Gene Vincent

• 1. Introduction

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  Gene Vincent was born Vincent Eugene Craddock on the 11th of February 1935 in Norfolk, Virginia, and he died at 36, largely forgotten in his home country, while sitting with his father in Saugus, California. Between those two points lay a story of a man who helped invent rock and roll, watched that invention leave him behind, and spent the rest of his life chasing it around the world with a steel brace on his shattered leg.

  The questions worth asking are not simply what went right in 1956. They are why his chart career collapsed so completely in the United States while it kept flickering in Britain. Why did a musician who drew 72,000 fans to Sydney Stadium concerts become best known on his second try, wearing black leather on a British television stage? And what does it mean that the last BBC recordings he ever made included a song about a Beethoven composition, from a man whose favorite piece of music was a Beethoven overture?

• 2. Norfolk to the Navy

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  Norfolk, Virginia, in the early 1950s was a naval town, shaped by the massive base that dominated the waterfront. It was the town where Craddock's parents ran a general store and a sailors' tailoring shop, and it was the town he left at 17 in 1952 when he dropped out of school and enlisted in the United States Navy.

  His father had served in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II, patrolling coastal waters against German U-boats. The military ran in the family. Craddock completed boot camp and served as a crewman aboard a fleet oiler, completed a Korean War deployment, and sailed home on a battleship without ever seeing combat. He planned to make the Navy his career.

  That plan ended on the 4th of July 1955. Craddock had just used his $612 re-enlistment bonus to buy a Triumph motorcycle. A drunk driver struck him in Norfolk, shattering his left leg. He refused amputation. The leg was saved but never fully healed. He wore a steel sheath as a leg brace for the rest of his life and walked with a permanent limp. He was medically discharged not long after, and the Navy career was gone. What replaced it was a guitar, which he had first received at age twelve as a gift from a friend, and a local music scene in Norfolk that was about to reward his attention.

• 3. Be-Bop-a-Lula

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  In 1956, Craddock renamed himself Gene Vincent, assembled a band he called the Blue Caps, a term drawn from the blue caps worn by enlisted sailors in the U.S. Navy, and wrote a song that drew immediate comparisons to Elvis Presley. The band included Cliff Gallup on lead guitar, Dickie Harrell on drums, Jack Neal on upright bass, and Willie Williams on rhythm guitar.

  The group won a talent contest organized by a local radio DJ who went by "Sheriff Tex" Davis, and Davis became Vincent's manager. He arranged for a demo of "Be-Bop-a-Lula" to be made, and that demo landed Vincent a contract with Capitol Records. Capitol producer Ken Nelson picked the song as the B-side of the first single, with "Woman Love" as the intended hit.

  Bill Lowery of the Lowery Group in Atlanta then pressed promotional copies of the B-side and sent them to radio stations across the country before the single was officially released. By the time Capitol put the record out, "Be-Bop-a-Lula" had already caught on. Radio stations played it over the A-side. It peaked at number 7 on the Billboard pop chart and spent 20 weeks there, and reached number 5 on the Cash Box chart for 17 weeks. Rolling Stone magazine would later rank it number 103 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

  Vincent received gold records for two million sales of "Be-Bop-a-Lula" and 1.5 million sales of "Lotta Lovin'". The follow-up "Lotta Lovin'" reached number 13 on the Billboard chart and spent 19 weeks there. "Bluejean Bop" also sold over a million copies. These were real numbers. But the commercial peak was brief, and the Blue Caps were already beginning to fracture.

• 4. Instability and Decline

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  Cliff Gallup left the Blue Caps in 1956, and the guitarist chair became a revolving door. Russell Williford came in, toured Canada with Vincent in late 1956, then left in early 1957. Gallup returned for another album, then left again. Williford came back, then left again. Johnny Meeks eventually joined and gave the lineup some stability.

  "Dance to the Bop" was released on the 28th of October 1957, and Vincent and His Blue Caps performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show on the 17th of November 1957. It peaked at number 23 on the Billboard chart on the 23rd of January 1958 and spent nine weeks there. That was his last American hit single.

  By the end of 1959, the Blue Caps were no longer listed on Gene Vincent records at all. The single "Wild Cat" was credited to Gene Vincent alone, and every subsequent release carried only his name. That same year, a dispute with U.S. tax authorities and the American Musicians' Union, rooted in payments to his band and the sale of the band's equipment to cover a tax bill, pushed Vincent to leave the country. He went to Europe. In Britain, he found something the United States had already taken back.

• 5. The British Reinvention

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  On the 15th of December 1959, Vincent appeared on Jack Good's television program Boy Meets Girl, his first appearance in England. Good is credited with transforming Vincent's image. Vincent came onstage in black leather, wearing gloves and a medallion, and held a hunched posture that seemed to match the menace of the music. It was a different figure from the American stage version, and British audiences responded to it.

  Promoter Don Arden brought Vincent back to the UK in 1961 for an extensive tour of theatres and ballrooms. In 1962, Vincent was on the same bill as the Beatles in Hamburg. The same year, a young Ritchie Blackmore, who would later become Deep Purple's guitarist, played in the Outlaws, one of Vincent's UK backing bands on a 1963 tour. Sounds Incorporated, a six-piece outfit with three saxophones that backed Vincent on one UK tour, went on to play with the Beatles at their Shea Stadium concert.

  Vincent's UK chart run stretched across eight top 40 hits from 1956 to 1961, far outlasting his American commercial life. But the personal difficulties that had begun in the United States followed him. His alcohol problems disrupted the 1963 UK tour. In 1963, he appeared in court for pointing a gun at his then-wife Margaret Russell and threatening to kill her, though she stated in court that she had forgiven him. In 1968, in a hotel in Germany, he fired several shots at Paul Raven, later known as Gary Glitter, and missed. The pattern was consistent.

• 6. The Crash at Chippenham

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  On the 16th of April 1960, while on tour in the UK, Vincent was riding in a private-hire taxi near Chippenham, Wiltshire, along with his friend and fellow musician Eddie Cochran and songwriter Sharon Sheeley. The taxi was traveling at high speed when the accident occurred. Vincent broke his ribs and collarbone and further damaged his already weakened left leg. Sheeley suffered a broken pelvis.

  Cochran, who had been thrown from the vehicle, suffered serious brain injuries and died the following day. Vincent returned to the United States after the accident. Before boarding the taxi that night, Vincent and Cochran had turned down a request from Tony Sheridan to ride with them to the next venue. Sheridan escaped the crash. He soon relocated to Hamburg, where he worked with and influenced a number of British groups, including, for a period, serving as a backing act for the Beatles.

  The crash compounded Vincent's leg injury, an injury that had already changed the entire shape of his life by ending his Navy career. The steel brace he wore from the 1955 motorcycle accident onward became, under Jack Good's direction, part of the image. The limp and the posture Good turned into theater were the physical consequences of a drunk driver on the 4th of July 1955.

• 7. Last Sessions and Legacy

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  Vincent's 1969 album I'm Back and I'm Proud was recorded for John Peel's Dandelion Records, with producer Kim Fowley and arrangements by Skip Battin of the Byrds. The musicians included Mars Bonfire on rhythm guitar, Johnny Meeks on lead guitar, Jim Gordon on drums, and Linda Ronstadt and Jackie Frisco on backing vocals. Vincent threatened to shoot two people in the studio during that session; they left quickly.

  On the 19th of September 1971, he began what would be his last run of gigs in Britain. His backing band recorded four tracks at BBC studios in Maida Vale, London, for Johnnie Walker's Radio 1 show, including "Be-Bop-A-Lula", "Roll Over Beethoven", and "Say Mama". A fifth track, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On", was never finished. He played two shows at the Wookey Hollow Club in Liverpool on the 3rd and the 4th of October. Then he returned to the United States.

  He died on the 12th of October 1971 from a ruptured ulcer, internal hemorrhage, and heart failure. He was visiting his father in Saugus, California. He is interred at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall, California.

  Vincent was the first inductee into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame when it formed in 1997. He entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the following year. In 2012, the Blue Caps were retroactively inducted alongside him by a special committee. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1749 North Vine Street, and a bronze star embedded in the Granby Street sidewalk in Norfolk, placed there on the 23rd of September 2003. His final American recordings, a few weeks before his death, included a track performed by his daughter Melody Jean Vincent, with Johnny Meeks on guitar.