28.12.11

Dead Links...


New Year. As good a time as any to attend to the broken links, of which I'm sure there are many. If you find any dead links please let me know. I don't want disappointed visitors.
I'll keep you updated regarding the progress made in renewing the links.

The Milkshakes Sing and Play 20 Rock & Roll Hits of the 50's & 60's (1984)

A genius.
When I listen to a Billy Childish record I want to play my guitar.
When I see a Billy Childish painting I want to paint.
When I read a Billy childish poem I want to write poems.
When I see Billy Childish I want to grow a fine moustache
and ride an old bicycle. 
That's how much I like Billy Childish.

26.12.11

Camper Van Beethoven -Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1985)


This is the expanded 2004 reissue.
Quirky Indie rock interspersed with instrumental tracks that sound like Russian Ska Music. In fact one of the bands from which Camper Van Beethoven evolved was called Estonian Gauchos - if there were gauchos in Estonia I can imagine them producing the sort of music featured here. Remarkable.

David Lowery -lead vocals, rhythm guitar
Jonathan Segel - violin, keyboards, guitar, backing vocals
Chris Molla -guitar, backing vocals
Victor Krummenacher -bass, backing vocals
Anthony Guess -drums

http://d01.megashares.com/dl/NdH04R4/Camper Van Beethoven.rar

17.12.11


That's probably going to be it from me until after the holidays. Have a good time folks. Do your bit to promote freedom.

16.12.11

This Is Big Audio Dynamite (1985)

You can hear this coming if you listen to Combat Rock and Rat Patrol by The Clash. A sophisticated groovy sound laced  with soundtrack samples.
The first words heard on the LP are Get three coffins ready, spoken by Clint Eastwood in Per un pugno di dollari . I've often wondered if Mick was thinking of his former bandmates there...

The outstanding E=MC2   references the films of Nicholas Roeg, with soundbites from one of my all time favourite movies, Performance

 
United we stand, divided we're lumbered-Johnny Shannon as Harry Flowers

I like a bit of a cavort, I don't send 'em solicitor's letters. I apply a bit of pressure - James Fox as Chas

At the death, who is left holding the sodding baby?- James Fox as Chas

Don Letts - sound effects, vocals
Dan Donovan - keyboards, photos
Leo Williams - bass, vocals
Greg Roberts - drums, vocals
Mick Jones - vocals, guitar

14.12.11

Colin Ward Reader...

 Why do people consent to be governed? It isn't only fear: what have millions of people to fear from a small group of politicians? It is because they subscribe to the same values as their governors. Rulers and ruled alike believe in the principle of authority, of hierarchy, of power. These are the characteristics of the political principle. The anarchists, who have always distinguished between the state and society, adhere to the social principle, which can be seen wherever men link themselves in an association based on a common need or a common interest.
Colin Ward
Holidays coming up. Get a bit bored? Fancy a bit of reading, all for free?
A selection of works by Colin Ward.
Credit to the original poster.

12.12.11

The Housemartins- London 0 Hull 4 (1986)

 
I've been thinking a lot about the eighties recently.  Spent some time with my good friends Jim and Karl last week, first time, we reckon, since about 1988, that we'd all been together. That's what started it (or cranked it up, to be honest I'm always thinking about the eighties). And this LP has featured prominently in those recollections. Decency, virtue, honesty.  I was never a big fan of the acapella stuff. When I heard them first I thought they were going to be bigger than The Beatles...
I went to the shop and I bought a brass door knocker in the shape of Marcel Proust's nose.










P.d. Heaton – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, melodica; Hugh Whitaker – drums, vocals; Stan Cullimore – guitar, vocals; Norman Cook - bass, vocals.

9.12.11

Miserable Old Bastard Speaks...

 Actually that title is well wide of the mark. I've never been happier in my life.
I was having a chat with Gruff from Secret Sound Machine the other day and he asked me what my album of the year so far was.
I told him without hesitation that I didn't listen to new music. I thought about this statement later on and realised how true it was, and that the only 2011 release I have is Dim Problem by Conductors.I didn't even get the last Scroobius Pip record that came out...
In fact I just looked at what I thought was the only vaguely recent stuff I have- it's all about 4 years old.
It really is a case of there being too much old stuff that I want to listen to. I just haven't got the time or energy to take on any new stuff. Have you noticed how many times I used the word stuff there?  Three times.
As I type this I'm listening to Rockabilly music from about 1959.
 Oscar Wilde died when he was my age. So did Baudelaire, Antonio Gramsci , Roscoe Arbuckle. Tony Hancock didn't even make it this far...
So, I wear old fashioned clothes and listen to old fashioned music, stuff from twenty or thirty years ago generally speaking.  I don't go to football because you can't stand up, I think that it stinks that you can't smoke in planes, trains, restaurants. I don't watch TV because I detest insincerity and I think that life is a shallow enactment.I don't know the first thing about most bands who debuted this century. I know there's a lot of soulless, boring dross around. You can't avoid it.
Some music I love. I love the raw energy of Punk and Rockabilly, I love the simplicity of delta blues. ( More pertinently at present  I love the joyful poppiness of Secret Sound Machine).
But most music I simply haven't got the time for.

8.12.11

Manchester, So Much To Answer For (1990)

The Fall Eat Yourself Fitter Buzzcocks What Do I Get
The Frantic Elevators  Hunchback Of Notre Dame The Chameleons Second Skin (Films) 
The Passage  Dark Times Blue Orchids The House That Faded Out
Tools You Can Trust Working And Shopping Twang Big Dry Out
A Witness I Love You Mr. Disposable Razors Big Flame All The Irish Must Go To Heaven 
The Smiths Handsome Devil Happy Mondays Mad Cyril Inspiral Carpets Directing Traffic 
The Railway Children Consider Dub Sex Swerve A Certain Ratio Do The Du 
A Guy Called Gerald Rockin' Ricki Ruthless Rap Assassins Three The Hard Way 
Kiss AMC Rawside New Fast Automatic Daffodils Big


I bet you've all been dying for a bit of Mick Hucknall on here?
A bit of a cash in on the (then) massive impact that Manchester was having on the popular music scene.
 Flaws? A Manchester comp covering roughly 1978-1990 with no Joy Division / New Order?
Stone Roses never played a Peel Session so they're not here either. Similarly absent and more of a loss - The Durutti Column and Frank Sidebottom . Anyway, what's here is, generally speaking, good. In places the sound quality is not great I'm afraid. (One of those 90's CDs that's turned a funny yellow colour...)

5.12.11

Secret Sound Machine


 If you're in the West Wales area on Wednesday 7th December you could do a lot worse than get down to the Parrot, King St, Carmarthen, give the man £3 and get to see a very exciting pop group. Secret Sound Machine
will be supporting Songdog on the night.

If you like mature literate pop, blonde bouffanted flautists or just good old baroque and roll  Secret Sound Machine should be just your cup of tea. We'll be seeing more of them at Burning Aquarium soon, meanwhile, catch 'em while they're fresh!

2.12.11

Johnny Cash With His Hot and Blue Guitar ! (1957)


They used to call me Rockabilly
all of us ran through
When Elvis opened up the door 
with a pup-and-pup-and-boo
I didn't ever play much rock and roll 
cause I got so much country in my soul
 Johnny Cash

This will ease us out of Rockabilly mode for a while. As Johnny himself said, he was never anything other than Country, but the Country and Rockabilly sounds got pretty close in Memphis back then.  
This was the first ever LP on Sun Records, and a lot of the characteristics of the early Rockabilly sound are strongly in evidence.
 
Johnny Cash - Guitar, Vocals
Luther Perkins - Electric Guitar
Marshall Grant - Bass

30.11.11

A Third Rockabilly Selection...


So, that was Rockabilly month.
I've learned something from it- that what I look for above all else in music is excitement, and listening to these acts from the early days of Rockabilly has certainly given me plenty of that. It has also reinforced my view that music gets its power from simplicity.
My belief in the importance of Elvis has also been renewed- the right man in the right place at the right time, he ignited a cultural phenomenon that has shaped the lives of millions of people over almost sixty years. Rockabilly was happening anyway, but it would have remained a rather obscure form of country music without the transcendent impact of Elvis.
I hope that some of our readers have taken the chance to listen to some really great artists who they might otherwise have missed, in particular Mr Rockabilly himself, the great Mr Charlie Feathers.



Rock And Roll With Mom And Dad Bill Davenport & His Circle D Ranch Hands; I Need Some Lovin' Harold Allen; Lovin' Honey Gene Morris; Shook Shake Ken Davis; Betty Ann Cruisers; Rattle Shakin' Mama Mel McGonnigle; Shake It Up Baby Frankie Dee; Be My Baby F.D. Johnson With The Missouri Valley Boys; Hang Out Lloyd Arnold; It's Rock And Roll Jack Winston & The Hi-Jacks; Rock N' Roll Saddles The Whitecaps with Johnny Edwards; Sugar Sweet David Houston; If You Love My Woman Jimmy Witter & The Shadows; I Hate Myself Al Sweatt With Johnnie Cale & The Valentines; Hey Jibbo  Art Wood; Robinson Crusoe Bop Sonny Cole & The Rhythm Roamers; Full-Grown Cat The McCoys; Rhythm Guitar Carl Miller; Love Bug Crawl Jim Billington; Rock, Baby, Rock Bob Hicks & The Fenders; Barefoot Baby  Janis Martin; Rock-A-Bye-Baby  Skeeter Bonn; Oooh-Wee  Ric Cartey; Jungle Rock Hank Mizell; Rakin' And Scrapin' Dean Beard; Flying Saucers Rock 'N' Roll Billy Lee Riley; A Red Cadillac And A Black Moustache Warren Smith;   Brand New Cadillac Vince Taylor; Red Hot Billy Riley And The Little Green Men; Stutterin' Papa Buck Griffin; Matchbox Carl Perkins.

I know Vince Taylor was English, but I just love the number!

29.11.11

Drummers...

Purists often insist that acoustic rhythm guitar, electric lead guitar and stand up bass are all you need for the authentic rockabilly sound. No drums. The percussive effects come from the slap bass -consider That's Alright- the seminal Rockabilly disc-Elvis Presley vocals and rhythm guitar, Scotty Moore on lead guitar, and Bill Black on upright 'slapped' bass. The recording contains no drums or additional instruments.

Even the great Charlie Feathers said:
And drums don't really work with rockabilly. They collide with the bass. It isn't really rockabilly if you use drums. That turns it into just rock. Well, drums are OK on rockabilly if it's just a running lick, like Buddy Holly's 'Peggie Sue' - that's rockabilly, when you keep that flow going. That's what Scotty Moore (sic) and them gave Elvis. But if it's laid-down, straight backbeat, like Carl Perkins had, that isn't rockabilly. Half the drummers don't know how to drum, to start with. They're timekeepers, that's all they are, with no dynamics. And dynamics, that's part of the show in rockabilly. That is exactly what it's all about, right there.

But check out the drumming of D. J. Fontana on Elvis' 'My Baby Left |Me'- sublime. Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, Carl Perkins, The Rock n Roll Trio (on record at least,The Rock n Roll Trio used session drummers for recordings) all featured drummers.

W.S Holland was Johnny Cash's drummer for about a million years. His illustrious career started out with Carl Perkins in a most unusual manner. Holland would beat out a rhythm on the body of  Jay Perkins' bass:
"On a Saturday night, Carl said, 'We've got an audition at Sun Records next week,'" Holland remembered. "'Get some drums and go with us.' I told him I'd never played drums, but I borrowed a set the next day. I set them up backwards, because I didn't know the difference. Tuesday, I went and played with them at the Cotton Boll. Thursday morning, we went to Memphis...On the way back to Jackson, we were all laughing about it," Holland said. "I mean, the second time I ever sat on a drum stool in my life, I played on a record."


DJ Fontana was staff drummer for the Louisiana Hayride. Country Music had no place for drums in those days- not visible drums at least, and DJ played behind the stage curtain. The first time he played with Elvis and the Blue Moon Boys was on October 16, 1954. He played behind the curtain as usual, but after that date he played out in front with the rest of the band, and joined Elvis' group full-time in August of 1955.

In Gene Vincent's 'Be-Bop-A-Lula,' an undeniable rockabilly classic, Vincent's Blue Cap drummer Dickie Harrell demonstrated that it wasn't necessarily the volume of the beat that made it work, but the manner in which it was delivered. In 'Be-Bop-A-Lula,' a Top 10 hit in 1956, Harrell used brushes instead of drumsticks and created a sexy, circular snare drum rhythm. He moved the song along with innuendo and cool dynamics. A very hip drum part, it's a perfect example of the way restraint in drumming can give the music momentum and power.

Max Weinberg - Let There Be Drums sleeve notes.

28.11.11

Cliff Gallup (1930-1988)



With the utmost respect to Scotty Moore and Paul Burlison, I'm not going to argue with anyone who claims that Cliff Gallup was the most exciting guitarist in Rockabilly. Cliff's place amongst the true legends of Rock music rests on the 35 surviving tracks from 9 sessions with Gene Vinvcent And His Blue Caps at Bradley Film & Recording Studio Nashville, with Ken Nelson at the controls.


May 4, 1956
       1. Race With The Devil  Released on single CAPITOL F 3530 (1956). Tab  
2. Be-Bop-A-Lula Released on single CAPITOL F 3450 (1956). Tab
3.Woman Love Released on single CAPITOL F 3450 (1956). Tab
4. I Sure Miss You Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps CAPITOL T811 (1957)

June 24, 1956
   5. Jezebel Released on the LP Bluejean Bop CAPITOL T764 (1956) 
6.Crazy Legs  Released on single CAPITOL F 3617 (1957)
7.Peg O' My Heart Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) 
8. Wedding Bells (Are Breaking Up that Old Gang Of Mine) Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .
June 25, 1956
9.Waltz Of The Wind Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .
10. Up A Lazy River Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .
11. Ain't She Sweet Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .
12. Gonna Back Up Baby Released on single CAPITOL F 3530 (1956).  
13. Race With The Devil  (unissued / lost track)

June 26, 1956
14. Who Slapped John Released on single CAPITOL F 3558 (1956) and the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .   
15. Jumps Giggles And Shout Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .
16. Bluejean Bop Released on single CAPITOL F 3558(1956) and the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .   Tab
17. I Flipped Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) 

June 27, 1956
18. Bop Street Released othe LP Bluejean Bop  (1956) . Tab
19.Well, I Knocked Bim Bam Released on the Compilation LP Teenage Rock CAPITOL T1009 (1958)
20. You Told A Fib Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
21.Jump Back,Honey,Jump Back Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) 

October 15, 1956
22. Teenage Partner (version 1) Released othe LP  A Gene Vincent Record DateCAPITOL T1059 (1958)
23. Blues Stay Away From Me Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
24. Five Feet Of Lovin' (version 1) Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
25. Cat Man Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
October 16, 1956
26. Double Talkin' Baby Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
27. Hold Me, Hug Me, Rock Me Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
28. Unchained Melody Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957) 

October 17, 1956
29. B-I-Bickey-Bi Bo Bo Go Released on single CAPITOL F 3678 (1957)
30. Pink Thunderbird Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
31. Pretty, Pretty Baby Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
32. Cruisin'  Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957) Tab

October 18, 1956
33. Important Words (version 1) Released on single CAPITOL F 3617(1957)
34. You Better Believe Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
35. Red Bluejeans And A Pony Tail Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
36. Five Days, Five Days Released on single CAPITOL F 3678 (1957)

Cliff used a flat pick and  fingerpicks on his middle and ring fingers, and operated the vibrato bar with his small finger.
Guitar =1955 Gretsch 6128 Duo-Jet


Amplifier = Standel 25L15 (26-Watts tube amp with a single 15-inch speaker)



In the mid sixties Cliff Gallup and his group, The Four C's, released an LP, entitled Straight Down the Middle. It's very hard to find! Haven't even located a rip of it. 

Interesting to read that Cliff , who being a family man was reluctant to go on the road, went back to working in school maintenance. His obituary made no mention of his music career.

There's some good info on Cliff's set up here: http://www.rockabillyhall.com/soundlikecliff.html

Here are all the surviving tracks that Cliff Gallup recorded with Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps:





Plundered from many sources!

27.11.11

Corky Jones- Hot Dog (1956)



I didn't say I wasn't gonna do rockabilly. I just said I ain't gonna sing no song that ain't a country song. I won't be known as anything but a country singer.
Buck Owens.



Lots of rockabilly artists came from a Country music background, others, such as Charlie Rich and Wanda Jackson enjoyed success in Rockabilly and then returned to the Country genre when the craze for Rockabilly subsided.
Country music legend Buck Owens released one Rockabilly 45. He used an alias because he didn't want to alienate his country music following.
These tracks are not ripped from the original, they're MP3s.

26.11.11

Rockabilly Stars, Volume 1


The following is lifted from a review of the 1982 compilation LP Rockabilly Stars, Volume 1:

With hindsight and experience we now can recognise how the foundations of rock n roll were to be found all over the thirties forties and fifties...
Rockabilly, as a musical genre, corresponds emotionally and, for the most part, geographically and temporally to that segment of Elvis’ career that stretched from (That’s Alright Mama) until his induction into the army in 1958.
The early rockabilly artists, raised on a diet of White Country and Hillbilly music, began, at the urging of Elvis’ mentor, Sam Phillips, of Sun Records, to listen to Black Blues and jazz, and affect black vocal styles…

And they made extensive use of the instrument that became literally and metaphorically the voice of a generation- the amplified electric guitar.
Though recorded electric guitar solos date back to the thirties…by the fifties Les Paul had ‘whitened’ and began to popularise the sound. The Rockabillies’ more forthrightly sensual lyrics grafted perfectly onto the guitar sound that was raw, aggressive and devoid of soft sentimentality. It was a sound that established the existence if a generation. Young peoples feelings and fantasies were codified and publicly expressed. The artists spoke for as well as to their audience. And when the slithering, sensuous music was universally condemned, it took on still greater meaning as a challenge to the morals and aesthetics of the older generation.

Tom Bentkowski New York Magazine 25 Jan 1982

So am I posting the record? Nope. The curious thing about the album is that it's not really Rockabilly! Throughout there's lashings of fiddles, slide guitar, honky tonk pianos, even saxophones and chorus backing singers.  Generally speaking what we have is a lot of 1950's (ish) country-pop and straight Rock n Roll with all the trimmings. I'm sure loads of Rockabillies in the 80's must have been mightily frustrated on hearing this selection.  Look elsewhere if you want a slice of the authentic music that the review refers to but which is curiously absent from this particular disc.

If you want to check it out for yourselves it's posted here: http://avaxhome.ws/music/rock/rnr_rock_n_roll_roots/rockabilly/va__rockabilly_stars1.html

25.11.11

Elvis Presley- The Sun Sessions (1954- 55)


Beale Street- 'Colored Memphis'

Dewey Phillips of  WHBQ- listeners sometimes mistook him for an African American.  A white DJ who played black music. The first DJ to play an Elvis record on the radio and the first person to interview Elvis.  


Elvis' friend and bodyguard Jerry Schilling
We can never forget that rock and roll was born out of segregation. It was dangerous for us to go down to Beale Street to buy our records. Our parents would have grounded us forever if they found out. It was a totally segregated society. Beale Street was black. Main Street was white. In the middle of all of that, Dewey Phillips played a record called 'That's All Right Mama' by a boy from Humes High School. He had to say Humes High School, because the audience would then know that he was white. Dewey played predominately black music. When 'That's All Right Mama' came on the radio, it was so exciting. It rolled it into something to be a part of.




Taken from elvis.com.au:

'Down in Tupelo, Mississippi', Elvis told a white reporter for 'The Charlotte Observer' in 1956, he used to listen to Arthur Crudup, the blues singer who originated That's All Right, Elvis' first record. Crudup, he said, used to 'bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw'. It was statements like these that caused Elvis to be seen as something of a hero in the black community;in those early years. In Memphis the two African-American newspapers'The Memphis World' and 'The Tri-State Defender', hailed him as a race man- not just for his music but also for his indifference to the usual social distinctions.
In June 1956, 'The Memphis World' newspaper reported, 'the rock 'n' roll phenomenon cracked Memphis's segregation laws by attending the Memphis Fairgrounds amusement park 'during what is designated as 'colored night'.Elvis also attended the otherwise  segregated WDIA black radio station's annual fund-raiser for 'needy Negro children' at Memphis' Ellis Auditorium.


From a transcript of The Biography of America.

You've got to understand, Memphis is an interesting place. It's a convergent point really for two immigration movements. The immigration of whites, of Scotch-Irish and Irish descent through the Appalachian Mountains
We often call their music hillbilly music, okay? Rockabilly they often called it. At the same time lots of these people were living in Memphis.
And just below Memphis, all the way down from Memphis to Vicksburg, is a place called the Delta, the great cotton planting region of the South at the time of the Civil War. And Memphis is a cotton-exporting center. And there's a lot of poverty in the Delta, but there's rich music coming out of the Delta. Howling Wolf, and all the early greats like B.B. King, blues singers are coming out of there.And they're migrating to a place called Beale Street, which is almost an all-black entertainment section in Memphis. And Beale Street fascinates Elvis. And he and his friends started to go down there along with another -- a couple of other white rebel kids. And then more and more of these kids started to go there.
And the interesting thing is that a lot of the black clubs wouldn't let white kids in. They started to let them in, but they roped them off into a separate section. Then all of a sudden, the music gets going, the rope goes down and everybody's out there dancing.
And that's taboo. This is the solid south, the segregationist south. And Memphis is a bastion of segregation. So this is a strange city for a revolution like this to take place.

And a revolution it was, because people like Elvis were not only playing black music; but when Elvis hit it, and he hit it because he got hooked up with a guy named Sam Phillips. And Sam Phillips was an interesting kind of entrepreneur. He wasn't a social revolutionary; he was out to make a little money. He was a record producer with Sun Records.
And he used to say to himself, "What I need, if I really want to make a lot of money in this section of the country is, I need a white kid that can sing like a black guy." And Elvis happened to stumble into his studio one day and cut a record, That's All Right Mama. And Phillips said, "There's the guy, there's the guy." And Elvis simply took off after that. And people are listening to his music. But get this, they're white kids listening to his music, and the white kids are picking up also on the black music...



Some more Elvis stuff:


An interesting blog...


Downloadable audio files of interviews with Sam Phillips...





Elvis at Sun, the 1976 release of Elvis' early recordings (lossless)


Hats off to the sterling work of the original posters...

24.11.11

Mac Curtis


Texan Wesley Erwin "Mac" Curtis, Jr. fronted a  Rockabilly trio when he was in high school. One of their shows was stopped due to the 'lewd and sexually suggestive' gyrations that Mac made on stage. 
There's a story that has a friend of Mac's interrupting a practice session with the news 'there's a guy that sounds like you and he's got a record on the jukebox at the Dairy Queen'- the record in question being by Elvis Presley.
 Mac played on Alan Freed's 1956 Xmas show while still at high school.
Here are some sides that Mac cut for the King label in 1956 and 1957.



Tracks: Grandaddy's Rockin'; Goosebumps; Just So You Call Me; That Ain't Nothin' But Right; What You Want; Half Hearted Love; You Ain't Treatin' Me Right; If I Had Me a Woman; The Low Road; Don't You Love Me; Say So; Little Miss Linda; Half Hearted Love

23.11.11

Wanda Jackson -The Queen of Rockabilly (1956-1963)


Oklahoma's Wanda Jackson had her first hit in 1954- a Country number. As an 18 year old she toured (chaperoned) with Elvis Presley, who encouraged her to sing more  Rockabilly . Most of her output at this time was a hybrid of Country and Rockabilly, usually a Country number on one side of a record and a rocker on the other, but by 1957 she was rockin' full time.
In the first half of the 1960's she was known as The Queen of Rockabilly, with producer Ken Nelson  (who had turned her down for Capitol in 1954 on the grounds that Girls don't sell records ) modelling her sound on that of Gene Vincent.
In 1965 she returned to singing Country.


Tracks: Baby Loves Him; Mean Mean Man; Fujiyama Mama; Cool Love; Honey Bop; I Gotta Know; Let's Have a Party; Money Honey; Long Tall Sally; Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad; Searchin'; Savin' My Love; Kansas City; Hard Headed Woman; Tunnel of Love; My Baby Left Me; Sticks and Stones; Who Shot Sam? ; There's a Party Goin' On; Brown Eyed Handsome Man; You Don't Know Baby; Tongue Tied; Riot in Cell Block # 9; Slippin' and Slidin'; Fallin'; Rip It Up; Rock Your Baby; Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On; Honey Don't; Man We Had a Party

22.11.11

Johnny Carroll



Texan Johnny Carroll had very little commercial success during the heyday of Rockabilly, but enjoyed a new lease of life in the 1970's due to the attentions of European Rockabilly aficionados and a well received Gene Vincent tribute. 
He did , however, enjoy the 'distinction' of appearing in the 1957 movie Rock Baby Rock It, which was a showcase for Dallas Rock n Roll acts held together by a very dodgy storyline.



Tracks: Hearts Of Stone; Why Cry; Love Is A Merry-Go-Round; Stingy Thing; Crazy Little Mama; Sexy Ways; Cut Out; You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often; You Made Me Love You; Hot Rock; Rock 'n' Roll Ruby; Wild Wild Women; Corrine Corrina; Crazy Crazy Lovin'; Tryin' To Get To You; Rock Baby, Rock It; The Swing; Bandstand Doll; Rag Mop; Run Come See; Crazy Crazy Lovin'.