James Burton: the self-effacing guitar genius who changed music

James Burton with some fat bloke in a clown suit

The three guitarists who probably had the greatest impact on popular music were Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix and James Burton. The last member of the trio may not be familiar to you, but he was Elvis Presley’s favourite guitarist, and at some stage you will have heard him on a record – probably on dozens.

Burton was a session player and a stalwart of numerous backing bands from 1957 onwards (he’s still going strong). In his time, he has toured and recorded with Ricky Nelson, Merle Haggard, Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, John Denver, Bob Luman, Hoyt Axton, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Costello. When it comes to who he recorded with, it would probably be easier to list those he hasn’t accompanied. (Bob Dylan, for instance - Burton was too busy to accept an offer to join his first touring band)

Why such a popular bunny?

I suppose it’s because he often made more of an impact on whatever records he appeared on than the singer and the rest of band combined - without hogging the limelight. He made everyone else sound great. On Dale Hawkins’s 1957 rock ‘n’ roll classic, “Susie Q”, he conjured up a hard, mean, ominous, driving atmosphere which makes it as compelling today as it was 53 years’ ago. A guitar had never sounded like that before.  Spool forwards 38 years to 1995 and hear him accompany Elvis Costello on“Leave My Kitten Doll Alone” – his simple choppy guitar pattern does more to propel the song than the drumbeat: control, clarity, attack, rhythm.

In 1960 he laid down a break on Ricky Nelson’s “Hello, Mary Lou” which practically created the “hot country” genre that would allow rockabilly to survive and prosper in disguise, minus its somewhat embarrassing tag. Burton’s solo – precise and clean and ever so slightly deranged - probably hasn’t been bettered to this day (he claims to have come up with it on the spot), and it’s a delight to play - even for a sausage-fingered amateur such as myself.

On Merle Haggard’s 1969 hit, “Working Man’s Blues”, he created a simple but urgent backing riff that’s been copied a million times since, as well as a vintage chicken-picking opening which sounds like a blue-collar worker spitting tacks. This was the hard-edged Bakersfield sound defined. Here he recreates the magic with some other notable Telemasters:

I’m convinced that without the Great Man’s influence, and that of Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons’s two legendary solo albums would either never have been released, or would by now be forgotten. “Pick it for me, James!” Parsons orders just before another classic guitar break on the  delightful “Return of the Grievous Angel”.

And then he was invited to join Elvis’s TCB (Taking Care of Business) band – quite possibly the tightest, most professional band ever assembled. It’s lovely to see one King delighting another on “Johnny B. Goode”:

When I first saw Roy Orbison’s Black & White Night on British TV in the eighties, I was far more excited to see Burton than The Big O or any of the other megastars on display (Burton’s the Man in White  – he was musical director for the event):

Then I bought myself a Telecaster and a James Burton instructional videowhich allowed a closer study of his style. First, the exquisite crispness of his finger-picking technique was partly explained – he wore metal picks on every finger on his left hand, and one on his thumb (I’ve tried it with one finger and one thumb-pick, and I can’t tell you how difficult that is). While most professional guitarists favour heavier-than-normal strings, Burton favoured ultra-light strings, which are much harder to get a controlled, consistent sound from, but which seem to allow him to move up and down the fretwork with a creamy effortlessness which reminds one of Roger Federer at his peak (Federer can be seen here playing a guitar – sort of). Burton also reveals that he treats his guitar as a percussion instrument – which may help explain why so many of the recordings he plays on have such rhythmic drive.

I love hearing how early electric guitar players invented their styles, and Burton doesn’t disappoint. Back in the 1950s, existing guitar strings didn’t allow him to bend the notes the way he wanted (he’s probably the biggest bender of them all, as it were) so he moved the five highest strings down one and replaced the top E with a banjo string. And when he first heard the great Scotty Moore playing on Elvis’s early Sun records, he had no idea the sound of double-picked strings was being achieved using a tape-delay mechanism to produce an instant repeat of each note – so he sat down and taught himself how to achieve the same effect without any artificial aids. No wonder early electric guitar geniuses like Burton were so original and influential – they had to make it up as they went along.

The old boy (71 now) is still going strong. His website reveals that a version of the old Elvis TCB band will be touring Europe in early 2011.