"Rock It" is a

rockabilly Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the Southern United States, South. As a genre it blends the sound of Western music (North America), Western music ...

single by

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

singer

George Jones George Glenn Jones (September 12, 1931 – April 26, 2013) was an American country musician, singer, and songwriter. He achieved international fame for his long list of hit records, including his best-known song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", ...

. Not wanting to use his real name and jeopardize his reputation as a country artist,

Starday Records Starday Records was an American record label producing traditional country music during the 1950s and 1960s. History The label began in 1952 in Beaumont, Texas, when local businessmen Jack Starnes (Lefty Frizzell's manager) and Houston record di ...

released it under the pseudonym "Thumper Jones."

Background

With the explosion in popularity of

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...

in 1956, country music lost a sizeable portion of its young audience and scrambled to adapt. As biographer Bob Allen put it in his book ''George Jones: The Life and Times of a Honky Tonk Legend'', "It temporarily sent the country music industry sprawling flat on its ass. Sales figures for country music plummeted dangerously, and soon even the most dedicated country artists - as a matter of sheer professional survival - were all rushing to pump some Elvis glottal bestiality into their own music." Jones, who had played with both Elvis and

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his ca ...

on the ''

Louisiana Hayride ''Louisiana Hayride'' was a radio and later television country music show broadcast from the Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana, that during its heyday from 1948 to 1960 helped to launch the careers of some of th ...

'', and his producer

Pappy Daily Harold W. Daily (February 8, 1902 – December 5, 1987), better known as "Pappy" Daily, was an American country music record producer and entrepreneur who cofounded the Texas-based record label Starday Records. Daily worked with many of the well-kn ...

decided to give rockabilly a shot, recording two songs Jones wrote: "Rock It" and "Dadgumit, How Come It." As Jones explained to ''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. I said, 'Well, hell, I'll try anything once.' I tried 'Dadgum It How Come It' and 'Rock It', a bunch of shit. I didn't want my name on the rock and 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." Jones and Daily came up with the name Thumper Jones, but the single failed to chart. Jones retained a lifelong disdain for the rock and roll sides he cut during this time, joking in his 1995 autobiography ''I Lived to Tell It All'', "During the years, when I've encountered those records, I've used them for Frisbees." However, some critics disagree, with

Nick Tosches Nicholas P. Tosches (; October 23, 1949 – October 20, 2019) was an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet. His 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, '' Hellfire'', was praised by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine as "the best rock and roll ...

noting in his 1994 ''Texas Monthly'' article "The Devil in George Jones", "Though Jones would never acknowledge it, the rockabilly impulse of the early fifties had affected his sound as much as the lingering voices of Acuff and Williams. 'Play It Cool, Man, Play It Cool,' recorded by Jones in 1954, several months before Elvis's debut, had bordered on pure rockabilly..." In the 1989 Jones documentary ''Same Ole Me'', Johnny Cash insisted, "George Jones woulda been a really hot rockabilly artist if he'd approached it from that angle. Well, he was, really, but never got the credit for it." Moreover, Jones' first #1 country hit, " White Lightning", was written by J.P. Richardson, better known as rockabilly star the

Big Bopper Jiles Perry "J.P." Richardson Jr. (October 24, 1930 – February 3, 1959), known as The Big Bopper, was an American singer, songwriter and disc jockey. His best-known compositions include "Chantilly Lace" and " White Lightning", the latter of wh ...

, and also had a rock and roll edge.

References

{{George Jones 1956 singles George Jones songs