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New
Bio from www.shorefire.com
Even in Nashville, Brian Setzer stands out.
It's not because of that pompadour; that 'do has been old news
here since Elvis.
It's not the duds; folks don't care what other people wear here,
as long as it's got soul; Brian's rockabilly rags fit that bill
like a comb in a tight back pocket.
No, people crane their heads when he pulls into
the Station Inn to pop a longneck and chill because Nashville
cats know their music. They know when a master is in the house.
And even in this sea of sizzlin' pickers and whammy-bar jammers,
Brian Setzer stands alone.
For a few weeks this year, he was a regular on
the strip that runs along Lower Broadway to the Cumberland River.
And in between visits to sit in with local honky-tonk heroes,
Setzer was in the studio, cutting Rockabilly Riot, Vol. 1: A Tribute
to Sun Records -- the album that confirms that he is, among other
distinctions, the unrivalled king of rockabilly guitar.
You can hear in the swing and swagger of his guitar
licks and lip-curling vocals that Setzer knows what made the Sun
sound revolutionary: that head-on collision of country and R&B
that gave birth to this music, the prototype for rock & roll.
It's the sound that put fins on fine cars and a blonde on each
true believer's arm.
The Sun label was where all this began. Memphis
radio deejay Sam Phillips started it in 1949 but it wasn't until
1954, when Elvis walked in and cut "That's All Right, Mama," that
all hell began breaking loose -- "hell" being the golden age,
when suddenly the studio was filled with guys like Jerry Lee Lewis,
Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and the hot players that
backed them up. You would have to fast-forward more than 30 years,
to the halcyon days of punk, to find anything this intense Click
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