[yourchannel user=”Amuse Her” playlist=”PL1yJk3eGuxoJCEHRrXekpLthqsTNW4nih”]
Glenn Allen Howard – Introduction
Jimmie Rodgers Show (Hank’s Son of a) – It’s the Beat
Gene Vincent – Be Boppa Lula (1956)
Johnny Burnette Trio – Lonesome Train (1956)
Wanda Jackson – Hard Headed Woman (1958)
Wanda Jackson – Mean, Mean Man (1958)
Wanda Jackson – Cool Love (1958)
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See her in the
Eddie Cochran – 20 Flight Rock (1956)
Eddie Cochran – C’mon Everybody (1959)
Bob Luman – Reddy Teddy (1958)
Bob Luman w/ James Burton on guitar – This is the Night (1957)
Johnny Carroll – Sugar Baby (circa 1957)
Ronnie Hawkins w/ Levon Helm (1959)
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A winner of
Carl Perkins – Glad All Over (1956)
Carl Perkins – Boppin’ the Blues (1959)
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All the Yardbirds but Bird himself came up boppin’ to Carl Perkins–a real cool cat. He got a flat car and a hitch in the hospital tryin’ to make his way to the Sullivan show, which gave Elvis an early edge and kept him off of his blue suedes and in the backseat for a solid year–which is not where he ever belonged.
Ain’t no doubt about it, it musta been love when the rock hit my little head and heart in the third or fourth grade. I passively signed myself up for a 2 year course in rock ‘n’ roll, from the forkin’ top forty of all places, before some dick clocked in with 30 pieces of Payola and switched it over to all the Frankies, Bobbys and other teen idles that bored me stiff and put a damper on lookin’ to the tube for any kind of solid sounds.
Rockabilly was unceremoniously removed from the radio by the evil grownups by ’59 so we kids wouldn’t grow up to become Juvenile Delinquents. Nice try, Mr. “Father Knows Zip” (as in the TV show), but the seeds had already been sown which would sprout in just a few and with far more flying colors than their out-cold martini-mindsets could have ever conjured.
In total desperation, I went as far as getting into classical music for a couple of choruses in and around the Stanford scene, where “good music” was a code word for Mozart and that crowd- no matter how poorly it was executed. With the exception of a couple of gigs I caught when Stravinsky was bribed and showed up to shake his stick, I witnessed more executions (called recitals) than any Texas governor, bar W or his egg–suckin’ successor.
They were very adamant that NO Gershwin need apply, ‘cause it was too accessible to the lower 7 or 8 classes, which included the unmentionable Blacks (excuse me, Negroes) and Jews so critical to the core content of America’s real classical music genres. Like all the great styles, it comes from the underclass, not from the upperclassmen and fratheads, and definitely not from the poison ivy-covered ivory towers where they were pushin’ the likes of Walter Piston till I finally got totally pissed off.
I’m lookin’ for a classical clip as cool as this one from the Carlster that’s worth throwin’ your way, but the pickin’s are mighty slim. Fortunately, there is no need to look at much recorded after 1964.
Luckily, before long a hip kid named Pete Clark crossed the tracks, my path and my eardrums, and steered me on to the Wolfman and the black stations that were hidin’ in the colored section of the mostly whites-only radio dial and I began to drinkin’ heavily from the “colored fountain” by ‘62.
To keep a long story from getting very much longer, this marked the beginning of my collecting and my education. I didn’t learn shinola from school about music though I kept tryin’. You have to learn it from records and clips like these, since the books are only good after you’ve pre-dug the sounds they are writin’ about. Maybe someday they’ll teach the good stuff startin’ in grade school, but I wouldn’t be waitin’ under water for that day without a large economy size tank or two of 02 to help see you through.
Carl Perkins – Blue Suede Shoes (1956)
Carl Perkins – Blue Suede Shoes; Your True Love (1957)
Carl Perkins – Matchbox (1957)
Carl Perkins – Dixie Fried (1957)
Johnny Cash – So Doggone Lonesome (1955)
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Okeh, so you might not know this tune as well as the last one, but like, this kinda jive, in 1955, is as early as your ever gonna see the Man not yet in Black and he’s already got ‘it’ with spades to spare.
He’s introduced by Little Jimmy Dickens and Hank Snow, and Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs are not playing with a full deck in the foreground on each side of J.C.
Johnny was new to the fame game and was probably wigged out and flipped out to be sharin’ the stage with the heavy studs and stags he had been worshippin’ from a distance since forever on the Grand Ol’ Opry’s Saturday Night radio show.
Johnny Cash – I Walk the Line (1955) Down and missing :[
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This Cash is anything but trash ‘cause to catch this little baby Cash kid, live in ’55 is hard to top even with a ’55 Chevy Bel Air 2-door hardtop. He was just startin’ out and he wouldn’t be splittin’ the scene for another solid 48. This possibly recognizable tune was brand new, right out of the box and still had that new car, Body by Fisher smell. Cash’s lead player, Luther Perkins was absolutely essential to his sound, but he probably was shorter in the chops department than any other lead guitarist in both the hillbilly and rock ’n’ roll rackets.
A tip of the old felt Fedora to computer wizard John Gilmore for diggin’ up this little relic. I give it like, on a scale of 1 to 10 – it’s an easy 11.
Jack Scott – Greaseball (1958) audio only
