Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

It's been some time since I posted a "Track This," so I figured that discussing one of my favorite rockabilly songs by an underappreciated great, Gene Vincent, who does not get as much coverage as he should, would be an excellent return to form. Most of his career, he attempted to recapture his former rock and roll glory, and never completely turned country like his contemporaries Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. Elsewhere on this blog, I discuss his self-titled Kama Sutra album, which should also receive more accolades. In a perfect world, Gene Vincent's "Race With The Devil" would have been a bigger hit, but it never managed to capture the public attention like his first hit, "Be-Bop-A-Lula." I first heard The Stray Cats cover "Race With The Devil" on their underrated fourth studio album, 1986's Rock Therapy , and needed to track the original down as soon as I could. The countrified rhythms and frantic pace of the song leave the li...

Many of Gene Vincent's early rock and roll peers turned to country in the 1970's. Jerry Lee Lewis had number one country hits as he mined the deep vein of country singer-songwriters, and rerecorded old hits in different styles. Johnny and Dorsey Burnette, who recorded some of the wildest rockabilly sides for Coral in the fifties as The Johnny Burnette Trio, became pop singers. Others like Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly, who each had already recorded pop and country songs before they died tragic deaths, would have probably also gone in a much more country direction. Gene Vincent's Self-Titled record, which was later reissued as If Only You Could See Me Today, has a slight country sensibility, but manages to effectively capture the zeitgeist of the time period, while showing Vincent in a much more adventurous light. Recorded in 1970, shortly before Vincent's 1971 death, at the Sound Factory in Hollywood with members of the Sir Douglas Quintet, the record is surprisin...