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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.
(more…)

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…)

Hillbilly boogie was a postwar hybrid popularised by white folk in the South and evolved into rockabilly in the mid-1950s. (more…)

I didn’t discover Elvis until his Vegas period in the early 1970s, belting out big ballads with overblown arrangements while I waited impatiently for new singles by T. Rex, Slade and The Sweet. (more…)