Rock And Roll Music Without Drums? Rockabilly Proves It is possible - And delay!
It's hard for fans of rock and roll to assume the way a rock song could exist without drums. Well, maybe some rock ballads or slower folk-rock tunes might get away with it. However, not a driving rock song that makes you need to stand up and move to the music. No way, right? Wrong. Enter rockabilly!
It's true that most rockabilly songs do indeed feature drums. Actually, the drums--particularly the snare drum--have become an intrinsic person in the normal rockabilly combo. But it wasn't always that way. some of the most famous rockabilly songs was lacking any drums in any way plus they still rock as hard every other tune ever recorded.
Rockabilly evolved away from a variety of several musical styles. The blues, rhythm and blues, gospel, and a few elements of jazz all contributed something. And the supplier of the "billy" part of the name: new bands (which was known as "hillbilly" music back in the 1940s and early 1950s.) Several artists and bands often will be pointed to as creating music that sounded an awful lot like rockabilly even while far back as the 1940s. A few of these bands were R&B bands plus some where country-oriented bands. It was Elvis who melded these styles together to produce without doubt that would be a new form of music and it came to be called rockabilly.
Elvis had obviously been influenced by many of these musical forms, nevertheless it was country music he chose to pursue. Of course, that made sense since he was obviously a white kid and blues-related music was mostly made by black musicians. During the early 1950s, that color difference made a massive difference. Blues and R&B music was "race" music. A white performer will be bucking strong racial currents being involved with it. Therefore, Elvis turned to country.
But the other music became this type of section of the young Elvis which it couldn't take place down long. While he showed up at Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service studios to reduce a couple of country tracks for Phillips' Sun Records, Sam hired several country musicians (Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on string bass) to accompany Elvis in the sessions. Country music didn't make heavy use of drums during those times therefore no drummer was brought in for the session. Throughout a break from recording the scheduled songs, Elvis started camping it up on an old R&B number called, "That's Alright Mama". Moore and Black followed his lead and joined in. Phillips knew there was clearly something in what he was hearing and told the boys to start out over right from the start, this time around with the tape running.
The result was a fantastic recording from the song which Phillips released on Sun Records underneath the title "That's All Right" and also a country number "Blue Moon of Kentucky" done up in the same style. Maybe they did not know what to call it at that time, nevertheless it was rockabilly through and through. Both recordings are as rockin' as anything ever recorded there are no drums on either recording! Instead, Bill Black provided the percussion using the slap-bass style that he'd learned from hearing and watching blues bop and R&B bass players. This slap style has become a hallmark of rockabilly music from the time.
This hadn't take very long before Phillips started adding drums to Elvis' Sun Records recordings, attracting drummer D.J. Fontana to offer the beat. They all recognized exactly what the drums could give an already exciting rockabilly recording as well as the drums have, needless to say, become a must-have in stone music. But those early recordings prove it wasn't always this way.
1960's rock and roll music