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)

Dwight "Whitey" Pullen

Sunglasses After Dark

(Cleopatra)

Whitey's "Sunglasses After Dark," the greased anthem of hep wolves everywhere, has been revisited by a wicked roster that numbers the Cramps, Meteors, and Japan's 5.6.7.8s. This fresh Cleopatra remarketing of the erstwhile Blue Cap plank-packer's killer 7"s reminds (as if any afficianado had forgotten) that not all top-drawer, first-generation Rockabilly is credited to marquee personalities.

(Note: Alabama-birthed Whitey resurfaced in the 1970s. He cut sides for Californian Ronny Weiser's Rollin' Rock, as did other Golden Agers like Charlie Feathers, Ray Campi, Johnny Carroll, and Mac Curtis.)

Recommended: "Everybody's Rockin'," "Sunglasses After Dark," "Moonshine Liquor," "Crazy in Love," "Walk My Way Back Home," "Let's All Go Wild," "Tuscaloosa Lucy," "Drinkin' Wine Spo Dee O Dee," "Teen Age Bug"

Videos: "Sunglasses After Dark"  "Crazy in Love"  "Let's All Go Wild"    "Teen Age Bug"

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Colin Winski 1956 - 2007 

Rebellion and the unheard grail

"A very special and fabled musical crossroad exists in America," I wrote in a Blue Suede News article, while Colin still breathed. "One that would defy cartographers' attempts at location. 'Rockabilly,' reads the signpost. 

"Countless hopefuls journey in search of it, and some even produce wondrous works that capture its lightning between grooves. But few call it home. Colin Winski lives at that rural intersection."

I recall his self-reflection: "Throughout my life, as long as I could get up onstage and put on a wild, sweat-drenched show and was appreciated for it, then yes, I felt redeemed. Sort of like a baptism of sweat and a little of Janov's primal scream therapy." 

The serpentine-hipped L.A. shouter didn't so much replicate fires that preceded, as vent a blaze independently within. Born of Ronny Weiser's legendary indie Rollin' Rock, in an otherwise ordinary, Van Nuys garage, he leapt to the fore of 1970s/1980s Neo-Rockabilly voices. 

I first spoke with Colin in 2005, for that Blue Suede News piece. Following the article's publication, he and I maintained our telephone connection. He was both witty and clever. I'm proud to say we were friends.

He had recorded several 1970s singles for Rollin' Rock, and later performed globally as a member of Ray Campi's Rockabilly Rebels. He cut two albums with Ray, and also released solo discs. Wholly apropros Rockabilly Hall of Fame formal acknowledgement came to him in the 1990s.

Three solo albums captured his specialness.

1980's Rock Therapy (Takoma) loosed upon unsuspecting ears a wildman whose hiccuping, sonorous entreaties and dizzying-height shouts painted dangerous Neo-Rockabilly of mercurial quintessence. 

Erstwhile Ray Campi bandmate Jerry Sikorski, his helter-skelter guitar wielded as incising banderilla, drove deeply and savagely into each unfolding arrangement. Notably, Colin here covered the Burnette Trio's "Rock Therapy," which was to become his signature selection.

Follow-up disc Helldorado (Fury) didn't appear until 1993. Colin had by that time relocated to Arizona and wrestled with demons familiar to aspiring creative souls: self-doubt, substance reliance, and a vocation-uncertainty sword of Damocles whose sinister shadow had already crossed his dirty-blond pompadour.

None of those negatives, though, dimmed Helldorado. Once again within Rock'n'Roll's mad clutch, Colin was restored. Shimmering with delirious ferment, he delivered up a testimony so reckless and bold as to render all about in spectacular wonderment. 

And that leaves the last Colin Winski solo recording. It is, at the moment of this writing, doubtful most will ever hear the unmarketed Rockin' at the Calderon. 

Among its perhaps forever-secret documents are mournful hillbilly laments, jumping and laughing bop, even songs leaving orthodox Rockabilly in swirling, take-off exhaust as they zoom upward.

 

I was fortunate enough to have been sent a cassette dub by the man himself. 

Colin and I had agreed, earlier in what turned out to be his last year, to make efforts at securing label interest. I wrote promo copy that drew on vintage Lucky Strike advertising:

TAKE THE COLIN WINSKI CHALLENGE:

Does your Rockabilly sound different lately? Not as satisfying or thrilling as before?

Make the move smart cats and chicks do! Switch to Colin Winski! Colin blends the rich, good-time hillbilly and bluesy flavors you
crave with electrifying additive Psychobilly!

So, take the challenge! You'll agree:

CW/MFR -- COLIN WINSKI MEANS FINE ROCKABILLY!


We made a few tries, focusing on US and UK independent labels that catered to his style's market. Sadly, though, we found no interest. 

Colin just stopped trying. He took his own life.

The world may never hear Rockin' at the Calderon.

Back in the Day, 1979

Ray Campi

Rockabilly Rebellion

(Rollin' Rock)

Each time you drop a needle on gone wax, remember that Ray and Rollin' Rock's Ronny Weiser were very much among 1970s (and beyond) Rockabilly Rebels whose indefatigable toils helped the wildcat sound rise again. Since his 1950s Texas ramblings, Ray bore feral witness to homestyle Country's prominence in the glorious Red White and Blue story - often with hot-rodded, handerchief-waving abandon that dug the cool things possible when Sol sinks. Tracks compiled on this platter are good-time, good-humored evidence that the bar on the corner of Sunset, where Country and Rockabilly met up and shook hands, was one fractured destination. Indie label-maven Rockin' Ronny and the King of Rockabilly threw hellacious Van Nuys bashes - ones we still can and should dig.

Recommended: "Tore Up," "Ballin' Keen," "Don't Get Pushy," "Pinball Millionaire," "Eager B-B-Beaver Boy," "Georgia Slop," "You Don't Rock'n'Roll At All," "One Part Stops Where the Other Begins," "Dual Wheels No Brakes," "Rockin' and Rollin' Towards Tennessee"

Videos: "Ballin' Keen"   "Pinball Millionaire"   "Dual Wheels No Brakes"   "Rockin' and Rollin' Towards Tennessee"

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The Blasters

s/t, Non Fiction, Hard Line

(Slash / Liberation Hall)

The Blasters' three Slash LPs, now thankfully reissued by Liberation Hall, represent some of the 1980s Neo-Rockabilly crusade's finest exponents. 

Solid grounding in Blues truths was every bit as hardwired into their muscular exertions as were dirt-road joints' bucolic animations.

Dave Alvin threw flashing fires packed with twangs from his Strat. He also evidenced himself as a song-craftsman with one alligator shoe in vintage Americana tune idioms, and the other in a many-shelved library.

Bill Bateman, Gene Taylor, and John Bazz acquited themselves with such passions (all the while confidently showing their respective instruments who was boss) that kids beholding them doubtless caught the bug. (That's how Rock'n'Roll works.) 

Adding their own sax magics to all three discs were OG Lee Allen (whose majestry exists into perpetuity in scores of vital vintage waxings) and Steve Berlin, himself a cut-above brass actionist. Better bopping through honking.

Brother Phil crooned every melody and touched all notes with enviable mastery. As if it were easy. But his bulging temple veins, and the perspiration rivulets demarcating facial features like interstates on an unfolded map, let the cat escape the bag.

They were the real article, while all around were flamboyant money-machine contrivances. Flock of Seagulls, Eurythmics, Madonna, and a slew of interchangeable MTV manikens had limited shelf life. 

The Blasters offered desperately craved, rocked-to-the-nth-degree celebration, in an otherwise airless and formulaic music environment. Genuine humanity was in scant supply. They brought it. Oh, brother, did they.

Plus, with each chord, note, and downbeat, they kept in glorious dynamism stylings crafted by elders like Rudy Toombs, Jimmy Rodgers, Little Willie Johns, and Big Joe Turner. (Afore-cited, stalwart originals from the pen of Dave boosted the worth.)

I'll scrutinize one track from each record.

"American Music" (first waxed by Ronny Weiser's Rollin' Rock indie label) was a rousing calling card whose union of rambunctiousness and legitimate Old Gloryism underscores blood shared by common-man musics birthed in New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, the Delta, and anywhere folks earned calluses and burned candles 'til wee hours.

"Look Out It Must Be Love." Dave once told an interviewer that the more personal a lyric, paradoxically, the more universal its relatability. In no example is that truer than this song. While idiosyncrasies like "she works all night at a joint on the highway" and making a "date at the city hall" don't figure in everyone's wedlock accounts, the 'lavender haze' experience is common. For 2:59, Dave and Phil, Gene Taylor, and the Johns Bateman and Bazz bounce like to happify all hearts from Lovers' Lane to Saturn's rings.

"Rock and Roll Will Stand" Embodied here is a quality typical of Blasters' ouput: Raging momentum of old-ways Rock'n'Roll in fresh glad rags, ridden by substantial lyricism that speaks of mankind's undersurface. Hard to discern is whether its honest criticisms of shady managers, fickle audiences ("dedicated followers of fashion," went a bygone verse), and the hapless protagonist himself were intended as industry condemnations or forewarning advisories. Probably both. 

I'll land the plane here: Then and today, the group deserves acclaim by the Mason jar-full. In 2026, a somewhat altered lineup hefts the group's standard admirably. Between their efforts and Dave's solo ones, "the house'll be shakin' from the bare feet slappin' on the floor," as a man once said.

Recommended, s/t: "Marie Marie," "I'm Shakin'," "Border Radio," "American Music," "So Long Baby Goodbye," "This is It," "I Love You So," "Stop the Clock"

Recommended, Non Fiction: "Red Rose," "No Other Girl," "Bus Station," "One More Dance," "It Must Be Love," "Jubilee Train," "Long White Cadillac," "Fool's Paradise," "Leaving"

Recommended, Hard Line: "Trouble Bound" (feat. the Jordanaires), "Little Honey," "Samson and Delilah," "Hey Girl," "Samson and Delilah," "Rock and Roll Will Stand"

Videos: "Stop the Clock" (live, 1982)   "Fool's Paradise"   "Trouble Bound"

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Back In the Day, 1981

Ray Campi

The Rollin' Rock Singles Collection 1971 - 1978

(Rondelet Music & Records)

In 1971 California, Italian emigre Ronny Weiser was stunned to learn '50s Texas legend Ray lived mere blocks away. Ronny enticed Ray, who was by then a high school English teacher (and had been for some 24 years) , to abandon the chalkboard and return to music via Weiser's garage-located Rollin' Rock. Thus began a collaboration that endured for decades.

Ray's rollicking efforts bopped jauntily, always drawing on the unvarnished Country he'd grown up hearing in the Lone Star State. Though a gutbox-slinger in earlier years, at Rollin' Rock he grabbed hold of the double-bass that became his trademark.

Younger Rockabilly singers may have mastered de riguer affectations, but Ray's singing spoke of old-school honky-tonk seasoning that had been earned the hard way. His drawl, back-of-throat inflections, heartsore tenor, and jittery histrionics were characteristic of the genre's pioneer rank.

This 1981 compendium wax was issued in the UK. 

Recommended: "Eager Boy," "Dobroogie," "Tore Up," "If It's All the Same To You," "Pan American Boogie," "Sixteen Chicks," "A Lil' Bit Of Heartache," "Booze It!," "Wrong Wrong Wrong," "Rockin' At the Ritz," "Quit Your Triflin'," "Rattlin' Daddy"

Videos: "Pan American Boogie"  "A Lil' Bit Of Heartache"

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