The earliest recognized style of rock and roll by white performers. Its practitioners were white southerners in the USA who had been attracted to and learned from the music of African-Americans; they called it country rock, but music industry figures and fans dubbed it rockabilly as a different way of signifying the merger of blues and hillbilly styles. One of its first stars, Carl Perkins, defined it as ‘a country man’s song with a black man’s rhythm’. Its origins are usually traced to the 1954 recordings of the genre’s most successful singer, Elvis Presley. Like Presley, most of rockabilly’s early stars recorded at Sam Phillips’s Sun Studios in Memphis, where a distinctive echo effect was used to enhance the music. Typically, twangy electric guitar, slapped upright bass and (after 1956) drum kit accompanied the singer, although other instruments often appeared, most notably Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano. Rockabilly generally used the electric guitar as the main solo instrument, marking a shift away from the saxophone and piano solos of jump blues and other popular African-American genres. However, it frequently used boogie rhythms and 12-bar blues progressions, and was closely related to the rhythm and blues of African-American performers such as Bo Diddley, T-Bone Walker and Chuck Berry.
One of rockabilly’s most distinctive musical characteristics was the range of unpredictable vocal inflections of the singers: lyrics about sex and love were performed with gasps, hiccups, trembling, non-linguistic syllables and repetition, implying that the singer was consumed by desire. Many rockabilly singers cultivated a wild, sexy image and performed with intensity and abandon, all of which contributed to their popularity and impact. Successful performers of the 1950s included Presley, Perkins, Lewis, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers, Eddie Cochran, Wanda Jackson, Johnny Cash, Gene Vincent and Brenda Lee. The Stray Cats briefly revived the style in the 1980s, and some of its elements persisted in the swing revival of the 90s.
G. Marcus: Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music (New York, 1975, 4/1997)
N. Tosches: Country: the Biggest Music in America (New York, 1977, 3/1996 as Country: the Twisted Roots of Rock ’n’ Roll)
B. Cooper and W. Haney: Rockabilly: a Bibliographic Resource Guide (Metuchen, NJ, 1990)
C. Morrison: Go Cat Go!: Rockabilly Music and its Makers (Urbana, IL, 1996)
ROBERT WALSER