![]() Edmunds, signed at that time to the F-Beat label, a U.K. A significant break came in September when the Stray Cats were invited to open the show for Elvis Costello & The Attractions at the Rainbow Theatre.īut a musician who did appreciate what they were doing, who loved those same types of early roots music, was Welsh-born guitarist Dave Edmunds. They were barely making it, living like real stray cats, scrounging for food and a place to sleep. They made the move across the pond, getting some small gigs around London at first. In New York, they thought we were from Mars, they had no way to relate to us at all." Back here you had to search it out, and that always confused us. "School kids knew who Gene Vincent was and Eddie Cochran. ("The boys pulled a Jimi Hendrix by heading to Britain" was how CREEM magazine later described it.( "In England, that stuff never went away," Slim Jim told GOLDMINE. In 1980, encouraged by their manager of the time, Tony Bidgood, and their friends in the group The Rockats, Brian, Jim and Lee came to the conclusion that they would have a better shot at making it if they moved to England. ![]() But even the purists had to later admit that the Stray Cats' version of Johnny Burnette's Baby Blue Eyes was terrific. Lee played an upright bass like Dorsey's, but the main difference was having a drummer (Slim Jim's bare-bones "kit" consisting of one snare and one cymbal) rather than a second guitar. ![]() Whether or not it was an entirely conscious decision, the band was mod-eled after the rock 'n roll trio of the mid-Fifties, which was Johnny and Dorsey Burnette, and Paul Burlison on electric lead guitar. And their timing could hardly have been better. Surely by design, the Stray Cats were "retro"- but this was damn good retro. First as The Tomcats and then as the Stray Cats, Brian (who'd been playing guitar since age eight), Jim and Lee chose to put their talents to work in a traditional rock 'n roll vein, mining the rich legacy of Fifties and early-Sixties roots rock created by the likes of Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, Johnny Cash, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent (look for the Stray Cats original Gene And Eddie), Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins. (Lee, a classically-trained cello player, was the son of Stanley Drucker, first clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.) Punk was all the rage, but just as former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious crashed and burned at the Chelsea Hotel, the three budding rockers decided to make an about-face and take their music in another direction altogether. Right before that, Brian and his brother had been in a New York City punk band called The Bloodless Pharoahs, while Slim Jim (real name James McDonnell) and Lee (real name Leon Drucker) had played in various blues bands and rock groups in the New York area. It was 1979 when Brian - a talented young (barely 20) guitar player and singer - joined with two friends, bass player Lee Rocker and drummer "Slim" Jim Phantom, to form the Stray Cats. It's almost hard to believe that Brian Setter has been in the music business for 20 years now, but it's true. Before long, everybody would be into the Stray Cats, expert rockabilly revivalists who knew a thing or two about how to rock, and how to entertain. ![]() Stage clothes and exaggerated, pouffed-out pompadours. What mattered was that the Stray Cats were cool, man, and they loved their sound in England, just as they loved their snazzy It made little difference, of course, if even a single one of those English fans had the foggiest idea where these Stray Cats came from (aside from "the States"), or that Setzer was referring to his little hometown on New York's Long Island. "Here's a little song I wrote in my garage in Massapequa," Brian Setzer told the highly-enthused British audience, as the Stray Cats went into one of their earliest and best-known tunes, Stray Cat Strut. Brian Setzer A Real Swinger, With Cat Class And Cat Style
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