Rockabilly music should maybe have never come into existence. After all, the music is a blend of country, blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel styles all mashed together to create a unique sound. And who would have ever thought to combine these varied styles, let alone thought that the resulting music might actually become popular and eventually be responsible for millions of record sales? Well, luckily for rockabilly and rock and roll fans, there were people back in the 1950s who were willing to do just that type of experimentation and they've left us a wonderfully rich musical legacy! As it turns out, there were actually quite a number of people experimenting with the music that eventually formed into rockabilly. Black R&B artists had been performing and recording increasingly rocked-up songs that were coming very close to the rockabilly sound even back into the 1940s. These players were experimenting with guitar sounds and styles, a much more aggressive drumming style, and the slap-bass style that has become so ubiquitous with rockabilly music. As ahead of their time as these musicians might have been, it also took white musicians willing to experiment to move the music forward. In those times of racial discrimination in the American South, these black musicians were not able to break their music into the wider and more lucrative white radio markets that would have brought them more success and money. Most stations operated by whites wouldn't play this "race" music, no matter how good it was. But by the late 1940s, white musicians were also starting to create music that foreshadowed rock and roll. Some people argue that The Maddox Brothers and Rose were creating rockabilly music even before the 50s decade began. Indeed, Rose Maddox went on to record some great rockabilly tracks after the style had really caught on. Bill Haley and His Comets, while not strictly rockabilly, were also breaking his new R&B-influenced style to the American listening public in the early 50s. But it took a visionary independent record label owner and three inventive musicians named Bill Black, Scotty Moore, and Elvis Presley to really break rockabilly music into the musical mainstream. Sam Phillips started the Sun Record label in Memphis, Tennessee in order to release the music he'd been recording in this studio since 1950. At first the music he recorded was mostly blues played by black performers. Phillips, who was white, was willing to experiment with not only recording techniques, but also with the idea of a white man in the deep south running a business that treated black musicians fairly and honestly. But he was also on the lookout for a white artist with a sound like the black artists had. He found that one day when one of his newly signed musicians, Elvis, started letting off some steam during a session by singing a wild version of the R&B song "That's All Right". Phillips loved what he heard when Moore and Black joined in with Presley and they ended up recording the first commercially successful rockabilly tracks--another bold experiment. Of course, the experiment obviously paid off, Elvis rocketed up the charts to superstardom, and rock and roll was here to stay! Nadel Paris an EDM artist is a jack of all trades; an accomplished singer, producer and writer. Nadel writes about music and its various genres, other related topics and shares her experience she has over the years. She provides expert advice and tips regarding every aspects of music genre through her blogs.
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