The Route 1 corridor’s newest mural in the making celebrates influential rockabilly musician Link Wray, who got his start playing local shows.
Located on Otis Street in Mount Rainier, near two other recent pieces of public art, the mural is being worked on by Brentwood artist Jay F. Coleman.
Along with his brothers, Wray was part of the house band for “Milt Grant’s House Party,” a local DC teen dance show in the vein of Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.”
They also toured local dance halls, regularly playing at the Route 1 venues like the Hyattsville Armory and the Bladensburg Firehouse. At one show at the Armory, a Hyattsville teen named JoAnne Sales was even asked to dance with a then-unknown Bobby Darin.
At another show, Wray improvised a guitar riff that came to be known as “Rumble.” The song, an instrumental because Wray had lost part of his lung to tuberculosis and couldn’t sing, became a top 20 hit.
The song became hugely influential on bands as varied as The Who and Led Zeppelin due to its pioneering use of tremolo and distortion. Because the title could refer to a streetfight, it also became the only instrumental song ever banned on radio in the US.
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The Link Wray mural is spectacular! The photo doesn’t do it justice. View it in person (3706 Otis St., across the street from the Mount Rainier Skate Park).