Rock against
the clock

After 30 years out of the game, rockabilly
icon Art Adams rips into round two

MAKING A WHOLE LOTTA SENSE: Art Adams in the ’50s

by ERIK LEIJON

In 1952, Hoosier rockabilly musician Art Adams bought a Martin acoustic guitar for $300 he paid for in weekly installments. It’s fitting that Adams uses the guitar today, not only because it came with a lifetime guarantee but because he still plays the same rockabilly music as he did when he cut two 45s for Cherry Records in the late 1950s.

Adams may be considered a legend in the genre today, but it took a three-decade retirement before his status as one of rockabilly’s greatest ambassadors was cemented. “I had just agreed to do my first show in over 30 years, at the Gold Coast Hotel-Casino,” recalls the septuagenarian Adams of his 2003 return. “I was nervous. I had just gotten my guitar worked on after it had been sitting around for all those years.”

STILL ROCK CRAZY: Today’s Art Adams Band

Even in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Adams never achieved much success outside of the Midwest. Beyond a small write-up in Billboard magazine, the singles never charted and he was never paid for his lip-synched television performances. When rockabilly gave way to rock ’n’ roll bands, Adams changed his style, eventually giving up the guitar and doing covers of Top 40 hits. By the late ’60s, Adams was out of music, and the only time he considered making a return was in 1981 when rockabilly revival band Stray Cats released “Rock This Town,” whose riff resembled Adams’s “Rock Crazy Baby.”

“The thinking was, we could re-release the song and make some money, but I wasn’t really all that hepped up on suing anybody. A lot of songs sound alike and I didn’t have a big problem with it.” Adams adds he did become friends with Stray Cat member Slim Jim Phantom, although he admits they never discussed the two songs.

Starting in 1999 and culminating with his 2003 comeback show, Adams was contacted by collectors interested in any material he might have saved. It was when a music historian in Indiana showed him his Cherry Records releases were being sold for hundreds online that Adams realized his musical output had developed a massive underground following. “I only recorded a few songs and I never dreamed they would reach the level they had.”

In recent years, Adams has finally had the chance to tour Canada and Europe, and the original recordings he had kept became his first album, 2003’s Rock Crazy Baby. He has subsequently released two other records featuring new material.

Since coming back, Adams admits he’s been to “a lot of places for a country boy,” and he remains dumbfounded with how younger generations have adopted rockabilly culture, from the music to the fashion. “Now you’ve got psychobilly too, since we didn’t have tattoos, mohawk haircuts and piercings back then,” he says. “But we get guys in suits, people with jeans cuffed up, it’s a mixture of people.”

“It’s got a great beat,” he says of rockabilly music’s lasting appeal. “You can understand the words. Even the rock ’n’ roll stuff I did didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

With Bloodshot Bill at Club Lambi
on Saturday, June 21, 9 p.m., $10