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…)

I first heard Rose Maddox when my friend Steve England made a tape of old-time music – bluegrass, country, western swing and hillbilly boogie – after starting his club Son of Redneck with Jo Hagan. (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…)

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…)

This is my favourite Elvis song of all time. It’s one of the first he recorded at Sun Studios and it came out on the B-side of his second single Good Rocking Tonight in 1954.
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Here’s my final contender for the earliest rock’n’roll song. And I think it’s the winner. (more…)

Sam Phillips is arguably the single most important name in the history of rock’n’roll music. In 1950 he opened a recording studio in Memphis and his label, Sun Studio, went on to make much of the earliest – and still the greatest – rock’n’roll music ever recorded. (more…)