New projects revive rockabilly legacy
|
But keep cool about that when those tattooed, black-booted neo-greasers roll into town for a rockabilly festival. They say the music with the wild boogie beat that crystalized in Memphis with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and all those cats is still rockin’.
Two new projects capture the flavor of the era: eMusic has released “The Sun Essentials,” a compilation of songs recorded on Sun Records, the label that popularized rockabilly under producer Sam Phillips in the 1950s; and Brian Setzer, probably the best known modern interpreter of rockabilly, has recorded a Sun tribute album called “Rockabilly Riot Vol. I”
“The inspiration for this was my son, who’s 18,” Setzer said. “I was playing some old Sun Records, and he and his friends rushed into the room and loved it. I thought that if I did a Sun tribute record I could get more young people to listen to it.”
In the early 1980s, Setzer spurred a rockabilly revival in Europe and America with his group the Stray Cats. The band had three Top 10 hits, including “Stray Cat Strut” and “Rock This Town.” Setzer, a guitar slinger who’s worked with Robert Plant and Bob Dylan among others, helped revitalize swing band music a decade later with his Brian Setzer Orchestra.
On “Rockabilly Riot,” he focuses on the Sun catalog between 1954 and 1957, a period that defined the classic rockabilly sound of twangy electric guitars and acoustic bass set to a fast, thumping beat.
Setzer covers 23 songs, including Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes,” Cash’s “Get Rhythm” and Lewis’ “Real Wild Child” as well as more obscure tunes like Warren Smith’s “Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache.” He uses Presley’s backing singers, the Jordanaires, on one track, “Stairway to Nowhere.”
“I wanted to keep it authentic,” Setzer said. “I even went as far as copying the original drum parts. I felt that was an overlooked part of those recordings. Now when people play rockabilly they ignore the little fills and tricks they used.”
An early form of rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly blended country, R&B and gospel. Memphis was a hotbed with dozens of studios and record labels, Sun being chief among them. The hallmarks of the music were echoed vocals, thick reverb and a percussive “slap-back” bass sound created by snapping the bass strings.
The genre hit its stride with Presley’s 1954-56 Sun recordings, then faded quickly as popular tastes changed.
“These guys who were stars for about four years had to make a choice — go to country music or get real jobs,” said Nikki Douglas, operations manager at Sun Studio, which in those days was called the Memphis Recording Service.
Cash, Charlie Rich and Conway Twitty went on to successful country careers, while others such as Orbison and Presley continued as rock ‘n’ rollers.
“The Sun Essentials” compilation overlaps some with Setzer’s album but includes more hits, some beyond rockabilly.
“Sun had blues, rockabilly, rock ‘n’ roll, lots of different stuff,” said John Schorr, manager of Sun Studio, which, besides being a tourist attraction, continues as a working studio with artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Tom Petty, Matchbox 20 and U2 recording there. “The label wasn’t specific to one type of music. It was whatever was selling at that time.”
Sun Records became inactive in the 1960s as key artists left and the roster grew stale. But Mercury Records producer Shelby Singleton Jr. bought the label in 1969 and, recognizing the value of the catalog, began reissuing Sun recordings and licensing them to other companies.
Today, the label is based in Nashville instead of Memphis, and its little rooster with rays of sunshine in back is world famous.
As for rockabilly, like Sun Records and Sun Studio, it’s still thumping — some say thriving. Many U.S. and European cities host multi-day festivals that celebrate rockabilly music and 1950s pop culture, with hotrod car shows and burlesque competitions. In Memphis, Sun Studio attracts about 150,000 visitors a year, most of them tourists on their way to Presley’s Graceland mansion. And in nearby Jackson, Tenn. — Perkins’ hometown — a rockabilly museum opened about five years ago.
Meanwhile, young musicians continue to reinterpret the music, though none with the success of the Stray Cats.
“At this point, rockabilly is a subculture without the support of popular radio,” said Marc Bristol, owner of publisher of Blue Suede News, a 3,000-circulation quarterly magazine based in Seattle.
But Setzer and Singleton believe rockabilly endures in contemporary music. Setzer says the fleet guitar picking on some country records echoes the sound. Singleton says one hit song can push the genre back into the mainstream.
“Rockabilly never really dies. It just sits there and smolders,” Singleton said.