Rockabilly Music Explored Uncharted Territory

Having sprung from very familiar and comfortable roots, rockabilly music took off in a completely new and unexpected direction. The musicians of rockabilly were making things up as they went along. There was no plan for how the music would develop. It just did. Several pioneers of the genre took control of the ship's rudder and steered a course for uncharted waters. And the splash they made was heard around the world.

Country music, the blues, gospel music, and rhythm and blues were the main influences behind early rockabilly. Other forms of music like jazz, big-band swing music, and others also spiced up the rockabilly world. Rockabilly musicians were eager and enthusiastic youngsters who came from all different corners of the United States. Along with them, they brought all of the musical influences they'd grown up with and infused it into their style.

It's fun to listen to rockabilly music and various artists and analyze their sound in an attempt to dissect it and figure out where it came from. With Elvis, you can easily see the rhythm and blues influence in the way he moved and the way he presented himself and his music. When you listen to his voice, you can readily hear the gospel choirs and the singing congregations that he'd spent so much time hearing and participating in as a youngster.

Carl Perkins was a bit more countrified than Elvis in my opinion. Yet there's no denying the blues and rhythm and blues influences that also shaped his delivery and playing.

Eddie Cochran also brought a good dose of country into his musical style, but it was a more refined, elegant country than that which inspired Perkins. Jerry Lee Lewis clearly hear plenty of honky-tonk and rhythm and blues piano players in his time and he melded the two styles together in a particularly wild way that put him on the outrageous edge of rock and roll performances early on.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the point. What these guys were doing was taking the raw materials of the music they loved, blending it all together, and shaping it into something completely new. No one could have predicted whether it would be successful or not, although Sun Records' Sam Phillips might have a legitimate claim to an argument against that statement!

But even the musicians themselves couldn't have known what they were unleashing. They were just doing what creative musicians do: they were trying to come up with something fresh and new. And they certainly did! Once they began to recognize how thirsty the fans were for what they were creating, the energy fed upon itself and rockabilly music took off like a rocket. And the splash that those early pioneers made with this new, crazy form of music is still making waves today. Wonderful, rich, glorious rockabilly waves!

Buster Fayte is an author and rockabilly musician. Visit his Rockabilly Romp blog at http://rockabillyromp.info/, download free rockabilly computer background artwork as Buster's way of welcoming you to the blog, and join the rockabilly discussion.

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Rockabilly Music's Appeal: The More It Changes, The More It Stays The Same

What was it about rockabilly music that held such strong appeal to the youth of the 1950s? Why was the music so powerful and why did it become such a defining force in American culture and then worldwide culture? And how has the music's appeal evolved over time? What makes modern fans love the music as much as--if not more--than the fans of the 1950s. I'm not sure those are questions that can truly be answered, but I'm willing to try!

It's easy to point out that the young fans of the 1950s had become terribly bored with the music they had available to listen to. Country music was (in my opinion) at its wonderful peak during this era, but it wasn't really music aimed at the kids. There was lots of great jazz music happening at the time, but it didn't really move kids either. The kids weren't looking for jazz sophistication. They needed something more powerful. Other forms of music were also turning out great performances. Neither blues nor rhythm and blues was mainstream enough for a wide audience.

And then Elvis came along. A new music was, if not invented by Elvis, certainly made famous by The King. And it was just what the young fans were looking for. Elvis was young, charismatic, energetic, and completely new and different. That was his appeal. The music he created was unlike anything most people had ever heard before. It was loud, brash, fast, and not just a little bit controversial. That was the music's appeal!

The very things that made adults despise Elvis and deride his music were the things that appealed to his youthful audience. And of course, Elvis wasn't alone. Once he exploded on the scene, many other similar artists followed and began to grow the new rock and roll phenomenon. Soon it wasn't just one outrageous kid from Memphis, rather it quickly became a movement. And being part of this exciting movement of energy, joy, rebellion, and pure fun naturally held amazing appeal to millions of kids who'd finally found something they could claim strictly as their own. The adults didn't like it and didn't approve of their listening to it, so of course they liked it and listened to it all the more!

In this way, rockabilly music of the 50s was similar to the punk music of the late 70s and into the 80s. In fact, many people call rockabilly music the original punk music. It's just that by the 1970s, behaviors had to be even more outlandish in order to get a similar rise out of the establishment. But punk music couldn't be sustained. It lacked musicality that enabled fans to enjoy the songs as songs themselves. Instead they enjoyed the rebellion and the shock of the music and scene. They enjoyed irritating the adults.

Rockabilly music did that too. Fans enjoyed the rebellion and the shock, but there was musicality to the genre. Fans could appreciate a good rockabilly song for the music that it contained and for the musicianship that it took to play it. You could sit and listen to a rockabilly song in a way you couldn't with punk music. And so while punk eventually died largely away, the original appeal of rockabilly started to catch on once again. Rockabilly's revival began as punk music's reign began to subside. The kids could get the same feelings of rebellion and antiauthoritarianism from rockabilly as they were getting from punk. But at the same time, they could actually enjoy the music as great music.

Just like when rockabilly originally hit the scene in the 1950s.

Buster Fayte is an author and rockabilly musician. Visit his Rockabilly Romp blog at http://rockabillyromp.info/, download free rockabilly computer background artwork as Buster's way of welcoming you to the blog, and join the rockabilly discussion.

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Raw Talent Made Rockabilly Famous

It's no great revelation that the original stars of rockabilly music had talent. But very often, theirs was a very special kind of talent. It was often unformed, underdeveloped, and even undiscovered. In other words, it was raw. And the rawness of rockabilly talent may have had as big an influence on the wild success of some of the music's stars as did anything else.

All of this raw talent made for some very raw music. Rockabilly was a real departure from any other mainstream music of the time--at least the white mainstream. Much of the attitude of rockabilly was derived from the raucous rhythm and blues music of the 1940s and early 1950s, but white audiences had yet to really discover much of that music. Rockabilly musicians had enough country music in their blood to be largely accepted by country-loving audiences and those fans were served their first taste of rhythm and blues attitude through rockabilly performers.

Few of the early rockabilly pioneers had much formal musical training. They simply took what they'd picked up from their musical influences in several different genres and melded it all together into a new musical art form. Not that they necessarily knew exactly what they were doing! They were just doing what seemed natural to them. And it was indeed raw. It was loud, brash, flashy, and almost wholly disapproved of by the "grown ups." So what more could teenagers want in their music?

The rockabilly music scene featured some amazingly talented musicians. Talented, but again, not necessarily formally trained. This lack of formal musical training freed these talented young people to fly off in any musical direction that occurred to them. They took things that everybody know you "couldn't do" with music and they did them. They broke rules and did it with flare. Who would have thought you could take country music and combine it with rhythm and blues and make records that people would want to listen to and buy? Maybe no one actually thought about it, but it's precisely what they did.

The raw nature of the music can be perceived in many ways. One simple way is to listen to many of the old recordings where you'll hear obvious mistakes made by the musicians. Bass players that stop late, drummers who accidentally play through a break, guitarists who "fat finger" a lead line--many records were release with mistakes like these on them and far from ruining the recordings, it's often those mistakes that lend that special character to the record. It's raw and the fans love it that way!

Today's pop charts can't even conceivably tolerate that type of rawness. You will not hear a mistake like those on a Lady GaGa recording, I can almost guarantee it. Today's pop music is often so over produced as to squeeze every last bit of raw goodness out of it. Maybe that's why rockabilly music endures even today almost 60 years later. Rockabilly fans love the raw sound. It's the sound of passion. The sound of musicians doing what they love and loving what they're doing. Are modern fans too sophisticated for this type of rawness? Maybe. But--judging by the resurgence and strength of the rockabilly scene throughout the world today--maybe not. Maybe it's exactly what modern fans want...and need!

Buster Fayte is an author and rockabilly musician. Visit his Rockabilly Romp blog at http://rockabillyromp.info/, download free rockabilly computer background artwork as Buster's way of welcoming you to the blog, and join the rockabilly discussion.

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Rockabilly Queen Wanda Jackson Has Approached Music From Many Different Angles

Wanda Jackson, known widely as the "Queen of Rockabilly" was just a kid when she first hit the music scene in the mid 1950s. Like so many rockabilly pioneers, she'd started her career as a country artist. When Elvis exploded upon the scene, he naturally influenced countless other musicians and Ms. Jackson was one of them.

Like so many others, Jackson credits Elvis with her switch from country to rockabilly, but her story is a bit different. Instead of seeing Elvis on stage or on TV and saying, "I want to do that" like countless artists did, Jackson was personally encouraged by the King to try this new style of music called rock-and-roll. Legend has it that Jackson dated Presley for a bit and he--along with her father--talked her into rocking up her act.

Jackson proceeded to create some of the very finest rockabilly recordings ever cut into vinyl. And in the process, she completely redefined the image of a "girl" singer. Jackson didn't only sing, but she also accompanied herself on acoustic rhythm guitar. That was ground-breaking enough for a female artist, but that isn't close to the extent of her influence on all women rockers to follow.

Jackson's most enduring contribution to rock and roll (aside from her great recordings) is attitude. She was the first to break out of the common mold of cowgirl outfits on stage. Instead, Jackson and her mother sat down and designed then stitched together a stunning wardrobe of tight-fitting "pencil" dresses. Always tight-fitting, frequently with subtle use of cowboy fringe, and often a bit on the low-cut side at the neck, Jackson cut a stunning, sexy on-stage figure.

And once she had the audience's attention, she belted out wonderfully raw rockabilly with a knock-out growl in her voice. She seemed to have a sixth sense about when to use her small, sweet voice and then lash out with her trademark rockabilly growl. It was sometimes hard to imagine the two different sounds were coming out of the same small, pretty frame!

Jackson didn't see huge commercial success as a rockabilly artist and once the rockabilly craze died out in the early 60s, she switched back to country music. In fact, she never really left country since record executives insisted that a "girl" couldn't make it in rock and roll music. Thus, Jackson would routinely release records with a country song on one side and a rocker on the other. But it was country music that kept her career alive after people stopped buying rockabilly.

She never became a mega superstar in country music either, but she did have several respectable hits and this success was enough to keep her in the music business. In the 1970s, she tried a new angle and recorded some great gospel music.

When the rockabilly revival was in swing during the 1980s, Jackson found a home for herself on the revival circuit. She discovered that she had fans who truly appreciate her contribution to early rock and roll. She's been playing a mix of all of her music on the road since, though her shows frequently lean toward her early rockabilly masterpieces.

Early in 2011, Jackson teamed up with superstar Jack White on a brand new album, The Party Ain't Over. The record has won great critical acclaim and has sparked Jackson's career once again. As I write this article in the summer of 2011, Jackson is in the midst of a heavy touring and performing schedule that keeps her playing in front of appreciative fans all over the world. Not bad for a 73-year-old performer!

Jackson has shown amazing resilience in a business that eats many people alive. Her talents are as sharp today as they were nearly 60 years ago when she was just a fresh, young kid hitting the stages for the first time. The Queen of Rockabilly is a perfect example of someone who just loves to entertain people and finds a way to keep doing that despite all the odds.

Buster Fayte is an author and rockabilly musician. Visit his Rockabilly Romp blog at http://rockabillyromp.info/, download free rockabilly computer background artwork as Buster's way of welcoming you to the blog, and join the rockabilly discussion.

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