One of the sub-debates that caught my eye in the reaction to the news about Oasis reforming to play live dates in 2025 was whether demand for tickets to their shows would be comparable to anyone trying get a ticket for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. It’s been a long time since I concerned myself over attendance figures at a rock concert. The last time I did so was mid-1996, when my concern for how Blur had seemingly gone from heroes to punchlines after winning the Country House vs Roll With It single battle, but decisively losing the Great Escape vs (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? albums battle both in terms of sales figures and, more crucially, in the court of public opinion. They were due to play a gig at the RDS Grounds, Dublin which I feared virtually no-one would attend. In the event, 32,000 people turned out and those present got to be the first people to hear Song 2.
I’m out of the loop when it comes to Taylor Swift. I drifted away from mainstream music over the course of the 2010s, so her rise to superstardom was something I knew about, but didn’t witness. Apart from a bit of the chorus to Shake It Off, the only thing I know about Swift’s music is that she got her start in the business as a country music star. Going by Wikipedia, she’s subsequently recorded albums that are inspired by pop, rock, hip-hop and electronica. Maybe I should go through her back catalogue one day as it appears that she has never stood still as an artist and has been eager and brave enough to step out of her musical lane, time and time again. I thought about Swift while researching the story behind Thumper Jones’s 1956 single, Rock It, released through Starday Records. Not least because the man who recorded it found that having done so, he had no wish to get outside of his designated lane. What’s more, he actively tried to close the other lane down.
Thumper Jones was a pseudonym used by country singer, George Jones, a man who was regarded as one of the finest and most successful country singers ever. He had over 160 hits on the country music charts from 1955 to 2013. His first records came out in 1954, just at the point that rock ‘n’ roll music was getting started. Indeed, Jones had shared bills with Elvis Presley during 1955. Although Jones had already had a couple of Top 10 hits on the country charts, he set to writing a fast rockabilly tune called Rock It, so as to reflect the new musical sound. However, it doesn’t seem as though he was artistically invested in the single, not least because he put it under a pseudonym. He subsequently admitted that he had taken a punt on trying a rock ‘n’ roll tune in the hope of making a quick buck. The record didn’t chart and Jones beat a path back to pure country music as fast as he could. In fact, Jones was so embarrassed by it, he unsuccessfully tried to buy the masters to both sides of the single so that he could stop them surfacing on compilations.
It’s a shame that Jones had such a low opinion of both Rock It and its flipside, How Come It, because he gives a terrific performance here. There’s a degree of appropriation going on with a few borrowed “Go cat, go!” lines and he also tries to channel Elvis’s “smushy” vocal sound* at points. He also makes a bit of a dogs dinner of the Everybody likes to do the bop/Some is just too slow lines where they clearly don’t fit the scansion of his tune, but these quibbles apart, the tune flies and Jones makes it a compelling listen with a lyric which can be read either as one about dancing or sex.
I wish Jones had had a few more stabs at rock ‘n’ roll music, as he clearly had the aptitude to do it well. If he felt that it was an inferior art form to country music then he’s entitled to his opinion. But having listened to his 13 Number 1 country hits while prepping this blogpost, I only found 3 of them to be anywhere near as good as Rock It. Two of them were duets he sang with his ex-wife, Tammy Wynette (1976’s Golden Ring & 1977’s Near You). The best of them was his first number 1, White Lightning, recorded in 1959, and ironically given Jones’s antipathy towards the form, arguably his most rocking country hit. This could be down to the fact that it was written by The Big Bopper and Jones does a fine job of marrying the idiosyncrasies of Bopper’s style with his own in the recording.
Peel occasionally played George Jones’s records through the years and four years to the day of the broadcast of this show, he played Developing My Pictures from the 1982 compilation album, Burn the Honky-Tonk Down, released via Rounder Records.
*I’m thinking particularly about the way Elvis sounds on the “…so lonely…” lines of Heartbreak Hotel.
Lyrics are copyright of George Jones.
Video courtesy of TyroneSchmidling.
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