Rockabilly
THE BIG BOPPER
Legendary as one of the three rock greats to die in the tragic 1959 Clear Lake, IA, plane crash that also claimed the lives of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper (born Jiles Perry Richardson) had just established himself as a rock hit-maker with the rollicking "Chantilly Lace."
Born in the heart of Texas, Richardson grew up in Beaumont and changed his first name to Jape. He broke into show biz as a DJ over at KTRM radio, where he coined the nickname the Big Bopper.
In March 1955, he was drafted into the United States Army and did his basic training at Fort Ord, California. He spent the rest of his two years service as a radar instructor at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas. Following his discharge as a corporal in March 1957, Richardson returned to KTRM radio, where he held down the "Dishwashers' Serenade" shift from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
One of the station's sponsors wanted Richardson for a new time slot and suggested an idea for a show. Richardson had seen the college students doing a dance called The Bop, and he decided to call himself "The Big Bopper". His new radio show ran from 3 to 6 p.m. Richardson soon became the station's program director.
In May 1957, he broke the record for continuous on-the-air broadcasting by eight minutes. From a remote set-up in the lobby of the Jefferson Theatre in downtown Beaumont, Richardson performed for a total of five days, two hours and eight minutes, playing 1,821 records and taking showers during five-minute newscasts. Richardson is credited with coining the term music video in 1959, and recorded an early example himself.
Richardson - who played guitar - began his musical career as a songwriter. George Jones later recorded Richardson's "White Lightning", which became Jones' first #1 country hit in 1959 (#73 on the pop charts). Richardson also wrote "Running Bear" for Johnny Preston, his friend from Port Arthur, Texas. The inspiration for the song came from Richardson's childhood memory of the Sabine River, where he heard stories about Indian tribes.
Richardson sang background on "Running Bear", but the recording wasn't released until September 1959, after his death. Within several months it became #1.
The man who launched Richardson as a recording artist was Harold “Pappy” Daily from Houston, Texas. Daily was promotion director for Mercury and Starday Records and signed Richardson to Mercury. Richardson's first single, "Beggar To A King", had a country flavour, but failed to gain any chart action. He soon cut "Chantilly Lace" as "The Big Bopper" for Pappy Daily's D label. Mercury bought the recording and released it in the summer of 1958. It reached #6 on the pop charts and spent 22 weeks in the national Top 40.
It also inspired an answer record by Jayne Mansfield titled "That Makes It". In "Chantilly Lace", Richardson pretends to have a flirting phone conversation with his girlfriend; the Mansfield record suggests what his girlfriend might have been saying at the other end of the line.
Later that year, he scored a second hit, a raucous novelty tune entitled "The Big Bopper's Wedding", in which Richardson pretends to be getting cold feet at the altar. He was known for his "Hello Baby!"
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With the success of "Chantilly Lace", Richardson took time off from KTRM radio and joined Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Dion and the Belmonts for a "Winter Dance Party" tour. On the eleventh night of the tour, Holly chartered an airplane to fly them to the next show in Moorhead, Minnesota.
The musicians had been travelling by bus for over a week, and it had already broken down once. They were tired, they had not been paid yet and all of their clothes were dirty. With the airplane, Holly could arrive early, do everyone's laundry and catch up on some rest.
A 21-year old pilot named Roger Peterson had agreed to take the singers to Fargo, North Dakota, where the airport serves the twin cities of Moorhead and Fargo. A snowstorm was on its way and the young pilot was fatigued from a 17-hour workday, but he agreed to fly the trip.
The musicians packed up their instruments and finalized the flight arrangements. Buddy Holly's bass player, Waylon Jennings, was scheduled to fly on the plane, but gave his seat up to the Big Bopper, who was suffering from influenza. Holly's guitarist, Tommy Allsup, agreed to flip a coin with Ritchie Valens for the remaining seat; Valens won.
The three musicians boarded the red and white single-engine Beech Bonanza around 12:30 am on February 3. The musicians waved and then climbed onto the plane. Snow blew across the runway, but the sky was clear. Peterson received clearance from the control tower, taxied down the runway and took off.
He was never told of two different weather advisories that warned of an oncoming blizzard ahead. The plane stayed in the sky for only a few minutes; no one is quite sure what went wrong. The best guess is Peterson flew directly into the blizzard, lost visual reference and accidentally flew down instead of up.
The four-passenger plane ploughed into a nearby cornfield at over 170 mph, flipping over on itself and tossing the passengers into the air. Their bodies landed yards away from the wreckage and stayed there for ten hours as snowdrifts formed around them. Because of the weather, nobody could reach the crash site until later in the morning.
Albums:
Sources: http://www.artistdirect.com/ http://www.wikipedia.org/
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Eddie Cochran
Somehow, time has not accorded Eddie Cochran quite the same respect as other early rockabilly pioneers like Buddy Holly, or even Ricky Nelson or Gene Vincent. This is partially attributable to his very brief lifespan as a star: he only had a couple of big hits before dying in a car crash during a British tour in 1960. He was in the same league as the best rockabilly stars, though, with a brash, fat guitar sound that helped lay the groundwork for the power chord. He was also a good songwriter and singer, celebrating the joys of teenage life -- the parties, the music, the adolescent rebellion -- with an economic wit that bore some similarities to Chuck Berry. Cochran was more lighthearted and less ironic than Berry, though, and if his work was less consistent and not as penetrating, it was almost always exuberant.
Cochran's mid-'50s beginnings in the record industry are a bit confusing. His family had moved to Southern California around 1950, and in 1955 he made his first recordings as half of the Cochran Brothers. Here's the confusing part: although the other half of the act was really named Hank Cochran, he was not Eddie's brother. (Hank Cochran would become a noted country songwriter in the 1960s.) Eddie was already an accomplished rockabilly guitarist and singer on these early sides, and he started picking up some session work as well, also finding time to make demos and write songs with Jerry Capehart, who became his manager.
Cochran's big break came about in a novel fashion. In mid-1956, while Cochran and Capehart were recording some music for low-budget films, Boris Petroff asked Eddie if he'd be interested in appearing in a movie that a friend was directing. The film was The Girl Can't Help It, and the song he would sing in it was "Twenty-Flight Rock." This is the same song that Paul McCartney would use to impress John Lennon upon their first meeting in 1957 (Paul could not only play it, but knew all of the lyrics).
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Cochran had his first Top 20 hit in early 1957, "Sittin' in the Balcony," with an echo-chambered vocal reminiscent of Elvis. That single was written by John D. Loudermilk, but Eddie would write much of his material, including his only Top Ten hit, "Summertime Blues." A definitive teenage anthem with hints of the overt protest that would seep into rock music in the 1960s, it was also a technical tour de force for the time: Cochran overdubbed himself on guitar to create an especially thick sound. One of the classic early rock singles, "Summertime Blues" was revived a decade later by proto-metal group Blue Cheer, and was a concert staple for The Who, who had a small American hit with a cover version. (Let's not mention Alan Jackson's country rendition in the 1990s.)
That, disappointingly, was the extent of Cochran's major commercial success in the U.S. "C'mon Everybody," a chugging rocker that was almost as good as "Summertime Blues," made the Top 40 in 1959, and also gave Eddie his first British Top Tenner. As is the case with his buddy Gene Vincent, though, you can't judge his importance by mere chart statistics. Cochran was very active in the studio, and while his output wasn't nearly as consistent as Buddy Holly's (another good friend of Eddie's), he laid down a few classic or near-classic cuts that are just as worthy as his hits. "Somethin' Else," "My Way" (which The Who played in concert at the peak of psychedelia), "Weekend" (covered by the Move), and "Nervous Breakdown" are some of the best of these, and belong in the collection of every rockabilly fan. He was also (like Holly) an innovator in the studio, using overdubbing at a time when that practice was barely known on rock recordings.
Cochran is more revered today in Britain than the United States, due in part to the tragic circumstances of his death. In the spring of 1960, he toured the U.K. with Vincent, to a wild reception, in a country that had rarely had the opportunity to see American rock & roll stars in the flesh. En route to London to fly back to the States for a break, the car Cochran was riding in, with his girlfriend (and songwriter) Sharon Sheeley and Gene Vincent, had a severe accident. Vincent and Sheeley survived, but Cochran died less than a day later, at the age of 21.
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Jimi Hendrix
Chuck Berry
Elvis Presley
Buddy Holly
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The King Of Rock N Roll Little Richard
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Carl Perkins
Carl Perkins is best known for being the writer and original singer for the rockabilly anthem Blue Suede Shoes. Perkins was part of the renowned artists on the Sun label that included Elvis, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.
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Despite his modest solo career, he persevered and created a body of work that is both critically acclaimed and massively influential for many singers, songwriters and guitar players.
His humble beginnings were in Tennessee where he played in a little band with his brothers. After hearing Elvis on the radio in 1954, Perkins drove down to Memphis to audition for the legendary record producer, Sam Phillips of Sun Records.
In 1956, he released Blue Suede Shoes that made him the first white, country artist to cross over on to the R&B charts. The song would alternate with Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel for the top spot. Eventually, Presley would record his version of the song.
Perkins’ career basically hit a nosedive even though he had some minor rockabilly hits in the form of Boppin’ the Blues and Your True Love. But it wasn’t until 1964, when he realised that The Beatles admired his music.
He went on to supervise the Fab Four’s recording of five of his songs including Matchbox, Honey Don’t and Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby. Rick Nelson and Patsy Cline also covered Perkins’ songs.
The rockabilly style was beginning to wane so Perkins decided to concentrate on country. He wrote the #1 hit Daddy Sang Bass for Johnny Cash and joined Cash’s touring group in 1969.
For the next twenty years, he continued to write for others and release his own material. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Perkins eventually passed away in 1998.
Juanita Appleby
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Elvis Presley
George Harrison
The Nashville Teens
The Legend That Is Ronnie Wood
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THE FLAMIN' GROOVIES
The Flamin' Groovies were an American rock music band of the 1960s and ’70s. They began in San Francisco in 1965, founded by Cyril Jordan and Roy A. Loney. The Flamin Groovies’ early recordings reveal a debt to The Lovin’ Spoonful. Their first album, 1969’s ‘Supersnazz’, was something of a mixed bag, containing as it did both re-creations of 1950s rock and roll and more melodic, and songs that anticipated the power pop movement of the 1970s, a genre to which The Flamin' Groovies would eventually contribute significant work.
Their second album, 1970’s ‘Flamingo’, was a considerably stronger effort and revealed a band with a sly sense of humor and a musical approach that continued to draw upon ’50s rock and roll as well as upon the work of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
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In 1971 Roy Loney left The Flamin Groovies, and was replaced by singer and guitarist Chris Wilson, who, along with Jordan, began to move the group in a more overtly power-pop direction.
Between 1971 and 1976, very little was heard of the group except maybe their 1972 anti-drug song ‘Slow Death’. In 1976, they teamed up with British producer Dave Edmunds, and recorded an album entitled ‘Shake Some Action’. This LP and the following effort, ‘Now’, are good examples of their somewhat self-conscious attempt to revive the sound of the classic mid-’60s pop groups.
The Flamin Groovies continued in the same style until somewhere early in the 1980s.
Members include George Alexander (born on May 18, 1946, San Mateo, CA), bass; Ron Greco, drums; Cyril Jordan (born in 1948 in San Francisco, CA), guitar; Roy Loney (born on April 13, 1946, San Francisco, CA), guitar, vocals; Tim Lynch (born on July 18, 1946, San Francisco, CA), guitar; Danny Mihm, drums. Later incarnations include James Farrell, guitar; Terry Rae, drums; Mike Wilhelm, guitar; Chris Wilson, vocals, guitar; David Wright, drums.
Group formed in San Francisco, CA, 1965; released eleven-inch EP Sneakers on Snazz label, 1969; signed to Epic, released first LP, Supersnazz, 1970; signed contract with Kama Sutra, relocated to New York; second LP Flamingo, 1970, followed by Teenage Head, 1971; released singles and a live EP; relocated to England, collaborated with musician/producer Dave Edmunds; Shake Some Action, recorded in 1972, released 1976; Still Shakin', a compilation of earlier recordings, released by Buddah, 1976; second Edmunds-produced LP, Now, released on Sire label, 1978; released Jumpin' in the Night, 1979; band effectively disbanded after 1979; released Bucket Full of Brains, which was recorded live in 1971, 1983.
In 1978 the Flamin' Groovies released the Edmundsproduced Now, comprising original material by Jordan and Wilson along with such covers as the Stones' "Blue Turns to Grey" and "Paint it Black" and the Beatles' "There's a Place." The following year the band released Jumpin' in the Night, produced by Jordan and Roger Becherian, which, in addition to Groovies originals, included covers by Warren Zevon, Roger McGuinn, Lennon/McCartney, David Crosby, and Bob Dylan.
Albums:
Sneakers (EP), Snazz, 1968.
Supersnazz, Epic, 1969.
Flamingo, Kama Sutra, 1970.
Teenage Head, Kama Sutra, 1971; reissued, Buddha, 1999.
Still Shakin', Buddah, 1976.
Shake Some Action, Sire, 1976.
Now, Sire, 1978.
Jumpin' in the Night, Sire, 1979.
Bucketful of Brains, Voxx, 1983.
Flamin' Groovies '68 (live), Eva, 1983.
Flamin' Groovies '70 (live), Eva, 1983.
Slow Death-Live!, Lolita, 1983.
Super Grease, Skydog, 1984.
Live at the Whiskey A Go-Go '79, Lolita, 1985.
Roadhouse, Edsel, 1986.
One Night Stand, Aim, 1987.
Groove In, Revenge, 1988.
Groovies Greatest Grooves, Sire, 1989.
The Rockfield Sessions, AIM, 1990.
Sixteen Tunes, Skydog, 1991.
Step Up, Aim, 1991.
Oh How Groovy, Discurios, 1992.
A Collection of Rare Demos and Live Recordings, Marilyn, 1993.
Rock Juice, National, 1993.
Rockin' at the Roundhouse: Live, Mystery, 1993.
Flamin' Groovies, Polydor, 1994.
California Born and Bred, Norton, 1995.
Live 68/70, New Rose, 1995.
Live at the Festival of the Sun, Aim, 1995.
Groove In, New Rose, 1996.
Supersneakers, Sundazed, 1996.
In Person! (live), Norton, 1997.
Oldies but Groovies, Aim, 1997.
Grease: The Complete Skydog Singles Collection, Norton, 1998.
Yesterday's Numbers, Camden, 1998.
Absolutely the Best, Varese, 1999.
Backtracks, Renaissance, 1999.
Slow Death, Norton, 2002.
Sources: Carly Page; Kevin O'Sullivan
This information is provided as a brief overview and not as a definitive guide, there are other sources on the net for that. If however you have a story or information that is not generally known we would love to hear from you. Content@rokpool.com.
Why Not Check Out:
The Lovin Spoonful
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Beatles Secret Hideaway
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The Clash
The Clash was an English Punk Band founded in 1976. The bands stalwarts were Joe Strummer on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Mick Jones lead guitar/ vocals and Paul Simon on on bass guitar and backing vocals. Nicky “Topper" Headon on drums and percussion would join the band later.
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After some time, Headon left the group as did Mick Jones, however the band continued to perform with new members until they disbanded in 1986. The Clash’s sound was based on punk rock, reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap and rockabilly and their lyrics and musical experimentation had such an influence on rock and, in particular, alternative rock they were referred to by some as “The Only Band That Matters".
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The Clash signed to CBS Records in 1977. Their first album "The Clash” was a major success in the UK and while CBS released only a “radio friendly” version in the US, the original album became the best selling imported album of all time in the USA. The Clash’s third Album “London Calling” released in 1977 is regarded as one of the greatest rock albums every recorded.
The band recorded a further three albums: “Sandinista,” “Combat Rock” and “Cut the Crap” before disbanding in 1986.
Unfortunately Joe Strummer died of a heart problem in 2002, The Joe Strummer Foundation (Strummerville) was set up by Lucinda, his wife shortly after his death and continues to champion new music.
Mick Jones continues to play and collaborates with Tony James releasing several albums under the Band name Silicon/Carbon.
This information is provided as a brief overview and not as a definitive guide, there are other sources on the net for that. If however you have a story or information that is not generally known we would love to hear from you. Content@rokpool.com
