His spot-on drummer, Bernie Dresel, charted all the original drum charts and played them just like the original versions of these long-neglected classics. The vastly underrated singer and guitarist handpicked the 23, yes, 23 tracks, mixing the familiar, “Red Hot,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Get Rhythm,” “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll,” with the obscure chestnuts, “Lonely Wolf,” “Put Your Cat Clothes On,” “Stairway to Nowhere,” “Rakin’ and Scrapin,” for a purist’s history of, as Setzer says in the liner notes, a sorely neglected, yet solely American musical genre.Īnd, he did his homework, and thus got it dead to rights. If for any reason you thought that Brian Setzer’s involvement with the Stray Cats and his interest and passion for rockabilly music was phony, listen to this incredible record and you can bet your pompadour that you’ll change your mind, lickety-split. Here's a review of it that I just did for Sound Waves: I would expect we'd hear a few tracks from this during the trio segment of his upcoming Christmas tour with the Orchestra. Setzer's fans should enjoy this one as well. I don't know how purists would take a project such as this, but I've enjoyed it so far! Plus, with the credits in the booklet, I can seek out the originals for reference. Since Simmons could not recall the original lyrics, Setzer completed the song with his blessing, and Simmons even sings backup vocals on it! On a few tracks, too, The Jordanaires make an appearance for backgrouond vocals (on the Charlie Rich song "Lonely Weekends" and Tommy Blake's "Flatfoot Sam"). One song is notable in that only a fragment of it was left on an old recording: "Peroxide Blonde in a Hopped Up Model Ford" by Jumpin' Gene Simmons. Some songs I recognized here were "Red Hot", "Slow Down", "Real Wild Child", "Mona Lisa" and "Blue Suede Shoes". I'm still discovering rockabilly myself, and this may be a good starting point for others. The mastering doesn't seem too "smashed" for a recent CD.it doesn't really stick out as being headache-inducing like some other recent CDs I've heard. The mics are also vintage, and the entire project was recorded in Nashville. Sure, it has modern engineering, but Setzer used an old Gretsch "duo-jet" guitar played through a small Supro amp, "blew up about 4 echo units" (his words ), and they even used tape delays (no digital here) and an old water cistern out behind the studio as their reverb chamber. Setzer has a lot of respect and admiration for the music and the artists that originally created it!Įven the sound is "authentic" here. So it sounds familiar without being a note-for-note "ripoff" of the original. To a point, maybe.but the intent here was to recreate the rhythmic foundation that made Sun's sound so unique, and yet Setzer's own vocals and guitar playing are a combination of the old ideas and riffs with his own personality coming through. At this point you wonder if they are just doing a note-for-note reproduction of the originals. For some songs, Setzer made use of an acoustic guitar, and also enlisted the help of rockabilly pianist Kevin McKendree to remain true to that original sound. Drummer Bernie Dresel charted out the original drum parts (including all the little fills and nuances) and plays with the same type of kit used back then bassist Mark Winchester also stays true to the originals. Setzer and his band took a different route. Normally a band like this would just take the songs and rip through them in their current style on modern-day instruments. It contains 23 classic Sun tracks, from well-known tunes to some relatively obscure gems. I just picked up this CD a couple of weeks ago, and I'll admit I've had a lot of fun listening to it! This is Brian Setzer's latest recording, Rockabilly Riot Vol.
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