Steven Hale
1 min readOct 30, 2022

--

Much vicarious joy from shopping with you.

Here are two rockabilly pianists to keep an eye out for:

Teddy Riedel (sometimes spelled Reidel or Redell). I discovered him by purchasing some gospel 45's from the Arkansas label Vaden and looking to see what else that label had published--turns out that their brief catalog consists of anemic white southern gospel and some ferocious rockabilly. I haven't found any of Teddy's records (yet) in my thrift store shopping, but there's a beaucoup available on YouTube and (to a lesser extent) the streaming services. Elvis covered Teddy's song "Judy." Here's a typical example of his Vaden work: https://youtu.be/0AT9ueZAJ-8

Imo, he's as good as Jerry Lee but a bit less flamboyant. Bonus track: I'm pretty sure that's Teddy on this Vaden classic by Joyce Green: https://youtu.be/ApsI9k-wRbc

And another rockabilly pianist, Jerry Lee's surviving cousin (now that Mickey Gilley has also passed on), Jimmy Swaggart. Jimmy's first album is more rockabilly than his later works, but it's gospel as you might expect: https://youtu.be/f2SZs4rMBX4

The good news--the debut album that this song comes from is rare, but it's been reissued (with another cover).

The bad news--you can't throw a dart into a thrift store without hitting one of Swaggart's more pious and smarmy albums.

--

--

Steven Hale
Steven Hale

Written by Steven Hale

Music: Discovering the lost and forgotten. Politics: Exposing injustice. Screenwriting: Emotional storytelling.

Responses (1)