WHIZ KID

It's Travis Wammack month over at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban, and as I patiently waited for his "Scratchy" to be posted over there, I thought I'd go looking to see if it was posted anywhere else, and to my surprise it's nowhere to be found as an mp3 (a YouTube link is below). Wammack has been described as a guitar prodigy, releasing his first record at the age of twelve. "Scratchy", which reached #80 on the charts, was released when he was seventeen, a year after the above photo was taken. Within a few years he would be playing on sessions for Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, Bobbie Gentry, Candi Staton, Delbert McClinton, Narvel Felts, among many others.

Thanks to a thrift store dupe my brother had, "Scratchy" has been in my stash and a instrumental oddball favorite of mine for years. It's apropos that I ran into the most awesome mix below while looking for it. The mix is from The Slop and includes his version of "Louie Louie", along with twenty six cuts by others, all of similar vintage, equal gusto, and all ripped from sufficiently worn records, as in scratchy. It's a killer mix and, as a result, The Slop's now on my map. Dig it!

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Travis Wammack - It's Karate Time mp3 at Probe Is Turning On the People 1967
Travis Wammack - Scratchy (streaming) at YouTube  1964
The mix:
The Slop's Dance Party Mix (via DivShare) at The Slop Twenty seven bona fide rip roaring stompers. Go there to check the track list.
Visit:
Excellent Wammack bio from the Memphis Flyer via Ponderosa Stop