THAT LOOK WHEN YOU KNOW YOU'RE THE SHIT

I heard a shitty version of Ray Charles's "Hallelujah I Love Her So" yesterday. When that happens my normal practice is to immediately listen to another version I know is good, usually the original. This time, for whatever reason, I immediately thought of Billy Zoom's version. The version that I was thinking of is from 1981 and, although live, is a near dead ringer of Eddie Cochran's version recorded somewhere around 1957-'58.

Billy Zoom Band

Zoom was the guitarist for X, which I would hope some of you knew. Before that he was a rockabilly guy with as good a credential as you could get. He was Gene Vincent's guitarist towards the end of his career, just before he passed away. Zoom went on to record with his own band for Ronny Reiser's Rollin' Rock Records, a rockabilly label in L.A. It's just insane when you think about it. With all the retro stuff going on in recent decades, roots music, classic cars, cuffed Levis, and such, you'd be forgiven if you thought there's always been a market for rockabilly since the mid-late fifties heydays. Not so, not in the U.S.. The long hairs took care of that. Okay, so there was a market, but it was a tiny market, and consisted of only total fiends, total purest types. The fact that Rollin' Rock existed at all is just crazy. At the time Zoom was recording for them, covering Johnny Carrol's "Crazy Crazy Lovin'", most of what would become L.A.s first generation punk rockers were listening to Bowie.

Okay, we can agree that that's just nuts. But what gets me is that Zoom's cover of "Hallelujah I Love Her So" was recorded in 1981, he'd already been with X, a seminal L.A. punk band, for roughly four years, enough time for three singles and a couple LPs. Yet he retained the straight up rockabilly chops with his side thing.

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Listen:
Billy Zoom Band - Hallelujah, I Love Her So (live) mp3 at Billy Zoom 1981
Billy Zoom Band - Crazy Crazy Lovin' mp3 at  Billy Zoom Rollin' Rock 1975
Billy Zoom Band - Bad Boy mp3 at Billy Zoom Rollin' Rock 1976
Billy Zoom Band - Say When mp3 at Billy Zoom Rollin' Rock 1975
Eddie Cochran - Hallelujah, I Love Her So (streaming) at YouTube
Ray Charles - Hallelujah, I Love Her So (streaming) at YouTube
Johnny Carroll - Crazy, Crazy Lovin' mp3 at Rocky-52.net
Visit:
Billy Zoom interviewed by Buddy Seigal (Buddy Blue) from the OC Weely, 1998
Billy Zoom's Official site
Rollin' Rock Records

FRIGID, MAN, FRIGID

Here's a nice photo of a young Ray Campi, and a couple songs from around the same time, 1957. Most people my age know him primarily from his revived career in the late seventies and early eighties, around the time he was on Rollin' Rock Records. He'd occasionally play in punk venues with the Rockabilly Rebels. Man, that was a gas. Punk rock, rockabilly and reggae were the big three among my crowd, and Campi was the biggest rockabilly guy, due in no small part to the fact that he was one of very few rockabilly OGs that you could still go see.

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Listen:
Ray Campi - Caterpillar mp3 at Rocky 52 1957
Ray Campi - Play It Cool mp3 at Rocky 52 1957
Ray Campi - Rockin' at the Ritz mp3 at Haurie.free.fr/softs 1977
Visit:
Fuck, What a Label - Post about Rollin' Rock Records 

MUST HAVE SILVER JET AND SMILE

I had the player on shuffle the other day and had to stop for a second. I had completely forgotten how good Billy Zoom's cover of Ray Charles's "Hallelujah, I Love Her So" was. It doesn't deviate much from Eddie Cochran's version, which is why I was taken aback, because it's sooo close, you'd be tempted to think it was a live recording of Cochran's. It's that good.

Zoom, for you pea greens that don't know, was/is the guitarist for X, and even before that had some serious cred. He played for a brief period with Gene Vincent (shortly before Vincent passed away), and with Big Joe Turner and Etta James. Just a couple years before X, he recorded some really good stuff for Rollin' Rock (the same label mentioned a couple days ago in the Mac Curtis thing).

Zoom's day job: serious tube amp geek

The Zoom cuts below come from his web site, and, if you dig these, you should check it out. There's a few others, including a cover of Johnny Carroll's "Crazy, Crazy Lovin'", and a whole set (43 minutes) with Mark Neil in his band. Neil is the guy who produced the Black Keys' Brothers LP, amongst a lot of lower profile stuff, and he's no slouch on the guitar himself. The recording on that one's not as good as the others, but you get to hear Zoom doing double duty on sax  (Note: The links at his site aren't highlighted or underlined. Just click on the song titles. On the last one, the set with Neil, click on "Billy Zoom Band - 2005".)

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Listen:
The Billy Zoom Band - Hallelujah, I Love Her So (live) mp3 at Billy Zoom 1981
The Billy Zoom - Bad Boy mp3 at Billy Zoom Rollin' Rock 1976
The Billy Zoom - Say When mp3 at Billy Zoom Rollin' Rock 1975
Eddie Cochran - Hallelujah, I Love Her So (streaming) at YouTube
Ray Charles - Hallelujah, I Love Her So (live) mp3 at Blog No Blat (?)
Video:
Johnny Carroll- Crazy, Crazy Lovin' at YouTube

OOM-A-LA-BABY

Holy shit, how could I have not posted anything by Mac Curtis? He was another rockabilly singer that most people haven't heard of, and he wasn't all that prolific, but to fiends of the genre he's practically a household name thanks in no small part to rockabilly compilations and Rollin' Rock, the little L.A. record label that almost single-handedly kept U.S. rockabilly alive in the pre-revival seventies (check "Pistol Packin' Mama" below, a 1978 Rollin' Rock 45). Curtis passed away in September, from complications after a car accident Sadly, there was hardly a peep in the music press. 

Some of you may know these songs like the back of your hand. I gotta thank Diddy Wah for his recent posting of "If I Had Me A Woman". It reminded me of a favorite that's been buried away ("it's around here someplace") for a long time. That was his first record, recorded when he was just seventeen. Get this, even at that young age, he'd had a school show shut down because of suggestive moves.

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Listen:
Mac Curtis - If I Had Me A Women mp3 at Diddy Wah 1956
Mac Curtis - Grandaddy's Rockin' mp3 at Rocky 52 1956
Mac Curtis - Don't You Love Me? mp3 at Rocky 52 1956
Mac Curtis - Goosebumps mp3 at Rocky 52
Mac Curtis - Pistol Packin' Mama mp3 at Rocky 52 1978

FUCK, WHAT A LABEL

If ol' Ronny Weiser isn't good at tooting his own horn, I'll toot the damn thing for him. First a little background. Weiser is the founder of Rollin' Rock Records, specializing in rockabilly records. In the late seventies, because rockabilly was big in the UK, interest kind of seeped into the record collections of the punk rock crowd, including Southern California. That's where Rollin' Rock, a Los Angeles based label comes in. Former rocker Ray Campi, then a moonlighting school teacher, was already getting a lot of attention in the UK in the late seventies, for his Rollin' Rock 45 "Rockin' at the Ritz". Then, about 1979-80, British rockabilly band Levi and the Rockats appeared in L.A., for what was an extended stay (they may have moved there, I forget). Though well intended, I gotta say, they always reminded me of a rockabilly version of what boy bands are now, pretty boy types; maybe because gals seemed particularly interested. Those unconvinced, like myself, would find themselves gravitating towards Rollin' Rock, which was slowly gaining appreciation from a whole new crowd. They had a few old rockers, like Campi, Mac Curtis and others, a few a little further out there (the long hair and bearded Johnny Legend), and some other younger out crowders just cutting their teeth. A Rollin' Rock compilation from the mid-seventies included three songs by Billy Zoom, who was in X around the time all of this backtracking was happening. In 1980, The Blasters debut LP was released, and all hell broke loose. Okay, maybe just some of hell.

Recorded a year or so before their Slash debut, which shares three of the same songs, there were only 2,000 copies of the Blasters Rollin' Rock LP pressed. It sold out quick. Adios Lounge just posted a handful of songs from the original LP, along with a great long and detailed thing about that particular Rollin' Rock LP. That's what prompted this mess, and had me digging for the past day and a half.

 

Weiser moved to the U.S. in 1965 to go to college. Bummed that authentic early rockabilly, and rhythm and blues weren't quite the rage he thought they'd be, he networked, meeting like minded nuts, and starting The Hollywood Rock 'n' Roll fan Club in 1969. The club needed a fanzine, so that's how Rollin' Rock began. In 1971 he started Rollin' Rock, the label, recording bands in his home (there are records with telephones ringing and dogs barking in the background). Crude, but it worked. What followed became a rocker's safe haven, for decades. His is a fascinating story. Check the links below for more on how things coalesced. These were true believers, an island surrounded by a sea of Marshall stack miscreants.

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Listen:
The Blasters - American Music (Rollin' Rock version) mp3 at The Adios Lounge 1980
The Blasters - Crazy Baby (Rollin' Rock) mp3 at The Adios Lounge 1980
The Blasters - Barefoot Rock (Rollin' Rock) mp3 at The Adios Lounge 1980
The Blasters - Three more songs at The Adios Lounge all from 1980
Billy Zoom Band - Bad Boy mp3 at BillyZoom.com Mid-70's
Billy Zoom Band - Say When mp3 at BillyZoom.com Mid-70's
Billy Zoom Band - Crazy Crazy Lovin' mp3 at BillyZoom.com Mid-70's
Ray Campi and the Rockabilly Rebels - Rockabilly Man mp3 at Music Pop Hits (?) 1980
Ray Boy (Campi) and Jimmy Lee - I Need Love mp3 at Haurie.free.fr/softs 1980
Ray Campi - Rockin' at the Ritz mp3 at Haurie.free.fr/softs 1977
Visit:
Rockin' Ronny Weiser and Rollin' Rock Records at Rockin' Records Translated from French (by Google bot)
The Vinyl File: The Blasters – American Music at The Adios Lounge
Ronny Weiser Interviewed by his son at Rock In Roll (?) Very short, just the facts.
Ronny Weiser interview at The Rockabilly Hall of Fame 2001
Ronny Weiser interview at The Rockabilly Hall of Fame 1999

OH YES IT'S LADIES NIGHT

I wasn't even looking for Alvis Wayne. Never heard of him before tonight. I was poking around looking for stuff on Rollin' Rock Records, of which there is little, and ran across their MySpace page. (Hey, I know, but do you think Rollin' Rock is going to follow the pack? Hell no, MySpace makes sense.) I ran into a tune by Wayne, which is pretty good, a little repetitive with the lyrics, but dig that sound. What really hit me was the promo photo on the page. My first thought was "Whoa, the ladies will dig this". Of course, this being the era of PC overload, I hesitated. Then I thought to myself, fuck it. A few of my lady friends will dig it for sure, and those are the ones I'd probably rather hang with. No need to look for flaws. I think we've established they're everywhere.

I went looking for another Alvis Wayne cut, and guess where he popped up? At good ol' Rocky 52's. That guy never ceases to amaze me. Dude's the man. I think we've established that too.

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Listen:
Alvis Wayne - Don't Mean Maybe Baby mp3 at Rocky 52
Alvis Wayne - (not sure of the title) (streaming) at Rollin' Rock's MySpace