From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Sun Oct 27, 2002  2:57 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Floyd Cramer
 
FLOYD CRAMER

Born 27 October 1933, Samti, Louisiana

Died 31 December 1997, Madison, Tennessee

Though mostly labeled as a "country pianist", Floyd Cramer will also be fondly
remembered by rock and roll fans for his contributions to countless rocking
records. In fact, Floyd Cramer can be heard on so many recordings that he must
have been virtually a prisoner in RCA's Nashville studio, especially during the
years 1955-1965. Floyd Cramer, Jr., was born in Samti, Louisiana, but grew up in
the small town of Huttig, Arkansas. His parents bought him a piano when he was
small and wanted him to take piano lessons, but young Floyd didn't want to take
lessons at all. He began playing by ear and got really interested in playing
around the time he was thirteen. His musical career started in earnest when he
graduated from high school in 1951 and hustled a job on the Louisiana Hayride in
Shreveport. There were virtually no studio pianists in Nashville when Floyd
started going there in 1952. After a few years of commuting, Floyd talked to
Chet Atkins about relocating and becoming a session pianist. Chet said he
thought that Floyd could make a good living working sessions in Nashville, so
that's where the young couple Floyd and Mary Cramer moved to in January 1955. By
that time Floyd had already made several records under his own name for Fabor
Robison's Abbott label. His second single, "Fancy Pants" (which he would
rerecord for RCA in 1958), was also released in England, on the famous London
label. After he moved to Nashville, music publisher Wesley Rose got him a
contract with MGM Records, for which he made seven singles that have never been
rereleased. It was not until Chet Atkins signed him to RCA in 1958 that Floyd
hit the Billboard Hot 100 (# 87) with his first 45 for that label, the great
"Flip, Flop and Bop". However, it would be his fourth RCA single, "Last Date"
(1960), that made his name a household word. It got to # 2 on the US charts and
is a perfect example of the technique that Floyd has become associated with. He
himself calls this the "slip note" : accentuating the discord in rolling from
the main note to a sharp or flat. Or in Floyd's own words: "It's a near miss on
the keyboard, you hit below the note you want and then immediately slide up into
it". Before "Last Date", he had already incorporated this technique in his style
on Hank Locklin's "Please Help Me, I'm Falling", earlier in 1960. "Last Date"
stayed at number 2 for four weeks, only being kept from the top spot by Elvis
Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight", another record Floyd had played on. Other
Top 10 hits followed in 1961: "On The Rebound"(# 4)and "San Antonio Rose"(# 8).
After that, the hits became fewer, but by then everybody knew who Floyd Cramer
was.

What most people didn't realize was that they had heard him long before "Last
Date", on million sellers as diverse as "Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis Presley,
"The Three Bells" by The Browns and "I'm Sorry" by Brenda Lee. Floyd played on
Elvis' first RCA session on January 10-11, 1956, but the next time Presley (with
whom he had toured in 1955) required his services would not be until June, 1958
("I Need Your Love Tonight", "A Big Hunk o'Love", "I Got Stung", "A Fool Such As
I", "Ain't That Loving You Baby"), Elvis' last session before he left for
Germany. However, after Presley's return from the US Army, Floyd would become
his regular session pianist. Apart from backing many RCA artists (Jim Reeves,
Don Gibson, Eddy Arnold, Bobby Bare, Hank Locklin, Janis Martin, etc.), Floyd
also played on the Nashville sessions of many others: The Everly Brothers,
Brenda Lee, Conway Twitty, Marvin Rainwater, Marty Robbins, many Hickory
artists, well, the list is endless. Like the other members of Nashville's A-team
(Hank Garland, Grady Martin, Bob Moore, Boots Randolph, Buddy Harmon, etc.) he
knew what to play and what not to play. He could rock as hard as Jerry Lee Lewis
if he wanted to (listen to Jimmy Newman's "Carry On" on Dot, for instance), but
just as easily could he add almost inaudible embellishments to Jim Reeves' "Four
Walls". And if he felt that the arrangement didn't need a piano, he wouldn't
play the instrument at all, as on "Big Bad John" by Jimmy Dean, where he hung an
iron door-stopper onto a coat hanger and hit it with a hammer to get the
now-famous sound effect. With Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer was Nashville's most
prolific musician. Starting in 1959, he has made dozens of albums for RCA
Records, virtually all of them produced by Atkins. After a six-month battle with
lung cancer, Cramer died at his Madison home on the morning of New Year's Eve
1997.

Recommended CD's:

The Essential Floyd Cramer (RCA 07863 66591 2). Selected and annotated by Colin
Escott.

Hello Blues (RCA 74321 29859 2). His first album, from 1959.

Very Best Of Floyd Cramer (Point CD 14351, Canada)

Last Date / On The Rebound (Collectables COL 2711)