Ronny Mack, Rockabilly Back in Limelight

It wasn’t easy being a rockabilly kid in Baltimore during the ‘60s. In 1964, as other 9-year-olds bopped to the Beatles, little Ronny Mack was spinning Hank Williams tunes. “Back then,” Mack says, “I thought like the grown-ups: ‘This isn’t rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis is rock ‘n’ roll.’ ”

By the time Mack was in his early teens, he wanted to get a band together. “Baltimore was not a country music city,” Mack says. “Everyone wanted to play Jimi Hendrix or Cream or the Doors--I was still trying to get them to play ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ ”

It wasn’t until the rockabilly revival of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s that Mack found the music he loved suddenly ‘in.’ He signed with Rolling Rock, a hard-core rockabilly label based in Van Nuys, and found himself playing before packed L.A. club crowds eager to listen to the jacked-up twangs and croonings of his band, which was called Ronny Mack and the Black Slacks.

Yet Mack still felt a little out of step. The rockabilly fad was a novelty phase that had more to do with ‘50s nostalgia than the emergence of a real movement. Sure, the Stray Cats sold a ton of records. But because of that group’s success, record executives, including the head of Mack’s label, Ronny Weiser, felt that each new rockabilly band had to fit exactly into the rockabilly formula, which meant pompadours and an upright bass.

“I had never differentiated much between rockabilly and country,” Mack says. “To me, it was just a style of music that I loved. But then rockabilly became separate and suddenly there were strict rules about how performers had to look.

“I went along with it,” Mack says. “I had the mile-high hairdo, the collar turned up, and I did all this wild stuff like jumping off the stage. I compromised because I thought, ‘This is all I get--this is my shot.’ ”

But Mack wasn’t comfortable with his new image. “We’re friends now, but I had a really big falling out with Weiser,” Mack says. “I got off the label and back to what I’ve always done.”

Now that the rockabilly hype has run its course, a new country/rockabilly roots movement has emerged. And this time people are more interested in the music than the look. Mack has found himself in the middle of things again, but not so much for his music as for his ability to gather the best of the L.A. roots scene--both established and emerging--in one room.

Every other Tuesday night, Mack hosts the CSUN Barn Dance and plays at the Little Nashville Club. Youngsters like Dave Alvin and Rosie Flores and old-timers like Ray (The King of Rockabilly) Campi, Rose Maddox and James Burton (who Mack calls “the greatest guitar player in the whole world”) have all been part of the typically standing-room-only show that’s been going strong for a year and a half. The barn dances have become so popular recently--everyone from rock fans in leather jackets to truck drivers in Stetson hats show up--that there’s talk of eventually moving the party to the roomier Palomino Club.

Finally, Mack feels in sync with his peers. Still, he has regrets. He can’t help feeling that he was born a generation behind the music he loves. Toward the end of the interview, Mack says, “I sometimes think I’d rather be 15 years older right now and lose a few years of my life--as long as I could have been around when rockabilly first came out.”

Ronny Mack’s next Barn Dance is Tuesday, July 5, from 9 p.m. until the bands tire out at Little Nashville, 13350 Sherman Way in North Hollywood. Admission is free and the show is broadcast live on KCSN-FM. Call (818) 764-0420 for information.