Tony and the Tennessee Rebels – EP
Red Hot! – REP 1004 [1980]
Ten Little Women – Slap That Bass / Rock The Barn – Roll On Baby
Clint Bradley sang and played music since 1977. His first bands were the Chevys, Warpath, Rockabilly Fever which became Litttle Tony & the Tennessee Rebels. The first name they adopted was the Spur Dogs or Spur Dog Run, but their London agent opted for the more traditional name of Little Tony and the Tennessee Rebels much to the band distress.
The first line up of the band consisted of Clint Bradley on vocals and guitar, Steve Noyce on electric bass, Danny Kelly drums, and Gus Guthrie on guitar. Then, in 1979 Mitch Caws and Bruce Hobbs replaced Noyce and Guthrie, switching to double bass in the process.
The band name was shortened to Tony and the Tennessee Rebels, and in January 1980 they went to Frog studios to record a demo, which led to the recording of this EP at Telecom studio in Southampton a couple of months later.
The four songs are very good, creating a bridge between the Teddy Boy sound that was hugely popular at the time and the burgeoning scene of young and more traditional sounding bands (including the Blue Cat Trio). It kicks off with a solid cover of Ten Little Women, but the real strength of the bands lays in the originals penned by Bradley. Slap That Bass is a showcase for Caws’s skills on the instrument, and Rock the Barn and Roll On Baby are two excellent Rockabilly tracks, the latter in the style of Baby Let’s Play House.
In September 1980 Clint Bradley and Mitch Caws replaced Dave Phillips who had left the Blue Cat Trio which became the Blue Cats.
The demo tracks recorded in early 1980 were later released by Nervous on the album “The Blue Cats – the Early Days”.
Fred “Virgil” Turgis
