TO SEE HAYDEN THOMPSON AT WORK, DRIVING FARES to and from O`Hare in his long black limousine, you`d never guess that the courtly middle-aged driver, dressed conservatively in a dark suit and tie, used to be a rock `n` roll star.
In Europe, where he has done six tours and had seven albums released since 1984, he still is a star.
As with some better-known young, wild-eyed Southern boys in the mid-`50s- most notably Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins-Hayden Thompson recorded what has come to be known as ”rockabilly” music for Sam Phillips` Memphis-based Sun and Phillips International record labels. Part rock `n` roll, part hillbilly, rockabilly was what happened when country and bluegrass music collided with rhythm and blues.
Although rockabilly`s golden years were brief-roughly from the mid- to late-1950s-the music made a lasting impression. Strong rockabilly strains can be heard in the music of the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and Creedence Clearwater Revival. In the early `80s, the Stray Cats hit the Top 10 with neo- rockabilly tunes such as ”Rock This Town” and ”Stray Cat Strut.”
But for every Sun artist such as Presley, Lewis or Perkins, there were many more like Thompson, Warren Smith and Carl Mann: one- or two-hit wonders who remain as footnotes of rock `n` roll`s heady early days.
Thompson, though, refuses to remain a footnote. At an age when many men are facing midlife crises, he`s reliving his youthful glory, thanks largely to the enduring appeal of rockabilly in Europe. Earlier this year he performed in front of 12,000 fans at a country-music festival at London`s Wembley Arena. While in London he recorded a new half-rockabilly, half-country album, ”The Time Is Now,” that was released in Europe earlier this month; he is currently in the midst of a six-week tour of Europe-his third there this year.
”I`ve been wanting to make my living with music and be a star since I was 15 years old,” says Thompson, 52, a Booneville, Miss., native who has called Highland Park home since 1958. ”I thought it was all over, and now here I am getting another chance.”
Unlikely as it may seem, Europe-particularly Britain, Germany, Holland and Scandinavia-remains a hotbed of rockabilly mania. Over there, Thompson`s 1957 single, ”Love My Baby”-a regional hit in the U.S.-is considered a rock `n` roll standard.
A late-`70s rockabilly revival in Europe made converts of fans who weren`t even born when the original songs were recorded. Record labels such as Britain`s Charly, Sweden`s Sunjay and Germany`s Bear Family have reissued hundreds of albums by such American rockabilly pioneers as Sonny Burgess, Charlie Feathers and Jack Scott.
”The music of the `50s never really went away in Europe,” says Johnny Sandberg, co-owner of Sunjay Records, which has released several of Thompson`s albums in the last few years. ”In just about every country in Europe, there are groups playing rockabilly music. You can also hear it on the radio wherever you go.”
”The music that was on the radio here in England just before the rock
`n` roll era was so terrible and maudlin that I can`t begin to tell you,”
says Brian Hogdson, a veteran London musician and songwriter who produced Thompson`s new album. ”That`s why the original rockabilly music was so explosive and had such an impact here. Suddenly you turned on your radio and heard Elvis singing `Hound Dog,` and it was like an electric shock. And I don`t think that feeling has ever gone away.”
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Highland Park may seem an unlikely address for a veteran rock `n` roller, but Thompson and his wife, Georgia, seem comfortable in their modest brown house with Thompson`s limo parked behind it.
Despite a slight paunch and a bit of a receding hairline, Thompson is still instantly recognizable as the pompadoured teenager who stares out at the world from his old publicity photos wearing a Presley-esque sneer and a Gibson guitar.
After switching to country music in the `60s and releasing an album on Kapp Records in 1966, appearing on the Grand Ole Opry several times and putting out a number of singles on small labels afterward, a disgusted Thompson decided to quit music for good in 1975 and concentrate on his day job as a limo driver.
Toward the end, he had been playing at ”beer joints” for very little money and was tired of working with under-rehearsed and often incompetent pickup bands.
”It just made me sick after a while,” he recalls. ”I told my wife, `If this is the best I can do, I`ll just hang it up for a while.` ” A ”while” lasted eight years.
Thompson`s return to rockabilly came as a result of a series of telegrams and phone calls beginning in 1981 from British concert promoter Willie Jeffries, who had been bringing over American rockabilly artists to Europe for years. After Thompson turned down his repeated offers, Jeffries asked Thompson`s rockabilly contemporaries such as Burgess, Mann and Eddie Bond to speak to him.
Recalls Thompson: ”They`d call me and say: `Man, if you get another chance to go over to Europe, take it! You may not make a lot of money, but the reaction you`ll get is just like turning back time to the `50s.` ”
Although still skeptical, Thompson agreed to a three-week tour of Holland, Sweden and Britain in 1984. Recalls Georgia Thompson who, along with their son (a college student in Minnesota), accompanied him on the tour,
”Before that first trip, he kept worrying, `Will they accept me?`
” Thompson admits: ”Two weeks before we were supposed to leave, I was ready to back out. I didn`t know what to expect.”
There were trepidations on the other side of the Atlantic as well. Sandberg, the copromoter of the tour, had his concerns too. ”We were a bit worried,” he admits. ”We`d had the situation before with some artists who
`used to be,` and many of them failed to live up to the expectations of the public.”
Thompson`s first show was at a festival in Eindhoven, Holland, on a bill headlined by Carl Mann. Provided with a backup group familiar with his old material, Thompson hit the stage for the first time in nine years.
”I`ll never forget this as long as I live,” Thompson says, the disbelief still in his voice. ”When they introduced me, and I walked out there from behind the curtain, you`d have thought I`d sold 10 million records from the reception I got. I was just a small part of the Sun Records scene, but you`d never know it by the way they treated me.”
”There were about 2,000 to 3,000 people in the crowd, and they screamed throughout the entire show,” Sandberg recalls. ”I think it took him a few days to get over it.”
Says Thompson: ”What makes the European trips so great is that I`m seeing the same types of audiences that I played to in the `50s: mostly kids in their early `20s. The guys have long sideburns and these crazy outfits, and the girls wear hoop skirts, pony tails and patent-leather shoes.
”You can`t imagine what it`s like to witness this!”
IF THERE ARE VOCAL SIMILARITIES between Presley and Thompson, you could blame it on the Mississippi soil they both came from. Born three years after Elvis, Thompson hails from Booneville, a small town 25 miles north of Elvis`
hometown of Tupelo and 120 miles southeast of Memphis. An only child, Thompson`s father worked in a sawmill and as a truck driver, while his mother worked in one of the many garment factories then in the area.
”It was the typical Southern upbringing-lots of singing in church and listening to country music around the house,” Thompson recalls. ”My dad always played the guitar, and I got my first guitar when I was very young.”
Although Thompson was initially a country-music fan, he was also exposed to the blues and R&B music broadcast at night on Nashville`s WLAC that influenced Elvis and other like-minded young musicians throughout the South.
Thompson`s first group was the Southern Melody Boys, who played country music at parties and over Booneville`s WBIP. They also recorded a country/
blues single at the station`s studio, ”I Feel the Blues Coming On,”
released on the tiny Von label in 1954.
In July of that year a shock wave rolled throughout the South, when Elvis` cover of blues singer Arthur ”Big Boy” Crudup`s ”That`s All Right, Mama” on Sun Records hit radio like a house on fire. Previously, Phillips`
main business had been recording black blues singers at his small recording studio at 706 Union Ave. in Memphis and then leasing the master recordings to various record labels, including Chicago`s Chess Records.
After he launched Sun in 1952, Phillips often said that if he could find a white man who had the black sound and the black feel, he could make a billion dollars. In Elvis he found his man, if only to sell his contract to RCA Records a year later for $40,000 in badly needed operating capital.
”I can remember hearing `That`s All Right, Mama` for the first time like it was yesterday,” Thompson recalls. ”It was so different from the country music I had been listening to. He had the looks, the personality, and the timing was just right.”
As with many of his contemporaries, Thompson found this new sound, newly dubbed ”rock `n` roll,” more in sync with his youthful energy than country music. The Southern Melody Boys started adding a few Elvis tunes to their repertoire, though not always happily.
”Some of the older guys in the band at the time would tell me that rock
`n` roll was just a flash in the pan and would never last,” Thompson says.
”They didn`t like Elvis` music at all.”
By 1955 the group had gotten rid of its fiddle player and added a drummer. After Thompson graduated from high school in 1956, the group toured the Southern movie-theater circuit with the film ”Rock Around the Clock,”
playing both before and after the movie. Not all the excitement was on the screen either.
”I remember one town in Arkansas where we had six or eight carloads of guys waiting outside our motel after a show,” Thompson says. ”So we just loaded up our instruments and drove on through to the next town instead. I guess their girls just liked the band a little too much.”
By that time Thompson had seen Elvis perform a number of times at venues ranging from high school auditoriums to small theaters. ”I remember standing back in the alley behind the Von Theatre in Booneville and looking at his pink and black Cadillac with my eyes popping out of my head. I knew that was what I wanted to do.”
When some of the group members remained hesitant about playing rock `n`
roll, Thompson formed the Dixie Jazzlanders with some other Booneville friends. ”Everybody was trying to capture that sound,” he says. ”All of a sudden rock `n` roll bands began appearing all over the south. All the record companies in Memphis were trying to find another Elvis.”
In 1956 Thompson landed at Phillips` Memphis recording studio. He`d already made an impression on Sun session guitarist Roland Janes, who would later play on such classic Jerry Lee Lewis hits as ”Whole Lotta Shakin` Goin` On” and ”Great Balls of Fire.”
”I`d heard a lot about Hayden before I`d even met him,” recalls Janes, who after a long interval is working for Phillips again at his new Memphis studio. ”He was in a pretty good group, the Dixie Jazzlanders, that had some gimmicks going for them-like their drummer having green hair. Well, it may not have been green, but it was some sort of Easterlike color like that.”
Like many young rockabilly artists, Thompson wangled an audition at Sun and recorded four songs with the Dixie Jazzlanders: ”Blues Blues Blues,”
”Fairlane Rock,” ”You Are My Sunshine” and ”Mother Goose is Rockin`.”
All four remained unreleased until the `70s, when they were issued in Europe. One famous rockabilly fanatic, former Led Zeppelin singer turned solo artist Robert Plant, serenaded Thompson with an impromptu rendition of
”Fairlane Rock” when the two met a few years ago while Plant was doing a soundcheck before his Rosemont Horizon concert.
When Thompson`s group broke up shortly after the sessions, he began working with Billy Lee Riley and his band, the Little Green Men, touring throughout the South. Janes, who played guitar for Riley`s band, recalls that Thompson would sing the Presley material while Riley handled the Little Richard tunes. ”Hayden was a tremendous performer with enormous charisma,”
Janes says. ”He really knew how to handle an audience.”
He returned to the Sun studio later that year to cut ”Love My Baby.”
Originally recorded by blues singer Junior Parker, Thompson`s version came complete with a spirited slurring of the words in the best Presley tradition. Highlighted by an insistent, chugging rhythm, the song also featured a young Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, playing on his first Sun recording session.
Inexplicably, ”Love My Baby” was put on a shelf for 10 months before Sam Phillips released it on his Phillips International subsidiary in 1957. It was released simultaneously with saxophonist Bill Justis` instrumental
”Raunchy.”
”When that record finally came out I was so happy-it was like holding pure gold in my hands,” Thompson says. ”I thought I was going to be a star.”
Unfortunately for Thompson, ”Raunchy” ended up becoming a smash hit for the label and all but buried ”Love My Baby.” Says Janes, ”Today it might seem like Sun Records was a giant company, but in reality it was a small company that had more going on than it could handle.”
Years later, Sam Phillips himself wondered why the record didn`t become a smash. Talking to English writer Martin Hawkins in 1987, he said: ”(One person) for whom I have no explanation why he didn`t make it is Hayden Thompson. His `Love My Baby` is one of my favorite records. It was a classic. Hayden had an awful lot of talent, and I would like to have had more time with him. Maybe there was too much of an Elvis influence in him; that`s all I can think of.”
Thompson stayed in Memphis, working with the regionally popular Slim Rhodes Band as their featured singer. But disheartened by Phillips` penchant for holding up the release of his records, he decided to head to Chicago`s North Shore, where a friend had bought the Tally Ho Club in Highwood.
For five years Thompson led the club`s house band, playing piano, guitar and belting out songs from the rock `n` roll hit parade in between the occasional fight on the dance floor. ”There were a few guys who didn`t like my shoes with lightning bolts on the sides or my long hair and pink jacket,” he recalls. It was also at the Tally Ho that he met his future wife, Georgia, in 1959.
”I wasn`t that impressed by who he was when I met him,” she recalls.
”I remember he gave my brother one of his early records where it sounded like he was singing through his nose.”
By the mid-`60s country music was making headway in Chicago with the city`s new full-time country station WJJD. Thompson soon found himself singing country music on weekends with the house band at the 1,400-capacity Rivoli Ballroom at Montrose and Elston on the Northwest Side, which featured top stars like Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Buck Owens.
When the Rivoli closed in 1967 Thompson stayed with country music, playing on package shows throughout the city and outlying areas and recording a number of singles on obscure record labels until he quit music in the mid-` 70s.
Thompson is hoping his new European album will generate interest from record companies here as well, though to date he has received little encouragement from the Nashville music industry. In 1987 Thompson recorded a tribute to Elvis, ”The Boy From Tupelo,” backed by the Chicago group Bud Hudson and the Hornets, with whom he teamed up for a handful of shows. The song received airplay locally on Dick Biondi`s Magic 104 (WJMK-FM) show, on US 99 (WUSN-FM) and on Steve King`s WGN-AM show.
” `The Boy From Tupelo` was as good as most of the things that are coming out of Nashville today,” says King, who has had Thompson as a guest on his show several times. ”Hayden could be a big star in Europe if he moved there, but I think he really wants to make it in his own country.”
”In country music today the accent is on youth,” Roland Janes says.
”Once you`re past 30 you`re over the hill, according to the Nashville mentality.”
A full-time limo driver since 1975, Thompson has reaped some unexpected dividends from his day job. A casual conversation with one of his fares, movie director John Hughes, led to his recording ”Are You Lonesome Tonight?” for inclusion in Hughes` ”Ferris Bueller`s Day Off.” The song, unfortunately, ended up on the cutting room floor.
Another passenger was a producer for NBC`s ”Today,” who upon learning of Thompson`s background included him in a segment on the ups and downs of the music business that aired last December.
Still, Thompson would like to put that long black limousine out to pasture.
”I`m 52 years old and I don`t know how much time I have left, but I know I can still entertain people,” he says. ”I`d like to be able to get up in the morning and know that all I had to do that day was concentrate on the shows I had coming up and on writing some songs.
”And not have to worry about that damn limousine.”
