Skip to content

Gene Vincent

GENE VINCENT

YEAR

1998

INDUCTED BY

John Fogerty

CATEGORY

Performers

The rockabilly rebel encapsulated his era with the hit song “Be-Bop-A-Lula.”

Decked out in leather, roughed up by circumstance, Gene Vincent was an unsinkable, unruly, unrestrained rockabilly maverick.

Gene Vincent

Gene Vincent

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Robert K. Oermann

The producer was afraid he’d lose his job. The studio was barely solvent. The engineer wrestled through twelve takes trying to get something usable. The record label didn’t really believe in the song, the artist or even in rock & roll. Out of such gloom came the bubbling magic of “Be-Bop-a-Lula,” and a career that was born under a bad sign.

Harold and Owen Bradley had constructed their Nashville studio a little over a year before Gene Vincent arrived on May 4, 1956. It had been built as a country-music recording base for Decca Records, but times were tough and the brothers were renting it out to anyone who wanted to use it.

Read More
Class of 1998
I do believe that this record is probably one of the greatest records ever made.
John Fogerty
More from the class of 1998
%post_title%

Allen Toussaint