Michael Dregni - Rockabilly: The Twang Heard Round the World: The Illustrated History

You pick the tune And you slap the bass Ill play the rhythm And Ill set the pace But we gotta get with it Aint no time to waste!

Charlie Feathers, Get With It, 1956

I got a rocket in my pocket and the fuse is lit...

Jimmy Lloyd, I Got a Rocket in My Pocket, 1958

CONTENTS

FOREWORD
WE WANNA BOOGIE
BY SONNY BURGESS

INTRODUCTION
OPENING RIFF
THE BIRTH OF HILLBILLY BOP

CHAPTER 1
SUNRISE
ELVIS PRESLEY AT SUN RECORDS, 19541955

CHAPTER 2
WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN
CARL PERKINS, JOHNNY CASH, ROY ORBISON, AND JERRY LEE LEWIS

CHAPTER 3
SUNS UNSUNG ROCKABILLY HEROES
THOSE WHO WOULD BE KING

CHAPTER 4
ROCKABILLY FAR AND WIDE
LOCAL STARS, REGIONAL HITS

CHAPTER 5
GENE AND EDDIE
ROCKABILLY AMBASSADORS

CHAPTER 6
THE DARK AGES OF THE 1960S
ROCKABILLY LIVES ON IN THE SHADOWS

CHAPTER 7
ROCKABILLY, EUROPEAN STYLE
TWANG WITH A FOREIGN ACCENT

CHAPTER 8
RAVE ON
THE WORLDWIDE ROCKABILLY REVIVAL

AFTERWORD
NOWHERESVILLE

By Sonny Burgess

Sonny Burgess with red hair, red tux, and red Telecaster leads the red-hot Pacers in 1957. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

I NEVER HEARD THE TERM rockabilly back then. Nobody did. Everybody said, Whered that term come from? I dont know. We never really pinned it down, where that term came from. When people asked what music we played, we were rock n rollers. We didnt think about rockabilly. We were rock n rollers.

It was shocking music to people at the time. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Warren Smith, Billy Riley, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Burnette and the Rock n Roll Triowe played shows together all over the country. It was wild back then.

Sonny Burgess and the Pacerswe had a real show. We used to have these 50-foot-long cables for our guitars which would allow us to jump off stage and play out in the crowd. We had the cables specially made. One night back in 56, we were playing a show with Marty Robbins, Ray Price, and the Maddox Brothers and Rose at Robinson Auditorium in Little Rock, Arkansas. My guitarist Joe Lewis, our bassist Johnny Ray Hubbard, and I all jumped off the stage and we didnt look before we leaped. Usually stages were about 12 inches up to three foot high. We just assumed this was the same, so we jumped off and there was an orchestra pit and we went down. We must have dropped 10 foot. Johnny Rays upright bass just came all to pieces. But the show had to go on, and so we climbed back up on stage and kept on playing.

Another time, I tried to dye my hair white. It was black and I wanted to dye it white. Perkins was blue with his blue suede shows. Elvis was pink and black. I wanted a color, too. I was reading about a guy named Shell Scotty, a detective in pulp magazines, and he had white hair with black eyebrows. I thought that would be really cool, different. Me and my wife, Joann, we decided wed do itbut it turned out red. It was really red. We were heading out to California that week to join the tour with Cash in 57. So the Pacers and I all got red tux jackets with black shirts, black ties, and black pants. I had that red tuxedo and got red shoes, red socks, and played a red Telecaster and red Stratocaster. I sure stood out.

Concert poster, Armory, Trenton, Tennessee, February 2, 1956. Pete Howard/Poster Central

My band also had a trumpet player, Jack Nance. Adding a trumpet to the band was actually good for us, because nobody else had a trumpetthey all had saxophones. We wanted a sax player, but couldnt find one. We already had Russ Smith playing drums; Jack Nance was also a drummer but he was also a music major and played a little bit of everything. He had an old trumpet and thats how we wound up with a trumpet player. In clubs, it was fantastic, you could play it loud! It turned out great for us. But Jack would get hit a lot. See, people would reach up to touch us and hit his trumpet and he had false teethyoung guy, but he had false teethwhich put things out of whack.

We were in Truman, Arkansas, one night at the Cotton Club, drove up there in a our old green Cadillac, and we had a big crowd and we was really going strong. Jack and Johnny Ray had got themselves some Prince Albert smoking tobacco and some cigarette papers and they took aspirin tablets, ground them up, and rolled them cigarettes with this aspirin in it. Boy, they got wild. Ive never seen anyone do that before or since, but they got wild. Jack was playing that horn so bad, Joe Lewis finally took it away from him. Jack said, You cant do thisthats the best Ive ever played in my life! We had to send Jack and Johnny home.

Our band also did the bug dance. We got the bug trick from Orbison. He played the Silver Moon in Newport, Arkansas, in 1955 along with Warren Smith, Eddie Bond, and us. He had a guy named Big Jack playing the upright bass and a little guy named Willie playing rhythm guitar; Roys playing guitar, then he had a mandolin player and a drummer. Anyway, they done this bug dance. Big Jack and the little guy. Theyd reach down on the floor and pick up this bug and throw it on each other. Thats where we got it. So four of us would do it and we outdid them on it. We had four of us, throw it on each other, shake around, try to catch it, and then throw it on the next guy.