Song of the Day 10/10: Link Wray & His Ray Men, “Rumble”

In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, let’s put a dime in history’s jukebox to play the only instrumental ever banned by American radio stations.

Link Wray, a Shawnee from North Carolina, changed rock guitar forever in 1958 when he strummed some power chords and poked a pencil through the speaker cone on his amp to get the sound he wanted. When Phil Everyly heard the record he said it sounded as rough as a street fight — a “rumble” in the ’50s patois of what were known as juvenile delinquents. The combination of the song’s title and its sound — distorted guitar wasn’t something people had heard before — were thought to be glorifying gang violence, so many stations refused to play it.

Wray influenced an entire generation of rock guitarists, particularly Brits — Jimmy Page and Pete Townsend are huge fans. Though he periodically released new material, his career moved into low gear in the early 1980s after he moved to Copenhagen, where he died in 2005 at age 76. The last single released in his lifetime was a recording of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” It might be the hardest-rocking version of all this song’s copious covers.