THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410140113
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUE SMALLWOOD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
AFTER 15 years with the multiplatinum selling Stray Cats, slap-bassist Lee Rocker has traded in straight-ahead rockabilly for a bluesier bent with his new trio, Big Blue. For Rocker, it's just doing what comes naturally.
``I've always loved blues music, it's always been my main thing,'' the bassist said recently from Cleveland, telling of blues bands he'd played in during his pre-Cats school days and his longtime fanhood of blues legend Willie Dixon. ``Big Blue started out really as just something to have fun with.''
It's evolved into a full-scale project. Club gigs in and around Southern California - where Rocker, who sings and snaps standup bass, recruited ace guitarist Mike Eldred and veteran drummer Henree DeBaun - netted a spot on a U.S. concert tour with blues-rocker Paul Rodgers last year. The tour cinched an album deal with stalwart blues label Black Top, which released Big Blue's eponymous debut LP of largely original material a few months ago.
The sound, produced by Rocker - who also turns out some surprisingly terrific vocal work - is vibrant, a crackling hybrid of varietal blues and rockabilly Rocker calls ``rockin' blues'' but prefers to keep uncategorized.
``I like to cross lines on things,'' he said, ``just really deal with it in my mind as roots music. I really want to try to deal with all of the things that've been my influences - blues, rockabilly, R&B, true American music.
``I don't think that many people have crossed rockabilly with blues that much.''
To wax the Big Blue sound, the band traveled to the source of both 'billy and blues - Memphis.
The Memphis Horns, of Stax/Volt fame, lent a brassy hand, and the band managed to coax Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley's original guitarist, out of 25 years of semi-retirement to help on a few tracks.
``Scotty was great, he was such a cool guy and just a real professional, Rocker said enthusiastically. ``His sound of the Sun sessions (the Presley tracks recorded in 1954 for Memphis' Sun Records, considered the birth pangs of rock 'n' roll), ``his tone and that echo on his guitar is really the trademark of that kind of music. With the Stray Cats, we'd spend hours, days, sometimes even longer than that to get something close to that sound. With Scotty, I put a microphone in front of him and that was it. It's just him.''
Moore was apparently just as impressed with Rocker, inviting him to Memphis to provide bass at the recent televised Elvis Presley tribute concert, which featured singers from Michael Bolton, Bryan Adams and Tony Bennett to Chris Isaak, Dwight Yoakam and Iggy Pop. It was ``thrill of a lifetime kind of stuff,'' Rocker says.
``I got to rehearse for a week with Scotty Moore and (drummer) DJ Fontana and (backing vocal group) the Jordanaires, all the original guys. To sit down and hear the stories from the early days of Elvis, the early days of rock 'n' roll, from people who were there is pretty amazing.''
Rocker and the Presley bunch have hit it off so famously, in fact, that Moore and Fontana will be sitting in with Big Blue on the band's Memphis club date later this month. Rocker is practically beside himself with excitement.
``I'm working right now to try to get that night recorded,'' he says ``at least for myself. I don't know if it's ever going to see the light of day, but I'm getting that night on tape so I can sit there at my house and say, `I did this, I actually played with those guys.' ''
So with Rocker and Big Blue already at work on a follow-up album, Cats guitarist/singer Brian Setzer doing his big band orchestra thing and drummer Slim Jim Phantom now a Hollywood nightclub owner, what is the Stray Cats' status?
``I don't think there is any status,'' Rocker explained. ``We're all really happy doing what we're doing, we're all really good friends. I really don't think we'll be doing any Stray Cats stuff. Who knows? Maybe way, way down the line.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Big Blue will bring its ``rockin' blues'' to Virginia Beach on
Tuesday.
by CNB