Rockabilly and Rock n Roll evolved side by side during the late 40's and early 50's, but it was rock n Roll that would become the commercial success of the day, resulting in Rockabilly becoming a cult fashion. Rockabilly has never gone away, it has always had a cult following enabling it to survive the 60 years it has, with periods of commercial success.
The genre came about when poor white kids in the southern states of the US grew up listening to hillbilly, gospel and blues, and mixed these musical influences and developed the sound that would later be known as Rockabilly.
Most of the rock n Roll stars of the early 1950's started their musical career in Rockabilly bands, such as Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, indeed Elvis was spawned from Sun Records, the first record label to promote the sound at a national level.
The influence and popularity of the style waned in the 1960s, but during the late 1970s and early 1980s, rockabilly enjoyed a major revival of popularity that has endured to the present, often within a rockabilly subculture. It was the new generation of kids that became interested in the genre that spawned Neo and Psychobilly to the tree of Rock n Roll.
Rockabilly was never really promoted by the commercial industry, and so the kids following the style started a whole network of independent recording studios and promoters for the bands, most Rockabilly gigs are organized by the average joe who has a fulltime job, and some of these gigs have audiences numbering in their thousands.
Attending a Rockabilly gig is like no other gig you have ever been to. The clothes, hair are wild, bright and clash. The cars of these kats will often be hotrods or customised cars from the 1950's. The fans are like a global extended family. and no matter where in the world the gig is, you will meet old friends, or make life long friends.
Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
