Suburban-based rockabilly musician Hayden Thompson saw great success with European audiences, beginning with a rockabilly revival there in the late 1970s.
“Hayden’s voice was amazing,” said Spike Barkin, a longtime events organizer who over 30 years launched and produced the Roots of American Music Festival at Lincoln Center in New York — a production in which Thompson took part. “He put on a great show. And he was just a gentleman to work with — he was an absolute pleasure.”
Thompson, 87, died of pneumonia Dec. 31 at Endeavor Health Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview, said Georgia Thompson, his wife of nearly 60 years. Thompson had lived in Wheeling for 27 years and previously had been a longtime Highland Park resident.
Born in Mississippi in 1938, Thompson grew up in Booneville, Mississippi, about 120 miles southeast of Memphis. Thompson’s mother worked in a garment factory and his father was a truck driver and a sawmill worker.
Growing up, Thompson spent evenings listening to blues and R&B music on Nashville’s WLAC radio, he told the Tribune in 1990. His first group, the Southern Melody Boys, focused on country music, performing at parties and playing songs heard on Booneville’s WBIP radio. In 1954 — when Thompson was just 16 — the band released a single, “I Feel the Blues Coming On,” which it recorded in the radio station’s studio, on the tiny Von record label.
In July 1954, the Southern music world was transformed when a teenager named Elvis Presley recorded a cover of blues singer Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s song “That’s All Right, Mama” at Sun Studio in Memphis. Some consider that song the first rock ‘n’ roll record.
“I can remember hearing ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ for the first time like it was yesterday,” Thompson told the Tribune in 1990. “It was so different from the country music I had been listening to. He had the looks, the personality, and the timing was just right.”
Drawn to this new sound, Thompson persuaded the Southern Melody Boys to add some Elvis songs to their repertoire. After Thompson graduated from high school in 1956, the group toured the South with the musical film “Rock Around the Clock,” playing songs before and after showings of the movie.
With some of his bandmates less interested in playing rock ‘n’ roll, Thompson formed a new band with some Booneville friends, the Dixie Jazzlanders, in 1956.
“Everybody was trying to capture that sound,” Thompson told the Tribune in 1990. “All of a sudden rock ’n’ roll bands began appearing all over the South. All the record companies in Memphis were trying to find another Elvis.”
The Dixie Jazzlanders recorded four songs in 1956 at Sam Phillips’ Sun Studio in Memphis — which remained unreleased until the 1970s, when they were issued in Europe. Shortly after those recording sessions, Thompson’s band broke up, and he began working with another band, the Little Green Men, touring throughout the South. Thompson sang Presley tunes while bandmate Billy Lee Riley covered songs by Little Richard.
In the mid- to late 1950s, Thompson was squarely at the center of the influential but short-lived “rockabilly” music movement, which was a melding of country and bluegrass music with R&B, all at the start of the rock era. Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and others popularized rockabilly’s sound, and later in 1956, Thompson returned to Sun’s studios to record a cover of the song “Love My Baby,” featuring a young Lewis on piano. Thompson’s slurring vocals mimicked Presley’s style.
Sun delayed the release of “Love My Baby” for 10 months. Once out, it was overshadowed by another Sun release that became a major hit. That disappointed Thompson.
“When that record (“Love My Baby”) finally came out I was so happy — it was like holding pure gold in my hands,” Thompson told the Tribune in 1990. “I thought I was going to be a star.”
Thompson remained in Memphis a little longer, singing in the regionally popular Slim Rhodes Band. Ultimately, however, he moved to Chicago’s North Shore, to join a friend who had bought Highwood’s Tally Ho Club.
Thompson led the house band at the Tally Ho for five years. He also sang country music in the house band on weekends at the Rivoli Theater Country and Western Club at 4380 N. Elston Ave. in the Irving Park neighborhood until the Rivoli closed in the late 1960s.
Thompson played three times on the stage of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry in 1966, and he released his first solo album, “Here’s Hayden Thompson,” in 1967. Later, Thompson played package shows and released singles on obscure labels — including a cover of Presley’s “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone” — before walking away from music altogether in 1975 and focusing solely on working as a limousine driver.
“It just made me sick after a while,” he told the Tribune, referring to his diminished fortunes in the music business in the early 1970s. “I told my wife, ‘If this is the best I can do, I’ll just hang it up for a while.’”
However, rockabilly music remained popular in Europe, and starting in the early 1980s, concert promoters across the Atlantic started wooing Thompson to come to Europe for tours. He demurred, but other rockabilly performers began pressing him as well.
Thompson eventually agreed to a three-week tour of Holland, Sweden and Britain in 1984. At his first show, at a festival in Holland, Thompson received a rousing welcome.
“I’ll never forget this as long as I live,” he told the Tribune. “When they introduced me, I walked out there from behind the curtain, you’d have thought I’d sold 10 million records from the reception I got. I was just a small part of the Sun Records scene, but you’d never know it by the way they treated me. What makes the European trips so great is that I’m seeing the same types of audiences that I played to in the ‘50s: mostly kids in their early 20s. The guys have long sideburns and these crazy outfits, and the girls wear hoop skirts, ponytails and patent-leather shoes.”
In Europe, “Love My Baby” became a rock ’n’ roll standard.
Back home, Thompson continued driving a limo, and a mid-1980s encounter ferrying Chicago-based filmmaker John Hughes nearly placed one of Thompson’s songs in Hughes’ film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” During a casual conversation, Hughes revealed that he had wanted to use Presley’s song “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” for a scene, but the licensing fees were too high. Well familiar with recording Elvis’ songs, Thompson cut a demo of the song for Hughes, who initially declined.
Thompson then got together with a friend with whom he had recorded several singles, longtime audio recording engineer Timothy Powell, who employed a vintage microphone akin to what Presley had used. They recorded the song again.
“Hayden sang a perfect take (and) I remixed the song while referencing the original, making sure to get the reverb just right,” Powell recalled. “Hayden played the revised version for John. He loved it (and) … flew Hayden to Hollywood, where they re-recorded the song with some of the original musicians.”
“Are You Lonesome Tonight?” was to be used in a scene in which Bueller and his friends, seeking to duck his father while Bueller is cutting class, enter a nearby bar and play the song on a jukebox, with Bueller lip-syncing it. Ultimately, Hughes cut the entire scene from the film’s final version.
“Hayden was understandably sad, but he told me that he had a great time in California,” Powell said.
For the next two decades, Thompson continued touring in Europe and performing, often clad in a ‘50s getup of black slacks, black shirt, loud sport jacket and colorful tie.
“It’s like going back in time,” Thompson told the Tribune in 1994, referring to screaming crowds during his shows in Europe.
By 2005, Thompson had quit his job as a limo driver and was focusing on recording. He released a self-titled solo LP in 2007 and two more albums in the 2010s.
In all, Thompson claimed to have traveled to Europe 55 times to perform since 1985, sometimes sharing bills with other rockabilly figures like Riley and Sonny Burgess.
“I’ve been wanting to make a living with music and be a star since I was 15 years old,” Thompson told the Tribune in 1990. “I thought it was all over, and now here I am getting another chance.”
Into his 70s, Thompson continued playing gigs. In retirement, he enjoyed traveling, his wife said.
More than a decade ago, Thompson was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
In addition to his wife, Thompson is survived by a son, Keith; and two granddaughters.
There were no services.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.