Photo: James Burton | By Jackson Maxwell, Guitar World | Though the name James Burton may not immediately ring a bell for everyone, you’ve almost certainly heard his playing. If, somehow, you haven’t, you’ve definitely heard someone whose playing owes Burton a great debt.
Burton’s list of session credits – even among the titans of the Nashville electric guitar scene – is mind-boggling. Country greats spanning multiple generations (Brad Paisley and George Jones), R&B and soul legends (Ray Charles), Great American Songbook masters (Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin), and rockabilly pioneers (Ricky Nelson and Jerry Lee Lewis) have all utilized the Louisiana native’s services. Oh and, of course, he served as Elvis Presley’s live guitarist for eight years.
Though the names he backed got much of the adulation, fame, and credit for shaping rock and roll as its known today, Burton arguably deserves just as much recognition as the Elvises and Ricky Nelsons of the world. It was his supple fretwork, after all, that guitarists cutting their teeth on rock’s formative tracks were focusing on.
“I never bought a Ricky Nelson record, I bought a James Burton record,” Keith Richards explained when inducting Burton into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.
As one can glean from the breadth of his discography, Burton can handle just about anything that’s thrown at him, but it’s in the country and rockabilly arenas that the guitar legend really shines.
An example of that prowess can be seen in the killer clip below, in which – around about the 1:35 mark – Burton gives an up-close demonstration of his awe-inspiring chicken pickin’ technique.
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An absolute groundbreaker as a player”: His Telecaster mastery was the backbone of records by Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, and countless others – watch James Burton demonstrate his incredible chicken pickin’ technique… Read the whole article here and watch the video:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/absolute-groundbreaker-player-telecaster-mastery-100022930.html
Photo: James Burton | from his Facebook page
How Many of James Burton’s Records Have You Purchased? Probably More Than You Knew!
