Richard Wayne Penniman (born December 5, 1932), better known by the stage name Little Richard, is an African-American singer, songwriter, and pianist, who began performing in the 1940s and was a key figure in the transition from rhythm & blues to rock and roll in the mid-1950s.
Penniman's reputation rests on a string of groundbreaking hit singles from 1955 through 1957, such as "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally", which helped lay the foundation for rock and roll music,[1] influencing generations of rhythm and blues, rock and soul music artists. Little Richard's injection of funk during this period[1] also influenced the development of that genre of music.
Little Richard's early work was a mix of boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues and gospel music, but with a heavily accentuated back-beat, funky saxophone grooves and raspy, shouted vocals, moans, screams, and other emotive inflections that marked a new kind of music. In 1957, while at the height of stardom, he became a born-again Christian and withdrew from recording and performing secular music.[2]
James Brown, who called Little Richard his idol,[2] credited him with "first putting the funk in the rock and roll beat"[1] via his saxophone-studded, mid-'50s road band, by Smokey Robinson, in 1997 as, "the start of that driving, funky, never let up rock 'n' roll", by Dick Clark as "the model for almost every rock and roll performer of the '50s and years thereafter", and Ray Charles, in 1989, as "the man that started a kind of music that set the pace for a lot of what's happening today." In 1969, Elvis Presley told Little Richard, "Your music has inspired me - you are the greatest.".[2] Otis Redding, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, Dick Dale, Bob Seger, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and numerous other rock n roll icons have also cited Little Richard as being their first major influence.
Biography.
Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, to Leva Mae Stewart and Charles ("Bud") Penniman, a bootlegger.[1][3] He grew up in a spiritual family, amid poverty and prejudice, and it was singing that made his family feel closer to God. His family had a group called the Penniman Singers, who would go around and sing in local churches, and enter contests with other singing families. Richard's siblings called him 'War Hawk' because of his loud, screaming singing voice. His paternal grandfather, Walter Penniman, was a preacher, and his father's family were members of the Foundation Templar African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Macon, Georgia. Richard's maternal grandmother was a member of the Holiness Temple Baptist Church, also in Macon. Richard regularly attended the New Hope Baptist Church in Macon, where his mother was a member. However, of all the churches he frequented, Richard's favorite were the Pentecostal churches because of the music and the fun he and his friends would have doing the holy dance and talking in tongues along with members of the congregation. When he was as young as ten, he would go around as a healer, singing Gospel songs and touching people, who would testify that they felt better after he ministered to them. Inspired by Brother Joe May, a singing evangelist known as 'The Thunderbolt of the West', Richard wanted to become a preacher. It was in and through the church where Richard's life in music all began.[2]
Nearly all of Richard Penniman's dramatic phrasing and swift vocal turns are derived from Black Gospel artists of the 1930s and 1940s. He referred to Sister Rosetta Tharpe as his favorite singer when he was a child. She had invited him to sing a song with her onstage at the Macon City Auditorium in 1945, after hearing him sing before the concert. The crowd applauded and cheered and she paid him more money than he had ever seen after the show.[2] He was also heavily influenced by Marion Williams, from whom he got the trademark "whoooo" in his vocal,[2] Mahalia Jackson,[2] and Brother Joe May.[2] He was heavily influenced in appearance (hair, clothing, shoes, makeup, etc.) and sound by late 1940s gospel-style, jump blues shouter Billy Wright, who was known as the 'Prince of the Blues'.[2] It is reported that he got one of the inflections ("Lucille-uh") in his vocal from Ruth Brown.[citation needed]
One of Penniman's main influences on his piano-playing was Esquerita (Eskew Reeder Jr.), who demonstrated to Penniman how to play high notes without compromising bass. Penniman met Esquerita when he traveled through Macon with a preacher named Sister Rosa. Another influence was Brother Joe May. Penniman explained, "I used to get in a room and try to make my piano sound just like him. He had so much energy." May generated energy by moving from a subtle whisper to a thunderous tenor and back in a four-bar phrase.
He learned to mix ministerial qualities with theatrics by watching the traveling medicine shows that rolled through his native Macon. Colorful medicine men would wear lavish capes, robes and turbans, all of which left an impression on Penniman.
In 1952, Penniman's father was murdered. After this, he returned to Macon and performed blues and boogie-woogie music at the "Tick Tock Club" in the evening, whilst also washing dishes at the cafeteria of a Greyhound Lines bus station during the day.
Recording career.
Modeled after recording artist Billy Wright, Little Richard had recorded songs for the Peacock Records label between 1951 and 1954, including "Little Richard's Boogie". These records sold poorly and Penniman had little success until he sent a demo tape to Specialty Records on February 17, 1955. Specialty's owner Art Rupe placed Richard's career in the hands of Robert 'Bumps' Blackwell, who had nurtured and groomed Ray Charles (then known as R.C. Robinson) and Quincy Jones at the start of their careers in the music business.
Blackwell had intended to pit Little Richard against Ray Charles and B.B. King by having him record blues tracks. He arranged for a recording session in New Orleans in the late summer of 1955, when, during a break, Penniman began singing an impromptu recital of "Tutti Frutti", in his raspy, shouted vocal style, while pounding out a boogie-woogie based rhythm on the piano. Blackwell, who knew a hit when he heard one, was knocked out and had Little Richard record the song. However, in order to make it commercially acceptable, he had Little Richard's lyrics changed from "tutti-frutti, loose booty" to "tutti frutti, aw rooty."[4]
The song, with Little Richard shouting its unique introductory "A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-whop-bam-boom!", became the model for many subsequent Little Richard songs, with a driving piano, boogie-woogie bass, funky saxophone arrangements, with sax solos usually from Lee Allen. Over the next few years, Little Richard had many hit singles, such as "Long Tall Sally", "Rip It Up", "The Girl Can't Help It", "Slippin' and Slidin'", "Jenny, Jenny", "Good Golly, Miss Molly", and "Keep A Knockin'". His performing style can be seen in such period films as Don't Knock the Rock (1956) and The Girl Can't Help It (also 1956), for which he sang the title song.
In the commercial fashion of the day, several of his early hits were re-recorded in other styles. Little Richard's first national success, "Tutti Frutti," was covered by Pat Boone, whose version outdid the source record, #12 to #17. Boone also released a version of "Long Tall Sally," with slightly bowdlerized lyrics. But this time, the Little Richard original outperformed it on the Billboard charts, #6 to #8. Bill Haley tackled Little Richard's third major hit, "Rip It Up," but again, Little Richard prevailed. With the record-buying public's preference established, Little Richard's subsequent releases did not face the same chart competition.
Despite the raw sound of his music, the singles were carefully arranged, as documented on the three-volume album The Specialty Sessions, which include many false starts and variations.
Born-again Christianity.
Little Richard quit the music business in 1957, while on tour in Australia, claiming he had been warned of his own damnation in a vision.
Since then, he has been in and out of rock and roll as well as in and out of religion. He took the Voice of Prophecy courses run by members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, attended Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, and was ordained a minister in the Church of God of the Ten Commandments.[5] His stance at that time in his life was that rock music was of the devil and that it is not possible to play rock and roll and to please God at the same time. He began performing Gospel music throughout the United States of America, often with Gospel artists who inspired him, including Mahalia Jackson, whom he met one day in Los Angeles, where he invited her to hear him sing at the Mount Maria Baptist Church.[2] In 1959, he married a Christian girl named Ernestine.
While Specialty Records released a few new songs based on past sessions, Richard recorded only Gospel music in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He performed only Gospel material on the Gospel circuit. During this time, he did not perform his early rock and roll hits, resenting the secular themes of the songs.
In 1962, Little Richard was invited to tour Europe. He took a young Billy Preston with him on the road as part of his band. They intended on performing only Gospel music, but were lured into performing his old, secular hits. That year, an unknown British group called The Beatles were his opening act. In 1963, his opening band was another young band, the Rolling Stones. In 1964, Little Richard then introduced another then-unknown artist, Jimi Hendrix, as part of his band. Hendrix said in 1966, "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice."[2]
Richard performed on the rock revival circuit through the remainder of the 1960s and into the 1970s. He also recorded live and studio albums over this period of time. He experienced moderate chart success with new material in mid-1960s and again in the early 1970s. His late 1960s output, especially with Okeh Records, was unsuccessful commercially, but became popular on the Northern Soul circuit.
Back to religion.
In 1977, following the death of a nephew that he loved like a son, and with his own life spiraling out of control with drug abuse in the seedy underworld of LA, Little Richard returned to God and the ministry, this time for the Universal Remnant Church of God.[6] During this time, he traveled and preached to hundreds of thousands of people, and recorded more gospel music. He also represented Memorial Bibles International and sold the Black Heritage Bible for a short while. In his sermons in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Little Richard proclaimed that it is not possible to perform rock and roll music and to serve God at the same time. He said, "I like Pat Boone as a friend, but he's trying to serve two masters. Pat believes he can go to Las Vegas and do his thing, then preach on Sunday. I don't believe we can do that. God has not called us to do that. I can never see myself going back to rock 'n' roll."[2]
In 1984, Charles White released his authorized biography of Penniman, "The Life and Times of Little Richard," in which Little Richard testified about his conversion to Christianity and subsequent deliverance.[2] Mick Jagger proclaimed on the cover, "Little Richard is King." He launched yet another comeback, this time recording an album of inspirational rock and roll music. Ever since he has attempted to reconcile his role as a rock and roll star and his role as a minister. Penniman once said, "I believe that there is good and bad in everything. I believe some rock 'n' roll music is really bad, but I believe there is some not as bad. I believe if the message is positive and elevating, and wholesome and uplifting, this makes you think clearly. If it's not then it is not good even in Gospel."
As detailed in White's biography (2003 revision, pg. 221),[2] Richard's dilemma - whether to be a minister or to sing rock 'n roll - came to a head again while recording the soundtrack to the 1985 hit movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills, so he enrolled his old friend Billy Preston to help him write a song with spiritual lyrics that would sound like rock 'n' roll. The result was a song called "Great God A'Mighty", which he changed to "It's A Matter of Time", reflecting the conflict in his mind.
The song became his first hit in over a decade and became part of a Little Richard "messages in rhythm" album entitled Lifetime Friend released by WEA in 1986. Little Richard called his new music "message music", stating, "my mother died not long ago and it was only a few months before she died that she made me promise that I'd stay with the Lord. I have contentment and peace of mind, which is more important than anything. I am going to stay with God and just travel around."[2]
Recent events.
Through the remainder of the 1980s, 1990s and into the twenty-first century, Little Richard has remained a popular guest on television, in music videos, commercials, movies and as a recording artist. He has contributed new recordings to movie soundtracks (ex. Twins, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Why Do Fools Fall in Love) and wrote and performed a song for the 2001 film The Trumpet of the Swan. He also sang background vocals on the U2 / BB King hit song "When Love Comes to Town, and preaches, as well, at times amid funky saxophone playing, in the extended "Live From The Kingdom Mix' of the track". Penniman appeared on Living Colour's "Elvis Is Dead", and also recorded new tracks for tribute albums, such as Folkways: A Vision Shared ("The Rock Island Line") (1989) and Kindred Spirits: A Tribute to Johnny Cash ("Get Rhythm") (2002). He also recorded duets in the 1990s with Jon Bon Jovi, Hank Williams Jr., Living Color, Elton John, Tanya Tucker, Solomon Burke, and in 2006 with Jerry Lee Lewis, in which they covered the Little Richard-influenced, early 1960s, hit Beatles track "I Saw Her Standing There." He also recently headlined the University of Texas event "40 Acres Fest".[7]
In the 1990's, CNN's World Championship Wrestling/WCW signed a contract with Marc Mero to play a flamboyant character by the name of Johnny B. Badd, based loosely on Little Richard, due to Mero's resemblance to the singer. Mero's impersonation helped made him a superstar in the wrestling world, and he continues to wrestle under the persona as of 2006.
In 2006 he was a judge on Celebrity Duets. In 2006/2007 he was featured in a Geico advertisement, wherin he uses his signature "whoop" to denote the joy he would receive while consuming "mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce" at a Thanksgiving dinner. In 2007 his song "All Around The World" was featured on a Cravendale Advertisement for an animation by PicPic which features a cow, a pirate, and a biker. In 2007, he also performed at the Capitol Fourth - a July 4th celebration (televised live on PBS) in front of the White House in Washington D.C. In 2001, he performed at the July 4th music event in Dublin, Ohio.
On July 25th, 2007, he made an appearance on the ABC show The Next Best Thing.
Awards/honors.
In 1956, Cashbox awarded Little Richard the Cashbox Triple Crown Award for "Long Tall Sally".
In 1986, Little Richard was one of the first group of recording artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[8]
In 1990, Little Richard was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[9]
In 1993, he then received a Honorary Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.[10]
In 1994, Little Richard was the fourth recording artist (the others being Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and James Brown) to be recognized with the Lifetime Achievement Pioneer Award by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.[11]
In 1997, he received the American Music Award of Merit.
In 2002, BMI, during the 50th Annual BMI Pop Awards celebration, Little Richard, along with Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, were awarded the first BMI Icon Awards in recognition of their “unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers.”[12] The same year, he was inducted into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Hall of Fame for having "distinguished himself as not only an unparalleled musical genius, but also as a unique and innovative performing artist—fusing pure vocal talent with exhilarating showmanship."[13]
In 2003, Little Richard was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.[14]
In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked[15] Little Richard #8 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[16] Although, at least six of the seven artists which preceded him on the list were heavily influenced by Little Richard and his music (which he pointed out in the article).
In 2006, Little Richard was inducted into the Apollo Theater Legends Hall of Fame, at the same time as Ella Fitzgerald (who was one of the first winners of 'Amateur Night at the Apollo' in 1934) and Gladys Knight & the Pips.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Fats Domino
Antoine Dominique "Fats" Domino (born February 26, 1928) is a classic R&B and rock and roll singer, songwriter and pianist. He was the best-selling African-American singer of the 1950s and early 1960s.[citation needed] Domino is also a pianist with an individualistic bluesy style, showing stride and boogie-woogie influences. His congenial personality and rich accent have added to his appeal[citation needed].
Biography.
Domino was born on February 26 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He first attracted national attention with "The Fat Man" in 1949 on Imperial Records. This song has been credited by some as being the first rock and roll record, featuring a rolling piano and Domino doing "wah-wah" vocalizing over a fat back beat. The record, a re-working of "Junker's Blues" by Champion Jack Dupree, was a massive hit, selling over a million copies and peaking at #2 on the Billboard R&B charts.[citation needed] It has been estimated that Domino has sold in excess of 110 million records.[citation needed]
Domino then released a series of hit songs with producer and co-writer Dave Bartholomew, saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler and drummer Earl Palmer. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, who was also Domino's trusted bandleader. Domino finally crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955), which hit the Top Ten, though Pat Boone characteristically hit #1 with a milder cover of the song that received wider radio airplay in a racially segregated era. Domino would eventually release 37 Top 40 singles, including "Whole Lotta Loving" and "Blue Monday.
His 1956 uptempo version of the 1940 Vincent Rose, Al Lewis & Larry Stock song, "Blueberry Hill" reached #2 in the Top 40, was #1 on the R&B charts for 11 weeks, and was his biggest hit. Blueberry Hill sold more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956-57. The song had earlier been recorded by Gene Autry, and Louis Armstrong among many others.
Fats appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock![1] and The Girl Can't Help It.[2] On December 18, 1957, Domino's hit, "The Big Beat," was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Domino was a huge star in Jamaica and can be considered a father of reggae music along with Louis Jordan.[citation needed] The well known "upbeat" style of guitar in reggae can be directly traced to his piano playing.[citation needed]
Domino continued to have a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including the 1960 "Walkin' to New Orleans," written by Bobby Charles. Twenty-two of his Imperial singles were double-sided hits -- that is, both the A-side and the B-side of the single charted (i.e., 44 songs).[citation needed] After he moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963, however, Domino's chart career was drastically curtailed. He had a hit with 1963's "Red Sails In The Sunset," but by the end of 1964, the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, and sporadically after that. He also continued as a popular live act for several decades. He was furthermore acknowledged as an important influence on the music of the 1960s and 1970s by some of the top artists of that era; Paul McCartney reportedly wrote the Beatles song, "Lady Madonna," in an emulation of Domino's style.
Domino did manage to return to the "Hot 100" charts one last time in 1968. Ironically, it was with a cover of The Beatles' "Lady Madonna," which appeared at exactly #100 for two consecutive weeks.[citation needed]
In the 1980s, Domino decided he would no longer leave New Orleans, having a comfortable income from royalties and a dislike for touring, and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anyplace else. His induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and an invitation to perform at the White House failed to persuade Domino to make an exception to this policy. He lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class Lower 9th Ward neighborhood, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac. He makes yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and other local events. Domino was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #25 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[3]
When Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, due to his wife's poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded. He was thought to be dead, with someone spray-painting a message on his home, "RIP Fats. You will be missed." This was shown in news photos. On September 1, Domino's agent, Al Embry, announced that he had not heard from the musician since before the hurricane had struck.
Later that day, CNN reported that Domino was rescued by a United States Coast Guard helicopter. His daughter, gospel singer Karen Domino White, identified him from a photo shown on CNN. The Domino family was then taken to a Baton Rouge shelter, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and Fats' granddaughter's boyfriend. He let the Dominos stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on Friday, September 2, the Dominos had left Russell's apartment, after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post story.[4]
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun.
Domino was the first artist to be announced as scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival, although he was too ill to perform and was only able to offer the audience an on-stage greeting. Domino also released an album Alive and Kickin' in early 2006 to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians. The title song was recorded after Katrina, but most of the cuts were from unreleased sessions in the 1990s.
On January 12, 2007 Fat Domino was honored with OffBeat Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards held at House of Blues in New Orleans. Mayor C. Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented Fats Domino with a signed declaration. OffBeat publisher Jan Ramsey and WWL-TV's Eric Paulsen presented Fats Domino with the Lifetime Achievement Award. An all-star musical tribute followed with an introduction by the legendary producer Cosimo Matassa. The Lil' Band O' Gold rhythm section, Warren Storm, Kenny Bill Stinson, David Egan and C.C. Adcock, not only anchored the band, but each contibuted lead vocals, swamp pop legend Warren Storm leading off with "Let the Four Winds Blow" and "The Prisoner Song," which he proudly introduced by saying, "Fats Domino recorded this in 1958.. and so did I." The horn section included Lil' Band O' Gold's Dickie Landry, the Iguanas' Derek Huston, and long-time Domino horn men Roger Lewis, Elliot "Stackman" Callier and Herb Hardesty. They were joined by Jon Cleary (who also played guitar in the rhythm section), Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, Irma Thomas, George Porter, Jr. (who, naturally, came up with a funky arrangement for "You Keep On Knocking"), Art Neville, Dr. John and Allen Toussaint, who wrote and debuted a song in tribute of Domino for the occasion. Though Domino didn't perform, those near him recall him playing air piano and singing along to his own songs.
Fats Domino returned to stage on May 19th, 2007 at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. A foundation has been formed and a show is being planned for Domino and the restoration of his home, where he intends to return someday. "I like it down there" he said in a February, 2006 CBS News interview.[5]
Business.
His career has been produced and managed since the 1980s by multimedia entertainment purveyor and music producer Robert G. Vernon. During Vernon's tenure, Domino's earnings increased 500%.[citation needed]
Since 1995, Vernon and Domino have been partners (with many other companies, such as Dick Clark Productions) in the Bobkat Music Trust. Bobkat Music is an entertainment group that manages the careers (some posthumous) of Domino, Randy Pringle (writer), and other artists.
Trivia.
In 1999, National Public Radio included "Ain't That A Shame" in the NPR 100, in which NPR's music editors sought to compile the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.
A play on his name is the name of the gospel music group Fetz Domino, which means in mixed German and Latin "Groove for the Lord".
'50s blues singer Skinny Dynamo had a brief career.
Domino had 66 US Hot 100 chart hits. (James Brown had 99.)
Domino has always had strong links to The Beatles, who recorded a version of "When the Saints Go Marching In" in Germany, two years after Fats' version on Imperial Records. When they auditioned for Decca, one of their songs was another standard in Domino's repertory: "The Sheik of Araby".
In his song "I Want to Walk You Home", Domino used the words "I want to hold your hand" which may have inspired Lennon and McCartney when writing their song of the same title. In 1968, the Beatles modelled their song, "Lady Madonna", on Fats Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues", a record which Joe Meek had engineered. They also played some hits of the 1950s and early 1960s, including Domino's "Kansas City", during the Get Back album sessions.
I Want to Walk You Home was used in two Public information films by the Irish Department of the Environment, highlighting the dangers of being distracted on roads.
Domino returned the compliment in 1970 by covering not only "Lady Madonna", but two other Beatles songs, for his Reprise LP Fats is Back. Since then, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney have recorded Fats Domino songs.
Chubby Checker (Ernest Evans) got his stage name as a play on Fats Domino's name.
He appeared in a commercial for a brand of plastic food-storage bag. Various people had been shown holding and shaking these bags filled with various food items (including an obviously unhappy kid saying "shake, shake, shake--your spinach!"). At the end, Domino appears, in front of his piano, with such a bag containing blueberries. He sings, "shake, shake, shake your blueberries--on Blueberry Hill!"
References in popular culture.
In the popular 1970s sitcom Happy Days, set in the 1950s, lead character Richie Cunningham (played by Ron Howard) would often sing "I found my thrill," (the first line of Domino's "Blueberry Hill") in reference to pretty girls he dated or wanted to date.
The fictional girl band in the television series Rock Follies threatened to revolt if they had to sing "Blueberry Hill" one more time.
The American humor magazine Mad ran a cartoon spread that included fictitious artists with similar name variations, such as "Pudgy Parcheesi".
Biography.
Domino was born on February 26 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He first attracted national attention with "The Fat Man" in 1949 on Imperial Records. This song has been credited by some as being the first rock and roll record, featuring a rolling piano and Domino doing "wah-wah" vocalizing over a fat back beat. The record, a re-working of "Junker's Blues" by Champion Jack Dupree, was a massive hit, selling over a million copies and peaking at #2 on the Billboard R&B charts.[citation needed] It has been estimated that Domino has sold in excess of 110 million records.[citation needed]
Domino then released a series of hit songs with producer and co-writer Dave Bartholomew, saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler and drummer Earl Palmer. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, who was also Domino's trusted bandleader. Domino finally crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955), which hit the Top Ten, though Pat Boone characteristically hit #1 with a milder cover of the song that received wider radio airplay in a racially segregated era. Domino would eventually release 37 Top 40 singles, including "Whole Lotta Loving" and "Blue Monday.
His 1956 uptempo version of the 1940 Vincent Rose, Al Lewis & Larry Stock song, "Blueberry Hill" reached #2 in the Top 40, was #1 on the R&B charts for 11 weeks, and was his biggest hit. Blueberry Hill sold more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956-57. The song had earlier been recorded by Gene Autry, and Louis Armstrong among many others.
Fats appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock![1] and The Girl Can't Help It.[2] On December 18, 1957, Domino's hit, "The Big Beat," was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Domino was a huge star in Jamaica and can be considered a father of reggae music along with Louis Jordan.[citation needed] The well known "upbeat" style of guitar in reggae can be directly traced to his piano playing.[citation needed]
Domino continued to have a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including the 1960 "Walkin' to New Orleans," written by Bobby Charles. Twenty-two of his Imperial singles were double-sided hits -- that is, both the A-side and the B-side of the single charted (i.e., 44 songs).[citation needed] After he moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963, however, Domino's chart career was drastically curtailed. He had a hit with 1963's "Red Sails In The Sunset," but by the end of 1964, the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.
Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, and sporadically after that. He also continued as a popular live act for several decades. He was furthermore acknowledged as an important influence on the music of the 1960s and 1970s by some of the top artists of that era; Paul McCartney reportedly wrote the Beatles song, "Lady Madonna," in an emulation of Domino's style.
Domino did manage to return to the "Hot 100" charts one last time in 1968. Ironically, it was with a cover of The Beatles' "Lady Madonna," which appeared at exactly #100 for two consecutive weeks.[citation needed]
In the 1980s, Domino decided he would no longer leave New Orleans, having a comfortable income from royalties and a dislike for touring, and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anyplace else. His induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and an invitation to perform at the White House failed to persuade Domino to make an exception to this policy. He lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class Lower 9th Ward neighborhood, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac. He makes yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and other local events. Domino was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #25 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[3]
When Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his family, due to his wife's poor health. His house was in an area that was heavily flooded. He was thought to be dead, with someone spray-painting a message on his home, "RIP Fats. You will be missed." This was shown in news photos. On September 1, Domino's agent, Al Embry, announced that he had not heard from the musician since before the hurricane had struck.
Later that day, CNN reported that Domino was rescued by a United States Coast Guard helicopter. His daughter, gospel singer Karen Domino White, identified him from a photo shown on CNN. The Domino family was then taken to a Baton Rouge shelter, after which they were picked up by JaMarcus Russell, the starting quarterback of the Louisiana State University football team, and Fats' granddaughter's boyfriend. He let the Dominos stay in his apartment. The Washington Post reported that on Friday, September 2, the Dominos had left Russell's apartment, after sleeping three nights on the couch. "We've lost everything," Domino said, according to the Post story.[4]
By January 2006, work to gut and repair Domino's home and office had begun.
Domino was the first artist to be announced as scheduled to perform at the 2006 Jazz & Heritage Festival, although he was too ill to perform and was only able to offer the audience an on-stage greeting. Domino also released an album Alive and Kickin' in early 2006 to benefit the Tipitina's Foundation, which supports indigent local musicians. The title song was recorded after Katrina, but most of the cuts were from unreleased sessions in the 1990s.
On January 12, 2007 Fat Domino was honored with OffBeat Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Best of the Beat Awards held at House of Blues in New Orleans. Mayor C. Ray Nagin declared the day "Fats Domino Day in New Orleans" and presented Fats Domino with a signed declaration. OffBeat publisher Jan Ramsey and WWL-TV's Eric Paulsen presented Fats Domino with the Lifetime Achievement Award. An all-star musical tribute followed with an introduction by the legendary producer Cosimo Matassa. The Lil' Band O' Gold rhythm section, Warren Storm, Kenny Bill Stinson, David Egan and C.C. Adcock, not only anchored the band, but each contibuted lead vocals, swamp pop legend Warren Storm leading off with "Let the Four Winds Blow" and "The Prisoner Song," which he proudly introduced by saying, "Fats Domino recorded this in 1958.. and so did I." The horn section included Lil' Band O' Gold's Dickie Landry, the Iguanas' Derek Huston, and long-time Domino horn men Roger Lewis, Elliot "Stackman" Callier and Herb Hardesty. They were joined by Jon Cleary (who also played guitar in the rhythm section), Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, Irma Thomas, George Porter, Jr. (who, naturally, came up with a funky arrangement for "You Keep On Knocking"), Art Neville, Dr. John and Allen Toussaint, who wrote and debuted a song in tribute of Domino for the occasion. Though Domino didn't perform, those near him recall him playing air piano and singing along to his own songs.
Fats Domino returned to stage on May 19th, 2007 at Tipitina's at New Orleans, performing to a full house. A foundation has been formed and a show is being planned for Domino and the restoration of his home, where he intends to return someday. "I like it down there" he said in a February, 2006 CBS News interview.[5]
Business.
His career has been produced and managed since the 1980s by multimedia entertainment purveyor and music producer Robert G. Vernon. During Vernon's tenure, Domino's earnings increased 500%.[citation needed]
Since 1995, Vernon and Domino have been partners (with many other companies, such as Dick Clark Productions) in the Bobkat Music Trust. Bobkat Music is an entertainment group that manages the careers (some posthumous) of Domino, Randy Pringle (writer), and other artists.
Trivia.
In 1999, National Public Radio included "Ain't That A Shame" in the NPR 100, in which NPR's music editors sought to compile the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.
A play on his name is the name of the gospel music group Fetz Domino, which means in mixed German and Latin "Groove for the Lord".
'50s blues singer Skinny Dynamo had a brief career.
Domino had 66 US Hot 100 chart hits. (James Brown had 99.)
Domino has always had strong links to The Beatles, who recorded a version of "When the Saints Go Marching In" in Germany, two years after Fats' version on Imperial Records. When they auditioned for Decca, one of their songs was another standard in Domino's repertory: "The Sheik of Araby".
In his song "I Want to Walk You Home", Domino used the words "I want to hold your hand" which may have inspired Lennon and McCartney when writing their song of the same title. In 1968, the Beatles modelled their song, "Lady Madonna", on Fats Domino's style, combining it with a nod to Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues", a record which Joe Meek had engineered. They also played some hits of the 1950s and early 1960s, including Domino's "Kansas City", during the Get Back album sessions.
I Want to Walk You Home was used in two Public information films by the Irish Department of the Environment, highlighting the dangers of being distracted on roads.
Domino returned the compliment in 1970 by covering not only "Lady Madonna", but two other Beatles songs, for his Reprise LP Fats is Back. Since then, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney have recorded Fats Domino songs.
Chubby Checker (Ernest Evans) got his stage name as a play on Fats Domino's name.
He appeared in a commercial for a brand of plastic food-storage bag. Various people had been shown holding and shaking these bags filled with various food items (including an obviously unhappy kid saying "shake, shake, shake--your spinach!"). At the end, Domino appears, in front of his piano, with such a bag containing blueberries. He sings, "shake, shake, shake your blueberries--on Blueberry Hill!"
References in popular culture.
In the popular 1970s sitcom Happy Days, set in the 1950s, lead character Richie Cunningham (played by Ron Howard) would often sing "I found my thrill," (the first line of Domino's "Blueberry Hill") in reference to pretty girls he dated or wanted to date.
The fictional girl band in the television series Rock Follies threatened to revolt if they had to sing "Blueberry Hill" one more time.
The American humor magazine Mad ran a cartoon spread that included fictitious artists with similar name variations, such as "Pudgy Parcheesi".
Professor Longhair
Quick Facts.
Birthname: Henry Roeland Byrd.
Nicknames: Roy, Fess, Professor Longhair.
Born: December 19, 1918.
Died: January 30, 1980.
Birthplace: Bogalusa, Louisiana.
"The very first instrument I played was the bottom of my feet."
"Professor Longhair", a.k.a. Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd was born in 1918 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He moved with his family to New Orleans, where he began performing at a young age, tap dancing for tourists in the French Quarter. Many say this is where he picked up his incredible sense of rhythm.
Byrd is most known for his unique piano playing style, creating entire solos on a very limited range of notes. Chalk it up to his early days when he was first learning from his mother on an old broken piano that someone had left out for the garbage man. "My mother started teaching me what few keys they had left on it – I guess that’s why I learned the style that I learned. When I was playing, I had to remember what keys were good and what was bad and skip them and jump ‘em. Some of the guys said I was cross-chording but, whatever it was, I was getting to the right keys. With these good pianos, it’s simple for me to do what I was doing then."
After returning from serving in the Army in 1944, he went through a series of professions, cooking, boxing, and often hustling cards. The first break as a musician came in 1949 at a New Orleans club called the Caledonia. He started playing there every weekend, and gained a large following. The name Professor Longhair was awarded him by the owner of the club – "Professor" being a common term used then to describe anyone who was a great piano player, and "Longhair" because, well, he had long hair. Soon he was in a studio recording tracks, and his first (and only) hit came in 1950 when "Bald Head" reached number five on the R&B charts.
A small tour followed, where he frequently found himself in trouble with promoters and other musicians for being too hard on the pianos. Sax player Lee Allen was also on that tour: "He used to have a little quirk of kicking the piano with his right foot. The man [Fats Domino] happened to have a white baby grand piano onstage, and when he saw Fess do that, he had a fit. He saw little indentations fixing to go into his piano, so he went and got a piece of plywood or something to put up there."
In 1954 he saw a bit more success with "Tipitina", which didn’t hit the charts but did well locally.
At this point some of the details get sketchy. Most accounts say that the he had a stroke, and then disappeared from the music scene for several years after either having trouble with the law or the local musicians’ union. What is known is that he was banned from playing in New Orleans, the place where he was most famous.
Dr. John was such a Professor Longhair fan that he quit a regular gig just to play one night with him. The two became friends, and he later ended up producing the Professor’s New Orleans party classic "Go To The Mardi Gras". Dr. John remembers the musical direction given at the recording: "Fess wanted the band to rawmp [sic] and frolic – just to get what he meant by rawmp and frolic was the whole thing."
Things really didn’t take off, though, until the start of the now famous New Orleans Jazz Festival. In 1971 he was given a place to play, and he played there every year to bigger and bigger crowds. By the late 70s, his early and live albums were starting to get released, and he had just finished recording a new album for Alligator Records. He was even slated to go on tour with The Clash. He died in his sleep on January 30, 1980, the day his best studio album, "Crawfish Fiesta" was released.
Professor Longhair Quotes:
"The very first instrument I played was the bottom of my feet, workin' out rhythms, tap dancing. We used to dance up and down Bourbon Street."
Big Chief (liner notes).
"We had long hair in those days and it was almost against the law. Mike (Tessitore-club owner) said, 'I'm going to keep this band-we'll call you Professor Longhair and the Four Hairs Combo.'"
Big Chief (liner notes).
Birthname: Henry Roeland Byrd.
Nicknames: Roy, Fess, Professor Longhair.
Born: December 19, 1918.
Died: January 30, 1980.
Birthplace: Bogalusa, Louisiana.
"The very first instrument I played was the bottom of my feet."
"Professor Longhair", a.k.a. Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd was born in 1918 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He moved with his family to New Orleans, where he began performing at a young age, tap dancing for tourists in the French Quarter. Many say this is where he picked up his incredible sense of rhythm.
Byrd is most known for his unique piano playing style, creating entire solos on a very limited range of notes. Chalk it up to his early days when he was first learning from his mother on an old broken piano that someone had left out for the garbage man. "My mother started teaching me what few keys they had left on it – I guess that’s why I learned the style that I learned. When I was playing, I had to remember what keys were good and what was bad and skip them and jump ‘em. Some of the guys said I was cross-chording but, whatever it was, I was getting to the right keys. With these good pianos, it’s simple for me to do what I was doing then."
After returning from serving in the Army in 1944, he went through a series of professions, cooking, boxing, and often hustling cards. The first break as a musician came in 1949 at a New Orleans club called the Caledonia. He started playing there every weekend, and gained a large following. The name Professor Longhair was awarded him by the owner of the club – "Professor" being a common term used then to describe anyone who was a great piano player, and "Longhair" because, well, he had long hair. Soon he was in a studio recording tracks, and his first (and only) hit came in 1950 when "Bald Head" reached number five on the R&B charts.
A small tour followed, where he frequently found himself in trouble with promoters and other musicians for being too hard on the pianos. Sax player Lee Allen was also on that tour: "He used to have a little quirk of kicking the piano with his right foot. The man [Fats Domino] happened to have a white baby grand piano onstage, and when he saw Fess do that, he had a fit. He saw little indentations fixing to go into his piano, so he went and got a piece of plywood or something to put up there."
In 1954 he saw a bit more success with "Tipitina", which didn’t hit the charts but did well locally.
At this point some of the details get sketchy. Most accounts say that the he had a stroke, and then disappeared from the music scene for several years after either having trouble with the law or the local musicians’ union. What is known is that he was banned from playing in New Orleans, the place where he was most famous.
Dr. John was such a Professor Longhair fan that he quit a regular gig just to play one night with him. The two became friends, and he later ended up producing the Professor’s New Orleans party classic "Go To The Mardi Gras". Dr. John remembers the musical direction given at the recording: "Fess wanted the band to rawmp [sic] and frolic – just to get what he meant by rawmp and frolic was the whole thing."
Things really didn’t take off, though, until the start of the now famous New Orleans Jazz Festival. In 1971 he was given a place to play, and he played there every year to bigger and bigger crowds. By the late 70s, his early and live albums were starting to get released, and he had just finished recording a new album for Alligator Records. He was even slated to go on tour with The Clash. He died in his sleep on January 30, 1980, the day his best studio album, "Crawfish Fiesta" was released.
Professor Longhair Quotes:
"The very first instrument I played was the bottom of my feet, workin' out rhythms, tap dancing. We used to dance up and down Bourbon Street."
Big Chief (liner notes).
"We had long hair in those days and it was almost against the law. Mike (Tessitore-club owner) said, 'I'm going to keep this band-we'll call you Professor Longhair and the Four Hairs Combo.'"
Big Chief (liner notes).
The Teddy Boy Movement
The Velvet Collar And The Iron Fist.
The Teddyboy emerged in the 1950s as Britain was coming to the end of post-war austerity and represented the first face of British youth culture. The consumer boom of the 1950s America did not reach Britain until the 1960s but nevertheless working class teenagers could for the first time afford good clothes, a bicycle or motorcycle and entertainment. The clothing that the Teddyboys wore was designed to shock their parents' generation. It consisted of an Edwardian style drape jacket, much too 'camp' for a working class man, suede Gibson shoes with thick crepe soles, narrow 'drainpipe' trousers, a smart shirt and a loud tie - usually of the 'Slim Jim' or bootlace type. The trademark drape jacket was not as impractical as it seems. Not only did it act as a badge of recognition but, as it was made of woollen cloth with lots of pockets, its kept it's owner warm as he hung around in the street and was also good at concealing weapons and alcohol. The Teddygirls adopted American fashions such as toreador pants and circle skirts, although they tended to wear low cut tops to make themselves look less prissy. Girls wore ponytails and the boys tried a number of experimental hairstyles, the most favourite being the overblown quiff with a DA (ducks arse) at the back.
The Teds fully embraced the American Rock and Roll music that hit Britain and the British bands that adopted the same style. The Teds were, however, shadowy figures at the dancehalls, lurking around the bars, bopping around and drinking. They formed gangs who sometimes had a common uniform like a particular colour of jacket or socks. For the most part, violence and vandalism was not too serious by modern standards, and exaggerated by the media, but there were instances of serious gang warfare with razors and knives. Some Teddyboys had fascist tendencies and were involved with gangs of youths that attacked the West Indians that emigrated to Britain in the mid Fifties. This racism was the most unfortunate of the Teddyboy's tendencies and it closed off much American Rock and Roll to them. This was their loss as a lot of white covers of Afro-American songs were very poor by comparison with the originals.
The British pop boom of the 1960s brought new music and new youth culture. The Teddyboys that remained began to devote more attention to Rock and Roll music, which they at first took for granted. The first Rock and Roll pubs appeared as did the Rockers who liked the same music and rode powerful British motorcycles. Teds and Rockers got on well with each other and the leather motorbike jacket became the normal wear for many Teddyboys and Teddygirls for daytime use and for rough pubs. The bike jacket could protect against motorcycle accidents, razor attacks and spilt beer in a way that the drape jacket never could.
The 1970s saw Glam Rock and Rockabilly styled bands appear in Britain and, although the Teds despised most of this music, it brought a resurgence of interest in Rock and Roll and new venues appeared. Many teenagers bought second hand drape jackets, hid the moth holes with badges and became the new generation of Teddyboys and Teddygirls. British Rock and Roll bands developed their own style, using guitar blues and rockabilly to give their music more bite. Rock and Roll pubs would put on bands of this type and also play original 1950s records. This, the dancing and the beer created an unique entertainment experience. The Seventies also saw the appearance of the Rockabilly. Basing their look on poor white boys from the American South, they adopted the Confederate Flag as their emblem, and avoided rock and roll that was based on blues sounds or performed by black artists. Rock and Roll disk jockeys stopped playing music that Rockabillies didn't like and the Teds realised that they had new rivals for their Rock and Roll venues. There were a lot of fights and many Rock and Roll venues closed.
The 1980s were a lean time for Teds, who carried on much as they had in the Seventies. However the difficulty of finding venues led to British bands sharpening up their act and some of the new bands produced the best British Rock and Roll music ever. The Thatcher regime was an enemy of creativity, and youth cults of all types faded in the mid Eighties as low working class employment and wages led to teenage apathy and pointless riots.
In the 1990s the Teds and Rockabillies buried the hatchet, and any remaining racism amongst Teddyboys evaporated, leading to the emergence of Teddyboys in the rest of Europe where Rock and Roll has always been popular. The original Teddyboys were by now too old for violence and those that appeared in the 1980s were not interested in fighting. This led to a new type of safer Rock and Roll event where people could feel comfortable without Rock and Roll clothes or leathers. However, it would be wrong to assume that all modern Rock and Roll venues are glorified dance clubs. Many a night of drunken fun can be still be had dancing to Rock and Roll and the music is better than ever. Records sell on merit rather than star quality, and disk jockeys play CDs and vinyl disks of 1950s piano boogie , 1990s German rockabilly and Elvis back to back. Mention has to be made of 'The Flying Saucers' 'Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers' 'Lucas and the Dynamos' 'Jive Street', and Pollytone Records who organise the Teddyboy Weekenders.
The sight of children and teenagers in drape jackets and circle skirts suggests that Teddyboys and Teddygirls will still be seen for a long time yet.
Coshes, Chains and Razors.
Early in the decade, Britain produced the first Teddy Boys, regarded as the urban, unskilled working class boys, looking for an identity through the clothes they wore. They pursued gang warfare and vandalism in both the streets and the dance halls, carrying coshes, bicycle chains, razors and flick-knives beneath their fine Edwardian style clothes. The 50's was the first decade to produce teenage fashions, before this they were expected to dress similar to their parents. Following the war, when prosperity hit Britain, these working class teenagers could afford to buy their own clothes, although most shops only offered 'off the peg' conventional styles and many tailors refused to make up these 'new' fashions. The teenagers were now a marketing target that made 50's fashion a symbol of a whole new lifestyle.
The association between these youths, their dance music, their clothes and crime, had become a major source of concern well before 1954 when a gang of Teds murdered a youth on Clapham Common.
The teddy boy uniform was originally copied from the smart Edwardian gentleman - their 'social superiors'. The style was tailored, and featured long high necked jackets, sometimes of velvet, or velvet trimmed collar and cuffs, and were lined in either floral or bright colours. This was worn with brocade waistcoats, bootlace or slim jim tie, narrow 'drainpipe' trousers, wing-collared shirts and suede shoes, which were originally regarded as 'gay men's shoes' or 'nancy boy shoes'. An essential accessory, along with the cycle chain was the comb. These new 'Edwardians' were not the respectable working class, and as a result the middle class who had pioneered the style, felt that their wardrobe had now become unwearable. Those who now wore the style were described as 'delinquents', 'zoot-suiters' and 'spivs'.
In the States, following Brando in the film 'The Wild One' the teenagers adapted their fashions accordingly, buying leather bomber jackets from War Surplus stores. As this film was banned in most towns in Britain at the time, the British missed out on this style until Gene Vincent, who already had a conviction for Public Lewdness and Obscenity in the States, flew over for a British TV show.
All teddy boys went to great pain to keep their hair in place. Fighting messed up the hair - hence the ever present metal comb. The DA was the main style although there were many variations such as 'the bop', 'the Tony Curtis', 'the be-bop', 'the tevee', 'the panama' or the 'back sweep and crest'. It was greased and usually accompanied by sideboards.
As the fifties went on the urban working class association with the 'Teddy Boy' dress spread further a field and with the commercial success of films like 'Rock Around The Clock' and resultant media attention it became the style of the fifties for not just the working class. Anyone causing trouble of any kind was blamed on Teddy Boys. Just as all health problems today are blamed on 'smokers', it became almost fashionable (and it sold papers) to blame any unsocial crime on 'Teddy Boys'. A youth only had to have a Tony Curtis haircut and he was instantly labelled 'a Teddy Boy'.
The Teddyboy emerged in the 1950s as Britain was coming to the end of post-war austerity and represented the first face of British youth culture. The consumer boom of the 1950s America did not reach Britain until the 1960s but nevertheless working class teenagers could for the first time afford good clothes, a bicycle or motorcycle and entertainment. The clothing that the Teddyboys wore was designed to shock their parents' generation. It consisted of an Edwardian style drape jacket, much too 'camp' for a working class man, suede Gibson shoes with thick crepe soles, narrow 'drainpipe' trousers, a smart shirt and a loud tie - usually of the 'Slim Jim' or bootlace type. The trademark drape jacket was not as impractical as it seems. Not only did it act as a badge of recognition but, as it was made of woollen cloth with lots of pockets, its kept it's owner warm as he hung around in the street and was also good at concealing weapons and alcohol. The Teddygirls adopted American fashions such as toreador pants and circle skirts, although they tended to wear low cut tops to make themselves look less prissy. Girls wore ponytails and the boys tried a number of experimental hairstyles, the most favourite being the overblown quiff with a DA (ducks arse) at the back.
The Teds fully embraced the American Rock and Roll music that hit Britain and the British bands that adopted the same style. The Teds were, however, shadowy figures at the dancehalls, lurking around the bars, bopping around and drinking. They formed gangs who sometimes had a common uniform like a particular colour of jacket or socks. For the most part, violence and vandalism was not too serious by modern standards, and exaggerated by the media, but there were instances of serious gang warfare with razors and knives. Some Teddyboys had fascist tendencies and were involved with gangs of youths that attacked the West Indians that emigrated to Britain in the mid Fifties. This racism was the most unfortunate of the Teddyboy's tendencies and it closed off much American Rock and Roll to them. This was their loss as a lot of white covers of Afro-American songs were very poor by comparison with the originals.
The British pop boom of the 1960s brought new music and new youth culture. The Teddyboys that remained began to devote more attention to Rock and Roll music, which they at first took for granted. The first Rock and Roll pubs appeared as did the Rockers who liked the same music and rode powerful British motorcycles. Teds and Rockers got on well with each other and the leather motorbike jacket became the normal wear for many Teddyboys and Teddygirls for daytime use and for rough pubs. The bike jacket could protect against motorcycle accidents, razor attacks and spilt beer in a way that the drape jacket never could.
The 1970s saw Glam Rock and Rockabilly styled bands appear in Britain and, although the Teds despised most of this music, it brought a resurgence of interest in Rock and Roll and new venues appeared. Many teenagers bought second hand drape jackets, hid the moth holes with badges and became the new generation of Teddyboys and Teddygirls. British Rock and Roll bands developed their own style, using guitar blues and rockabilly to give their music more bite. Rock and Roll pubs would put on bands of this type and also play original 1950s records. This, the dancing and the beer created an unique entertainment experience. The Seventies also saw the appearance of the Rockabilly. Basing their look on poor white boys from the American South, they adopted the Confederate Flag as their emblem, and avoided rock and roll that was based on blues sounds or performed by black artists. Rock and Roll disk jockeys stopped playing music that Rockabillies didn't like and the Teds realised that they had new rivals for their Rock and Roll venues. There were a lot of fights and many Rock and Roll venues closed.
The 1980s were a lean time for Teds, who carried on much as they had in the Seventies. However the difficulty of finding venues led to British bands sharpening up their act and some of the new bands produced the best British Rock and Roll music ever. The Thatcher regime was an enemy of creativity, and youth cults of all types faded in the mid Eighties as low working class employment and wages led to teenage apathy and pointless riots.
In the 1990s the Teds and Rockabillies buried the hatchet, and any remaining racism amongst Teddyboys evaporated, leading to the emergence of Teddyboys in the rest of Europe where Rock and Roll has always been popular. The original Teddyboys were by now too old for violence and those that appeared in the 1980s were not interested in fighting. This led to a new type of safer Rock and Roll event where people could feel comfortable without Rock and Roll clothes or leathers. However, it would be wrong to assume that all modern Rock and Roll venues are glorified dance clubs. Many a night of drunken fun can be still be had dancing to Rock and Roll and the music is better than ever. Records sell on merit rather than star quality, and disk jockeys play CDs and vinyl disks of 1950s piano boogie , 1990s German rockabilly and Elvis back to back. Mention has to be made of 'The Flying Saucers' 'Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers' 'Lucas and the Dynamos' 'Jive Street', and Pollytone Records who organise the Teddyboy Weekenders.
The sight of children and teenagers in drape jackets and circle skirts suggests that Teddyboys and Teddygirls will still be seen for a long time yet.
Coshes, Chains and Razors.
Early in the decade, Britain produced the first Teddy Boys, regarded as the urban, unskilled working class boys, looking for an identity through the clothes they wore. They pursued gang warfare and vandalism in both the streets and the dance halls, carrying coshes, bicycle chains, razors and flick-knives beneath their fine Edwardian style clothes. The 50's was the first decade to produce teenage fashions, before this they were expected to dress similar to their parents. Following the war, when prosperity hit Britain, these working class teenagers could afford to buy their own clothes, although most shops only offered 'off the peg' conventional styles and many tailors refused to make up these 'new' fashions. The teenagers were now a marketing target that made 50's fashion a symbol of a whole new lifestyle.
The association between these youths, their dance music, their clothes and crime, had become a major source of concern well before 1954 when a gang of Teds murdered a youth on Clapham Common.
The teddy boy uniform was originally copied from the smart Edwardian gentleman - their 'social superiors'. The style was tailored, and featured long high necked jackets, sometimes of velvet, or velvet trimmed collar and cuffs, and were lined in either floral or bright colours. This was worn with brocade waistcoats, bootlace or slim jim tie, narrow 'drainpipe' trousers, wing-collared shirts and suede shoes, which were originally regarded as 'gay men's shoes' or 'nancy boy shoes'. An essential accessory, along with the cycle chain was the comb. These new 'Edwardians' were not the respectable working class, and as a result the middle class who had pioneered the style, felt that their wardrobe had now become unwearable. Those who now wore the style were described as 'delinquents', 'zoot-suiters' and 'spivs'.
In the States, following Brando in the film 'The Wild One' the teenagers adapted their fashions accordingly, buying leather bomber jackets from War Surplus stores. As this film was banned in most towns in Britain at the time, the British missed out on this style until Gene Vincent, who already had a conviction for Public Lewdness and Obscenity in the States, flew over for a British TV show.
All teddy boys went to great pain to keep their hair in place. Fighting messed up the hair - hence the ever present metal comb. The DA was the main style although there were many variations such as 'the bop', 'the Tony Curtis', 'the be-bop', 'the tevee', 'the panama' or the 'back sweep and crest'. It was greased and usually accompanied by sideboards.
As the fifties went on the urban working class association with the 'Teddy Boy' dress spread further a field and with the commercial success of films like 'Rock Around The Clock' and resultant media attention it became the style of the fifties for not just the working class. Anyone causing trouble of any kind was blamed on Teddy Boys. Just as all health problems today are blamed on 'smokers', it became almost fashionable (and it sold papers) to blame any unsocial crime on 'Teddy Boys'. A youth only had to have a Tony Curtis haircut and he was instantly labelled 'a Teddy Boy'.
Psychobilly
Psychobilly is a genre of music generally described as a mix between late-1970s punk rock and 1950s American rockabilly. It is often characterized by lyrical references to horror and exploitation films, violence, lurid sexuality, and other topics generally considered taboo, though often presented in a comedic or tongue-in-cheek fashion. Psychobilly music is often played with an upright double bass instead of the electric bass more common in modern rock music.
Origins.
The term psychobilly was first used by Wayne Kemp when he penned the Johnny Cash song "One Piece at a Time", a Top 10 hit in 1976. Although the song is not musically categorized as psychobilly, the lyrics refer to a "psychobilly Cadillac." The term came into use as a music genre a few years later, when The Cramps described their music as "psychobilly" and "rockabilly voodoo" on flyers advertising their concerts. Although The Cramps rejected the idea of being a part of a psychobilly subculture they, along with artists such as Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the Stray Cats, are considered important precursors to psychobilly. The Cramps had deep rockabilly roots and were fascinated by the genre's sound and attitude, recording numerous covers of songs from the Sun Records catalogue. The Cramps' style of psychobilly also had antecedents in the American garage rock genre of the 1960s and the UK pub rock movement of the 1970s.
The Meteors, who formed in South London in 1980, are considered the first verifiable psychobilly band. One member was part of the rockabilly subculture, another the punk subculture, and the the third a horror movie fan. Their musical and lyrical ideas overlapped to help create psychobilly as it is known today. The Meteors are often credited with advancing the idea that psychobilly should be apolitical by encouraging their concerts to be "politics-free" zones to avoid the disputes among fans which were common at punk rock concerts of the time.
International prevalence.
In 1982 the Klubfoot nightclub opened at the Clarendon Hotel in Hammersmith, West London, creating a center for the emerging psychobilly movment in the UK. At the time the genre had not yet gained national exposure and most concerts were organized as "weekenders" in which several bands were featured on one bill. Within a few years the genre spread to mainland Europe, eventually gaining popularity in Germany, Sweden, Italy, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Finland, and elsewhere. By the mid- to late-1990s psychobilly movements had begun to gain momentum in Canada and the United States, and by the early 2000s had also appeared in Japan and other Asian countries.
Fashion.
Psychobilly musicians and fans often dress in styles that borrow equally from 1950s rock and roll and 1970s punk fashions. For men this often includes cuffed jeans, worker's boots, and coiffed hair. Many style their hair in a high "wedge"-shaped pompadour reminiscent of a mohawk, sometimes known as a "quiff", though traditional pompadours are equally prevalent. Women often dress in updated 1950s fashions inspired by classic pinup models, such as full crinoline skirts and bold colors including blacks, reds, and pinks. Common patterns include horizontal stripes, gingham, and animal prints. Women's hair is often worn with pompadour-style bangs and bandannas used as headbands.
Origins.
The term psychobilly was first used by Wayne Kemp when he penned the Johnny Cash song "One Piece at a Time", a Top 10 hit in 1976. Although the song is not musically categorized as psychobilly, the lyrics refer to a "psychobilly Cadillac." The term came into use as a music genre a few years later, when The Cramps described their music as "psychobilly" and "rockabilly voodoo" on flyers advertising their concerts. Although The Cramps rejected the idea of being a part of a psychobilly subculture they, along with artists such as Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the Stray Cats, are considered important precursors to psychobilly. The Cramps had deep rockabilly roots and were fascinated by the genre's sound and attitude, recording numerous covers of songs from the Sun Records catalogue. The Cramps' style of psychobilly also had antecedents in the American garage rock genre of the 1960s and the UK pub rock movement of the 1970s.
The Meteors, who formed in South London in 1980, are considered the first verifiable psychobilly band. One member was part of the rockabilly subculture, another the punk subculture, and the the third a horror movie fan. Their musical and lyrical ideas overlapped to help create psychobilly as it is known today. The Meteors are often credited with advancing the idea that psychobilly should be apolitical by encouraging their concerts to be "politics-free" zones to avoid the disputes among fans which were common at punk rock concerts of the time.
International prevalence.
In 1982 the Klubfoot nightclub opened at the Clarendon Hotel in Hammersmith, West London, creating a center for the emerging psychobilly movment in the UK. At the time the genre had not yet gained national exposure and most concerts were organized as "weekenders" in which several bands were featured on one bill. Within a few years the genre spread to mainland Europe, eventually gaining popularity in Germany, Sweden, Italy, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Finland, and elsewhere. By the mid- to late-1990s psychobilly movements had begun to gain momentum in Canada and the United States, and by the early 2000s had also appeared in Japan and other Asian countries.
Fashion.
Psychobilly musicians and fans often dress in styles that borrow equally from 1950s rock and roll and 1970s punk fashions. For men this often includes cuffed jeans, worker's boots, and coiffed hair. Many style their hair in a high "wedge"-shaped pompadour reminiscent of a mohawk, sometimes known as a "quiff", though traditional pompadours are equally prevalent. Women often dress in updated 1950s fashions inspired by classic pinup models, such as full crinoline skirts and bold colors including blacks, reds, and pinks. Common patterns include horizontal stripes, gingham, and animal prints. Women's hair is often worn with pompadour-style bangs and bandannas used as headbands.
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]
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]
Why Elvis Matters
by Roderick T. Beaman.
Contrary to myth, the 50s was not a decade of stultifying conformity under a benign but clueless President Dwight Eisenhower. It was a time of roiling creativity, pushing the envelope in all artistic fields. James Dean, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen brought the movie anti-hero to self-doubting, sensitive fruition. Jackson Pollock was in full bloom with his abstractionist and pop art work. Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg led the beatnik movement in literature, re-combining poetry, prose, fiction and non-fiction and taking them in different directions. Most of them all of them appalled the establishment.
With all those things happening in the other arts, it was inevitable that music would change. Igor Stravinsky was blurring the edges of jazz. Later, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim would collaborate with writer Arthur Laurents to produce West Side Story. The music was essentially standard show themes with jazz elements. It was great but not groundbreaking.
As the decade dawned , the big bands that hadn't broken up, were doing nostalgia touring or being reduced to irrelevancy with Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra later releasing an abomination called 'Tea For Two Cha Cha' that probably had Tommy Dorsey beating at the inside of his coffin. Ray Anthony had a hit version of the theme from the television show Peter Gunn but the recording, in the later fifties with its big beat, actually had more in common with the rock and roll that had overtaken everyone than it did with the smooth sounds of the big band forties. Former lead singers, like Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, Doris Day and Jo Stafford were pursuing solo careers. Jazz to us was the sound of the big bands and was the music of an older generation.
To be sure, there was great jazz being produced but it had gone largely underground. The long format lasting 25 and even 30 minutes per side, of the 33&1/3rpm record gave opportunities for extended improvisation that 78 and even 45 rpm singles just did not offer. Much of Duke Ellington's best work was in the past but Dave Brubeck's legendary 'Time Out', the first major experiment in different time signatures, was to come as was John Coltrane's, Miles Davis' and Herbie Hancock's work. But jazz was no longer a force in the pop market, if true jazz ever really was. Personally, I'm inclined to dismiss most of the big bands' work as not true jazz. As David Brinkley said after Elvis died, much of what was called jazz at the time wasn't. There was something called be-bop that I remember mostly as a term that we associated with music, probably jazz, but I had no idea what it really was and I think most of the kids growing up then thought the same.
Blues had been considered a variant of jazz by much of the American public as distilled through Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Sophie Tucker with her theme, 'Some Of These Days'. Their accompaniment usually consisted of drums, bass, trombone and piano with some other instruments, rarely a guitar, thrown in. The other exposure was via W. C. Handy's 'St. Louis Blues' which was usually played in a dixieland format, devoid of blues flavor. To most of us, blues was a lament for women, usually black, over lost loves and not really something that we listened to or bought.
But there was another blues, urban type, that was developing in Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and elsewhere but was ignored by the larger white audience. It could be heard only in clubs and on certain record labels. Many of the larger record companies had what was called 'race records' which were released on alternative labels, such as Okeh and Coral. In addition, there were smaller labels that were recording this urban blues - Imperial, Chess, Sun, Stax, Specialty and Atlantic among them. That blues that was guitar based and decidedly harder edged, even raunchy. There were giants like Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Son Seals. It was waiting to be discovered by the white audience.
The music that we heard on the radio and sang wasn't jazz or blues for that matter. We would sing songs such as, Eddie Fisher's hit 'Dungaree Doll' or 'Bali Hai' and 'I'm Going To Was That Man Right Out Of My Hair' from 'South Pacific' and other hits of the day. They were all lily white. But there were others of a different cut and it was those songs that would lead the way to the musical revolution that was coming, hints of the coming storm.
A number of black artists had outright hits on the pop charts. LaVerne Baker, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Coasters, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and the Drifters all scored with big hits on the pop charts. It now became rhythm and blues and 'n----r music' was corrupting good white kids.. Articles in the newspapers, letters to the editor and Sunday sermons all warned of the dangers of this new devil's music. Blues had become rhythm and blues but us white kids called it rock and roll. We only knew that we enjoyed it. Many elders called it 'rot and roll' and predicted its quick demise. That was to be a calculation akin to booking a round trip on the Titanic. All we knew was that it was catchy, bouncy, got our feet tapping and a lot of us up dancing. Final notice that the music was here to stay may have come with Bill Doggett's 'Honky Tonk', a great dance record. Bill Doggett had been a respected journeyman jazz musician when he released the recording that was firmly grounded in rock and roll and was the biggest hit of his career. Ironically, neither Doggett nor his musicians considered themselves rock and rollers.
Some white artists had hit recordings, too. Boyd Bennett had one with 'Seventeen' that told of hot rod queens, juke boxes and had a blistering sax solo. But, Boyd Bennett was too much country & western and he faded. Lonnie Donegan's Skiffle Group from England had a hit with 'Rock Island Line', an old folk blues number that was too much folk and he couldn't follow up.
Bill Haley and the Comets scored big with 'Crazy Man, Crazy', Big Joe Turner's 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' and 'Rock Around the Clock', still the biggest rock and roll hit ever. It was featured in the opening of the film 'Blackboard Jungle', the first movie to deal with adolescent crime. The combination hinted at an association between the music and crime and that played off the white fear of blacks and made the music even more threatening. To boot, when Haley's group played in Europe, sometimes riots broke out, underlining its danger.
Bill Haley played good cut loose rock and roll but he was a little rotund and had that ridiculous spit curl down his forehead. Then he cut records such as 'See You Later, Alligator', a legitimate R&B standard but followed up with 'Skinny Minnie' and 'Lean Jean, Seventeen' which threw him into the corn field of irrelevancy. Ironies abound because 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' was the first song that Elvis sang on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, his national network television debut that catapulted him to stardom in January, 1956 and the Dorsey's were quintessential big band men.
Carl Perkins made a run at it with 'Blue Suede Shoes' that he wrote himself. He was one of the very first rock and roll singer-composers. The song was a monster hit for the same label, Sun, that Elvis recorded for. Unfortunately, Perkins was married which cooled his appeal to single girls and he was almost killed in a car wreck not long after the record became a hit. The accident took him out of the picture for months. He had a lot of the tools but it's far from certain that he had all of them. He did have a very successful career later and the Beatles covered more of his songs than they did of any other composer. Carl had to content himself with being a great also ran.
It all came together with and for Elvis. He was from Memphis, the apex of the delta where blues had begun. It was a hotbed for music. To the east, is Nashville, the home of Country & Western. To the northeast is Kentucky, the home of the bluegrass music of Bill Monroe. From the south, there was also jazz from New Orleans. Gospel and spiritual music infused life everywhere in the South. It was almost pre-destined to start there and start there it did. Elvis was influenced by all of it.
Some maintain that the time from when Elvis cut a version of Bill Monroe's, 'Blue Moon of Kentucky' and 'That's All Right' until he switched to RCA was the most important period in the development of rock and roll. The period has been mythologized and many also maintain that Elvis lost his edge after that. They especially think that he lost it after he went in the army and even more so when he went Las Vegas with schlock and glitz but all of that should be examined, too.
The myth is that RCA and Col. Tom Parker combined to sanitize Elvis into a more mainstream singer, tearing him from his natural blues, gospel and country and western roots. They didn't succeed to any where near the extent that they wanted or the extent that many critics maintain. A glimpse at the songs that he covered during all those RCA years puts the lie to such thoughts.
From the pre-army years, 'Heartbreak Hotel' is a searing R&B picture of life after a broken romance. 'Hound Dog' was an R&B number that was originally covered by Big Mama Thornton and Jerry Lee Lewis has always called 'Don't Be Cruel' the best R&B record ever. 'My Baby Left Me', 'Any Way You Want Me' and 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin' are all great numbers based in blues. Those are only some random samples among many.
There can be no doubt that blues was Elvis' natural turf but right from the beginning, he had a much more universal musical interest. He cut versions of 'My Happiness', 'Harbor Lights' and 'Blue Moon'. All had been long time standards. Elvis always said that his favorite singer was Dean Martin, as mainstream as they came. Even though Dean Martin did have a number of C&W hits, most people remember him for songs like 'I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm', 'That's Amore', 'You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You' and 'Everybody Loves Somebody, Sometime'. And if he ever did a blues, I never heard it.
When Elvis came out of the army, he launched the second part of his career. Although his albums were dominated by the soundtracks from his movies, there were always singles, flip sides and his non-soundtrack albums that had songs like, 'Fever', 'Reconsider, Baby', 'Ain't That Loving You, Baby', 'Tomorrow Night' and other blues gems.
This is the time period that the critics cite as evidence that Elvis truly sold out. The score from his very first film, 'G.I. Blues', had at least two songs that were classic melodies with words added, 'Tonight Is So Right For Love' and 'No More'. They were hints of what was to come. 'It's Now Or Never' was a reworking of 'O Solo Mio' and 'Surrender' a reworking of 'Come Back To Sorrento', both Italian love songs, the latter having been a hit by Vic Damone. Still later, his version of 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' made a lot of people forget about Dusty Springfield and her dusty voice that was one of the best and most sensuous ever to come from a record groove. This was at a time that many dismiss as his schlock and glitz period of Las Vegas. He covered Tony Bennett's old hit 'Rags To Riches' and Andy Williams' 'Are You Sincere?'. Many critics dismiss this as a sellout and further evidence that Elvis lost it after he left Sun. I disagree.
Throughout all of the RCA years, Elvis always drew from C&W, R&B, blues and gospel. There is no doubt that he extended his repertoire but he never forgot those roots. James Taylor composed 'Steamroller Blues' but Elvis' snatched it from right under his nose and did a much gutsier version. Like has been said, it was as if Elvis was saying, 'Good try kid but this is the way to sing blues'. For more evidence, just listen to 'Always On My Mind', 'Walk A Mile In My Shoes' and 'Polk Salad Annie'.
'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' was a standard long before Elvis sang it. It was recorded by Jaye P. Morgan earlier in the fifties. Even with its melodramatic interjected speech, not too many artists since have seen fit to cover it which should give an idea of how formidable it must seem to any singer to try. Which brings us to another point. How many of Elvis' big songs have ever been covered later by other artists? Leon Russell did 'Heartbreak Hotel' and Cheap Trick 'Don't Be Cruel' and so did Bill Black's Combo but I don't even remember it. The actor Richard Chamberlain cut a version of 'Love Me Tender' and another singer had a version of 'Jailhouse Rock' in the early sixties but I couldn't even find mention of it on the internet. Does anyone remember them? How many other attempts at covers of his hits have there been? The movie 'Leaving Las Vegas' had a compendium of his songs by other artists and many were very good but there have been few other serious attempts and that movie was almost an Elvis tribute. It's similar to Vladimir Horowitz at the piano. Once he did it, few would even try it for fear of the comparison.
No discussion of Elvis' importance could be complete without mentioning the Singer NBC Special of December 3, 1968 which has come to be called the Comeback Special. Recently, TV Guide named it as one of the most important musical events in television history.
The timing could hardly have been less auspicious for Elvis. He had just finished his string of movies which were his only connection with his audience for most of his post-army career. They had been almost universally panned and the critics had been as cruel to them as they had always been to him. His last number one hit was 'Good Luck Charm' from 1962. Many thought that he had lost his edge because of the army and the movies. The British Invasion with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who was in full swing. Along with Bob Dylan and a host of other later American rockers, they had transformed rock and roll to rock. Worst of all, on a dare, he had stood outside a bar in Los Angeles one morning and no one noticed him - hardly fitting for a king. Many wondered, including Elvis himself, if he could still do it. Elvis prepared for that show for months. He lost weight and trained. Right from the very beginning of the show, he answered all of the questions.
Only Elvis Presley could have had the audacity to wear that black leather outfit and only Elvis Presley could have gotten away with it. It heightened the air of sexual danger that underlay all of rock and roll and especially his appeal. The setting struck me as unusual at the time, a central square stage, with him and a back up band that included D. J. Fontana and Scotty Moore from his earliest days, Bill Black, his bassist, having died. Elvis roamed the stage like a caged animal, transfixing everyone. He never looked better, oozing sex, and he never sounded better. The setting is now acknowledged as a forerunner of MTV's Unplugged. He launched into a medley of hits and threw every fibre of his being into them with a determined fierceness that wasn't present in his previous or subsequent television appearances. It was almost as if he knew that this might be his only chance to re-establish his star in the musical sky. And re-establish his star, it did. He showed his unique combination of shyness, smart-assed confidence, impish sexuality, vulnerability, earnestness and, above all, the soul of an artist yearning for acceptance. When it was over, the King had returned to claim his throne. There could be only one King and all others were just pretenders. It was one of the most highly rated shows of the year and after that Elvis decided to return to live performing which launched the third and final part of his career.
But to show you how controversial Elvis still was, I lived in Philadelphia at the time and I didn't read a positive review. One critic said that Elvis and his sidemen were as moronic as the ongoing exchanges between them during the first part of the special, adding that the humor was apparent to no one other than them. He was wrong. Elvis fans recognized everything that they were bantering about. This very same critic fawned over a Bridget Bardot special that was on right after it. Hers has been long forgotten while Elvis' is a classic. Elvis still pushed the envelope.
Which in turn gets us to the whole question of the critics. Right from the beginning, the critics dismissed rock and roll in general and Elvis in particular. I know of only one musical authority who took it seriously at the beginning. Leonard Bernstein recognized it as being descended from blues. For innovation, jazz was the intellectuals' and the critics' music of choice.
As an example, Playboy Magazine, for all its hedonism, always was simply a survival manual for those who aspired to be part of the in crowd. Throughout the fifties and early sixties, the magazine held an annual poll of favorite musical artists. They called it the Annual Jazz All Stars Poll, which gives you an idea of what they regarded as worthwhile. The poll would list categories such as trumpet, clarinet, trombone, piano, drums and vocals.
For each category, they'd list suggestions such as Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Pete Fountain, Maynard Ferguson and Buddy Rich. Among vocalists they'd list Frank Sinatra, Ella FitzGerald, Steve Lawrence, Peggy Lee and others, all greats. Only occasionally would Elvis appear in their list. The highest I ever saw him listed was 17 and I don't think that he ever won during that time period. More often than not, it seemed, it was Frank Sinatra.
As a further example, in 1958, Elvis, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Buddy Holly were tearing up the charts with one hit after another. The Grammy for Record of the Year was awarded to 'Volare' by Domenico Modugno. In short, rock and roll just was never intellectually acceptable and Elvis, especially, wasn't. Eventually, that all changed but the critics were never ahead of the curve and that should be remembered four and five decades later when the critics lambaste Elvis for having abandoned his roots. The critics back then often referred to him and other rockers as 'singers(?)', quotation marks and all.
When The Beatles came over from England, American critics fell over themselves fawning on them and it galled a number of America's original rockers. (America has always had an inferiority complex when it comes to things British.) When they asked the Beatles who their inspirations were, they mentioned Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and especially Elvis. So great was Elvis' influence on The Beatles that his version of 'I Want To Play House With You' was the inspiration for their song 'Run For Your Life' that John Lennon wrote. Lennon later said that when Elvis appeared on television, sang, 'wiggled his ass' and the girls went crazy, they knew that was what they wanted. Ringo said that without Sun records, the Beatles would never have been. It still took the critics years to realize what home grown treasures we had.
Which leads to another point. What are the critics but another group of people who have opinions about things, in this case, the performing arts? They showed themselves to be cemented in the establishment with their attitude toward the single most important post war musical trend and the single most important artist in that trend. They did not recognize innovation. While the critics were deriding Elvis and the other rock and rollers, a musical revolution was occurring right under their noses and they didn't recognize it. These were serious artists. Ultimately, the critics are the customers who plunk down their hard earned dollars to have some moments of enjoyment.
At this juncture, it's difficult to envision the uproar surrounding Elvis. Elvis was controversial, for the music he performed and his stage act. It was bad enough that the music was black and 'the devil's music'. His movements sent shrieks of horror through all layers of society. Ministers and nuns denounced him. Religious magazines had articles that seriously argued that Elvis Presley was sent by Satan for our moral destruction, an ironic contention given that he was steeped in the southern religious tradition and always voiced the desire to quit popular music and join a gospel group. Vituperation was heaped upon William F. Buckley, Jr. when he wrote in a column that, for all the hullaballoo, Presley had a nice voice. Roy Orbison saw Elvis in person and said that there was just no point of reference for his stage act. Tom Petty saw Elvis in Lakeland, Florida and decided then and there to make music his career.
(There's an interesting sidelight here. Elvis was given the nickname 'Elvis the Pelvis'. When Dick Gregory was asked about it, he said, 'Thank God his name isn't Enos').
So, not only doesn't the argument that Elvis abandoned his roots stand up to examination, but it's specious anyway. Elvis was always more than a just a bluesman or C&W wailer. Even at the beginning, he was much more catholic in his musical tastes than the myth has suggested.
And so what if he did stray from his roots? He was raised in the southern musical stew of blues, gospel and C&W and it was natural that his primary thrust would be blues but southern music, while great, is limited. In this light, Sam Phillips was right to sell Elvis' contract to allow him to go to a venue more suited to his full potential. He was above all, a singer and could he ever sing. He had a two and a third octave range, almost operatic and rarely was off pitch. Remember that next time you listen to his renditions of 'Softly, As I Leave You', 'Memories', 'Love Letters' and 'Until It's Time For You To Go'. It's not clear whether Sun Records could have given Elvis the opportunity for such gems.
Ultimately, there may have been a more serious consideration for Elvis' significance. Tony Bennett had a hit version of Hank Williams' 'Cold, Cold Heart' and Dean Martin had numerous C&W hits. Hank Williams had many crossover hits, including 'Hey, Good Lookin' and others but they were white music making it in another white world. Elvis had hits with blues, rhythm and blues, C & W and even gospel. Elvis and the other early southern rockers weren't content with any limitations. They were raised in that great southern musical stew. They were going to play all of it and that was all there was to it.
Until the day he died, Martin Luther King, Jr. said that there would be integration in the south far sooner than in the north. Time has born that out and maybe in their own way, those early rockers were saying something far more important than music. They may have actually been presaging the integration that was to come.
During the time of the twenty fifth anniversary commemorations, David Bowie revealed that at the time of his death, Elvis and he had been discussing a joint project which shows just how far he had brought his music and himself. It also shows how abreast of things Elvis kept. He did covers of Beatles songs, including 'Hey Jude' and 'Something', Paul Simon's 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters' and Bob Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice', John Fogerty's 'Proud Mary' and the list goes on.
So then we come back to the whole original idea of bringing blues and country and western music to the masses. Elvis sang them all and by unabashedly mixing them up with all other types, isn't that exactly what he did?
My kids know that I've been a Elvis fan and they say that they like 'A Little Less Conversation'. They think Elvis is cool. That says lot and that's why, twenty five years after his death, Elvis still matters.
Contrary to myth, the 50s was not a decade of stultifying conformity under a benign but clueless President Dwight Eisenhower. It was a time of roiling creativity, pushing the envelope in all artistic fields. James Dean, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen brought the movie anti-hero to self-doubting, sensitive fruition. Jackson Pollock was in full bloom with his abstractionist and pop art work. Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg led the beatnik movement in literature, re-combining poetry, prose, fiction and non-fiction and taking them in different directions. Most of them all of them appalled the establishment.
With all those things happening in the other arts, it was inevitable that music would change. Igor Stravinsky was blurring the edges of jazz. Later, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim would collaborate with writer Arthur Laurents to produce West Side Story. The music was essentially standard show themes with jazz elements. It was great but not groundbreaking.
As the decade dawned , the big bands that hadn't broken up, were doing nostalgia touring or being reduced to irrelevancy with Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra later releasing an abomination called 'Tea For Two Cha Cha' that probably had Tommy Dorsey beating at the inside of his coffin. Ray Anthony had a hit version of the theme from the television show Peter Gunn but the recording, in the later fifties with its big beat, actually had more in common with the rock and roll that had overtaken everyone than it did with the smooth sounds of the big band forties. Former lead singers, like Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, Doris Day and Jo Stafford were pursuing solo careers. Jazz to us was the sound of the big bands and was the music of an older generation.
To be sure, there was great jazz being produced but it had gone largely underground. The long format lasting 25 and even 30 minutes per side, of the 33&1/3rpm record gave opportunities for extended improvisation that 78 and even 45 rpm singles just did not offer. Much of Duke Ellington's best work was in the past but Dave Brubeck's legendary 'Time Out', the first major experiment in different time signatures, was to come as was John Coltrane's, Miles Davis' and Herbie Hancock's work. But jazz was no longer a force in the pop market, if true jazz ever really was. Personally, I'm inclined to dismiss most of the big bands' work as not true jazz. As David Brinkley said after Elvis died, much of what was called jazz at the time wasn't. There was something called be-bop that I remember mostly as a term that we associated with music, probably jazz, but I had no idea what it really was and I think most of the kids growing up then thought the same.
Blues had been considered a variant of jazz by much of the American public as distilled through Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Sophie Tucker with her theme, 'Some Of These Days'. Their accompaniment usually consisted of drums, bass, trombone and piano with some other instruments, rarely a guitar, thrown in. The other exposure was via W. C. Handy's 'St. Louis Blues' which was usually played in a dixieland format, devoid of blues flavor. To most of us, blues was a lament for women, usually black, over lost loves and not really something that we listened to or bought.
But there was another blues, urban type, that was developing in Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and elsewhere but was ignored by the larger white audience. It could be heard only in clubs and on certain record labels. Many of the larger record companies had what was called 'race records' which were released on alternative labels, such as Okeh and Coral. In addition, there were smaller labels that were recording this urban blues - Imperial, Chess, Sun, Stax, Specialty and Atlantic among them. That blues that was guitar based and decidedly harder edged, even raunchy. There were giants like Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Son Seals. It was waiting to be discovered by the white audience.
The music that we heard on the radio and sang wasn't jazz or blues for that matter. We would sing songs such as, Eddie Fisher's hit 'Dungaree Doll' or 'Bali Hai' and 'I'm Going To Was That Man Right Out Of My Hair' from 'South Pacific' and other hits of the day. They were all lily white. But there were others of a different cut and it was those songs that would lead the way to the musical revolution that was coming, hints of the coming storm.
A number of black artists had outright hits on the pop charts. LaVerne Baker, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Coasters, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and the Drifters all scored with big hits on the pop charts. It now became rhythm and blues and 'n----r music' was corrupting good white kids.. Articles in the newspapers, letters to the editor and Sunday sermons all warned of the dangers of this new devil's music. Blues had become rhythm and blues but us white kids called it rock and roll. We only knew that we enjoyed it. Many elders called it 'rot and roll' and predicted its quick demise. That was to be a calculation akin to booking a round trip on the Titanic. All we knew was that it was catchy, bouncy, got our feet tapping and a lot of us up dancing. Final notice that the music was here to stay may have come with Bill Doggett's 'Honky Tonk', a great dance record. Bill Doggett had been a respected journeyman jazz musician when he released the recording that was firmly grounded in rock and roll and was the biggest hit of his career. Ironically, neither Doggett nor his musicians considered themselves rock and rollers.
Some white artists had hit recordings, too. Boyd Bennett had one with 'Seventeen' that told of hot rod queens, juke boxes and had a blistering sax solo. But, Boyd Bennett was too much country & western and he faded. Lonnie Donegan's Skiffle Group from England had a hit with 'Rock Island Line', an old folk blues number that was too much folk and he couldn't follow up.
Bill Haley and the Comets scored big with 'Crazy Man, Crazy', Big Joe Turner's 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' and 'Rock Around the Clock', still the biggest rock and roll hit ever. It was featured in the opening of the film 'Blackboard Jungle', the first movie to deal with adolescent crime. The combination hinted at an association between the music and crime and that played off the white fear of blacks and made the music even more threatening. To boot, when Haley's group played in Europe, sometimes riots broke out, underlining its danger.
Bill Haley played good cut loose rock and roll but he was a little rotund and had that ridiculous spit curl down his forehead. Then he cut records such as 'See You Later, Alligator', a legitimate R&B standard but followed up with 'Skinny Minnie' and 'Lean Jean, Seventeen' which threw him into the corn field of irrelevancy. Ironies abound because 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' was the first song that Elvis sang on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, his national network television debut that catapulted him to stardom in January, 1956 and the Dorsey's were quintessential big band men.
Carl Perkins made a run at it with 'Blue Suede Shoes' that he wrote himself. He was one of the very first rock and roll singer-composers. The song was a monster hit for the same label, Sun, that Elvis recorded for. Unfortunately, Perkins was married which cooled his appeal to single girls and he was almost killed in a car wreck not long after the record became a hit. The accident took him out of the picture for months. He had a lot of the tools but it's far from certain that he had all of them. He did have a very successful career later and the Beatles covered more of his songs than they did of any other composer. Carl had to content himself with being a great also ran.
It all came together with and for Elvis. He was from Memphis, the apex of the delta where blues had begun. It was a hotbed for music. To the east, is Nashville, the home of Country & Western. To the northeast is Kentucky, the home of the bluegrass music of Bill Monroe. From the south, there was also jazz from New Orleans. Gospel and spiritual music infused life everywhere in the South. It was almost pre-destined to start there and start there it did. Elvis was influenced by all of it.
Some maintain that the time from when Elvis cut a version of Bill Monroe's, 'Blue Moon of Kentucky' and 'That's All Right' until he switched to RCA was the most important period in the development of rock and roll. The period has been mythologized and many also maintain that Elvis lost his edge after that. They especially think that he lost it after he went in the army and even more so when he went Las Vegas with schlock and glitz but all of that should be examined, too.
The myth is that RCA and Col. Tom Parker combined to sanitize Elvis into a more mainstream singer, tearing him from his natural blues, gospel and country and western roots. They didn't succeed to any where near the extent that they wanted or the extent that many critics maintain. A glimpse at the songs that he covered during all those RCA years puts the lie to such thoughts.
From the pre-army years, 'Heartbreak Hotel' is a searing R&B picture of life after a broken romance. 'Hound Dog' was an R&B number that was originally covered by Big Mama Thornton and Jerry Lee Lewis has always called 'Don't Be Cruel' the best R&B record ever. 'My Baby Left Me', 'Any Way You Want Me' and 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin' are all great numbers based in blues. Those are only some random samples among many.
There can be no doubt that blues was Elvis' natural turf but right from the beginning, he had a much more universal musical interest. He cut versions of 'My Happiness', 'Harbor Lights' and 'Blue Moon'. All had been long time standards. Elvis always said that his favorite singer was Dean Martin, as mainstream as they came. Even though Dean Martin did have a number of C&W hits, most people remember him for songs like 'I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm', 'That's Amore', 'You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You' and 'Everybody Loves Somebody, Sometime'. And if he ever did a blues, I never heard it.
When Elvis came out of the army, he launched the second part of his career. Although his albums were dominated by the soundtracks from his movies, there were always singles, flip sides and his non-soundtrack albums that had songs like, 'Fever', 'Reconsider, Baby', 'Ain't That Loving You, Baby', 'Tomorrow Night' and other blues gems.
This is the time period that the critics cite as evidence that Elvis truly sold out. The score from his very first film, 'G.I. Blues', had at least two songs that were classic melodies with words added, 'Tonight Is So Right For Love' and 'No More'. They were hints of what was to come. 'It's Now Or Never' was a reworking of 'O Solo Mio' and 'Surrender' a reworking of 'Come Back To Sorrento', both Italian love songs, the latter having been a hit by Vic Damone. Still later, his version of 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' made a lot of people forget about Dusty Springfield and her dusty voice that was one of the best and most sensuous ever to come from a record groove. This was at a time that many dismiss as his schlock and glitz period of Las Vegas. He covered Tony Bennett's old hit 'Rags To Riches' and Andy Williams' 'Are You Sincere?'. Many critics dismiss this as a sellout and further evidence that Elvis lost it after he left Sun. I disagree.
Throughout all of the RCA years, Elvis always drew from C&W, R&B, blues and gospel. There is no doubt that he extended his repertoire but he never forgot those roots. James Taylor composed 'Steamroller Blues' but Elvis' snatched it from right under his nose and did a much gutsier version. Like has been said, it was as if Elvis was saying, 'Good try kid but this is the way to sing blues'. For more evidence, just listen to 'Always On My Mind', 'Walk A Mile In My Shoes' and 'Polk Salad Annie'.
'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' was a standard long before Elvis sang it. It was recorded by Jaye P. Morgan earlier in the fifties. Even with its melodramatic interjected speech, not too many artists since have seen fit to cover it which should give an idea of how formidable it must seem to any singer to try. Which brings us to another point. How many of Elvis' big songs have ever been covered later by other artists? Leon Russell did 'Heartbreak Hotel' and Cheap Trick 'Don't Be Cruel' and so did Bill Black's Combo but I don't even remember it. The actor Richard Chamberlain cut a version of 'Love Me Tender' and another singer had a version of 'Jailhouse Rock' in the early sixties but I couldn't even find mention of it on the internet. Does anyone remember them? How many other attempts at covers of his hits have there been? The movie 'Leaving Las Vegas' had a compendium of his songs by other artists and many were very good but there have been few other serious attempts and that movie was almost an Elvis tribute. It's similar to Vladimir Horowitz at the piano. Once he did it, few would even try it for fear of the comparison.
No discussion of Elvis' importance could be complete without mentioning the Singer NBC Special of December 3, 1968 which has come to be called the Comeback Special. Recently, TV Guide named it as one of the most important musical events in television history.
The timing could hardly have been less auspicious for Elvis. He had just finished his string of movies which were his only connection with his audience for most of his post-army career. They had been almost universally panned and the critics had been as cruel to them as they had always been to him. His last number one hit was 'Good Luck Charm' from 1962. Many thought that he had lost his edge because of the army and the movies. The British Invasion with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who was in full swing. Along with Bob Dylan and a host of other later American rockers, they had transformed rock and roll to rock. Worst of all, on a dare, he had stood outside a bar in Los Angeles one morning and no one noticed him - hardly fitting for a king. Many wondered, including Elvis himself, if he could still do it. Elvis prepared for that show for months. He lost weight and trained. Right from the very beginning of the show, he answered all of the questions.
Only Elvis Presley could have had the audacity to wear that black leather outfit and only Elvis Presley could have gotten away with it. It heightened the air of sexual danger that underlay all of rock and roll and especially his appeal. The setting struck me as unusual at the time, a central square stage, with him and a back up band that included D. J. Fontana and Scotty Moore from his earliest days, Bill Black, his bassist, having died. Elvis roamed the stage like a caged animal, transfixing everyone. He never looked better, oozing sex, and he never sounded better. The setting is now acknowledged as a forerunner of MTV's Unplugged. He launched into a medley of hits and threw every fibre of his being into them with a determined fierceness that wasn't present in his previous or subsequent television appearances. It was almost as if he knew that this might be his only chance to re-establish his star in the musical sky. And re-establish his star, it did. He showed his unique combination of shyness, smart-assed confidence, impish sexuality, vulnerability, earnestness and, above all, the soul of an artist yearning for acceptance. When it was over, the King had returned to claim his throne. There could be only one King and all others were just pretenders. It was one of the most highly rated shows of the year and after that Elvis decided to return to live performing which launched the third and final part of his career.
But to show you how controversial Elvis still was, I lived in Philadelphia at the time and I didn't read a positive review. One critic said that Elvis and his sidemen were as moronic as the ongoing exchanges between them during the first part of the special, adding that the humor was apparent to no one other than them. He was wrong. Elvis fans recognized everything that they were bantering about. This very same critic fawned over a Bridget Bardot special that was on right after it. Hers has been long forgotten while Elvis' is a classic. Elvis still pushed the envelope.
Which in turn gets us to the whole question of the critics. Right from the beginning, the critics dismissed rock and roll in general and Elvis in particular. I know of only one musical authority who took it seriously at the beginning. Leonard Bernstein recognized it as being descended from blues. For innovation, jazz was the intellectuals' and the critics' music of choice.
As an example, Playboy Magazine, for all its hedonism, always was simply a survival manual for those who aspired to be part of the in crowd. Throughout the fifties and early sixties, the magazine held an annual poll of favorite musical artists. They called it the Annual Jazz All Stars Poll, which gives you an idea of what they regarded as worthwhile. The poll would list categories such as trumpet, clarinet, trombone, piano, drums and vocals.
For each category, they'd list suggestions such as Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Pete Fountain, Maynard Ferguson and Buddy Rich. Among vocalists they'd list Frank Sinatra, Ella FitzGerald, Steve Lawrence, Peggy Lee and others, all greats. Only occasionally would Elvis appear in their list. The highest I ever saw him listed was 17 and I don't think that he ever won during that time period. More often than not, it seemed, it was Frank Sinatra.
As a further example, in 1958, Elvis, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Buddy Holly were tearing up the charts with one hit after another. The Grammy for Record of the Year was awarded to 'Volare' by Domenico Modugno. In short, rock and roll just was never intellectually acceptable and Elvis, especially, wasn't. Eventually, that all changed but the critics were never ahead of the curve and that should be remembered four and five decades later when the critics lambaste Elvis for having abandoned his roots. The critics back then often referred to him and other rockers as 'singers(?)', quotation marks and all.
When The Beatles came over from England, American critics fell over themselves fawning on them and it galled a number of America's original rockers. (America has always had an inferiority complex when it comes to things British.) When they asked the Beatles who their inspirations were, they mentioned Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and especially Elvis. So great was Elvis' influence on The Beatles that his version of 'I Want To Play House With You' was the inspiration for their song 'Run For Your Life' that John Lennon wrote. Lennon later said that when Elvis appeared on television, sang, 'wiggled his ass' and the girls went crazy, they knew that was what they wanted. Ringo said that without Sun records, the Beatles would never have been. It still took the critics years to realize what home grown treasures we had.
Which leads to another point. What are the critics but another group of people who have opinions about things, in this case, the performing arts? They showed themselves to be cemented in the establishment with their attitude toward the single most important post war musical trend and the single most important artist in that trend. They did not recognize innovation. While the critics were deriding Elvis and the other rock and rollers, a musical revolution was occurring right under their noses and they didn't recognize it. These were serious artists. Ultimately, the critics are the customers who plunk down their hard earned dollars to have some moments of enjoyment.
At this juncture, it's difficult to envision the uproar surrounding Elvis. Elvis was controversial, for the music he performed and his stage act. It was bad enough that the music was black and 'the devil's music'. His movements sent shrieks of horror through all layers of society. Ministers and nuns denounced him. Religious magazines had articles that seriously argued that Elvis Presley was sent by Satan for our moral destruction, an ironic contention given that he was steeped in the southern religious tradition and always voiced the desire to quit popular music and join a gospel group. Vituperation was heaped upon William F. Buckley, Jr. when he wrote in a column that, for all the hullaballoo, Presley had a nice voice. Roy Orbison saw Elvis in person and said that there was just no point of reference for his stage act. Tom Petty saw Elvis in Lakeland, Florida and decided then and there to make music his career.
(There's an interesting sidelight here. Elvis was given the nickname 'Elvis the Pelvis'. When Dick Gregory was asked about it, he said, 'Thank God his name isn't Enos').
So, not only doesn't the argument that Elvis abandoned his roots stand up to examination, but it's specious anyway. Elvis was always more than a just a bluesman or C&W wailer. Even at the beginning, he was much more catholic in his musical tastes than the myth has suggested.
And so what if he did stray from his roots? He was raised in the southern musical stew of blues, gospel and C&W and it was natural that his primary thrust would be blues but southern music, while great, is limited. In this light, Sam Phillips was right to sell Elvis' contract to allow him to go to a venue more suited to his full potential. He was above all, a singer and could he ever sing. He had a two and a third octave range, almost operatic and rarely was off pitch. Remember that next time you listen to his renditions of 'Softly, As I Leave You', 'Memories', 'Love Letters' and 'Until It's Time For You To Go'. It's not clear whether Sun Records could have given Elvis the opportunity for such gems.
Ultimately, there may have been a more serious consideration for Elvis' significance. Tony Bennett had a hit version of Hank Williams' 'Cold, Cold Heart' and Dean Martin had numerous C&W hits. Hank Williams had many crossover hits, including 'Hey, Good Lookin' and others but they were white music making it in another white world. Elvis had hits with blues, rhythm and blues, C & W and even gospel. Elvis and the other early southern rockers weren't content with any limitations. They were raised in that great southern musical stew. They were going to play all of it and that was all there was to it.
Until the day he died, Martin Luther King, Jr. said that there would be integration in the south far sooner than in the north. Time has born that out and maybe in their own way, those early rockers were saying something far more important than music. They may have actually been presaging the integration that was to come.
During the time of the twenty fifth anniversary commemorations, David Bowie revealed that at the time of his death, Elvis and he had been discussing a joint project which shows just how far he had brought his music and himself. It also shows how abreast of things Elvis kept. He did covers of Beatles songs, including 'Hey Jude' and 'Something', Paul Simon's 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters' and Bob Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice', John Fogerty's 'Proud Mary' and the list goes on.
So then we come back to the whole original idea of bringing blues and country and western music to the masses. Elvis sang them all and by unabashedly mixing them up with all other types, isn't that exactly what he did?
My kids know that I've been a Elvis fan and they say that they like 'A Little Less Conversation'. They think Elvis is cool. That says lot and that's why, twenty five years after his death, Elvis still matters.
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