Below The Fold

So, if you were one of the few people not watching Dante Culpepper light up Sunday night with yet another 5-touchdown performance, you might have been channel surfing like me. I was torn between watching the “Super Volcano” documentary on National Geographic channel, and a Women of Rockabilly special on PBS. Amy settled that one, and we watched the Beth Harrington tribute to the ladies of the 50s West.

Even as immersed in the scene as I got back in my MP8 days (our Guitarist, Mikey Taviera, played 11 years with the Tenessee Boys, a Portuguese Rockabilly outfit dedicated almost fanatically to their purist approach to the genre), I never really got a sense of the role these women played in the early days… sure, now you’ve got groups like Kim Lenz and the Jaguars and Candye Kane, but I never really heard much about these old timers who came up with Elvis and his ilk.

Harrington zoomed in on Wanda Jackson, Brenda Lee, Janis Martin and Lorrie Collins, four women who pioneered the rock suffrage movement decades before Madonna was born. The discussion of the time and place and birth of rock and all the controversy surrounding these young ladies and their unladylike behavior was a bit contrite and clichéd, sure. But the music that underscored it all was sublime, and the way Harrington wrapped it all up into a present day context drove it home. Seeing Janis Martin rocking out at a recent Weekender in Vegas, still as honey-toned and sassy as ever—well, it kind of suggested how it might be to see Elvis perform today.

Anyway, give Janis a listen. And then go buy an album or two.