NORTON RECORDS
Norton Records, a New York City based independent record label founded by musicians Miriam Linna and Billy Miller, maintains a focus on primitive, retro rock ’n’ roll, rockabilly, garage punk, garage rock, lounge music, and early R&B. (More from Wikipedia)
One cool thing about the Cramps is that they were always about half women, half men. One of their drummers, Miriam Linna met Billy Miller at a record show in 1977; and their common musical interests led them to form a fanzine called Kicks, dedicated to obscure rock, soul and rockabilly. They are now married.
A 1986 article in Kicks on Hasil Adkins caused a sensation, and Norton Records – named for Ed Norton, the Art Carney character on the long-running Jackie Gleason TV comedy The Honeymooners – was born when they released Out to Hunch later that year, the first of several albums collecting Adkins’s music. Norton LP’s are gloriously retro, sometimes with plain block lettering on their dull-orange labels, old-fashioned stiff album covers, and often long liner notes. I had heard the most successful of his singles on one of the Born Bad CD’s, “She Said”; and even that one song demonstrates that Hasil Adkins can burp and beep and howl his way through a song better than anyone this side of Charlie Feathers (he is known as the “king of rockabilly” and is the co-author of one of Elvis Presley’s earliest hit songs, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”). However, I didn’t get an entire album until last year.
The Hasil Adkins album that I got is called White Light/White Meat (subtitled: “Authentic West Virginia One Man Band Home Recordings 1958-1965”) and provides a representative slice of his output: raucous rockers (“Hot Dog Baby”), Hank Williams-style love songs (“You’re Gonna Break My Heart”), songs about dance crazes (“Come on and Do the Shake with Me”), and country weepies (“Lonely Graveyard”).
There’s plenty more out there: Allmusic reports that he released 5 or 6 songs about a “lascivious but non-existent dance craze called ‘the hunch’” – collected in that first Norton album, Out to Hunch – and another song about eating peanut butter on the moon. Norton also released Poultry in Motion, a full album of Adkins songs that all have “chicken” in the title. Thanks to the exposure from Kicks magazine and Norton Records, Hasil Adkins got to enjoy a minor celebrity status during the last 20 or so years of his life.
On an impulse, I ordered another Norton LP at the same time that I ordered White Light/White Meat, a 2010 compilation of a man from northern Louisiana who calls himself The Lonesome Drifter called Eager Boy (subtitled: “Rockabilly and Hillbilly Bop from the Vaults of Ram Records 1958-59!”).
The Norton Records label on some of their albums is adapted from the one used by K Records – the label that originally released “Eager Boy” – with “Norton” or a big “N” instead of a “K”, and with the same orange color.
The liner notes on the Lonesome Drifter LP – written by Kicks and Norton Records co-founder Billy Miller – says of his best known song: “‘Eager Boy’ epitomizes full throttled rockabilly – a cocksure lead vocal and trigger-happy guitar riding atop a solid slap bass rhythm”. He continues: “‘Eager Boy’ arguably stands as rockabilly’s high water mark, rightfully commanding a king’s ransom among today’s collectors”. As an example, in the week ending May 20, 2010, the original “Eager Boy” 45 was the third highest selling vinyl record on eBay, bringing an astounding $5,100.69.
Rockabilly survives as echoes and grace notes in a dozen or more rock and country subgenres but, in its purest form, might be too kinetic and sinewy for the general public to bear for very long. Thankfully, in this modern era, nostalgia has morphed into what might more properly be called musical appreciation; and forgotten and unknown gems from all types of popular music are available to connoisseurs like never before. Reissue CD’s from Norton Records and many other labels abound with rockabilly nuggets, as just one example. Norton – now celebrating its 25th anniversary – has released at least 8 albums of Hasil Adkins’ music and continues to do so (the album I have came out in 2010 and wasn’t mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Adkins until I added it); and several other record companies have also put out Hasil Adkins albums. And now the Lonesome Drifter has taken his rightful place in the Norton archives.
(May 2011)
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The artist behind the stompin’ song “Eager Boy” that has become one of the most valuable 45 collectables, The Lonesome Drifter also has a wealth of other country and rockabilly tracks that were collected on the Norton Records album shown above.
Finally, a fourth song that is listed as Unissued (though it is still on the Norton LP), “I Wish it Wasn’t So”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZupPW_1H60 . There are several other songs on YouTube as well.
(May 2013)
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This is the album of music by the Lonesome Drifter on Norton Records:
(May 2014)
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Norton Records has issued at least three Kim Fowley collections in this vein, with the first being titled One Man’s Garbage and the second Another Man’s Gold.
(January 2015/1)
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Of course, these are all people who are more or less well known. Other singer-songwriters live in obscurity but still produce their music year after year. One example is Hasil Adkins, the rockabilly one-man band from rural West Virginia that I have discussed previously. Once Miriam Linna and Billy Miller of Kicks magazine brought him to a wider audience, launching one of the best reissue record labels in the process (Norton Records), Adkins had some celebrity in the final years of his life. Wikipedia and Allmusic list 10 studio albums and 6 compilation albums by Hasil Adkins; I’m up to I think 5 albums myself thus far. If not for Norton, Hasil Adkins would have been almost completely unknown, and that would be a tragedy in my mind.
(March 2015)
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Following a series of searing 45’s, beginning with “The Witch” – a song originally about dancing, but rewritten about a treacherous woman – the Sonics released the seminal album Here Are the Sonics!!! in 1965; the album was reissued in mono on Norton Records in 1999. The band has never really broken up, having gone in and out of fashion as various musical waves ran through the Pacific Northwest. In May 2016, the Sonics announced that Larry Parypa and Gerry Roslie would no longer be part of the touring band, though they will remain involved with the group.
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The LP by the Iguanas that I have – at least I hope I still have it; it hasn’t shown up yet among the albums from the Katrina mud – The Iguanas came out in 1996 on Norton Records, showing the band posing in shades with matching hitchhiker thumbs. (I have had about a four-year hiatus from cleaning up those albums, but it is going to end by next month!). Norton has also reissued the Iguanas 45 “Mona” with the original b-side “I Don’t Know Why” and also the Iggy Pop original “Again and Again” that was planned to be on the second pressing of the single before he exited the band.
The copy advertising the album on the Norton Records website says: “Iggy Pop’s first band! Screamin’ eighteen song foot long slab o’ legendary Michigan garage punk bad attitude mayhem rounds up the sole Iguanas 45 ‘Mona’ / ‘I Don’t Know Why’ with Iggy’s first composition (the snarlin’ ‘Again and Again’), his first vocal (‘Louie Louie’) plus over a dozen crude demos 1963-64 in full color cover with liner notes.”
(December 2016)
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Just this month I learned of the untimely death of writer and musician Billy Miller, and also the co-founder (with wife Miriam Linna, a former drummer with the alt-rockabilly band the Cramps) of the excellent reissue label Norton Records, who was responsible for introducing Hasil Adkins to a wider audience through such albums as Out to Hunch, Poultry in Motion and The Wild Man. I learned of a past UARA named the Lonesome Drifter through their albums.
(Year 7 Review)
