rockabilly

The tradition & historical record

Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the South. As a genre, it blends the sound of Western musical styles such as country with that of rhythm and blues, leading to what is considered "classic" rock and roll. Some have also described it as a blend of bluegrass with rock and roll. The term "rockabilly" itself is a portmanteau of "rock" (from "rock 'n' roll") and "hillbilly", the latter a reference to the country music (often called "hillbilly music" in the 1940s and 1950s) that contributed strongly to the style. Other important influences on rockabilly include Western swing, boogie-woogie, jump blues, and electric blues. Defining features of the rockabilly sound included strong rhythms, boogie woogie piano riffs, vocal twangs, doo-wop a capella singing, and common use of the tape echo; and eventually came to incorporate different instruments and vocal harmonies. Initially popularized by artists such as Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Burnette, Jerry Lee Lewis and others, the rockabilly style waned in the late 1950s; nonetheless, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, rockabilly enjoyed a revival. An interest in the genre endures even in the 21st century, often within musical subcultures. Rockabilly has spawned a variety of sub-styles and has influenced the development of other genres such as punk rock. ¹

There was a close relationship between blues and country music from the very earliest country recordings in the 1920s. The first nationwide country hit was "Wreck of the Old 97", backed with "The Prisoner's Song", which also became quite popular. Jimmie Rodgers, the "first true country star", was known as the "Blue Yodeler", and most of his songs used blues-based chord progressions, although with very different instrumentation and sound from the recordings of his black contemporaries like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bessie Smith. During the 1930s and 1940s, two new sounds emerged. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were the leading proponents of Western Swing, which combined country singing and steel guitar with big band jazz influences and horn sections; Wills's music found massive popularity. Recordings of Wills's from the mid 1940s to the early 1950s include "two beat jazz" rhythms, "jazz choruses", and guitar work that preceded early rockabilly recordings. Wills is quoted as saying "Rock and Roll? Why, man, that's the same kind of music we've been playin' since 1928!... But it's just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It's the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. ¹

White sharecroppers' sons Carl Perkins and his brothers Jay and Clayton, along with drummer W. S. Holland, had established themselves as one of the hottest bands on the honky-tonk circuit around Jackson, Tennessee. Most of the songs they played were country standards with a faster rhythm. It was here that Carl started composing his first songs. While playing, he would watch the dance floor to see what the audience preferred and adjust his compositions to suit, writing them down only when he was sure they were finished. Carl sent numerous demos to New York record companies with no success; the producers believed the Perkins' style of rhythmically-driven country was not commercially viable. That would change in 1955 after recording the song "Blue Suede Shoes" (recorded December 19, 1955) on Sam Phillips' Memphis-based Sun Records. Later made more famous by Elvis Presley, Perkins' original version was an early rock 'n' roll standard. In the early 1950s, there was heavy competition among Memphis area bands playing an audience-savvy mix of covers, original songs, and hillbilly flavored blues. One source mentions both local disc jockey Dewey Phillips and producer Sam Phillips as being influential. An early radio show on KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas quickly became a mix of blues, country and early rockabilly. The Saturday Night Jamboree was a Memphis stage show held every Saturday night at the Goodwyn Institute Auditorium in downtown Memphis, Tennessee from 1953–1954. The Jamboree shows were sometimes broadcast live on KWEM. A number of future notables performed there, including Elvis Presley. ¹

Elvis Presley's first recordings took place at Sun Records, a small independent label run by record producer 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 modest fee, record themselves on a two-song vanity record. One young man who came to record himself as a surprise for his mother, he claimed, was Elvis Presley. Presley made enough of an impression that Phillips deputized guitarist Scotty Moore, who then enlisted bassist Bill Black, both from the Starlight Wranglers, a local Western swing band, to work with the young man. The trio rehearsed dozens of songs, from traditional country to gospel. During a break on July 5, 1954, Elvis started playing "That's All Right Mama", a 1946 blues song by Arthur Crudup, and Moore and Black joined in. After several takes, Phillips had a satisfactory recording. "That's All Right" was released on July 19, 1954. Presley's version of "That's All Right Mama" melded country, a genre associated with European-American culture, and rhythm & blues, a genre associated with African-American culture. The resulting track was denied airplay on both country radio stations and R&B stations for being "too black" and "too white", respectively. Country deejays told Phillips they would be "run out of town" for playing it. When the song was finally played by one rogue deejay, Dewey Phillips, Presley's recording created so much excitement it was described as having waged war on segregated radio stations. All of Presley's early singles featured a blues song on one side and a country song on the other, both sung in the same genre-blending style. ¹

In 1951 a Western swing bandleader named Bill Haley recorded a version of "Rocket 88" with his group, the Saddlemen. It is considered one of the earliest recognized rockabilly recordings. It was followed by versions of "Rock the Joint" in 1952, and original works such as "Real Rock Drive" and "Crazy Man, Crazy", the latter of which reached number 12 on the American Billboard chart in 1953. On April 12, 1954, Haley, performing with his band as Bill Haley and His Comets, recorded "Rock Around the Clock" for Decca Records of New York City. When first released in May 1954, "Rock Around the Clock" made the charts for one week at number 23, and sold 75,000 copies. In 1955, it was featured in the film Blackboard Jungle, resulting in a resurgence of sales. The song hit No. 1, held that position for eight weeks, and was the number two song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 1955. ¹

In 1954, both Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins a… ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Rockabilly”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

rockabilly is early style of rock and roll music, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 27 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²