Chris Ferrell–You were on my mind. This post is for you!

While I was in Muku-Muko last week, I met a Guitar Man. I fell in love with him! He is 67–which is old for Indonesia. The average lifespan in Bengkulu Province is 67. He was jammin’!!! He showed me his Facebook page where he does live karaoke. I am trying to get his Facebook page so I can post it. You will not understand the words, but you will understand how much he loves what he is doing. He said he does not care if no one watches. He just loves doing the shows. His health will not allow him to play in public now.

He is so cute. He has done a little bit of everything. Sold fish in the traditional market. Played in a band. He said his hair was down his back when he played in the band. He is Jerry Reed, Glen Campbell, Elvis Presley cool. He has swagger. He played his guitar for a few seconds. He does not play the guitar now because his hands hurt too much.

Writing about Guitar Man made me want to hear the song. I found a few good videos of Guitar Man–written by Jerry Reed. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. The Jerry Reed/Glen Campbell video is fuzzy but still good pickin’ and sound. Below that is Elvis singing Guitar Man. His version starts with Trouble and leads into Guitar Man. His version is more rock and seems faster and of course does not include the good pickin’. He could not play the guitar. If you are interested in the background of Elvis recording Guitar Man with Jerry Reed, the story is below the video of Elvis.

During the Guitar Man recording session everyone realized there was no way they were going to get the Jerry Reed sound without Jerry Reed. Reed was gone fishing. No one knew how to find him, but Mary Lynch, was found him and he agreed to work with Elvis. When he arrived, he looked, ‘like a sure-enough Alabama wild man. You know, he hadn’t shaved in about a week, and he had them old clogs on – that was just the way he dressed.’ Jerry Reed was 30 and an individualist, even in Nashville terms. Guitar Man was number fifty-three on the country chart just a few months earlier and Reed’s first record to chart. Jerry said, ‘See, I had my own tuning, and they were trying to record Guitar Man, and they couldn’t make it feel like my record. And I forget if it was Pete Drake or Charlie McCoy or Chip Young – one of those musicians said, ‘Well, these guitar players in here are playing with straight picks, and, you know, Reed plays with his fingers’. So they called me, and I went down, and I hooked up that electric gut string, tuned the B-string up a whole tone, and I toned the low E-string down a whole tone, so I could bar straight across, and as soon as we hit the intro, you could see Elvis’ eyes light up he knew we had it’. From https://www.elvis.com.au/presley/jerry-reed-and-elvis-guitar-man-sessions.shtml