The story goes that Peerie Willie first picked up the style from Joe Venuti
and Eddie Lang records heard on short wave radio back in the thirties.
The characteristics of the style are a four-on-floor swing feel, with strong
offbeats, a constantly moving bassline (cycle of fifths, scalar and
chromatic) and a variety of 'colours': extended chords (major and minor) and
altered chords (dominant). The old tension and release thing is important
as well, with what seems like a vinegary chord resolving quickly to
something a bit more comfortable. I heard Peerie Willie being interviewed
on Travelling Folk a year or two back, and he said that he had to be careful
to ration his flattened fifths when he played in a dance band with Tom
Anderson way back when.
The players don't play a different chord on every beat as such.
Accompanying a reel, for example, you generally hear the bass note on beats
one and three of the bar and the rest of the chord on the offbeats. The
chord may well change on every downbeat. So if you have a tune where the
basic harmony is: G IG IG ID7 IG IG lC D7lG ll, this might be
transformed to G D7lG G6lG G#dimlAm7 D9lG/B Em7lBm7 Bb7lAm7 D7b9lD7 Gll .
The percussive element is very important, so the voicings used will be three
and four note voicings, often with the fifth missed out (the third and the
seventh characterise the chord), a technique refined by the great Freddie
Green, Count Basie's guitarist. The strings used for these voicings would
often be 6, 4,3,2 or 5, 3,2 with the intervening string damped, and the top
string played only if you really wanted it. The satirical Mr Evans once
demonstrated 'Shetland style' guitar to a group of students by inserting a
match book under the top four strings and playing only the bass notes, while
still retaining the percussive sound.
Peerie Willie's way of playing set out the road for scores of other
guitarists from Shetland, and it's still the accompaniment style of choice
up there. Hazel Wrigley once told me that when she was very young and
learning she would sit next to PW at any opportunity, absorbing not only his
technique but his timing too. One of his best disciples is Dave Jackson,
who I think still bides in Aiberdeen. He can be heard to good effect, as
Stuart says, on the Curlew album. He used to play with the Boys of the
Lough on occasion (although never on album as far as I know). The late Tich
Richardson was also a great PW acolyte and he can be heard on several BotL
albums.
>One or more of the Shetland tune books feature photographs of guitar
>players
Tom Anderson's 'Ringing Strings' book has pictures of PW with TA in the
Islesburgh Scottish Dance Band, and also a pic of a country fiddler and a
blind guitarist, also called Johnston IIRC
>Then there's the "Hebridean Gaelic Giotar" - so many of those Gaelic
>recordings from the 60s and 70s have the same jazz/country/electric guitar
>sound - probably because its the same guy playing on them all. I just can't
>recall his name at present. I'm sure some of the early Calum Kennedy
records
>even have it.
Duncan Finlay?
>Another style is the "Jacobite Guitar" as made popular by the Corries and
>others in the 60s and 70s but now more or less gone - they could not afford
>to keep buying new strings I suppose.
What Billy Connolly used to refer to as 'battle guitar'....
David Francis
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
t/f (44) 131 557 1050 (o); (44) 131 669 8824 (h)
Stoneyport Agency representing:
The Cast; Ceolbeg;
Fiddlers Bid; Keltik Elektrik; McManus, Evans, MacLeod
www.stoneyport.demon.co.uk
Bella MacNab's Dance Band
www.ceilidhdance.com
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