METEOR ROCKABILLY

Description

Housed in an old grocery store in a remote industrial neighborhood, Meteor Records lived in the shadow of the Sun label in 1950s Memphis. It was run by Lester Bihari, the affable brother of Joe, Jules and Lester Bihari, as an outpost of their thriving Modern/RPM label in Los Angeles. Hoping to rival Sun, Meteor got off to a promising start in 1952 with Elmore James’s R&B hit “I Believe,” recorded in Chicago. Though commendable, the following R&B releases proved less successful. However, a second hit, this time in the country field, Bud Deckelman’s “Daydreamin” in late 1954, gave Meteor a new lease on life and piqued Lester’s interest in recording rockabilly artists, especially now that newcomer Elvis Presley was breaking through on Sun. Soon they came to visit us: local honky-tonk brawlers like Bill Bowen and Brad Suggs, out-of-state rockabillies (Junior Thompson, Steve Carl), determined amateurs (Jess Hooper and Wayne McGuiness), and a handful of Sun renegades (Charlie Feathers and Malcolm Yelvington). Each had something cool to say and left it for posterity at Meteor, one of the most collectible postwar labels since few records were distributed beyond Memphis and its surroundings. The sign on the front awning boasted “The supreme achievement of recorded sound,” but in reality the sound was the opposite — blurry, dark and mysterious, governed by whoever was closest to the microphone in Meteor’s poorly equipped studio, located in a back room with poor acoustics. Meteor’s studio was made to keep its secrets and that was where the magic lay. No one was ever paid and no one was invited back for a second session. At some point during the summer of 1957, Lester Bihari turned off the lights, closed Meteor shop for the last time and left without bothering to take the masters and all the paperwork, mythologizing the label with that final turn of the key. The unconscious truth of Meteor Rockabilly is our truth: it left the music to speak for itself, without frills and without commercial imperatives.