Stratosphere Boogie

West, Speedy and Jimmy Bryant

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Beware: Flaming Guitars

Purveyors of quickstepping boogies and clippety-clopping two-steps, guitarists Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant were a well-matched tandem. West played pedal steel, and specialized in swooping melodies. Bryant, the first guitarist to endorse the Fender Telecaster, played six-string with an accountant's precision. The chugging and choogling traveling music they made was ahead of its time. And, apparently, slightly too spaceage for mainstream tastes.

West and Bryant first met at a Los Angeles club in 1948. After several years of studio work—backing Tennessee Ernie Ford and Kay Starr—they began recording as a duo in 1952, and over the next four years met with sporadic success. Radio stations didn't play the duo. The Nashville establishment certainly didn't know what to make of the wild West-Bryant instrumentals, which sent the pedal-steel-plus-standard-guitar attack of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys to Jetsonian outer limits.

The recordings collected on Stratosphere Boogie are freewheeling and astonishing, explosions of guitar derring-do without equal. Here is bebop with a twang ("The Night Rider"), fiddle tunes brushed with a touch of Hawaiian soul ("Old Joe Clark"), and weepers that show West sliding and swooping over the fretboard ("Sleepwalker's Lament"). The music feels alive and off-the-cuff, because that's how West and Bryant made it. In the liner notes, West recalls that they'd each bring two songs to a session. Neither heard the other's material until it was time to record. "We did that on purpose so we had a spontaneous sound."

Genre: Country
Released: 1952-1956, Capitol (Reissued 1995, Razor & Tie)
Key Tracks: "Stratosphere Boogie," "Old Joe Clark," "Speedin' West," "The Night Rider."
Next Stop: Les Paul: Crazy Rhythm
Book Page: 854

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