Review: Johnny Burnette And The Rock'n'Roll Trio (1956)
Tracks: 1) Honey Hush; 2) Lonesome Train (On A Lonesome Track); 3) Sweet Love On My Mind; 4) Rock Billy Boogie; 5) Lonesome Tears In My Eyes; 6) All By Myself; 7) The Train Kept A-Rollin’; 8) I Just Found Out; 9) Your Baby Blue Eyes; 10) Chains Of Love; 11) I Love You So; 12) Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, Drinking Wine; 13*) Tear It Up; 14*) Youʼre Undecided; 15*) Oh Baby Babe; 16*) Midnight Train.
REVIEW
It is hardly a coincidence that both the Burnette brothers’ and their guitar player Paul Burlison’s primary claim to fame before music was boxing: all three had been Golden Gloves champions (in fact, this is where the brothers met Paul in the first place), and there are obvious and frequent glimpses of pure boxing aggression in much of their music — a perfect sublimational solution as far as I am concerned, though it also brings a whole new subtext to the "holding a baseball bat" line of ‘Honey Hush’, a line they did not invent but did appropriate with delightful gusto.
You do have to focus fairly hard on the sonic properties of the trio’s first single, ‘Tear It Up’, to note what it is which makes it stand out from the general pool of rockabilly copy-pastes recorded in the mid-Fifties. Although the song is formally an original composition, its melody is more or less completely taken from ‘Shake, Rattle & Roll’, and the arrangement is standard rockabilly fare à la early Sun-era Elvis. But while other performers would be content to simply imitate that sound, the Rock’n’Roll Trio chose to push it one or two steps further — to evolve it in a freer, wilder direction. To that end, Johnny Burnette delivers his lines in an overdriven, ecstatic tone which throws restraint out of the window, alternating them with series of football-fan-level yelps and howls; and Burlison pushes the treble levels on his guitar as high as it could be deemed prudent to go, creating a sound as self-indulgent as possible, one that demands your full attention to itself much like a cat that has not been fed for several hours. The only other guitar-based rockabilly band at the time who could boast the same desire to jump out of its britches in order to grab you were Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps — but the Rock’n’Roll Trio’s big difference was that they preferred a cleaner, more in-your-face sound without Gene’s echo-laden production style, which offers you a choice: the slightly «voodoo-like» effect from Gene or the completely down-to-earth, schoolyard-hooligan approach of the Burnette brothers. Both are equally valid from my point of view.
That said, ‘Tear It Up’ and its early sequels on their own are not enough to consolidate and validate the legend that is the Rock’n’Roll Trio (in fact, a few of them are mildly embarrassing, such as the fast acoustic Western ballad ‘Midnight Train’, on which Johnny goes way overboard with a faux Southwestern accent and plaintive intonations — this stuff should probably be best left to Johnny Cash). The legend was not properly born, in fact, until the fateful day when, according to his own words, Burlison accidentally dropped his amplifier, dislodged a power tube, and came up with the famous distorted sound of ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’ and ‘Honey Hush’ — two of the most, if not the most, period, dangerous-sounding songs of 1956, next to which even the wildest numbers ever recorded by Elvis sound like showtunes in comparison.
The truly delightful thing about these songs is that even today, after every technological breakthrough in sound production has been achieved, there is nothing in the recorded repertoire that sounds quite like that sound — it is truly a bit of a singularity in space and time. Distortion would soon be taken to new, barely imaginable heights, yet the distortion of ‘Train’ and ‘Honey Hush’ is in a class of its own. It is a quiet, reserved type of slightly grumbly distortion, a sort of grouchy echo that accompanies each note of the riffage — and since the riffage itself, in a jazzy fashion, keeps on varying and exploring the scale within reasonable limits, this creates the effect of some intimidating, if not openly aggressive, predator menacingly sniffing out every inch of your living space. Actually, while ‘Train’ is clearly the more famous song out of these two (largely because its legend would later be expanded by the Yardbirds and Aerosmith), ‘Honey Hush’ seems more wholesome to me because of how perfectly its aggressive instrumental tone matches the (allegedly misogynistic, but oh well) anger of the lyrics and the vocals — that is a whole frickin’ wall of pissed-off attitude right here, one that was so impressive on fiery teenagers around the globe that forty years later, even Paul McCartney himself would decide to revive the attitude on his album of oldie covers (he failed, of course).
It has actually been claimed that it was not, in fact, Burlison, but rather session legend Grady Martin who played on many of the Rock’n’Roll Trio’s recordings — including these two. Regardless of whether this is true or not (if it is, Grady must obviously be given his due), the fact remains that the sound here is unique, and neither Burlison nor Martin ever explored it further, perhaps due to being unable (or unwilling) to reproduce the exact conditions in which it had been generated. But this does not mean that the rest of the album is worthless — even if a track like, say, ‘Lonesome Train (On A Lonesome Track)’ is kind of like a twin brother to ‘Honey Hush’, but without the cool distortion, it still carries a swaggy, menacing groove and features Johnny at his most... let’s say, psychopathic. Traditional country-western singers tended to get all melancholic and moody when boarding those lonesome trains; Johnny Burnette sounds as if he’d been shoved head first into the luggage compartment inside a straightjacket.
Likewise, when they choose to cover Fats Domino’s ‘All By Myself’, a song that, typically for Fats, used to embody all the cheerful independence of the New Orleanian spirit, Johnny and the boys leave virtually nothing of the original spirit, replacing it with the same rebellious attitude — like it or not, they make this stuff theirs and nobody else’s. Same with the old R&B classic ‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee’ from the late 1940s — what used to be a friendly advertising for alcohol on the part of Sticks McGhee and his boys turns into a musical impersonation of a frenzied barroom fight. Not too aggressive, mind you — not to the point of sounding hateful or anything, rather just reminding you that those days of Golden Gloves are not as far away as one might have thought.
Of course, the Rock’n’Roll Trio were just as capable of tenderness and affection — it would, after all, otherwise be completely unclear how Johnny Burnette would go from rock’n’roll rebel to sweet teen idol in just a few years. It is in the sphere of tenderness and affection, in fact, that their greatest songwriting achievement lies — the slightly Latin-influenced dance ballad ‘Lonesome Tears In My Eyes’, catchy, seductive, and brawny at the same time enough to attract the attention of the Beatles, whose live BBC performance of the tune is now well remembered. However, it is also clear that Johnny emerges as the dominant force on just about every one of their slow blues and ballads, and that this soulful force is not as unique or even downright interesting as the band’s collective rockabilly power. I mean, when you play Big Joe Turner’s and the Burnettes’ ‘Honey Hush’ back to back, you can clearly see the progress; when you do the same with ‘Chains Of Love’, it is far less obvious if the brothers actually bring anything fresh to the table. Johnny may have tried to be versatile, for sure, but essentially there is one thing he truly excels at, and that is screeching his head off like there was no tomorrow. A calm and sentimental Johnny, one who has just taken his shots and been temporarily removed from the straightjacket, is simply not much use to society, if you know what I mean.
Still, despite a certain proportion of mediocrity, The Rock’n’Roll Trio is indispensable listening for all those who are interested in the high peaks of 1950s rock’n’roll — and all those who simply like themselves a bit of timeless rock’n’roll. The album is now most frequently available in a well-packaged CD edition called The Complete Coral Rock’n’Roll Trio Recordings, collecting all the A- and B-side singles, unreleased tracks and alternate takes from the sessions — a bit of overkill, especially due to some novelty doo-wop numbers like ‘Butterfingers’, but at least giving the impression that all the proper dues have finally been paid to this extremely short-lived, but unique and influential combo. Had the band found proper commercial success, things might have turned out differently; as it is, their brand of rock’n’roll somehow fell through the cracks of the public conscience — and maybe, back at the time, it was easier for a professional musician to truly appreciate that uncommon distorted sound than for the general public. On the other hand, it is useless to feel sad that the Rock’n’Roll Trio’s prime days lasted less than a year — after all, even the best rockers from that decade, who would go on to have lengthy extended careers, usually made their own legend with but a small handful of genius singles and, at best, one or two great LPs. In that respect, the Rock’n’Roll Trio’s worthwhile musical legacy is only a tad skimpier than that of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or Jerry Lee Lewis. And it’s all here, on one disc!