Canada's Bopcats echo onward

Popular-music mavens will recount that the 1980s Rockabilly Revival had geographically scattered jitter-bop paragons. Upstart indices could be located in NewYork, California, London, Japan, and many points beyond.

Canada's Bopcats warrant recollection, to speak nothing of evergreen appreciation. Tim "Sonny" Baker. Teddy Fury. Zeke Rivers. Jack de Keyzer. Men of rampage.

"They call themselves the Bopcats," a 1981 CBC reporter explained. "And for three years they've been squeezing out a high brand of Rockabilly in and around Toronto."

"I think the American Rockabilly is a lot more honest...," drummer Teddy told the CBC interviewer. "We approach it with a sense of today, same as the Stray Cats."

Theirs was a fervent assault that laced belovedly familiar genre gesticulations with full-on firepower that bespoke Punk uproar. Country-tinted numbers provided pacific ease between pummelings. Bopcats' drag-out fashion of bopping the Blues was fierce enough to trigger burg-wide sirens.

"Rock'n'Roll is really the only kind of music I really know. I've always really liked it," Zeke told a 1982 TV interviewer. "We don't really play solid, old Rockabilly. We more like to play Rock'n'Roll with Rockabilly Roots."

"What we do is basically, it's our own stuff," Sonny added. "And it's quite contemporary."

s/t (1980)

Notable tracks: "Rockin' a Dream," "Kiss Goodbye," "Down the Line," "Let's Go," "Buddy This Is It (the Stand)," "Don't Say Sorry," "Rainbow Girl," "Cool Off Baby"

An exhilerating freshness was announced by opening changes, which turned and shifted with acrobatic alacrity. To be sure, one sussed underlying hillbillies-on-juice bent, but youthful agitation and vernacular did their parts to tear away old-ways cobwebs.

Being rockers of sound bloods, of course, they tore up Feathers' "One Hand Loose" and Buddy's 1956 "Down the Line." And in the combustible combo's hands, Tiny Bradshaw's 1951 "Train Kept A-Rollin'" came out like a blade-swinger's snarl.

One sensed the Bopcats had never encountered a genre staple they couldn't grab hold of and pump up with intoxicating New Day oxygen.

"Buddy This Is It" scooted down the clay road with home-folks' tunefulness that surely would set woods on fire. More relaxed and emotive, "Don't Say Sorry" shone tenderly.

A most propitious introductory platter.

Videos: "Rockin' a Dream"   "Buddy This is It (the Stand)"   "Rainbow Girl"

Wild Jungle Rock (1982)

Songs etched into the LP's wax bore out Sonny's words with hand-standing exclamation points. As had been so of their debut, regard for vintage stylings stalked the deck alongside new and brash-out-loud creatures. Titles like "Too Fast Past," "Dressed to Kill," "Train Called Rock'n'Roll," "Earthquake," and the titular barnstorm showed off rockers versed in Then, hip to the Punk Now, and possessed of a wicked ferality they thoroughly dug throwing into everyone's agape mugs. 

Too, interspersed amongst the unleashed ravers were Countrified charm ("Home to Me") and the somewhat more Bluesish "What Did I Do Last Night?" 

Videos: "Wild Jungle Rock" (live)   "Dressed to Kill"   "What Did I Do Last Night?"   "Earthquake"

(In 1993, Attic released both Bopcats' LPs on CD. Appended to tracks, in the place of "Earthquake," was the Rock Angels' "Calling All Girls," penned by de Keyzer. No related video could be located.)

But the global gush of acclaim the Bopcats merited never materialized. Cynics (myself being in that number) would credit that as illustrating life's inexplicable unfairness.

Following the foursome's 1983 dissolution, some members briefly worked as new combo Rock Angels (absolutely not to be confused with annoying Bratz dolls' Rock Angelz.). All found divergent paths beckoning.

Drummer Teddy Fury cast his lot with the Royal Crowns, with whom he recorded numerous discs, and became one of Canada's finest bartenders. Fretboard hitman Jack de Keyzer issued numerous Blues safaris, becoming one of the Great White North's finest Blues purveyors. (Twice, Jack pocketed Juno awards, and seven times Maple Blues ones.)

Royal Crowns videos: "Badlands" (live 2011)   "Caveman Boogie" (live 2012)  

Jack de Keyzer videos: "I Want to Rock With You" (live circa 2007)   "On the Money"

The eventual careers of Sonny Baker and Zeke Rivers, per online research, did not involve performing. Sonny was said to have abandoned his post-Bopcats R&B/Soul band Ten to Midnight, and settled into retail and managerial labor with Sunrise Records.

Zeke took an altogether unlikely course that resulted in a Ph. D and teaching sociology and criminal justice in Massachusetts. (Long since absent by then, I'm certain, was the lofty ebony pomp and forehead-obscuring waterfall the bass agitator had once sported.)

What could have / should have graced sales charts and glossy magazine covers, then, is today but a memory -- though one relished by collectors of hot vinyl; we dig that cool notes can be forever heard.

Some two decades ago, while preparing a piece about Teddy's Royal Crowns, I spied an online notice that three CDs of live Bopcats performances (recorded directly from the soundboard) were newly on the market. I bought one from the seller, whose name was unknown to me, and explained I planned to review it.

Upon learning of my intention, the seller -- merely a "friend" of the Bopcats, he insisted -- sent the remaining two for free. (I did review the discs for Marc Bristol's Blue Suede News.)

I related that exchange to Teddy during a subsequent online conversation. The drummer replied that it was in fact, surely, bassist Zeke himself.

"If you catch him on a good day," Teddy emailed. "He'll tell you about his Rock'n'Roll past. But if you catch him on a bad day -- and it sounds like you did -- he'll deny having been in the group and say he was only a friend."

(Note: "Zeke Rivers" is too close to the name "Deke Rivers" -- Elvis' Loving You character, to be innocently coincidental.)

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