© 1995 by Richard E. Jandrow

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD
NUMBER

95-75534

SUGGESTED AREA

Main entry under title:

What it was was Rockabilly,

(Music in American life)

Includes discography's and index.

1. Rock musicians  United States  Biography

I. Jandrow, Richard E., 1942-

ISBN

1-886791-01-5

1st Printing

Edited by Nancy DeFalco

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Introduction

To say that this book is a mere compilation of information would be the same as saying that Elvis was just another singer and the Beatles were just another rock group. 

When a historian compiles  a history of a topic for the benefit of people in the future, he or she ordinarily does so out of an interest in the aspects of history presented and the times involved, in the hopes of sparking that same interest  in the reader. My interest is one of pure feeling: Having loved the sound and the emotions of the times, but never really understanding what was happening, I can only relate this feeling to  the  similar feeling of those  who  attended Woodstock or to those who were ripe during the emergence of the Beatles.

To  have  been  there during the beginning of rock and roll: to have experienced  its  uniqueness, but to have been too ignorant and too young to realize what was happening is something that I regret.

Jerry  Lee  Lewis,  Elvis  Presley,  Hank  Williams,  Chuck  Berry, Jimmie  Rodgers  (the original),  Bill  Haley, Gene  Vincent,  Carl  Perkins, Bob Wills, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran whether white or black, good or bad, smooth or rough --- all have something in common. They were associated with the beginnings of rock and roll. At the root of these beginnings was the creation and development of rockabilly music.

Rockabilly  began   in  an era of despair and hunger, using an instrument that was assumed to be unsophisticated and simple, to create a background  sound  for  the  rhythm section only. The guitar, which was the basic instrument of the rockabilly sound, took many, many years to develop from the background, strictly rhythm sounds of the big bands, through the ranks of Negro blues and country pickin', and into the electric era of the 1950s and 1960s. It Went along with the  early  development  of  Negro  blues  and  later  into the white sounds of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family.

In the beginning, there were various types of ethnic music, peculiar to  the  different areas of the country. Whether it be Kentucky bluegrass,  Louisiana  Cajun,  Texas  swing, Chicago blues, Tennessee country music, New York bop, 42nd Street breakdance music, or 16th Avenue country and western, the United States is unequaled in the variety of its musical forms and styles.

This book attempts to recreate one small aspect of the development of American popular music, through a form that was born in the late 1940s and early 1950s and went into seclusion in the 1960s, only to be resurrected in the 1980s. This type of music was called rockabilly, and the artists mentioned here were the creators of this genre of rock 'n roll.

Introductionvii

Rockabilly: A Definition

The sounds of rockabilly began in the mountains of the South, and those that blocked the passage to the West, stopping at mid- country to merge with the inner-city sounds of the blacks and their roots in  the  older,  more dated sounds of the African music that came to America during the early years of slavery. These sounds began to merge somewhere  near the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s. 

Rockabilly was a reflection of the restlessness of youth, coupled with the  desire  for  something  that  was  theirs, and only theirs.  It  starts  with  the  driving  beat  of  an electric guitar, and sometimes, with a pumping piano, accented with heavy drums, or rhythm guitar. It grabs the energy of its youthful creators and propels itself through the sounds of the day, reflecting the rebelliousness of the time. It is a full sound, in that three musicians can sound like  a  full  band;  it is  a  very sexy sound, driven by the beat of a heart, pro- jecting love on its audience: It is the fulfillment of years of musical development in this country that, somehow, refuses to die.

Epigraph

The  fifties  were  the  time  of  contentment  and innocence... Even though we were at war, it seemed far away and non existent... The country  was  flourishing;  people  were  traveling;  and jobs were plenty... Everything was written for us in black and white and was good . A  cheerleader  could sleep with every member of the foot- ball team after the big game, and the next day she would be renew- ed as a virgin. There was magic in the air, and music in our hearts.. Then, it happened!!!

On  a  nice  quiet  day  in  July,  of  1954, in Memphis, Tennessee, a young hillbilly entered a recording studio and created a sound that would change the course of history.