Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2022/January 2023 i Vintage Rock

When the very sad news of the passing of Jerry Lee Lewis was confirmed on 28 October it really was the end of an era. He’d succinctly said it himself, of course, more than a decade and a half ago with the title of his 2006 studio album – The Killer undoubtedly was ‘The Last Man Standing.’ Few artists personified the rebellious spirit of rock’n’roll more than Jerry Lee. His was a life lived on the edge, never too far away from controversy and scandal. It’s fair to say that separating truth from myth surrounding the star has often been a tangled business. “I’d have to be 5,000 years old to do all the things they say I’ve done,” he once remarked. Musically, the work of Lewis was dazzlingly diverse,…

The That’ll Be The Day rock’n’roll production has announced a special Yuletide incarnation of its show, which is all set to run over the festive holiday season. Freshly revamped for 2022, the three-hour production mixes pop and rock’n’roll classics with traditional favourites, alongside comedy sketches and impersonations. The 36-date set of shows began on 2 November in Mansfield and runs until 19 December, with its final concert at The Hawth in Crawley. Among the shows on this latest run is Leicester’s De Montfort Hall on 28 November, Weston-super-Mare’s Playhouse theatre on 7 December and two dates at Congress Theatre, Eastbourne, on 16-17 December. For a full list of tour dates and ticket details, visit thatllbetheday.com/tickets…

The legendary wild man of rock’n’roll, Jerry Lee Lewis, has died aged 87. On 28 October a statement on his website revealed that the star had passed away of natural causes at his home in DeSoto County, Mississippi, with his seventh wife, Judith Coghlan Lewis, by his side. Born in Louisiana in 1935, Lewis was perhaps that last great icon from the birth of rock’n’roll. One of the original trailblazers, he had lived to witness the passing of Presley, Berry, Richard, Domino, Holly, Cash, Perkins, Orbison, and many more contemporaries, to claim the poignant crown of ‘last man standing’. “Who would have thought,” he acknowledged towards the end of his life, “it would be me?” Having courted controversy throughout much of his career, the hellraiser was a scandalous sensation with…

When Vintage Rock caught up with Jerry Lee Lewis three years ago it marked the end of a prolific two-decade run for the iconic rock’n’roller. This latter-life purple patch included critically-acclaimed studio albums and one last hurrah on these shores at his sell-out show at the London Palladium in 2015 in celebration of his 80th birthday – just shy of 60 years since he’d first crossed Sun Studios’ threshold to try his luck. Jerry Lee was incredibly active in the last two decades of his life. Vintage Rock was a huge fan of 2006’s Last Man Standing, an album of duets that found him back in the charts. It was a set buoyed by the likes of Little Richard, Mick Jagger, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and – Jerry…

In grey, post-war Britain, London’s Soho, like some mini-Sin City, radiated a colourful reputation. Teeming with maverick artists and bohemians, streetwalkers, spivs, wide boys and all manner of nefarious characters, for many people it was a no-go area. On a recent BBC Radio 3 show on the subject, cultural historian Matthew Sweet described it as “a neon and fishnets sort of place”. Compared with the more restrained backdrop of the rest of the country, the parallelogram of worming streets bordered by Oxford Street and Leicester Square, Charing Cross Road and Regent Street, may as well have been an alternate universe. As a mysterious, exotic, yet murky area, it was also bustling with a melting pot of thriving industries. At its core, of course, was the sex trade; but equally, there…

01(1)IT’S NOW OR NEVER ELVIS PRESLEY (RCA ) 3 WEEKS ON CHART 02 (2)AS LONG AS HE NEEDS ME SHIRLEY BASSEY (COLUMBIA) 16 WEEKS ON CHART 03(4)ROCKING GOOSE JOHNNY AND THE HU RRICANES (LONDON) 8 WEEKS ON CHART 04(3)ONLY THE LONELY ROY ORBISON (LONDON ) 16 WEEKS ON CHART 05(5)DREAMIN’ JOHNNY BURN ETTE (LONDON) 8 WEEKS ON CH ART 06(12)MY HEART HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN CONNIEFRANCIS (MGM) 3 WEEKS ON CHART 07(25)MAN OF MYSTERY/ THE STRANGER THE SHADOWS (COLUMB IA) 2 WEEKS ON CHART 08(21)SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME THE DRIFTERS (LONDON) 3 WEEKS ON CHART 09 (6)LET’S THINK ABOUT LIVING BOB LUMAN (WARNER BROTHERS ) 11 WEEKS ON CHART 10 (9) MY LOVE FOR YOU JOHNNY MATHIS (FONTANA) 7 WEEKS ON CHART 1 IT’S NOW OR…

★★★★★ EXCELLENT ★★★★ VERY GOOD ★★★ AVERAGE ★★ PATCHY ★ POOR Various Artists TEXAS ROCKABILLY EP SERIES EL TORO ★★★★ Here are 24 tracks of prime Texas rockabilly for you, delivered across six EPs and available either separately or in a full half-dozen package. Bob Luman, Mac Curtis, Lew Williams, Bill Mack, Rudy ‘Tutti’ Grayzell and Johnny Olenn & The Jokers all get four of their finest dug out of the archives and pressed on fresh black wax. Luman’s disc is a fairly relaxed affair with the steady All Night Long more or less setting the pace for the whole EP. Curtis livens things up on his offering, with Grandaddy’s Rockin’ and If I Had Me A Woman both pointing towards the dancefloor – and even his slower tracks, Just…

Robert Gordon, a trailblazer among the neo-rockabilly revival scene in the 70s and 80s, has died aged 75. The singer’s family confirmed that Gordon passed away following a battle with acute myeloid leukemia. As vocalist in the band Tuff Darts, Gordon emerged from New York’s New Wave scene among contemporaries including Blondie and the Ramones. But it was following his collaborations with producer Richard Gottehrer that Gordon’s career quantifiably took off, thanks to a critically-acclaimed hook-up with controversial guitarist Link Wray. The pair’s two albums – Robert Gordon With Link Wray and Fresh Fish Special – were game-changers for the neo-rockabilly scene. Fresh Fish Special featured authentic versions of 50s hits by artists such as Jack Scott as well as new song Fire, gifted to Gordon by Bruce Springsteen. Gordon’s…

In the spring of 1971, my band The Houseshakers were playing the length and breadth of the UK with Gene Vincent, it was a tour that coincided with his 36th birthday. At first, our promoter found Gene a driver but after the pair fell out, the chauffeuring job was left to me and my 1959 Chevrolet. For our first gig in Newmarket, I picked up Gene and his girlfriend Marcia from their hotel and was puzzled why he wanted to visit a hardware shop en route. It turned out to be another of Gene’s jokes. He said he wanted to fix a toilet roll holder in my car on account of my driving – apparently I took the bends a bit too sharply! The Newmarket gig was an all-day extravaganza,…

Sixty five years since he first whipped up a storm in both the British singles chart and the tabloid press, the controversial whirling dervish Jerry Lee Lewis was already back making headlines prior to his recent passing, courtesy of the Cannes premiere of Trouble In Mind, a new feature documentary film about his life. It’s inevitable that the life choices of a 22-year-old Killer will always cause raised eyebrows, but there’s also no doubting his ferocious and fearless piano playin’ will forever get hearts pumpin’. Born into a poor but devoutly religious family, in Ferriday, Louisiana, Lewis became infatuated by the piano at the tender age of nine while visiting his aunt. When his parents mortgaged their farm to buy a used upright piano, the young Lewis started taking lessons…

A bouttwo minutes into Think Twice, her 1965 uptown soul duet with Jackie Wilson, LaVern Baker informs her partner: “I got news for you brother! They don’t make no more like me!” She could have said that again. Throughout her career, Baker’s gospel-inflected holler sounded like something from another age. The booming voice on more serious material could be overpowering. So although some critics have written about her as if her talent was wasted on novelty material for Atlantic that, undoubtedly, stretched her so little that she could have sung it in her sleep, it was these apparently frivolous 50s rockers that showed her in the best light. Without ditching her abrasive tones, they brought out her cheeky sense of humour, or what the sleevenotes of her La Vern Baker…

As the 70s dawned, Jerry Lee Lewis’ stock was higher than it had been since the late 50s. His turn to country in 1968 had reaped dividends beyond anyone’s expectations – who knew the wild-haired rock’n’roller could sing honky-tonk so well? The Killer was commanding $10,000 a show and flying to them via private plane, packed with an ever-swelling entourage of friends, groupies and hangers-on. Meanwhile, although the country hits kept coming, he hadn’t forgotten his rock’n’roll audience. In 1972, The Killer Rocks On reminded us that Lewis could still rip it up. Sure, the producers still added the odd ‘countrypolitan’ touch like strings here and there, but the old Jerry Lee was clearly back in the saddle. Even listening now, when he roars, “Oh baby, that’s what I like!”…

It’s a tale of bold ambition, a lofty dream achieved with sheer grit and graft. Despite its humble West Yorkshire location, Batley Variety Club rose in the late 60s and early 70s to become the ‘Las Vegas of the North’, a place where the locals got the chance to witness the cream of international entertainers on their doorstep. It was all down to the fantastical vision of former fairground impresario James Corrigan. Of course, club culture was nothing new. In the wider locality already lay the famous Greasbrough Working Men’s Club, The Embassy in Leeds, and the Wakefield Theatre Club, with the plush Fiesta in Sheffield swiftly following. But Batley was something else altogether. Corrigan, together with his wife Betty, reckoned his creation could rival Vegas in both look and…

Years before Milli Vanilli hit the headlines after it was revealed that it wasn’t in fact Fab Morvan or Rob Pilatus singing on any of their releases, there was another – possibly even the very first – great pop deception. Mary Thomas of 60s girl group The Crystals recalled driving through Ohio late at night and, on the radio, hearing a DJ announce, “Here’s the new Crystals song.” The track, it turned out, was He’s A Rebel. “Our mouths fell open,” she remembered. “I mean, goodness gracious, but what could we do? There was nothing we could do.” The reason for the girls’ shocked reaction? It wasn’t them. Sure, they’d had a couple of hits before then – There’s No Other (Like My Baby) andUptown – but He’s A Rebel?…

There’s a lazy myth built up around Elvis Presley that the once fiery and hip-thrusting rock’n’roller was all washed up by the 70s. Yet watch the 1972 documentary Elvis On Tour, and though he’s clearly packing more paunch than he was in his fresh-faced heyday, there’s an energy and passion there – just witness those wild scissor kicks – that simply doesn’t square with the cliché that he was out of shape and out of love with music by his late thirties. 1972 was a monumental – and often poignant – 12 months for Elvis. Just before New Year, his wife Priscilla had told him she was leaving and taking daughter Lisa-Marie with her. She held off telling him the reason why, however. When, a few months later, she confessed…

Before entering Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in the second week of December 1949, Fats Domino had been plying his trade performing at various dive bars across New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. But after answering a call for local talent from Imperial Records label boss Lew Chudd, he would go on to change the face of rock’n’roll forever. Among the first batch of material he recorded for the label was The Fat Man, a song based on the old New Orleans tune Junker Blues that would feature a typically rollicking turn on piano by Domino, then aged just 21. Rush-released to make it into stores before Christmas, the single eventually gained traction in the new year, making it to No.2 in the US R&B charts in February 1950. Regularly cited as the…