<< I think that the whole "radicals during the conservative '50s" thing gets overblown sometimes. The truth is, from everything I've read and from every interview I've ever come across of older Southern musicians, I've come to the conclusion that the lines between R&B and country weren't drawn nearly as sharply as people believe. >> Absolutely, Greg! Even more interestingly (that IS a real word, isn't it?), Chuck Berry has always talked about listening to the Grand Ole Opry and Louisiana Hayride on the radio in the early Fifties, and the influence those sounds had on his early songwriting. (and his guitar playing was inspired by the horns on Louis Jordan's earliest sides, no??) meanwhile, on the opposite side of the equation, Has anyone out there heard (of) Sid King and the Five Strings?!! AMAZING material, again from the early/mid Fifties, which mixes everything from r&b to Western swing with even a bit of Spike Jones thrown into the (mono) mix. Sid and Co. were from Texas; Roy Orbison was a big fan of Sid's. Just goes to show yez, once again, that when it comes to music, "it's all one big ball of wax" (as Charlie Rich would say), Gary "or, even more poetically, 'if it wasn't for the pebbles on its bottom, the stream would have no song' in the brilliant words of Carl Perkins" Pig