Just Give Them That Old-Time Rockabilly : Pop music: Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys take Anaheim club back to the mid-’50s, going for a rebirth of the sound rather than a mere re-creation.

A lot of people have reasons for wishing it was 1956 again--a time when traffic flowed freely, youth gangs stockpiled brass knuckles and switchblades instead of AK-47s, the Dodgers won the pennant (albeit at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn) and a young, beautiful Elvis was appearing not on a postage stamp but live on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Those days are gone for good. But Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys have found a way to at least make it sound like 1956 again.

The Orange County band has an uncanny ability to capture the essence of the rockabilly music that Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins forged in their earliest days on the Memphis-based Sun label, and that subsequently was elaborated on by the Johnny Burnette Trio, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly and others.

Moreover, the young quintet--which recently began an every-Monday-night engagement at Linda’s Doll Hut--has a knack for making its spirited, infectious music sound like a rebirth rather than a re-creation.

“We try not to sound exactly like anything from the past, but (to make it) as if you were there,” says Wally Hersom, a thin, gangly bass-fiddle player who wears thick-framed Holly specs.

Hersom, 23, and singer Robert (Big Sandy) Williams, 28, started the band late in 1988 as an outlet for their love of authentic rockabilly. They write the band’s original songs, which tend to be about the joys of good rocking, the thrill of new romance and the agony of good lovin’ gone bad--pretty much the thematic gist of ‘50s rockabilly music.

Big Sandy and company do throw in a wrinkle that the Sun rockabillies didn’t offer, but it’s hardly a new wrinkle, and it’s one that Elvis and his peers probably would have appreciated. Reaching back beyond the mid-’50s, Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite boys add a steel guitar to the basic rock ‘n’ roll quartet, incorporating the influence of Western swing and old-fashioned honky-tonk music.

So why is a band whose members weren’t even born until the mid- to late-’60s so enraptured with rock ‘n’ roll from the ‘50s?

“It’s hard to come up with an answer to that,” Williams said Monday night as he sat in a dark corner of the Doll Hut, his hair slicked back, his bulky mass and broad, round-cheeked face looming over the table. “I don’t analyze it or think about it.”

“Certain things you just fall in love with,” Hersom interjected. “It’s hard to say why. We don’t think about it that hard. We didn’t come to it with some big plan.”

Williams didn’t grow up a stranger to old rock ‘n’ roll. His father, Bob, collected records by Presley, Gene Vincent and many others. In the early ‘80s, when Williams was still at Canyon High School in Anaheim Hills, a rockabilly revival led by the Stray Cats swept the United States and gave rise to a fertile local scene.

Williams and Hersom first met as fans going to neo-rockabilly shows, then joined separate bands. Drummer Bobby Trimble, who went to high school with Hersom in Tustin, also was part of the scene.

But their earlier bands “were the ‘80s version of rockabilly, not the original,” Hersom said. “We decided to get a truer sound,” Williams continued. That was the start of what then was called Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Trio, with Williams singing and plunking an acoustic rhythm guitar, Hersom slapping an upright bass, original drummer Will B., and guitarist T.K. Smith, a deft player well-versed in the twangy, skittering style forged by Elvis’ original guitarist, Scotty Moore. Williams used the nickname he’d acquired by going around in a hand-me-down mechanic’s shirt that had belonged to his uncle and bore the name patch “Sandy.”

By that time, rockabilly wasn’t exactly hot anymore; the early ‘80s craze had died down considerably. Most of the bands from that period--notably X and the Blasters--had incorporated rockabilly and country strains but had revised them for their own use.

Still, starting out on the Southern California club circuit, Big Sandy and band found there was an audience for what they were trying to do. “There were still some hard-core fans (from the early ‘80s rockabilly revival) that didn’t have anything to do any more and were looking for something,” Hersom recalls.

In 1989, the band issued its first album, “Fly Rite With . . .” on Dionysus Records, a tiny Burbank label. It was followed by a 78 r.p.m. single--”a statement,” as Hersom put it, that Big Sandy and the Boys were serious about doing things the old-fashioned way.

They sent the LP to Now Dig This, a British roots-rock magazine. It was given a rave review and Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Trio soon found themselves booked on their first bill outside of California: a roots-rock festival in England. It was attended by more than 3,000 fans, and that was the start of a budding career in England and Europe, where the band now has toured four times. A fifth visit is booked for May.

“We were one of the first young bands to go over there and play a real traditional style,” said Williams. “It’s not big-time,” but Big Sandy can usually pack 500-capacity clubs overseas and has played shows to audiences of several thousand.

A second album, “On the Go,” came out last year on a British label, No Hit Records. Big Sandy again sounded smooth and assured, never forcing or overdoing his singing but letting out impressive yells and Bob Wills-style whoops at opportune moments as he urged his band mates through ripping instrumental breaks.

It wasn’t until after the album was finished that they found the steel guitar player they’d long envisioned adding.

“We tried out different people, but we never could find anybody” who fit, Williams said. Then, while on tour in Austin, Tex., late in 1991, they found Lee Jeffriess, a transplanted Englishman.

The band acquired additional experience backing such country and rockabilly figures as Rose Maddox, Sleepy LaBeef and Johnny Powers on West Coast tours. Last fall, British alternative rock star Morrissey came calling at a Big Sandy gig in Pasadena and offered the band a gig as the opening act on his U.S. tour.

“The (opening) band he had, Gallon Drunk, had some problems and had to go back to England,” Williams recounted. Morrissey’s own band included some rockabilly veterans who knew Big Sandy’s music and suggested he check Big Sandy out.

“We were kind of nervous about how (the monthlong tour with Morrissey) would go,” Williams said, “but it went surprisingly well. His fans are such devout followers. They knew he chose us, so they thought, ‘It must be cool.’ ”

The slot with Morrissey came up so quickly that Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys didn’t even have time to order boxes of their albums to hawk at venues.

“I was on the phone the whole way, trying to contact our distributor,” said Williams. But some Morrissey fans evidently were able to find the albums in stores. “We’re getting letters, asking when we’re going to come back on our own.”

While Morrissey helped the band gain exposure, the gig ultimately cost Big Sandy an ace musician. When the series of dates was over, guitarist T.K. Smith had quit.

“The rest of us had a really good time, but the whole tour (Smith) was really stressed out,” Williams said. “He’s a really intense person. It had started to go further than he originally intended. He wanted to be in a band around town, and I think it was getting to be too much for him.”

For a short New Year’s tour of Europe that already had been booked, Big Sandy and the band hired Malcolm Chapman, a guitarist they knew from the British rockabilly scene.

“At first,” Williams said, “I was really worried about it. But then the tour just went better than ever. It forced the rest of us to do more. It made me realize that as great as T.K. was, it wasn’t all T.K.”

Last month, after local auditions failed to turn up a full-time replacement, Williams and the band recruited another veteran British rockabilly guitarist they knew, Ashley Kingman. After three weeks of rehearsal in a shed behind Hersom’s grandmother’s house in Villa Park, the curly haired guitarist made his debut with the band last Monday at the Doll Hut. While not injecting much in the way of showmanship during his opening set as a Fly-Rite Boy, Kingman did display a sure, light-skipping touch, playing concise, darting solos and joining in tandem with Jeffriess on harmony-guitar passages.

The band’s next aim is to try to get a U.S. record deal.

Williams says that “as great as (Europe) is, I won’t feel legitimate until we have success here.”

Upcoming showcase dates include March 19 at the Palomino in North Hollywood and March 26 at Bogart’s in Long Beach. The Palomino show will find Big Sandy billed above Phil Alvin, the Blasters singer who has enjoyed an excellent reputation in the roots-rock world for more than a decade.

“(Alvin) was really nice to do that. We have a lot of respect for him,” Williams said. The billing is “a step in the right direction. It’s all psychology: ‘Hey, he’s opening up for them .’ We’re excited about that. Hopefully, it’s a trend.”

Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys play every Monday starting at 10 p.m. at Linda’s Doll Hut, 107 S. Adams St., Anaheim. $5. (714) 533-1286. Today from 2 to 4 p.m., the band will play a free concert at Jake’s ‘50’s Style Barber Shop, 110 N. Olive, Orange. (714) 532-6810.