Roy Nichols - No Stranger to a Tele - Ask Zac 72

well hello friends and welcome to another Ask Zac today we are going to talk about Roy Nichols uh
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pretty hard not to after last week's episode on buck Owens and dawn rich i just felt like i had to continue the
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Bakersfield thing and uh oh my goodness yeah Roy Nichols one
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of you know another one of the great telecaster players and one of the most influential country telecaster players
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uh so many people heard the you know haggard records or saw haggard live
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and uh and were influenced by him and he had such a great style of playing and now we're
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gonna talk a bit about his history and his gear and some of his playing we're gonna look at the mama tried
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solo and and some of his other techniques and and also talk about some kind of
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suggested listening and of course I'll have a Spotify playlist so all right
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for all you guys that have done that and uh yeah all right Roy Nichols
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so i probably yeah I'm sure i was exposed to Roy Nichols from
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uh you know from listening to merle haggard and uh you know was just really curious
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about him and also there's this whole thing between Roy and James burton about who played on certain things
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and once you start listening intently it's pretty easy to tell the difference
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between Roy and James burton because of uh
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Roy's feel and also his tone
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you know it's like if you listen to working man blues the original recording which is James burton and then you listen to like the live
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version that's like on the uh Muskogee Oklahoma live record or for
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you know other you know live things immediately you hear this bigger
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bouncier still you know twangy telecaster sound but uh Roy's tone was really rich
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and uh so yeah it starts to become more obvious so anyway let's get to the beginning with Roy so
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Roy Ernest Nichols was born in on October 21st
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1932 in chandler Arizona but soon afterwards his parents moved to
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Fresno California so his family had a uh
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a migrant camp okay and so this was this was during the depression and a lot
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of people were out of work and they had had to sell their the family farm for pennies
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on the dollar they'd gone bankrupt and lots of um especially Okies
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but uh you know all ethnicities you know were going out to California
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because there was work in the uh you know in the fields picking
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cotton vegetables fruit all sorts of other things and so what they had were you know these
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people had to have a place to stay and so they had these you know they had these camps
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and they were not uh auspicious uh accommodations but they uh you know
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certainly were good enough for people to uh to live in and work in the in the fields
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and pick cotton or vegetables whatever else so so that was the environment that Roy
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grew up in and he saw gypsies come through
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and entertain the the people at the camp so it was also common to have some type of
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stage or some area central location at the migrant camps where there would be music so evidently
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some gypsy musicians came through and Roy was influenced by that to pick up the guitar
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also his father played upright bass so Roy started playing with his dad but
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in a short period of time he went professional and so that was by the time he was 14
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and so when he was 14 he started making 25 dollars a week which in today's money that'd be about
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337 dollars in 20 21 so not a bad weekly income for a 14 year old
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however in two more years he had gotten so much better that he started playing with the Maddox
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brothers and rose and so they are a very important
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California country group they were one of the first groups to wear the uh you know what we
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think of as nudie suits even though they might have been made by Turk or some or or men well or
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but they were one of the first uh you know artists to get into rhinestone outfits and also
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they were they you know they were entertainers they they jumped around they they would get a little uh not
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dirty but they would get a little blue with some of their jokes they had they had some interesting songs and so
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Roy joined their band at the age of 16 and then his income went up to 90 dollars a week which was
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basically a thousand dollars a week in today's money pretty good so while he was working with
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the Maddox brothers and rose buck Owens and his wife at the time bonnie who later would marry merle
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haggard uh another kind of George Harrison Eric Clapton Layla type thing
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uh yeah they saw him and they were very taken by his guitar playing
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and uh buck you know wanted to play like Roy Nichols uh Roy's time with the Maddox brothers
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in rose was not long it was only 18 months but during that amount of time he recorded over a hundred songs with
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them and he played seven nights a week and what brought his stint with them to an end was gambling so it was against
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the the rules for anyone in the band to gamble and he was caught gambling multiple times and finally he was thrown
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out of the group well he uh went back to California and uh you know he started playing on
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radio shows and doing different things and then he hooked up with lefty Frizzell
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and this is where merle haggard sees Roy play and so uh yeah
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so Roy's playing merle sees him and of course he thinks Roy Roy is an amazing guitar
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player and also you know merle is very taken by lefty for Zell and and and and actually me kind of
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imitates lefty at different times and he you know merle was a great imitator and he kind of shows that on some of his
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live albums so anyway uh Roy leaves lefty for zell because he says it was a
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horrible gig he starts playing with a cousin herb Henson who's a dj
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and has a radio show he does that for quite a few years
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then he uh he starts working with Wynn Stewart uh Wynn Stewart is one of the kind of
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architects of the Bakersfield sound uh he has some some great tunes probably big big love
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or it's such a pretty world today or probably the best known you know Wynn Stewart songs
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then merle haggard plays bass for a win steward for a time and then
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merle gets his capital deal and uh he hires Roy Nichols in 1965
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and Roy actually takes a pay cut to go from win Stewart's band to merle's
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because he believes that merle has more potential for success and he's
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absolutely right so then uh during this time
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it's kind of interesting because you know Roy plays on some very early stuff playing acoustic guitar
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and then when you get to the swinging doors in the bottle let me down
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album uh Roy's not really on it and the big singles on it bottle let me down
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has James burton and swing indoors has Phil Baugh and the reason for that was that uh
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you know Roy was having to support his family and so you know he was going out and playing
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with Wynn Stewart and such you know and didn't end up on those sessions
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so you have this guitar style that's kind of it's being created by James but it's
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also being created by Roy and in the in the biography the running
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kind merle haggard is quoted as saying that the merle haggard guitar sound
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is a combination of James burton and Roy Nichols saying more specifically that the
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chicken pick and stuff is James and comes from James and that
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the string bending is from Roy and uh
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you know and and really the signature guitar lick and like in the buck Owens episode you
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know i talked about last week um there was a big thing about having signature licks well Roy
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created the signature merle haggard lick and it's this [Music]
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and you know at this point in time you don't think it's that groundbreaking but
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starting with a note already bent and coming down was groundbreaking in the 1960s that was
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not common most people did not start with a note already bent and then come down and so he not only did that but then he
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landed on the dominant seven you know the flat seven which again was very uh
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you know it's it creates movement and tension and so again that was not a common thing
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so Roy created the string bending part the signature merle haggard lick and James
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burton kind of brought the uh the chicken picking element so yeah so
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again you know James plays a fair amount of guitar but then more and more roy starts being brought in some he's
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playing acoustic sometimes he's playing harmonica and then with mama tried
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which is what i played at the beginning of the beginning of the show that's where roy really started to get
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to shine and so now James and Roy are both playing on that cut
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and so here we'll i guess we'll just go ahead and do kind of the the the quick lesson portion and I'm gonna
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show you James burton's part uh James burton's part first which he played on a fretted dobro
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and so this is James's part and I'm playing the open d string with my pick and then with my
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fingers I'm playing this you know d note on the g string that's on the seventh fret and
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then on the tenth fret you've got this a so you're doing banjo rolls you're
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doing a forward roll and then it's all backwards roll so a forward roll is
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and a backward roll is so this is the James burton dobro
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fretted dobro lick that that starts the uh the song
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slower okay so that's James's part and then he
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continues to play a variation of that but it's a lot less busy during the the first verse or so okay
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now to Roy's part and this is where Roy first really gets to shine on electric guitar and he plays
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the signature merle haggard lick twice you have this
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so here you so here you are up at the 12th fret you're pre-bending it
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[Music] up [Music]
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all right so there's the intro that's you know James and Roy's
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parts then you get to the solo where you start to get you get a repeat of that you know the
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intro motif and you get some of Roy's style
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that comes from listening to Django Reinhardt and you know from the gypsies and
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listening to junior Bernard that played with bob wills and the Texas playboys and junior had this very
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bouncy uh aggressive bluesy style and uh yeah so i'll just play it okay so
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here's the solo and this is the way he played it on the original recording
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[Music]
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so you have that original thing [Music]
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then you have this kind of bouncy open string thing
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no first you have this coming up to play over the g chord
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[Music]
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then comes the bouncy part slower
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[Music]
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all right so then there's on the live recording uh from um that's the
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live from Muskogee Oklahoma he does a variation of it so this is what he does on on that
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version [Music]
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so that he does a little bit of embellishment where he uh you know does a little bit more over the g chord and then the ending
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lick he you know he he bit he does another pre-bend
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you know he does a pre-bend for both coming down to the dominant seven and uh and before that so you have the
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[Music] and that's really cool and i like the
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live version uh you know i mean the the studio recording is great but that's uh that's
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a really really cool and again in this solo you really get a lot of you know his elements so you get kind of
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the business you get the pre-bends you get the bouncy open string things that he would do every once in a while
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and yeah just some really great Roy Nichols elements uh one other you know kind of
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technique that he he would do and i think and again this kind of comes from Django uh was he would do these these half step
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bins so you have like in in d [Music]
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you have these these half step bends like he does on everybody's head the blues sometimes
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[Music] and that is a really cool uh you know
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bend and technique and he you know so again you're hitting the fifth and then you're uh and then
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you're you're taking this uh you know
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what the what note is that oh it's an a flat yeah you're an a flat to an a and so
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[Music]
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that whole thing so yeah very very cool half step bends are are nice and he had
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such a big fat tone all right so let's talk a bit about uh some great
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recordings and examples to show you you know what Roy Nichols is capable of
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well to hear him doing of course his best you know western swing stuff would be this a tribute to the best damn
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fiddle player in the world which is of course merle's tribute to his hero bob wills
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and you get to hear you know Roy along with tiny Moore who's the electric mandolinist who played a five
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string bixby mandolin you get to hear Eldon Shamblin on his early 50s gold strat but eldon's mainly
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playing rhythm or some of the harmony lines but you can really you know when roy gets to uh what gets going especially on
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roly poly so roly-poly is a really great one on here all right
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this is one of the absolute gems and this is on Spotify and this is a this is easy to find on vinyl uh merle
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haggard and the strangers oaky from Muskogee recorded live in Muskogee Oklahoma
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uh wow this is killer killer killer stuff um Roy's playing a uh you know a late
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50s telecaster through a silver face twin with jbl's most likely
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and uh you know you get to hear him really kill it on mama tried no hard times which is an old jimmy
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rogers tune uh and that was from the jimmy rogers tribute album that he did and
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James burton played the original solo but again Roy Nichols had this way of taking
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whatever he did and making it his own so i mean he he really takes James's solo and takes
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it to another level and it's even more impactful uh silver wings even on that tune which
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some people think is pretty tired he plays he turns the tremolo on the amp and uh and just does this really big twangy
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solo uh you know fugitive swinging doors just on and on and on and a great version of workman blues they do
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an instrumental uh called blue rock that's on uh let's see is that on this one
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yes blue rock that's uh on one of their instrumental albums but this this is just gold highly recommended
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this is the album that you need to get and then the second one you need to get is another live one
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fight inside of me and again you can see him here he's got the uh you know the uh late 50s
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telly that he put a black pickguard on and he just kills it here you get to
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hear a little bit more of his western swingish playing like on Karina Karina and such they do hamming it up and uh
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this is really fun for merle haggard's uh imitations that he does where he imitates marty robbins
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and uh oh you know johnny cash and all sorts of and buck owens
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really great album the tones on it killer and another live album uh
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a lot of people think this is the best one and i it it is killer uh this is where he went merle went down
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to new orleans and kind of was doing more kind of dixieland influence country
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music that's kind of jazzy great album another another must-have
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all right now we get to the instrumental albums that the the strangers did so this is
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the first one i like this one a lot it's great uh it's not it's not easy to find
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uh sometimes you end up having to pay 20 to 30 bucks for it but it is great it has the original version of hamming it
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up as a great instrumental version of mama tried and they do tennessee flat top box which
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roy nichols played the acoustic guitar on the original version of tennessee flat top
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fox by johnny cash so a little trivia for you there of the instrumental albums this one is
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my favorite this is the second one it's called introducing my friends the strangers and
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you know of course you get another picture of his uh late mid to late 50s telly that he had
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put a black pickguard on and of course you know the silverface drip edge twin
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this one's killer it's got steel and corn on it and you know street singer and blue rock and
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working man blues and uh you know just you know of course killer you know
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norm hamlet yeah all right getting to know the strangers
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this one's you know this has a great version of caravan on it and it's another you know it's another you know great one but not as good as
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the others and this one is is not my favorite but again this is another one of them this
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one was from 73 so anywho so those are
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recordings uh yeah so roy uh you know continued to play
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with merle up until 1987 when he retired and seemingly at some point in the 70s
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he had some type of reaction to something or some type of neurological thing where his playing
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uh kind of changed and i think it was around in the mid 70s and i'm not sure what happens and i
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don't want to get into a lot of conjecture but uh you know seemingly he had to retrain
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himself to a degree and his playing was still great but not quite as good as it had been
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you know before that uh yeah he uh they they brought on clint
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strong before roy left the band and they had the two of them in the band together for a while and that was that
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was really killer uh unfortunately uh roy was playing a les paul custom or a pvt 60 by
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that point which uh it's always uh you know frustrating when your hero starts playing some
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you know strange guitar and they they go away from their original sound but that's your thing all right so let's
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talk gear uh roy played you know like epiphone or gibson
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archtops you know early on and including with the maddox brothers and rose
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by the 50s he was playing a fender stratocaster sunburst with a maple neck
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and uh you know of course by the time he was playing with with merle you know merle was very much
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into the fender sound and they he and merle had matching 1965 it looks
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like 1965 telecasters that have a spaghetti logo but they're maple cap necks
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so that kind of limits it to being you know 64 65 which would be about the time
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that you know roy you know joined merle's band and merle probably would have gotten a deal with
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fender because he had a you know a record deal with capital and was you know seen as an up-and-coming
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artist so they both had matching uh you know and they
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it looks like the pick guards are almost kind of minty green looking but they have maple cap necks no no
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skunk stripe on the back no walnut plug on the front but then not long after that he starts playing a late
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50s mid to late 50s telly and it has you know the string tree and the logo in this location so that means
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it's post 56 and you know pre you know rosewood board
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and then it doesn't look to be a in pictures that i've seen it doesn't look to be a top loader so
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it's probably a 57 or 58 telecaster which like this 57 esquire and the only
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thing he did to it seemingly was he changed the scratch plate to a black one so i don't know if he had that made or
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he got it from fender or what but i think it's kind of funny in that he you know he had a telly that they had given him and then he dropped it
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for a uh an older tele and then used it quite a bit because that's the guitar
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that's i mean probably on a lot of the recordings like you know
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mama tried and in those live albums in fact you can see the guitar on the live
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albums uh you know in the pictures and so i'm not sure about the live and new orleans album
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but the live in philadelphia and the live in muskogee oklahoma are most assuredly a 57 or 58 tele
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so yeah as far as picks he used a fender medium and he would at least later in life
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he would take a hole puncher and he would punch a hole in the middle of the pick and sometimes he'd chew on the pick too
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to help him grip it and and some say he also liked to you know kind of chew on the edges so he
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could get a different sound kind of you know if you've ever had a pick that's kind of messed up on the edge
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it well it gets a different sound to it so uh and then as far as strings we're not
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sure uh i talked to red volkart um well in my interview with him we talked about
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it and he you know wasn't really sure in fact i text texted red volkart just today
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and read you know said probably he used you know black diamond strings early on but he said merle had a deal
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with ernie ball going back you know really early so uh he probably used ernie ball strings you
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know with with haggard um you know at least by the late 60s and uh we don't know what gauge no one
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knows what gauge of strings that uh you know that roy used i'm guessing he used at least tens if
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not 11's could have used as heavy as 12s but it certainly used an unwound third string
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so that would kind of lead more toward tens or 11's or maybe he put together his own set
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so yeah and then you know he added a tele and then into you know a twin reverb
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usually with jbl speakers uh the uh the late 50s telly kind of
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disappears by you know 7172 and you know he starts playing a black
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uh telly that you know fender most likely gave him then he starts playing a lot of 50s
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tellys and throughout the 70s like on austin city limits and other performances
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you see him with various early 50s telecasters some of them have you know white pick
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guards some of them have a charlie christian pickup and a little plaque that danny gatton
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modified some of roy's guitars and then you know roy starts playing a les
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paul deluxe with many humbuckers at sunburst he starts playing pvt 60 he switches to
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using pv amps using the session 400 with the big gold jbl you know 15 inch speaker and then he was
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using some by the end in 87 he was using a les paul artisan which is a really ornate
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les paul custom with a pv session 400 amp so uh still playing great but not not
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quite the 50s telly into the end of the twin kind of sound that he
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had earlier on he uh he ends up having a stroke in 1996
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and that ends his playing and he was still kind of playing locally but then he
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he stopped with the stroke and then in 2001 uh july 3rd 2001 to be exact he passes
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away so and he leaves behind just uh you know a great body of work which of
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course you can check out on on my spotify link or go pick up those albums
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but uh you know what an amazing player what a great tone and so influential
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even down to uh like vince gill uh talks about how he rolls the tone
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control down some on his bridge pickup and that he got that from roy that uh
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roy taught him to do that and uh yeah i think that just sounds like i would i would love to ask
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vince to uh to tell us that whole story about meeting roy but maybe someday but uh
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anywho yeah what a great player uh i'm kind of in indebted to certain people
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for helping me with information on this one would be terry downs who
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did this uh you know kind of dvd and little booklet a while back called the guitar styles of roy nichols and this is
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something i paid to download and he did a great job on that and there's some bio information in there then other
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information i got from red volkhart both through interviewing him for the true tone lounge we talk a lot about
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roy in in his interview because he's a hero of reds and of course mine
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and then also uh yeah those yeah those those are my sources for information for
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roy besides of course album jackets and things like that if you want to do a deep dive into roy
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nichols then yeah get those albums and man i would contact red volkart and get a
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lesson from him there's probably a few people that could help you learn more about roy than red volkart
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also mint morris who's a texas guitarist has a lesson series on roy nichols and he
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does a great job on that too so you can check those out all right guys well thank you so much for uh joining me
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and talking about roy nichols and thank you to everyone that has supported the show thank you
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for picking up you know these t-shirts especially this blueprint you know schematic one that's been flying off the shelves
31:25
and for uh you know friends have asked zach and for uh putting money in the tip jar
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i really appreciate it i hope you have a great week bye