Jackie Brenston And His Delta Cats* – Rocket "88" / Come Back Where You Belong

In June of 2001, I had the honor of meeting, seeing, recording Ike Turner during a sober period in his life, while promoting his new CD at the Chicago Blues Festival. I was able to shake his hand, look him in the eye and I said "Thanks for Rocket '88" and he was so nice. Just sayin'.....

Brenston himself itted there was nothing that original about the song (Rocket "88"), which he said they had simply borrowed from another jump blues about an automobile, Jimmy Liggins’ ‘Cadillac Boogie.’

Recorded on the 3rd of March 1951 and touted by Sam Phillips of Sun Records, the self proclaimed discoverer of rock n’ roll, as the first rock record ever, “Rocket 88” hit the store shelves on April 1st, the month of my birth, where I’m sure that the new vibes circling the globe had me dancing out of the womb.

“Rocket 88” was a lively new number recorded by Jackie Brenston & The Delta Cats, who in reality were Ike Turner’s band The Kings of Rhythm, where Brenston was the saxophone player, with the song being being penned by both Brenston and Turner, though Turner was not initially given due credits. The song regarded the Oldsmobile model Rocket 88 and was deeply influenced by the 1947 track “Cadillac Boogie” along with the instrumental “Rocket 88 Boogie.” The song broke new ground, fusing the styles of jump blues and swing, featuring a fuzzed out guitar with biting raw edges, bestowing on listeners a blistering swagger for the times and redefining music forever.

While reaching number one on the R&B charts, “Rocket 88” cast a long shadow across the world of music, where it was instantly picked up on by white musicians and fans such as Bill Haley & The Saddlemen (who was still living in the cowboy age), and would change their name to Bill Haley & The Comets, reflecting the coming of the age of space, based solely on this song, where he would go on to do a white man’s cover, before springing “Rock Around The Clock” on the radio airwaves.

Sadly Brenston achieved no further musical accomplishments, would go onto become an alcoholic and die at the age of 49. Ike Turner on the other hand would go on to take the world by storm at Woodstock eighteen years later, and like Brenston, would soon face and be destroyed by his own demons.

Now … there are others who claim that it was Roy Brown with his single “Good Rocking Tonight,” and the first song to incorporate the word rocking, was the genesis of rock n’ roll, where he followed up the hit with “Rocking About Midnight,” again infusing the song with the word rocking a few years earlier in 1947. Believe me, I searched and questioned, and I’ve never seen an image of it, though it’s claimed by many that Elvis Presley came face to face with Roy Brown backstage, whom he’d shamelessly stolen from, immediately wrote Brown a sizable check on the only thing handy, a brown paper bag.

The style and space-age references weren’t the only things up and coming musicians would copy from Brenston, who also had a hit in 1950 with the number “Cadillac Baby,” as it was thought that merely writing a song about a particular car model, or driving in general, would make for an instant hit. Regardless of whom one thinks first broke the ice … it’s Brenston who’s given the credit.

In my collection is the 78 rpm 10” single …

Review by Jenell Kesler