Rockabilly Slap Bass Has Become An Art Form Unto Itself

Back in the days when rockabilly music was originally taking shape, country music recordings rarely featured drums. By the early 1950s some acts were beginning to use them, but they were still frowned upon by the country music elite. Because country music had such an important impact on the development of rockabilly, drums were originally left out of the rockabilly lineup at first too. Without a drummer, who was going to drive the rhythm? That chore fell to the bass player.
Along with country's influence, rockabilly grew out of blues and rhythm and blues. Blues bass players found themselves competing to be heard over the rest of the band--especially in up-tempo music like jump blues and rhythm and blues. Of course, they were all playing acoustic upright basses and didn't have amplification for them, so they started playing hard in order to be heard. Along with the more aggressive playing came the sounds of the strings snapping against the stringboard.
Players soon realized that, far from being a problem, this noise presented an opportunity. Bass players could now add a percussive element to the band simply by slapping the strings against the bass in various rhythms as they simultaneously sounded their bass notes.
Rockabilly bass players took the concept even further and developed a very aggressive, percussive string slapping style that, when accentuated with the ever-present rockabilly echo during recording, created a very distinctive sound that plays just as much a role in defining rockabilly music as the guitars do.
Elvis' early Sun Records recordings were arranged without drums at all. All of the rhythm was supplied by Bill Black slapping on the ol' "doghouse" bass fiddle. "That's All Right," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Mystery Train," and more great songs feature just Bill Black's slap bass, Scotty Moore's electric lead guitar, and Elvis on vocals and acoustic rhythm guitar.
It didn't take long for rockabilly cats to realize that the no-drums rule didn't apply to this new music and drums started appearing on recordings very quickly. (Even still, when Elvis appeared on the stage at the Louisiana Hayride, house drummer D.J. Fontana played along from behind a curtain at the back of the stage so as not to offend the country audience! Fontana and Elvis quickly hit it off and played together for years, with Elvis immediately letting him out from behind the curtain!)
While the addition of drums didn't put an instant stop to the slap-bass sound, eventually bands realized that they no longer needed the bass player to provide the rhythm and--seeing as how an electric bass guitar is a lot easier to carry and amplify than a bass fiddle--many players began to make the switch to electric. As the rockabilly craze died out by around 1960, so did the use of stand-up slap bass and it was all but gone from rock and roll by the early 60s.
But the rockabilly revival of the late 70s and early 80s was also a revival of the stand-up slap bass style. Most modern rockabilly bands consider this an essential element to authentic rockabilly music. And many players have greatly expanded the slap-bass style. Lee Rocker, who played bass for the Stray Cats, is a perfect example of someone who's taken the style to new heights and made it an art form all by itself.
Like the rest of rockabilly, it turns out there was a historic basis for the slap bass style that everyone now associates with the genre. Rockabilly didn't invent the style, but like it did with everything else that went into it, it did adopt it, expand it, enhance it, exploit it, and finally, own it.