#Elvis pink tones tv
Storylines were specially written to feature Ricky’s band, so James was now a TV star and would be the guitar player on all of Ricky’s many hits right up until 1966.īurton was poached by Johnny Cash around 1965. Ricky was a singer, and when he heard Burton play he knew he had to have him in his band.īurton agreed and left Shreveport for Los Angeles, spending two years at the Nelson household. Ozzie and Harriet were a real-life couple – shots of the outside of the house were of the pair’s real home – and the show also starred their son, Ricky Nelson. The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet was an incredibly popular TV show which went on to become the longest-running sitcom in US history (now pipped by The Simpsons). While in California they landed a slot on the NBC television network’s Town Hall Party show, and things suddenly began to snowball for the 16 year-old Burton. I guess I was probably one of the first to do that… or maybe the first, I don’t know.” Electric dreamsīy 1956, Bob Luman – with Burton on guitar – had chalked up a string of hits and was invited to appear in a Hollywood movie. The sound was so different… I loved it, man! It became my sound. “I used those banjo strings for the first four strings, and then I used the regular D string in place of an A string and the regular A for the E. “The banjo strings didn’t have the little balls at the end which holds them in place, so I would have to cut the ball off a regular string and attach it to the banjo string to hold the tension.
The strings in those days were very stiff and I wanted to bend them, so I experimented with the banjo strings and it worked out perfectly. “In the mid-50s I developed a little style called chicken picking – it’s just my way of playing. It’s like when you hear Dolly Parton sing – you know who it is.”īurton’s style involves a fingerpick slotted onto his middle finger as well as a normal flatpick. You create an identity, then it’s easy to pick out on the records. It was God’s given gift, he was my teacher, and I don’t know where else I’d have gotten that kind of training. “I just played a little different – in the sound, and the approach to the chord structures. James Burton performs live on stage with the Emmylou Harris Hot Band. I kind of took a little bit of each one and made it one,” muses James. “My thing is country music, blues and rhythm and blues all mixed together. It took in many influences, including a love of the steel guitar developed from playing with Hayride steel man Sonny Trammell. When Elvis played the Hayride I was always on tour with a country singer called Bob Luman.”Īfter a year on the Hayride, Burton’s distinctive style was fully formed. I played behind George Jones, Billy Walker and Johnny Horton but I never played it at the same time as Elvis. “It was held at the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport… there’s so much history in that building, it’s incredible.
This was the show that launched the careers of big names like Hank Williams, and such was the buzz around Burton that he was asked to join the house band, still only 14. The big gig in town was the Louisiana Hayride, broadcast live every Saturday night on KWKH radio. So impressive were his skills that not only did he play at parties – the usual outlet for underage prodigies at the time – but he was also granted a special permit from the local police station to play the local bars and clubs.
#Elvis pink tones pro
Entirely self-taught, he turned pro at the tender age of just 14, encouraged by talent contest victories in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. Despite this, James Burton has never had a guitar lesson.
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