Rockabilly got its name from rock and the hillbilly music that fed it
Rockabilly, one of rock and roll's earliest forms, fused country music with rhythm and blues in the American South of the early 1950s. Its name joins rock with hillbilly, the label then used for country records. Western swing bandleader Bob Wills claimed he had been playing much the same thing since 1928.
The style blends country and western with rhythm and blues, and some describe it as bluegrass meeting rock and roll. Its signatures were driving rhythms, boogie-woogie piano, twangy vocals and liberal use of tape echo, with more instruments and harmonies added over time. Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis were among those who made it popular. It faded in the late 1950s, came back strongly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and still thrives in musical subcultures, while also helping to shape punk rock.
Its roots run back to the 1920s, when blues and country were already intertwined. Jimmie Rodgers, often called the first true country star, was nicknamed the Blue Yodeler and built most of his songs on blues chord patterns, though they sounded very different from records by Black contemporaries such as Bessie Smith. In the 1930s and 1940s Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys mixed country vocals and steel guitar with big-band jazz and horns, and their later records featured guitar work that anticipated rockabilly.
A boogie-woogie craze launched in 1938 by pianists including Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson inspired country acts such as the Delmore Brothers and Tennessee Ernie Ford to cut hillbilly boogie, country singing over a boogie bass line. After the Second World War the Maddox Brothers and Rose pushed things further with the slapped bass Fred Maddox had developed, loud volume and riotous stage antics that impressed white audiences and musicians alike.
Black blues artists supplied the other half. Jump blues singers like Wynonie Harris and electric bluesmen such as Howlin' Wolf and Arthur Crudup fed the sound, and Memphis musician Junior Parker's band, the Blue Flames, with Pat Hare on guitar, was a major influence through their 1953 recordings Love My Baby and Mystery Train.
Source: Rockabilly
