It’s no great revelation that the original stars of rockabilly music had talent. But very often, theirs was a very special kind of talent. It was often unformed, underdeveloped, and even undiscovered. In other words, it was raw. And the rawness of rockabilly talent may have had as big an influence on the wild success of some of the music’s stars as did anything else.
All of this raw talent made for some very raw music. Rockabilly was a real departure from any other mainstream music of the time–at least the white mainstream. Much of the attitude of rockabilly was derived from the raucous rhythm and blues music of the 1940s and early 1950s, but white audiences had yet to really discover much of that music. Rockabilly musicians had enough country music in their blood to be largely accepted by country-loving audiences and those fans were served their first taste of rhythm and blues attitude through rockabilly performers.
Few of the early rockabilly pioneers had much formal musical training. They simply took what they’d picked up from their musical influences in several different genres and melded it all together into a new musical art form. Not that they necessarily knew exactly what they were doing! They were just doing what seemed natural to them. And it was indeed raw. It was loud, brash, flashy, and almost wholly disapproved of by the “grown ups.” So what more could teenagers want in their music?
The rockabilly music scene featured some amazingly talented musicians. Talented, but again, not necessarily formally trained. This lack of formal musical training freed these talented young people to fly off in any musical direction that occurred to them. They took things that everybody know you “couldn’t do” with music and they did them. They broke rules and did it with flare. Who would have thought you could take country music and combine it with rhythm and blues and make records that people would want to listen to and buy? Maybe no one actually thought about it, but it’s precisely what they did.
The raw nature of the music can be perceived in many ways. One simple way is to listen to many of the old recordings where you’ll hear obvious mistakes made by the musicians. Bass players that stop late, drummers who accidentally play through a break, guitarists who “fat finger” a lead line–many records were release with mistakes like these on them and far from ruining the recordings, it’s often those mistakes that lend that special character to the record. It’s raw and the fans love it that way!
Today’s pop charts can’t even conceivably tolerate that type of rawness. You will not hear a mistake like those on a Lady GaGa recording, I can almost guarantee it. Today’s pop music is often so over produced as to squeeze every last bit of raw goodness out of it. Maybe that’s why rockabilly music endures even today almost 60 years later. Rockabilly fans love the raw sound. It’s the sound of passion. The sound of musicians doing what they love and loving what they’re doing. Are modern fans too sophisticated for this type of rawness? Maybe. But–judging by the resurgence and strength of the rockabilly scene throughout the world today–maybe not. Maybe it’s exactly what modern fans want…and need!