Eddie Cochran, Rock 'n' Roll Pioneer

I got rid of my 45rpm record collection from the 50s a few years ago. Katie and I were getting ready to move and we were pairing down our stuff. I didn’t own a record player, so I had no way of playing vinyl records. Besides, if I wanted to hear these early rock ‘n’ roll songs, I could easily stream them. It all made perfect sense at the time. The guy in the used record shop hastily flipped through my cherished stack of musical gems as if he were shuffling a deck of cards. When he got to the last one, he looked up at me and said, “They’re not worth anything”. I couldn’t believe it. I pointed out that some of these records were the beginning of a musical revolution that’s still going on today. “Nobody wants 45s and nobody’s buying them.” He pushed my pre-teen record collection across the counter as if it were garbage. I picked a record off the stack and held it in front of his face. “Here’s the original ‘Summertime Blues’ by Eddy Cochran.” “Never heard of him,” he replied. To jar his memory I added, “The Who covered it on their ‘Live at Leeds’ album”. The guy just shook his head back and forth. “And they performed it in the Woodstock documentary” I added. “Didn’t see it.” I could tell he’d had enough of me. He turned away to do something behind the counter, so I took my stack of records and left. I think he was probably a Millennial. I dropped my records off at Goodwill on my way home. I hoped some baby boomer who still had a record player and an adapter for 45s would discover them. As a pre-teen white boy growing up in the Midwest suburbs in the 1950s, the impact of early rock ‘n’ roll was huge. I think it was one of those “you had to have been there” times. Before the rock ‘n’ roll revolution, some of the popular songs were “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” by Bill Hayes, “Autumn Leaves” an instrumental by Roger Williams, “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Tweedle Dee” by Georgia Gibbs and “Moments to Remember” by the Four Lads. Then in the summer of 1956, Elvis burst onto the radio like a lightning bolt. I immediately bought the 45, “Hound Dog” side-A and “Don’t be Cruel” side-B. In the still segregated 50s, the radio stations in the Midwest did not play the black “race” music of the time. A young Elvis listened to this music on the radio and was able to see live performances after his parents moved to Memphis when he was 13. When Elvis began playing the guitar and singing, he blended this “race” music or what we now call rhythm and blues and Gospel with the hillbilly and western music of the time to create Rock-a-Billy which was the earliest form of rock ‘n’ roll. A host of young musicians imitated Elvis, later finding their own voices in this new genre, and none of them did it better than Eddie Cochran. Eddie was already a working musician by the time he became aware of Elvis. At age 14, he bought a blond Gibson cutaway acoustic guitar and modified it with an electric pick-up. The guitar became his passion. He taught himself to play blues guitar as well as the finger picking styles of Chet Atkins and Merl Travis. In 1953 his family moved to southern California from Minnesota. That summer, Eddie and a high school friend named Chuck, experimented with recording techniques on a two-track tape recorder. They fooled around with over-dubbing, multi-track recording and distortion techniques. Eddie became an extremely proficient guitar player and he also learned to play the piano, bass, and drums. Eddie dropped out of high school in 1955 when he was 16 to pursue a music career. He teamed up with another musician named Hank Cochran, who was no relation to him, but they called themselves the Cochran Brothers. They played pure country like the musicians on the Grand Ole Opry and performed at club gigs and dance halls. They even landed a few appearances on local TV shows. The Cochran Brothers cut a couple records at a local Hollywood studio, but didn’t have much record sales. Their songs featured their tight harmonies and Eddie’s guitar prowess, which later helped their careers. They started touring the south and landed an appearance on a Dallas TV and radio show called Big D Jamboree. According to Bobby Cochran, Eddie’s nephew, the show was broadcast from the Dallas Sportatorium, a huge “airplane hangar size Quonset hut.” According to Bobby, Eddie and Hank noticed a police officer standing to the side “covered in scratches”. They asked him about it and he told them some kid by the name of Elvis Presley had played there a few nights before and he explained “…all them gals nearly scratched us to pieces tryin’ to get to him.” After their tour was over, Eddie and Hank went to Memphis where they witnessed a Presley gig. “They were knocked out. When charismatic Elvis hit the stage, it was dynamic, like magic. The young women in the audience went wild.” Eddie believed they were witnessing “the world’s next musical hero.” After the concert they went backstage and briefly talked with Elvis. Eddie began to incorporate Elvis’s style into the duo’s performances. The next year he quit the Cochran Brothers and teamed up with Jerry Capehart who became his co-songwriter and manager. Eddie became a solo act, playing and singing strictly rock ‘n’ roll, which was just starting to take off around the country. Songs like “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets, “Maybellene by Chuck Berry and “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard, began to get airplay around the country. Eddie’s first successful song was “Twenty Flight Rock” written by Ned Fairchild. He recorded it in 1956 and performed it in a cameo appearance in the movie “The Girl Can’t Help It” starring Jayne Mansfield. In 1957, a 15-year-old Paul McCartney performed the song for 16-year-old John Lennon when he auditioned for Lennon’s band the Quarrymen. Soon after his movie appearance Eddie was signed to Liberty records and recorded “Sittin’ in the Balcony” which became a top twenty hit and rose to #18 on the Billboard chart. He “lip-synced” the song on Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beechnut Show. “Summertime Blues” was written by Eddie and Jerry and released in August of 1958. It peaked at #8 on the Billboard top 100. Recorded in Hollywood at Gold Star Recording Studios, Cochran played all the guitar parts and sang both the high and low parts of the song. He and his girlfriend Sharon Sheeley did the hand clapping in the background. The low voice in the song was meant as a tribute to the black character of Kingfish on the Amos and Andy show. Connie “Guybo” Smith played the electric bass and Earl Palmer played drums. Eddie’s career took off and he spent the rest of his short life playing his music in rock ‘n’ roll concerts around the US and in England. He died in a car crash in England on April 17, 1960. He was 22 years old. He was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Summertime Blues has been recorded many times over the years by a variety of artists. Alan Jackson had a #1 hit, Buck Owens recorded it and Brian Setzer’s cover was in the movie “La Bamba”. The Who made it a staple in their concerts and gave the song new life. But Eddie’s version even today sounds great, a perfect example of early rock ‘n’ roll. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and ranked #77 on the list of greatest Guitar tracks by Q magazine. It is #73 on Rolling Stone magazines greatest 500 songs of all time and The Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum lists it as one of the songs that shaped rock ‘n’ roll along with his song “C’mon Everybody”.