SONG OF THE DAY Jaycee Hill – Crash Out

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Whilst their are glimmers of hope and plenty of fight in today’s song, there’s also those little hints of tragedy, and as this tale unfolds, you can get a feel for where its heading! Jaycee HIll’s Crash Out is not even two minutes long, but what a great slice of rockabilly it is.

Hillman Baker, a.k.a Jaycee Hill, was born in Big Sandy, Tennessee, but spent a log of his career in Cleveland, Ohio.  He started out in music shortly after leaving school in 1949, forming his first band Hill & Jones with his friend Joe Sway. Influenced by the music and success of Elvis, their sound soon steered towards rockabilly and on June 3,1956, the two recorded four tracks in the Audio Recording studio in Cleveland. These included Romp Stompin ‘Boogie and A Love So Fine (very Elvis’y!), which were released that same year on Epic as “Jaycee Hill accompanied by Joe Sway”

There were two other tracks laid down in this session, Since My Baby Left Me and My Suspicious Heart, but these remained unreleased. As a result of the good sales generated by these records, producer Joe Sherman invited Hill to a session in New York City in October that same year, but this time without Sway. Instead, Hill was accompanied by some top session musicians, including George Barnes on guitar, Danny Perri on guitar, Milt Hinton on bass and Panama Francis on drums.

Bump! and today’s song, Crash Out, were released in November 1956 on Epic, and in the following two years only a couple more singles followed. After leaving Epic, Hill recorded one single in Cleveland and sold the masters to Chess So Long – Goodbye/Only True Love came out on Argo 5311 in September 1958.  In 1959 he cut one session for MGM, but was unaware that the record (“Dum De Dah Dah Dah Dah”/”Little Boy Blue”, MGM 12765) had even been released until 1979!!  These would be Hill’s final releases and, though he remained connected to the music scene as a successful songwriter, he never recorded any more!

Crash Out is by far my favourite of all his singles and though classified as a rockabilly standard, this has a definite rock’n’roll edge.  For me this makes it stand way out from a lot of other rockabilly songs! Listen above and if you’d like to read more, I’ve found an interesting article here.