Hey, blame it on Warren Smith and a freshly heard Rock and Roll Ruby via YouTube automatic retro magic. Hell, blame it on Sonny Burgess burning up the world with Red-headed Woman, yah, now that I think of it blame it on him, or even on a mad dog middle of the night discussion with kindred Peter Paul Markin rekindled from childhood (or rather budding teen-hood) about who was who in the be-bop rock and roll firmament in the mid-1950s. Damn, blame it on the retro-fuelled Stray Cats but under no circumstances blame it on me for lighting up cyberspace with a bag full of rockabilly gumbo.
The last time that I discussed rockabilly music in this space was a couple of years ago when I was mulling over the work of artists like Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, when they were young and hungry, from hunger really, and fed into our jailbreak hungry after years of listening to parent Sinatra, Como, Page and the Ink Spots ad infinitum, who got their start at Sam Phillips’ famed Sun Records studio in Memphis. Part of the reason for those thoughts was my effort to trace the roots of rock and roll, the music of my coming of age, and that of my generation, the generation of ’68. Clearly rockabilly was, along with country and city blues from the likes of Robert Johnson, Skip James , Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and pre-Tina Ike Turner (think Rocket 88 among other be-bop stuff) and rhythm and blues from the likes of Big Joe Turner (think, big think and don’t spare anything, Shake, Rattle and Roll) a part of that formative process. The question then, and the question once again today, is which strand dominated the push to rock and roll, if one strand in fact did dominate.
I have gone back and forth on that question over the years. That couple of years ago mentioned above I was clearly under the influence of Big Joe Turner and Howlin’ Wolf and so I took every opportunity to stress the bluesy nature of rock. Recently though I have been listening, and listening very intently, to early Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis and I am hearing more of that be-bop rockabilly rhythm flowing into the rock night. Let me give a comparison. A ton of people have done Big Joe Turner’s classic rhythm and bluish Shake, Rattle, and Roll, including Bill Haley, Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee. When I listen to that song as performed in their more rockabilly style those versions seem closer to what evolved into rock. So for today, and today only, yes Big Joe is the big daddy, max daddy father of rock but Elvis, Jerry Lee, and Carl are the very pushy sons.
And that brings us to the treasure trove of rockabilly music, the stuff the big boys came, all back forty barns dances, high school last chance dances, and country fair jamborees from, the stuff the big boys listened to get an idea or two, and maybe helped to create. I have already done enough writing in praise of the work of Sam Phillips and Sun Records to bring that good old boy rockabilly sound out of the white southern countryside. I noted that for the most part those who succeeded in rockabilly in say 1954, or 55 had to move on to rock to stay current with the youth wave (the disposable income/allowance post- World War II youth wave, mainly girls, who bought those luscious 45 RPM records and put those nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes and, and, sometimes, pretty please some times, let the likes of cash-lite Josh Breslin and P.P. Markin help them make their selections, okay) and so the rockabilly sound was somewhat transient except for those who consciously decided to stay with that sound. The best example of that, other than those mentioned above, is Red Hot by Bill Riley and His Little Green Men, an extremely hot example by the way. If you listen to his other later material it stays very much in that rockabilly vein. In contrast, take High School Confidential by Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee might have started out in rockabilly down in that Cajun mishmash Louisiana swamp but this number (and others) is nothing but the heart and soul of rock (and a song, by the way, we all prayed would be played at our junior high school dances to get thing, you know what things, going). Case closed.
Other stick-outs included Ooby Dooby, Roy Orbison (although he has a ton of better songs); Blue Suede Shoes (the teeth-cutting, max daddy of rockabilly songs), Carl Perkins; Susie-Q (right at that place where rockabilly and blues meet to form rock and a classic come hither song), Dale Hawkins; Party Doll (another great junior high school dance song), Buddy Knox; Come On, Let’s Go (bringing just a touch of Tex-Mex into the rockabilly mix), Ritchie Valens, and the national anthem, Summertime Blues by the great and underrated Eddie Cochran.
No comments:
Post a Comment