JIMMY BRYANT

Jimmy Bryant is one of the finest country pickers to have walked the face of the Earth. Instead of gushing about his six-string wizardry, I'll include some quotes from his partner, steel player Speedy West, the other half of the duo deservedly known as "The Flaming Guitars".

source: Article from: Guitar Player magazine, Written by: Rich Kienzle

"They built a set, and we sat behind this box, this frame. It had cut-out flames in front of it in different colors, and it looked like we was sittin'in a pit of fire. And they had one of those smoke machines and a wheel with different colors."

"If it hit our minds, we'd try it right on the record session. One of us might hum a lick, and the other would start working out the twin guitar harmony to it. If the lick didn't prove successful, we'd either put it out of our minds, play it backwards, or hum another lick."

"I never did hear one of the songs he wrote, and he never heard one of mine, until we got in the recording studio. We did that on purpose, so we had a spontaneous sound. If we did 10 takes, we never played the same chorus twice after we played something pretty good - like,'I believe I'll play that on the next take."

"And we'd start playing the next take, and sometimes Jimmy would stop and say,'What the hell's the matter with you? Can't you think of something else?' I'd do him the same way. We did this to get an exciting feel. We just let our minds run rampant. If we were on a network television show, and a new thought struck us in the middle of the dad-blamed show, we'd let loose and try to do it. It might be a big, bad mistake, but it might be something real good, too, so we'd try it."


Jimmy Bryant died of lung cancer in 1980. His tombstone reads "Jesus's Guitar Man".
Listen to Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant "Pickin' the Chicken".