Artist: Gene Vincent
Genre(s):
Rock & Roll
Other
Discography:
The Beginning Of The End
Year: 1962
Tracks: 28
Wild Cat
Year: 1959
Tracks: 21
Say Mama
Year: 1958
Tracks: 28
Git It
Year: 1957
Tracks: 28
Dance To The Bop
Year: 1956
Tracks: 29
Bluejean Bop! - Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps
Year: 1956
Tracks: 18
Be-Bop-A-Lula
Year: 1956
Tracks: 28
Gene Vincent only had unmatched actually prominent hit, "Be-Bop-a-Lula," which epitomized rockabilly at its prime in 1956 with its sharp guitar breaks, scanty trap drums, flapping echo, and Vincent's dyspnoeic, sexy vocals. Yet his place as unmatched 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. The leather-clad, gameness, greasy-haired isaac Merrit Singer was besides one of rock's original bad boys, lionized by romanticists of past tense and gift generations attracted to his primitive, sometimes ferine style and unsubduable spirit.
Vincent was bucking the odds by entering professional music in the low place. As a 20-year-old in the Navy, he suffered a life-threatening bike stroke that almost resulted in the amputation of his leg, and left wing him with a permanent limp and considerable chronic painfulness for the remain of his life. After the accident he began to concentrate on building a musical life history, playing with country bands around the Norfolk, VA, area. Demos cut at a local wireless post, fronting a lot assembled around Gene by his direction, landed Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps a narrow at Capitol, which hoped they'd constitute rival for Elvis Presley.
Indeed it had, as by this time Vincent had plunged into full-scale rockabilly, equal to of both fast-paced exuberance and whispery, virtually sensitive ballads. The Blue Caps were one of the sterling rock bands of the '50s, anchored at first base by the stunning silvery, faster-than-light guitar leads of Cliff Gallup. The slap-back echo of "Be-Bop-a-Lula," combined with Gene's swooping vocals, lED many to error the singer for Elvis when the record number one strike the airwaves in mid-1956, on its way to the Top Ten. The Elvis comparability wasn't alone fair; Vincent had a gentler, less melodramatic style, capable of both whipping up a storm or twisting down pat to a hush.
Magnificent follow-ups like "Raceway With the Devil," "Bluejean Bop," and "B-I-Bickey, Bi, Bo-Bo-Go" failed to click in intimately as self-aggrandizing a way, although these overly ar symbolic of rockabilly at its most luxuriant and knock-down. By the end of 1956, the Blue Caps were starting time to undergo the low gear of changeless personnel changes that would extend throughout the '50s, the most crucial expiration being the difference of Gallup. The 35 or so tracks he tailor with the band -- many of which showed up entirely on albums or b-sides -- were unimpeachably Vincent's greatest do work, as his subsequent recordings would never once again capture their pristine clarity and uninhibited spontaneity.
Vincent had his second and final Top Twenty hit in 1957 with "Lotta Lovin'," which reflected his progressively tamer approach path to production and vocals, the abandon and hot atmosphere toned dispirited in favor of poppier material, more subdued guitars, and conventional-sounding backup singers. He recorded a great deal for Capitol end-to-end the breathe of the '50s, and it's unfair to displace those sides taboo of script; they were respectable, at times exciting rockabilly, only a marked disappointment in comparison with his earlier work. His act was captured for posterity in one of the best scenes of one of the first-class honours degree Hollywood films to feature film rock'n'roll & drift stars, The Girl Can't Help It.
Live, Vincent continued to rock'n'roll the house with heedless intensity level and showmanship, and he became especially popular overseas. A 1960 tour of duty of Britain, though, brought tragedy when his booster Eddie Cochran, wHO divided up the bill on Vincent's U.K. shows, died in a railroad car stroke that he was too involved in, though Vincent survived. By the early '60s, his recordings had turn much more sporadic and depress in calibre, and his chief audience was in Europe, particularly in England (where he lived for a patch) and France.
His Capitol compact expired in 1963, and he worn-out the stay of his life transcription for several other labels, none of which got him close to that retort hit. Vincent ne'er stopped-up stressful to resurrect his vocation, coming into court at a 1969 Toronto john Rock fete on the same poster as John Lennon, though his medical, drinking, and marital problems were making his life a muss, and diminishing his stage presence as well. He died at the age of 36 from a ruptured venter ulcer, one of rock's number one mythic figures.
