2021 GRAFFITI | THE MADDOX FAMILY
Th e
rockabilly Modesto? pioneers of . . .
M
By MARTIN REED
odesto and rock music go way back, of course – maybe even all the way back. By some accounts, the very roots of rock once thrived here in the persons of the Maddox Brothers & Rose, “America’s Most Colorful Hillbilly Band.” The Maddoxes were a family of freight-jumpin’, fruit-trampin’, stringpickin’ Alabamans who rode the rails to California’s Central Valley in 1933. After settling in Modesto, they formed a musical act with 11-year-old sister Rose in the vocal spotlight. With a level of energy and flamboyance seldom seen in their day, the group became fast favorites on stage, radio, and record. By the approach of the 1950s, they were banging out a racket scarcely distinguishable from the one dubbed “rockabilly” some five years later. “They ought to name a street out there after ‘em,” says the similarly legendary Glen Glenn, who played and sang with the last vestiges of the Maddox combo for most of 1957. “They were from Modesto…and without the Maddox Brothers, there wouldn’t be no rockabilly.” Although a draft notice put the brakes on Glenn’s own bid for stardom in 1958, his scant recorded output found an enthusiastic audience during the rockabilly resurgence of the late 1970s and ‘80s. These days, he often finds himself courted by rock royalty but reserves his
highest praise for that little- known hillbilly band, the Maddox Brothers & Rose. “They were the best group I’ve ever seen in my life…I idolized ‘em. I still do, and I’m 70-some years old! They were showmen…Have you heard their music? Their old 4-Star stuff? Man, when they got on stage, they were doing rock & roll before they even knew there was a rock & roll. They were doing it in the ‘40s.”
They were from Modesto, and without the Maddox brothers & Rose, there wouldn’t be no rockabilly. — Glen Glenn Consider, for example, the opening track of “The Maddox Brothers & Rose Vol. 1” (Arhoolie CD 391), which kicks off with a shout-out to the Central Valley: “There’s a real hot spot on the Waterloo Road,” sings Rose…Waterloo Road in Stockton. The rollicking “George’s Playhouse Boogie” is about a rowdy nightclub at that locale, where the band played regularly. Early stirrings of rock can be heard here, as on at least five other songs in this collection of highlights from the group’s 1946 to ‘51 tenure with 4-Star Records. “I’ll tell you, there’s a book,” says Glen Glenn. “I think you can get it on the internet. It tells a lot about the Maddoxes – a hardcover book about Rose Maddox.”
GRAFFITI 8
AUGUST 2021
Ramblin’ Rose, by Jonny Whiteside (Country Music Foundation Press/Vanderbilt Press, 1997), is indeed a fine introduction. Thumbing through its pages, an area resident will recognize a procession of towns and landmarks. Here is Modesto’s South 9th Street, where 18-yearold Fred Maddox convinces a business owner to sponsor the group on radio while wangling a standup bass fiddle for himself. Never mind that he can’t play; he’ll just slap the strings, creating an exciting percussive effect. Fabulous once more is the Strand Theater, remembered, perhaps, as a derelict building with the moxie to proclaim “Modern and Fireproof ” every day of its condemned life. Here again is the Assembly of God in Riverbank, the scene of a tug-of-war between the Holy Rollers and Rose Maddox for the soul of Jimmy Winkle, Rose’s lead guitarist and steady flame (the Holy Rollers won). Author Whiteside’s description of Modesto continues a tired tradition of dismissals and slights (“scorched and moribund,” he offers), but he also reveals a bygone character of this region, that of a cultural crossroads where the Maddoxes could rub shoulders with Roy Rogers, Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills, and a host of Steinbeckian sorts. While other hillbilly bands played to type, dressing like hayseeds and working predictable cornball comedy into their act, the Maddoxes, being the genuine article, were ill-equipped to draw this caricature. They channeled their earnings into the flashiest western wear they could find and gave their own boisterous humor free rein onstage. Paradoxically, they found immediate favor with both radio and live audiences, and when, in 1939, they entered a hillbilly band contest at the State Fair, they took top honors. Their prize was a one-year series of shows on KFBK radio in Sacramento, syndicated over several northwestern states. With the advent of World War II, the band’s future fell into doubt, as several of the brothers were spirited off to distant lands. By 1946, however, the entire family was back in Modesto, and the group (singer Rose,
