Today, we know that, for every Elvis, Carl Perkins or Jerry Lee Lewis, there were thousands of singers southerners who, in the mid-fifties, jumped into the open grave by the newly opened path to rock and roll. They recorded singles for small companies, disks that generally went unnoticed; in their majority, were removed or repented and went to the country. The case of the singer and guitarist Sleepy LaBeef was special.
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LaBeef, who died Thursday, December 26, 84 years old, never left the music, and remained active until the very end, despite his ailments heart. Very popular in Europe, visited Spain often, even leaving testimonies to be recorded. Real name Thomas Labeff, was born in 1935 into a family of farmers of Smackover, Arkansas; his ancestors were acadians (cajuns) of Louisiana. I was working in Houston in 1955, when he saw in concert Elvis Presley; like him, LaBeef had gone to a pentecostal church and was able to recognize their inflections of gospel applied to a material that is profane. She decided to continue her track career.
LaBeef was striking: nearly two meters tall, more than a hundred kilos of weight, a deep baritone voice; his nickname professional was The Bull and his physique allowed him to appear in any film of series B. Artistically, his formula was simple but irresistible: stepped on the accelerator and kept pace live while attending to all the requests. He had an immense knowledge of the repertoires of New Orleans, boogie, western swing, blues, honky tonk and other varieties cowgirls. His goal was that none of their viewers are aburriera and since then that’s what I got.
he Recorded for labels such as Starday, Dixie, Wayside, branch of Columbia, Nashville Plantation and the resurrected Sun Records, owned by entrepreneur Shelby Singleton. It was there when he called the attention of Peter Guralnick, the future biographer of Elvis, who stressed that Sleepy, it represented a connection with the festive spirit of the fifties; it was an optimistic free of sentimentality or nostalgia. A miracle of the nights southern that, it warned, could play in other latitudes.
Europe came to the end of the decade of the seventies, earning him the staff with their friendliness, their delivery and the depth of his songbook. In Spain, which had remained out of the loop that is presented to veterans of rock and roll, led up to riots: the madrid Theatre Martin was closed in 1980 after a concert LaBeef where it exceeded the capacity allowed. The nascent community of rockers spaniards worshipped him: on the web you can find an appearance of his on Applause, the program of TVE, where among the extras, it is possible to see Carlos Segarra or Horse.
LaBeef had all the numbers to become a peripatético artist direct, forced to play with bands improvised (which does not imply that do not suffer with some of the european musicians that played on luck). Happily, more than compensated for these gigs with his career record: he signed with Rounder Records, a company of Massachusetts of breath purist, who strove in that their albums have made sense. Those releases featured instrumentalists more young people the accordionist Jo-El Sonnier, and even historical as the drummer D. J. Fontana.
Become an encyclopedia of the music of the Southern united States, Sleepy LaBeef came to be known as The Jukebox, Human. Never had what you would call a success, but saw the re-release of everything that had been recorded during a half century of recordings. His farewell informal was a documentary of 2013, Sleepy LaBeef rides again, recorded partially in the Studio B of RCA, the old place that Elvis was going for the nights recording.
