Go Cat Go! is the first solid overview of rockabilly, from its crystallization as a recognizable style in 1954 with Elvis Presley's first release through its fadeout at the end of the 1950s and subsequent revival in the late 1970s. Craig Morrison's lively account will bring back memories of "Blue Suede Shoes, " "Be-Bop-A-Lula, " Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, and more. Morrison defines the genre, plots its historical and stylistic development, identifies its main performers and recordings, and presents the who, what, where, and when of the music. He draws on personal and published interviews, printed sources, his own vast record collection, and his insights as a professional musician in re-creating country music's romance with rhythm and blues, which exploded into rockabilly, a music form once described by Carl Perkins as "a country man's song with a black man's rhythm." Characterized by its identifiable country and rhythm and blues inflections, blues structures, the use of an echo effect, a wild or extreme vocal style, a strong rhythm and beat, and an obvious Presley influence, rockabilly peaked rapidly and all but disappeared just as rapidly. Revived in the late 1970s with bands like the Stray Cats, rockabilly is now popular from Japan to Finland.
Craig Morrison is a Montreal ethnomusicologist, author, teacher, and musician. He specializes in rock and roll and its roots in blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, country, folk, gospel, and pop. Raised in Victoria BC, Canada, he bought his first guitar in 1966 and played in coffeehouses.
As a teenager, seeing concerts of blues (such as Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee), jazz (Louis Armstrong), and rock (Janis Joplin) led to an interest in music history. Playing in groups provided a deeper appreciation of music styles and he has since performed and recorded extensively with his own bands and backed others, notably rhythm and blues legend Vann "Piano Man" Walls. Two CDs are available on Amazon: Live at the Oscar, and Echoes From the Blue Angel.
For more than a decade, he has been teaching courses at Concordia University in Montreal (where he earned a PhD), on Rock and Roll and its Roots, The Music of the Beatles, and Pop/ Soul and its Roots. Since the early 1970s, he has been teaching private lessons on guitar and piano. Since 1982, he has been interviewing veteran musicians, more than 100 of them, across North America, from the rockabillies of Tennessee and Texas, to the garage, folk rock, and psychedelic pioneers of the West Coast, as well as many seminal blues, r&b, and country players.
All three of Craig Morrison's books are available through Amazon.com: Go Cat Go! Rockabilly Music and Its Makers (University of Illinois Press), American Popular Music: Rock and Roll (Facts On File), and Psychedelic Music in San Francisco: Style, Context, and Evolution (self published). Additionally Morrison has written CD liner notes and numerous articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia of the Blues (Routledge), Women and Music in America Since 1900 (Greenwood Press), the Journal of American Folklore, and other publications.
