Rockabilly Revival

The successive revivals, from the late 1970s onward, of 1950s rockabilly: the stripped trio format of slap upright bass, twangy semi-acoustic guitar and small drum kit, quiffed presentation and period dress, and a repertoire mixing Sun Records standards with new songs written to period specifications. Britain's teddy-boy circuit and bands such as *The Polecats* and *Matchbox* launched the first wave; the *Stray Cats* carried it to American mass success in the early 1980s, and later figures from *Reverend Horton Heat* to *Imelda May* and *JD McPherson* have renewed the formula.