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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by digger
    Good call on Rockabilly, Mark. Played in a few rockabilly bands in my time. I think that whole scene is even more tunnel-visioned that other genres insofar as authenticity is concerned. We lost a few gigs because we didn't have the right jeans, boots, and full-sleeve tattoos. I love that early Carl Perkins and Scotty Moore sound and Luther Perkins, too. Love a lot of what Brian Setzer did, too - he's notched up a few superb solos in his time and did a lot to rejuvenate the genre back in the day. I enjoy Jeff Beck's rockabilly album and the Danny Gatton live CD with Robert Gordon remain a favourite.

    There's some great music out there where country and rock'n'roll and jazz all meet.

    Derek
    I loved Luther Perkins too. Did you know he always used flatwound strings? They were much more common then, so he wasn't the only one. But he definitely did. I think it adds a lot to the sound. (I recently put flats on my Tele.) Also, no squeak!
    I enjoyed The Stray Cats too. I still think "Stray Cat Strut" is a cool song.
    Jeff Beck is singularly amazing.
    I love this live version of "My Baby Left Me" (and "Matchbox" too)----you never heard drums sound this crisp on the old records. And is that a Marshall amp I see????


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  3. #27

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    God,
    I can't imagine no one mentioned the King of Rockabilly: Jerry Lee Lewis.











    Play live . . . Marinero

  4. #28

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    Oh, yea . . . Blue-eyed Soul Brother



    Play live . . . Marinero

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by ruger9
    That's OK, your incorrect option on the subject is laughable to me, so we're even. Like I said- it's OK if you DON'T LIKE something, but to argue against a objective truth is a losing battle... Without the Stray Cats, there would have been no rockabilly revival at all.

    Saying The Stray Cats weren't rockabilly is like saying Stevie Ray Vaughan wasn't blues, because he wasn't Albert King... but then... that's another opinion I suspect you would hold, so...
    I don't care what anyone likes or doesn't like. I didn't really express my opinion on the Strat Cats other than they are oft categorized as rockabilly. They are neo rockabilly at best and new wave pop at worst.

    Rockabilly is a sub genre of Rock n Roll. It is a very specific sound that occurred in a very small window of time in the mid to late 50s. Labels are often put on things after the fact. Bach didn't refer to himself as a Baroque composer.
    You don't need all of these things to qualify as rockabilly but you need most. There are exceptions to all of these. Vocals
    Acoustic guitar
    Double bass
    Very often electric guitar
    Very often slapback echo on the entire mix (not just guitar or vocals)
    Drums are optional
    Almost all released on small independent labels as 45 singles. Not albums.

    Take Elvis. His Sun recordings didn't have any drums. When his contact with Sun was bought. He didn't record any more rockabilly tracks. The sound changed. They added drums and background vocals. What made his Sun recordings special was the distinct mix of r and b and c and w. He would pay an r and b song in a c and w way. Or a c and w song in an r and b way.
    Other things that changed were that they released LP. And you can't have a whole LP of uptempo songs. That will never sell (plus Elvis really was a crooner at heart). They also started using song writers trying to ape his earlier songs. As opposed to taking a song from another genre and playing it in a new way.

    This is one brief case study.

    As for Jerry Lee. He's killer. and played on loads of rockabilly tracks. Except the ones where he was the singer. No acoustic and no double bass.
    Doesn't fit the description. It's Rock and Roll. Equally cool. Just a different thing.

    Pluto is cool and special. Just not a planet.

    Play dead...

  6. #30

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    A better but still bad analogy would have been comparing SRV and Robert Johnson.
    The Blues is a big genre with lots of sub genres. SRV and Albert King are not in the same sub genre or play in the same style.

    Bach and Beethoven are both classical composers, (note the use of the lower case c) but sound extremely disparite because there are things that distinguish their styles despite their composing in the same genre.

    Play dead...

  7. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by ruger9
    The people who are credited for "inventing" rockabilly.... Elvis/Scotty Moore, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, etc... have said they never called it "rockabilly", it was always "rock and roll" to them. I'm not sure when the "rockabilly" moniker took hold for the genre, as the originators did not call it that...
    It's mostly marketing that I think started in the late 70s.

    Play dead...

  8. #32

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    In general I think that if you like a genre and wish for it to grow or be more popular it would be wise to define it in ways that are more inclusive and less exclusive. To do otherwise is to impose an ideological straitjacket that will suffocate innovation and eventually sentence the once-admired genre to ultimate irrelevance. That's just how the Biz works.

  9. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    I wasn't planning on buying this but I think your assessment is harsh.
    James Burton thinks it's worth trying out, and he made lots of records in the '50s. (And in the '60s and the '70s...)


    If all one wants is some slap back echo, any decent delay pedal will give you a workable one. (Of course, since no one in the '50s used a delay pedal, I'm a bit surprised--though pleased--you're okay with them now. You seem strict about period authenticity.)

    As for reverb, it wasn't on amps until the late '50s but it was used in studios from the late '40s on. And for most of us who are too young to have heard rockabilly played live when it was new, we heard records and those records were made in studios where sound could be manipulated by engineers. Sam Philips had an Ampex tape machine and that's how he created slapback echo in his Memphis studio.
    Chet Atkins bought the second EchoSonic amp made and used it on "Mr. Sandman" in 1954. (The EchoSonic had a built-in tape delay.) I think that's where Scotty Moore heard it and he got one too. He used it on "Mystery Train" and many other recordings with Elvis at Sun.
    Les Paul's experiments with tape and recording had been going on for some years already.

    I think the EchoPlex was developed in 1959. It had a huge impact over the following decades.
    As with much musical technology, it put into the hands of the multitude sounds that were once attainable only in some studios.

    I don't think many bands (if any) who play some rockabilly (or rockabilly-influenced) music are trying to sound just like 1954. For one thing, you can barely hear the bass on many of those old records and the drums are thin. The guitar parts can be tricky to suss out because they're not as clear in the mix as we've since come to expect solos to be.
    It's just marketing. Bad marketing at that. Your don't need anything fancy to get that sound. I'm sure the pedal is actual fine. Just superfluous. And it's not going to help you hit the right notes.
    What is actually more helpful would be single coils. No rockabilly players at that time would have had those new fancy hum bucking pickups. It a Gretsch. Aside from Cliff Gallup, I don't think anyone played a Gretsch. (See Eddie Cochrane and the e bass above).

    But gear isn't overly important in rockabilly. Not like surf music. A single coil guitar into a tube amp (yes with flatwounds) will get you most of the way there.

    But hey Mark make sure you use an analogue (style) delay. You don't want to end up sounding like the edge with those clean repeats.

  10. #34

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    wow, lots of wrong info being thrown around here...the term rockabilly is completely authentic and goes back to the 1950's!!

    the johnny burnette trio-rockbilly boogie...cut july 4th 1956! at bradleys studio, nashville




    stray cats were rockabilly fans coming out of punk era, so their fashion sense was a bit more over the top... saw setzer play before he was even in the stray cats

    the stray cats were greatly helped and molded by their producer..the great welsh guitarist/producer-dave edmunds- who was fully grounded in rockabilly...in fact edmunds had already used the stray cats band name in a film project he was involved with-stardust..the drummer was keith moon!

    dave doin ep



    cheers

  11. #35

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    It is already an irrelevant sub genre. If you define something too loosely it doesn't mean anything. Similarly if you keep moving the goalposts.
    I have decreed that all music that has slapback echo on it is now rockabilly. Welcome to the club CCR!
    Not very helpful or useful.

    They weren't trying to create a new style of music called rockabilly. I could be wrong. But I think it was defined later looking back.

    The fact that the Johnny Burnette trio had a song called "Rock-Billy Boogie" is likely were the term came from. But I don't know of any evidence that anyone called the music rockabilly at that time.

    Defining music genres is not stifling creativity. Choosing to write or play within the confines of a genre is a choice. No one forces you to do that.
    I choose not to eat red delicious apples. They do not appeal to me. I can still eat apples though despite my self imposed restriction. And my Apple pies are the better for it. But I don't put nectarines in a crust and call it an apple pie. Though I guess I should be more accepting of other fruits. I do also enjoy Apple galettes. But they are not Apple pies!

  12. #36

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    I don't think Miles Davis called it Cool Jazz, or Modal.
    I don't think Parker or Gillespie called their music Bebop.
    Django didn't call what he played gypsy jazz.

    Most artist don't like to be confined by a term. They just do what they do.
    Critics and historians are typically the ones who codify movements and genres after they appear.

    Obviously there are lots of exceptions like the Bauhaus school or Die Brucke. Where artists create a manifesto or the like. Or, the Meteors who coined Psychobilly.

  13. #37

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    c'mon man!!

    Dizzy Gillespie Sextet - Bebop (1945)...written by diz!

    Personnel: Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Trummy Young (trombone), Don Byas (tenor sax), Clyde Hart (piano), Oscar Pettiford (bass), Shelly Manne (drums)



    cheers

  14. #38

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    1. I said I don't think...
    2. The fact that a song was called bebop doesn't mean they called the music that. Or that they even named the song. Often the producer named the songs or marketing guys at the record company.
    3. That is the same thing as Rock-Billy Boogie. It's a song title. Not a type of music.

    Hell Miles didn't even like it being called Jazz.

  15. #39

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    from wiki, but I already knew it was called bebop back then, you can hear Symphony Sid refer to it in the live Bird recordings from the Royal Roost etc.

    The term "bebop" is derived from nonsense syllables (vocables) used in scat singing; the first known example of "bebop" being used was in McKinney's Cotton Pickers' "Four or Five Times", recorded in 1928.[3] It appears again in a 1936 recording of "I'se a Muggin'" by Jack Teagarden.[3] A variation, "rebop", appears in several 1939 recordings.[3] The first, known print appearance also occurred in 1939, but the term was little-used subsequently until applied to the music now associated with it in the mid-1940s.[3] Thelonious Monk claims that the original title "Bip Bop" for his composition "52nd Street Theme", was the origin of the name bebop.[4]
    Some researchers speculate that it was a term used by Charlie Christian because it sounded like something he hummed along with his playing.[5] Dizzy Gillespie stated that the audiences coined the name after hearing him scat the then-nameless compositions to his players and the press ultimately picked it up, using it as an official term: "People, when they'd wanna ask for those numbers and didn't know the name, would ask for bebop."[6] Another theory is that it derives from the cry of "Arriba! Arriba!" used by Latin American bandleaders of the period to encourage their bands.[7] At times, the terms "bebop" and "rebop" were used interchangeably. By 1945, the use of "bebop"/"rebop" as nonsense syllables was widespread in R&B music, for instance Lionel Hampton's "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop".[citation needed] The bebop musician or bopper became a stock character in jokes of the 1950s, overlapping with the beatnik.[8]

  16. #40

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    Last edited by Littlemark; 01-03-2021 at 08:42 AM.

  17. #41

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    Did someone say CCR rockabilly? Here you go.



  18. #42

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    1947 film



    "Oop bop sh'bam a klook a mop" is a homage to bop drummer Kenny Clarke, nicknamed "Klook"

    written by diz



    cheers

    ps- frankly i don't even know where this thread is goin?...what the point is? lets get back to the rockabilly tunes!

    next it'll be that punk rock wasnt called that back in the 70's either...so much for the ramones sheena! haha

  19. #43

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    gene vincent & the blue caps...(2nd edition in this vid..no cliff gallup)...the first 45 paul mccartney ever bought!

    be bop a lula



    cheers

  20. #44

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    So finally we have become worse than these guys

  21. #45

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    I got your Gretsch with a side of reverb right here...


  22. #46

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    Quote Originally Posted by neatomic
    gene vincent & the blue caps...(2nd edition in this vid..no cliff gallup)...the first 45 paul mccartney ever bought!

    be bop a lula



    cheers
    Excellent example of Bebop. They got rid of those stupid horns!

  23. #47

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    Quote Originally Posted by neatomic
    wow, lots of wrong info being thrown around here...the term rockabilly is completely authentic and goes back to the 1950's!!


    cheers
    I'm just reporting what I have seen and/or read out of the actual people's mouths... interviews with some of the originators. Jerry Lee Lewis, Billy Lee Riley, and I'm pretty sure even Scotty Moore- all said THEY never called it "rockabilly"- THEY called it "rock and roll", and "rockabilly" became a marketing term a little later on.

  24. #48

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  25. #49

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    Quote Originally Posted by ruger9
    I'm just reporting what I have seen and/or read out of the actual people's mouths... interviews with some of the originators. Jerry Lee Lewis, Billy Lee Riley, and I'm pretty sure even Scotty Moore- all said THEY never called it "rockabilly"- THEY called it "rock and roll", and "rockabilly" became a marketing term a little later on.
    I think you’re probably right. Record stores and marketers and music reviewers (AKA people who can’t play writing for people who can’t read, according to FZ) always wanted to pigeonhole players and groups.

    I never heard the term until the early 80’s when there was the rockabilly revival—Robert Gordon, Dave Edmunds, etc. Some of the older players were coming out of retirement as well.

    Prior to that we just called it old-fashioned rock-n-roll—not necessarily in a positive sense.

  26. #50

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    A lot of early 80’s groups picked up on the vibe of early rock-n-roll, in part as a protest against the narcissistic noodling of bands like Yes and Led Zepp. Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, the Clash, Rockpile...many groups picked up the mantel from Gene and Eddie and Duane and others who turned out 2’30” of energetic RNR.
    Last edited by Doctor Jeff; 01-04-2021 at 09:02 AM.