"Rumble" is an instrumental by American group Link Wray & His Wray Men. Released in the United States on March 31, 1958, as a single (with "The Swag" as a B-side), "Rumble" utilized the techniques of distortion and tremolo, then largely unexplored in rock and roll.
At a live gig in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in early 1958, while attempting to work up a backing for The Diamonds' "The Stroll", Link Wray & His Ray Men came up with the instrumental "Rumble", which they originally called "Oddball". It was an instant hit with the audience, which demanded four repeats that night.[6] The host of the sock hop, disc jockey Milt Grant, paid for the song to be recorded and released as a single; in turn, Grant would receive songwriting credit.[7][8]
Eventually the instrumental came to the attention of record producer Archie Bleyer of Cadence Records, who hated it, particularly after Wray poked a pencil through the speaker cone of his amplifier to make the recording sound more like the live version.[9][10] But Bleyer's stepdaughter loved it, so he released it despite his misgivings.[11]Phil Everly heard it and suggested the title "Rumble", as it had a rough sound and said it sounded like a street fight.[10]
It was banned in several US radio markets, because the term 'rumble' was a slang term for a gang fight, and it was feared that the piece's harsh sound glorified juvenile delinquency.[10] The record is the only instrumental single ever banned from radio in the United States.[12][13]
Chart performance
"Rumble" was a hit in the United States, where it climbed to number 16 on the pop charts and number 11 on the R&B chart in the summer of 1958.[14] In Canada the song also reached number 16.[15]
Another recording of the instrumental was released by Wray in 1968 as "Rumble '68", and again in 1969 as "Rumble-69" (Mr. G Records, G-820).[16] In 2014 jazz guitarist Bill Frisell released a cover of "Rumble" on his album Guitar in the Space Age![17]
In the 2008 documentary, It Might Get Loud, with the guitarists Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White, Page, the Led Zeppelin founder and guitarist, appears playing a 45 rpm single of "Rumble", apparently from his personal collection. Page discusses the record and performs air guitar along with it. Intercut in this footage is part of a conversation among the three guitarists where Page discusses listening to, "anything with a guitar on, when I was a kid [...] but the first time I heard "The Rumble" [sic], that was something that had so much profound attitude to it".[20]
"Rumble" was sampled by experimental hip-hop trio Death Grips in "Spread Eagle Cross the Block" from their 2011 mixtape Exmilitary.[21] Interviewing on television with Stephen Colbert on April 29, 2013, Iggy Pop commented that he "left school emotionally" at the moment he first heard "Rumble" at the student union, which led him to pursue music as a career.[22] The record's title serves as the title of the 2017 documentary film Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World which features, amongst others, the work of Wray and his impact on rock music as a man of Native American descent. The 1980 Adam and the Ants song "Killer in the Home", from the Kings of the Wild Frontier album, is based on the same refrain in "Rumble" (Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni has cited Link Wray as a major influence).[11]
^*Shaw, Greg (September 15, 1998). Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 (4-CD Box Set) – Sic Transit Gloria: The Story of Punk Rock in the '60s (liner notes). ISBN978-1-56826-804-0. R2756466.
^Tushnet, Mark V.; Chen, Alan K.; Blocher, Joseph (2017). "Instrumental Music and the First Amendment". Free Speech Beyond Words: The Surprising Reach of the First Amendment. NYU Press. p. 30. ISBN978-1-4798-8028-7. LCCN2016590840. OCLC946161367. Nongovernmental institutions that control forums for musical expression have also played a censoring role. For example, in 1959, federally licensed American radio stations refused to broadcast the purely instrumental Link Wray song 'Rumble' on the basis of its title's association with street violence.
^Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 637.
^Harrington, Richard (January 13, 2006). "Wray's 'Rumble' Still Reverberating". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Bob Dylan ... who once called 'Rumble' 'the best instrumental ever', visited with [Link] Wray and [Robert] Gordon backstage after a 1978 London show.
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