Elvis’s first guitar player Scooty Moore had a costum made amplifier in the 50s that had a built in echo unit, the cabinet of this very amp is now for auction at eBay.

quote from eBay page:

The original Echosonic guitar cabinet used on most all the live and studio guitar work during Elvis Presley’s career (1955-1957).

You can hear it on all the hits from the early years including: Mystery Train, That’s All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Don’t Be Cruel, Love Me Tender, All Shook Up, and more.

The Echosonic was designed and hand-built by Ray Butts. While only 68 ever being built, the Echosonic found a unique place in history with a built-in tape echo (loop) unit. …

This site has a very informative primer for Indorock newbies. Indorock is the closest equivalent to Surf western Europe had at the time (early 60s). It was performed by indonesian emigrants living in the Netherlands and touring western Europe, mainly the Federal Republic of Germany.

Here are The Tielman Brothers doing an Elvis vocal during the period the above picture was taken, with Fender Jazzmasters and Bass VI.

I don’t have that many of his records – but I sure found a lot of his tracks at iTunes! He was very busy covering any style of popular guitar playing you can think of during the 60s and 70s. I guess most of you don’t know him, so for starters I made a little 42 track Buddy Merrill iMix, which you can find at Itunes.
Here’s what I wrote about it:

The versatile Buddy Merrill!
We start with a surfy/Ventures-style division before going into a nowsound/funky part. This turns over into his best bossa tracks on iTunes. After this we are exposed to a little gang of country favorites leading into Buddy’s steel guitar skills featured on his coolest hawaiian offerings. We go Exotica for the second to last bunch of tunes. This leaves us to close this collection with three tunes pulled from the classical catalogue – Where Czardas had briefly taken us during the bossa section.

Here’s his homepage www.buddymerrill.com.

Buddy on iTunes

Clayton Hula Hottie guitar picks – now those look great! Have never used or seen Clayton here in Germany.

Here’s an online article about the tune Miserlou, that has always been an Exotica favourite, and proven to be a great guitar melody over the years as well.

picture: Dick Dale