Rockabilly

Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock n’ roll music to emerge during the 1950s. This music was a combining of roots music from different styles and done in a lively, fun, enthusiastic way. The music was dominated by its original exponent, Elvis Presley, and has had an important influence on rock music and popular culture, despite having flourished for only a short time during the 1950s. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, rockabilly enjoyed a major revival of popularity and has remained an important subculture since.



Forebears.
There was a close relationship between the blues and country music from the very earliest country recordings in the 1920s. Jimmie Rodgers, the first true country star, was known as the “Blue Yodeler,” and most of his hits were in the blues format, although with very different instrumentation and sound than the recordings of his black contemporaries like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bessie Smith.[1]

During the 1930s and 1940s, two new sounds emerged that mixed country with current black musical styles. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were the leading proponents of Western Swing, which combined country singing, steel guitar, and big band jazz, selling lots of records in the process. After blues artists like Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson launched a nationwide boogie craze starting in 1938, country artists like Moon Mullican, the Delmore Brothers, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and the Maddox Brothers and Rose began recording what was known as “Hillbilly Boogie,” which consisted of "hillbilly" vocals and instrumentation with a boogie bass line.[2]

The Maddox Brothers and Rose were at "the leading edge of rockabilly with the slapped bass that Fred Maddox had developed".[1] [2] Emmylou Harris believes that performers such as Rose Maddox have never received the recognition they deserve. She says part of this is due to what she calls a reluctance in American society to celebrate the value of white country and roots music. [3]

Bill Monroe was the originator of Bluegrass, a new style of country that sounded very old-fashioned. Many of his songs were in blues form, while others took the form of folk ballads or parlor songs. Earl Scruggs, the banjo player in Monroe’s most influential band, created a fast-picking style that gave this music tremendous drive and energy.[3] The fast tempo would be a key influence on rockabilly, along with the focus on instrumental pyrotechnics.

The Honky Tonk sound, which "tended to focus on working-class life, with frequently tragic themes of lost love, adultery, loneliness, alcoholism, and self-pity", also included songs of energetic, uptempo Hillbilly Boogie. Some of the better known musicians who recorded and performed these songs are: the Delmore Brothers, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Merle Travis, Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Tennessee Ernie Ford. [4]

Stylistically, the development of rock ‘n’ roll music was inevitable. However, the huge cultural impact of the music was anything but inevitable. This impact was due to rockabilly’s first and most important performer, Elvis Presley, who combined the musical excitement and rebellion of Hank Williams with the adolescent charisma of James Dean. Presley’s good looks, scandalously sexy concerts, and innovative music would make him the hero of an emerging demographic group: teenagers. As a result, his music and that of his successors would become the central unifying feature of youth culture during the second half of the 20th century.

Rockabilly music cultivated an attitude that assured its enduring appeal to teenagers. This was a combination of rebellion, sexuality, and freedom—a sneering expression of disdain for the workaday world of parents and authority figures. It was the first rock ‘n’ roll style to be performed primarily by white musicians, thus setting off a cultural revolution that is still reverberating today.[5][6]


Memphis, Tennessee.
Younger musicians around Memphis, Tennessee were beginning to play a mix a musical styles. Paul Burlison, for one, was playing in nondescript hillbilly bands in the very early 1950s. One of these early groups secured a fifteen minute show on radio station KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas. The time slot was adjacent to Howlin' Wolf's and the music quickly became a curious blend of blues, country and what would become known as rockabilly music. In 1951 and 1952 the Burnette's and Burlison played around Memphis and established a reputation for wild music. They played with Doc McQueen's Swing Band at the Hideaway Club but hated the type of music played by "chart musicians." Soon they broke away and began playing their energetic brand of rockabilly to small, but appreciative, local audiences. They wrote "Rock Billy Boogie," while working at the Hideaway. [4] Unfortunately for the Burnettes and Burlison, they didn't record the song until 1957. [5] [6]

The Saturday Night Jamboree was a local stage show held every Saturday night at the Goodwyn Institute Auditorium in downtown Memphis, Tennessee in 1953-54. But of more historical significance was something that was going on backstage in the dressing rooms. Every Saturday night in 1953, the dressing rooms backstage were a gathering place where musicians would come together and experiment with new sounds - mixing fast country, gospel, blues and boogie woogie. Guys were bringing in new "licks" that they had developed and were teaching them to other musicians and were learning new "licks" from yet other musicians backstage. Soon these new sounds began to make their way out onto the stage of the Jamboree where they found a very receptive audience.

Within a year these musicians were going into the recording studios around town and recording these sounds. A couple of years later these sounds were given a name: "rockabilly." The Saturday Night Jamboree was probably where the first live rockabilly was performed. [7]

In an interview that can be viewed at the Experience Music Project Barbara Pittman states that, "It was so new and it was so easy. It was a three chord change. Rockabilly was actually an insult to the southern rockers at that time. Over the years it has picked up a little dignity. It was their way of calling us hillbillies."

Although the term was in common use even before the Burnettes wrote "Rock Billy Boogie", one of the first written uses of the term "rockabilly" was in a June 23, 1956 Billboard review of Ruckus Tyler's "Rock Town Rock".

On 12 April 1954 an overweight "singing cowboy" called Bill Haley went into a studio in New York and recorded a more raucous version of (We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock than his previous country-flavoured attempt. [8] This was three months before Elvis. Haley had in fact already recorded Rocket 88, Rock the Joint, Rocking Chair on the Moon, Real Rock Drive, and Crazy Man, Crazy beginning in 1951. [9] "Part of the problem is Elvis has a much better public relations machine behind him," said Alex Fraser-Harrison, a writer for the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.[10]

The song didn't make much impact, making the charts for one week at number 23, and selling 75,000 copies [11] until it was featured in the film Blackboard Jungle a year later - but soon afterwards it was topping charts all over the world and opening up a new genre of entertainment. [12][13]


Birth.

Sun Records was a small independent label run by Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee. For several years, Phillips had been recording and releasing performances by blues and country musicians in the area. He also ran a service allowing anyone to come in off the street and (for a fee) record himself on a one-off souvenir record. One young man who came in to record himself this way was Elvis Presley. Phillips is often quoted as saying “If I could find a white singer with the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a million dollars.” In Elvis, Phillips thought he had found what he was looking for. (Phillips would sell Presley's contract for $40,000 [14] in little over a year.)

Elvis was paired with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, both from the Starlight Wranglers, a local western swing band. [7] The trio rehearsed dozens of songs, from hardcore country to Harbor Lights by Bing Crosby [15] to gospel. On July 5, 1954, while recording for Phillips in the Sun studio, the group felt frustrated and took a break. Elvis began goofing around with an old blues song and Scotty and Bill joined in the fun. Excited, Phillips told them to “back up and start from the beginning.” They did, Phillips recorded it, and released “That’s All Right,” Elvis’s first single, on July 19, 1954.

The sound of “That’s All Right” was entirely new, even though it brought together many familiar elements. Carl Perkins has described rockabilly as “the blues with a country beat.” That’s All Right” was certainly a blues song played at a fast bluegrass tempo. It also featured Bill Black’s percussive slapped bass and Scotty Moore’s eloquent lead guitar. But what really sets this recording apart is Elvis’s vocal, which soars across a wide range and expresses both a youthful humor and a boundless confidence. The overall feeling the song communicates is one of limitless freedom—the very thing rebellious teenagers desire most. The energy and charisma pour off the record, and teenagers would be compelled to respond. The trio recorded a bluegrass number, “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” in the same style for the flip side and Phillips rushed the record into stores a few weeks later. [8]

When the song was played on Memphis radio, it became a sensation and it soon topped local charts and began to receive airplay across the South. Many listeners were unsure whether the singer was black or white, but the strongest support came from country radio stations. Nobody was sure what to call this music, so Elvis was described as “The Hillbilly Cat” and “King of Western Bop.” Later, the name “rockabilly” was introduced, and it stuck. Over the next year, Elvis would record four more singles for Sun, each mixing the blues and country into the same winning formula. Together, they would define the rockabilly style: “nervously uptempo” (as Peter Guralnick describes it), with slap bass, fancy guitar picking, lots of echo, constant shouts of “go man go,” and vocals full of histrionics such as hiccups, stutters, and swoops from falsetto to bass and back again. [9] [10]

By the end of 1954 Elvis asked D.J. Fontana, who was the underutilized drummer for the Louisiana Hayride, "Would you go with us if we got any more dates?" Presley was now using drums,[11] as did many other rockabilly performers. In the 1955 sessions shortly after Presley’s move from Sun Records to RCA, Presley was backed by a band that included Moore, Black, Fontana, lap steel guitarist Jimmy Day, and pianist Floyd Cramer.[16] In 1956 Elvis acquired vocal backup via the Jordanaires. [17] The 1957 recording of Jailhouse Rock for the film of the same name clearly features piano and saxaphone.


Important Performers.


Once Elvis’s first couple of singles on Sun started getting airplay across the South, he attracted attention. Large crowds turned out to see his concerts, and in every audience were young men who had previously hoped to become country singers, but now wanted to become rockabilly singers. Soon these musicians began beating a path to Sam Phillips’s door, hoping to record for Sun and capture their own piece of the success Elvis was enjoying. Luckily for Sam, many of these young singers had very real talent and enjoyed some measure of commercial success.


By late 1955, Elvis had gotten too big for an independent label like Sun to keep up with his sales. So Phillips sold Presley’s contract to RCA Victor for $40,000 and plowed the money back into making Sun a bigger and better place for his remaining stable of performers. These included such stars as:

Carl Perkins. Who would score Sun’s first million-seller with his classic composition “Blue Suede Shoes.” Carl’s career was sidetracked by a terrible auto accident he suffered on his way to New York to appear on television. He and his band members were in the hospital for months, recovering, as “Blue Suede Shoes” stormed up the charts and slowly worked its way back down. Although Carl’s body recovered from the wreck, his career never did. Despite producing many of the wildest and most heartfelt rockabilly records of the 1950s, he never had another hit.
Jerry Lee Lewis. “The Killer,” as he was known, sold all the eggs on his daddy’s farm in Ferriday, Louisiana to afford to travel to Memphis and audition for Sun. Jerry Lee had a piano sound like no one else and a stage presence somewhere between an explosion and a riot. He attacked the piano with his feet, threw the piano stool across the stage, charged at the audience with the mike in his hand to astonish his listeners. There is a general myth that he once set his piano on fire in order to intimidate Chuck Berry. However, he and others have denied this ever happened. His musical approach was similarly anarchic and exciting. Jerry Lee would enjoy four million-selling records in a row on Sun, before the news broke that he had married his 13-year-old cousin. America’s conservative establishment was horrified and the Killer was quickly blacklisted. His records disappeared from the charts and he struggled in obscurity for a decade.
Roy Orbison. Although Roy is best known for the beautiful ballads he recorded during the early 1960s on Monument Records, he began his career singing rockabilly at Sun. Some of his Sun recordings, such as “Ooby Dooby,” were regional hits and many of them have remained popular with later rockabilly artists and listeners.
Johnny Cash. If Elvis was King, then J.R. Cash was the Prince of Rockabilly. He recorded hits like "Home of the Blues," "Train of Love," "I Walk The Line," "So Doggone Lonesome," "Country Boy," "Rock and Roll Ruby," "Cry Cry Cry," "Get Rhythm," "Big River," and, perhaps the greatest rockbilly hit of all time, "Folsom Prison Blues." Cash's sound was revolutionary, with only himself on rhythm guitar, Marshall Grant his stand-up bassist, and Luther Perkins, who is considered the father of the modern electric guitar style. Cash's sound may have been simple, but it was so simple it appealed to everyone -- the Man in Black will not be forgotten anytime soon. Cash signed on with Columbia, but stayed true to his rockabilly roots while expanding into folk, gospel, and even novelty songs. At the height of his popularity in 1968-69, he even outsold the Beatles. His albums At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin are considered the greatest live albums of all time.
There were thousands of musicians who recorded songs in the rockabilly style. An on line database lists 262 musicians with names beginning with "A".[18] And many record companies released rockabilly records. [19] Some enjoyed major chart success and were important influences on future rock musicians.

Buddy Holly. From Lubbock, Texas, Holly made several records for Decca’s Nashville division before finding success recording for Decca’s Coral and Brunswick subsidiaries in New Mexico with Norman Petty. Holly was a gifted songwriter and guitarist, as well as a unique vocalist. Most of his big hits, including “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue,” were his own compositions. Holly’s band, the Crickets, were first-rate and quite influential themselves. Holly died in a plane crash in 1959, but his recordings remained popular, especially in England, and would inspire many later artists. [12]
Johnny Burnette. and his Rock ‘N’ Roll Trio were from Memphis. When Elvis starting having success in music, Burnette and his cohorts landed a slot on Ted Mack’s TV talent show. They went on to make some of the wildest rockabilly records of the 1950s. Unfortunately, none of these records were chart hits. Burnette would have a few big hits with more teen-oriented pop songs a few years later, such as “You’re Sixteen.” His career was cut short by a boating accident in 1964.[13]
Gene Vincent. Clad in black leather and singing uncontrolled songs of sex and menace, Vincent would establish the crucial image of what a rock musician looks like. His band, the Blue Caps, were extremely talented and contributed to the great power of his rockabilly recordings. Although his sales declined in the USA after his initial million-seller “Be-Bop-A-Lula”/ “Woman Love,” he remained very popular in Europe and helped inspire the next generation of musicians there. Vincent died of a ruptured ulcer in 1971.[14]
Eddie Cochran. Humorously captured the details of teen life in his songs, much like Chuck Berry. Cochran was a gifted guitarist and songwriter, best known for hits like “Summertime Blues,” “C’mon Everybody,” “Sittin’ in the Balcony,” and “Something Else.” His slow songs generally showed a light touch and his rockers were exciting. He toured England to great success with Gene Vincent in 1960, but died in a car crash on his way to the airport to return to the USA. [15]
Rick Nelson. Although Rick Nelson’s career was launched on his parents’ TV show, his recordings show a very real talent and enthusiasm for rockabilly music. He had dozens of hits during the late 1950s and early 1960s, including “Hello Mary Lou,” “Lonesome Town,” “Travelin’ Man,” and “Poor Little Fool.” On these records, Nelson worked with major rockabilly musicians, such as Johnny Burnette and James Burton. He had only two hits after 1964 and spent the last two decades of his career struggling for audience acceptance, as he was unwilling to become just a nostalgia act. Nelson died in a plane crash in 1985. [16]
Sun also hosted performers, such as Billy Lee Riley, Sonny Burgess, Charlie Feathers, and Warren Smith. There were also several female performers like Wanda Jackson, Janis Martin, Jo Ann Campbell, and Alys Lesley, who also sang in the rockabilly style. Rockabilly pioneers the Maddox Brothers and Rose, both as a group, and with Rose as a solo act, added onto their two decades of performing by making records that were even more rocking. [20][21] However, none of these artists had any major hits and their influence would not be felt until decades later, when artists like Becky Hobbs, Rosie Flores, and Kim Lenz would join the Rockabilly Revival. [17]

Rockabilly music enjoyed great popularity in the United States during 1956 and 1957, but it was pretty much shunted off the radio after 1960. The style remained popular longer in England, where it attracted a fanatical following right up through the mid 1960s.


Influence on the Beatles and the British Invasion.
The first wave of rockabilly fans in Britain were called Teddy Boys because they wore long, Edwardian-style frock coats, along with tight black drainpipe trousers and brothel creeper shoes. By the early 1960s, they had metamorphosed into the rockers, and had adopted the classic greaser look of T-shirts, jeans, and leather jackets to go with their heavily slicked pompadour haircuts. The rockers loved 1950s rock and roll artists such as Gene Vincent, and some British rockabilly fans formed bands and played their own version of the music.


The most notable of these bands was the Beatles. When John Lennon first met Paul McCartney, he was impressed that McCartney knew all the chords and the words to Eddie Cochran’s "Twenty Flight Rock." As the band became more professional and began playing in Hamburg, they took on the Beatle name (inspired by Buddy Holly’s Crickets) and they adopted the black leather look of Gene Vincent. Musically, they combined Holly’s melodic pop sensibility with the rough and rocking sounds of Vincent and Carl Perkins. When the Beatles became worldwide stars, they released versions of three different Carl Perkins songs; more than any other songwriter outside the band.

Long after the band broke up, the members continued to show their interest in rockabilly. In 1975, Lennon recorded an album called Rock ‘n’ Roll, featuring versions of rockabilly hits and a cover photo showing him in full Gene Vincent leather. About the same time, Ringo Starr havd a hit with a version of Johnny Burnette’s "You’re Sixteen." In the 1980s, McCartney recorded a duet with Carl Perkins, and George Harrison played with Roy Orbison in the Traveling Wilburys. In 1999, McCartney released Run Devil Run; his own record of rockabilly covers. [18]

The Beatles were not the only British Invasion artists influenced by rockabilly. The Rolling Stones recorded Buddy Holly’s "Not Fade Away" on an early single. The Who, despite being mod favourites, covered Eddie Cochran’s "Summertime Blues" on their Live at Leeds album. Even heavy guitar heroes such as Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were influenced by rockabilly musicians. Beck recorded his own tribute album to Gene Vincent, Crazy Legs, and Page’s band, Led Zeppelin, offered to work as Elvis Presley’s backing band in the 1970s. However, Presley never took them up on that offer.[19] Years later, Led Zepplin's Page and Robert Plant recorded a tribute to the music of the 1950s called The Honeydrippers: Volume One.


Elvis’s Comeback and 1970s Nostalgia.
By 1968, the British Invasion had largely chased the older American rock artists off the charts. Most of the 1950s rockabilly performers who were still alive, such as Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, had taken refuge in country music. And Elvis Presley was mired in an endless series of lousy movies, seemingly a has-been in his 30s.

In December 1968, Elvis appeared on an NBC-TV special. Clad in black leather, he sang his heart out, proving not only could he rock, but that he had far more emotional depth to share than he had 10 years earlier. The so-called “comeback special” created tremendous excitement among the record-buying public, and Elvis’s newer, harder-hitting songs soon began enjoying major chart success. Songs like “Suspicious Minds,” “Promised Land,” and “Burning Love” were all cut from Presley’s classic mold and they enjoyed huge international sales. The King returned to live performances, setting attendance records across the USA.[20]

In the wake of Elvis’s return, a renewed interest developed in 1950s music. A young band from San Francisco, Creedence Clearwater Revival, became one of the best-selling rock groups of the era playing old rockabilly songs and new songs written in the same style. Don McLean had a giant hit with “American Pie,” a song about the death of Buddy Holly. Then, in 1973, George Lucas released his film American Graffiti. This movie, and its chart-topping oldies soundtrack, launched a major 1970s industry of '50s nostalgia (and a cycle of 1950s Nostalgia Films). Soon TV had its own version of Graffiti in Happy Days. Artists like Sha Na Na gained fame playing 1950s rock as a cartoon joke and many original artists began playing “oldies” shows. Linda Ronstadt enjoyed a major string of hit singles with soft-rock covers of songs by Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and the Everly Brothers. Although none of these captured the fire and excitement of 1950s rockabilly, they did create curiosity about the real music of that era.[21]

Elvis’s death in 1977 inspired an unprecedented outpouring of news coverage, radio tributes, books, and documentaries. Presley’s records were all over the radio for months, and efforts to document the early history of rock ’n’ roll began to reach a mass audience. Although there was an unfortunate explosion in the number of cheesy Elvis impersonator stage acts, over time all of the hoopla drew attention to the original music, too.

Two films released in the late 1970s really did capture the excitement of the music, even though they confused several facts. The Buddy Holly Story was a biopic starring the magnetic Gary Busey, who seemed possessed by Holly’s spirit, even though nearly all of Holly’s friends and relatives denounced the screenplay’s cavalier way with the truth. American Hot Wax, a film bio of DJ Alan Freed, was even more creative with the details of history, but concluded with a barn-burning concert sequence featuring Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, proving they still had all the moxie and charisma that made them rock gods in the '50s. This was exciting, but was just the prelude to even bigger things.


Rockabilly Revival.
Many young listeners were dissatisfied with the “light rock” and bloated “art rock” music on the radio in the 1970s. They wanted to return to the simple, loud, fast, emotionally-direct music rock had started with. Some musicians stripped their sound down to the bare basics of three chords, loud guitars, and emotional lyrics, creating punk rock. Others turned back to the original music of the 1950s for inspiration. Starting slowly in the mid to late Seventies, an underground rockabilly revival began to take shape. By the early 1980s, it broke through to enjoy some mainstream chart success and inspire a new generation of fanatics. The most important of these artists were:

Robert Gordon. Formerly vocalist for pioneering New York punks the Tuff Darts, Gordon went solo and began performing old rockabilly songs in 1977. Unlike Sha Na Na or the Elvis impersonators, Gordon was not presenting the music as a joke, but trying to recapture the wild energy and excitement of the 1950s performers. He teamed with legendary guitarist Link Wray and recorded an album that year, spawning a minor hit single with a cover of Billy Lee Riley’s “Red Hot.” Four more albums followed by 1981 (first on independent Private Stock, then on major label RCA), with another minor pop hit and two low-level country chart hits. Gordon toured tirelessly around the country and his dedication and energy inspired many listeners and musicians to begin to explore rockabilly music.[22]
Dave Edmunds and Rockpile. Edmunds had enjoyed an out-of-left-field chart hit in 1970 with his dour but rocking version of Smiley Lewis’s “I Hear You Knocking.” During the early Seventies, he worked in the studio, trying to recreate the Sun Records sound on new songs. In 1975, he joined up with songwriter Nick Lowe to form a band called Rockpile and created a string of minor rockabilly style hits like “I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock ‘n’ Roll).” The group became a popular touring act in Britain and the US, leading to respectable album sales. Edmunds also nurtured and produced many younger artists who shared his love of rockabilly and Chuck Berry, most notably the Stray Cats[23]
Shakin' Stevens. Was a Welsh singer who gained fame in the UK portraying Elvis in a stage play. In 1980, he took a cover of The Blasters’ “Marie Marie” into the UK Top 20, initiating an amazing string of hits. His hopped-up versions of numbers like “This Ole House” and “Green Door” were giant sellers across Europe and he toured constantly selling out large auditoriums across the continent. By the time his streak wound down a decade later, Shakin’ Stevens was the number two bestselling singles artist of the 1980s in Europe, outstripping Michael Jackson, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. Despite his huge popularity in Europe, he has never been able to catch on in America. In recent years, he returned to public attention in the UK, with a greatest hits album topping the charts in 2005.[24]
The Cramps. Rising out of the punk scene at the New York club CBGB, the Cramps combined the most primitive and wild rockabilly sounds with lyrics inspired by old drive-in horror movies in songs like “Human Fly” and “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” Lead singer Lux Interior is one of the most unrestrained performers in rock music and the band’s live shows are outstandingly energetic and unpredictable, even for a rockabilly band, which has attracted a fervent cult audience. Their so-called “psychobilly” music has provoked a number of followers, including The Meteors and Reverend Horton Heat.[25]

Stray Cats. Easily the most commercially successful of the new rockabilly artists, the Stray Cats formed on Long Island in 1979 when Brian Setzer teamed up with two school chums calling themselves Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom. The trio fully adopted the Gene Vincent look, complete with flashy pompadour haircuts, leather jackets, and tattoos aplenty. Attracting little attention in New York, they flew to London in 1980, seeking the supposedly active rockabilly scene there. Although the Cats found rockabilly action to be less than reported in the UK, they soon inspired a very active scene to appear. Early shows were attended by the Rolling Stones and Dave Edmunds, who quickly ushered the boys into a recording studio. In short order, the Stray Cats had three UK Top Ten singles to their credit and two bestselling albums. They returned to the USA, performing on the TV show “Fridays” with a message flashing across the screen that they had no record deal in the States. Soon EMI picked them up, their first videos appeared on MTV, and they stormed up the charts stateside. Their third LP, Rant ‘N’ Rave with the Stray Cats, topped charts across the USA and Europe as they sold out shows everywhere during 1983. However, personal conflicts led the band to break up at the height of their popularity. Brian Setzer went on to solo success working in both rockabilly and swing styles, while Rocker and Phantom continued to record in bands both together and singly. The group has reconvened several times to make new records or tours and continue to attract large audiences live, although record sales have never again approached their early Eighties success.[26]
The Blasters. were centered around brothers Phil (who sang and played harmonica and guitar) and Dave Alvin (who played lead guitar and wrote songs). The brothers and their musical friends had grown up in a country town called Downey, outside Los Angeles, and had spent their teens playing with such legendary R&B musicians as Big Joe Turner, Willie Dixon, Jimmy Reed’s former bandleader Marcus Johnson, and Lee Allen, the sax player on the hits of Fats Domino and Little Richard. Having learned American roots music from the masters, the band began playing around LA in the late 1970s, attracting a following for their combination of classic styles, punk energy, and Dave Alvin’s powerful songs. Several albums on the Warner Brothers-distributed label Slash and appearances in movies failed to land a chart hit, although sales were respectable and the band captured a strong cult following among fans and critics, even inspiring fan John Cougar Mellencamp to write and produce a single for the band. In the late 1980s, Dave Alvin left the band to begin a successful solo career and Phil went back to UCLA to get his doctorate in Mathematics. Today Phil tours with a new Blasters lineup and the original members occasionally gather for performances.[27]

Jason & The Scorchers. Put heavy metal, Chuck Berry, and Hank Williams into a punk-powered blender, creating a truly modern style of rockabilly. Although many would slap them with another label, such as alt-country or cowpunk, Jason and the Scorchers did what Elvis and the others had done in the Fifties: they combined the rockingest current urban sounds with the most backwoods country to create a new sound that had more edge than either of its sources. Although they were critic’s darlings and drew a rabid fan base from coast to coast, the Scorchers never managed to have that big hit record their label demanded and now their works are nearly all out of print, although they periodically reappear for another rip-roaring tour.[28]
Many other bands were associated with the rockabilly bandwagon in the early 1980s, including the Rockats, The Polecats, Zantees, The Kingbees, Leroi Brothers, Lone Justice, and Chris Isaak.

Closely related was the “Roots Rock” movement which continued through the Eighties, led by artists like the Beat Farmers, Del-Lords, Long Ryders, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Los Lobos, The Fleshtones, Del Fuegos, and Barrence Whitfield and the Savages. These bands, like the Blasters, were inspired by a full range of historic American styles: blues, country, rockabilly, R&B, and New Orleans jazz. They held a strong appeal for listeners who were tired of the MTV technopop and glam metal bands that dominated radio play during this time period, but none of these musicians became major stars. [29]

Also related, but much more successful, were the artists who rose to fame in the wake of Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen first achieved pop chart success with “Born to Run” in 1975 and had always been strongly influenced by earlier styles, notably rockabilly, Sixties girl groups and garage bands, and soul music. (In fact, Springsteen originally wrote his song "Fire"" for Robert Gordon, although the Pointer Sisters version sold more copies than Gordon's.) Although he was a hugely popular performer throughout the 1970s, his 1984 LP Born in the USA brought him overwhelming success. Not only did the supporting tour set attendance records, but Springsteen’s songs became ubiquitous on radio and MTV. The album spawned a slew of hit singles and several other veteran performers with similar roots-oriented sounds and socially-conscious lyrics enjoyed renewed popularity during the mid 1980s: Bob Seger, John Cougar Mellencamp, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s former leader John Fogerty, who scored a chart-topping triumph with his solo album Centerfield in 1985.[30]

In 1983, legendary country rock singer Neil Young recorded a rockabilly album titled "Everybody's Rockin'". The album was not a commercial success and Young was involved in a widely publicized legal fight with Geffen Records who sued him for making a record that didn't sound "like a Neil Young record." Young made no further albums in the rockabilly style.[31]


Finally, during the 1980s, a number of country music stars scored hits recording in a rockabilly style. Marty Stuart’s “Hillbilly Rock” and Hank Williams, Jr.’s “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” were the most noteworthy examples of this trend, but they and other artists like Steve Earle and the Kentucky Headhunters charted many records with this approach. Another artist, Dwight Yoakam, rose to success in Nashville after attracting a large following among punk and rockabilly fans in his native Los Angeles. His first album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. became a surprise hit, despite being considered “too country” by Nashville insiders. In 1989, Yoakum would record a hit version of the Blasters’ “Long White Cadillac.”[32]

Although these styles of music were overshadowed after 1990 by the rise of grunge and rap, they left behind a sizable cult audience that continued to support rockabilly and roots-influenced performers through the 1990s and into the present.


Rockabilly in the 2000s.
Rockabilly has joined the ranks of established musical subcultures in the United States. As with other established music genres such as jazz, blues, bluegrass, and punk rock, rockabilly musicians are able to earn a steady but limited living, supported by fanzines, websites, annual festivals, and specialist venues and record labels. Although no other rockabilly performers have risen to the level of mass popularity enjoyed by the Stray Cats in the 1980s, the scene has been grown in the 2000s. There has been a significant overlap with, and interaction between, the current rockabilly scene and swing revival; with Brian Setzer (of the Stray Cats and The Brian Setzer Orchestra) being a key figure. Other artists, such as Trick Pony (a country music trio influenced by both rockabilly and honky-tonk styles), and Royal Crown Revue have also found popularity among both camps. [33]

There are active rockabilly scenes in many US cities, particularly on the west coast; as well as major festivals such as Viva Las Vegas and Hootenanny and the Heavy Rebel Weekend festival on the east coast. Rockabilly fans have made common cause with hot rodders, and many festivals feature both music and cars with a 1950s flavor. With the growth of satellite and internet radio, there are regular broadcast outlets for rockabilly music. The not-for-profit Rockabilly Hall of Fame was created March 21,1997 to remember the early rockabilly music and to promote those who want to continue rockabilly music popularity and accessability into the future. In Europe, rockabilly remains a vibrant and active subculture, with strong interest not only in current revivalist musicians, but also in performances and recordings by surviving artists from the 1950s. Along with the revival of 1950s-style rockabilly music, several rockabilly disc jockeys have arisen around the world.


The Rockabilly Look.

Since the emergence of the Stray Cats, rockabilly fans have been much more conscious about dressing the part. In the UK, this has meant a full-fledged revival of Teddy Boy fashions, and in the United States, fans have favored more of the greaser look. In both cases, men have sported flamboyant pompadours, with lots of hair pomade, long sideburns, tight jeans or black slacks, brothel creeper shoes, Texas “bolo” neckties, and a fondness for color combinations of pink and black with leopard-skin accents. American fans have also adopted bowling shirts, cowboy shirts, and Hawaiian “aloha” shirts, as well as the leather motorcycle jacket.

The motorcycle jacket stems from the rockers, who needed them as much for function as for fashion. The rockers were as notorious for being Café Racers as for their love of rockabilly music. They gathered in places such as London's Ace Cafe, where they would place bets on a table for a quick race. These races involved running out and mounting their hopped-up motorcycles and racing them around a short predetermined course of roads, circling back to park, and getting back to the table before a selected rockabilly song finished playing on the jukebox. The rockers' dangerous antics and attitude was perhaps the greatest influence to the lasting romance, symbolism, image, and overall fashion that has immortalized rockabilly. Although nearly all of the motorcycle operators were male, there were plenty of girls involved in the image who rode on back of the bikes.

Women’s fashions in the rockabilly community have never really revived the true 1950s look of poodle skirts worn with letter sweaters. However, glamorous 1950s dresses, often with crinolines, have found some favor. Many of today’s female rockabilly fans are inspired by bad girl pinup models of the 1950s, such Betty Page. They often wear animal prints, horn-rimmed sunglasses, fishnet stockings, tight jeans, capris, or short shorts. Tattoos are popular among both sexes. [34]