Profile of Clarence White on Deft Digits

Joe Walker, Seattle guitarist and blogger at From the Woodshed, has started a new blog at Deft Digits, where he started a series called "Discover a Guitarist". He started out with Stevie Ray Vaughn, deservedly one of the most acclaimed guitarists of the late 20th century. He then opened it up to other musicians, and frend-of-the-blog Stratoblogster wrote up an introduction to the Big Dog, Scott Henderson.

I had to stand up for the Tele after two Strat players showed up, so I entered my discovery of Clarence White, touching on other favorites such as Marty Stuart and Tony Rice. Read, enjoy, and suggest your own favorites. If you find yourself wanting to learn more, I strongly suggest the Adios Lounge multi-part bio.

Roger and "Clarence" Together Again

I think, if you want to quickly grab all the trends in Rock through the 1960s, you can pick up everything you need by getting all the Byrds and all the Yardbirds. Every trend is represented. While the known songs from the Byrds are the early Byrds, my favorite era is Sweetheart of the Rodeo and after, the less vocal-harmony-oriented and more jam-bandish version, mostly with the masterful guitar work of Clarence White and his B-Bender. Marty Stuart has had Clarence White's B-Bender Tele as his #1 Tele for years now.

Here we have Marty and his band, the Fabulous Superlatives (which has to be the best band name ever!) backing Roger at the Grand Old Opry, doing a very true-to-the-Byrds take on Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere".

Get Bent

Reading the Holiday 2010 issue of Guitar Player. The one with Carlos Santana on the cover. The part that really gets me reading is the Marty Stuart article on page 50. A good big chunk of the interview is about his #1 guitar, the original B-Bender originally belonging to Clarence White. I like Marty Stuart because of Clarence White. I started buying Marty Stuart albums because of Clarence White. I now get his work on his strengths.

The one thing he recommends for B-Bender players is long-pull bender. I wish I could find more information on how to play the thing, but then again, nothing can really tell you how to play it until you have one to play. Nobody could've talked me through playing mandolin or lap steel without having a mandolin or lap steel. Which, again, makes me want to get one more.

What I find most interesting is, while there are many guitarists dropping D, tuning to D-standard, dropping C, getting baritones, 7-strings or 8-strings, and Marty, for one song, tunes a Tele that used to belong to Mick Ronson up to F. That's an interesting thing.