Rockabilly Slap Bass has become an art form unto itself

Back in the days when rockabilly music was originally taking shape, country music recordings rarely featured drums. In the early 1950s, some acts began using them, but they were still frowned upon by the country music elite. Because country music had such a major impact on the development of rockabilly, drums were initially left out of the rockabilly lineup as well. With no drummer, who was going to set the beat? That task fell to the bassist.

Along with the influence of country, rockabilly grew out of blues and rhythm and blues. Blues bassists found themselves competing to be heard above the rest of the band, especially in up-tempo music like jump blues and rhythm and blues. Of course, they all played acoustic double basses and had no amplification for them, so they just started playing loud to be heard. Along with the more aggressive playing came the sounds of the strings breaking against the string board.

Players soon realized that far from being a problem, this noise presented an opportunity. Bassists could now add a percussive element to the band by simply hitting the strings against the bass in various rhythms while simultaneously playing their bass notes.

Rockabilly bassists took the concept even further and developed a very aggressive and percussive string-tapping style which, when accentuated with the ever-present rockabilly echo during recording, created a very distinctive sound that plays such an important role in the definition of rockabilly music as the guitars yes.

Early Sun Records recordings of Elvis were arranged without drums. All the rhythm was provided by Bill Black pounding on the bass fiddle from the old “doghouse”. “That’s All Right,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Mystery Train,” and other great songs feature just Bill Black’s bass, Scotty Moore’s lead electric guitar, and Elvis on vocals and acoustic rhythm guitar.

It didn’t take long for the rockabilly cats to realize that the no drumming rule didn’t apply to this new music and drums began to appear on recordings very quickly. (Still, when Elvis appeared onstage at the Louisiana carriage ride, house drummer DJ Fontana played from behind a curtain at the back of the stage so as not to offend the country audience. Fontana and Elvis quickly hit it off and played together for years, and Elvis immediately let it out from behind the curtain!)

While the addition of drums didn’t instantly stop the bass sound, eventually bands realized they no longer needed the bass player to provide the beat, and seeing that an electric bass is much easier to get along with. and amplify than a bass violin: many musicians began to make the switch to electric. As the rockabilly fad died out around 1960, so did the use of the double bass, and it all but disappeared from rock and roll by the early ’60s.

But the rockabilly revival of the late ’70s and early ’80s was also a revival of the slap bass style. Most modern rockabilly bands consider this to be an essential element of authentic rockabilly music. And many musicians have greatly expanded the slap-bass style. Lee Rocker, who played bass for the Stray Cats, is a perfect example of someone who took the style to new heights and turned it into an art form unto itself.

Like the rest of rockabilly, it turns out that there was a historical basis for the slap bass style that everyone now associates with the genre. Rockabilly didn’t invent the style, but just like it did everything else that went into it, did adopt it, expand it, improve it, exploit it, and finally own it.