There’s a documentary making the rounds of North American theatres called Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World. (In fact, it screens at the Vancity Theatre this Friday [May 5] as part of the DOXA Documentary Film Festival.) I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m happy to say that one of those Indians rocked my world, person-to-person, back on June 21, 1997.

That’s when I called Link Wray up at his Dallas hotel room and had a wonderful chat with the creator of the raunchy riff, whose 1958 instrumental “Rumble” has had a massive influence on everyone from Jimmy Page to Bill Frissell to Jack White.

The 68-year-old sounded full of piss and vinegar, raving about his show in Houston the night before. Part Native American of Shawnee extraction, Wray first picked up the guitar when he was eight, after discovering the power of music through an old black guitarist who performed in the local circus.

“I heard him playin’ that bottleneck music, and I knew right then I wanted to play a geetar,” Wray explained. “And then when I moved to Virginia at 13 years old I heard all the country artists playin’ behind the country stars, and I tried to play like that, but I could never get that clean sound. So instead of tryin’ to pick clean like a Chet Atkins, I sorta created my own ‘rumble’, you know what I mean?”

It was a rumble heard round the world, and it’s still echoing far and wide. So yes, Link, as a matter of fact, I do know what you mean.