Sam Phillips and Elvis
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Posted on 07/30/2003 9:39:24 PM PDT by Valin
I saw that one, and other bit on him on VH1. I had previously only known him for a drunken appearance on Late Night with David Letterman back in the '80s. What a great judge of talent.
Jerry Lee was still going strong, about the same as when I saw him 20 years ago. Billy Lee was a little slower, but gave an enjoyable performance nonetheless.
Sam Philips was a true man of vision. I've alrady heard "Who's going to replace Sam?" He's like Bob Hope. He's unique in his field. No replacements avalible.
Sam Phillips and Elvis
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I saw Billy Lee Riley about 2 years ago.
Even the "forgotten name" artists like Billy Lee Riley had talents like Jerry Lee Lewis (and his pumping piano) backing them up.
The song "The Company Of Kings" by Monsieur Jeffrey Evans (of 68 Comeback and the Gibson Brothers) has been recorded twice by him now. It tells the "untold" story of the artists of Sun. The names that weren't heralded, the artists who missed their shot at fame.
The live solo recording on "I've Lived A Rich Life" is much easier to listen to. The link here doesn't give enough of a sample of this song:
Mr. Evens also talks of growing up listening to Sun singles and how it took him awhile to grow to appreciate the soulful ballads that would be the flip side to some of the rockabilly. This live album has him describing all of this.
He also recorded The Gibson Bros. final album at Sun Studios (with up and comer Jon Spencer in his band).
The music may not be to everyone's taste but many an artist is awed by Sun studios and makes their pilgrimage to record there.
Some people have to choose between family and chance at stardom. Malcom chose his family.
I always understood that Bill Hailey and the Comets' "Rock around the Clock" was the first rock n' roll record. And the term was coined by a disc jockey, Alan Freedman?
Rock and roll is an undeniable sound. Rockabilly is rock and roll (and it is one step away from hillbilly, but it definitely isn't country or western).
1951's Rocket 88 makes a good run at the title. 1953's Butcher Pete (by Roy Brown & His Mighty Men) is close (and an over the top shouter that is explicit in its references to sex and violence, whether "hacking and packing and stacking" and "chopping that meat" is about murder or fornicating). Roy Brown hit soon afterwards with "Good Rockin' Tonight"
Rock Around The Clock had been out for a year before it took off (when it was placed in the opening title sequence of Blackboard Jungle). Rock Around The Clock was the first ROCK AND ROLL song to break through on the charts. It made it clear that there was this new music to reckon with; something that the bands on the hit parade couldn't cover (not Frank Sinatra, not Patty Page, not Nat King Cole).
Some people say that the outrage was about "race music" and black singers. I say it was about the unrestrained content and something that just bugged parents to no end. Rock and roll had its detractors but the dam burst and there was no stopping it although by the late 1950s, a few scandals, a few retirements, a few deaths, and Elvis' induction threw the brakes on the movement.
Artists were castrated and one time rockers (like the Johnny Burnette Trio) were singing with orchestras harmless fluff like "You're 16, you're beautiful and you're mine". The singers were harmless poster boys, teen idols. Listen to the Johnny Burnette Trio's distorted take on "Train Kept A Rollin'" and compare it to the original jump blues version by Tiny Bradshaw (the original seems so polite by comparison). Rock and roll was vicious.
The Yardbirds copied the riff they used on that song out of the mid1950s version by The Johnny Burnette Trio (on Sun).
Artists continued to record, tour, and spawn new bands but lamestream America tried to shutter rock and roll. Things were not calm before the British Invasion ("frat bands" played a wild mix of r&B and rock and roll, bands like the Wailers go back to 1959 with Dirty Robber - what could even be the first punk song!).
Alan Freed stuck his neck out putting some of this music on the radio (although he got publishing credits for songs he didn't author). He started in Cleveland and went to NYC. So did another DJ named Pete Meyers (aka the Mad Daddy).
The Mad Daddy is the only proof I've heard (I've heard old radio tapes) that some of the wildest and most obscure rock songs of the 1950s actually got on the radio (things like Pretty Plaid Skirt & Long Black Sox, psychobilly at its finest). Pete was frustrated with the lack of control of his show in the 1960s and committed suicide in 1968. There are some who hold that it was Pete and not Alan who first applied the term Rock and Roll to the music they were playing on the air. Mad Daddy also called it "Wavy Gravy" and used hipster talk like Al Jazzbo Collins (only more hopped up) "coming to you from the land of obladi...").
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