Name Your Price!

Larry in David's Attic 1970 (Gratitude 'A So Low')

David Snider was only 16 years old when Larry Coryell dropped by his home in 1970 and asked David to push record on his Teac tape recorder.  Snider had been taking guitar lessons from Coryell after hearing they lived on the same street some two miles apart from each other.  “I grew up in Nyack, New York, and I lived on Tweed Blvd.,” Snider shares.  “And Larry lived at the end of Tweed Blvd.  I had been playing since I was 10 or 11, and started taking it really serious by the time I was 14 or 15, and I wanted to get better, and I knew about Larry, so I started taking lessons with him when I was about 15.  I would go to his place on Tweed Blvd.  This was about 1969, and so I would study with him off and on.  It was just a gas playing with him and learning from him.” When asked how much lessons were back then, Snider remembers them being somewhere between $35-$50 a lesson (about $300-$400 today). “And so when that recording was made I had a Teac tape machine, and after our house burned down, me and my family moved around, we ended up in New City.  I had the attic apartment, and this was a real attic, it was like you had to put a ladder in and walk up.  It had nails sticking out of the ceiling, it was not a finished attic at all.  So Larry came over for a lesson, and he was playing my Martin acoustic guitar.  And he said ‘Here’s something I’m working on, hit the record button’. Halfway through he discovers a chord sequence, you know, going down in augmented form, and he does it again because he pleased himself with it.” What unfolded was an improvisational-style piece Coryell had been working on, a piece which would ultimately make its debut some 4 years later on the seminal album Introducing the Eleventh House featuring Larry Coryell.  This piece would morph itself into “Gratitude ‘A So Low’”, a catchy play on words, only the piece itself had some technicality to it. For decades this unique recording would go unheard by anyone outside of David Snider’s circle, but now with his blessing, fans of the fusion innovator can own it to add to their collection. Snider and Coryell would lose touch over the years, but not before some timeless memories were made, including one where the Teac recorder missed an opportunity. “One of the greatest things that happened was when I was 16, I organized a jam session at my house, and I got Larry to come, and my friend was friends with Tony Williams and he (Williams) got Larry Young to come over to my house. I wish I had recorded that.”  When asked why he didn’t record that, Snider says, “I was just sitting there with my mouth open.”