To paraphrase the inimitable Rodney Crowell, Rock’n’roll (like life itself) is very, very messy!  To wit: Try getting the three biggest surviving icons of Rock in a small room, place them across from one another on three red or pink enameled folding chairs.  How would this go?  There’s Chuck Berry, at the head of the circle by virtue of his age and experience – if not talent.  Flanking Chuck on his left is the Crown Prince or Queen, depending on one’s perception of his unique soul, Little Richard, born Richard Penniman, 75 years ago in Macon, Georgia.  To the right, perhaps politically as well (but only God knows for sure!) sits the anointed but most assuredly gifted Jerry Lee Lewis.  Friends, let it not be denied, that according to the great and trashy classic music bio of 1987 (starring Dennis Quaid as the Killer), Great Balls of Fire, we saw little Jerry Lee “cross over the railroad tracks to the wrong side of town,” to soak up that magnificent and very Black, Gospel and Honky-Tonk piano and commit it to his own musical mental database.

Which brings us right back to ... Elvis?  Well, not quite, for our tour guide down an ever more tortuous Memory Lane is none other than the ‘Baron of Boogie’, Mr. Billy Hancock, lately of the hilly and scenic Lake Barcroft section of historic Falls Church. Bill is an intense bearer of the music torch, Even if he, like so many of us, has surpassed the AARP age-point of no return, he is a busy man. Not much less engaged than in 1981, when record-buyers found the man standing outside the mirrored front of old Whitlow’s down at 11th and E, NW in the ancient downtown. There Hancock stood, head cocked to one side, carefully combing his impressive pompadour.

Funny, too. Bill was on the verge, at the time of that photo sesh, of breaking big over in Berlin, London, and many other world capitals with his ultra tight Tennessee Rockets- perhaps the best representation of the barest bone fundamentals of rockabilly ever seen,. That’s a huge playing field, dearreaders. Levi and the Rockats, Brian Setzer and his cool ‘Strays’, even the originals who still roamed stages across the Western world thirty years ago. Charlie Feathers, Vernon Taylor, and someone who never had a rival in any market.

Hancock, chuckling softly with respectful pain at the thought of so many lost nights of fun playing with the inimitable CARL PERKINS, sipped a Diet Coke and recounted to us how he first crossed paths with the great man.  “Was outside the [legendary Georgetown super-dive] Bayou, and I glanced at the marquee. My name was in big plastic caps on the screen, right alongside that of “CARL PERKINS,” Mister Blue Suede Shoes himself, and the lettering was of EQUAL size to my name! Doggone it– and then I spotted this lanky booted figure making his way up the sidewalk towards me! That show blew everybody away– and it was the beginning of a great association. We toured together all over from then on- until Carl’s death, a few years back.”

Billy carried the particular Olympic flame of Appalach with a bouncin’ Blues beat from a very early age, he confided to GIGS. “Elvis may have had an early bunch of hangers -on [as in his “Memphis Mafia”] from a very early point in his Humes High, Memphis days, but this kid– me–was quite the opposite in 1959 or 1960. Out of over 1000 kids at George Washington High on Mount Vernon Avenue here in Del Ray, I never carried my guitar through the halls the way Elvis did- oh no. Instead, I’d cloister myself up in my bedroom of my parents’ house and just practice, practice, practice!” And to think Billy barely missed being a classmate of a fellow GW alum– Jim Morrison! But when he matured to legal bar-playing age by 1964, Billy began working regularly in Downtown DC, often along the legendary New York Avenue “Strip” near the bus stations on Eleventh, in the company of the reigning royalty in that zone. Think of giants of classic “greasy” lounge rock like Link and Doug Wray (see CRIER, February 2006) Bobbie Howard, for whom Billy is currently producing a couple of CDs on his own Turkey Mountain label.  Other players Billy giged along side would have to include Roy Buchanan, Ronnie Dove, and Billy Stewart.

All that practicing has paid off.  These days Billy is considered such a melodic maven that several adult bass & guitar playing students seek him avidly for instruction sessions on a regular basis.  Meanwhile, Billy launches himself out on the road to play strings of incredibly off-beat venues several times a year.  For instance, Hancock just recently braved the threat of our impending epic blizzard, to fly in and out of Clear Lake, Iowa.  That town, of course, the site of Buddy Holly’s awful end half a century ago, now offered a triumphant memorial concert for serious rock bands with Billy Hancock one of the headlining acts.  

In our April issue we will fully recount a head-spinning road trip to some cowboy saloons in Butte, Montana and parts elsewhere, where Mr. Hancock and friends recently left their mark to much acclaim.  And, you readers will fervidly thrill at Billy’s revealing such arcane factoids as in ‘did you know Hopewell, Va. was briefly considered for the host city of the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame?’.

Hopefully, we’ll have enough room in our April piece to let you know a little about another illustrious Falls Church-ian – the Tabla player Broto Roy and his family group Ganga.