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Stray Cats' Rocker shares passion for rockabilly Wednesday, March 19, 2003 By Jack Leaver The Grand Rapids Press These days, you won't find rockabilly on the charts or hear it much on commercial radio, but the genre is alive and well. A revved-up hybrid of country-and-western music and rhythm and blues, rockabilly is one of the earliest forms of rock 'n' roll. Dating back to the early 1950s, the raw and propulsive music gained popularity with American youth, thanks to such artists as Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. However, as rock 'n' roll evolved and became more commercialized, rockabilly fell off the charts and subsequently out of the mainstream. In fact, the last time a pure rockabilly band had substantial success was when the Stray Cats exploded onto the music scene in the early 1980s. Fueled by the Top 10 hits "Rock This Town," "Stray Cat Strut" and "Runaway Boys," the trio of Long Island, N.Y.-schoolmates sold more than 7 million albums and helped revive the music. The Stray Cats disbanded in 1992, but one of its founding members, upright bassist and singer Lee Rocker, will bring his own rockabilly quartet to Grand Rapids Sunday to promote his latest album "Bulletproof." A tireless performer and influential musician, Rocker has recorded several of his own albums and traveled the world promoting his brand of rockabilly music. The 41-year-old musician believes the rockabilly scene is in good shape. "My stock line is that it's alive and well and living underground," Rocker said in a phone interview from a tour stop in Madison, Wis. "I do believe that because I see it, from traveling the States and Europe. It's worldwide." "It's a cult," he continued. "People love this music, you just have to know where to find it. It's not on the radio; it's not in the mainstream. Most cities and even larger towns have a rockabilly scene, and I think it's pretty healthy." On "Bulletproof," Rocker and his band deliver 14 tracks that exemplify Rocker's passion for Americana and rockabilly music. Fronting the group with his trademark slapping upright bass style, Rocker puts forth a slew of his own songs along with unique treatment of songs by Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. One of the tracks on "Bulletproof" is a cover of the Beatles' "I'll Cry Instead," a song that fits effortlessly to a rockabilly treatment. "I got to work a bit with George Harrison over the last 10 or 15 years," Rocker said. "When he passed away, I was really thinking about the Beatles and George and thinking about what (song) would work for what I do. That song just lent itself to it." Rocker also speaks reverently of his friend and mentor, the late Carl Perkins, who introduced the bassist to Harrison. Rocker included a cover of Perkins' "One More Shot" on his new album. "Carl was a great person, in addition to being one of the guys who invented rock 'n' roll," he said. Since the Stray Cats called it quits, Rocker has recorded five solo albums and, in his 20-plus years in the music business, he also has performed and recorded with a variety of roots-oriented artists, including Perkins, Harrison, John Fogerty, Willie Nelson and Elvis Presley's original lead guitarist Scotty Moore. Born Leon Drucker to professional musician parents, Rocker was just 17 years old when he and the other two Stray Cats, guitarist and singer Brian Setzer and drummer Slim Jim Phantom, relocated to London. The group scored its first success in the UK before returning to the States, where the Grammy-nominated Stray Cats garnered huge success on the pop charts. The Cats originally broke up in 1984, and while the members reunited a couple of times, they decided to call it quits for good in 1992. Setzer went on to great solo success on the forefront of the swing revival, and Slim Jim Phantom still performs with a variety of groups. Rocker, who now resides with his wife and children in southern California, doesn't rule out the chance for another Stray Cats reunion at some point in the future. "I really don't know," he said. "Actually, in the last two or three weeks, all three of us have talked to each other, (just about) the personal stuff that's going on. "We had an old-friend-kind-of conversation. Things are good, and I would imagine that the Stray Cats will play together at some point. "I don't know when; it might be 10 years or it might be 10 months," he said. |