Rockin' Randall
During his 15 successful years as a full time professional drummer, Rockin Randall learned and played all types of music, including: Classic Country, Rockabilly, Rock & Roll, Blues, Swing, Big Band, Hard Rock, Country Rock and even some jazz.
In desiring to "get out front and sing" he became a front-man lead vocalist, but found that most Country Bands found his sound "too Blues-y", most Rock Bands found him "too Country" and most Blues Bands didn't know what to make of his Honky-Tonk vocals at all!
So, upon relocating from Los Angeles to the greater Tampa Bay area in 2005, Randall made the decision to "start his own thing."
He now combines his deep love of classic Honky-Tonk, the high energy of Vintage Rockabilly, and the raw, honest soulfulness of Authentic Blues, creating his own personal mini-Genre: HonkabillyBlues!
"Honkabilly Blues"
What exactly is "HONKABILLY BLUES"?
HONKABILLY BLUES is a unique blend of:
Classic Honky-Tonk: derived from Country and Blues and became the father of Rockabilly
Vintage Rockabilly: which sprung from Honky-Tonk, Country, Bluegrass and Blues
Authentic Blues: which musical style is apparent in Country, Rock & Roll and Modern Blues
By combining all three we are not stuck to a single genre and are actually just playing ...
Good Old American Music - In Our Own Unique Way!
To book us for your next party or function call Randall on 727-466-8988
And's here's the general rundown (thank you Wikipedia!) for anyone interested.
HONKY TONK:
The first musical genre to be commonly known as honky tonk music was a style of piano playing related to ragtime, but emphasizing rhythm more than melody or harmony, since the style evolved in response to an environment where the pianos were often poorly cared for, tending to be out of tune and having some nonfunctioning keys.
Such honky tonk music was an important influence on the formation of the boogie woogie piano style, as indicated by Jelly Roll Morton's 1938 record "Honky Tonk Music," and Meade "Lux" Lewis's big hit "Honky Tonk Train Blues" which Lewis recorded many times from 1927 into the 1950s and was covered by many other musicians, including Oscar Peterson.
The 12-bar blues instrumental "Honky Tonk" by the Bill Doggett Combo with a sinuous saxophone line and driving, slow beat, was an early rock and roll hit. New Orleans native Fats Domino was another honky tonk piano man, whose "Blueberry Hill" and "Walkin' to New Orleans" became hits on the popular music charts.
During the pre-World War II years, the music industry began to refer to honky tonk music being played from Texas and Oklahoma to the West Coast as hillbilly music. More recently it has come to refer to the primary sound in country music, developing in Nashville as Western swing became accepted there. Originally, it featured the guitar, fiddle, string bass, and steel guitar (importated from Hawaiian folk music). The vocals were originally rough and nasal, like singer-songwriters Floyd Tillman and Hank Williams, but later developed a clear and sharp sound with singers such as George Jones and Johnny Paycheck. Lyrics tended to focus on working-class life, with frequently tragic themes of lost love, adultery, loneliness, alcoholism, and self-pity.
During World War II, honky tonk country was popularized by Ernest Tubb ("I'm Walking The Floor Over You") who took the sound to Nashville, where he was the first musician to play electric guitar on Grand Ole Opry. In the 1950s, though, honky tonk entered its golden age with the massive popularity of Webb Pierce, Hank Locklin, Lefty Frizzell, George Jones and Hank Williams. In the mid to late 1950s, rockabilly, which melded honky tonk country to Rhythm & Blues, and the slick country music of the Nashville sound ended honky tonk's initial period of dominance.
In the 1970s, outlaw country's brand of rough honky tonk was represented by artists such as Gary Stewart, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, David Allen Coe, and Billy Joe Shaver. During the 1980s, a revival of slicker honky tonk took over the charts. Beginning with Dwight Yoakam and George Strait in the middle of the decade, a more pop-oriented version of honky tonk became massively popular. It crossed over into the mainstream in the early 1990s with singers like Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and Clint Black.
ROCKABILLY:
There was a close relationship between the blues and country music from the very earliest country recordings in the 1920s. The first nationwide "country" hit was "Wreck of the Old '97", backed with "Lonesome Road Blues", which also became very popular.[3] Jimmie Rodgers, the "first true country star", was known as the "Blue Yodeler," and most of his songs used blues-based chord progressions, although with very different instrumentation and sound than the recordings of his black contemporaries like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bessie Smith.
During the 1930s and 1940s, two new sounds emerged. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were the leading proponents of Western Swing, which combined country singing and steel guitar with big band jazz influences and horn sections; Wills' music found massive popularity. Recordings of Wills' from the mid 40s to the early 50s include "two beat jazz" rhythms, "jazz choruses", and guitar work that preceded early rockabilly recordings.[5] Wills is quoted as saying "Rock and Roll? Why, man, that's the same kind of music we've been playin' since 1928!...But it's just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It's the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm's what's important."
After blues artists like Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson launched a nationwide boogie craze starting in 1938, country artists like Moon Mullican, the Delmore Brothers, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Speedy West, Jimmy Bryant, and the Maddox Brothers and Rose began recording what was known as "Hillbilly Boogie," which consisted of "hillbilly" vocals and instrumentation with a boogie bass line.
The Maddox Brothers and Rose were at "the leading edge of rockabilly with the slapped bass that Fred Maddox had developed". Maddox said, "You've got to have somethin' they can tap their foot, or dance to, or to make 'em feel it." After WWII the band shifted into higher gear leaning more toward a whimsical honky-tonk feel, with a heavy, manic bottom end - the slap bass of Fred Maddox". "They played hillbilly music but it sounded real hot. They played real loud for that time, too..." The Maddoxes were also known for their lively "antics and stuff." "We always put on a show... I mean it just wasn't us up there pickin' and singing. There was something going on all the time." "...the demonstrative Maddoxes, helped release white bodies from traditional motions of decorum... more and more younger white artists began to behave on stage like the lively Maddoxes."."[10] Others believe that they were not only at the leading edge, but were one of the first, if not the first, "Rockabilly" group.
Emmylou Harris believes that performers such as Rose Maddox have never received the recognition they deserve. She says part of this is due to what she calls a reluctance in American society to celebrate the value of white country and roots music.
Zeb Turner's February 1953 recording of "Jersey Rock" with its mix of musical styles, lyrics about music and dancing, and guitar solo, is another example of the mixing of musical genres in the first half of the 1950s.
Bill Monroe is known as the Father of Bluegrass, a specific style of "country" music. Many of his songs were in blues form, while others took the form of folk ballads, parlor songs, or waltzes. Bluegrass was a staple of "country" music in the early 1950s, and is often mentioned as an influence in the development of rockablly.
The Honky Tonk sound, which "tended to focus on working-class life, with frequently tragic themes of lost love, adultery, loneliness, alcoholism, and self-pity", also included songs of energetic, uptempo Hillbilly Boogie. Some of the better known musicians who recorded and performed these songs are: the Delmore Brothers, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Merle Travis, Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Curtis Gordon's 1953 "Rompin' and Stompin' ", an uptempo hillbilly-boogie included the lyrics, "Way down south where I was born, They rocked all night 'til early morn', They start rockin', They start rockin' an rollin'."
There was a close relationship between the blues and country music from the very earliest country recordings in the 1920s. The first nationwide "country" hit was "Wreck of the Old '97",[1][2] backed with "Lonesome Road Blues", which also became very popular.[3] Jimmie Rodgers, the "first true country star", was known as the "Blue Yodeler," and most of his songs used blues-based chord progressions, although with very different instrumentation and sound than the recordings of his black contemporaries like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bessie Smith.
During the 1930s and 1940s, two new sounds emerged. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were the leading proponents of Western Swing, which combined country singing and steel guitar with big band jazz influences and horn sections; Wills' music found massive popularity. Recordings of Wills' from the mid 40s to the early 50s include "two beat jazz" rhythms, "jazz choruses", and guitar work that preceded early rockabilly recordings. Wills is quoted as saying "Rock and Roll? Why, man, that's the same kind of music we've been playin' since 1928!...But it's just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It's the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm's what's important."
The Maddox Brothers and Rose were at "the leading edge of rockabilly with the slapped bass that Fred Maddox had developed". Maddox said, "You've got to have somethin' they can tap their foot, or dance to, or to make 'em feel it." After WWII the band shifted into higher gear leaning more toward a whimsical honky-tonk feel, with a heavy, manic bottom end - the slap bass of Fred Maddox". "They played hillbilly music but it sounded real hot. They played real loud for that time, too..." The Maddoxes were also known for their lively "antics and stuff." "We always put on a show... I mean it just wasn't us up there pickin' and singing. There was something going on all the time."[9] "...the demonstrative Maddoxes, helped release white bodies from traditional motions of decorum... more and more younger white artists began to behave on stage like the lively Maddoxes.". "Others believe that they were not only at the leading edge, but were one of the first, if not the first, "Rockabilly" group.
Blues musical styles, forms (12-bar blues), melodies, and the blues scale have influenced many other genres of music, such as rock and roll, jazz, and popular music. Prominent jazz, folk or rock performers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and the White Stripes have performed significant blues recordings. The blues scale is often used in popular songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night", blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love", and even in orchestral works such as George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F". Gershwin's second "Prelude" for solo piano is an interesting example of a classical blues, maintaining the form with academic strictness.
The blues scale is ubiquitous in modern popular music and informs many modal frames, especially the ladder of thirds used in rock music (e.g., in "A Hard Day's Night"). Blues forms are used in the theme to the televised Batman, teen idol Fabian's hit, "Turn Me Loose", country music star Jimmie Rodgers' music, and guitarist/vocalist Tracy Chapman's hit "Give Me One Reason".
R&B music can be traced back to spirituals and blues. Musically, spirituals were a descendant of New England choral traditions, and in particular of Isaac Watts's hymns, mixed with African rhythms and call-and-response forms. Spirituals or religious chants in the African-American community are much better documented than the "low-down" blues. Spiritual singing developed because African-American communities could gather for mass or worship gatherings, which were called camp meetings.
Early country bluesmen such as Skip James, Charley Patton, Georgia Tom Dorsey played country and urban blues and had influences from spiritual singing. Dorsey helped to popularize Gospel music. Gospel music developed in the 1930s, with the Golden Gate Quartet. In the 1950s, soul music by Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown used gospel and blues music elements. In the 1960s and 1970s, gospel and blues were these merged in soul blues music. Funk music of the 1970s was influenced by soul; funk can be seen as an antecedent of hip-hop and contemporary R&B.
Before World War II, the boundaries between blues and jazz were less clear. Usually jazz had harmonic structures stemming from brass bands, whereas blues had blues forms such as the 12-bar blues. However, the jump blues of the 1940s mixed both styles. After WWII, blues had a substantial influence on jazz. Bebop classics, such as Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time", used the blues form with the pentatonic scale and blue notes. Bebop marked a major shift in the role of jazz, from a popular style of music for dancing, to a "high-art," less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music". The audience for both blues and jazz split, and the border between blues and jazz became more defined. Artists straddling the boundary between jazz and blues are categorized into the jazz-blues sub-genre.
The blues' twelve-bar structure and the blues scale was a major influence on rock-and-roll music. Rock-and-roll has been called "blues with a back beat". Carl Perkins called rockabilly "blues with a country beat". Rockabillies were also said to be twelve-bar blues played with a bluegrass beat. "Hound Dog", with its unmodified twelve-bar structure (in both harmony and lyrics) and a melody centered on flatted third of the tonic (and flatted seventh of the subdominant), is a blues song transformed into a rock-and-roll song. Jerry Lee Lewis's style of rock 'n' roll was heavily influenced by the blues and its derivative boogie woogie. His style of music was not exactly rockabilly but it has been often called real rock 'n' roll (this is a label he shares with several African American rock 'n' roll singers).
Early country music was infused with the blues. Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican, Bob Wills, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams have all described themselves as blues singers and their music has a blues feel that is different to the country pop of Eddy Arnold. A lot of the 1970s-era "outlaw" country music by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings also borrowed from the blues. When Jerry Lee Lewis returned to country after the decline of 1950s style rock 'n' roll, he sang his country with a blues feel and often included blues standards on his albums.
Many early rock-and-roll songs are based on blues: "That's All Right Mama", "Johnny B. Goode", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On", "Shake, Rattle, and Roll", and "Long Tall Sally". The early African American rock musicians retained the sexual themes and innuendos of blues music: "Got a gal named Sue, knows just what to do" ("Tutti Frutti", Little Richard) or "See the girl with the red dress on, She can do the Birdland all night long" ("What'd I Say", Ray Charles).
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