“When I first started I never meant to make money. My only thought was to make a living singing, but all of a sudden I was getting $1500 a night. And if you take a 19-year-old boy and put him in those circumstances…it was a bad scene, it shouldn’t have happened on that first record. I didn’t know how to handle a hit: I was only a child, a boy.”
~Gene Vincent in 1969Gene Vincent only had one really big hit, “Be-Bop-a-Lula,” which epitomized rockabilly at its prime in 1956 with its sharp guitar breaks, spare snare drums, fluttering echo, and Vincent’s breathless, sexy vocals. Yet his place as one of the great early rock & roll singers is secure, backed up by a wealth of fine smaller hits and non-hits that rate among the best rockabilly of all time.
~Richie Unterberger (allmusic.com)
Be-Bop-a-Lula:
Continue reading “February 11: Gene Vincent was born in 1935”
