Bob Dunn

Adrian Wulff · From: Portland, OR, USA

I just got the five cd collection of Milton Brown. I'm amazed by Bob Dunn's style and tone. Does anyone know what tuning he used? How can I learn more about this guy?

Mitch Drumm · From: Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake

detailed info about bob is tough. you can read liner notes to some western swing anthologies. you can read milton's biography by his brother roy lee brown. none of which tell you much about him as a person.

do yourself a favor and get the cliff bruner bear family boxed set of 5 cds. all great 30s and 40s western swing by one of the great swing band leaders and fiddle players who passed away only a week or two ago. bob dunn plays on about half the tracks in the box. as far as i have been able to find out, dunn did not record after 1949, with bruner.

Andy Volk · From: Boston, MA

Dunn used A major tuning (E,C#,A,E,C#,A) exclusively. He began as a Jazz trombone player and was influenced heavily by Jack Teagarden, who's approach he translated to steel. He had fantastic drive and swing but IMHO, his tone was severly hampered by existing technology ... a Mexican guitar with a pre-cambrian pickup that required him to magnitize the strings with a magnet before playing. I've seen later photos of him with a Rickenbacher.

Ian McLatchie · From: Sechelt, British Columbia

Andy:
I'd argue with you about Dunn's tone. In fact, he seems to me to be one of the ultimate examples of someone who employs a crude technology to produce something truly magical. As you say, he was originally a trombonist, and the trombone-inflected lines he plays on steel are somehow made all the more effective by that brassy, buzzing tone
that a cheap guitar, a primitive pickup and
a tiny, overdriven amp produced. On tunes like "St. Louis Blues," he produces a rude, menacing sound that in its own way is quite as remarkable as anything Guitar Slim or Johnny "Guitar" Watson spewed out twenty years later. The greatest limitation to Dunn's recorded sound is often the production quality of the records themselves, which even by the standards of the time is generally not very good.

Adrian Wulff · From: Portland, OR, USA

I agree with Ian about Bob Dunn's tone.I first heard about him in Nick Tosches's book
Country;the Biggest Music in America". Tosches describes Dunn's tone as 'Great yelling dissonances burst from his bastard tool like glass against a stone wall.' The thing about Dunn is how syncopated his lines are. They do things and go places that are so unexpected and interesting that my ears have to hear a certain passage over and over again before I can decode the cipher. I plan to get the Cliff Bruner boxed set soon. I think part of the reason his tone so raunchy is that he had a tiny amp that he probably had to crank up to be heard over the band. I read in the liner notes to the Milton Brown cd set that Dunn got his Masters in music and opened a music store, in the fifties or sixties I think. Seems like there'd be people in the Houston area(where I think it says he settled down) who remeber the store or had him as a music teacher.

billchav · From: Houston, TX USA

Bob Dunn had a music store on Park Place Blvd. in Houston, just down the block from where another couple of guys on this forum were known to hang out, but it may have been a couple of years before their time. I enjoyed talking to him, but he was no longer playing much in the late 50's. Gene S. or Chuck S. may have some input, but B.B will tell you they can't remember that far back. I still have some old tapes around with Bob Dunn, Deacon Anderson and Herb playing on some of them with the late Cliff Bruner. Thanks for bringing up some good memories. Bill Chaviers

Mike Black · From: New Mexico, USA

Mike Black · From: New Mexico, USA

Andy Volk · From: Boston, MA

You make some good, points, Ian et al. The real question is whether the tone Dunn got on record is what he would have wanted or merely what existing technology could offer. We'll never know. Wes Montgomery was quoted that he was never satisfied with how he sounded on records. The positive or negative qualities of a given palyers tone is in the ear of the listener. For what it's worth, I love the slightly overdriven sound Gabor Szabo got in the 60's - partially due to the technological limitations of pick ups on acoustic guitars at that time.

Ian McLatchie · From: Sechelt, British Columbia

Andy:
I guess the simple answer is that Dunn wasn't satisfied with the tone he got on those early records, or at least with the equipment that produced it, as he later changed his set-up.
Not surprisingly for a player of that caliber, the later records really don't sound all that different, although there is a raunchiness to the earlier work that I don't think even Dunn himself was able to match.
It's the perpetual question of the role of the accidental in art. As Mike says, a player of Bobby Black's stature may find it impossible to reproduce a sound that to Bob Dunn's ears was unsatisfactory. More dramatically, the Chess recordings of the 1950's were made under the crudest conditions by a producer who, if we're to believe Etta James and others, was a complete ignoramus. A half-century later, people are still trying to recapture the atmosphere of those records.

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