Welcome to the Rockabilly Belt

There’s a movement afoot to put northeast Mississippi on the musical map for its place in the birth of rockabilly music.

Written by Eugene Stockstill | Photos by Joe Worthem

If you are from northeast Mississippi, rockabilly is your proud birthright. And there’s a movement afoot to make sure you and everyone else knows it.

And just what is rockabilly, you might be asking yourself? It’s Johnny Cash preaching “Folsom Prison Blues” to a roomful of rowdy inmates. It’s Elvis Presley driving all the girls crazy, telling them “That’s Alright.” It’s Carl Perkins perhaps driving them even crazier with his “Blue Suede Shoes.” That’s the short answer.

No rockabilly? No rock ‘n’ roll. No Rolling Stones. No Taylor Swift, for that matter.

“We’re here to give some historical accuracy and credence to where this music came from,” said Jeff Cole, executive director of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame Museum, whose bass-playing father played backup for Presley. “The hills area (of Mississippi) is the truest breeding ground for rockabilly.”

Cole is leading a push to make sure the world never forgets the Highway 45 corridor birthed the sounds that helped make Tupelo’s most famous son the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

A regional foundation has been established. A rockabilly museum somewhere between Tupelo and Corinth may not be far behind. And besides this summer’s annual Tupelo Elvis Festival, the city is gearing up for two big events in September to commemorate some of rockabilly’s most important moments (see Rockin’ Good Times on page 76).

Let’s dig deeper into the sound of rockabilly music.

The word rockabilly comes from two other words, rock and hillbilly. It is the music of the hill people. Part country, part bluegrass, part rhythm and blues, with more than a dash of the stuff that put the boogie in boogie-woogie.

“If you can’t dance to it, you can’t dance to anything,” said Dale Rushing, a Tupelo musician and a historian of the music of the Deep South, who is working alongside Cole to make sure northeast Mississippi gets all the credit it deserves.

Rushing sings with a band, The Rust Bucket Roadies, and gushes rockabilly lore like clear, fresh water pours out of a natural spring in the woods south of Tremont.

“We look to Memphis and Sun Records. To me, this part of the world was at least as important,” he said.

Trying to distinguish rockabilly from, say, rock ‘n’ roll can get tricky. Trying to pinpoint where exactly it started or who exactly started it is a little bit like trying to build a house in the middle of a tornado.

Rushing cites a fellow named Cooney Vaughan as one of the first innovators of the electrified sounds of rockabilly. Cole takes it in a much different direction: One of the first was Hank Williams Sr.’s song “Move It On Over,” a tune that George Thorogood and the Destroyers amped up considerably a few decades later.

“That was where the percussion style came in,” Cole said. “When Hank would pick his guitar, he would use his thumb to create a percussive sound. Just watch his hands. I don’t think he knew he was doing it.”

By the time that famous gyrating kid from Tupelo and his band’s three-instrument sounds hit the biggest of the big times, nothing could hold back the flood of music that would wash across the world.

Rockabilly shuffles. It bounces. It snaps. It’s Roy Orbison. The Stray Cats. Marty Stuart and

His Fabulous Superlatives. You can hear rockabilly grind through again and again in the work of those swinging sultans, Dire Straits. Remember “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets? The rockabilly influence doesn’t get much heavier than that.

“In popular music, you had rockabilly, then you had rock ‘n’ roll,” Rushing said. “That influence helped people like Eric Clapton and Leon Russell and guys like that.”

And it all started right around here. It should have done for northeast Mississippi what country music did for Nashville, what the blues did for the Mississippi-Arkansas Delta, experts say.

Through the influence of state Senator Chad McMahan, Cole said, a statewide proclamation this year anoints the Highway 45 belt as the official birthplace of rockabilly, and Cole said he’s also going to lobby for that designation to be added to the national archives.

“Those guys were trying to energize their sound so much. It’s just the energy,” Rushing said.

“Bands beyond this area, they’d never seen anything like it, with girls screaming, crying. Carl Perkins had that sound, too. Carl Perkins, the first time he played ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’ in Amory, got the crowd going more than Elvis did. It’s just hyped-up music. And that’s really what boogie-woogie music is.”

Presley will always be the bridge, though, between the countryfied sounds that came before and the rockin’ out ways that came after, Cole said.

“Sun Records didn’t have the sound until Elvis. They were behind until Elvis came along,” Cole said. “He was unbridled, and he truly did feel the energy. That’s what made him move. It was pure magnetic showmanship.”

Rockin’ Good Times

Expect more than the usual amount of musical fanfare in Tupelo over the next two years.

There will be the annual Tupelo Elvis Festival June 3-6, of course. This year’s slogan: “One guitar. One town. One legend.” And since next year marks the 50th anniversary of The King’s untimely death, do not be surprised if 2027 ushers in more than a few Elvis-related activities.

Sept. 26 this year will be the 70th anniversary of a legendary show in Tupelo. In 1945, 10-year-old Elvis Presley had come in fifth in a talent show hosted by the Mississippi-Alabama Fair & Dairy Show. Eleven years later, he came back and made history in his hometown.

Here’s the way the website Mississippi Memories recalled the King’s 1956 Homecoming Concert.

“Elvis performed two shows in downtown Tupelo, diagonally across from the Tupelo Hardware Store, where Gladys bought the first guitar for Elvis. The shows were part of the Mississippi-Alabama Fair & Dairy Show. The day started with a small reception in the presence of the mayor, followed by a parade through the center of the city. There were a hundred National Guardsmen surrounding the stage to control the crowds of excited fans. A 14-year-old Tammy Pugh (Tammy Wynette) watched from the front row.”

Presley received a key to the city, then turned around and donated all the proceeds from the day to the city for the upkeep of the family’s old house and for the creation of a neighborhood park.

In memory of that piece of music history, there will be a concert Sept. 26 at Fairpark featuring Elvis tribute artist Nick Perkins from Louisiana, who will recreate the historic event. It is a joint venture between the Elvis Presley Birthplace, the city’s Convention and Visitors’ Bureau and the Downtown Tupelo Main Street Association.

“Our vision was to do it here in our 125-seat theater,” Roy Turner, executive director of the Elvis Presley Birthplace, said. “Our board said, ‘Uh-uh, we’re going to do it downtown at Fairpark, make it big.’”

Separately, the Northeast Mississippi Rockabilly Heritage Foundation/Rockabilly Hall of Fame Museum is organizing Rockabillaque Tupelo for Sept. 24-27, a festival to celebrate all things Elvis Presley and rockabilly. One of the things to be commemorated is a performance from that same September 1956 weekend on the same stage by Wanda Jackson, the “Queen Mother of Rockabilly,” who is now in her 80s and living in Oklahoma.

There will be events all up and down the Highway 45 corridor, and nationally known musicians are expected to be in Tupelo for that one. Plans are still in the works.

Rockabilly Trivia

Here are a few bits of trivia connected to the sounds known as rockabilly.

• James David Vaughan from Tennessee, also known as the “Father of Southern Gospel,” is a 20th century musical legend whose influence, oddly enough, has been cited as an early inspiration for country, rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll.

• Some of the well-known Mississippians connected to rockabilly include Mary Elizabeth Johnson Lee of Corinth (Jeanie Greene), who sang backup for Elvis Presley and also recorded with Cher; Charlie Feathers of Holly Springs, whose song “Can’t Hardly Stand It” Quentin Tarantino used in his film “Kill Bill: Volume 2”; and “Jumpin” Gene Simmons of Itawamba County, best known for the record “Haunted House.”

• Another Mississippi native sometimes connected with rockabilly, Delaney Bramlett of Pontotoc County, wound up recording with the likes of George Harrison, Duane Allman and Eric Clapton.

• One famous show in the 1950s, the “Show That Made History,” took place at the National Guard armory in Amory and featured Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins on the same night.

• Highway 45 through Lee, Prentiss and Alcorn counties is officially designated as “Rockabilly Way.” A stretch of highway from Jackson, Tennessee, to the Mississippi line was given a similar christening (Rockabilly Highway) years before that.

• In the late 1950s and early 60s, the Tupelo Fairgrounds hosted a cornucopia of rockabilly talent, and even Roy Orbison may have played in Tupelo.

• Dewey Phillips, who had a wildly popular radio show, “Red, Hot and Blue” on WHBQ in Memphis in the 1950s, was the first DJ to broadcast the first record ever made by a young Elvis Presley, “That’s All Right”/“Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Phillips also helped break the color barrier by playing black musicians’ tunes on his show.