Wednesday, November 22, 2006

man with the golden guitar

hawaii5

van shipley was known as "the man with the golden guitar and the magical violin" and is largely considered the first electric guitarist in india. you can see him on the left in the photo above (not mine unfortunately but found on line), holding his 8 string electric creation from the 1940's. he also designed an electric violin. there's a nice extended bio and a great string of comments including some from his daughter at bagatellen.

the recordings here are from a 78 of the van shipley trio, picked up ages ago. the tracks are that wonderful soup of indian music with western influences that ended up in a lot of 40's and 50's bollywood movies (even though i can't read the labels, i'm pretty sure these tunes are from a film). shipley's take on the electric sounds like it not only came via hawaii; but also from western swing. track "61149" is an absolute beauty.
columbia 61147
columbia 61149

8 Comments:

Blogger High Power Rocketry said...

: )

11:26 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I heard van shipleys music in Africa in I968. It was sooooo beautiful. Where can I get it please?? Regards, Amina email: aminhaha@yahoo.com

7:41 PM  
Blogger sroden said...

i don't know. i bought this at a flea market years ago, i only post things rare and not available on cd. supposedly some cds of later recordings are available. check the web...

8:57 AM  
Blogger sroden said...

in case anyone was wondering i got an email from a very smart indian film lover who said "Both the tracks are from a famous 1953 movie "Aah". 61147 is "Jhanan jhanan jhanan jhanan ghungerva baje", and 61149 is "Ye shaam ki tanhaian, ayse me tera gham"

6:15 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Had my Itunes on shuffle and 61149 came on... I had to run to see what it was, I was loving it so much. I couldn't quite place it. So have to say thanks for that! Such a beautiful piece of music...

8:20 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

He's my grandfather...

1:07 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Van Shipley's tunes are magnetic. Sadly he passed away at the age of 78 in Mumbai ,so her daughter wrote to me and asked what I could do for the memory of the great artist. I am posting a few tunes I have to dedicate to him.
I happened to meet him when I was still a lad.
Premchand with love.
rajking132@hotmail.com

3:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi My name is Valentine Shipley ,friends call me Val.He gave me his name when I was born .I am his younger brothers son...
I am carrying on the legacy of my uncles guitar world.
I have 5 albums of guitar Instrumentals on Times Music.
You can read loads on my work on GOOGLE or visit my website
www.valentineshipley.com
or
get in touch thru FACEBOOK/ORKUT
See my videos on
www.youtube.com/valentineshipley
and chk out my stuff on
www.myspace.com/valentineshipley
Love to get connected
I travel across the world with shows
sply solo unplugged concerts..
PEACE
VAL

6:21 AM  

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