Lenny Breau on Mixing Country & Jazz: Plays Unreleased 'Cold Cold Heart' Solo on Classical: 1968

If you've enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to The Lenny Breau Archives Channel. We are dedicated to presenting rare, seldom heard/seen, and out-of-print music, TV and film footage, interviews and workshops of the great master guitarist, Lenny Breau

Catalogue of Content on Lenny Breau Archives You Tube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@thelennybrea...

Lenny Breau Archives Face Book Page/Group
  / 15000.  .

Please send questions and comments to [email protected]

History and Song Index

In early April of 1968, Lenny Breau recorded his first album as leader, "Guitar Sounds From Lenny Breau" in Nashville. Initially, Lenny had been uncertain about recording a jazz-flavoured album in a town regarded as the center of the Country Music universe but later (with gentle persuasion from Chet Atkins) decided that his music was a good fit with the sound for which the city was know considering his love of and background in country music.

In this interview, done shortly after recording his first album, he discusses how he liked to bring a jazz touch to the country songs with which he'd grown up. To illustrate, he plays a solo nylon string guitar version of the Hank Williams' song 'Cold Cold Heart, using an arrangement quite different arrangement from the one he had recorded a few months earlier on "Guitar Sounds".

Almost fifteen years later, Lenny would do an entire album of country music given the jazz treatment on the album 'When Lightn' Strikes', which Paul D Kohler remastered and rereleased with a bonus track as 'Swingin' On A Seven String' on his Art of Life label.

1. Lee Major Interview with Lenny Breau
2. Cold, Cold Heart 01:18