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Rockabilly is one of the component parts of rock and roll. It is a style of music made famous during the 1950s by American performers. In that decade, the music was propelled by catchy beats, an electric guitar and an upright bass which was played using the slap-back technique.
While Rockabilly is often considered to have begun in the early 1950s, when Bill Haley began mixing jump blues and electric country, it was an undercurrent in country music throughout the 40's, with diverse artists like Tennessee Ernie Ford (Smokey Mountain Boogie), Hank Williams (Rootie Tootie), and Merle Travis (Sixteen Tons), dating back to Bob Wills (Twin Guitar Boogie) and The Delmore Brothers (Freight Train Boogie and Hillbilly Boogie used acoustic guitars and harmonica).
In 1954, however, a singer named Elvis Presley truly began the popularization of the genre with a series of recordings for Sun Records. Rock Around the Clock, a B-side released in 1955, was the breakthrough success for the style, and it launched the careers of several rockabilly entertainers. Rockabilly is also the genre of early Buddy Holly recordings.
By 1958, most of these performers had moved on to different sounds and rockabilly had largely disappeared from popular music
In the 1980s, The Stray Cats led a brief revival of interest in rockabilly. Later on, bands like The Cramps and Reverend Horton Heat merged the music with punk, forming a distinct sub-genre referred to as psychobilly.
Recent rockabilly bands have often used stage theatrics specific to this genre: exaggerated hairdos, "bad boys" clothing and attitude, tricks with the upright bass, and lyrics about motor cars and relationships.
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