Back In the Day, 1981
Big Daddy Sun and the Outer Planets
Rockabilly
(Jazzbo)
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The present reviewer tore shrink wrap from this independent LP upon its maiden issuance. Still in my collection, it stands as a fine relic of an era that saw Robert Gordon, the Rockats, Stray Cats, and Ronny Weiser's California constellation waxing numerous significant platters. (Europe, too, offered abundant examples.) But this release enjoyed the distinction of Illinois origin. And the particularity it evidenced stemmed from that 'flyover country' germination.
(Also of Middle-American coinage in that era were Hi-Fi and the Roadburners, Safety Last, and Pinky Black and the Excessives. They strode club stages as members of the bar-band culture that, though not featured on top-ten lists or posters, help keep real Rock'n'Roll burning before American working folks every night.)
Big Daddy's wax was possessed of a down-home folks quality that revivalist efforts produced on the coasts (salient as they were) lacked to identical degree. Covers of Louie Jordan, Jimmy Wages, and Bob and Lucille found comfort alongside crisply-drafted outings like "Hey, Pretty Baby," "Twelve Bars On Mars," and "Clothes Don't Make the Man." The heavy Country aspect of the good-time picking and saxophone swinging imbued proceedings with jubilance. All of which might have floundered, were it not for the dependably on-duty drummer.
Vocals alternated between hiccupped madness teetering on the edge, and harmonies that enriched with congeniality. Audiences surrendered happily to bacchanalian imperatives. "There's a Rockabilly Party on the edge of town," advised the song of that name; this disc was surely spun there, to the delight of limber-legged Jacks and Jills.
(Sadly, group leader Ron Cannon passed in 2013. The Smile Politely site remembered him as a "big man with a big heart." The present fortunes of other group members could not be ascertained at presstime.)
Recommended: "Hey, Pretty Baby," "Miss Pearl," "Breakout," "Rockabilly Party," "Midnight Ball," "After the Dance," "Momma Told Me," "Eenie Meenie Miney Mo," "Twelve Bars on Mars," "Right Around the Corner," "Gone All Along," "Clothes Don't Make the Man," "Hey, Little Momma," "That Chick's Too Young To Fry"
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