TOMMY CROOK!!! WOW!!!
Mr.Will
featuring Martin Taylor but then TOMMY CROOK! All I can say is WOW - he's
incredible! Tell me, does he have actual bass guitar strings for the A and E
(lows)? Its a good idea - he sounds wonderful.
Does anyone know of any recordings or websites or just ANYTHING about this guy?
Mr.Will
Guitar and Vocal duo
www.sarahandwill.co.uk
Jurupari
>guy?
>
>
>Mr.Will
Tom Lippincott can probably tell you more since he's from Tulsa at some point
and Tommy won't leave there. Tulsa's in Oklahoma, in the center of the US
where the federal building bombing took place in '95.
I lived about 125 north of there in Bourbon County Kansas, and I first heard of
him when I was in high school. I've had people as far away as Florida and
Massachusetts listen to me play and come ask me if I had ever heard of Tommy
Crook - he's sort of an underground guitar legend in the U.S. for the past 40
years.
Tom visited and heard him live and reported here so there should be some stuff
in google. For all of hearing about him for close to 40 years, I still haven't
gotten to hear him - he's probably only recently recorded, since he seems to
prefer to live his personal life kind of stuck in the '50's, which is probably
a further sign of genius.
I've had his playing described to me in almost bar by bar detail for so long
that if I ever did get to hear him, I think I could ID him on a blindfold test.
Good to read his name here - he deserves all the recognition he can get, but
he'd probably hate the attention, from what I've heard of him.
Clif Kuplen
RobertH446
he didn't have his guitar so he ended up playing a gibson 335 , playing solo
guitar.
really didn some nice improv on each tune.
i remember chet atkins once saying he was the best guitar player he ever heard
or somthing to that effect!
bob
Dick Schneiders
He has visited him many times in Tulsa, Oklahoma and also stayed at his house a
few times. He actually convinced Tommy to travel from Tulsa to central Kansas
a couple of years ago, which not very far is still way more of a trip than
Tommy likes, to play a concert in a small coffee house. I sat in the front row
and could have reached out and touched Tommy while he played. He played a
Gibson Switchmaster with electric bass guitar strings on the 5th and 6th
strings. He used an old Hammond drum machine for rhythm and sounded like a
guitar/bass/drum trio (with a very poor drummer :-) ). Easily the best
concert I have ever attended in the 30 plus years I have been playing guitar.
My guitar teacher had recorded Tommy during some of his live gigs in Tulsa on
an inexpensive cassette tape recorder during some of his visits. I had
listened to these over and over before going to Tommy's concert so had some
idea of his talents. However, seeing him live is so much nicer because you can
better appreciate how much he can get out of one guitar.
Tommy had never recorded, other than the video mentioned here, and a couple of
self-produced cassette tapes he used to sell at his gigs. When I saw him live
he told me that he had sold all of the tapes but was planning on making some
more. He gave me his phone number and told me to call him at a later date to
get some. I called him a couple of times, but he still had not yet gotten
around to doing some more tapes. Tommy is a real laid back, sort of unassuming
person and he might never get around to doing this. My jazz guitar teacher has
a wonderful digital recording set-up and told me that he really would like to
remaster Tommy's tapes into CD's. However, he moved to Austin TX last year and
I haven't contacted him to see if he was actually going to pursue this.
I really should call Tommy again as it has been about a year since I last
talked to him. If I find out anything I will post the information here.
Dick Schneiders
Marcus A. Noel
> he played at the chet atkins convention a few years ago. was great!
>
> bob
First place I ever heard the name Tommy Crook was on
Tuck Andress' Hot Licks Video. Andress is also either from
Tulsa or spent an awful lot of time there. He also was either
a student of Tommy Crook or something like an apprentice or
disciple while he went about developing his own unique style.
If I recall correctly from the video, Andress gives high credit
to Tommy Crook and also to Buddy Fite.
M. A. Noel
onlyserious
What follows is clipped from a posting I wrote last year you might
find interesting:
Glad to see Tom posting on the subject of Tommy Crook... He is a
local legend, and probably became more well known for a 20 year gig at
the Tulsa Airport Hilton where all the travelling musicians would stop
in. That gig ended a few years ago and now he makes a living doing
the gigs mentioned on his site and lots of "society gigs." In fact, He
played at my (our) wedding reception last spring (solo, with the
Hammond drum machine--he charged $250 for a 3 hour gig and brought his
own lunch! When kids started dancing, he roared into an astonishing
version of the Theme From Sesame Street.) and it was a peak experience
for me to play the last 15 minutes or so of the engagement with him.
(I called two simple blues tunes so as to not embarrass myself--Tenor
Madness, and Kenny Burrel's Now See How You Are--he was very generous
and supportive.)
About the drum machine...he likes it because he knows everything there
is to know about it...it is rudamentary but he knows the tempo
(contolled by a single knob) and the style (pushes a single button)
and so he doesn't mess around between tunes and he has the on/off
footswitch so that's all he needs. It is so softly mixed you barely
notice it (or at least the simplisity of it) but it adds a lot but
very subtlely.
Too bad Tom got to see the closing engagement at this used
bookstore--I've seen him several times there and there were usually
only a handful of folks there--as Tom mentioned--mostly an older crowd
there to hear his Western Swing stuff. He knows the American Songbook
tunes cold, but wouldn't know many (if any) bop tunes. (He didn't
know Tenor Madness, but after he heard me play the head once he was
off and running on the theme.) But if you want Lullaby of Birdland or
Nature Boy, etc. he is astonishing. When he played Summertime at our
reception, he reharmonized it with every chorus--a highly trained
classical singer friend of ours commented that it was one of the most
amazing performances of virtuosity he'd ever heard.
One more note--He actually plays through a 3 channel Peavy keyboard
amp--it can handle the low bass strings, and has an imput for his
guitar, drum machine, and a mike--he often accompanies singers as they
sit in with him or are booked for his gigs--or he theirs.
BACK to the present:
I go see him occasionally and we chat it up. A friend of his had a
simple web page up for him--tommycrook.com--but it doesn't seem to be
working now...Tommy doesn't do computers, even though I offered to
have him over to check it out--he had never seen his page. Anyway, he
said "some guys from Boston" came to town and recorded about three
CD's worth of solo guitar last year" and are suppose to be getting
produced material ready for release... He said he didn't know when or
how it would get out ("over that internet thing, I think...").
I'll keep you posted on the local front...
Again, anybody from or in Tulsa wanting to jam, look me up. Sam
wshe...@aol.com (Mr.Will) wrote in message news:<20020626114702...@mb-cd.aol.com>...
kbrown4ou
I’m glad I just came across this because it reminds me I need to give Tommy a call and wish him Merry Christmas.
gtr
you use for the A and E?