Conway Twitty – Conway Rocks

As titles go, Conway Rocks is a lot like, say, Elvis Acts: Because it addresses the least interesting part of the story, its appeal is mostly historical.

Conway Twitty, born Harold Jenkins in Helena, Arkansas, was a country fan when he entered the service in 1954. By the time he returned home two years later, Elvis Presley had taken over the world, and, wowed like so many others, Twitty rushed to join the rockabilly queue forming at Sam Phillips’ Sun Recording Studios in Memphis. But rockabilly was such a poor fit for Twitty’s brand of distinctiveness. Phillips, who prized distinctiveness above all, passed on releasing Twitty’s “Rock House”, though a retooled version of the song became Roy Orbison’s second single.

Probably because Twitty arrived late, his rockabilly lacks the wild sense of discovery, of making it up as he went along, that we still hear in the music of Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent. Twitty’s earliest recordings (mostly for MGM) sound cobbled from the precise rockabilly surprises that, even by 1957, had hardened into loud, fast rules.

For example, Twitty’s first single was built upon a Bill Haley-styled sax riff, was titled “Shake It Up”, proclaimed “I’m a juke-joint daddy,” and finished with a couple of “Whop-bop-a-lu-bop-a-whop-bam-booms.” And while Twitty never sang less than passionately, his particular intensity wasn’t of the sort that allowed him to transcend generic material by getting real, real gone. Unlike Billy Riley, Charlie Feathers, Billy Burnette and Eddie Cochran, all of whom had far less talent but who were far superior rockabillies, Twitty was better at slow burn than red hot.

This Bear Family disc makes that plain from the start. Conway Rocks opens with “It’s Only Make Believe”, the recording that remained his signature number, 40 chart-topping country singles notwithstanding. A wrenching performance, “It’s Only Make Believe” stands today not only as perhaps the greatest Elvis impersonation of them all, but as the why-mess-with-success model for all Twitty’s country hits to come. Taken at a ballad pace, the song allows him room to speak with his pauses and to highlight the twangy texture of his growled vocals — among the very features, one suspects, that pushed it to the top of the pop charts in 1958. Why he’d then waste the next several years on second-rate rockabilly is a mystery.

Well, that’s too harsh. Twitty did produce a few more gems in those years, both artistically and commercially, though it should be noted that hits such as “Mona Lisa”, “Danny Boy” and “Little Blue Boy” became less rockabilly and more just plain rock ‘n’ roll as they arrived. In the early ’60s, after Twitty’s pop run was finished but before his collaborations with Owen Bradley made him a country star, Twitty was getting better as he went, cutting swell, albeit unsuccessful, rock ‘n’ roll in the mold of Presley’s Nashville Sound masterpiece Elvis Is Back.

Indeed, on most of the 30 tracks here, Twitty is fronting the same Nashville A-Teamers who were backing Presley during the same period. It’s all very fun and groovy in an Elvis-flick kind of way, but…is there anything else on? For Twitty, that “anything else” — one of the most impressive second acts in pop music history — was just around the corner.