Ray Campi: Slappin' that doghouse, wavin' that scarf

Look over lists of golden era, million-selling rockers who've gone to their rewards, and names like Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy, and Little Richard will turn up. 

Thoroughly sincere Rockabillies, sweating and bopping on subterranean levels of regard, have always outnumbered the storied icons of 706 Union. But their toils are significant, also.

Here is the story of one.

Ray Campi's name doesn't adorn Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame billboards. But he nevertheless enjoyed select renown amongst internationally located rebels; for us, the "big bass-slappin' man" was of especial rank in American popular culture.

One heard in this veteran foot soldier's recent work the same snapped-tight dynamism and rollaround, good-time flow that he unleashed in bygone salad days. 

Older lovers of primordial, country-sparked bop will recall Ray's 1957 romp, "Caterpillar." And their more youthful fellows were fortunate to have Ronny Weiser's indispensible 1970s/1980s Rollin' Rock label to facilitate their own howdy-hi to Campi, and, in some cases, to the musical vein, itself. 

"Rockin' At the Ritz," "Hollywood Cats," "Quit Your Triflin'," "Rockabilly Man," "Pan American Boogie," "Tore Up," - these are only a few of the titles he committed to vinyl and thereby etched into Rockabilly revival immortality. 

His roots stretch back into a pre-Rock'n'Roll era in which loose-limbed and rambling young Country pickers first fortified bouncing rural melodies with a pronounced beat. The hillbilly bop they fathered in countless, liquored-up honky tonks resounds healthily in Ray's contemporary efforts. 

As a young man of spirit, he scaled to the mountain's top in the hardest way. Ray mastered his wild-side-of-life craft before 1950s Texas honky tonk crowds. Blurry late nights beyond enumeration were spent surveying the world through the lens of raucous, boozy revelry and suds-up brawls.

But the fame and riches that came to a chosen few eluded him. And life called.

Like many who had, from bill-paying necessity, turned to punch-clock existences - their one-time imaginings of the big time having swirled away like smoke from a dobro picker's Pall Mall - Ray abandoned stages for blackboards, taking up the unspectacular life of the high school teacher.

And on that unremarkable downbeat the story might have faded, were it not for Ronny Weiser.

Born and raised in Italy, Ronny fell in long-distance love with the 1950s American culture he found on movie house silver screens and precious 45s.

He became a Californian in 1965. But to his dismay, Fats Domino and Buddy Holly had been pushed from popularity by the Beatles. 

By the late 1970s, Ronny had launched his independent Rollin' Rock Records label. And the hot sounds he had as a youthful immigrant hoped to find in his new land, Country bop steeled by hard-driving beats, romped again. 

Over years, numerous LPs were cut in Ronny's Van Nuys garage. A mail-order business thrived. Originals like Charlie Feathers, Johnny Carroll, and Mac Curtis released Rollin' Rock tracks. 

But before those wonders transpired, Ronny discovered school teacher Ray lived near. And just like that, Campi was back.

He and other pioneers were were joined on the roster by new generation rockers including Billy Zoom, Jimmie Lee Maslon, Rip Masters, Ronnie Mack, Colin Winski, Steve Clark, and Jerry Sikorski. (These last three, with an additional guitarist, would eventually back Campi as members of the Rockabilly Rebels.)

Ray onstage lived his songs. He full-throated them with more enthusiasm and ingratiating humor than many of the Rock'n'Roll Hall's manufactured transient sensations. (But his habit of waving a cowboy scarf over fans swarming stage fronts holds significance not known to the present author.)

Since reemerging at Rollin' Rock, he recorded disc after good-time disc. Audiences around the world whose only previous exposure to him had been got from scratchy, hotly-sought vinyl, were driven wild by his on-fire performances.

Ray wasn't a star (save for among creepered believers). But with his genuinely affable rollicking and 'all the world's a honky tonk' Rockabilly, he offered a precious portrayal of Americana fast slipping otherwise into oblivion. 

Over decades, Ray imparted lessons in regular-folks' jumpin' and kickin' to the "real gone, crazy beat" that can be appreciated in scores of subsequent wax laid down by acolytes. As long as Mr. Campi's schooled bopcats are trodding studios and stages, something that helps make our world special endures and will always be accessible to us. Money in the bank, as goes the phrase.

And he will forever scale his Texas-starred double bass, mug in histrionic delirium, and wave that handerchief whenever needles drop on his platter legacy.

Which is cool. Because everybody digs a happy ending.

Videos: "Rockabilly Rebel" (live in England 1979)   "Rockabilly Man" (official 1981 video - pink-shirted Rollin' Rock founder Ronny Weiser cuts rug amid dancers.)   "Rockin' and Rollin' Towards Tennessee" (Rollin' Rock 1975)   "Rockin' At the Ritz" (74 year-old Ray, live at 2008 French Blue Monday festival)