Rockabilly

Rockabilly is a style of music made famous during the 1950s by American performers. At its heart, rockabilly is simply a fusion of rock and roll, blues and hillbilly music, hence the name. The music was propelled by catchy beats, an electric guitar and an upright bass which was played using the slap-back technique.

Rockabilly is generally considered to have begun in the early 1950s, when musicians like Bill Haley began mixing jump blues and electric country. In 1954, however, a singer named Elvis Presley truly began the popularization of the genre with a series of recordings for Sun Records. Rock Around the Clock. a B-side released in 1955, was the breakthrough success for the style, and it launched the careers of several rockabilly entertainers.

By 1958, most of these performers had moved on to different sounds and rockabilly had largely disappeared from popular music

In the 1980s, The Stray Cats led a brief revival of interest in rockabilly. Later on, bands like The Cramps and Reverend Horton Heat merged the music with punk, forming a distinct sub-genre referred to as psychobilly.

Recent rockabilly bands have often used stage theatrics specific to this genre: exaggerated hairdos, "bad boys" clothing and attitude, tricks with the upright bass, and lyrics about motor cars and female relationships.

• Alvie Self
• Bill Haley
• BadTones
• Bob Luman
• Buck Naked and the Bare Bottom Boys
• Buddy Holly
• Carl Perkins
• Charlie Rich
• Cliff Gallup
• Conway Twitty
• Cub Koda
• Elvis Presley
• Eddie Cochran
• The Everly Brothers
• Gene Vincent
• Jerry Lee Lewis
• Dorsey Burnette
• Johnny Burnette
• Johnny Cash
• Marty Robbins
• Matys Brothers
• The Tyrones
• Patsy Cline
• Rick Nelson
• Wanda Jackson

Samples

• Download sample of Elvis Presley's "Good Rockin' Tonight"

Further reading

• Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway, Colin Escott, Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-93783-3

External link

• Rockabilly Hall Of Fame (http://www.rockabillyhall.com/)

• http://www.geocities.com/alvieself/index.html (ALVIE SELF)

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