Acoustic Guitar recently featured a video of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash singing Girl From the North Country in 1969.

Next week (April 8) marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Bob Dylan‘s Nashville Skyline album. At the time, the album was viewed as yet another new direction for Dylan, whose previous album had been the spare, rustic, lyrically opaque, acoustic guitar-based John Wesley Harding (1967); itself a departure from the mostly electric sound of Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). Both Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding were recorded in Nashville, the latter using three local musicians exclusively, but when he returned to Nashville in February 1969 to record Nashville Skyline (released in April ’69), he embraced country music more than he ever had before—penning simpler, more straightforward lyrics, doing a deeper dive into country instrumentation as accompaniment, and also singing with a much warmer, sweeter tone than he had shown before. “Lay Lady Lay,” the Top Ten hit from Nashville Skyline, was emblematic of the “new” Dylan: Could this honey-voiced crooner be the same singer whose distinctive nasal delivery had become famous all over the world? And what was up with all that pedal steel guitar (courtesy of Nashville steel master Pete Drake, who had also been on John Wesley Harding)?

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written by Jim Radenhausen, Pocono Record Writer
Posted Aug 25, 2017 at 12:18 PM Updated Aug 25, 2017 at 12:18 PM

Any songwriter would love to have his material covered by multiple artists. Don Mclean, the voice behind the iconic “American Pie,” hit the songwriter mother lode when Elvis Presley recorded a version of his 1970 song “And I Love You So.”

“Elvis recorded ‘And I Love You So’ because at the time he did it, most everybody that sang that kind of music had recorded that song,” said McLean, who performs Friday at Penn’s Peak, Jim Thorpe. “It probably had 100 recordings of it by then. So Elvis came, and once Elvis did a song, it transformed the song, and he was going out with Sheila Ryan at the time (later became the wife of James Caan), but he would sing it to her and it was kind of their song. Elvis sang it every night for the rest of his life. From 1976-1977, there are hundreds of recordings of Elvis singing that song.”

Read full article and interview with Don here.

If you’ve spent any time on our website, then you know the story of how Pete Drake introduced Peter Frampton to the talk box.

Listen to Peter tell his firsthand account in this article and video from Ultimate Classic Rock.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHR-tI0Pj4

Click here to see the complete interview from Guitar World:

In the current March 2013 issue of Guitar World, guitar legend Peter Frampton gives GW readers the full “Dear Guitar Hero” treatment, answering 12 questions about everything from Pensa Suhr guitars to the status of his long-lost (and recently recovered) 1954 Gibson Les Paul.

As is usually the case, there was some leftover material from that interview, and you can check out the extra information here and below.

In this portion of the interview, Frampton discusses his talk-box usage and his involvement in recording sessions featuring two former Beatles — George Harrison and Ringo Starr — during the ’70s.

Remember to check out the new issue of Guitar World (with Stevie Ray Vaughan on the cover),which is available now at the Guitar World Online Store, for the bulk of this interview with Frampton.

GUITAR WORLD: Where’d you get the idea for the talk box? Did it take a long time to learn how to use it correctly?

When I was living at home with my parents in the ’60s, there was a radio station called Radio Luxembourg. They used this gadget to do their call letters. Also, I think Alvino Rey started using something approaching the sound of a talk box in 1939. But the guy who showed me the talk box was pedal steel guitarist Pete Drake. So I moved to America and found that Bob Heil was starting to make them because Joe Walsh had asked him to. Pete lent Joe the talk box he used on “Rocky Mountain Way.” I verified this the other day when I spoke with Joe at a Ringo Starr show. Pete’s wife, I think, sent it up to Joe to use on that song.
Head over to Guitar World to read the complete interview.