Don’t Worry

  • Artist: Marty Robbins
  • Label: Columbia
  • Year: 1961
  • Producer: Don Law
  • Engineer: Glen Snoddy
  • Studio: Quonset Hut Studio, Nashville

Notes:

Distortion
A 6-string tic tac bass, performed by Grady Martin, gets the sound they later called "Fuzz Tone," when -- according to engineer Glen Snoddy -- a transformer begins to fail on the console input. You can't miss it: solo at about 1:30.
Rather than avoid the mistake, they embrace it, even allowing it to return at the close of the tune. The transformer likely failed completely not too long after, and the sound would have disappeared if not for the wisdom of engineer Glen Snoddy, who helped develop a transistor-based circuit approximating the sound, which Gibson developed and marketed as the Maestro Fuzz Tone. This, the first commercially produced distortion pedal, would get the spotlight when used by Keith Richards for those rather important three notes in the opening riff of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones.

Echo
Marty's lead vocal gets a classic slap back echo treatment.

Chamber Reverb
That echo on Lead Vocal, likely tape slap, is feeding a chamber. Though present on the vocal throughout the tune, it's nicely revealed at 0:30, "Love can't ….. be explained."


Sources

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