Robert Gordon
's first album without
Link Wray
showed no diminution of his appeal -- indeed, lead guitarist
Chris Spedding
's somewhat more polished approach to licks first explored 20 some years earlier by
Scotty Moore
or
Cliff Gallup
(of
Gene Vincent
's
Blue Caps
) come off well in the studio, and fit in with the somewhat more polished sound this album aimed at. The presence of a few slow
ballads
like
"Wheel of Fortune,"
some with surprisingly restrained string accompaniment, put this on the sophisticated side of
rockabilly
, which doesn't mean that it's not exciting -- just that, in the musical timewarp of his work, some of
Gordon
's impulses had advanced to the place that
Buddy Holly
Elvis Presley
had gotten to around the middle of 1958.
Rock Billy Boogie
is mostly kicking
rock & roll
with a killer beat (
"Rock Billy Boogie,"
"Am I Blue"
) and welcome rescue job on one classic (
"Black Slacks"
), spiced with a few slowies and one
country
ballad
(
Johnny Burnette's
"Walk on By"
revived), plus one superb original (
"I Just Met a Memory"
), and there's not a bad song, or even a less-than-first-rate performance anywhere on it. If
had lived long enough to hear this record or discover
, one suspects he'd have loved them both. The
One Way
reissue on CD offers good sound and reprints the essential credits from the original LP. ~ Bruce Eder