Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops, 1959

Gene Vincent, performing “Over the Rainbow” on the Town Hall Party, 1959. That’s the great James Burton on guitar. When Charley and I went to see James Burton last year, he played a completely instrumental version of the song, and it was breathtaking. You could have heard a pin drop in that small club. I didn’t realize then that it was a callback to this moment in time, the rockabilly moment, when such strange things were possible. There is something so poignant to me about Gene Vincent’s version. He was a sex-pot, the guy who gave us “Be Bop a Lu La” (and my personal favorite, “She She Sheila”), he was the classic rockabilly star, with the greased-up pompadour and the focus on young love and sex and emotion. And here he is singing a song originally sung by a 12-year-old girl, and totally making it his own. There’s a sweetness coursing around that stage, the smiles all those guys – all guys – throw one another, a sweet and simple pleasure in their own performance, in the sounds they are making, in the moment they are creating together.