7.05 Other Rockabilly Stars

Overview

Elvis Presley’s early recordings for Sun Records were in a musical style that was called rockabilly, which was a mixture of rhythm and blues, country and western, honky tonk, boogie woogie, and gospel music. When Elvis made the move to RCA, other recordings artists continued making records in this rockabilly style. Artists such as Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Eddie Cochran all made names for themselves as rockabilly artists.

Objectives

Examine the defining musical characteristics of rockabilly and consider how artists combined different genres of music to create a new style
Examine the shift in rock and roll that occurred at the end of the 1950s, often marked by "The Day the Music Died"
Identify various rockabilly music artists and defining characteristics of their musical styles

Other Rockabilly Stars

Roy Orbison

The late 1950s saw a number of other rockabilly musicians achieve commercial success. The Everly Brothers’ music featured syncopated guitar riffs that frequently engaged in call and response with the vocal lines, yet they retained the close vocal harmonies that were so characteristic of country music. The group released 26 Top 40 pop hits, including "Bye, Bye Love ♫" (1957), "Wake Up, Little Susie ♫" (1958), and "All I have to Do is Dream ♫" (1958).

Eddie Cochran could play piano, bass, and drums, and his interest in recording technology led him to experiment with multitrack recording and overdubbing even in his earliest recording singles.

Cochran’s life was cut short in 1960 by a car accident, but the songs he recorded still live in their covers by other artists, including "C’mon Everybody ♫" and "Summertime Blues ♫."

As we will see, both rock and roll and rockabilly declined in popularity sharply at the end of the 1950s. Several recording artists continued to make respectable careers during the 1960s and beyond performing rockabilly, however. For example, Roy Orbison recorded a number of hits during the 1960s, including "Crying ♫," "Only the Lonely ♫," and "Running Scared ♫," and his "Oh! Pretty Woman ♫" of 1964 reached number 1 on the pop charts, beating out groups such as the Beatles for the spot.

Brenda Lee was signed by the Decca label at the age of eleven, and between 1960 and 1967, she recorded 29 Top 40 hits for Decca. Tracks such as "I’m Sorry ♫" and "I Want to Be Wanted ♫" also held their ground on the charts against the invading British artists of the 1960s.

Brenda Lee

“If you ask me, rockabilly has had a raw deal for far too long. People never shunned the blues or jazz the way they do rockabilly. But it's the original punk-rock, and it changed the way people looked at music for ever.”

-Imelda May

“For me, rockabilly is very, very exciting music. It's electric and kind of wild, you know? It's 'make your hairs stand up on the back of your neck' kind of music.”

-Imelda May

"In 1968, Jerry Lee Lewis was in a rock musical called Catch My Soul (a version of Shakespeare's Othello). This was made into a movie without him."

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