Musician Link Wray 'Rumbles' into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

By Miles Morrisseau.

Indigenous musician Link Wray – considered the godfather of punk, hard rock and heavy metal – will finally be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more than 60 years after his iconic "Rumble" became the first and only instrumental song banned from the radio for fear it would incite violence.

Wray, of Shawnee descent, was nominated twice before finally winning the vote this year. He will be inducted as one of the most influential musicians in the history of rock and roll in the Musical Influence category along with DJ Kool Herc.

"Link Wray was there for the birth of rock," musician Stevie Salas, Apache, told ICT after the news broke Wednesday, May 3. "He influenced all that would become the greats we know – Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend. Jeff Beck told me he and Jimmy Page would play air guitar to 'Rumble,' jumping around in his bedroom at 17 years old."

Wray went on to also influence heavy metal and punk rock, where his music – along with his leather jackets and attitude – caught the eye of The Sex Pistols and the Ramones, and then Hollywood, with "Rumble" featured on the soundtrack for Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film, "Pulp Fiction" and others.

"That started all of Hollywood's hoorah to use Link as a way of establishing cool in a scene," Salas said, "because Link was the coolest."

The documentary film, "Rumble: The Indians that Rocked the World," is named after Wray's song. Salas, who played with Rod Stewart, Mike Jagger, George Clinton and others on top of a storied solo career, was the film's executive producer.

The induction caps a long effort to get Wray into the Hall of Fame by Salas, musician Steven Van Zandt and Anishinabe/Dakota author Brian Wright-Mcleod, who literally wrote the book on Indigenous music with "The Encyclopedia of Native Music," published in 2005.

"All I can say is that it's about time," Wright-Macleod, a professor of Indigenous studies at York University in Toronto, told ICT. "His enduring legacy is now cemented into the annals of rock and roll history."

In announcing this year's inductees, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation cited Wray's influence on the music world.

"If there is one musician with an overriding influence over all rock guitarists – from 1960s British rock to 1970s punk to 1980s hardcore to 1990s grunge – that musician is Link Wray," according to the statement.

"Every young rebel who has donned a leather jacket and slashed away at an electric guitar with loud, distorted abandon, owes a significant debt to Wray."

There is no definitive list of Indigenous musicians in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but among those previously inducted are Robbie Robertson, Mohawk, of The Band, and Charlie Patton, considered the Father of the Delta Blues who was African-American and Indigenous.

The 2023 inductees also include performers Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine and The Spinners, with Chaka Khan, Elton John collaborator Bernie Taupin and Al Kooper in the Musical Excellence category. Don Cornelius, the longtime host of "Soul Train," will be inducted with the Ahmet Ertegun Award.

The long-awaited announcement came just one day after what would have been Wray's 94th birthday. He died Nov. 5, 2005, at age 76, at his home in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The induction ceremony will take place on Friday, Nov. 3, at Barclay Centre in Brooklyn, New York. The documentary, "Rumble: The Indians that Rocked the World," is currently available on Netflix.

Striking a chord

Fred Lincoln Wray Jr. was born May 2, 1929, in Dunn, North Carolina, to Fred Lincoln Wray Sr. and Lillian Mae Wray, who was Shawnee.

The Hall of Fame took note in its announcement that Wray was of Indigenous descent.

"Raised in North Carolina with Shawnee origins, Fred Lincoln Wray Jr., joined his brothers in a band that played a mix of country and rockabilly music," according to the announcement. "While his family suffered racial discrimination due to their Native American background, Wray later honored their heritage in songs like 'Comanche' and 'Shawnee.'"

He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War in the early 1950s before he hit it big with "Rumble," released by Cadence Records in 1958. He quickly followed that up in 1959 with "Raw Hide," another hit not related to the popular television Western.

"Rumble" climbed both the pop and R&B charts and at one point was banned from radio for fear that the title, a reference to a gang fight, would stir teenagers to violence.

Wray had experimented with feedback and distortion during live performances, but could not recreate that same sound in the studio. He finally took a pencil and started jabbing holes into the tweeters of his amplifier, creating his revolutionary sound and the power chord that made him famous.

Musicians discussed the impact the song had on rock music in the documentary film.

"It was the sound, the chord progressions, that was the thing. It was the way they didn't understand the feedback," said Marky Ramone, who went into the Hall of Fame in 2002 with The Ramones. "It was the groove. It was so many things that turned people off."

Other artists also heaped praise on Wray.

"There may not be a Who if there were there no Link Wray," said drummer Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters, who were inducted in 2021 before Hawkins' death in 2022. "There might not be a Jeff Beck group without a Link Wray. There might not be a Led Zeppelin if there were no Link Wray."

Slash of Guns and Roses, in the Hall of Fame class of 2012, enthused, "It is the rawest form of the kind of guitar that a lot of the guys that I listened to, that is where it started. And it still sounds better when he does it."

Added Iggy Pop, the punk rock pioneer who went into the Hall of Fame with his band, The Stooges, in 2010, "'Rumble' had the power to push me over the edge. It did help me say, "F*** it, I am going to be a musician."

Robertson, who went into the hall in 1993 as a member of The Band, said Wray caught his eye before he knew he was Indigenous.

"Rumble made an indelible mark on the whole evolution of where rock and roll was going to go, and then I found out that he was an Indian," Robertson said in the film.

Wray's music has been heard in numerous films, perhaps most memorably in the restaurant scene between Uma Thurman and John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction." but also in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," 12 Monkeys," "Desperado," and "Independence Day."

In 2008, "Rumble" was added to the archives of the Library of Congress.

"He has been called the 'missing link' in rock guitar, the connecting force between the early blues guitarists and the later guitar gods of the 1960s (Hendrix, Clapton, Page)," according to the announcement from the Library of Congress. "He's the father of distortion and fuzz, the originator of the power chord and the godfather of metal. He seems to be as well the reason the word "thrash" was invented, or at least applied to music."

Two newly discovered recordings were released by Easy Eye Records after his death, "Son of Rumble" in 2018 and "Vernon's Diamond," in 2019.

Revolutionary music

Salas told ICT that he got a private alert just before the announcement that Wray had finally made it into the Hall of Fame.

"Late last night I got a private confidential text from a friend," Salas told ICT on Wednesday, May 3. "He was sharing with me the great news that Link Wray finally was going in the Hall ... When I woke up this morning, I got a call from Stevie Van Zandt and we both were so happy."

Salas said Van Zandt, who played in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and played Silvio Dante in "The Sopranos," pushed to win recognition for both Wray and Patton.

"It was Stevie Van Zandt that fought for Link to have his song 'Rumble' in the Hall Of Fame jukebox," Salas said. "It was Little Steven who also pushed to get Charlie Patton into the Hall. We also spoke this morning about hoping to make sure Link's story is correct when he goes in because we were all very disappointed when Charlie Patton went in and they didn't bother to mention he was Native American but instead that he was African-American."

Salas also praised Wright-McLeod for his efforts.

"It was Brian and his book about Native American recordings that taught me all about these details that led to me pitching the story to the Smithsonian [National Museum of the American Indian] and then going out and getting the film made," Salas said. "Brian Wright-McLeod is a hero."

The impact will now live on in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"Legions of guitarists testify that the 'big bang' for them was the first time they heard Link Wray's revolutionary instrumental, 'Rumble,' a ragged slab of edgy, brutal distortion that he laid down in 1958," according to the Hall of Fame announcement. "The rebellious, sonic onslaught of 'Rumble' cut through Top 40 radio like a steamroller."

Reprinted with permission from ICT.