KOOL ‘N’ KRAZY KATS
(Comments/discussion: Tony.Papard@btinternet.com)
When rock’n’roll emerged as a new kind of music in the early to mid-1950s it brought with it a host of over-the-top characters to go with the brash, over-the-top music.
Let’s face it, rock’n’roll is not about sophistication. It is loud, vulgar and many people in this country thought it rather common. The very name, rock’n’roll, was a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
Although uptempo rhythm’n’blues had existed for quite a while and was popular amongst black audiences, it wasn’t until Bill Haley cleaned the music up a little and performed it in the film ‘Rock Around The Clock’ that rock’n’roll really took off worldwide. Back in the 1940s black artists like Big Joe Turner and Fats Domino had been recording what later became known as rock’n’roll. Haley took Turner’s ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ and issued his own sanitized version, omitting references to see-thru dresses and what lay underneath, but passing the line ‘just like a one-eyed cat peeping in a sea-food store’ which was actually much filthier, being another euphemism for sexual intercourse.
Haley, who’d performed as a Country’n’Western outfit called Bill Haley and His Saddlemen, introduced up-tempo rhythm’n’blues to a global white audience for the first time. His new band, The Comets, were a sort of slimmed-down version of the 1940s big bands, and apart from the saxophone, the line-up of drums, lead guitar and bass behind the vocals became the basis for pop and rock music to this day, or at least until pre-recorded electronic backings came into vogue for House, Garage and boy and girl bands, which are all crap anyway. I’m talking about real, live, music with guts!
Bill Haley and His Comets’ stage act was as loud and brash as their music. They wore loud jackets, and performed acrobatics on stage. This new music form so excited cinema audiences around the world that they jumped up in the aisles and started jiving. In Britain, a trail of riots and ripped cinema seats followed the screenings of ‘Rock Around The Clock’ around the country. Teenagers had been invented, and found their own identity, music and fashions. It was a very exciting time.
However, compared to some other performers of rock’n’roll and rhythm’n’blues who were soon to come to the fore, Haley was pretty tame. A wild black man known as Little Richard soon arrived on the scene with a rasping voice and frantic piano style. Many of his rock’n’roll numbers were self-penned, a new innovation in popular music, and they were nearly all sung at a frantic pace, and included crazy and often nonsensical lyrics. Richard kept Haley’s basic backing of drums, lead guitar, bass and wailing saxophone, but added the piano. Richard Penniman gave the world those immortal lines: ‘A-wop-bam-a-looma-a-wop-bam-boom’, and a host of rock’n’roll standards like ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’, ‘Long Tall Sally’, etc..
Richard took his cue from Esquerita, an even wilder piano rocker with hair piled high on his head. Esquerita wore rhinestones everywhere and outrageous stage costumes, and his songs were even more frantic and wild than Little Richard’s. Numbers like ‘Hole In My Heart’ (‘…all my love leaked out’), ‘Rockin’The Joint’ and ‘Getting’ Plenty Lovin’’ should have been much bigger hits, but he didn’t get the exposure Richard enjoyed.
Chuck Berry has been described as the ‘poet of rock’n’roll’. He certainly wrote some of the best rock’n’roll standards, and his guitar playing and singing were very exciting, as was his stage act which included the famous Chuck Duckwalk. Without Chuck, rock’n’roll just wouldn’t have been the same. His songs inspired a new generation of rock stars in the 1960s, when groups like The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys had hits with Chuck’s tunes (‘Surfin’ USA’ was simply a re-hash of ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ with surfing references.)
Then in 1957 The Killer burst on to the scene, and tore up all the remaining rules. Jerry Lee Lewis, the blond wild man from Louisiana, was undoubtedly the wildest and most versatile of all the rock’n’rollers, as he himself said he could ‘do a blues tune one minute then turn around and do a beautiful country song’. Although, unlike Chuck Berry and Richard Penniman, Jerry didn’t write much of his own material, he had a unique talent for re-interpreting other people’s songs and making them pure Jerry Lee Lewis. In the 1950s he pioneered long hair and bright drape jackets, and his on-stage antics included jumping on pianos and on one occasion setting fire to one to stop Chuck Berry following his act. Jerry’s private life was as controversial as his stage act, and he and Chuck Berry both suffered for their lifestyles. Chuck served a term of imprisonment, and Jerry had his records banned from the airwaves. It took him 10 years to rebuild his career and have hits again.
For me, these are the Big Three of rock’n’roll – Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Elvis doesn’t even come into my Top Ten I’m afraid. Presley was a great ballad singer, but as a rock’n’roller I don’t rate him very highly at all, and think other artists have made better versions of Elvis’ rock’n’roll hits. Wanda Jackson’s ‘Party’ is streets ahead of Elvis’ version, Carl Perkins’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was the original and better version, and as for Elvis’ versions of Little Richard numbers like ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Rip It Up’, they are on a par with Pat Boone’s pathetic covers. Even ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Hound Dog’ have been recorded much better by Jerry Lee Lewis, and of course Mama Mae Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ was also far superior to the Presley version. Presley’s best uptempo recordings were the early rockabilly cuts he did on Sun Records backed by Bill Black and Scotty Moore.
Far from being King of Rock, Elvis was a second-rate rock’n’roll singer in my opinion, very over-rated. He inspired many imitations, and set a fashion for good-looking boys wiggling their hips and grunting suggestively in front of screaming girl audiences, but his musical talents were best epitomized in some of his powerful big ballads, and his early rockabilly material. In the 1960s he wasted even this talent on a load of mediocre film soundtracks.
Everyone knows Jerry Lee Lewis is the one and only true King of Rock’n’Roll. His private life robbed him of the chance to snatch Elvis’ crown in 1958, but it was this rebellious lifestyle as much as his music and talent which should have earned him this title. Jerry Lee was the original punk rocker; the original Rebel Without A Cause whom no-one could tame. Elvis, in contrast, became not so much a Hound Dog as a little puppy, obediently getting his hair cut, joining the Army and taking orders from them and a bogus Colonel for the rest of his life. No-one ever gave Jerry Lee orders – he did what he damned well pleased and if you didn’t like it you could kiss his ass.
Other great artists of the rock’n’roll era include the great Gene Vincent, who started off with an Elvis-inspired rockabilly style, but developed into a unique rock’n’roll singer, dressed head to toe in black leather. Sonny Burgess is hardly a household name, but he was one of the wildest of the rockabillies, apparently dyeing his hair red to match his suits in the 1950s.
In a different genre, coming from a blues background, was the great Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, King of Rock and Horror. His songs are absolutely crazy – full of screams, grunts and sheer gobble-de-gook. He had a wild stage act involving coffins and all sorts of scary props, and he was also a great pianist and songwriter.
In the UK, Screamin’ Lord Sutch took his cue from Hawkins. Sutch didn’t have the talent of Hawkins, but nevertheless he did record some great wacky numbers like ‘Black and Hairy’, ‘Dracula’s Daughter’, and ‘Jack The Ripper’. He also had a great stage-act, very similar to Hawkins’, but with his own innovations. I particularly liked his arsonist tendencies during ‘Great Balls of Fire’, and his pig’s head with toilet seat necklace when singing ‘I’m A Hog For You Baby’. I remember on one occasion Sutch chopped down a bamboo partition with an ax in his impatience to get on stage – sadly that was the end of rock’n’roll acts at that venue.
Another British wildman is Freddie ‘Fingers’ Lee, a Geordie piano-player and singer with one glass eye, which he frequently used to take out of its socket. Freddie must be the only piano player in the world to play piano with his eyeball! On one occasion, at the end of his performance, Freddie took a ten-inch knife out of a sheath on his belt, and cut all the keys off the piano he’d been playing and threw them into the audience. You never knew what Freddie would do next – sit on top of the piano in the middle of a song and have a cup of tea from a flask, or set his head dress on fire whilst playing Jerry Byrne’s ‘Lights Out’. Freddie’s stage act is full of off-beat humor, with lines like: ‘All my love, all my kissing, you don’t know where the cat’s been pissing’. Freddie was, and is still, a great showman. Sadly he can no longer play due to suffering some strokes.
Wee Willie Harris was a wild British rock’n’roller back in the 1950s, wearing bright jackets with his name on the back, dyeing his hair green and also wearing cavemen outfits on stage. He still performs today, and also has a great blues voice. Another underestimated artist.
Many of these performers mentioned above had to be seen ‘live’ to be really appreciated at their best. Some never had a hit record, but in all cases their stage act left one breathless and screaming for more. There were a host of tamer rock’n’roll artists, but I have always preferred the wildmen, those who were a bit over-the-top or eccentric.
I have only mentioned Rockabilly in passing so far in this article. This was an early form of white rock’n’roll which a lot of hillbilly singers recorded in the 1950s. It has an infectious beat, and perhaps the most well-known rockabilly numbers are the early Elvis Sun recordings like ‘That’s All Right Mama’ and Carl Perkins’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. Most rockabilly singers never had a hit, and the music was almost unknown outside the Deep South of the USA until the 1960s and later. It has since developed a cult following, and rockabilly bands sprung up all over the world in places as diverse as Germany and Japan.
Of the rockabilly artists, Sonny Burgess is one of my favorites still touring. The late Warren Smith recorded some great numbers, as did Billy Lee Riley, who is also still touring. Of course the Johnny Burnette Trio recorded some of the finest rockabilly ever, but sadly their career and Johnny’s life were short-lived. Sleepy La Beef is another very talented and underestimated performer, one of the very greatest still touring.
Of the second generation rockabilly bands, Crazy Cavan and The Rhythm Rockers from South Wales were one of the first and best. Although they had a large Teddy-boy following, with self-penned numbers like ‘Teddy-boy Boogie’ and ‘Teddy-boy Rock’n’Roll’, they are essentially a rockabilly band, very loud and very exciting. They write nearly all their own numbers, and are perhaps the most underestimated band in the world. Although very popular in Europe, there seems to be a snobbish attitude in the UK which denies them the status which they deserve even within 1950s rock’n’roll circles. Let me state it quite clearly here and now: Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers are the best British group ever (The Beatless wouldn’t even rate in my Top 100!) Other great British groups include Graham Fenton’s various outfits (Hellraisers/Houseshakers/Matchbox), The Avengers, Mike Sanchez' current band and his previous one The Big Town Playboys, and Sandy Ford’s various Flyin’ Saucers line-ups.
So, rock’n’roll and rockabilly have given us some great music, some great performers, and some great times. These two closely related genres produced some of the most exciting, danceable music of the 20th century.
If you want to hear the ultimate rock’n’roll record, just listen to Jerry Lee Lewis ‘Live’ at the Star-Club, Hamburg. You’ll never ever hear a wilder recording – Jerry Lee and rock’n’roll at their very best.
Comment from the great Breathless Dan Coffey:
Hi man, just taken a look at your website and I am amazed to see that early Elvis is not fit to be in your top ten rockers. Cavan based his entire style on Elvis so it's hard to believe they are your favourite British group ever !! I guess I`ll be back in Ireland tomorrow I`ll be in touch with you soon. Take care, Breathless Dan.