George Barnes Country Jazz Guitar

[Jussi Huhtakangas]

Loads of great rockabilly guitar, driving rhythm-sections and fine vocals on "Janis Martin - The Female Elvis (Complete Recordings 1956-60)" available from Bear Family.

Some of it is done in New York (George is on most of those tracks, along with Shorty Long on piano, who also did Elvis' 1956 New York sessions) and some in Nashville with Chet and the 'A' team. ("Let's Elope, Baby" has some great Chet thumbstyle driving the take!)

Does anyone know what guitar George played back then? Presumably a Gibson arch-top, from which he manages to get a wonderful combination of 'bite' and fatness at the same time. Great hands!!!

Thanks, Jussi, for putting me on to this album a couple years ago.

You're welcome Roger, Janis was a sweet, sweet person and a real hoot, and her recordings deserve a lot more attention she ever did.

[Dave Mudgett]

Sorry for my ignorance, but what do I have to do to get this to play? No experience with FLAC. Would really appreciate it since he's got some wonderful stuff on here.

A couple of other points, once you find and download the files:

1. The archives of these files are in rar format, which is an alternative to a zip archive, and you will need something to unrar them. I use 7zip - http://www.7-zip.org/ - which is an open-source, multi-platform compression archiver. It has its own excellent compression/archive algorithm 7z, can archive using the usual suspects (zip, gzip, etc.), but will also unarchive quite a lot of less common formats, including rar.

2. There are no doubt a lot of ways to deal with the flac files - I use VLC Media Player, which is an open-source, multi-platform media player that will play practically anything I can throw at it (save real audio/video), and also can convert to and from many audio and video formats - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

These two programs have worked so well that I have uninstalled all my other compression archivers and media players, since I haven't used them in months.

[Michael Haselman]

Thanks Andy and Dave, I figgered it out. Used the unzip program from Dave, and I already had a program to play/convert. All I can say is Freaking Awesome!!! Kid in a candy store, though I do feel a few twinges of guilt on this great site.

[Mike Neer]

Very touching to read what George said about Carl Kress in the interview. They were an amazing duo.

[Andy Volk]

From everything I've heard he was a really good guy. When one player on the NY scene had really tough personal problems with alcohol, Barnes was a supportive friend.

Don't miss the Barnes/Kress duet record that comes with Kress-only rhythm tracks for each song. You can play duets with Karl Kress. Holly #@$%&!!!

GEORGE BARNES CARL KRESS TEN DUETS FOR TWO GUITARS FLAC

[Mark Durante]

Neither George nor Carl get the recognition they deserve it seems. Innovative and brilliant both.

[Ron Whitfield]

What truly good players get's the attention they deserve these day's from the masses who would otherwise enjoy them if promoted properly?

[Andy Volk]

Jussi, Ooby Dooby is a killer cut! Barnes must have been in his mid 30s when he cut that side. He even managed to combine his trademark clarinet licks with a rockabilly/blues approach. awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWJWbLWLkRw

[George Rout]

There is a fellow in the UK, named Dave Gould, who has a lot of rare and out-of-print George Barnes material. For a fee, he'll make you a CD copy of the stuff you are interested in. He also has a lot of material by other guitar greats from that era, including Barney Kessel, Les Paul, Wes Montgomery, etc.

His site is called "Dave Gould's Guitar Pages". http://www.gould68.freeserve.co.uk/default.htm

Geo

[Ron Whitfield]

That look's like a lot of good stuff.