toomanyhatz wrote:Muskrat wrote:Guy E wrote:Great indeed. Comparisons are besides the point, he's the quintessential 50's white rock and roller. A real guitar slinger, a great songwriter, a teen heart throb.
I'll give you the heartthrob (though I don't see it) but Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins were both at least good guitar players and great songwriters. I think of Cochran more as an early Glen Campbell, without as clear a sense of direction. Cochran recorded a LOT of second- or third-rate material, though of course some of it was other people's records, and a lot of stuff was released after he died that otherwise probably wouldn't have seen daylight. Hell, I think Ritchie Valens was more consistent than Cochran.
This surprises me coming from you (the guy with the Cochran song as his sig). Yep, Holly and Perkins were good guitar players. Better than Cochran? Probably not. As far as the second and third-rate material, I guess I haven't heard most of that. He did a lot of sessions on other people's stuff, but judging him on that's like judging Jimmy Page on his work with Englebert Humperdinck. There's sure not much under his name that's not at least good. I mean, even something flawed and juvenile like "Dark Lonely Street" is an interesting bit of teen melodrama, which taken in context of his age and the era promises greater things.
As for sense of direction, he was all over the freaking map, which of course I like. He did teen melodrama, he did guitar workouts, he did sweet pop numbers, he did proto-punk...about the only thing he didn't do was sappy string-laden stuff, which even his buddy Gene Vincent fell prey to. As the complete package, perhaps he wasn't as self-contained as Buddy Holly, but that's the only person I'd put above him.
I'd agree with that. I mean, if both men had lived long lives I imagine Holly would have had a more lasting impact. Cochran and Holly were both boy next door types, but Holly was something of a geek. That image stuff isn't important to me, but looking back, Cochran strikes me as a complete natural and he must have appealed to the girls in a way someone like Gene Vincent did not, even if he wasn't quite in Ricky Nelson territory.
He was the first 50's rocker I discovered, buying the 2-LP anthology on UA when I was in high school. That was probably due to Who and Rod Stewart covers, and it was definitely a good purchase.