OLLIE HALSALL Rusty Strings

1973 White Sports Coat/Buttons & Bows Medium Twist This Wheel's on Fire Deep in the Heart of Texas Summer in the City Can't Help Lovin' That Man Happy Together Elvis Medley Platters Medley God Only Knows Perhaps the most bizarre artefact of Ollie's entire career, these multi-track instrumental recordings - clearly n the style of Les Paul - were made in early 1973, around the time of Patto's final, unreleased album, Monkey's Bum. Ollie had experimented with the layered speeded-up guitar tracks on the song I Need You [from the aforementioned album] and had also used the technique with devastating effect on Singing The Blues on Reds [from Roll 'em, Smoke 'em]. However, the 'Rusty Strings' tracks are a world away from such masterpieces. Quite why he chose to do them is a mystery. Equally unaccountable is why anyone would want to release them, but RCA did just that in early 1974 with a single coupling the Jerome Kern tune with a Halsall original [which does have some redeeming features]. "For the Rusty Strings project, Muff Winwood said to him, ‘Why don’t you come into the studio and do really straight-ahead stuff like The Shadows and call yourself a different name.’ So he went into the studio, called himself Rusty Strings, and recorded this bloody awful album of lift-music. That was another attempt to make money.” • John Halsey Many thanks to 'Rutling' Ken Thornton of the Patto Fan Site and Duncan Goddard for finding and researching these recordings and, especially, to Richard Elen, the assistant engineer on the sessions at Island Studios, who had the foresight to make a cassette copy. The 'flying saucer' on the cover mock-up is the container for a set of the Picato UL77 'Green Pack' guitar strings [which Ollie used] Image coutesy of David Osbiston