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nicholas f. centino Razabilly Boogie
The Latino rockabilly scene Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021
or Los Angeles rockabilly fans coming of age at the turn of this century, Rudolpho’s was the place to see and be seen. The Silverlake establishment, a F nondescript Mexican restaurant by day, transformed by night into the “Be Bop Battlin’ Ball,” a rollicking 1950s-style nightclub serving stiff drinks alongside obscure music from rock and roll’s very infancy. Patrons packed the venue to capacity attired in their best vintage ensembles, drinking, dancing, and singing along to the records of Johnny Burnette, Janis Martin, and Bunker Hill. With hot rods lining the parking lot outside, young musicians could be found inside demonstrating their mastery of rockabilly licks and slapping bass rhythms, often joined by an original 1950s artist booked for the night. Some outsiders may have been surprised to discover that such a vibrant Los Angeles following existed for a genre of music fifty years past its prime. But it seems likely that most were shocked, or at least pleasantly surprised, to discover that Rudolpho’s patrons were almost exclusively young working-class Latinas and Latinos. Rockabilly shows at Rudolpho’s came to an end in 2002, but the Los Angeles rockabilly scene has since come to be considered one of the most dynamic in the world. While contemporary rockabilly scenes are prominent throughout California, on any given weekend in the greater Los Angeles area someone somewhere is hosting a rockabilly show for a packed house of predominantly Latino patrons. And whereas most local scenes have to wait weeks, if not months, to see live bands perform fifties music, it’s Los Angeles that has the most consistent access to original 1950s performers as well as scores of contemporary rockabilly bands and disc jockeys.1 Combined with the homebred Kustom Kulture scene of hot-rodding, rockabilly in Los Angeles is a full-fledged regional phenomenon, with thousands of aficionados ranging from casual observers to diehard fanatics—and the majority are Latinos. The contemporary rockabilly revival was born in the de-industrial Great Britain of the 1970s and has grown from a small circle of fans to a worldwide network of
Boom: A Journal of California, Vol. 2, Number 3, pps 90–97. ISSN 2153-8018, electronic ISSN 2153-764X. © 2012 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for Potographh by Nicholas F. Centino permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/boom.2012.2.3.90.
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Potographh by Nicholas F. Centino
local scenes throughout the global north. With its working- wondering why working-class Raza youth in the urban class aesthetics, shoebox hot rods, and bass-slapping metropolis of twenty-first century Los Angeles are rhythms, rockabilly enthusiasts have crafted their own attracted to the music of rural, Southern white musicians identity, drawing elements from 1950s Americana. Yet, of the mid-twentieth century. After all, rockabilly is despite claims to a relatively marginal and invisible status, categorized as country western music, a genre all too the rockabilly scene is nowhere near an underground often—and often wrongly—racialized as music by phenomenon. An estimated 20,000 attendees took part and for white people.3 In many ways, this racialization in the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender of 2012. Viva stretches back to rockabilly’s birth in the American Las Vegas is a yearly four-day festival promoted by UK- South of the mid-1950s, when the term rockabilly was born DJ and promoter Tom Ingram, and it is just one of derisively coined by white disk jockeys to describe music the genre’s dozens of large-scale weekend festivals held by white artists appropriating black sounds. The “rock” worldwide.2 in rockabilly reflected the black rocking rhythm and blues tradition, and the “billy” gestured to the hillbilly or country tradition. The amalgamation of traditions is The logic of incongruity most often exemplified byE lvis Presley’s first record: one The seemingly incongruous pairing of rockabilly music side featured the popular rhythm and blues (read black) with Latino and Latina fans has left many casual observers song “That’s All Right” performed with white country
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inflections, while the other featured the country and unseen since the 1920s. In Los Angeles County alone, western tune, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” performed in a a reported 23.5 percent increase in hate crimes occurred black rhythm and blues style. It is this type of hybridity against Latinas and Latinos in 1994.7 The relationship that may still resonate decades later with Latinos and still persists, as popular rockabilly festivals such as the Latinas, an audience well familiar with cultural mestizaje. Hootenanny in Irvine and Kustom Kulture gatherings, While Presley and his white contemporaries are like West Coast Kustom’s Cruisin’ Nationals in Santa remembered as rockabilly artists, you can hear the same Maria, are popular haunts for members of Southern hybridity in the music of contemporary black artists, such Californian hate groups. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 as Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” or Muddy Waters’s “I Can’t But most LA scene veterans can also demarcate a racial Be Satisfied.”4 Muddy Waters, however, is remembered as shift in the scene, largely solidified by California’s turn, at the a bluesman while Chuck Berry is emblematic of rock and turn of this century, from majority white to majority brown. roll; their use of hybridity in the 1950s is largely forgotten In Southern California, the presence of people of color in or overlooked in contrast to their white counterparts. To the rockabilly scene, although notable, was nevertheless the credit of many rockabilly DJs who are cognizant of this considered marginal and negligible. With the exception of history, black musicians are equally celebrated, and their Rosie Flores, the biracial Robert Williams of Big Sandy and songs and records are played alongside those of white his Fly-Rite Boys, The Paladin’s Dave Gonzales, and a few musicians. Yet blackness remains a mark of difference others, Southern California Latinos did not see themselves in the rockabilly scene. While Eddie Cochran and Gene reflected on rockabilly stages in the early to mid 1990s. Vincent are rarely referred to as white rock and rollers, it is After the turn of the century, the Los Angeles rockabilly not uncommon to hear to the music of Kid Thomas or Roy scene experienced a tremendous demographic shift toward Gaines referred to as black rock and roll.5 a majority Chicana/o and Latina/o makeup. This shift also
The racial shift
While the Los Angeles rockabilly scene of the 1990s was never explicitly racist or xenophobic, it did serve as a recruiting ground for white supremacist groups. The 1990s saw an explosion in the neo-Nazi hate music scene, with a handful of bands such as Orange County’s Youngland performing rockabilly. Banking on the music’s Southern white roots, the Confederate flag became a recurring symbol in the scene, appearing everywhere from belt buckles to tattoos.6 White supremacist groups sought to capitalize on white working-class anxieties evidenced by the passage of California’s Proposition 187 (denying basic healthcare and education rights to undocumented immigrants), Proposition 227 (eliminating bilingual education), and Proposition 209 (an anti-affirmative action measure). White working-class hostility against
immigrants in California of the 1990s reached heights Potographh by Nicholas F. Centino
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Boom0203_10.indd 93 20/09/12 5:34 PM La Raza out-rockabillied with modern elements or cross genre pollenization like psychobilly (a hybrid of punk and rockabilly) were strictly rockabilly. prohibited. Both men and women practiced to perfect vintage 1950s dances of the bop, stroll, and jive to perform with precision accuracy. And yet, ironically, despite the happened to take place during a political era of xenophobia attempts of Raza Rockabilly enthusiasts to strive for a sense and intensified attacks on civil rights. In the introduction of historical authenticity through leisure, their legitimacy to her compiled series of photographs, The Rockabillies, as “true” Americans with claims to citizenship was being Jenner Greenberg noted that her own interactions with the shunned in the political realm. scene coincided with the first term of George W. Bush’s While Rudolpho’s and other venues provided physical presidency and the intense xenophobia associated with the space for Latinos to stake their claims to rockabilly, the War on Terror following the events of 9/11.8 Internet provided a virtual world where those stakes could Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 For many Latinos, Rudolpho’s was one of a small handful be claimed on a broader scale. By the early 2000s, the of venues that provided an accepting place for Raza fans of Internet had become more accessible and user friendly. rockabilly. Located in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood Online services such as Yahoo! group listervs provided of Silver Lake, inside Rudolpho’s, La Raza out-rockabillied rockabilly promoters, who once relied solely on physical rockabilly. Dubbing their promotion of “Be Bop Battlin’ flyers and word of mouth, with another venue to advertise Ball,” event promoters Vito Lorenzo and Gonzalo Gonzales their upcoming events. However, with the creation of and their patrons turned to the core elements of the scene’s free webhosting services in the early 2000s, and social British roots to create sonic and aesthetic alternatives to networking sites, anyone with access to a computer could what represented rockabilly in the United States. With the broadcast themselves and their identity to the world at tagline “It doesn’t get closer to the real ’50s than this!” the large. Developed by Ruth Hernandez from Whittier and promoters of the Be Bop Battlin’ Ball fully embraced the Erick Sánchez from Santa Ana, “Razabilly” was a MSN- British model. hosted user-based forum and website where fans could Rudolpho’s patrons rejected the “mainstream” share their love for rockabilly music and style. Infused with American rockabilly style for actual vintage clothing that a campy tongue-in-cheek spirit evidenced in its wordplay is more specific and obscure. Eschewing the cuffed jeans title, “Razabilly” allowed its users to post upcoming events, and solid white T-shirts synonymous with the archetypical discussion topics, and pictures. American greaser, the Fonz from the television show Social networking sites such as Friendster and MySpace Happy Days, male patrons opted for double-welted suede provided anyone with access to a computer their own mini- loafers, high-waisted gabardine trousers, flap pocket web page, where they could upload pictures of themselves, shirts, and two-toned rayon Hollywood jackets, emulating compose their own self-descriptions, talk about their what the European rockabilly scene dubbed the hepkat: a interests, and interact with other members of the respective gendered identity meant to apply to a hard partying, rock site’s membership. Instead of the off chance that a fan and roller who always dressed in vintage 1950s American could stumble upon a rockabilly show only during specific teenage fashions, drove a hot rod, collected vintage hours on a specific night, MySpace provided a virtual records, and had a healthy disdain for modern aesthetics. rockabilly scene that could be discovered at any hour of the Women patrons refused their greaser counterparts’ cotton day. Images on MySpace of brown bodies in the rockabilly cherry or polka dot print sundresses and simple Betty scene normalized the demographic shift that was occurring Page hairstyles for printed cable knit pullover sweaters, and depicted the scene as Raza-friendly. rayon cocktail dresses, and elaborate victory curls from Through physical venues like Rudolpho’s and through the 1940s. virtual portals like “Razabilly,” Latinas and Latinos not Recording artists were booked and expected to perform only crafted spaces where they themselves made up a their original rock and roll or rockabilly material from critical mass, they also deftly positioned themselves as the the 1950s. New artists were booked only if they played American torch bearers in an international rockabilly scene. and looked like vintage artists; artists who experimented As Los Angeles-based bands, disc jockeys, and rockabilly
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fans traveled internationally to festivals, they transformed Joe Clay. Latinos looked for their own icons to emulate from the representational face of the United States, the birthplace the golden age of Mexican cinema—Pedro Infante and Tin of all things rockabilly—from white to brown. Tan instead of Elvis Presley and James Dean. A single white streak in dark hair, in honor of US-born dancer Yolanda “Tongolele” Montes, became a common sight
Rewriting history Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 amongst Raza rockabilly women. For those enthusiasts, Significantly, the invocation of the scene’s British roots the experience of the 1950s was reimagined through their and strict guidelines to what is and is not rockabilly own eyes, shaped by their own unique vantage point. Of provided Latinos with the space to radically alter the course, the relationship between Chicanos and Latinos scene to fit their needs. With an understood ownership and rock and roll music in California is a long and of the scene, they were free to adapt the scene and makes fruitful one. Yet, while rockabilly music had always had changes as they saw fit. Disc jockeys began playing 45s of fans within La Raza, the appeal of embodying the era of Lalo Guerrero and Gloria Rios alongside Glenn Glenn and that music each and every day was new. While low-riding
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Boom0203_10.indd 95 20/09/12 5:34 PM Raza rockabilly provided a way for Los Angeles Latinos to rewrite themselves into the history of Los Angeles.
enthusiasts could pay homage by incorporating and Notes modifying elements of bygone eras into their own The Chicano Studies Institute at UC Santa Barbara provided contemporary style, Raza rockabilly fans sought to fully financial support for this dissertation research. The following Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 re-create those looks and performances. people provided guidance and inspiration: Dolores Inés In many ways, Raza rockabilly provided a way for Los Casillas, Theresa Gaye Johnson, George Lipsitz, and Juan Angeles Latinos to rewrite themselves into the history of Vicente Palerm. Los Angeles and rewrite Los Angeles into the history of 1 While he is not a focus of this article, credit must be given to rock and roll. While black and white rockabilly and rock “Rockin’” Ronnie Weiser for seeking out original Los Angeles- based rockabilly artists and encouraging them to perform and and roll musicians experimented with each other’s sounds record again in the 1970s. Weiser is best witnessed at his most in the segregated South, groups like the Silhouettes eccentric zaniness in Elizabeth Blozan’s documentary on Los (Ritchie Valens’s original band) and the Rhythm Rockers Angeles Rockabilly, Rebel Beat: The Story of L.A. Rockabilly were racially mixed, reflecting the multiracial makeup of (Betty Vision, 2007). the urban areas they descended from. In Los Angeles, rock 2 I utilize “Raza” and “Latina/Latino” as pan-ethnic terms to and roll served as an alternative culture operating against refer to people of Mexican, Caribbean, and Central and South hegemonic racial segregation and discrimination. Far from American descent living in the United States. I typically pair novel, black and brown shared cultural expressions were Chicano and Latino due to the unique position that the border experience and culture of Chicanas and Chicanos have in Los ordinary and to be expected, due to shared neighborhoods, Angeles, as well as its relationship to American rock and roll. schools, and social spaces. 3 See Peter La Chapelle’s Proud to Be An Okie: Cultural Politics, Through rediscovering, and in many ways embodying Country Music and Migration to Souther California for an these artists, Raza rockabilly enthusiasts engage with their exploration on the role played by both African American and own past. For many, the cultural practices of Razabilly not Mexican American musical traditional on country western only reflect musical and aesthetic interests, but also speak musicians. Peter La Chapelle, Proud to Be An Okie: Cultural to one’s identity as a Chicano or Latino. Thus, race holds Politics, Country Music and Migration to Souther California an equally important role in the construction of the Raza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 4 rockabilly that both parallels and surpasses the traditional According to George Lipsitz, rock and roll was born out of the same blue-collar industrial landscape that Chicana/os rockabilly arrangement of clothing, hair, makeup, and and Latina/os found themselves in after World War II. In the tattoos. Given that so much of their past has been stricken migrations and resettlements of working peoples, transplanted from the institutional historical record, and their very cultures mixed with local expressions in ways that were presence in certain Los Angeles communities is being previously restricted. Lipsitz argues that encoded protest wiped clean through gentrification, this strong and creative found within rock and roll songs resonated with working-class musical movement is all the more significant. As memory listeners of all colors. He writes, “From its tradition of social made flesh, the Raza rockabilly enthusiast provokes Los criticism to its sense of time, from its cultivation of community to its elevation of emotion, rock-and-roll music embodies a Angelenos to recognize their own immediate history as dialogic process of active remembering. It derives its comedic well to consider all the unfulfilled promises of equality and dramatic tension from working-class vernacular traditions, made to people of color since the era of the civil rights and it carries on a prejudice in favor of community, collectivity, movement. b and creativity in its very forms and constructs.” George Lipsitz,
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Boom0203_10.indd 96 20/09/12 5:34 PM Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture 7 Anna Pegler-Gordon, “In Sight of America: Photography and (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, U.S. Immigration Policy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1990), 116. 2002), 346. 5 George Lipsitz has published an excellent study of the centrality 8 Greenberg remembered, “. . . as an artist and a liberal—in fact of whiteness in US culture. George Lipsitz, The Possessive as a human being—I felt defeated and hopeless. All I wanted Investment in Whiteness How White People Profit from Identity was to escape into the vivid world depicted in my grandmother’s Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). photographs.” Jennifer Greenburg, The Rockabillies (Chicago: 6 emily Dutton, director, Desperate Generation: The 10th Anniversary Center for American Places, 2010), xi. (Mad Fabricators. 2006). Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/3/91/381504/boom_2012_2_3_90.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021
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