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It should come as no surprise that Rhino Records is responsible for several of the items I’ll feature in this space—year in and year out they produce some of the finest retrospectives of all sorts of music. Occasionally their efforts are a bit too obvious, but that’s certainly not the case with Rockin’ Bones: 1950s Punk & Rockabilly, a terrific four-disc collection of raw rock ‘n’ roll made between 1954-69 with a deliberate emphasis on juvenile delinquency, sex, and general bad behavior, all of it delivered with the stripped-down urgency of titular punk. While some of the era’s best-known rockers are duly represented—Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Elvis Presley, Ronnie Dawson, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis—the majority of the 101 tracks belong to more obscure talents. There are loads of freakish selections, from Joyce Green threatening to murder her boyfriend in “Black Cadillac” to the orgiastic moans that scream through John & Jackie’s “Little Girl,” and while it may be easier and more entertaining to focus on such oddities, the real value of this set is how it genuinely sums up the whole musical moment. It may not have every single hit by the Killer, but there’s not much that’s missing.
