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Author
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Topic: Bob Dunn
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adrian wulff
unregistered
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posted 31 August 2000 10:47 PM
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I just got the five cd collection of Milton Brown. I'm amazed by Bob Dunn's style and tone. Does anyone know what tuning he used? How can I learn more about this guy? |
Mitch Drumm
Member From: santa rosa, ca
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posted 01 September 2000 01:06 AM
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detailed info about bob is tough. you can read liner notes to some western swing anthologies. you can read milton's biography by his brother roy lee brown. none of which tell you much about him as a person. do yourself a favor and get the cliff bruner bear family boxed set of 5 cds. all great 30s and 40s western swing by one of the great swing band leaders and fiddle players who passed away only a week or two ago. bob dunn plays on about half the tracks in the box. as far as i have been able to find out, dunn did not record after 1949, with bruner. |
Andy Volk
Member From: Boston, MA
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posted 01 September 2000 02:08 PM
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Dunn used A major tuning (E,C#,A,E,C#,A) exclusively. He began as a Jazz trombone player and was influenced heavily by Jack Teagarden, who's approach he translated to steel. He had fantastic drive and swing but IMHO, his tone was severly hampered by existing technology ... a Mexican guitar with a pre-cambrian pickup that required him to magnitize the strings with a magnet before playing. I've seen later photos of him with a Rickenbacher. |
Ian McLatchie
Member From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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posted 01 September 2000 08:29 PM
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Andy:
I'd argue with you about Dunn's tone. In fact, he seems to me to be one of the ultimate examples of someone who employs a crude technology to produce something truly magical. As you say, he was originally a trombonist, and the trombone-inflected lines he plays on steel are somehow made all the more effective by that brassy, buzzing tone
that a cheap guitar, a primitive pickup and
a tiny, overdriven amp produced. On tunes like "St. Louis Blues," he produces a rude, menacing sound that in its own way is quite as remarkable as anything Guitar Slim or Johnny "Guitar" Watson spewed out twenty years later. The greatest limitation to Dunn's recorded sound is often the production quality of the records themselves, which even by the standards of the time is generally not very good. |
adrian wulff
unregistered
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posted 02 September 2000 06:10 PM
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I agree with Ian about Bob Dunn's tone.I first heard about him in Nick Tosches's book
Country;the Biggest Music in America". Tosches describes Dunn's tone as 'Great yelling dissonances burst from his bastard tool like glass against a stone wall.' The thing about Dunn is how syncopated his lines are. They do things and go places that are so unexpected and interesting that my ears have to hear a certain passage over and over again before I can decode the cipher. I plan to get the Cliff Bruner boxed set soon. I think part of the reason his tone so raunchy is that he had a tiny amp that he probably had to crank up to be heard over the band. I read in the liner notes to the Milton Brown cd set that Dunn got his Masters in music and opened a music store, in the fifties or sixties I think. Seems like there'd be people in the Houston area(where I think it says he settled down) who remeber the store or had him as a music teacher. |
billchav
Member From: Seabrook, Texas 77586 USA
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posted 02 September 2000 07:32 PM
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Bob Dunn had a music store on Park Place Blvd. in Houston, just down the block from where another couple of guys on this forum were known to hang out, but it may have been a couple of years before their time. I enjoyed talking to him, but he was no longer playing much in the late 50's. Gene S. or Chuck S. may have some input, but B.B will tell you they can't remember that far back. I still have some old tapes around with Bob Dunn, Deacon Anderson and Herb playing on some of them with the late Cliff Bruner. Thanks for bringing up some good memories. Bill Chaviers |
Mike Black
Member From: New Mexico, USA
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posted 02 September 2000 09:10 PM
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The best article on Bob Dunn is by my compadre and one of the hippest young Western Swing historians, Kevin Coffey. "Steel Guitar Colossus: The Bob Dunn Story" It's in the "Journal of Country Music" put out by the Country Music Foundation, 1-800-255-2357 Ask for Vol #17 issue 2.
I visited Bob's surviving brother John in 96 at Muskogee, Ok. As close as I could get to Bob.(I was 11 years old when he passed) John has since passed. While there I visited Bob's Grave and left a thumb pick and my thoughts. I have a 90 minute cassette tape of Floyd Tillman and the late, great, Cliff Bruner recollecting stories about Mr. Dunn. Cliff goes on to say it was Bob that coined the phrase "Steel Guitar". I don't doubt it for one second.
His tone was just that, HIS tone. Bobby Black told me he's been asked to get Bob's sound and said he just plain couldn't! Ted Daffan was an electronics geek and more than likely tweaked every east Texas cats amps at that time. I have a 30's Epiphone amp, there's nothing to them. But I could see them tweaked to the point of explosion!
With no disrespect to todays young players, Give me the old cats any day! I'm amazed at all the times I'm the only one around without grey hair.
As Jerry Byrd said to Bobby while he was in Hawaii recently, "No mater what we think we're gettin old!" Make friends with these guys cause one day you won't be able too!
Hey Mitch did Bob ever show up on any of Roy Newmans recordings after the war? In the article I mentioned he is sitting at a multi neck non with a Wide Panel Pro behind him so that had to be after 52 though the caption says late 40's.[This message was edited by Mike Black on 02 September 2000 at 09:13 PM.] |
Mike Black
Member From: New Mexico, USA
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posted 02 September 2000 10:53 PM
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I just went and actually looked at the photo, shoulda done that first. Bob's sitting at an odd single neck with legs that look like they fold up. And the WP Pro is behind George Ogg the Sax player. The caption says 48 but Fender was making TV front stuff till 52. And it's not even Roy Newman and his Boys it's Bernie Leaders and his Western Rangers! Which is shorter my memory or my.... life span.
For you guys that don't know Mitch Drumm is the man for ANY thing recorded. Take a Bow Mitch. |
Andy Volk
Member From: Boston, MA
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posted 05 September 2000 11:41 AM
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You make some good, points, Ian et al. The real question is whether the tone Dunn got on record is what he would have wanted or merely what existing technology could offer. We'll never know. Wes Montgomery was quoted that he was never satisfied with how he sounded on records. The positive or negative qualities of a given palyers tone is in the ear of the listener. For what it's worth, I love the slightly overdriven sound Gabor Szabo got in the 60's - partially due to the technological limitations of pick ups on acoustic guitars at that time. |
Ian McLatchie
Member From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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posted 05 September 2000 04:29 PM
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Andy:
I guess the simple answer is that Dunn wasn't satisfied with the tone he got on those early records, or at least with the equipment that produced it, as he later changed his set-up.
Not surprisingly for a player of that caliber, the later records really don't sound all that different, although there is a raunchiness to the earlier work that I don't think even Dunn himself was able to match.
It's the perpetual question of the role of the accidental in art. As Mike says, a player of Bobby Black's stature may find it impossible to reproduce a sound that to Bob Dunn's ears was unsatisfactory. More dramatically, the Chess recordings of the 1950's were made under the crudest conditions by a producer who, if we're to believe Etta James and others, was a complete ignoramus. A half-century later, people are still trying to recapture the atmosphere of those records. |
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