Customer Reviews

The Rockabilly Legends: They Called It Rockabilly Long Before It Was Called Rock 'n' Roll (Book & DVD)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jerry Naylor is to be commended highly for his exhaustive research and commitment to what I understand was a seven year labor of love. He truely captures the essence of the talent that made the 50's Rockabilly era so special and created the roots of rock n' roll.The addition of the DVD to complement this volume makes it even more desireable for any student of music history! My only complaint is that Ricky Nelson was not included, since he too was a pioneer in rockabilly and idolized Carl Perkins as his musical mentor!While I realize Jerry may not have worked with him directly he still deserved honorary mention! That aside though, this book/dvd is a must have!

This is a great book that is not only easy to read, and has an abundance of great early photos from 1954 - 1959, but tells the definitive beginnings of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison. It connects them all through stories of how they all played together or ran into each other during the mid-50s.

Elvis was just a 19 year old truck driver who was talked into going to a cheap recording studio in Memphis in 1954 to sing some gospel songs, and met session player Scotty Moore there. Producer Sam Philips didn't like what he was hearing, until Elvis started singing (during a break) an old blues tune from the 40s called "That's Alright Mama." Philips loved it, and rockabilly (which is what early rock'n'roll was called) was born. They soon after got a slot on the Grand Ole Opry to play just one tune, and Elvis got a positive response from the females. Teenaged Roy Orbison saw Elvis from the front row in January 1955 at a west Texas concert, and he immediately dropped his hilbilly singing of Hank Williams tunes, and started doing rockabilly. Buddy Holly saw early Elvis as well, and it influenced him to start his Crickets. There's stories of Johnny Cash (how he tried to get Roy Orbison on the Sun label), and Jerry Lee, and Carl Perkins, and how they all got influenced each other, and even played together.

Get this book....it's great!

If you love the 50s music and those who made it great, you will enjoy this book and the history of the 50s music legends! Great book! Great history!

This is probably the best book I have ever read on the history of rockabilly and its origins. The graphics are great and make the book a really fun one to read. When I bought it, I didn't realize there was a DVD inside and the DVD is worth the price of the book itself. So it feels like a two for one. Jerry knew most of the people in the rockabilly world and the first hand experience brought a breadth and personal feel to this book. I was also so glad that the Johnny Burnette Trio was in this book too as often they are left out of the rockabilly discussion and were an important part.

I do wish however, that Jerry would have included some females in the story. Wanda Jackson especially - she is not included in this book and I think she should have been. Also I think that Chuck Berry's influence in the rockabilly world and Little Richard could have been highlighted in this book as well. It seems odd they are written about in this book. Maybe some discussion on the pre-Elvis influence of Bill Haley too where he crossed over into some pioneering sounds of rock and roll/rockabilly prior to Elvis.

This is still a great, great book and I am so glad it was written.

This book is so much fun to read! Looking back, rock 'n' roll has grown to be such a standard genre of music that we don't often think about how it came to be, but this book goes through and shows you step by step how it came about. There are some great pictures and great stories and it even includes a DVD! This book is wonderful!

There's not much to say, this is one exception to the rule - you can judge this book by it's cover. I like the DVD more than a book - lot of video clips and interviews.

It's a very easy read. Lots of inside stories. About the author,
Jerry Naylor. He replaced Buddy Holly, as lead singer of The Crickets-
after his tragic death. The Grand Old Opera went for big stars.
They didn't like Elvis, who was a new comer. He went on tour with The
Louisiana Hayride. They took a chance on new talent,rejected by
The Grand Old Opera.Here's a quote from the book. " Those three nights
January 5,6 &7, 1955 literally changed the music world forever.The
Beatles trace their inspiration to that famous Louisiana Hayride tour. Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings also trace their early inspiration to this early Elvis Tour. "

this is the greatest coffee table book for any fan of rockabilly, great pics and history in a beautiful presentation

This project was, I think, badly misconceived: it should have been designed and marketed as a DVD with a companion book rather than the other way around.

As it is, this is the only book on the history of rockabilly, and unfortunately it reads more like a vanity piece, where the author devotes far too much space to his role in the rockabilly oeuvre. (His claim to fame is that after Buddy Holly died, he sang lead on some of the Crickets' songs for a few years.) There are lots of examples sprinkled throughout, but the most galling is in the chapter on Gene Vincent, where he points out that Vincent was the first to use the hiccup in his singing -- "something both Buddy Holly and I later adopted and developed". Uh... yeah. Okay, whatever, dude.

In terms of (non-self-promoting) content, it's a mixed bag. The DVD is far superior to the book, featuring first-rate documentary material mixed with interview footage of Red Robinson (him, at least, I've heard of...) speaking to the author. The book itself is basically a coffee-table book. Lots of photos, not much in the way of content.

Part of me thinks that if the author had somebody behind him cracking the whip, he could have produced a truly spectacular work on the history of rockabilly. Maybe such a work is still in him, as it's pretty clear that at one point in his life, he really knew his stuff. Except, he seems to have forgotten that rockabilly, above all else, was about teenagers out for a good time, rocking it out in the garage and trying to impress the girls. Eddie Cochrane and Ricky Nelson were not just influential and successful, they were the absolute embodiment of that ideal, and they merit barely a mention in his book. So that makes me think that at the end of the day, he just doesn't get it.