Bands Keep The Rockabilly Rolling At Shake The Shack Ball

The KCMU Fifth Annual Shake the Shack Rockabilly Ball with Ike and the Orbiters, Ramadillo and the Rattled Roosters, with host Leon Berman. Tomorrow, 8 p.m., Backstage, 2208 N.W. Market St., 789-6953. $6. --------------------------------------------------------------- If ever there was a pop music hybrid it's rockabilly. Created in the early '50s by white musicians who borrowed black musicians' R & B riffs and rolled them down the back hills of country western, it's a remarkable music form in that so many influences created a sound so ultimately spare.

Rockabilly is built around the spark of a clipped, echoing guitar, open-palmed thumping bass and the driven slap of a central snare drum. Early purveyors included Carl Perkins ("Blue Suede Shoes"), Eddie Cochran ("Summertime Blues"), and, of course, the pre-Army Elvis. Although it has only occasionally known the pinnacle of pop-chart success, most recently with the Straycats, its insistent, bare-bones influence is always felt if not flat out duplicated in contemporary music.

Leon Berman, whose rockabilly radio show airs Friday nights on KCMU FM, lives for the music. It's his first love, although he makes his living working for Everett Steel. "I sell anchors and chains and shackles," he says. "No leather. Yet." He first got the rockabilly bug in the early '80s and now owns a record, tape and CD collection with more than 2,000 units. Tomorrow night's Fifth Annual Shake the Shack show at the Backstage coincides with the fifth anniversary of his radio program. "(The radio show) is more popular now than ever," Berman says, noting that when he began his show, the time slot was lost somewhere on Sunday.

Shake the Shack also marks the return of Ike and the Orbiters. The four-piece - guitarist Michael Par, bassist Bernie McKinney, pianist Kevin Pottinger and drummer Randy Martin - have individually and collectively covered all manner of rock over the years, but Par says the band's true passion is rockabilly.

"We had been playing in a Top 40 band," says Par, "when one night we saw the Sun Rhythm Section at the Backstage." The Sun band is made up of players who originally backed up Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins at Memphis' Sun Studios during the earliest days of rock and rockabilly.

"That was it for us," Par says. "We shut down the Top 40 band and came back as Ike and the Orbiters."

Par says the Orbiters will do a tight, strict rockabilly show. "We do 20, 25 standards, then we get into the album cuts. With rockabilly, you have 30 or 40 standards before you have to get into that Pat Boone whitebread."

Sharing the bill with Ike and The Orbiters will be Seattle's Ramadillo and the Rattled Roosters from Vancouver, B.C.

Pete Droge, lead guitarist and chief writer for the country rock Ramadillo, says the band will be playing "our regular thing. Plus we have some new material we want to introduce.

"We're looking forward to the show," Droge says, "especially with it being a benefit for KCMU. I never have any money to donate, so this'll be a good way to contribute."

The Rattled Roosters, who will close the evening, have been getting a lot of attention around Seattle lately. Guitarist Rick Cameron says the band got started playing on the streets of Vancouver, but recently has been working more in the U.S. "There's a lot of (club) politics up here," he says. "The scene in Seattle is much more receptive."

Although the band does play classic rockabilly music, it's more interested in turning out original material.

"We're trying to create a new sound based on the old music," Cameron explains. He says a tape, recorded live in Vancouver, is due out by December.

Cameron does most of the writing with fellow guitarist Lucky Bee. The band is rounded out by breakneck drummer Gord "Crash" Piggott and bassist Tony "Long Legs" LaBorie, who uses his stand-up bass as both instrument and launching pad for his onstage gymnastics.

The young quartet plays the rockabilly role to the hilt. The Roosters are all cool, strutting attitude, drape coats and huge hair. As one clubgoer observed at a recent Seattle band date, "Their pompadours entered the club a good two or three minutes before they did."