Lonnie Lee
and The Leemen
Back To Base X
(Starlite Records)

Being of Golden Era rock and roll's vanguard, Australian legend Lonnie is as regardful of sensitively crafted ballads as the knock-down ravers he so adroitly dispatches.

Recommended: "Hey, Little Mama," "Goin' Jukin'," "She's My Baby," "Woman In Love," "Mona Lisa," "I Got A Woman," "Back Door Sally," "Are You Lonesome, Tonight," "Living In A Fantasy," "Ready Steady."

Video: "Hey, Little Mama"
            Live, Feb. 2019 (performance excerpts) 
            "Mona Lisa" (live)
            "Are You Lonesome, Tonight?" (live)


Lonnie Lee website

Lonnie Lee and The Leemen Facebook page

Starlite Records page

1963

Raw Dogs
Feel the Disease
(Self)

Creeping beneath brutality is purposefulness that lifts and separates red-eyed abominations.

Recommended: "System Meltdown," "Toxic Wasted," "Idled Up," "Six Lines," "Bottom of the Bottle."

Video: "System Meltdown"
            "Toxic Wasted" (live)
            "Idled Up" (live)
            "Bottom of the Bottle"


Facebook page

Bandcamp page


CD Baby ordering

The Sugar Daddys
#notsorry (self)

Here's the plan, Stan: Everybody cruise their rods to the maltshop after making the family dinner table-scene. The Sugar Daddys are throwin' out the beat at the union hall, later. Straight from the fridge. Then we'll head out to the country mile and drag for pinks. Dig?

Recommended: "Goodbye To You," "Don't Really Matter," "Bring On the Pain," "#notsorry," "Let's Drink Together."

Videos: "Goodbye To You"
             "Don't Really Matter"
             "#notsorry"


Charles Daniels/Band Facebook page


Band Napster page

https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/thesugardaddys7

Atomic Megalodon
Trust No One
(self)

Demolition chording, growled expostulations, and doomsday poundings in moments surrender to understated lures, only to again crash down. Admirable constructive mindfulness.

Recommended: "I Want To Believe," "Devil's Triangle," "Lone Gunmen," "Smoking Man," "Victor Tooms."

Video: "Devil's Triangle"


Facebook

CD Baby

Bandcamp


Spotify

Amazon

Phantom Pomps
The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God
(self)

"Breakneck  thrill-seekers may go for zis," sputtered Prof. Gustav Klemperer, of the venerated Heidelberg Institute. "But bevare! I vud caution strongly against allowing zis 'music' to infect ze general populace! In all my years under the tutelage of European psychiatry's finest minds, I haf nevah encountered such lunatic celebration. I fear innocent souls vill be lured from sanity by ze seductive rock'n'roll, and be reduced to mindlessly undulating participants in unspeakable pleasures, crashing through doors man vas never meant to open!" 

Recommended: "Runaway Truck Ramp," "Psychobilly Attack," "I Forgot My Meds," "No More Hot Dogs." "Is You Is?"

Videos: "Runaway Truck Ramp"
             "No More Hot Dogs"
             "Is You Is?"


Band Facebook page

Band Reverb Nation page


CD Baby ordering

Amazon Ordering

Will Payne Harrison
[featuring the Freetown Flyers]
Living With Ghosts
(self)

Harmonica and accordion ambled over to throw in with guitars, piano, and drums. A subtle, Nashville/Louisiana singer drawled insightful, pacific compositions that denuded humanity. Plain folk genres like bluegrass, country, and blues again illustrated they had much in common. 

Recommended: "Jacqueline," "I'm Over Thinking About You," "High/Low," "Anne Marie,"  "Walk On," "Funeral Home," "Red River Blues," "Living With Ghosts."

Videos: "Jacqueline"
             "I'm Over Thinking About You"
             "Walk On"
             "Red River Blues"


WillPayneHarrison.com

Facebook

CDBaby ordering


Amazon ordering

iTunes

Bob Woods
Western Swing Train
(self)

A thousand and one nights plugged in before honky tonk crowds gave Bob an ear for what fits in western swing: Simple narratives articulated in a nice guy-voice, and a guitar of pearl-shaped tones so sublime as to soothe away all cares. 

Recommended: "Tiny Moore," "Swing Train," "I've Got A New Road Under My Wheels," "Desert Flower," "I Love the Nightlife."

Videos: "Tiny Moore"
            "Swing Train"
            "Desert Flower"



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CD Baby


Amazon Prime Music

Spotify

The Memphis Suns
Old Fashioned Fool
(self)

Much like 1956, though not pretentiously so. A clean sound, in which hillbilly and step-lively beats, crested with smooth and accessible vocals, romp with upbeat assurance.

Recommended: "Old Fashioned Fool," "Demon Woman," "Loves Me Hard,"  "Hats Too Tight," "I Let Her Down," "Like I Love You."

Videos: "Old Fashioned Fool"
             "Demon Woman"
             "Loves Me Hard"


Memphis Suns Bandcamp page

Memphis Suns Facebook page


https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/thememphissuns

Elvis Presley
My Kind of Blues 
(Petticoat Records)
Best of the '68 Comeback Special 
(Sony)

Of comic actors, Chevy Chase told an interviewer: "We're all doing Jerry" Lewis.

No less apt an observation is that all rock'n'rollers are doing Elvis, Whether the manifestations be physical or attitudinal, actuality is inarguable.

From his blue collar Memphis origin, Elvis ascended to worldwide renown. Alex Harvey remarked that, in the deepest jungle, one would be more likely to find a photo of Elvis than of the president.

Presley was of the people because he was born of our plebian sphere. Record-buying regular folks intuited that; when the former truck driver made it big, we did, too.

Throughout decades, his incomparable voice remained a grand vessel of common humanity. It was gloriously stentorian, and merits the reverence still paid it, today.

And whatever the raiment, audacious essence had its say.

The blues-centered disc collects 1950s-1970s tracks, including alternate versions. They're austere, as befits the material, and Elvis doesn't so much interpret songs as imbue them with wrenching immediacy.

By the moment of the '68 Comeback Special, his pop-culture preeminence was endangered by evolving generational tastes and the British Invasion. Classics by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, among others, were reinvented with abbreviated arrangements and prominent brass that presaged the Vegas Era.

Perhaps that modernization was calculated as an appeal to younger audiences. Veteran loyalists were served by the Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana appearances; their participation underscored Elvis's early standing. 

Spinning these discs, one appreciates a grand talent who raised out of blues their anguish, loosed from rock'n'roll a storm yet a-howl, and wrought a legend for the eons.

Recommended (My Kind of  Blues): "Stranger In My Own Hometown," "Like a Baby" (spliced take), "It Feels So Right" (take 2)  "Give Me the Right" (take 2), "Good-Time Charlie's Got the Blues" (take 6), "Down In the Alley" (take 1), "Reconsider, Baby" (live 1977).

Recommended (Best of '68 Comeback Special): "Trouble / Guitar Man," "All Shook Up," "Jailhouse Rock," "One Night," "Love Me," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Burning Love," "Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do?," "Don't Be Cruel."

Videos: "Stranger In My Hometown"
             "Down In the Alley"
             "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues"
             "Trouble" / "Guitar Man"
             "All Shook Up"
             "Love Me"



Elvis Shop London ordering (My Kind of Blues)

Ebay auction (My Kind of Blues)


Shop Elvis orders (Best of '68 Comeback Special)


Jumbo Records (UK) orders (Best of '68 Comeback Special)


Amazon orders (Best of the '68 Comeback Special)

Little Junior Parker
[with the Blue Flames]
Rocks (Bear Family)

"We got the old-time boogie / and the new one, too," Junior declared, on 1953's Sun 187. "Don't nobody boogie / like the Blue Flames do!" He was right. And not just a little bit.

Recommended: "Feelin' Good," "Love My Baby," "Mystery Train," "That's My Baby" (With Bill Harvey's band), "Next Time You See Me," "Pretty Baby," "Barefoot Rock," "Sweet Home Chicago," "Sometimes," "Seven Days," "Annie,Get Your Yo-Yo," "I Feel Alright,Again," "Sweeter As the Days Go By," "Cryin' For My Baby."

Videos: "Feelin' Good"
            "Love My Baby"
            "Mystery Train"
            "That's My Baby"
            "Barefoot Rock"



Bear Family ordering

Amazon ordering

Billy Lee Riley
Rocks (Bear Family)

Billy Lee's hot-rodded cover of Billy 'The Kid' Emerson's "Red Hot" and mad-dash "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll" may be his most widely known efforts. But many of the multi-instrumentalist's other sides, for Sun and others, also yielded treasure. Listen to "Betty and Dupree," "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash," or "Little Green Men." and get hip to the tip.

Recommended: "The Little Green Men," "Red Hot," "Flying Saucer Rock 'n' Roll," "Pearly Lee," "I Want You, Baby," "Got the Water Boiling," "College Man," "Baby, Please Don't Go," "Betty and Dupree," "Rockin' On the Moon," "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash," "I've Been Searching" (As Darron Lee). 

Videos: "The Little Green Men"
            "Red Hot"
            "Flying Saucer Rock 'n' Roll"
            "Pearly Lee"



Bear Family ordering

Amazon ordering

Sid King and the Five Strings
Sag, Drag, and Fall
Singles As and Bs 1954 - 1961...Plus
(Jasmine Records)

24 smooth examples of why this outfit -- which began in high school and put the beat to the unassuming country of their time/space vicinity, commanding the nexus between veteran folk musics and the incoming generation's rockabilly  -- endures in both acclamation and collectors' stacks.

Recommended: "Sag, Drag, and Fall," "Gonna Shake This Shack, Tonight," "Warmed Over Kisses, Left Over Love," "Let 'er Roll," "Purr, Kitty, Purr," "Booger Red," "I Like It," "Mama, I Want You," "Hello There, Rockin' Chair."

Videos: "Sag, Drag, and Fall"
             "Gonna Shake This Shack, Tonight"
             "Let 'er Roll"
             "Warmed Over Kisses, Left Over Love"
             "Hello There, Rockin'Chair"



Jasmine Records ordering

Amazon ordering

Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers
The Real Deal
(Rebel Music Records)

Observations of Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers' influence across generations attest to their gravity, though not so much as the chain-swinging bop they expertly dole out.

Recommended: "Little Misguided," "No Kissing At the Hop," "Smokey Joe's," "Don't Do Me Wrong, Domino," "Drapes 'n' Drainpipes," "Rattlesnake Daddy," "Don't Blame It On Me," "Zing Zing," "How Come You Do Me."

Videos: "Little Misguided"
            "Smokey Joe's"
            "Drapes 'n' Drainpipes"
            "How Come You Do Me"


Band website

Band Big Cartel ordering page

Band Facebook page


Amazon ordering page

Jets
40 Rockin' Years
(Krypton Records)

Cheerily tuneful rock'n'roll is the Cotton Brothers' established stock. Nary a tune here in which amiability doesn't parade. Yes, there are gleams in fans' eyes and smiles wreathing their faces. The Jets are now and have long been the prompt.

Recommended: "Little Doll," "Warpaint," "Good Love," "Tonight's the Night," "Morse Code of Love," "Call the Police," "Tell Me That You Love Me," "At the Hop," "Whole Lotta Woman,"  "The Majestic."

Videos: "Little Doll" (Official video)
             "Warpaint"
             "Morse Code of Love"
             "Call the Police"


Band website

https://www.facebook.com/thejetsuk/


Spotify listening

Apple / itunes purchase page

O Preço
s/t (Self)

Being Brasilian street punks, with all the muscle that suggests, these three crash through bare-boned tunes in raucous form. Variety arrives when more involved and fluidic rhythms speak up.

Recommended: "Alta Combustâo," "Rueiros Avançar," "Não Venha Me Julgar," "Unidos Somos Reis," "Candidato Imundo," "Homem Botas," "Renegados da Matriz," "Total Destruição."

Video: "Alta Combustão"
            "Rueiros Avançar"
            "Unidos Somos Reis"
            "Total Destruição"


O Preço Facebook page


O Preço Bandcamp page


https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/opreco#

The Red Diablos
s/t
5-track disc
(self / Tepahue Records)

It's easy, and hours well spent, to lose all sense of decorum and surrender to raw rockabilly's call. Music this devotedly lashed makes plain that truth.

 Recommended: "Going Down," "She Moves (And Shakes It)," "Wild Party."

Videos: "Wild Party" (live session)
             "Going Down"
             "She Moves and Shakes It"


Red Diablos facebook page

Tepahue Records Facebook page


CD Baby ordering page

Amazon MP3 single ordering page

Red Diablos Spotify page

Matchstick Johnny
"Let Me Tell You About My Baby" 
"Jungle Blues," "The Twist"
3-track 45
(Reeltone)

Matchstick Johnny's hysterical fits and writhings owe to possession by contemporary, underground one-man-band spirits. He's of the Bill Bloodshot/Gene Crazed/Hasil Adkins freneticism school. And at turns, his howling and glottal punctuations recall unleashed episodes of Charlie Feathers and Dexter Romweber.

Tom Von Hollywood contributes bold slap bass. Only 200 copies of this single were manufactured.

Early 20th Century Southern medicine show troubadour Harmonica Frank Floyd is sometimes cited by chroniclers of the American-manifestation of the one-man-band phenomenon. He did bring average people's folk songs to 1930s regional radio and, later, the Sun and Chess labels. 

But it can be traced to European old countries, where royal court musicians dressed in fanciful, colorful costumes, and played three-hole flutes with one hand while beating a drum with the other. 

Had any of them carried on in the outrageous Matchstick Johnny manner over which we today enthuse, the court sorcerer-doctor and his leeches might have been summoned.

Recommended: "Let Me Tell You About My Baby," "Jungle Blues," "The Twist"

Video: "Let Me Tell You About My Baby" (Teaser)
            Live in Fort Lauderdale, 2018

https://www.matchstickjohnny.com/

https://www.facebook.com/matchstickjohnny/

https://matchstickjohnny.bandcamp.com/

Ronnie Crutcher
Crutchero
(self)

.

Hillbilly Casino's oxygen-swiping soloist perpetrates crunch-chording and a light-speed flurry of incisive guitar notes. Classic rock 'n' roll and blues figurations stomp in affiliation with allusive ethnic flourishes. Flabbergasting, to degrees seldom heard.

Recommended: "Crutchero," "I Go Smoking," "Two For Flinching," "You Don't Say," "Battle Possums," "Native Stepson," "I Got This," "It's All Good."

(Of the 14 tracks contained on Crutchero, only those above were available for preview.)

Videos: "Crutchero"
             "I Go Smoking"
             "Two For Flinching"


https://www.facebook.com/ronnie.crutcher.1


http://www.junglerecords.fi/crutcher-ronnie-crutchero.html

Lucky Lance and the Star Devils
s/t
(self)

Chief among this confidently aggressive quartet's attributes is unfeigned affinity with the common-man music they so deftly dispatch. That's a fancy way of saying they feel what they play.


Recommended: "I Wanna Jump," "Get Gone," "Rose Marie," "Some Kind of Cool," "Ramblin' Daddy," "Monsters (Knockin' At My Door)," "Masticatin' Mama," "Please Baby Please."

Video: "I Wanna Jump" (Bopflix Session)


Band website

Band Facebook page

Mike Teardrop Trio
Till the Dawn
(Enviken Records)

The rustic-folk element integral to true-blue rockabilly informs every jumped-up melody and sprightly rhythm presented on this important wax.

Recommended: "Just a Country Boy," "Sad and Blue," "Good For Nothin'," "That Extra Mile," "Twenty One," "Down To the Corner," "I'm Gonna Live Some Before I Die"

Videos: "Just a Country Boy"
             "Good For Nothin'"
             "Down To the Corner" (live)


https://www.facebook.com/Miketeardroptrio/

https://envikenrecords.com/news/news_enrec180/



https://www.amazon.com/Till-Dawn-Mike-Teardrop-Trio/dp/B07SXSYHYN

https://airplaydirect.com/music/tillthedawn/

https://open.spotify.com/album/6Wqf6Yhqyzspo2lGNqbq8x

The Meteors
The Mental Instrumentals II:
When Guitars Attack
(Mutant Rock)

These tracks hail from various Meteors configurations, as well as P. Paul's solo endeavors. Gnashed psychobilly, Party Beach meditations, and Mexican melodies are all fed into a uniquely sinister device.

An army of ink-barrels have, over decades, been expended portraying his choreographed grotesqueries. And to be sure, his onstage criminally lunatic persona and bug-eyed, howling-mad antics are of striking rank.

But beneath the gleefully morbid exterior, we find a consummate professional. P. Paul richly merits respect for his compositional and six-string abilities. 

His knack for crafting multi-faceted arrangements that span frenetic dash and ominous quietude, while making much of whatever instrumentation is appropriate, sits him in high company, indeed. 

Meanwhile, he tears from his guitar calamitous storms, headlong rocketing, and cannily reined understatements. Studied, complex voicings rival the brutish mayhem. There's ample space for both in P. Paul's presentation, and each exacts its peculiar purpose.

Recommended: "When Guitars Attack," "The Cutter Cuts (While the Widow Weeps)," "Mule Boy and His Unformed Face," "The Multiple Deaths of Pichina," "Do the Blood Feast Twist," "Giancando Con La Mano Sinistra Di Dio," "Blood Beat," "Nightmare In Elche (Alicante Breakdown)," "Halloween Scream," "Surfing Home On a Dead Girl," "Let's Go Play At the Myers House," "L'odio Cavalca De Solo," "Bad Universe," "The Loneliness Of a Long Distance Killer."

Videos: "When Guitars Attack"
"The Cutter Cuts While the Widow Weeps"
"Giancando Con La Mano Sinistra Di Dio"
"Surfing Home On a Dead Girl"


https://www.facebook.com/themeteorsofficial/

http://www.mutantrockrecords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pg/MutantRockRecords/posts/

Doyley and the Twanglords
Twang Solo
Return ofthe Twangi
(Diablo Records)

.

Philip Doyle excels at novel instrumental craft; one is as likely to thrill to a mischievous surfers-beach air or leathery Link Wray reference as zoom aloft along uncharted spaceways, battling all manner of sinister and comically odd creatures. These discs surely are alone in combining Hang Ten exhortations with affectionate tips to Gene Roddenberry, Irwin Allen, and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.

Many laud Doyley's hyper-torrential psycho toil with the Guitar Slingers and Demented Are Go. But any who've thusfar missed his equally astounding sci fi-surf expressions have now the happy opportunity for rectification.

Recommended (Twang Solo): "Zorch + 14," "Twangzilla," "Graviton"," "Hava Nagaila," "The Day of the Triffids," "The Trip," "Johnny Dangerously," "Surf Bitch," "Revenge of the Morlocks," "Django II Bastardo."

Recommended (Return of the Twangi): "Prime Directive," "Joe 90," "Lost In Space," "Botz," "Cybermen," "Kicks Back," "Collision Earth," "Grinder," "Whiskey Charles n Snatch," "Mariachi," "Missing Link," "One More Bite," "Space and Twang."

Videos (Twang Solo): "Zorch + 4"
                                    "Twangzilla"
                                    "Graviton"


Video (Return of the Twangi): Full album stream, from Diablo 


Philip Doyle (Doyley) Facebook

Diablo Facebook


Twang Solo (Bandcamp)

Return of the Twangi (Bandcamp)

The Gun Club
Danse Kalinda Boom 
Vinyl reissue
(Chaputa Records)

Reissue of 1984 live recordings.

Those intent on digging the singular punk-blues of Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Kid Congo, and Patricia Morrison (with an unknown drummer, possibly Terry Graham) will disregard unflattering audio, and gambol in a fractious mileau through which slid the driven and tormented spirit of Robert Johnson; urban seethe and its distant voodoo kinfolk hunted illicit elation on dissolute boulevards; and schizzing guitars smacked together in madly confluent battle.

Recommended: "Stranger In Our Town," "Gila Monster, New Mexico / Preaching Blues," "Goodbye Johnny," "Sleeping In Blood City," "Give Up the Sun."

Video: "Stranger In Our Town" (non-LP version)


https://www.chaputa.com/store/gun-club-danse-kalinda-boom-lp/?v=7516fd43adaa

(L-R: Pierce, Morrison, Graham, Powers)