Pat Capocci

Echoes from the Asphalt Jungle   vinyl or CD 

(Sleazy Records)

Mr. Capocci evinces offhand vocal trenchancy and plank hip-dipping, all in the service of Bopification. The world already knows as much. (Straight from the fridge.) But the conclusion that fresh waxings from him aren't, then, of pressing interest is a far piece from this truth: digging his every new disc is of most-ut imperativeness.

(Also scissors-operator of Harbord Road barbering emporium Flying Tiger, Pat has tonsorial adeptitude in common with Rockat Smutty Smith and Hillbilly Casino's Nic R.) 

Recommended: "Lucia," "Day by Day," "Barnitos Bounce," "Trance," "The Puzzle," "Enzos Outing"

Videos: "Day by Day"   "Trance"   "The Puzzle" 

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Of brother Shine                                                               

Even in death, Tennessee's James Louis "Shine" Wilbourn maintains as rightful a grasp on American music as anyone found on this site. He was reportedly a staple at the West Tennessee Farmer's Market. He ran a shoeshine stand there, into his seventies, and entertained by unspooling familiar musics of the region in one-man guitar / harmonica renditions -- a feat not in common evidence today.

No record establishing his final year could be located when this piece was being prepared. But an account relates he was active as recently as October 2014; in fact, he was that year made the first recipient of the Jack and Jerry Smith Community Spirit Award, in Nashville.

A Jackson Sun newspaper account at the time related that "When it was announced that Wilbourn had won the award, the craft room at the West Tennessee Farmer's Market was filled with shouts of joy and clapping from friends."

He had devoted decades of his hard life to folk musics -- Blues, Rock'n'Roll, Country, Bluegrass, and Gospel. In 2012, Shine (he'd gotten the nickname while shining shoes as a youngster) explained to an interviewer how he came to music; more precisely, how it had come to him.

"Well, down in Toone in the 1950s, my uncle had a cafe," he recalled. "On Friday, after people had worked in the fields all week, they'd come to Uncle Ray's. The Kids would play outside while the grown-ups danced to the jukebox. They listened and danced to everything from Elvis to Chuck Berry, Fats Domino to Gospel.

"Sometimes us kids would look in, and they'd be crying. We guessed they had the blues."

He eventually took up a guitar. And he was soon inspired to also reach for the harmonica. 

"I worked at Old Country Store, and the Bluegrass players would come out and play. I'd hang around behind the counter. And while they played, I'd play along 'til I could make my sound fit theirs."

In Shine's autumn years, he operated a Memphis shoeshine stand. But he could on a moment's notice produce a harmonica and give free, loud, and stirring vent to real-world feelings familiar to all. 

Some said he was closely associated with Jaxon Records, located just down the street from his shoeshine stand. But accounts differ as to whether he personally recorded for the label. (An email query sent to Jaxon was not answered by presstime. Perhaps the label is now inactive.)

Underscored by Shine's story is the vital connection everyday people have to music. It belongs to those unheralded by fame machinery, no less than the limousine fortunate.

The Black Prints

Short Stories

(Self-issued)

Assembled land of Macron bop merchants cite but one ambition: to play the Rebel Sound loved by millions of chain-swingers, and to do so eminently. That they succeed can be affirmed by fractured Blues de Traverse festival acolytes, as well as by lucky attendees at other national gonegonegone gatherings. Tracks present ring out whoppingly big and bold.

Recommended: "King Cadillac," "Blue Lady" (players stretch impressively), "Deathrace"

Video: No related clips were available at presstime. live (2023)

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Black Kat Boppers

All Out Rock'n'Roll   digital album

(Swelltune Records)

One pointy alligator shoe stomping in Sun world, the other imprinting Blues swampscape, and mojos cavorting in Mashed Potato abandon all the while. Lauded scene habitués Roy, Luca, Dylan, and Colin affirm again why they're major attractions hither and thither. Don't comb tracks for ponderous cogitation, just grab some pick-'em-up-and-put-'em-downs.

(Collaboration and graphic artwork come courtesy of Clash-mate and dedicated supporter Paul Simonon who, on occassion, also subs on four-string axe at gigs.)

Recommended: "Billy Billy," "All Out Rock'n'Roll," "Scream & Holla," "Black Kat Boppin' atcha," "Casting My Spell," "Rollin' In," "You Silly Thing"

Videos: "Billy Billy" (live at Rockabilly Rave 2026)   "All Out Rock'n'Roll" (live at Continental Club 2024)   "Casting My Spell" (live at Hank Dietle's Tavern 2024)   "You Silly Thing" (recorded in separate locations during COVID era)

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Rock'n'Roll solution, not problem

"Rock'n'Roll smells phony and false. It is sung, played, and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons...and, by means of its almost imbecilic reiteration and sly, lewd -- in fact, plain dirty -- lyrics, it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the Earth. It is the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has ever been my misfortune to hear."

- Frank Sinatra 1957

Ol' Blue Eyes mentioned no names in his caustic grading. But his condemnation included not just onstage interpreters and those cheering on the raucous evolution, but also, by implication, the profound reshaping it delivered to the entire planet.

Sinatra, of course, epitomized an earlier idealization of the coolness spirit. But his favored model was a dinner-jacketed, cocktail-slinging hipster whose winked argot and nightclub long-legging had become passé, given generational exchange.

(And it merits remark that, when younger, Frankie had himself been assailed by clucking parents. It is not known to what degree his transformation from objection's focus to its spokesman was genuine or simply prompted by professional apprehension.)

The coolness of his era was one to be observed, to be entertained by, and perhaps aspired toward. But the new Rebel Music was egalitarian. Of its audience. Everyone could be a Rock'n'Roller, whereas only the socially well-situated orbited the Rat Pack galaxy.

Much 1950s Rebel Music was Southern and not Northern in origin. It was produced by the working poor, not imposed downwardly upon them by a gold cuff-linked, Copacabana elite. Factors of class and region had not been so prominent in popular culture. Rock'n'Roll ushered to the table's head constituencies theretofore 

unacknowledged.

Too, Rock'n'Roll was of multi-racial character. It was and remains an ill fit for propagandizing separatists. To twist an aged saw, a bird needs both the black Blues wing and the white Country one to flip, flop, and fly. Remove either from the equation and you can have fine music, true. But it won't be Rock'n'Roll.

Hailed since as masters and giants, pioneers more likely stumbled onto greatness as blueprinted its construction. And their ambitions doubtless prioritized daily bread above dreams of renown.

But from a patchwork foundation of poor boy nerve and determination rose a phenomenon so unique in its make-up, so cracklingly vibrant amid placid pop culture, that it endures, still.

As a singer, Frank Sinatra was a baker's dozen sorts of koo-koo. But that he didn't dig Rock'n'Roll back then was his problem, not ours.

Danny B Harvey: Fingertips combustible 

There are legions of able guitar slingers, all of whose efforts help stoke important flames. Kentucky-born Danny, though, ranks way high. 

Swing, Rockabilly, Jazz, Blues, Classical, Country - Danny interprets each with ease and the posture of an erudite academic (who's swung a chain or two, in his time). Indeed, listening raptly as he fashions wondrous works simultaneously indebted to American roots argots and accelerative of them as heady, reinvented creatures, one feels like a fortunate pupil.

Danny's features generally remain placid as he swipes at his Telecaster under multi-colored and strobing stage lights, tearing from it lick upon astounding lick. He occasionally shoots audiences a slight smile as if to ask, "See how easy this is?"

For him, perhaps.

An assiduous showman, he freely indulges both US cat and UK Teddy Boy styles. Black leather jackets are alternated with vivid and elegant drape ones. Motorcycle boots, vivid creepers, two-tone bowling shirts, solid-hued tees -- all report to his closet.

Danny has through decades of applied heart earned industry respect as a first-chair player guaranteed to add class to anyone's cause. His fretboard wizardry has advanced missions mounted by Levi Dexter, Wanda Jackson, Lee Rocker, and Bow Wow Wow. 

Also on the list are groups including The Rockats, Honeydrippers, Swing Cats, Lonesome Spurs, 13 Cats, 69 Cats, Devil's Daughters, and Headcat (with Lemmy Kilmeister, Slim Jim Phantom, David Vincent, Jonny Bowler, and Alan Davey).

His most recent recording, at this writing, is Headcat Plays Buddy Holly. The disc reflects Harvey's capacity for animation of pure Rock'n'Roll, its Blues and Country facets at high luster.

When renowned titans Danny, Slim Jim, and Lemmy cast fortunes into one jackpot, a supergroup of planetary capacity assumed configuration. Meat-and-potatoes, crasharound rocking was zested by the piquancy of gods.

Early on, Danny told Blabbermouth.net: "I'm so excited this album is coming out, showing how important Buddy Holly was to Lemmy, Slim Jim, and I. We all love Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee and Little Richard, but as Lemmy said in his book White Line Fever, 'Buddy Holly never did a bad track, as far as I could hear.' I'm sure that's why our first album was mainly Buddy Holly songs."

There exist no previous DBH discs one shouldn't obtain. Here are two that merit acknowledgement:

Having by the early 2000s already done movie soundtrack endeavoring, Danny was solicited by Cult Films for its 2004 Dark Angel: Bettie Page, which starred Paige Richards.

"I played all the instruments on those recordings, as I do on a lot of my recordings," Danny told me in a 2005 interview for Rockabilly magazine. "I always record the drums using a combination of sample loops and real drums. Of course, the guitars, keyboards, and bass are all me."

For Dark Angel, he composed and performed smart backing for vintage Bettie stills and film loops. Titles included "Whip Dance," "Fighting Girls," "Bound and Gagged," and "Whatever Happened To?"

Characteristically, his soloing enunciated a panoply of emotions and inclinations, from ecstasy to aggressiveness to pensive, introspective articulation.

"Bettie Page's influence over men and women alike is off the Richter Scale, as far as I'm concerned," he told me. "Girls all over the world dress like her, walk like her, and cut their hair like her. Her look is timeless and will always be in style."

For his 2005 solo, all-instrumental CD Rockabilly Jazz (Raucous 2005), Danny again played everything. Filled nearly to bursting with buoyant runs, bends, trills, and twangs, the disc was manna. He revisited classic modes and airs, charging them with fresh elan.

It was what a happy guitar turned loose sounds like.

"My finger-picking style is a direct derivative of Chet Atkins's and Merle Travis's picking style," Danny explained to me at the time. "I love to play loud and fast, but playing like Chet Atkins is very challenging."

Merle Travis tribute "The Travis Rag" is a carbonated, finger-picked romp over high-spirits clay. "Cattlesburg Express" rolls and rollicks merrily down driven-steel tracks in headlong ramble. "Dixie Doodle Dandy," splices traditional Southern and Northern melodies, recalling Link Wray's 1959 "Dixie Doodle."

In Jazz aspect, "Misty" unfurls sumptuous atmospherics. An exhumation of the Benny Goodman/Charlie Christian chestnut "Seven Come Eleven" gambols with uptown carriage. And the stately "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You?" ambles serenely, chin high.

An instinctive hybridizer, Danny is that rarest and most meritorious of players -- a heart-wired, creatively inquisitive, adventurous artist whose encyclopedic knowledge and expressive abilities awe riveted listeners and envious colleagues, alike.

His best work may well lie ahead. But Headcat Plays Buddy Holly and looking further back offer unique rewards.

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Videos: "Whiskey Hollar Blues" (solo w/Bettie reel)   "Crazy Baby" (13 Cats)   "Hammerhead" (solo)   "Whip Dance" (Paige Richards) "Not Fade Away" / "Fool's Paradise" (Headcat, live)   "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (Headcat alternate mix)

Pitchfork Militia

The 'power trio' concept, once rallied 'round by scribes and audience ears alike, returned in 1995 as the Peter Head-fronted PM. Riff-equipped warriors clad in Punk/Country/Blues/Hard Rock armor, they thankfully crusade to this day. 

Video: "Whole Damn Farm" (live 2025)

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Hillbilly Casino: World's toughest bar band                                       

"I defy you to find five other bands in the U.S. that can play Hank Sr. back-to-back with Motorhead, back-to-back with Ernest Tubb, back-to-back with Tex Ritter, back-to-back with the Ramones," first-era slap-bassist Geoff Firebaugh declared.

The amalgam of crunch-blast dynamism and individualist tunecraft locates the group miles over the headset mics of choreographed in-fashion video mannequins. Profoundly American roots-music stylings old and new, raved forth unaffectedly and with devotion a-burnin' rollick, sway, and reel until time and space lose significance and all around is bacchanalian abandon. 

Currently in this barnstorming, Honky Tonk-hearted confederacy are six-string assassin Ronnie Crutcher, straight-out skins-attacker Sam Clay, double-bass wrestler Colin Taylor, and windmilling frontman Nic Roulette. 

Roulette's manically howled sermons ricochet from neon beer-signs to scuffed hardwood and from shoulder-to-shoulder blue-collar brethren to sudsily euphoric dimensions not locatable by eggheaded NASA star-charters. 

Hillbilly Casino's is a diversely splendored Rock'n'Roll of feverish honesty. And it is possible that they are the most important, most eminently grounded in Americana, and most knockabout agitative band in the land.

Hillbilly Casino's maiden wax was 2006's Sucker Punched. As was made manifest, the group was never blueprinted as hidebound. (Members then included bassman Geoff Firebaugh and drummer Andrew Dickson, who today fills in on occasion.) 

During 2008's Buy In DVD, hip-chained tumbler/mic guru Nic Roulette spelled out the combo's ethos: While roots musics gush through members' circulatory systems and have spattered innumerable of the group's stage boards, innovation, too, has formative pull. Syd Nathan and Norman Petty didn't use Rudy Vallee-era technology, after all. 

Reverence for both Ernest Tubb commoness and Johnny R. chordal blitzkrieg were etched with bold-font bravado. Billybo-butcher Ronnie Crutcher pared deftly and slammed out broadsides that evidenced forward-and-backward knowledge of the Americana repertoire. 

Videos: "Plain to See" (live)   "Shoe Leather" (live)   "Way Past Gone"    "Mimes of the Old West"   "Blanche's Song" (backstage)

Disc #4, Tennessee Stomp (Hobolight), portrayed self-made sideburned rovers. HC's anti-Industry bootstrapism -- entailing self-recording / booking / everything -- had grown organically from the band's above-all calling: taking Rock'n'Roll (in all of its sundry aspects, including Country and Punk) to barrooms full of hoarse-throated, mug-waving true believers. 

Unanticipated permutations, rendered with brawn nobody better've looked at funny, posted notice that a uniquely multi-faceted proposition had maintained its jaw-jutting residence beneath spotlights.

The band's rambunctious oeuvre towered as testament to its consequence. Every outing featured, in vigorous exercise, slap-bass navigations, Ronnie's bent-string exclamations, and percussive insistence. One hears why Hillbilly Casino is indispensible for fans the world over.

Videos: "Tennessee Stomp" (live)   "Heartburn and Heartbreak" (live)   "The Doctor" (live)   "Psycho"   "Violets in May"

Platter the sixth was Red, White, and Bruised (Hobolight).

HC had by this moment become a favorite of average working folks in Nashville and all hep points beyond. Like HC, swarm honky tonk dance floors and throw off real-world cares. Like Hillbilly Casino, folks that swarm joint dance floors and throw away real-life concerns grasp that there are only two kinds of songs - good ones and bad ones.

Each portion of Red, White, and Bruised huffed with limber-limbed freshness and an audacity possible only for dynamite-in-every-paw roustabouts. One was knocked flat by the economical storminess. 

Add in frontman Nic Roullette's irrepressible vocal declarations and onstage gymnastics, and one perceived the stuff of legends -- in their own time.

Videos: "Knockin' at Your Door" (official video)   "She's Got Tricks" (official video)   "It's Not Me It's You"   "Jibber Jabber" (live)   "Troubles"

Come now the crispest: Singles "Tow Truck" and "Red on the Line" - initially issued as 2024 digital-only efforts - landed in bins last October, having been paired on 7" Swelltune vinyl.

The ecstatic squad remained in the first rank. Founders Nic and Billy-Bo suzerain Ronnie were abetted by fresh accomplices Sam Clay and Colin Taylor in storming through characteristic Americana genre-grafting that here pulls fresh oxygen. 

In a Facebook post, balletic energy crisis Nic disclosed: "Replacing 2 members of Hillbilly Casino has been quite a challenge. The fact that these two talented young men live 7 hours away from Ronnie and I make the entire project a different animal, altogether. We are doing our best, though, and I personally feel like the band has taken strides toward cultivating a great sound that is better than I could have imagined."

Videos: "Tow Truck" (live)   "Red On the Line" 

Rock'n'Roll this unaffected, cleverly folding populist lilts and barroom stomp into forcibly guitar-mastered celebration, may never realize the corporate success that demands numbing, processed music product for the ringtone legions. 

Remember, though, that that is not the only mark of distinction. For truly, no music scene can have too many sheerly devout, crazy-from-the-heart back-alley minstrels. 

 Carl Sonny Leyland

Carl Sonny Leyland's Blues   digital album

(Self-issued)

Admittedly, the Recommended list below isn't fully accurate, in that all 15 selections harbor fascinations worth appreciation. No words need be spent introducing the starring 88s maestro; Carl's renown is already global. Suffice it to say, a million roots-rhythm aspirants, going to town on a million ivories for a million years, would only be wasting their time striving to top these improvised hots and colds. Roll 'em, Carl.

Recommended: "Bouncin' Boogie," "Badland Meander," "Just Raggin'," "Deep, Dark, and Stormy," "Strolling Through Life," "Gyrate at a High Rate,"  "Enchanted Drifter," "Good King Albert," "8 Bars to Home,"  "CSL Walks the Boogie"

No related Videos were available at presstime. Here's Carl at the 2024 San Francisco Boogie Woogie festival. And here's another clip.

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Pontus J Back

Mikko Rintanen and Lelle Törnqvist (keys and drums, respectively) join Rockpastor Pontus J Back (vocals, guitar) in raising Blues-marinated Rock'n'Roll too few play in 2026. Should you find yourself stomping a jig, clapping uncontrollably, and shouting joyfulness - well, that ain't nothin' but the spirit. 

"Talk to God"

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The Martians

First Landing   digital album

(Self-issued)

Rock'n'Roll as originally fashioned has no expiration date. Introductory cut "On Your Balcony" cruises straight through, its 1950s-modeled energy good-natured and the song narrator an aspiring Romeo with important plans. Track #7, "Okey Dokey Boogie," uses Ella Mae Morse's "Okie Boogie" (already a sprightly hay-bale rumpus) as a launch spot, from which swing-bop jumps everywhere at once. Agitating between are vintage-crafted numbers that illustrate players' gifts and ring as if they hang hats in a roadside joint. Belly-rub goodbye track "Blue Light" guarantees her head will find your shoulder.

Recommended: "On Your Balcony," "Marylou," "Louisiana Rhythm," "Sweet Cherry Pie," "Okey Dokey Boogie," "Blue Light"

No First Landing Videos available at press time . Here's "Flip, Flop, and Fly" (live)

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Rick Larson: Greatness at the margin

A guitar is buried in Marshalltown, Iowa. This is why:

A flash point is possible in live music. An organic, vital moment in which emotional and sensory phenomena coalesce in a connected soloist's muse articulation. The spark surges through the crowd, electrifying the atmosphere and leaving listeners viscerally touched.

Skin crawls. Grins erupt. Shouts ring out. And all is right with the world -- at least for that moment.

Marshalltown, Iowa's Rick Larson found his way into that magical moment of greatness -- more than once, if truth be told -- as had so many unsung beat champions before him.

My brother, he knew his life's purpose from an early age. He got his first guitar when 12 and devoted himself to single-minded pursuit of earthly calling.

Stevie Ray Vaughn, Keith Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Guy, Joe Strummer, Pete Townsend - these were his influences. He played the music that spoke to him, and it became important to his audiences.

No prisoner of stylistic convention, he was as likely to rock the house as finesse a melody. He made all the right stops, from red-hot jumpin' to cool-blue orating. His intoxicating soloing interpreted heartache, passion, and kick-out-the-jams exuberance. Lesser players were made conscious of their limitations.

The demands of post-teen life typically compel young players to eventually pursue day jobs, relegating live music to weekend hobby status, if even that. 

But Rick never stopped. Because he and music were of a piece. And to him, no other pursuits mattered.

He never cut an album, shot a video or graced a magazine cover. What he did was infinitely more important. A veteran of America's bar-band culture, he helped keep Blues and Rock'n'Roll alive before average people every night.

For them, plagued by trials throughout the work week, the release and revelry offered by live bands is salvational. A person can be put down by a boss during the day, but be ten feet tall on the midnight dance floor.

Songs to which grassroots blue-collar crowds today shout and thrill have roots in America's many-fathered culture and wonderfully diverse heritage. Tempos, melodic inclinations, and engaging rhythms from a score of shores met here and became new and as one.

American songs derive from the Appalachian Mountain country and humming streets of Chicago. They hail from highways that crisscross the nation and from the farmlands. From the cities, swamps, and suburbs. And they are born from common experiences, telling of human struggles, aspirations, pains, and triumphs.

It is through the efforts of anonymous players that folk stories and voices survive from generation to generation. A country's music serves as both popular record and expression of national character.

Rick was professionally active in central Iowa from the seventies through the mid-nineties. Indeed, the area live-music circuit was richer for his indefatigable participation.

He co-founded numerous central Iowa groups: Amo, Armed and Dangerous, Party House, Ice Age, the Vipers, Commotion. And too many more to mention. Singer/harp player Mark Goodman and drummer Frank McDowell were usually in the mix. Accompanying players included keyboardist Doc Lawson and guitarist/vocalist Dave Taylor.

Sometimes, formal band names or line-ups were not even needed. If a sudden gig opened up or a last-minute party jam presented itself, Rick would be there. Guitar in hand, amplifier on.

He had something crucial to worthwhile musicianship: an absolute and unfeigned direct line between his heart and his art. He believed in each note he touched.

True, a few of the better chart songs sometimes crept into the late- night sets. But only the better ones. For Rick, ignoring his instincts and selling out his musical integrity were simply not options. The gold ring mattered less than the music. The moment.

Devoted rank-and-file bar musicians like Rick who keep music alive -- who realize that all-important moment -- are infinitely more significant to real world listeners than is the trendy WRIT LARGE corporate music-product industry that takes listeners for granted.

For every transient and fabricated chart sensation, there are innumerable unsung authentics. And greatness belongs to them, too. Probably most of all.

For it is indeed possible to reach greatness in isolation from the "big picture," without the whole world's being aware.

Rick did.

His guitar fell silent in 1998. We laid to earth with him the cherry wood-grain, Gibson SG Standard that had been his earliest performing guitar. It was only right that they remain together into perpetuity. Together, they had realized the moment.

That is how I know that greatness can flourish at the margin.

And that is why a guitar is buried in Marshalltown, Iowa.

Rick and longtime associate singer Mark Goodman.

Barry Ryan: Six-string statesman                

Minneapolis, 1980 -- A strippers-by-day, Rock'n'Roll-by-night club called Duffy's was showcasing Anglo-American group the Rockats during its Octemberfest. Only a year or so had passed since they'd split with Levi Dexter and realigned, having added several new members. 

Weeks before, they'd issued "Rockabilly Doll" b/w"Tanya Jean" (Kat Tale), giving early voice to the burgeoning US rockabilly movement. (I still own the 45 I purchased back then. Sadly, the accompanying brown/white/black mini-poster was lost to the ages.)

I was in that night's jam-packed audience. I was forever changed. The Rockats were everything a rank-and-file rebel could have hoped for. A formidable and precise, swinging Rock'n'Roll spectacle, they sported tailored cat style and showy, acrobatic professionalism. Under multi-colored strobes, the whole damn stage erupted.

And Barry Ryan was a major factor in their distinction. Having arrived from NYC Punk upstarts The Victims, he stalked the stage, reborn as the six-string statesman of a pomped subculture.

His onslaughts benefited beyond gauging from judicious dispatch. His styling drew on American popular music's Blues and Country roots, and crafted a glorious pastiche. 

(Scratch that past tense usage -- he remains among Rockabilly's premier pickers.)

Several years back, Barry reflected on the era that spawned the Rockats' first LP, a live explosion of creepered exuberance.

"Island Records head Chris Blackwell signed the Rockats on the advice of Grace Jones in late 1980. We went to London in December to start recording. For one reason or another, the sessions weren't matching up to our live shows. So the project was dumped and we came back to NY. 

"It was decided that the best thing to do was to do a live record. We recorded two consecutive nights at the Ritz, but I believe only the first night was used. Both nights were sold out and that's Billy Idol who introduces the band and also sang on the encore of Chuck Berry's "Around and Around," which wasn't included on the release."

Mr. Ryan performs a vital function, linking today and yesterday. The uproarious souls of gritty Blues and traditional Country step and whirl in gladsome union, spurred into fancy-footed Rock'n'Roll transmogrification. 

His hard-lived experience -- global touring, midnight stages, simultaneous uncertainty/exhilaration of Rock'n'Roll life -- resounds in each of his twanged, thrashed or elegantly touched-off notes.

Over decades, the Rockats counted various other remarkable guitarists as transient members. But to my mind, Barry always was the band's defining guitar voice. Others contributed especial piquance, but he was that group's constant. A Rockats without Barry's inimitable fretboard touches was inconceivable. 

The final release by the legendary group came in the form of 2021's Start Over Again.

Newly minted originals "Rock, Baby, Rock (All Night Long)," "Rockabilly Swamp," "Lucky Old Rockabilly (Walking Down the Pike),"and "Working Man" were apt complements to covers of Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, and others. 

1980 single "Rockabilly Doll" b/w "Tanya Jean" was remastered and reminded of the combo's initial promise. 

In short, the music was such a capstone as to render many competitors' toils superfluous. Enough good cannot be stated of the Rockats' cohesive deploy of rockin' mannerisms. They'd never sounded more committed to good times.

Barry had earned further global renown. He carved out a legend with New York zydeco ensemble Lucky 7, waxed volatile solo endeavors, was often tapped for live appearances by legend Robert Gordon, and recorded and gigged with Gary Setzer as Rockabilly X.

Such men, through impassioned devotion to Rock'n'Roll and the magical effect it can have to better average people's lives, accomplish something far larger and more significant than any isolated work. They give us all a finer world.

All of which seemed possible, if only hinted at, that bygone Minneapolis night.

Online examples of Barry's prowess seem ubiquitous: "Rite Time" (1981 w/Tim Scott McConnell)  "Make That Move" (1983 w/Danny B Harvey)  "Downtown Saturday Night" (1994)   "Rockabilly Barry Ryan!" (solo)  "Black Slacks / Red Hot" (live w/Robert Gordon)   "Joshua's Plea"  (2012 w/Rockabilly X - Barry on vocals + guitar)

2025

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)