Notes

---

Johnny Burnette is a legend to many rock & roll fans, but his legend is one that is not widely known, since his groundbreaking rockabilly sides of the late '50s weren't hits outside of the South and the hits that he had in the early '60s were as a sweet, slick teen idol. "You're Sixteen" is a long way away from the wild, careening rockabilly of "The Train Kept a-Rollin'," the best-known song that Burnette and the Rock & Roll Trio recorded for Coral Records during the '50s. While "You're Sixteen" was by far the bigger hit, climbing into the Top Ten in 1960, "The Train Kept a-Rollin'" had the greater impact, covered by many rock bands, including the Yardbirds, Aerosmith, and Motörhead. But that single was just the tip of the iceberg, the song that best represented the frenzied, manic rockabilly of Johnny Burnette and the Rock & Roll Trio at their peak. During the summer of 1956, they cut five different sessions (four with Owen Bradley as producer), with a final date following in the spring of 1957, where they recorded some of the nerviest, hardest rock & roll of that era. The spare instrumentation, heavy reverb, and rebellious attitude marked Burnette as a kindred spirit to the rockabilly cats at Sun, particularly Elvis Presley, but when his trio was revved up, they sounded even more dangerous — and not in the least because the lead guitar was fuzzed out with heavy distortion and that the rhythm section moved with the force of a runaway train. That's not to say that all of Burnette's Coral recordings were pure, unadulterated rock & roll — he dabbled in ballads and mainstream pop, even recorded a big-band tune called "Shattered Dreams" with a full orchestra, all laying the groundwork for his later success as a teen crooner. But these were the exceptions to the rule, and the great majority of his recordings for Coral was among the most exciting rock & roll ever cut, and among the most influential, setting the pace for generations of rock & roll and rockabilly bands.Unfortunately, despite his lasting influence and despite how well his music has aged, it's been relatively hard to find Burnette's classic Coral recordings. While his '60s hits have been recycled in the States in a number of compilations, the rockabilly sides have trickled out in the U.S., added as afterthoughts to albums devoted to his teen idol tunes. Overseas, it's been a different story, as Bear Family issued the complete Rock & Roll Trio recordings on their 1989 collection Rockabilly Boogie, and later as part of their exhaustive nine-disc 2003 box set, Train Kept a-Rollin'. The former was hard to find, the latter too much for anybody but completists, particularly since most of those nine discs are devoted to post-Rock & Roll Trio recordings. It wasn't until 2004 that these seminal recordings got reissued in the U.S., as The Complete Coral Rock 'N Roll Trio Recordings, the inaugural release in Hip-O Select's Internet-only label. While this collection may only be available over the web and is in a limited edition of 5,000, it is nevertheless considerably easier and cheaper than the Bear Family sets, and it's also better, with better remastering and a more listenable track sequencing (it also has good liner notes by Colin Escott, who penned liners for the two Bear Family sets as well). In short, this is the reissue that Johnny Burnette has long deserved, and while it's been a long wait, it's been worth it, since this disc is essential to any true rock & roll collection.