Charlie Gracie: He Beat Elvis to The Punch

Who made the first rockabilly record? Let’s get one thing straight from the outset: there’s rock ‘n’ roll and there’s the subset of rockabilly. While all rockabilly is rock ‘n’ roll, the reverse does not hold true. The more generalized origin of rock ‘n’ roll is an ultra-slippery slope, but it undeniably began when Black musicians started souping the blues up into R&B. Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88,” recorded in March 1951 and released a month later, is usually cited as the first rock ‘n’ roll record, but you could make the case for any number of tunes going back to the ‘40s.

The party line on rockabilly’s origin story is a predictable one. It starts with a 19-year-old Memphis trucker strolling into Memphis’s Sun Studio in 1954 and recording a jacked-up version of bluesman Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right,” alchemically melding country, blues, and R&B into a potent new paradigm. The making of Elvis Presley’s first 45 is an undeniably epochal event, but it’s not even close to where and when rockabilly began.

If you really want to uncover the origins of rockabilly on record, you’ve got to go about it rather counterintuitively, by abandoning the South altogether and looking to the unlikely environs of greater Philadelphia. A lot of folks consider Bill Haley’s April 1952 single “Rock the Joint”—previously recorded by R&B singer Jimmy Preston—to be the first rockabilly 45. (Some hair-splitters claim that Haley’s June 14, 1951 recording of Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” was actually the first rockabilly session, but Haley’s arrangement is more on the country boogie/Western swing side of the fence.) There’s a case to be made for “Rock the Joint,” but the closer you look, the more questionable it becomes.

Charlie Gracie, who left us on December 16, 2022, was a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer who beat Elvis (and arguably Haley) to the punch at an insanely early age. Gracie recorded his self-penned “Boogie Woogie Blues” (mislabeled “Boogie Boogie Blues” on the initial release) in 1951 when he was just 15 years old. Astonishingly, it’s a fully formed rockabilly record, and both his singing and guitar playing sound like the work of someone well beyond Gracie’s age at the time.

If it had come out shortly after its recording, as was the custom at the time, “Boogie Woogie Blues” would’ve had a clear claim as the first rockabilly record. But for some reason, it wasn’t released until 1953. The recording date of Haley’s 1952 “Rock the Joint” is unavailable and theoretically could have preceded that of Gracie’s tune. It’s unlikely, but we may never know.

But in short, it’s highly likely that 15-year-old Charlie Gracie had the distinction of recording the first rockabilly song. And it’s probably not coincidental that Gracie hailed from South Philadelphia, just about 15 miles upriver from Haley’s HQ in Chester, PA. Either there was something in that Delaware River water or there was enough country and R&B flowing through the area at the time to give a couple of open musical minds some big ideas.

The world wouldn’t really be ready for rockabilly until Elvis appeared in ’54, but Gracie would go on to have a No. 1 hit with “Butterfly” in 1957. In the ‘50s he toured with just about all the rock ‘n’ roll icons of the day, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and plenty more. Gracie did it all—performing on American Bandstand and The Ed Sullivan Show, appearing in Alan Freed’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Revue, and being featured alongside the likes of Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis in the 1957 rocksploitation film Jamboree.

Gracie toured England and racked up hits there, becoming an influence on most of the major U.K. rockers of the boomer generation. Graham Nash, Paul McCartney, and many more have sung his praises. In 1999, McCartney recorded Gracie’s ‘57 hit “Fabulous” with something of a British rock supergroup including Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice. Cliff Richard cut the tune as the semi-title track for his 2013 album The Fabulous Rock ‘n’ Roll Songbook.

Like most of his ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll peers, Gracie stopped scoring hits by the ‘60s, but he never quit plying his trade, taking his sound on the road for the rest of his life. He was never forgotten—in 2006 ABKCO Records documented Gracie’s ‘50s classics with The Best of Charlie Gracie: Cameo-Parkway 1956-1958. Co-producer Teri Landi cherishes “that charming Italian swagger that he brought to his brand of rockabilly that only a boy from South Philadelphia could. The other thing that struck me about Charlie,” she says, “is how he could entertain you for hours on end with just his guitar and no band. He said he was one of the last of the saloon singers. I got a great example of this at an outdoor show at Lincoln Center in August 2007. He was scheduled to play the evening in Damrosch Park at the yearly Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll show, but he was also booked in the afternoon in the South Plaza to do a solo show. He sang everything from his own hits and deep catalog to rock ‘n’ roll covers to Italian ballads to pop and old-timey standards. And he told jokes and stories to boot. I’m really going to miss seeing him perform.”

Veteran New York singer/songwriter Wes Houston recalls, “Back in 1957-’58 my mom, brother, and I went to all the Alan Freed Rock ‘n’ Roll shows that were held in either the New York or Brooklyn Paramount theaters. Charlie Gracie was a rockabilly/pop star—did his own excellent guitar work and had a very energized style. The great thing about these shows was the wide diversity of the acts. After Charlie, you might have Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or the Harptones or Johnny Ray. Charlie always held his own amongst the crowd—terrific shows.”

ABKCO even released an album of new Gracie material in 2011, For the Love of Charlie, co-produced by Al Kooper and featuring guest spots from Graham Nash and Herman’s Hermits frontman Peter Noone. Gracie didn’t have to receive his honors posthumously either—he’s in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and has a plaque on his hometown’s Walk of Fame. His story was told in the PBS documentary Fabulous. And the cover of his 2015 autobiography, Rock & Roll’s Hidden Giant: The Story of Rock Pioneer Charlie Gracie, is adorned by the following statement from McCartney: “When we were starting out with The Beatles, the music coming over from America was magical to us—and one of the artists who epitomized this magic was Charlie Gracie.”

-Jim Allen

Photo: Charlie Gracie (from the Fleer Spins and Needles Trading Card series, courtesy of Wes Houston)