Anyone who’s spent time on social media over the last few days may have been aware of the anger caused by Fatima’s future job in cyber, which is an advert in which ballet dancer, “Fatima” has an exciting future waiting for her in cyber security once she’s got all those notions about dancing Swan Lake at Sadler’s Wells out of her head. The implication being that there’s going to be plenty of exciting “proper” jobs waiting for creatives once the economic effects of COVID-19 finish decimating the arts businesses. The backlash has been swift and furious with even the Government itself disowning the campaign. What would Louisiana rockabilly star, Al Ferrier have made of it? Working in cyber security may be less physically taxing than working in the timber logging industry as Ferrier did, but he was in no doubts that music offered him a way out and one that he was determined to take as best he could. And for Ferrier, the route out of the timber industry was writing Let’s Go Boppin’ Tonight.
“I and my brothers, Warren and Brian, used to get up at 5am and go to Alexandria, Louisiana and go and play a radio show and then come back and haul pulp board for the rest of the day. That was real hard work. I’ll never forget what my dad told us one time. He said, ‘Sons, I used to get mad at you but now you’re ticklin’ me. I’m laughing at you at the way you’re running yourself down with the music and the work.’...It was real hard. My brothers and I would haul logs all day long but still played radio shows. One morning, I told my brothers I was going back to the house and write me some songs, because I want to play music. That’s what I did. In fact, that’s when I wrote Let’s Go Boppin’ Tonight.” Al Ferrier interviewed by Steve Kelemen for rockabillyhall.com circa 2011.
Ferrier’s breakout tune, after he and his backing group, the Boppin’ Billies, had released two singles on the Goldband label, was a classic example of a musical chameleon adapting to changing circumstances and hitting paydirt with it. In mid-1950s Louisiana, country music still held sway as the most popular form of music in the area, but rock ‘n’ roll could not be ignored. Ferrier and his band played predominantly country music at local gigs, but his liking for rock ‘n’ roll saw him write Let’s Go Boppin’ Tonight as a fusion of the two.
“All I did was take a country piece and put a fast tune to it...I did sing a lot of rock ‘n’ roll around the clubs. We played 4 or 5 nights a week back then and would play country and rockabilly . All the while I kept singing Let’s Go Boppin’ Tonight...We started playing it round the clubs and people started requesting it. I knew I had something that people would like.” Ferrier, 2011.
Let’s Go Boppin’ Tonight has clearly been written with a handful of other rock ‘n’roll songs in Ferrier’s mind. I can hear bits of Shake, Rattle and Roll, Blue Suede Shoes, Be-Bop-A-Lula and the other rock ‘n’ roll touchstone of 1958, Johnny B Goode popping up throughout it. The Louisiana punters lapped it up but the first sign that Ferrier had that it may have wider appeal was when Elvis Presley offered to record it.
“I thought, if he thinks he can put it over, I could probably do the same thing, so I didn’t send the song (to Memphis). I did alright with it by not giving it to Elvis.” Ferrier, 2011.
Soon, Ferrier was able to swap the timber yard for the recording studio and concert hall full time. The 2011 interview with the Rockabilly Hall of Fame contains more detail about his subsequent adventures in the music business including destructive times with alcohol, religious redemption and a 21st Century rebirth as a gospel singer. The interview is a poignant reminder of how the World Wide Web now acts as the great library of our times, catching and sustaining all who write on it for posterity, just as it has done here given that Ferrier died in 2015.
Video courtesy of 50sRockabilly
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