Rosie Flores: My mom kept a radio plugged in on top of the refrigerator, and that radio was going on all the time, so me and my older bother were always singing along and dancing to the radio. When we finally got to California, the radio changed from rockabilly to surf music, and my brother was playing all of those surf songs instrumentally on the guitar. I picked up the guitar in 1964. That’s when the Beatles came to America. With my brother’s male band, I was able to learn how to play lead guitar, and so at about fifteen, sixteen years old, I was learning how to figure out Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck parts and play blues songs and also learning folky songs like the Byrds, country and folk, and I was just enamored with playing guitar as a young girl.
[music]
RF: When I left San Diego, and I moved up to Los Angeles, all of a sudden I had this like potpourri of country, punk, rockabilly, singer-songwriter, and I was in all of it. The style that I already had developed as a lead guitar player, which was country and rockabilly, I was able to bring it into the Screamin’ Siren because they loved country, and we would do rockabilly songs, and so I was able to bring my style of rockabilly and country and speed it up and make it hardcore.
[music]
RF: I had met Wanda Jackson singing backgrounds for her at a country fest in Los Angeles. So I’m like, why don’t I just call Wanda up and say, “Wanda, I’m making a rockabilly record, do you want to sing with me on it?” And she was like, “Sure!” And then I had met Janis Martin; I finally just said, “I want you to sing on this Rockabilly Filly record with me.” So all of a sudden four of the songs on Rockabilly Filly had these legendary women on it. So I did help them by putting them on this record and bringing their name back out in the press, and then they helped me by making me legit while I was trying to move from country to rockabilly.
[music]
To hear the full program, tune in Saturdays at 5 and Sundays at 6 on WWNO, or listen at americanroutes.org.