be Love) to pop music ( Blue Skies ), with the band's music becoming more pop around 1939/40 -oriented stylistics. Dunn's "unorthodox" use of the electrically amplified steel guitar also influenced the young guitarist Charlie Christian .

After completing his military service in World War II, he played in various bands until the late 1940s, before retiring as a musician and opening a music store in Houston.

Bob Dunn was posthumously inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame and the Western Swing Hall of Fame in 1992. In 2010 the Origin Jazz Library label released a double-CD compilation of the guitarist's recordings entitled Western Swing Chronicles, Vol. 5: Master of the Electric Steel Guitar 1935-1950 .

Discographic notes

literature

  • Anthony DeCurtis: Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture . Duke University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-8223-1265-4 .
  • Cary Ginell: Milton Brown and the Founding of Western Swing . Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 0-252-02041-3 .
  • Dave Oliphant: Texas Jazz: 1920–50 - The Roots of Texas Music edited by Lawrence Clayton, Joe W. Specht, pp. 37-65. Texas A&M University Press, 2005, ISBN 1-58544-492-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Handbook of Texas Music , edited by Laurie E. Jasinski. 2012.
  2. ↑ Nick Tosches: Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock 'n' Roll . 1996, page 180.
  3. ↑ With the Rickenbacker Frying Pan , the first mass-produced electrically amplified steel guitar came onto the market in 1932.
  4. ^ Jean A. Boyd: The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing . 2010, page 116.
  5. ^ Bob Dunn - Western Swing Steel Guitar Pioneer in Brad's Page of Steel
  6. ↑ a b c Jeffrey J. Lange: Smile when You Call Me a Hillbilly: Country Music's Struggle for Respectability, 1939-1954 . 2004, p. 101.
  7. ↑ a b Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed September 4, 2015)
  8. ^ Robert Palmer: Church of the Sonic Guitar . In: Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture , edited by Anthony DeCurtis, 1992, p. 17
  9. Jump up ↑ Wayne E. Goins, Craig R. McKinney: A Biography of Charlie Christian, Jazz Guitar's King of Swing . 2005, page 117.
personal data
SURNAME Dunn, Bob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dunn, Robert Lee
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American western swing and jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Gibson , Oklahoma
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 1971
Place of death Houston , Texas