Billy Lee Riley dies at 75; rockabilly pioneer did 'Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll'

Billy Lee Riley dies at 75; rockabilly pioneer did 'Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll'

The raucous performer and songwriter recorded for Sun Records for four years and later worked as a studio musician in L.A. His other big single was 'Red Hot.'
By Dennis McLellan

August 4, 2009
Billy Lee Riley, a rockabilly pioneer and songwriter who recorded for the legendary Sun Records label and is best remembered for his 1957 singles "Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll" and "Red Hot," has died. He was 75.

Riley died Sunday of colon cancer that had spread to the bone at a hospital in Jonesboro, Ark., said his wife, Joyce.

The Arkansas-born son of a sharecropper who began playing harmonica and guitar as a child, Riley landed at Sam Phillips' Sun Records in 1956.

His band, which for a time included a then-unknown Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, is said to have played a key role in shaping the Sun Records' sound, providing backup on recordings by Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Lewis and others.

"My band was the Sun sound," Riley told the Associated Press in 1984. "We've never gotten credit for that, but it's a fact. I was doing what Elvis was doing before Elvis did it: mixing blues and hillbilly, putting a laid-back, funky beat to hillbilly music."


http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-billy-lee-riley4-2009aug04,0,6424973.story