With Pentecostal fervor—that’s the way prodigies Larry and Lorrie Collins of The Collins Kids played their rockabilly. Precocious doesn’t begin to describe Larry, the little maniac who was storming about stage like a pint-sized dervish while tearing off lightning-fast runs on his Mosrite double-necked guitar—when he was 10. And Lorrie—who was two years older than Larry—was steaming up rooms with sultry vocals that won her comparisons to the wicked Wanda Jackson. They were a mite older (two years or so) when they hit their peak in the late fifties, but they were still definitely kids—which didn’t stop them from cutting some of the hottest rockabilly tracks you’ll ever hear.
After Larry and Lorrie wowed them at amateur shows—first separately, and then as a team—in Tulsa, Oklahoma, their mom convinced their dad to sell the dairy farm, load up the family’s ‘47 Hudson and move west to Los Angeles, which was hardly Rockabilly, USA but where they managed to score a recording contract with Columbia Records. They also became regulars on the L.A.-based TV program Town Hall Party, and if you check out the available YouTube videos you’ll understand why—decked out in full C&W regalia The Collins Kids cook up an electrical storm.
Larry was a born showman, dancing around and mugging it up for the crowd like a cross between Chuck Berry and Angus Young while playing flashy runs on what was only the second double-neck guitar ever made. Meanwhile, Lorrie belted ‘em out, somehow managing to look virginal while upping the temperature in the room considerably. (No wonder she was Rickie Nelson’s first girlfriend.) They were just kids, but theirs was no kiddie novelty act—they served ‘em up red hot, just like Gene V. and Jerry Lee.
Larry, a childhood churchgoer like his sister, would later say, “We just had a natural Pentecostal beat that followed us in our music. It was rockabilly when we started doing it together. We had no one to learn from. We were just doing what we felt. It the song didn’t have a beat and something we could move around to, we didn’t do it.” In short, they found their inspiration to play the Devil’s music in God’s house, and both God and the Devil got a kick out of their handiwork.
In one sense their tender years would hurt them; the record company boys looked to Elvis and the rockabilly greats to light an unholy fire in the panties of America’s young girls, and that’s not what The Collins Kids were doing. On the other hand, their youth allowed them to get away with a lot. These kids were performing torrid, high-caliber rockabilly in front of C&W audiences, and no one threw Bibles or quoted scripture. The Collins Kids were subversives, spreading the gospel of rock ’n’ roll to the same people who started moral crusades at the mere sight of Elvis gyrating his hips.
When it comes to checking out The Collins Kids, your best bet is the 1983 compilation Introducing Larry And Lorrie. It’s bite-sized (twelve tracks) and captures them at the hottest in the late fifties, sparing you the inferior product you’ll find on the far more thorough, thirty-six track, 2020 compilation Anthology: The Deluxe Collection. As they aged your record biz types pushed them into producing anodyne stuff, and they weren’t happy about it. Songs like “Rock and Roll Polka,” “Sugar Plum,” and “Young Heart” are as far away from The Collins Kids who set fires on songs like “Whistle Bait” and “Hoy Hoy” as you can get, and the folks who put together Introducing Larry and Lorrie were wise enough to give their later stuff a pass.
“Party,” or as it’s often called “Let’s Have a Party,” got both the Elvis and Wanda Jackson treatment. But on their version The Collins Kids more than hold their own. Lorrie Collins, despite her tender year, sounds like she knows what she’s singing about in a voice that is pure Oklahoma. And I love the way the two of them swap lines. Larry sings, “I never kissed a bear,” Lorrie follows up with “I never kissed a goon,” and they come together to sing “But I can shake a chicken in the middle of the room.” Great stuff. And on the furious follow-up “Hoy Hoy” Lorrie practically spits out the words, while Larry turns his guitar into an acetylene torch, leading Lorrie to cry “Now go!” then “Rock on boys!”
“Hop, Skip and Jump” is pure hillbilly bop, and has a more innocent feel than some of the other tracks. The Collins Kids don’t commit arson on this one, but it does just what the title says. “Mercy” is a different story—it could well be Lorrie’s meanest and raunchiest performance ever, while Larry plays some of the flashiest guitar you’ll ever hear. “Aww let’s get it now!” shouts Lorrie, and that “mmmm” she throws in front of the “mercy” is freighted with pure libido.
Larry takes over on vocals on the rockin’ and rollin’ “Whistle Bait,” and he sounds every bit the pint-sized, butch cut psycho as he does on guitar. Why, he’s practically feral—he snarls, screams and goes “Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh” just like one E. Presley. It’s a bravura performance, “Whistle Bait,” and kicks the collective ass of those lame revivalists The Stray Cats. This here is the real article, as is the high-octane “Hot Rod,” the message of which is timeless—life doesn’t begin until you’re old enough to get yourself a sweet ride. “I’m only fourteen,” sings the song’s better half, “but I’m going on fifteen/But I want to be 16/So I can get me a hot rod.” Chuck Berry made his bones singing about adolescent desire—The Collins Kids were living it.
The Hank Williams-school “Hush Money” is a revved-up hillbilly number and funny duet complete with banjo and Larry’s pickin’ and grinnin’. The plot’s simple enough—Larry has seen Lorrie getting smoochy with her beau, and he knows an opportunity for extortion when he sees one. Doesn’t matter if the blackmail money comes from his sister or her guy—Larry wants a bicycle, and if he doesn’t get the funds to pay for one he’s going straight to pa.
“Rock Boppin’ Baby,” meanwhile, is a slow torch number on which Lorrie steams up the windshields of cars she isn’t even in. She gets raunchy, whispers in your ear, and sounds older than her years, which probably made her poor dairy farmer daddy nervous. Lorrie opens up the jumpin’ “Shortnin’ Bread Rock” with a thrilling “I don’t like cake/I don’t like pie/I don’t like sweets/And I tell you why,” then serves up a “go, go, go!” before Larry kicks into a blur of a solo. The song doesn’t sound as salacious as some, but lines like “When you roll that dough/My heart goes flippety-flop/If you want my lovin’ baby/Keep the oven hot” certainly have a fresh-baked aroma of carnal knowledge to them.
On the piano-heavy “Soda Poppin’ Around” Lorrie sounds more like the mainstream singers of her time than she does Wanda Jackson, Larry’s hot licks are nowhere to be found, and in short this one doesn’t quite measure up to the incendiary standard of their best rockabilly work. Similarly, “Just Because” does the West Coast bop, but lacks in pyrotechnics—it’s anything but raw, and you practically feel Lorrie’s hankering to cut loose and juice this baby up.
The Collins Kids’ cover of Ernest Tubb’s 1941 hit “Walkin’ the Floor Over You” is honky tonk bliss—Lorrie sounds fresh off the tractor, a fiddle adds hillbilly authenticity, and Larry plays some killer licks. As for “Hurricane,” it’s a fiery guitar duel between Larry and pal/mentor Joe Maphis, who just happens to be the first person to play a double-neck guitar. Basically what you have here is the invention of speed metal. It’s a must listen, but it wasn’t even released under The Collins Kids’ name and it doesn’t belong here—especially when the folks who put the compilation together had killer tunes like “I Got Stung” or the Kids’ red hot cover of the Brown-Eyed Handsome Man’s “Johnny B. Goode” (to name just two) to choose from.
Rockabilly came and rockabilly went, giving its players two options—going pop or going country. The Collins Kids did a little of both, but much of their later music gave Larry little reason to storm about the stage and the duo finally went their separate ways. Rockabilly wasn’t just what they did best—it was in their bones. They were born to set the woods on fire, and for a couple of years they did just that. You can dismiss them as a kid’s act, but one listen to songs like “Mercy” and “Whistle Bait” will disabuse you. They may have looked cute, but they played like the devil. What the hell do they get up to in those Pentecostal churches, anyhow?
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
