My style icons are Lucille Ball for her bouffant hair and all the updos, James Dean for his rockabilly style - the denim and rolled-up T-shirt thing. And I am also inspired by Dita Von Teese and Gwen Stefani. Their style is retro, but it's still very feminine at the same time.
Andra Day
I gleaned different style ideas over the years. In Southern California, there is a big rockabilly sub-culture. So when I would go to car shows, I would see women dressed like this. I had a teacher in high school that always had her Bette Paige bangs.
To me, rockabilly music paralleled punk's energy and feeling, but the players were much better.
Brian Setzer
We weren't afraid to mix some crazy styles into the standard rockabilly look. We also took a lot of different musical influences that were part of that era.
For every rockabilly festival staged here, there are 10 held overseas.
I'm not God's gift to rockabilly. There's great players out there, and some of them deserve a lot more than they've gotten.
With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues.
I didn't say I wasn't gonna do rockabilly. I just said I ain't gonna sing no song that ain't a country song. I won't be known as anything but a country singer.
Buck Owens
That rockabilly sound wasn't as simple as I thought it was.
Carl Perkins
I called it Rockabilly 'cause I was rocking the strums, which you're not supposed to do.
Dick Dale
The old-timers schooled me good. They brainwashed me to respect music, whether we were playing rockabilly or blues or rock and roll.
Dr. John
If you ask me, rockabilly has had a raw deal for far too long. People never shunned the blues or jazz the way they do rockabilly. But it's the original punk-rock, and it changed the way people looked at music for ever.
Imelda May
For me, rockabilly is very, very exciting music. It's electric and kind of wild, you know? It's 'make your hairs stand up on the back of your neck' kind of music.
Everybody told me that if I insisted on doing rockabilly music, I'd never have a chance of selling any records. In fact, I lost count of how many people told me to ditch it all together, in favour, I guess, of sounding like everybody else.
Ireland and America, music-wise, are very closely related. The Irish came over with their fiddles in hand, and you can hear it in the bluegrass and rockabilly. I love it when music from different countries combine.
The thing about a music career is that it ain't over until the fat lady sings. Look at all the times people threw in the towel on Dylan - or Neil Young. Remember when Young was doing things in the '80s like 'Trans' and the rockabilly album and being completely lambasted by critics who now think he is wonderful again?
Jeff Buckley
I like the Rockabilly look. My background is half Italian, half French. I wear cowboy boots and jeans.
Johnny Iuzzini
I was a hop-around. I hung out with the rockabilly crew, the guys who were trying to be rappers, the funny kids.
Katy Perry
If you went to school in Nashville, you were aware of all those '60s rockabilly people.
Kim Dickens
I was born in San Francisco. I was raised in Oakland, so I'm, like, super Bay Area born, and, you know, it's just really multicultural up there, and there's a lot of subcultures just from, like, anything, like from rockabilly to, like, crazy punk scenes to, you know, a huge rap scene, and there's just all kinds of things you can do out there.
Kreayshawn
I guess my favorite artists are The White Stripes or Tom Waits. The more theatrical the music is, the more I get into it. I also like the quieter folk music, that kind of old-school rockabilly or country. I'm not really picky when it comes to music, as long as it's honest.
I never thought I would be recording on any professional level, so to be doing a rockabilly, Motown, pop soundtrack in a L.A. studio was completely bizarre and amazing.
I obviously had my reggae, but I got quite into rockabilly when I was a kid, because I was trying to find something that represented me as a white person.
I like old rockabilly style. I always wear denim on denim with suspenders and slicked back hair.
My background was Rude Boys, Teddy Boys, rockabillys and skinheads. I was into reggae and Blondie and The Cure, and especially The Specials - these black and white guys getting it together. Extreme personalities. Extreme talent.
