What is rockabilly?

Rockabilly is a genre of music that has grown out of improvised sessions among musicians in the American South during the beginning to the mid -50s. Performers in southern cities as Memphis, Tennessee or Jackson, Mississippi often played traditional Blues songs in the positive Texas Swing style or popular country music. Soon rockabilly musicians imitated the emotional voice styles of Black Blues Singers, while adding slap bass and clear guitar sounds of Texas pedal and artists like Hank Williams. The drummers also developed a looser rhythmic formula with a strong rear rhythm for the genre.

While dozens of musicians on the music scene Memphis got local attention with their new sound, several of them were able to move it to a higher level of exposure. The leader of the swing group Texas named Bill Haley redesigned his earth version of the Blues song to a smaller single called "Rock Around the Clock". It contained many elements of True Rockabilly, but it retained part of its flavor of the dance band. TOnly when the song was introduced in the Blackboard Jungle , did it become the introduction of the Earth into the sound of the genre.

Meanwhile, other artists continued to improve the sound for their younger fan base. Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison all recorded rockabilly songs in Sun Studios in Memphis in Tennessee. Carl Perkins was especially proficient in the style of rhythmic guitar associated with the genre, as well as Luther Perkins and Scottie Moore. Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash both combined the elements of blues singing and country music to create signature rockabilly vocal sound. Singers often used hulba, shouts, hiccups and heavy echoes to capture raw energy forms.

As soon as Rockabilly went mainstream, he lost much of his popularity among demographic teens. Former rockabilly artists like Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly became more popular as singers"Rock and Roll". Other artists such as Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash either chased a career outside the United States, or have become more associated with country music. The influence of the genre can still be felt in modern rock music. Several bands, such as The Stray Cats, continued in the tradition of Rockabilly, while other artists only recorded songs using a replacement arrangement of slacks, drums and hollow electric guitars.