Sid King

Sid King, born Sid Erwin, counted among the initial Caucasian rock and roll artists to land a contract with a leading company such as Columbia. He likewise figured as one of the earliest young musicians from the South who shifted from Western swing into rockabilly during the middle 1950s. His upbringing took place in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. At school he performed vocals and guitar, and while still in his mid-teens he began appearing on local radio programs with Melvin Robinson. The pair eventually took charge of the broadcast, after which Erwin and Robinson—who contributed steel guitar and saxophone—assembled a full band that featured Erwin’s brother Billy Joe on lead guitar, Ken Massey on bass, and David White on drums.

Although the ensemble, then called the Western Melody Makers, continued to perform country and western swing material at live dates and on air, its members absorbed numerous albums by Black artists. A 1954 agreement with Starday Records produced a few tracks that never yielded hits. The group next secured a Columbia deal and adopted the name the Five Strings, while Erwin adopted the stage name Sid King to form the rhyming billing Sid King & the Five Strings.

Columbia recordings illustrate how far the group’s style had moved beyond country. Their vocal harmonies, the tightly compressed pulse of their playing, the songs chosen, and Jim Beck’s forceful, forward placement of the rhythm section made them, for a period, one of the stronger rockabilly acts operating outside Memphis. They lacked the wildness of the Sparkletones yet, together with the Collins Kids, occupied a small enclave of credible rockabilly inside Columbia’s artist roster. Their output today suggests they could have rivaled Bill Haley & His Comets or Carl Perkins on roughly equal terms, positioned stylistically between the two.

Sid King & the Five Strings appeared on the Louisiana Hayride with Elvis Presley and Johnny Horton and received “Ooby Dooby” after Roy Orbison, matching his Sun recording in direct competition. Success comparable to those artists never materialized, however. Their audience stayed restricted to Texas, the Columbia contract lapsed in 1957, and the group’s sound had already lost its edge by then, prompting the band to disband in 1958.

An acquaintance with fellow Denton native Pat Boone, whom he had met years earlier, led King to solo sessions for Dot in the early 1960s, yet he left the music business by 1965. European fans seeking authentic American rockabilly drew him back to part-time performing in the 1980s. He never committed fully to rock and never reached a national audience. Mid-1950s radio broadcasts, closer in character to hillbilly than rockabilly, represent some of his vintage work on CD. His Columbia sides appear in Germany on Bear Family’s Gonna Shake This Shack Tonight.