Billy Lee Riley was born in 1933 in Arkansas. He was 20 when he was discovered by Sam Phillips of Sun Records in Memphis. His debut, “Flyin’ Saucer Rock ‘n’ Roll,” was a hit in 1957, but by 1960 he was off the label. By 1962, he broke up his band, The Little Green Men, moved to Hollywood, and became an in-demand harmonica/guitar session man for the likes of the Beach Boys and Sammy Davis, Jr. In 1965, he performed an incendiary set of blistering rockabilly at The Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles, recorded by Mercury. It went nowhere so Riley quit the music business to start a successful construction company.
In the late seventies, Robert Gordon and Link Wray covered his “Red Hot,” so interest in his early primal Sun sides spurred him back to the stage where he toiled in roadside dives in the Deep South until 1992, when Bob Dylan brought him out onstage and told the crowd that Billy Lee was his musical hero. Thus, he was red hot again!
In 1997, he signed with Capricorn Records and made the best blues album of the year, Hot Damn. I was his publicist. I remember getting him into the pages of People magazine and dealing with him on a personal level, and he was the most charming, sweetest gentleman I ever had the pleasure to work with. It was nominated for a Grammy but lost to Taj Mahal’s Senor Blues. In 2005, he suffered a horrible fall that he never truly recovered from and died in 2009 of colon cancer.
These fond remembrances are due to Rocks (Bear Family Records), a red hot retrospective of Riley’s primal, earthy, roots-rockabilly (35 tracks!) that makes a strong argument for his inclusion into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. With great liner notes by Bill Dahl, beautifully-packaged booklet, and remastered sound, Rocks rocks. Highlights include “Your Cash Ain’t Nothin’ But Trash,” “Arkansas Traveler,” “Flip Flop & Fly,” “Barefootin’,” “Everybody’s Twisting,” “Baby Please Don’t Go,” “Catfish,” “Mean Woman Blues,” “Nightmare Mash,” “The Little Green Men,” and a few versions of “Flying Rock ‘n’ Roll,” plus “Red Hot.”
“My gal is red hot,” he once snarled, “your gal ain’t doodly-squat.”
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https://www.theaquarian.com/2019/08/28/mike-greenblatts-rant-n-roll-13/