Table of Contents

Introduction Part One: The Smoother Side of Town 1. Roy Orbison: Starlight lit my Lonesomeness 2. Perry Como: R.I.P. 3. Patty Page: Oklahoma Blues Part Two: Labor 4. Jim Reeves: Say Yes to Rugs 5. Mitch Torok: When Mexican Joe Gave Up the Rumba 6. Ned Miller: From a Jack to a King Part Three: Town Hall Party 7. Skeets McDonald: You Oughta See Grandma Rock 8. Wynn Stewart: Not Such a Pretty World 9. Wanda Jackson: Did She or Didn't She 10. The Collins Kids: Brokenhearted Ricky Part Four: Memphis, Sun Records, June 1957 11. Sonny Burgess: The Wild Man at 70 12. Ed Bruce: Mammas Don't let your Rock Boppin' Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys 13. Onie Wheeler: Onie's Unlikely Bop Postscript 14. Vernon Oxford: Too Country for Country Index

About the Author

Colin Escott lives outside of Nashville, TN. He is the author of Tattooed on Their Tongues: Journeys through theBackrooms of American Music and Hank Williams: TheBiography, and coauthor of Hank Williams: Snapshots fromthe Lost Highway, and Good Rockin' Tonight: The SunRecords Story. He has annotated over 500 recordings, and has won numerous awards for his writing, including a Grammy for historic documentation and an Lifetime Achievement Award from the ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections), a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the history of recorded sound.