The sense of tension in this single, named for gang fights in 50s greaser slang, simmers for 2:30, like two rivals sizing each other up. In fact, some parents' groups got the song banned from radio because they thought it might incite "youth violence." Still didn't stop the single from selling a million copies. (The publicity probably helped it, actually.)
Like so many other landmark tunes in rock history, "Rumble" came about during a jam at a live show. Wray and his band were playing a sock hop in Fredericksburg, VA, when the show's organizer, Washington, DC-based DJ Milt Grant, asked Wray to play a "stroll" (a slow, swinging number that was accompanied by a line dance, appropriately called "The Stroll"). Thing was, Wray didn't have a stroll in his arsenal of songs. So he just turned up his amp and started improvising some chords. The crowd loved it so much that they requested the song (which was called "Oddball" before it found its final moniker) four more times that night.
I'd never heard the song until I saw the movie Pulp Fiction (1994); it plays behind the "uncomfortable silences" scene in Jackrabbit Slims, perfectly capturing the tension (of a different sort) between "Vincent Vega" and "Mia Wallace."
I think what struck me about the tune was that it kind of doesn't fit any specific genre of 50s rock. I mean, there are tinges of rockabilly and surf music, but the track doesn't slip snugly into either category. In some ways, it's like the precursor of the precursor to punk: minimal chords, maximum attitude, and grungy guitar—a sound Wray achieved by jamming sharpened pencils into the cone of his amplifier. (If that's not punk, I don't know what is.)
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