Lee Rocker still strutting

By JEFFREY LEE PUCKETT

Lee Rocker came of age in the 1970s, when rock 'n' roll was beginning to seriously fragment and drift away from its roots. Bands such as Yes had little to do with Billy Lee Riley, and the Allman Brothers' trippy 20-minute marathons were far removed from the blazing two-minute gems of Johnny Burnette.

And then Rocker found an LP of early Carl Perkins rockabilly on Sun Records. It was, literally, a life-changing moment.

"Everything out there at the time was so different, so big, with synthesizers and orchestras," he said from his home in San Diego, "and early rock 'n' roll was straightforward and pure. The image of the music really got to me, but it was the music more than anything else."

For a generation of modern rockabilly fans, Rocker has come to represent both the genre's image and music. He's a greased true-believer.

As bassist for the Stray Cats, he helped spur an international rockabilly revival in the 1980s. That band has been gone for 20 years, but Rocker's recent album, "Bulletproof," finds him making raw, unadorned rockabilly true to the music's beginnings.

He isn't a revivalist or into nostalgia. He's just an upright bass player with an undying love for the boom-chukka beat.

"There's a rockabilly underground everywhere, from Moscow to Paris to New York," he said. "Every major town has underground bands playing this stuff. You just don't hear it on the radio, and you definitely don't see it on TV.

"I'm just doing what I like to do and having a good time with it."

When Rocker discovered Perkins he was already jamming with Brian Setzer and Slim Jim Phantom, childhood buddies from Long Island. They just hadn't yet decided to call themselves the Stray Cats.

They adopted that name in 1979 while still in their teens and began drawing overflow houses to clubs such as New York's CBGBs. The punk movement had exploded, and the Stray Cats' energy and anti-establishment stance made them heroes to both punkers and old-school rockers.

The Stray Cats made their name after moving to England in 1980. Their run was short, sweet and influential; in four years, they toured the world, had platinum sales and made some of MTV's most famous videos. But when burnout hit, it hit hard, and the band splintered in 1984.

Rocker has since scaled his life down, becoming a husband and father living in an Orange County, Calif., suburb, but his passion for rockabilly hasn't diminished. He has a superb band, with Brophy Dale and Tara Novick on guitars and Jimmy Sage on snare, and tours the rockabilly circuit regularly.

He'll spend the summer in Europe, where the Stray Cats will reunite.

"We played last July 4 and ... just had a ball together," Rocker said. "So we're going to do 20 or so shows, and if we don't kill each other we'll see what happens after that."

• January 23, 2004