Rockabilly Boogie (1956-1957)

I was looking for a 1956 album called Johnny Burnette and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio, listed in The MOJO Collection: The Greatest Albums of All Time. Instead, I ended up with this terrific 1989 Bear Family CD: 28 tracks, encompassing all 12 tracks from the original album and all 20 tracks from a 1993 CD release listed in Wikipedia, plus copious notes and scrupulous research you’ll need a magnifying glass to read. The sequencing is weirdly varied across all three. One of my favorites, for example (out of about 28 stellar favorites), is “Rock Therapy” (“I don’t need a doctor, I don’t need a pill”)—track 3 on this album, not appearing on the original LP, track 13 on the 1993 CD. In short, you’re probably best advised to get this Bear Family CD and play it loud and often. I don’t see it on my streaming service, though I might be able to cobble together a reasonable facsimile from tracks available. But why bother when I can just play this CD? I consulted the internet on Johnny Burnette, by searching on “best rockabilly artists.” Burnette, who died in 1964 at age 30 in a boating accident, seems to fall in the lower echelons of the top 10, preceded by names you would predict: Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Wanda Jackson, etc. More modern names also appear, such as the Stray Cats and Reverend Horton Heat. Johnny Burnette could thus well be a familiar name but still relatively unheard except by the most dedicated followers of rockabilly. I recommend you don’t skip Burnette. This stuff throbs with life, good screams, heavenly backup singers, barbed-wire guitar breaks, and deep thick grooves. On “Touch Me” Burnette even trills like a songbird inside the clatter. Most of the necessities are here: “Tear It Up,” “Train Kept a-Rollin’,” “Rockbilly Boogie,” “Lonesome Train (On a Lonesome Track).” “Butterfingers” is a goof, possibly playing on the candy bar’s popularity. “Eager Beaver Baby” might go too far—yes, I think it might. “Midnight Train” is a country jailhouse lament—Burnette obviously had a thing for trains. The last track, “Shattered Dreams,” is all show horns and no guitars as Burnette is called on to belt it out like Bobby Darin. It’s a novelty. Most of the rest is some of the purest rockabilly you may ever hear.