Tuesday 25 February 2014

DELTA RECORDS 705

LEROY MARTIN and the Rebels
Mar 58  (BMI Clearance on 31st May 1958.)
CP-1462 - Keen Teen Baby
(?)   (Golden State Songs)
CP-1463 - Upon This Day
(?)   (Golden State Songs)
DELTA 705
Radio Station KTIB, Thibodaux, LA.

No label shot - well, I was sent one ages ago but it's far too out of focus to use.

From: South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous. (John Broven)


Born in Golden Meadow in 1929, Leroy was mesmerized at an early age by the hillbilly recordings of Jimmie Rodgers. Many years later he repaid this inspirational debt when he presented his rare Jimmie Rodgers picture record, given to him originally by Jimmie’s widow, to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. Leroy started playing music seriously in 1947, as a guitarist with Dudley Bernard ‘s combo the Southern Serenaders, waking up to his native Cajun music only when Vin Bruce began recording for Columbia in the early fifties. In 1954 Martin left the Southern Serenaders to get married, and spent his honeymoon in Memphis, where he saw the last Barnum and Bailey vaudeville show and met the young Elvis Presley. Music was at the crossroads, and Leroy was there. Quickly displaying his musical vision, he formed the Rebels in 1955 to play "semicountry and rock" - in other words, rockabilly. 

Two years later he made his first record, "Keen Teen Baby" and "Upon This Day", which he released on his own Delta label. "It was meant to sound like ‘Decca" he says of the name, "...only major labels were selling then. I pressed 500 copies and was left with 400 !". After this he played with the local Dominoes group before joining the Vikings, who were backing his cousin Joe Barry.