Some Rock 'n' Roll/Rockabilly/Rock Music Artists I've Seen in Live Performance; "The music of my age"

Another old list (the first 13 names, no longer with us):

Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Billy Lee Riley, Sonny Burgess (and the Pacers), Tony Joe White, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, Etta James, James Brown, Tina Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Everly Brothers, Charlie Gracie, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Oasis, Tom Jones, Stereophonics, Radiohead, Duane Eddy, Eric Burdon, Paul Jones, Manfred Mann, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Marty Wilde, Big Jay McNeely, Ben Waters, Joe Brown, Donovan...(for more R'n'B artists, see preceding post)

I was at one of the two 1966 Dylan concerts featured here.

A poem I wrote back in 1984, when I was forty:

The Killer (1984)

A career in cultural diplomacy.

Met a lot of concert pianists: regular recitals.

Nothing against them: decent people, played good piah-no.

But I must admit

I'm a rocker at heart.

Prefer boogie-woogie blasting out,

Jerry Lee thumping the keyboard,

Pumping the pianner with fingers, fists, elbows, feet,

Humping it, jumping on top of it too,

Kicking the piano stool

Across the quaking stage,

Standing there shaking and stabbing the keys.

I loved it then, a quarter of a century ago;

I love it now; it's the music of my age.

When nobody's around,

I still try to pick out a basic twelve-bar boogie,

Pound away like the Louisiana "Welshman" on the Steinway concert grand.

I'm good at the glissandi. Nothing else.

The Killer began at eight. For me at forty it's getting late.

Rewrite the syllabus for Young Beginners!

Let Great Balls of Fire, the Lewis way,

Become their Grade One Study piece:

Fortissimo; with feeling. 

January 1984.

Elvis Lenin

The cultural high-spot of my life

Was not King Lear, or Rilke's Love Song,

It was when I heard, after all the bans and approbation,

My first blue-labeled record by the King of Rock

In a listening booth in Bristol,

Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis Presley.

I used to dream, one day he'd play the Colston Hall!

Raw rhythmic energy and pure rebellion!

The curled-up lip, the street-wise leer,

The Memphis trucker a new Messiah

Come to save us from our bourgeois schools,

Shocking Authority, provoking the guardians of taste and morals.

Tutti Frutti - another anthem; we rallied round,

Disobeying parents, smuggled it home.

Life would never be the same again.

He could have really changed the world.

He failed to see his historic role. 

The poor boy had no brains.

Elvis Our Likeness (1987)

I've lived longer than Elvis did,

Elvis who died ten years ago.

They've brought out some albums in Bulgaria now.

He really must be safe and tame,

Can't lead the counter-revolution.

Perhaps they'll make him an Artist of Merit.

I've lived longer than Elvis did,

Who was already in a sad decline.

I've not made my first hit record yet,

Though I'm still ready and raring to go

(Have you heard my version of That's All Right?

Why don't they set up a Sun Record Studio

On the corner of every downtown street?

I need a Sam Phillips.

 Colonel Parker I'd prefer not to meet.

Prague, 1987.

That's All Right

Photo credits not known: 

please inform me if you know the names of the photographers.

The last one above was signed by Scotty Moore.

Mystery Train

"Sticky Fingers", signed by The Rolling Stones in Melbourne

LISTEN to my radio interview with Big Jay McNeely, Sydney, December 1997 -
 on the history of rock 'n' roll, the honking saxophone, the jazz saxophone, R 'n' B, 
racism in music in the 1950's and much, much more!

Rapping on Rock: Jim Potts in conversation with Big Jay McNeely (YouTube, 22 minutes)