Life Before Rock 'n' Roll, Part 1

Ahhhh... Saturday. 86 degrees, humid. Perfect day to stay indoors. Which is great, as there's much work to do--mopping, waxing, cat-box-emptying, etc. You might call it perfect timing.

And you may (or may not) wonder how much litter we use, on average, per week. Let's see: five boxes, 20 lbs. per box. One hundred pounds. (Believe it or don't!)

We have 20 or 21 cats (I keep forgetting which), so that's five pounds per cat. Luckily, our felines are indoor and outdoor pets, so the boxes are pretty manageable. Throughout the week, that is. Past the seven-day mark, it's a different box o' litter. Or several thereof.

Most frequently heard comment by cashiers as we check out with lots of cat stuff: "You must have a lot of cats." I've been thinking of saying, "No, just one really huge one." But I never have.

But enough real life--it's time for rock and roll. Or, rather, it's time for the days before rock and roll. The question is, what did people do for their rock and roll fix before rock and roll? In a previous series, we listened to examples of pre-ragtime-revival ragtime and discovered that, in the days before The Sting reintroduced ragtime to the public, there wasn't much of a raggy nature going on pop music, save for recordings of The Maple Leaf Rag, The Temptation Rag, The Black and White Rag, and so on. Thank God for The Sting.

Similarly, before rock and roll, record buyers had little beyond The Midnighters' Work with Me Annie, Bill Haley's Crazy, Man, Crazy, or Red Prysock's Rock 'n' Roll. Stuff like that. Elvis, please recall, didn't invade the pop charts until early 1956.

Two years earlier, of course, Elvis invented rockabilly at Sun Studios (during a soda break, no less). No argument from me--I'm not about to doubt the judgment of Peter Guralnick, and neither are you. However, there were some rockabilly-like sounds to be heard in the days prior to the great blues/country marriage that occurred on Sam Phillips' watch. These first two sides, from 1945, sound like Scotty Moore with lots of extra chops, no?:

Cannonball Rag, Merle Travis, 1945.

Pigmeat Strut, Merle Travis, 1945.

And here's a side that sounds straight out of Sun Studios, all the way to the paper-behind-the-strings sound and plunky, Moore-style guitar, courtesy of a young performer named Chet Atkins:

No Help Wanted, The Carlisles, 1952. From Mercury 45.

This next track is referred to as "rockabilly" at more than one Internet site, but it can't be--it was made just before Elvis invented the style. Anyway, another example of country before country rocked:

Go Boy Go, Carl Smith, 1954. From Columbia 45.

Another pre-rocking-country country track. We'll be taking a closer look at the tune next time. Or a closer listen, anyway:

Rock Around the Clock, Sonny Dae and His Knights, 1953.




Lee