Who stole the rock'n'roll?

Whenever I can’t find something around the house I usually try to find someone else to blame for losing it. It’s one of those things. It’s always someone else’s fault isn’t it. Usually it’s sitting right in front of my nose if I could be bothered to look for it. Through a similar process the media can easily be blamed for the disappearance of artists, genres or even whole aspects of culture. Something is hot property for a while then it loses its mass appeal and it vanishes in front of your very eyes. It’s still there, hasn’t been wiped off the face of the earth, you just need to look beyond the obvious to find it - which is something most people can’t be arsed with. Rock’n’roll disappeared for about five years once in this very way.

Rock history has it that when the empire was being forged there was only one king of rock’n’roll, and that king was one Elvis Aaron Presley. Never mind that rock’n’roll had been around for a good old time prior to his discovery by down-home blues label Sun Records in Memphis. Thanks to this special combination, an underground music played by a segregated race of people in run down across-the-tracks clubs was suddenly on prime time TV and the sight of a white guy playfully gyrating his hips seriously offended middle-WASP America. So it is relayed in the book of Genesis in the bible of rock.

Most students of such tomes know the rest. By the end of the fifties Elvis got drafted, Buddy Holly died, Jerry Lee Lewis turned into a cousin-marrying pariah. The music biz came up with lame and tame crooners to take their place and that nasty rock’n’roll thing was deliberately ignored in the hope it would go away. Everything stateside returned to its pre-rock status quo until the British invasion forced rock back into the media eye again in the mid-sixties. Then rock musicians discovered LSD and things really went west (literally). But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The lesson for the congregation today is that, far from disappearing, rock in the early sixties survived and thrived back down in its underground home while Elvis was being paraded around in his uniform and Pat Boon was doing wimped-out Little Richard covers for the masses. And far from just retreating back to its original source, it expanded into a new home in the low-rent clubs of urban white America. It’s a neglected chapter of rock history but its well worth digging into. The original chitlin circuit that produced sensational early rockers like Little Richard and Ray Charles kept on keeping on as it always had and would later in the sixties provide the world with a certain James Marshall Hendrix. The urban white clubs, on the other hand, dispensed with the soul and instead picked up on the beat and the greasy/sleazy aspects of what rock brought to the table.

A taste of what this side of American culture was like can be found in the recent and essential biography of Jerry Lee Lewis by Rick Bragg. Dodgy managers, we-never-close hours, pills, booze, sex and violence. The classic rock’n’roll stew. All in all, the perfect environment for the devil to do his work. Depending on which part of the states you are talking about, the adoption of sleazoid rock pushed country or jazz out, and the evening’s entertainment often included the addition of stage shows featuring strippers and/or stand up comedians. Jazz lived on through the addition of brass to the standard rock line up, and the drums were pushed more up front giving things an even more greasy big band sound. Think Las Vegas and New Orleans, LA and Houston. Anywhere people splashed money, got loaded and looked for a good time. Salt Lake City? Not so much.

It would be difficult to point out any one artist to represent all of this, since so much of it was going on under the radar. People might record a single or three, but the action was centred so much on the live show that the need to do hard work promoting a record was pointless.

There are a few compilation series that focus on this forgotten chapter of rock’n’roll, and you need to check them out, so get googlin’ (there are/were some great blogs around housing them). The Born Bad series, featuring gems like “Funnel of love” by Wanda Jackson, covers the rockabilly ground later popularised by The Cramps. Even better are the six Las Vegas Grind volumes, focussing more of the sleazoid club sounds described above. There are some real turkeys included amongst the gems, but that’s half the fun. This is taken to even wilder extremes by the Wildsville! and Wowsville! compilations that go beyond mere sleaze into certifiable madness. Listen to this stuff and then even try to think of a modern equivalent. Actually don’t bother – there isn’t any.

My little guys bring you a little teasin’ taste on “How much is that bust of Elvis in the window?” on the album. If the above sounds good to you, check it out. Just don’t forget your gigavator.

Find it on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer, Google Play and Bandcamp, or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site.

Or try before you buy on Soundcloud or Youtube.