I don't bother chasing mice around I slink down the alley looking for a fight howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night

Quick Hit

“Stray Cat Strut”, Stray Cats (1981/82)

Brian Setzer was not following the fads in the early eighties – well maybe the looks a bit, but the music he liked, some thought was out of style. Rockabilly was a late fifties and early sixties phenomena that had long lost its momentum when Setzer, his bass player, Lee Rocker, and drummer Slim Jim Phantom, thrust it back into the spotlight.

They can call you Bill or even Billy But you’re my sweet William and you drive me silly

Quick Hits

“Will You Willyum”, Janis Martin, (1956)

“I Gotta Know”, Wanda Jackson (1956)

Like any definition of what the ‘first’ of anything was in history, it is fuzzy. Things aren’t that clear- cut. I have said this before, and I will say it again: music is a continuum, an evolution. Is anything ever entirely original? Some more than others, and it is a judgement call at the end of the day.  

The first female rockers were arguably ‘rockabilly’ artists who were steeped in country music and tainted by the wildness of their male contemporaries. One of these was Janis Martin.