By: Rick Landers
Over the years, blues-rock artist, Linwood Taylor, has forged ahead nailing down gigs, improving his game and building a reputation as an A-list musician in the Washington, D.C. area with a deep music history rarely fully appreciated.
The town and its surrounding areas have been the home of gifted musicians as diverse as: Tim Buckley, Danny Gatton, Roberta Flack, Yasmin Williams, Eva Cassidy, Roy Buchanan, Dave Grohl, the Bad Brains, and as historic as Duke Ellington and John Phillips Sousa.
Linwood performs his own eclectic mix of rock, blues, jazz, and more, inspired by disciplined and talented musicians he heard on local radio, as well as in D.C.’s live music hubs, like The Bayou, Blues Alley, The Birchmere, JV’s, The Twist and Shout, The Wax Museum, The Cellar Door and more. And in his quest to achieve not only success, but credibilty, he would reach out to meet musicians he admired. He’d find himself on stage with the likes of Curtis King, Dave Moore, Luther Allison, Lonnie Mack, the Blues Brothers, and his friend and mentor, Joe Louis Walker.
Albums would follow as he navigated the music business and stamped out recordings of his own, and was featured on those of others. Head to the grindstone, Taylor released: Live At Colonial Seafood, (1991) Take This and Stay Out Of Trouble (1993), Make Room For The Paying Customer (2000), and his more current, Two Sides, while also being featured on GeminiiDRAGON’s latest, Moonlight Movin’ & Groovin’.
“Explosive guitar solos …. With a classic rock feel that sounds familiar, and plenty of twists and turns to keep things fresh ….” – Scott Paddock, Mobtown Music Guide
“One of Washington’s Leading Blues Guitarists” – Washington Post Magazine
I met Linwood at one of the D.C. areas longest running and most ambitious live venues, JV’s Restaurant, that has attracted the attention of legendary musicians since it opened in 1947, including: The Seldom Scene, the Steve Miller Band, Tony Rice, the Country Gentleman, who’ve stopped by to enjoy the entertainment and-or to entertain. He pulled out his two guitars, a vintage ’54 Les Paul Gold Top and a ’58 Les Paul re-issue, opening up our discussion about guitars and anecdotes about musicians he’s worked alongside. Afterward, he stepped on stage to nail down some riveting licks to the pleasure of JV’s crowd. And my first thought was, “This guy’s the real deal”.
Guitar International is honored to feature Linwood Taylor, Jr., a treasured musician not only in his local D.C. haunts, but one who’s made a name for himself while on tour at the Sanremo Festival in Italy; the Czech Republic; Australia; and the private Mustique Island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
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Rick Landers: Let’s start out from the beginning when you were growing up, what kind of music were you listening to? I know that typically we had the Top 40. How does that influence you now, as a musician?
Linwood Taylor: Oh, man. No, it just was whatever was around. I mean, I was a kid. My father was a music fan, I still have his albums, as well as mine. We had big band jazz, you know, that kind of thing. That was in my house, but we also had rock ‘n roll. We also had jazz, like organ jazz, you know, Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, and all of that. I can remember Chubby Checker and that kind of thing. “The Twist” and “Hound Dog”…Leiber and Stoller wrote that, but Big Mama Thornton had a hit with it first.
And then I read a book about how Lieber and Stoller had their rights stolen by Johnny Otis and “Diamond Jim” Robey (Founder: Peacock Records).
Linwood Taylor
Rick: Well, you know, rock and rock and roll, you know, music, so…
Linwood Taylor: Because they were in high school, they didn’t know about publishing. And FM started and WPGC and WOL would be playing The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, then they played James Brown and The Temptations…that kind of thing. It was all mixed up.
Rick: Yeah, it was the Top 40, and they just sort of threw in everything before the FM underground stations.
Linwood Taylor: I listened to WHFS once. I guess I was 12 or so, and my parents gave me a cassette recorder and, oh man, I had it on all night. A cool song would come on and it would wake me up.
Rick: That’s funny. So, who do you think actually influenced you the most as far as buying your first guitar?
Linwood Taylor: Let’s put it this way, a 7th grade teacher played guitar, and an 8th grade teacher played guitar and sang. Sadly, he just passed away. He put himself through school playing coffee houses. So, he would play, “House of the Rising Sun,” “Sounds of Silence”. He could play all that stuff and I remember he had a 12-string Martin. The 7th grade teacher was a nun and the 8th grade teacher was Brian Fuller.
There was Top 40, but somehow I would hear about other things, like I heard about Jimi Hendrix when he first came out and that wasn’t Top 40. There was also a Baltimore television show called The Kirby Scott Show, and they had everything, the Count Five, “Psychotic Reaction,” Los Lobos, psychedelic stuff came in. You know, ’67.
Rick: I’m from the Detroit area, so there were venues to go to, there was also the Ed Sullivan Show. People today don’t realize how prolific he was in pulling in The Beatles, the Stones, the Doors.
Linwood Taylor: Oh, yeah, I’m acutely aware of Mr. Sullivan, everybody watched Ed Sullivan.
Rick: Today, basically we have music from everywhere. So, now we’ve got access to not only Mali, but Japan, Brazil, where you get beautiful music.
Do you listen to music from all over the world, or do you explore to see what else is going on?
Linwood Taylor: I listen to a lot of different things, but my time is rather limited, um, especially for me, because I’m having to learn other peoples’ repertoire. So, I gotta invest time in that. Then I gotta play my own stuff.
Rick: So, when you’re learning a new band’s original music…
Linwood Taylor: It’s originals. That’s the whole point, you know? The retention is the most difficult thing at this point. It used to be a lot easier. And the thing is this, I can remember it and the hand memory coordination. Takes a moment, you know?
Rick: I have a new keyboard player and he plays our originals hundreds of times, so they’re embedded, so the muscle memory goes with the mental memory.
Linwood Taylor: Absolutely.
Rick: That’s why I would find it very daunting. I’m not a trained musician. Did you take lessons, or did you learn on your own,?
Linwood Taylor: I’m mainly self-taught. I’ve taken a lesson here and there, just to get some basic theory. I even took a music class. The professor told me, “You did A work, but I’m giving you a B. You shouldn’t be in music. What I’ve learned through my lifetime and I’ve heard the expression from the past, “Those who can play, play. Those who can’t, teach.”
Rick: I think that may be true.
Linwood Taylor: Really and truly.
Rick: We met a short time ago and you had, I think, a vintage ’54 Les Paul and a ’58 reissue.
Linwood Taylor: Yeah, yes, yes I did. That was the maple top.
Rick: How’d you find the ’54?
Linwood Taylor: Oh, that’s another story! I used to work at Wheaton Music.
Rick: I remember it, yeah, yeah.
Linwood Taylor: And a guy came in, December 1990, with this Les Paul. The store owner didn’t want it, because the neck had a wonky repair. The next guy didn’t want it for the same reason. I picked the guitar up, I flexed the neck and went, “This is not going anywhere. This would be great to take out and play it. Sold. So, I bought it. Little did I know, the next day a fellow said, “Did a guy come in here?” And they all went, “Yeah”. I bought it and he was furious. I played it like that for 16 years. And by that time I had a Gibson endorsement.
So, I went to the Gibson factory in Nashville and they restored it to complete original. I have the neck with the wonky repair, but they put a new neck on it. They put on the original serial number, and they refinished the back and sides, because it’s an all-gold Les Paul. But it’s not just a gold top, the back and sides are gold, too.
Rick: Oh, I didn’t notice that. There are very few of those.
Linwood Taylor: Yeah, only 5%. So, that’s a super rare one. I’m fortunate to have it, but it’s not so much of a collectible that I can’t take it out and enjoy it.
Forty one years ago, I bought a ’61 SG Les Paul. Okay? It was somebody’s player. But, for me it was clean. I couldn’t play it. I learned my lesson at that point. It’s too clean. Don’t buy it, and it probably wasn’t that good, because nobody played it.
Rick: That’s true, too.
Linwood Taylor: Everything I have is a player. More or less, or something’s been done to it to devalue it. I can take it out and feel comfortable with it, but…I’m still not comfortable half the time, you know?
Rick: Yeah, I know how that is. What about acoustics? What are you playing acoustically? Do you play 12-strings, or mostly 6-strings?
Linwood Taylor: Uh, no, I have no 12s. I play a (Gibson) J-160E, that’s a reissue. That’s mainly what I use, but then I also have a resonator. It’s actually a Dobro, it’s wooden, not a metal one. And it’s a round neck, so it’s not like one of those squares that I have to lay it down. I can play normal guitar on it. I tune it to open D, and away I go, Elmore James, for days!
You know, I’m an electric guy, I just started doing acoustic because I was turning down too much work. Thirty years ago, my first acoustic gig was opening for the Brian Setzer Orchestra. It was one of those deals and I hated being alone like that. I prefer to work a duo, because we work off of each other. You know, as opposed to just me, for lack of a better expression, “Kumbaya!” It’s just not my thing.
Rick: Who was the first artist that you were impressed with?
Linwood Taylor: That was Muddy Waters, when I was 18.
Rick: Was Electric Mud around that time, right?
Linwood Taylor: No, Bob Margolin had just joined the band. This is about six months after Bob joined the band, so this is 51 years ago. The Nighthawks were back there backstage, we’re all backstage hanging out.
Rick: How much fun. I never went backstage. It just wasn’t in my mind to think that I could possibly go backstage and meet somebody.
Linwood Taylor: I also had a good friend who sadly is gone, but who also hipped me to a lot of, um, vintage gear. I actually bought that SG Les Paul from him. He was a world famous amplifier technician. He worked with everyone…I mean everyone! Cesar Diaz. I met Stevie Ray Vaughan backstage. And nobody knew who Stevie Ray was except real blues aficionados. And Stevie told us, “Yeah, my album is coming out, and I’m on the new David Bowie album.” He was on the album, but he quit right before the tour.
He did Let’s Dance. He did that whole album, Let’s Dance.
Rick: I did have a chance to meet him when I was working , but I didn’t go…he was playing at D.C.’s Wax Museum.
Linwood Taylor: Yeah. That’s where I met him, like the first time he played there, before he played at, I wanna say Desperados right on M Street. Gradually, I met a lot of guys, blues guys. I met all the way up to, like Roger Daltry, Paul Rogers. David Bowie I met several years later, because I was doing a deal with Peter Frampton and Peter was David’s guitar player. I met Robert Plant twice. I was there there the night of the famous fight at The Bayou with Robert Plant. And then, about eight-years ago in Australia in the green room. I meet a lot of guys, and then last year I met Mick Jagger.
Rick: Have you met anyBeatles?
Linwood Taylor: No, no.
Rick: I’ve never met any of them.I met Les Paul a couple times, and a few others.
Linwood Taylor: I met Les. In fact, Cesar Diaz and I, and one of his friends, we went to see Les at the Iridium. And then, the December before my friend passed, Cesar passed, I walked into his hospital room, and Les is in the hospital room.
Rick: Oh, how nice of him to show up. So how’d you find Les? I thought he was funny.
Linwood Taylor: Oh, yeah, he was a riot! He was a total cut-up. If you didn’t know he was a cut-up, you might be offended. But, I’d been a musician for so long, it’s like, “Okay, buddy, your funny,” you know?
Rick: So, have you been on tour often?
Linwood Taylor: Enough to know that it can be a grind. But not enough to discourage me.
Rick: What was the good, the bad, and the ugly of touring?
Linwood Taylor: Well, the only bad thing…to me, was that I got trapped in Hong Kong, behind 9-11. I had to stay an extra ten days. To me, it was that I got trapped in Hong Kong. I couldn’t get home, but I was able to reach my mother, and I was able to reach my girlfriend, who’s now my wife. The club was like, the act can’t come in, so the room was booked and I stayed, because I had no place to go. But, I had to buy my own meals, which was fine.
Rick: Well, I imagine you had fun.
Linwood Taylor: Well, you know, yeah. I mean, I made friends and whatever, people would show me around, and I really got to explore the city. All I can say is Hong Kong was like New York on steroids. And the thing is, the Chinese had not cracked down at that point. It had just changed over and they realized there was a lot of money there. I mean a lot of money. I mean, in Italy, I had never seen a Lamborghini dealership. But in Hong Kong, I saw a Lamborghini dealership with five different colored Lamborghinis in the showroom. That was like “Wow!” The bass player was driving a big Mercedes. If you ever see that movie, Die Another Day, a James Bond film with Halle Berry in it, where Moore gets out of the water at the Hong Kong Yacht Club, that’s where I played.
Rick: What a great experience. So, it really opens up your mind when you travel around the world. You get a different perspective about our country.
Linwood Taylor: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know there are some things that are really cool and you know that we could do better.
Rick: How does it differ now than when you first went into a studio to record?
Linwood Taylor: Well, I had a friend that had a home studio back in the ’70s, so I did that, but the first time I was in the studio I was in a band. And we were submitting, recording original music to DC 101 for the home tapes contest. We were actually runners up. We wound up going to a big-time studio in Philly, The Warehouse. But to me, it was just one of those things. I just play, you know? Since that time, I played on the H.R. solo album, he was the lead singer for the Bad Brains.
Yeah, I’ve got a consent by them somewhere. I guess they had broken up by this point. This is 1990 and the album came out called, Charge. I recorded in, like, 89, and the album came out in 1990. They misspelled my name, but I’m still there. I’m on Joe Louis Walker’s live album, Blues Conspiracies: Live On The Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise.
I’m actually on a cut (“It’s A Shame”) with Johnny Winter, so technically, I recorded with Johnny Winter. Joe Louis (Walker) introduced me to Johnny. I met Joe in 1989 at the Twist and Shout. I opened for them at the 8×10. Joe got me in as his guest for the Kennedy Center Honors for B.B. King!
Rick: Cool.
Linwood Taylor: So, I’m hanging out in the green room with everybody,. It was one of those things. I wanted to take pictures, and I realized, “No, you can’t take pictures.” And, I left my camera in the car. I just said, “You can’t take pictures because, if you take pictures, you don’t belong there.” By this time, I’d met Bonnie Raitt, Steve Martin, Steve Cropper. In fact, I was hanging with Steve Cropper because this was the second time I’d met him. Ed Bradley, Walter Cronkite, Lou Gossett, Jr., Bill Clinton. It was all there, man, it was a total happening.
Rick: I interviewed Cropper a while ago and saw him with Booker T. and The MG’s decades ago.
Linwood Taylor: Which was my favorite band until the Jimi Hendrix Experience came out. They actually had a lot of hits, “Time is Tight,” “Hip Hugger,” “Soul Limbo”. I’m sure a lot of people don’t know that. On Albert King’s “Born Under A Bad Sign” that was Booker T. and The MG’S backing him up.
Rick: I didn’t know that. Cool.
Linwood Taylor: Oh yeah, Booker T and almost everybody at Stax, Booker T. and the MGs backed them up.
Rick: They were kind of the session players for Stax, right?
Linwood Taylor: Yeah. They were the house band, pretty much.
Rick: What projects are you working on now?
Linwood Taylor: I’m getting ready, preparing to do some touring next year with the woman, Geminii Dragon, and her husband. They just released an album, Midnight Movin’ and Groovin’, Featuring Linwood Taylor. They have some physical copies, but mostly it’s gonna be on Bandcamp. It’s better than Spotify. People are pulling their stuff off Spotify. Between the guy being kind of right wing and the pay rate. If you want to support an artist, buy the physical copy of the album. Two or three purchases of the physical copy get more than you’ll get for 20,000 streams of a particular song.
Rick: That’s right. They pay about, I think it’s, like.003 cents.
Linwood Taylor: Yeah. This is ridiculous.
Rick: Incredible. And the songwriters don’t get hardly anything.
Linwood Taylor: The technology got ahead of their business. And unfortunately now it’s gonna be next to impossible to get ahead of the laws with the advent of artificial intelligence, that’s even making things worse. People are being recreated, and it’s not even them.
Rick: Yeah, and that may occur in some other countries, so you don’t have much access to sue anybody.
Linwood Taylor: Exactly. I mean, it’s always been kind of a rip-off, and everyone got ripped off. And you just kind of tough it out. You kept working, and hopefully you retained your fame so that down the road, when you had the money to hire a good attorney and sue them to get some back royalties.
Rick: Follow the money.
Linwood Taylor: Well, look, you know Sly Stone? He got, like, $5 million, like, 20 years ago. For all the music that they were making in the late ’60s and so forth, you know? Sly, partially it was his own fault. But at the same time he got ripped off badly, and I think that hurt him too.
Rick: Oh, yeah, yeah, he had some hard times. I think at some time… at one point, he was sleeping in his car.
Linwood Taylor: Joe Louis and his original bass player, they’re all from the Bay Area. They knew Sly. I spoke to Henry, he said, “Yeah, man, I passed him walking on the street, said, “Hey, man, what’s up? He says, ‘Hey, Sylvester, what’s up, man?’ And he said, “Sly kept on walking.” And then he turned… Sly turned around and said, “Hey, man, I’m sorry, I can’t do you that way, you know?” But it was like, they know.
Rick: Yeah, yeah, what a shame, what a shame. Tell me about some of your most favorite times that you’ve had on stage, like stand-up performances, or when something funny happened, uh, or something you weren’t expecting.
Linwood Taylor: For me to hit all the right notes. With one of them, when I played in the Blues Brothers for the Capitol’s 4th, so it was on national TV, right down on the Mall; that was pretty cool. I got to play, “Soul Man,” with Sam Moore. He was cool.
So, this is on national TV, right down here in the mall, and that was pretty cool. There’s a video of me where I’m playing with Ronnie Earle, he comes to sit with us up in Massachusetts. Joe is playing harmonica and Ronnie’s playing guitar through Joe’s amp and Ronnie’s on my guitar. The next day Joe comes to see me and goes, “Why did you cut Ronnie Earle?”
I’m like, “What are you talking about?” And he said,” Man, you totally cut him!”
I said, “No I didn’t!” And in my mind, I’m not cutting anyone, I’m just playing. And it’s like, “Okay, he did that. I have to do something different!” So I did something different. I mean, appropriate, but…you know, I don’t think like that; cut throat in a competitive way. I think in a creative way. And it’s like, “Okay, he’s done that, I need to do this.”
Rick: Well, and you’re playing for the audience.
Linwood Taylor: Right.
Rick: You know, you gotta get away from the competition idea; we should be collaborating with each other, and I think that what you did was fine, so…and appropriate, you want to give the audience your best.
Linwood Taylor: Well, but the thing is this, Joe said that to me. And I showed my buddy a while later, and he goes, “Yeah, dude, you totally cut him.” I mean, everyone I’ve showed that video to on YouTube, it’s like, “eah, you totally cut him, man.” He said, “When he turns around and starts fiddling with his amp, when you start playing, that’s like you cut him.” I said, “Really?” And I said, “Oops, sorry!”
Rick: What are you most proud of? You’re looking over your music career, what are you most proud of, how you’ve handled the changes in music, new technologies, experiences? Maybe how you’ve handled, like most of us, dry spells. You’ve reached a plateau, and you’ve got to kind of reinvent yourself somehow.
Linwood Taylor
Linwood Taylor: I will say this, I have been fortunate that whenever I’ve reached the plateau, something out of the blue came my way and elevated me, is the only way I could say it. I keep plugging along, and I keep trying to get better, and sometimes it’s a matter of playing with some different people, or playing with some people who think in a different way than some of the people you play with.
Sometimes I have to readjust my thinking, and I’m saying this as it’s coming out of my mouth, and what I’m thinking it’s like you have to go for and recognize an opportunity that comes your way. You know, like all of us, we’re human. Set in our ways, this and that, but then I realized, you gotta open yourself up to something when it comes your way, because if you’re out there and you’re good, and you’re open enough, things will come your way.
And when you’re unique enough sometimes things will come your way because this is a copycat business, and when you’re are really unique you’re gonna be turned down a bazillion times, until where somebody gets it,. And all of the greats have been turned down. I mean, you think about The Beatles, they got turned down by five different record companies, including the one that signed them, they got turned down twice by them, Decca Records turned him down, then Capitol picked them up, and they just…
Rick: Took off at that point.
Linwood Taylor: Yeah. Well, a lot of people got turned down, multiple times. For whatever reason. Even Prince got turned down, but then he managed to get Warner Brothers to let him produce his own thing at first. Right from the jump, as a teenager.
Rick: That’s amazing. So, what else do you play besides guitar and dobro?
Linwood Taylor: The radio.
Rick: We’ll leave it at that. So, let’s say you’re with a band and you like each other, you mentioned opportunities. When you’re offered an opportunity to go somewhere else, how do you manage the loyalty aspect of leaving friends and going off to some project where you have the dynamic of where you feel, “I’ll stick with these guys. I won’t go for the opportunity, even though it might be better?”
Linwood Taylor: I’m getting more money on this gig.
Rick: Well, I guess we all understand that, so…
Linwood Taylor: If they don’t, too bad. You’re in the wrong business. Everyone I know who has been elevated at some point, if they’re able, they sometimes you just gotta realize you might just be better.
Rick: Yeah, well, that’s true too.
Linwood Taylor: And that’s why you’re being elevated. You know, or maybe you put yourself out there. Which is, frankly, something I have done for my entire career, if you will. If some blues guy was coming to town and I wasn’t working, I would go see them. I’d meet them and say, “Hello.” And I was always very polite and respectful. And eventually, I wound up playing with 80% of them. That’s how… and I would learn something. That’s how I elevate. Bait myself. Even to this day, I still play that game. That’s how Ron Holloway (saxophone) and I met. And I said, “Man, so how’d you get that gig with Dizzy (Gillespie)?” Well, it turns out his plan was my plan.
That’s how I played with Joe Louis Walker, that’s how I played with Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, Johnny Rawls. It’s just… I just go and see them and say, “Hey, how’s it going, man?”
Rick: At what point in your career did you decide or did you always want to be a guitar player, a musician, or was there some other alternative path that you could have, where you vectored off to become a musician rather than being a doctor or something.
Linwood Taylor: Basically, I always wanted to be a musician. I always wanted to be a guitarist. But, I went to school for business and accounting. I transferred to a different school and was told bad information. My credits wouldn’t transfer, so I went fro being one class away from being a junior to starting all over again. It took the wind out of my academic sails. And even doing that, I made a couple of friends, and I played down in North Carolina. I worked at that profession that I studied for a friend of mine’s parents’ company. But then, when corporate took over. I went over to Coca-Cola for 9 months and said, “This sucks. I can’t… I can’t see myself…I don’t want to be an old man and go, I wish I tried.” This is right before I turned 28. I just I quit and never looked back.
Rick: Was that a hard decision?
Linwood Taylor: I come from a pretty conservative family, they really didn’t understand me. But fortunately, they let me be. You know, my neighbor, who is a world-class, keyboard player, he said, “I used to hear you practicing your stuff out the window.” And I was being an obnoxious kid. I had a 100-watt Marshall, and I’m blasting with the windows open.
Rick: That’ll shatter windows.
Linwood Taylor: Oh, and of course, I’m blasting stuff that was not typically heard in this neighborhood. It wasn’t James Brown, it was Jimi Hendrix. My neighbor, Herb of Peaches and Herb. I knew him when he was a singer the first time, and then when he became a police officer. And then, he had the resurgence when they reunited with the the shake and groove thing and all that. And then we opened for Funkadelic for homecoming and this is before Parliament had their big hit, Mothership Connection (1975). They had one, get off your ass and jam.
Rick: Yeah, do you ever regret not going to places that you wish you’d gone to when you were younger?
Linwood Taylor: No, I don’t have that issue. I went everywhere that I could. Basically, I’ve went to clubs in D.C. since I was 16 years old with a fake ID.
Rick: What are you looking forward to in 2026?
Linwood Taylor: Hopefully, hopefully making it out alive! Making it make it to my next birthday!
Linwood Taylor
Rick: How about any shout outs to people who’ve helped you, pushed your career along, or motivated you, or inspired you to move forward with your career and your life, I guess?
Linwood Taylor: Well, I mean, Joe Louis Walker, for one, he really got me out of D.C.. I really started traveling with him. I got introduced. He was always the big bit of a prankster. In that, when he introduced me to famous people, this is Bob Dylan’s favorite guitar player.
Rick: That’s great.
Linwood Taylor: Because he knew I met Bob. My friend Cesar Diaz and I both met Bob together at the old Twist and Shout.
Rick: Was Bob playing?
Linwood Taylor: No, ee all were there to see the Sun Rhythm section. Paul Burleson, who was from the Johnny Burnette’s rock and roll trio, DJ Fontana, you know, all the guys who backed up Elvis during the sun sessions, we were there to see them and Bob was in town playing at RFK Stadium, he was doing a split bill with the Grateful Dead. But at the time, Bob Dylan’s backup band, get this…Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Rick: Really? I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool. Was Scotty Moore there with the Sun group?
Linwood Taylor: No, he wasn’t there, but I met Scotty Moore at the Gibson factory in Nashville.
Rick: Okay, I met him just outside of Nashville at his house. He had his own home studio.
Linwood Taylor: And Scotty played on one of Joe Louis’s albums, and in fact, Joe had The Jordanaires singing backup on his album, and that was the second time I met Scotty, because I’d met Scotty about six years earlier in Memphis. We had dinner together. Basically, we were backstage at a theater in Memphis. I was sitting at a table. He and his wife came and sat down with me, so that was pretty cool.
Rick: Yeah, talk about a legend.
Linwood Taylor: Oh, absolutely!
Rick: When I… when I talk to him he said when he first saw Elvis come into the studio, he said, he thought to himself. “That’s the prettiest man I’ve ever seen.”
Linwood Taylor: Oh, jeez!
Rick: Do you have anything coming out, like an album or anything that you’d like to talk about?
Linwood Taylor: I’m still talking about Two Sides, I’m still pushing that one. As I say, I have some things noodling…noodling around in my head as to what I want to play coming up and how I’m going to approach it.
Right now, I’m gonna concentrate on the GeminiiDragon thing. They want me to do another album. I’m more than game. I’m just working on some things, trying to come up with some different song ideas that I’m gonna use.
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