Wit & Attitude Quote by Brian Setzer

Setzer is quietly rewriting the origin story of “authentic” rockabilly: it was never a museum piece, it was a mash-up with good hair. The line reads like a defense, but it’s really a manifesto. “We weren’t afraid” frames stylistic mixing as a risk-taking move, which hints at the gatekeeping he knew was coming. Rockabilly culture has long fetishized purity - the right cuffs, the right Gretsch, the right echo. Setzer flips that anxiety into a point of pride: the look and the sound were always porous.

The word “standard” does a lot of work here. It acknowledges the uniform - that codified, thrift-store-to-stage pipeline of pompadours, bowling shirts, and pinup cues - while also suggesting how quickly rebellion becomes a template. By calling their additions “crazy styles,” he signals both playfulness and provocation: exaggeration as strategy. The Stray Cats didn’t just revive a 1950s aesthetic in the late-’70s/early-’80s; they amplified it until it read as contemporary, almost punk in its sharpness.

Then he widens the frame: “different musical influences that were part of that era.” That’s Setzer pushing back against the simplified playlist version of the 1950s. Early rockabilly wasn’t one sound; it was country, blues, R&B, jump swing, gospel, and pop ricocheting through segregated radio markets and cheap studios. His subtext is that honoring the era means honoring its collisions, not freezing its surface. Authenticity, in Setzer’s telling, is movement.