Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Discussion of history's greatest guitar player.

Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby DagerRande » Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:59 pm

Doug, the real test of Chet's proficiency was with his live performances and not his recordings. There are stories of how he showed Jerry to correct recording mistakes with a razor blade and splicing. I'm sure he didn't need to do that often but I wouldn't spend too much time trying to listen for mistakes on anything he recorded because there's no guarantee that he recorded everything flawlessly in one take. I know that may be a "bubble burster" and it certainly was for me years back when I learned that! When I was playing guitar for Mickey Rooney's wife, Jan, I took her to one of Chet's concerts in Pasadena. That was as close to a perfect performance that I had ever heard!
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby Doug Working » Tue Jan 02, 2018 7:27 pm

I remember the anecdote you mentioned about splicing. As I recall Christopher Parkening was in the room (my all time classical guitar hero) and Parkening, after witnessing the splicing demonstration, ingenuously asked "Why not just play the piece through with no mistakes in the first place?"

Also, I want to remember which tune it was where at the end if the recording Chet was heard to comment "Mistakes and all."

It may have been a tune he recorded with Merle Travis, if memory serves.

But I wancha to know I don't "listen" for Chet's mistakes. Sometimes I'll just hear it if a harmonic is off or something. Even with minor mistakes, Chet was a zillion times better than I will ever be even in my dreams. If I ever achieve being one tenth of Chet's ability, I'll die a cappy hamper.

Doug
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby kwarren » Wed Jan 03, 2018 3:13 pm

Doug Working wrote:The Bojangle mess-up, was that after his surgery? I know for a fact he knew Bojangles forwards and back, and I recall the first time I heard him play the arrangement on the Mike Douglas show in the 70's. I was young, and my jaw dropped. If Chet messed up on that one, having known the arrangement in his sleep, I wonder if it was due to the brain surgery. Or perhaps it was BEFORE the surgery, but the cancer was messing with his playing skill.


Doug, The two shows I am referring to were in the early to mid 80's. I wasn't able to attend the shows but luckily they were broadcast over the radio so I was able to record both shows. :)
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby Doug Working » Wed Jan 03, 2018 6:53 pm

Million dollar question; Do ya' still have the recordings???

Doug
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby kwarren » Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:04 pm

Doug, I actually do still have the recordings. Even though I did the recordings on a cheap stereo, they turned out pretty good. I think there was a storm that night so there is some intermittent buzzing at times throughout the recording…but not too bad.
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby Doug Working » Thu Jan 04, 2018 3:19 pm

Would you share them with us sometime? Pretty please with a proverbial cherry on top?
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby kwarren » Fri Jan 05, 2018 11:29 pm

Doug Working wrote:Would you share them with us sometime? Pretty please with a proverbial cherry on top?


To be honest, the files of each show are over 50mb. I don't know where on the web I could post them free of charge.
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby Doug Working » Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:42 pm

Oh. :(
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby DagerRande » Mon Jan 08, 2018 9:53 pm

I have had files much larger than 50 Mb. sent to me via Dropbox. They just uploaded them and then gave me the log-in info to download them.
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Re: Difficult Christmas Tunes To Arrange And Play

Postby Doug Working » Tue Jan 09, 2018 6:44 pm

Right.

I'll tell ya' what I miss. When I were a younger buck, I recorded every Chet TV appearance in the world on good ol' VHS tape. Then through the years of moving, and I moved a lot, they got lost. They are gone forever now, but I'd give anything to have them back.

Kind of like the fact that when I was a kid, my dad used to film us all on 8mm home movies. Before he died, he had all those movies transferred to VHS tape, and that too was lost along with the Chet tapes.

Sad, sad, sad for me to think about all this.

Doug
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