Rockabilly

I have to confess that growing up I only knew the name Brenda Lee from the Golden Earring song Radar Love. I’m not sure I even knew she was a real person. But she was.

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This was my introduction to the weird and wonderful world of The Cramps. They came along at exactly the right time with their decadent and pervy punk-adjacent rockabilly.

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RIP Jerry Lee Lewis (1935-2022). Last of the rock’n’roll legends, The Killer might not have been the greatest of men but his musical legacy is peerless.

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Back in 1977 I don’t think I knew what rockabilly was, and I’d never heard Elvis Presley’s early Sun Sessions. Then along came a cool dude with impeccable punk credentials called Robert Gordon.

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Here’s a song by one of rockabilly’s revered elder statesmen that just makes you want to get up and dance, whatever music you like.
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Johnny Horton walked the line between country music and rockabilly but had his biggest success with a pair of folk-flavoured “saga songs” before dying an early death in a car crash in 1960. (more…)

Of all the country boogie songs (and there are many), perhaps the most unusual is Grady Martin’s hymn to the least fashionable style of men’s underwear – Long John Boogie. (more…)

Rockabilly one-hit wonder Ray Smith’s background is like a real-life version of The Dukes Of Hazzard. (more…)

Carl Perkins may be the least famous of the Million Dollar Quartet who turned up to record at Sun Studio on the same day as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. (more…)

Roy Orbison is another of those old-timers who I grew up thinking of as a career crooner – at least until I saw him live a year before his death after belatedly discovering his early rockabilly tunes. (more…)