I love this quote from rockabilly/country singer, Bob Luman, who happened to catch an early Elvis performance just after the release of The King’s first single (Elvis was still playing high schools then):

This cat came out in red pants and a green coat and a pink shirt and socks, and he had this sneer on his face and he stood behind the mike for five minutes, I’ll bet, before he made a move.  Then he hit his guitar a lick, and he broke two strings. I’d been playing ten years, and I hadn’t broken a total of two strings. So there he was, these two strings dangling, and he hadn’t done anything yet, and these high school girls were screaming and fainting and running up to the stage, and then he started to move his hips real slow like he had a thing for his guitar. That was Elvis Presley when he was about 19, playing Kilgore, Texas (The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 1980, pp. 19-20).

So very rock n roll.

But don’t worry, Bob, at least you accomplished something The King didn’t: you made it to the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame.

Brian Robinette – Saint Louis, MO

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree