1956 Billy Lee Riley SUN RECORDS #245 78 RPM Trouble Bound Rockabilly
$
91
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Description
OFFERED: 1956 Sun Records Catalogue Number 245 BILLY LEE RILEY 78 RPM Trouble Bound Rock with me Baby 10" Record Shellac. Early Pioneer Sun Records Rockabilly. Good- very good plus See; Photos.
Billy Lee Riley (1933–2009)
Billy Lee Riley was a rockabilly musician whose career began in the Arkansas Delta and peaked in the 1950s after he signed a record deal with Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. He recorded many songs during his life, alternating between the rockabilly style that made him famous and the blues music that he loved.
Billy Lee Riley was born in Pocahontas (Randolph County) on October 5, 1933, to Amos and Mae Riley; he was one of nine children. Although his father was a house painter by trade, the economic disparities of the time led the family into sharecropping. As a result, the Riley family moved frequently to different towns in Arkansas, at times living in intense poverty. Through this lifestyle, Riley found a taste for the blues. At age six, he learned to play the harmonica and was introduced to the blues for the first time by his African-American playmates, who took him to their side of town to listen to music. Many Saturdays he could be found sitting on the back steps of honkytonks listening to the jukebox.
Riley received only three years of formal education, quitting school to help earn money for the family by picking cotton. In 1943, during a small period of prosperity, Riley’s father bought Riley’s first guitar, a Silvertone, from a family friend. Riley began to learn to play it after moving to Forrest City (St. Francis County) and meeting a couple of young guitar players.
In 1949, at age fifteen, Riley joined the army and served until 1953, during which time he further improved his guitar skills. Upon his honorable discharge from the army, he returned to Arkansas and started a hillbilly band that played shows at high schools and appeared on local radio shows. In 1954, he married his first wife, with whom he had one child. In 1955, after a failed attempt at running a restaurant in Memphis, Riley met Jack Clement and his partner Slim Wallace, who gave him a opening in the music business. They were both established in Nashville, Tennessee, and invited him to join their band and sing at Wallace’s club in Paragould (Greene County). In March 1956, Riley recorded his first two songs at Fernwood Studios, owned by Clement and Wallace. The two tracks found their way into the hands of Sam Phillips at Sun Records. After hearing one of the songs, Phillips insisted on having another, to which Riley obliged by writing and singing, “Rock with Me Baby.” He then signed a record deal with Sun Records that lasted from 1956 to 1960.
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