96: GENE VINCENT & HIS BLUE CAPS
Bluejean Bop/Who Slapped John (Capitol, 1956)

I LOVE Gene Vincent very dearly indeed, and in this slot I could so easily have opted for any number of his singles. Bop Street perhaps, or Race With The Devil, or even Be-Bop-A-Lula, where it all began.

I’ve gone for Bluejean Bop, however, because just thinking about it, the lyric ‘you dip your hip, you free your knee’ is really making me smile at the moment; and God knows I could do with a good larf.

For the uninitiated, one could probably summarise Gene Vincent as the rocker’s choice of rocker; although it took the visionary input of British TV producer Jack Good to unwittingly mould him into the icon he became. By all accounts, the Gene Vincent of the ‘50s was polite and deferential, if already suffering chronic pain from a motorbike accident which shattered his leg and left him with a permanent limp.

The legendary story – which I am reliably informed isn’t apocryphal – has Gene Vincent coming over to the UK to appear on the Oh Boy! TV show and trying, as ever, to downplay his disability.

Jack Good, however, is said to have taken one look at Gene’s gaunt appearance, unkempt hair, bike leathers and leg irons, drawn an instant mental parallel with Richard III, and exhorted the hapless vocalist to ‘limp, you bugger, limp.’ For sure, it’s a noble and powerful image, but it should never be allowed to obscure the merits of the man himself. He had a far sweeter voice than he is ever credited with – one filled with country soul tenderness and hurt – and, lest we forget, he conveyed the orgiastic, uncontainable heat of rock ‘n’ roll more vividly than any of his peers.

I refer you to the gaps before the choruses in Be-Bop-A-Lula, or the refrain in Woman Love, wherein Gene hyperventilates and gibbers, drenched in full slapback echo, as though he’s about to spectacularly burst the bonds of his very trousers.

And how about The Blue Caps? More specifically, how about guitarist Cliff Gallup? Each of his solos is a masterclass in neat, tasty economy, often containing a jokey musical motif filched from elsewhere, and recorded with a tone as clean as a choirboy’s spit-polished face.

The Chippenham road crash in 1960 which claimed Eddie Cochran’s life left Gene Vincent in even more pain thereafter; a pain hopefully ameliorated by the love and faith his British fans (not least John Peel) showed towards him for the rest of his short life.