Sid King

One of the first white rock & rollers to record for a major label (Columbia), Sid King (born Sid Erwin) was also one of the first young Southern musicians to go from Western swing to rockabilly in the mid-'50s. Erwin grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He sang and played guitar at school, and while still in his mid-teens he began appearing on local radio with a friend, Melvin Robinson. The duo eventually took over the program, and Erwin and Robinson (who also played steel guitar and sax) formed a band, bringing in Erwin's brother Billy Joe on lead guitar, Ken Massey on bass, and David White on drums. The group, by then known as the Western Melody Makers, stuck to playing country and Western swing in their gigs and radio appearances, but they were listening to lots of records by black artists. They were signed to Starday Records in 1954 and recorded a handful of songs, but these yielded no hits. They subsequently got a contract with Columbia Records and rechristened themselves the Five Strings. Erwin, in turn, changed his name to Sid King, all for the sake of a rhyming moniker, Sid King & the Five Strings. The Columbia sessions show just how far afield from country the group's listening had gotten. Their harmonies, the high-compression beat of their playing, and their choice of songs, coupled with Jim Beck's hard, up-front mixing of the rhythm section, made them, for a time, one of the hotter rockabilly acts outside of Memphis. They weren't as wild as the Sparkletones, but within Columbia Records' stable of artists, their music (along with that of the Collins Kids) constituted a tiny corner of rockabilly validity. Hearing their stuff today, they could have been fair rivals to Bill Haley & His Comets or Carl Perkins, with a sound midway between the two. Sid King & the...