It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment rock ‘n’ roll was born. The Delmore Brothers, Maddox Brothers & Rose, and even Hank Williams played electrified hillbilly boogie that toed the line way back in the 1940s.
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But it wasn’t until rock ‘n’ roll became a viable commercial genre of its own that the music industry started to put the music that artists like Bill Haley or Elvis Presley were creating into its own, brand-new box.
And, in light of those artists’ incredible success, it’s not surprising that some early country singers wanted in. Here are two legendary country artists that I bet you didn’t know had rock ‘n’ roll alter egos.
George Jones, “Thumper Jones”
By 1956, thanks to the rise of rock ‘n’ roll stars like Presley, country music was in a bad way. A young Hank Williams soundalike with a Marine Corps haircut by the name of George Jones was just getting his footing professionally, and despite some reticence, gave rock a go.
Jones only had one hit under his belt, 1955’s “Why Baby Why,” by the time his manager Pappy Daily convinced him to cut “Rock It” and “Dadgumit (How Come It).” Jones later disowned the tracks entirely, telling Billboard in 2006: “I was desperate. When you’re hungry, a poor man with a house full of kids, you’re gonna do some things you ordinarily wouldn’t do.”
He goes on to call the tracks “a bunch of sh*t. I didn’t want my real name on the d*mn rock’n’roll thing, so I told them to put “Thumper Jones” on it, and if it did something, good, if it didn’t, hell, I didn’t want to be shamed with it.”
But I (and many critics) respectfully disagree with Jones on this point. “Rock It” is some of the most convincingly unhinged rockabilly ever cut to wax. Under his real name, the singer would later score one of his biggest early hits with rocker “Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson’s “White Lightning,” which unsurprisingly sounds an awful lot like rock ‘n’ roll, for a country song.
Buck Owens, “Corky Jones”
It’s no secret that Buck Owens’ Bakersfield Sound owes a lot to rock ‘n’ roll. Owens and the Buckaroos even cut some straight-up rock records over the span of their career, including a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”
So it’s not all that surprising that Owens took a serious stab at Rock ‘n’ Roll when it first hit the scene. 1956 saw the singer, under the moniker “Corky Jones,” recording “Hot Dog,” b/w “Rhythm and Booze” for the Pep label.
On these tracks, Owens affects the histrionic vocal style of Presley and Gene Vincent, and not entirely convincingly at that. I find the Thumper Jones records to be much better and a lot more authentically rocking (which is kind of ironic, because Owens never disavowed the tracks as Jones did his—in fact, he even re-recorded “Hot Dog” in 1988 for an album of the same name. And it is quite cringe).
It’s unclear where the “Jones” moniker came from (any relation to Thumper?), but it doesn’t seem that Buck was trying to hide his identity so much as he was trying to take an earnest swing at the rock genre with a more “rock” sounding pseudonym. Ever the savvy businessman, it’s likely he saw an opportunity to make some money and took it (though the Corky Jones record had limited distribution and likely didn’t bring in much).
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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