The Rock and Roll Trio - Split Up

Split Up

By the Fall of 1957, the Trio had become dispirited by this lack of success, and they were tiring of the endless one-nighters, so they decided to split up. A seventh single, "If You Want It Enough" backed with "Rock Billy Boogie" (Coral 61918) was released on December 16, 1957, under the name of Johnny Burnette, but by that time, The Rock and Roll Trio was no more. The Burnette Brothers decided to move to California and try their luck there. Paul Burlison joined them there briefly but decided to return to Memphis and retire from the music business. Had the Burnettes decided to follow Burlison’s example, then The Rock and Roll Trio may well have become just another forgotten 1950s group.

The Burnette Brothers success as songwriters in 1958 and 1959 and their individual, but varying, degrees of success in 1960 and 1961 as solo artists helped to keep the group’s memory alive. This success was to lead to one more single record release by Coral. In April 1960, following Johnny Burnette’s success on Liberty Records as a solo artist, Coral released “Blues Stay Away From Me” backed with “Midnight Train” (Coral 62190), under the name Johnny and Dorsey Burnette. This record, like its predecessors, however, failed to chart.

With the rise to fame in the 1960s of groups like The Beatles and The Yardbirds, with their professed admiration for The Rock and Roll Trio, interest in the group was rekindled. The Beatles would cover the trio’s songs (Lonesome Tears In My Eyes and Honey Hush in particular) at live gigs and on BBC radio. The Yardbirds, when Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were part of the lineup, were said to have practically made a career out of covering the Trio’s songs, particularly with “The Train Kept A Rollin” and their own rewrite of that song, “Stroll On”. “Stroll On” was featured in the 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni film “Blow Up”, which starred David Hemmings.

British pirate radio DJ Mike Raven heavily plugged the Trio’s original 1957 LP, and this prompted Decca to reissue it as a 12” LP in Britain on their budget Ace of Hearts label in 1966. Around 1970, a second LP entitled “Tear It Up”, which contained much of their unreleased material from 1956/7, was also released.