GOOD ROCKIN' TONIGHT :

Rockabilly? It's Alive and Kicking, Daddy-O : Survivors from the rockabilly era and their next-generation disciples gathered at Damrosch Park on Sunday afternoon to show that their music can still kick. (JON PARELES, 8/13/02, NY Times)

Survivors from the rockabilly era and their next-generation disciples gathered for the Red Hot Rockabilly Party at Damrosch Park on Sunday afternoon to show that their music can still kick. From the 1950's came Narvel Felts and Jack Scott, two singers who had not performed in New York City for decades, along with two more frequent visitors, Wanda Jackson and Billy Lee Riley. They shared the four-hour Lincoln Center Out of Doors concert, with Rosie Flores, the Persuasions, Lee Rocker (formerly of the Stray Cats) and Rocky and Billy Burnette, the sons (respectively) of the rockabilly pioneers Johnny and Dorsey Burnette.

The younger musicians, by and large, played rockabilly as a style they respected and doted on, an idiom of guitar twangs and vocal yelps salvaged from a bygone era. But Mr. Riley, Ms. Jackson and Mr. Felts sang their old songs as taunts, crows of triumph, moans of heartbreak and cackles of lust, barely less immediate than they were when they were recorded. For them, rockabilly was not just a fond memory but a continuing insurrection.

Narvel Felts was still cranking out hits in the mid-70s. In particular, I think he recorded the most successful version of Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away". Posted by Orrin Judd at August 14, 2002 9:20 AM