Rockabilly

Brian Setzer's Rockabilly Riot! Live from the Planet compiles concert recordings Setzer made while on the Rockabilly Riot! tour in 2011 and 2012. Included are performances from such diverse locales as Japan, Sweden, Australia, and, of course, the United States…

Essentially country music welded to jump blues, rockabilly was rock & roll’s first clear shot at the world in the late '50s, and for every huge star like Elvis Presley who passed through the genre and took it onto the charts, there were hundreds – if not thousands – of singles by likeminded artists released in the rockabilly era that vanished without much impact or became, at best, only regional successes. This two-disc, 50-track set collects some of these rare releases, and includes sides by footnote musicians like Al Epp, Jimmy Patton, Jimmie John, Jimmy Lloyd, Benny Joy, Benny Ingram, and many others with similar fame pedigrees…

Rockabilly's rough image can be traced to both Sam Phillips' lo-fi production ethic at Sun Records and the dangerous look of the many Elvis wannabes on the label's roster; it continued as a symbol of defiance thanks to the nouveau rockabilly look British teddy-boys sported in the '60s (greased hair, rolled-up pant leg) and the makeshift music the reconfigured teddies of punk rock made in the late '70s.

Back in the 1955, a gallon of gas cost 23-cents, Disneyland opened, both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born, Rosa L Parks sets the Civil Rights Movement in motion and Carl Perkins wrote Blue Suede Shoes, which went on to become the first million-selling country song to cross over to both the rhythm & blues and pop charts. They called it country in ’55 but a year later the term ‘rockabilly’ was officially introduced by Billboard to describe what we all recognize today as the early roots of rock and roll.

Following the success of sister volume The Rarest Rockabilly Album Volume 1 , comes a second compilation of 50 of the rarest tracks from the genre that is more popular today than it was when the records included here were first released…

Wanda Jackson was only halfway through high school when, in 1954, country singer Hank Thompson heard her on an Oklahoma City radio show and asked her to record with his band, the Brazos Valley Boys. By the end of the decade, Jackson had become one of America's first major female country and rockabilly singers.