I heard “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats only once before I bought it, but the two events were separated by almost a decade. It’s an understatement to say that music wasn’t as readily available then as it is today, and in the case of “Rocket 88,” which was released as a single in 1951, it was out of retail circulation by the time I became immersed in blues. The renowned collector and r&b expert Victor Pearlin, who lived in Worcester, played it for me amidst a group of sides recorded in Memphis by Sam Phillips, but what interested me most on that occasion were records by Howlin’ Wolf and James Cotton, both of whom were still touring. It wasn’t until the late seventies when Charly Records of England released a multi-volume series of Sam Phillips and Sun Records material that I finally came to own it, and I’ve treasured it ever since.
The first version of the song that I became familiar with was by James Cotton, who recorded it in 1965 for the three-volume series, Chicago/The Blues/Today, on Vanguard Records. Produced by the late Sam Charters, Cotton’s is a virtuoso performance driven by his harp and Otis Spann’s piano. It was only one of five sides on that album by Cotton, but I can hardly recall hearing him in concert when he didn’t play it.
The Delta Cats were actually Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm, but the group’s baritone sax player Jackie Brenston doubled as a singer and he’d worked up this number about “ridin’ all around town for joy” in an Oldsmobile Rocket Hydra-Matic 88. Brenston’s musical chassis was modeled on Joe Liggins’s “Boogie Cadillac.” Sam Phillips coined the group’s name after Turner & Co recorded “Rocket 88” at the Memphis Recording Service, then leased it to Chess. Ike was outraged at being left off the billing of the single whose driving beat propelled it to the top of the r&b charts, and Brenston’s days were soon numbered with the Kings of Rhythm. I don’t recall hearing it performed by Ike & Tina Turner in the seventies, but Ike sang it in the years before his death in 2007.
“Rocket 88” is often cited as the first rock’n’roll record. Peter Guralnick and I discussed it when we spoke last month about his new biography, Sam Phillips, The Man Who Invented Rock’n’Roll. Phillips detested the concept of musical perfection, and “Rocket 88,” with Ike’s raucous piano, Raymond Hill’s shrieking sax solo (Hill was the father of Tina Turner’s first child), and the amplifier distortion on Willie Kizart’s guitar, made this one of Sam’s proudest accomplishments behind a control board.