Japanese Rockabilly

After blues artists like Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson launched a nationwide boogie craze starting in 1938, country artists like Moon Mullican, the Delmore Brothers, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Speedy West, Jimmy Bryant, and the Maddox Brothers and Rose began recording what was known as “Hillbilly Boogie,” which consisted of "hillbilly" vocals and instrumentation with a boogie bass line.
The Maddox Brothers and Rose were at "the leading edge of rockabilly with the slapped bass that Fred Maddox had developed". Maddox said, "You've got to have somethin' they can tap their foot, or dance to, or to make 'em feel it." After World War II the band shifted into higher gear leaning more toward a whimsical honky-tonk feel, with a heavy, manic bottom end - the slap bass of Fred Maddox. "They played hillbilly music but it sounded real hot. They played real loud for that time, too..." The Maddoxes were also known for their lively "antics and stuff." "We always put on a show... I mean it just wasn't us up there pickin' and singing. There was something going on all the time." "...the demonstrative Maddoxes, helped release white bodies from traditional motions of decorum... more and more younger white artists began to behave on stage like the lively Maddoxes." Others believe that they were not only at the leading edge, but were one of the first Rockabilly groups, if not the first. Zeb Turner's February 1953 recording of "Jersey Rock" with its mix of musical styles, lyrics about music and dancing, and guitar solo, is another example of the mixing of musical genres in the first half of the 1950s.