Rockabilly

Rockabilly is one of the earliest forms of rock and roll as a distinct style of music. It is a fusion of blues, hillbilly boogie, bluegrass music and country music, and its origins lie in the American South. more...

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As Peter Guralnick writes, "Its rhythm was nervously uptempo, as well as accented on the offbeat, and propelled by a distinctively slapping bass....The sound was further bolstered by generous use of echo, a homemade technique refined independently by Sam Phillips and Leonard Chess in Chicago with sewer pipes and bathroom acoustics." While recording artists such as Bill Haley were playing music that fused rhythm and blues, western swing and country music in the early 1950s, and Tennessee Ernie Ford performed in a somewhat similar style on songs such as "Smokey Mountain Boogie", they were not playing rockabilly. As Nick Tosches writes, "By the early 1950s, it was not uncommon to encounter simultaneous country and rhythm-and-blues recordings of the same song."

Tosches also points out that the Delmore Brothers and Hank Williams were performing, in the late 1940s, music that could be called rock and roll. But rockabilly was a stripped-down version of its various sources, and thus a specific stylistic moment in the evolution of music that before had existed in many forms. The rockabilly movement of loud, fast, simple music that communicates directly with the audience was echoed in Great Britain by the resurgence of skiffle music. Both forms contributed materially to the development of rock and roll.

Bill Flagg was the first to name the music when he recorded for Tetra Records in 1955−1956. His song "Go Cat Go" went into the National Billboard charts in 1956. He is a member of the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame.

In 1952, Bill Haley and the Comets, released "Rock the Joint" on the Essex label, which is most likely the very first true rockabilly recording. Replete with slap bass and the hallmark, country/blues sound and the first appearance of guitar solo would appear in two years later in his biggest hit, "Rock Around The Clock."

Elvis Presley's 1954 Memphis sessions for Sam Phillips's Sun Records produced arguably the most influential rockabilly recordings. "That's All Right (Mama)", first performed by Arthur Crudup, was a reworking of a blues tune, done with overtones of country music. "Blue Moon of Kentucky", by Bill Monroe, was a bluegrass standard, done with overtones of blues. Elvis had been singing similar songs on the Louisiana Hayride where he was billed as "The Hillbilly Cat", a title that embodies the rockabilly synthesis.

During roughly the same period of time, a young singer/songwriter down in Lubbock, Texas named Buddy Holly was busy taking elements of various musical styles (blues, country, gospel, south of the border, etc...) and melding them into what later became the "Tex-Mex" sound. Holly's pioneering efforts are legendary, and the rockabilly sound was a strong element in much of his work.

Read more at Wikipedia.org