A conversation with Rocky Frisco, part 1

| | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of years ago, on April 11, 2007, I sat down at the Village Inn with Tulsa rock and roll pioneer Rocky Frisco and recorded a leisurely conversation with him. I am a lousy interviewer, but Rocky is a great interview subject. It didn't take much prompting to get him to tell some fascinating stories about his upbringing, Tulsa schools in the '40s, Tulsa music in the '50s, his bicycle ride to Fort Hood, Texas, to interview Elvis and his views on matters political and spiritual.

For quite some time, I've intended either to transcribe the interview or to edit and upload the audio. At long last, I've started working on the audio, and I have the first 15 minute segment ready to go. In this segment, Rocky talks about how he got started with rock and roll, winning contests at the Sheri-Bob Dance Studios, Gene Crose and his band, Flash Terry, the Flamingo Lounge, and the Greenwood music scene of the late '50s, and the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and the tribute they put together for Carl Radle. (Other topics and names dropped in this discussion: Liquor-by-the-wink in 1950s Oklahoma, the contrast between the music business then and now, Leo Feathers, Brooks and Dunn.)

Rocky has the beginnings of a website on the Tulsa Sound, where he mentions some of the same history and quotes JJ Cale:

According to John "JJ" Cale, "There isn't really any Tulsa Sound; we were just trying to play the blues and didn't know how, so that's what we came up with." We played what we knew, so it was a mixture of Western Swing, Country, Blues, Gospel and Popular Music, which ranged from ballads to marching bands.

(If you only see a 30 sec. excerpt, click the "Play full song here" link.)


A Conversation with Rocky Frisco, April 11, 2007 - Rocky Frisco with Michael Bates

0 TrackBacks

Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: A conversation with Rocky Frisco, part 1.

TrackBack URL for this entry: https://www.batesline.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5271

2 Comments

XonOFF said:

Can't get this to play.
It loads the player and acts like it should, just never starts the download.

I just checked, and it works OK for me in Firefox 3 -- just press the play button and it should start, or you can click the link and visit the imeem site. Anyone else having trouble?

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Michael Bates published on September 7, 2009 12:01 PM.

District 4 candidate forum audio was the previous entry in this blog.

Rocky Frisco on downtown development; Chamber to run downtown marketing? is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Contact

Feeds

Subscribe to feed Subscribe to this blog's feed:
Atom
RSS
[What is this?]