Billy Lee Riley
Billy Lee Riley ( born October 5, 1933, Pocahontas, Arkansas; † August 2, 2009 in Jonesboro, Arkansas ) was an American musician. His musical spectrum ranging from rockabilly and country to blues to folk and rock music. Apart guitar played Riley harmonica and bass.
- 4.1 albums
- 6.1 Online Biographies
- 6.2 MP3 Billy Lee Riley portrait with interview
- 6.3 Discography
Life
Childhood and youth
Billy Riley was of Irish and Native American descent and had seven siblings. At seven, he learned harmonica and spent his childhood in Osceola and Forrest City. There he worked in the cotton fields. As a teenager, Riley began playing guitar. In addition to the usual rural country music Riley was heavily influenced by the blues of the most black field workers: " blues is the music I grew up hearing on the plantation ," he said later.
At the age of ten years Riley was on the school to work in the fields. Five years later, he volunteered for the U.S. Army, where he founded his first band during his military service, which mainly old hillbilly music, the forerunner of the Country played.
Career as a rockabilly
In 1953, when Riley was discharged from the army, he moved to a short stay in Jonesboro to Memphis, Tennessee. Already in Jonesboro, he had in a country band called CD Played Tennyson and his Happy Valley Boys. In Memphis, he made contact with Jack Clement, with whom he it a member of Slim Wallace's group was soon. During the day, Riley worked as a truck driver while he performed at night in bars and pubs. When Wallace 1956, the record label founded Fernwood Records, Riley got the chance to record with Johnny Bernero on drums a demo recording of his song Trouble Bound. Jack Clement put the finishing touches to Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records. The label had already successful musicians such as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash under contract and was known for the so-called "Sun Sound", the rockabilly.
Phillips took Riley under contract. Along with his own band, later also belonged to the hitherto unknown Jerry Lee Lewis, he played in the Sun Studio its first single Rock With Me Baby / Trouble Bound one. Although this was a failure in commercial terms, Riley undertook with other Sun artists an extensive tour through the southern states. His next singles like Flyin 'Saucer Rock'n'Roll also did not bring the desired success. Meanwhile, Jerry Lee Lewis, who had started a solo career, had been replaced by the pianist Jimmy Wilson and Charlie Rich. But when it became the commercial success with Riley's Red Hot Single, Phillips Riley dropped to Jerry Lee Lewis build, who was coming with Great Balls Of Fire in the charts.
Riley worked as a session musician with on many classic Sun recordings and brought to 1959 five more singles under his name out. In between, he also took Is That All To The Ball, to Mr. Hall / Rockin 'On The Moon for Brunswick Records. Real Hits, however, failed to materialize, although Red Hot has sold well regionally.
Later career
In 1959, he left Sun and founded his own label Rita, the 1960 scored a hit with Harold Dorman Mountain of Love. 1962 Riley moved to Los Angeles, where he stood for Mercury Records.
His own country, soul, blues and rock records for Rita, Mojo, Pen, GNP Crescendo, and a number of other labels sold in the 1960s, not very good. However, in 1966 his LP radio harmonica, on which he interpreted current folk - rock hits on the harmonica as Folk Hits released in Germany. That same year, Riley was to Atlanta, Georgia, pulled.
In the 1960s, Riley was a frequent accompaniment and studio musician who was considered because of its stylistic range as a " musical chameleon " thanks to his harmonica playing.
While triggered by Elvis Presley's death rockabilly revival Riley became known rockabilly musician. Since then, he has been honored by the global Rockabilly Rockabilly fan base as a living legend and stepped on international rockabilly festivals up to the present on.
Bob Dylan took him back to the stage in 1992. At the time, Riley began to appreciate the blues, which had determined his musical childhood. Since then, Riley's reputation grew, fame and success. For his blues album " Hot Damn! " He was nominated for a Grammy in 1997.
On the cover and in the booklet of his blues album " hot damn! " Riley presented repeatedly with a Gibson Blueshawk. These photographs were the reason that Riley's album " hot damn! " Was perceived by the Gibson Blueshawk community what its limited to the rockabilly scene notoriety increased and out the end of 2006 for an extensive scope -special radio portrait of Billy Lee Riley has, making his volatile life and work was presented to a wider public for the first time in German-speaking.
In 2009 it was revealed that Riley has cancer. In the same year he died at the age of 75 years at St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro at the consequences of the disease. Riley's death triggered within the rockabilly scene of great concern, for example, sent the U.S. Rockabilly Radio a Billy Lee Riley Special show their Weekly Jamborees. On August 30, 2009 in Newport, Arkansas, a tribute concert in honor of Riley's take on the rockabilly stars such as Sonny Burgess and the Pacers, WS Holland, Ace Cannon, Carl Mann, Larry Donn, Dale Hawkins and Riley's former drummer Jimmy Van Eaton occurred.
Work
His song Trouble Bound has consistently impressed the young Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley has over Sam Phillips led to remark: " The sounds more like me - as I myself ." Elvis Presley invited Riley in 1967 and 1968 as a musician in his New Year's Eve parties.
DVD recordings
In the two-hour U.S. television documentary " Good Rockin ' Tonight. The Legacy of Sun Records "(2001) Billy Lee Riley is seen as interview partners, as an interpreter of his songs and in the context of a discussion of former Sun Records musicians who discuss with Sam Phillips, Sun Records studio.
Also the John Prine concert DVD "Live on Soundstage 1980 " (2007) includes a guest appearance by Billy Lee Riley. Together with Prine and his band, he interprets No Name Girl and Red Hot.
Discography
Albums
Swell
- Andreas Weigel: Billy Lee Riley's erratic career. Motto "Trouble Bound". ORF OE1, game rooms special (5 November 2006).
- Colin Escott, Martin Hawkins: Catalyst. The Sun Records Story. Aquarius Books, London, 1975, ISBN 0-904619-00-1.
- Phil Hardy, Dave Laing: Encyclopedia of Rock 1955-1975. Aquarius Books, London 1977, p 78
- Billy Lee Riley. In: Leigh Ann Deremer (ed. ): Contemporary Musicians. Vol 43 Thomson Gale, 2004.
- Michael Gray: The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. New York, London, 2006. Pp. 575f.
- Colin Escott, Martin Hawkins: Sun Records. The Discography. Bear Family Records, Vollersode 1987, ISBN 3-924787-09-3, pp. 170-173.