GENERATIONS: Studio Guitarists Harold Bradley, Dann Huff and Guthrie Trapp
By Edward Morris
© 2010 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
Guitarists Harold Bradley, Dann Huff and Guthrie Trapp represent that reliable continuum of sound that makes Nashville Music City. It’s impossible to listen to Country radio for more than a few minutes without hearing samples of their handiwork.
Long before Bradley, 84, was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2006, he was widely regarded as the world’s most recorded guitarist. The list of classic songs on which he played is vast and wide, with Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry,” Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” a few among many. During a single week in 1962, he played on sessions for Margie Bowes, the Cotton Pickers, Don Gibson, R&B great Clyde McPhatter, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Elvis Presley and Conway Twitty. (His total take for that week: $196.16 — before deductions.)
Huff, 49, won his spurs as a pop player in Los Angeles before returning to his native Nashville. A two-time CMA Musician of the Year winner, he applied his guitar wizardry to albums by Clint Black, Mariah Carey, Peter Cetera, DeBarge, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Reba McEntire, Tim McGraw, Selena, Barbra Streisand, Shania Twain and many others, and has earned distinction as a producer for Faith Hill, Lonestar, Martina McBride, Rascal Flatts, LeAnn Rimes, Kenny Rogers, Keith Urban and other Country mainstays.
Trapp, 31, has recorded and performed for clients including Garth Brooks, Jerry Douglas, Vince Gill, George Jones, Patty Loveless, Lorrie Morgan, John Oates and Travis Tritt. A native of Pensacola, Fla., he was a highly regarded musician on the Gulf Coast circuit before moving to Nashville in 2001.
What was the first session you played that actually ended up on a record?
BRADLEY It was 1946 in Chicago. There were no recording studios in Nashville then. I did my first session — actually an album — with Pee Wee King. It was Western swing.
HUFF Mine was for a guy named Greg Guidry, a pop project in Los Angeles (Over the Line). I was about 19. I remember James Stroud and (Toto bassist) David Hungate also played on it. I was in tall weeds.
TRAPP The first thing I remember doing not long after I moved here was for a guy who came over from Germany. I played acoustic guitar and mandolin on the record. I walked in and there was (bassist) Willie Weeks and (former King Crimson drummer) Ian Wallace. I was maybe 21 and I really felt intimidated by those two guys because I’d grown up seeing their names on records.
Have the demands or expectations from artists or producers changed from when you began doing sessions?
BRADLEY Why don’t we talk about a little history? In 1947, my brother Owen (producer) called me, and we went and played the first recording session in Nashville, at Castle Recording Studio. It was a jingle and we got paid $17. I thought I’d really made it.
HUFF Castle?
BRADLEY It’s not the one you’re thinking about (Castle Recording Studios in Franklin, Tenn.). This one was on the corner of Eighth and Church, in the Tulane Hotel. Back then, there was no echo in your amplifier, no tremolo, no effects. It was direct to disc, which meant you couldn’t make any mistakes or else you had to do it all over from the top. Even with three track recording — the band was split left and right with a voice in the middle — until they finally got to where there was a separate track for each instrument, we didn’t have the ability to go back and correct any mistakes.
Did the musicians read from charts for those sessions?
BRADLEY There was no number (musical notation) system at first. No headphones. But the A Team (Nashville’s top studio players) was very versatile. We went from Bill Monroe to Henry Mancini. We never used a cartage company to carry our instruments to the studio. In the trunk of my car, I carried a tic-tac bass, a Martin D-18 guitar, a nylon-string guitar, a tenor banjo, a mandolin, a ukulele and two electric guitars. I had one amplifier in the car seat and another guitar tuned to high third. On special requests, I would bring my archtop guitar and a 12-string guitar and maybe an electric sitar. I even played tire chains once on a song about a convict trying to go over the wall.
Dann, you hit your stride as a session player in Los Angeles, doing rock and R&B dates, before coming back to Nashville. What changes have you observed since then?
HUFF Nowadays, because of the fact that recording is everywhere and anywhere at any time, you don’t have a demo system to come up through. There’s no way to become kind of “half-professional.” There’s a lot of freedom in that, but some fundamentals have been lost. Recording technology moves so rapidly that young musicians spend half their time just keeping up.
TRAPP Trying to keep up with all the technology and your gear — all that stuff together is tough. It’s a full-time job. I come from a roots background — bluegrass and acoustic music — but I play a lot of electric guitar too. I guess in the '80s and '90s here, it was just slamming. Now there’s just so many people moving here, the competition is intense. There are a lot of good young players here now. Compared to these guys, I’m just getting started.
HUFF In the period I went through, we got the handoff from Harold’s generation: It was like sports. We started getting more money. Everything was double (Musicians Union) scale. We were doing no better work, but we were making probably $800 for every session we played — that is, if we were the main stream of players. If you do three of those a day … Well, you do the math. With that pay scale came a certain sense of entitlement and greed. It’s just human nature. Laziness sets in because you just feel you’re entitled. Pick up a guitar and play a C chord for three hours: Hey, that’s $800. Things are going back now to a more reasonable level. As a producer, I’m having to ask my buddies to play on my records because the budgets I’ve been given (by the record companies) don’t support that kind of spending. All of a sudden, there’s a little more hunger, a little more responsibility in the sessions.
BRADLEY I want to comment on something Dann said. We did have a training system here, like a minor league. A guy could make $35,000 a year playing demos. Then, if he played a lick on a demo a producer liked, the producer would say, “I need that guy.” We never worked for double scale here — unless we were the leader — until (producer) Jimmy Bowen brought the practice here from the West Coast in the 1980s. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not knocking it. I’m just saying that’s what happened.
HUFF At that point, record sales were just monumental, and it was right that musicians reap a little bit of the rewards of that. It’s not as healthy a demo scene here as when I was coming up. But there are still demos. I notice a lot of the top players now have to do everything. They play on the top records, they go on the road and some of them play demos too. The key is working and being heard, being relevant. Guthrie’s right: There are a lot of new guys coming up. I don’t know them all but I want to find out who they are. They’re fresh and they’re hungry to work. I think it’s going to be real positive.
TRAPP I’m 31 and I’m starting to feel old. It goes back to technology. These kids have access to everything, all around the world, through their iPhones or their laptops — anything from finding amps and pedals and guitars to finding music and influences. Everything is just broader.
Is it still common for people with no formal training in music to make a career in studio work?
HUFF Nobody cares about that. If you’re good, you’re good.
TRAPP Growing up, I played in clubs. I didn’t have any formal music training at all. I’m still learning to read charts and stuff. When I first moved here, I didn’t say no to anything. I just kind of jumped in there and played by ear and feel. Formal training alone can’t give you that.
BRADLEY Somebody asked me if I could read music, and I gave them Chet Atkins’ answer: Not enough to hurt my playing.
HUFF It’s more than just musical skills. You can be a great musician and be a horrible studio player, the reason being that studio playing requires teamwork. There’s a certain selflessness involved. It’s not about you. It’s very humbling work. There’s a core of players I use who are tried and true. That’s the difference between making records here on a budget as opposed to making band records. You work with a band and you live in the studio for three or four months. Here, we’ve got to do it in three-hour increments, and the tab runs pretty high.
TRAPP You can’t experiment.
HUFF I do a lot of experimenting at home. That’s how I balance that out. As a producer, you’re looking for players who you know are going to give you that 90 or 94 percent of what you need for that situation every time. You have to bank on that. That’s what still keeps the talent pool kind of tough to get in here. You pretty much get a shot and that’s it. If you don’t deliver pretty quickly, that word spreads quicker than how good you are. There is some pressure. Careers are built on those moments.
