Biography
Originating from St. Louis—the city that also produced foundational rock & roll figure Chuck Berry—Jules Blattner stands as an authentic pioneer of the genre. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1941, he reached his teenage years precisely as rock & roll surfaced and had already begun envisioning his participation by the moment the style ascended the charts in 1955. At fifteen, during 1956, he formed his debut ensemble, Jules Blattner & the Teen Tones. This outfit evidently constituted the area’s earliest rock & roll band, or at least its first white rock & roll band, consisting of local youths so youthful that Blattner’s mother chauffeured them to engagements in the beginning, granting them uncontested local ground. For several ensuing years they dominated the grassroots tier of the rock & roll economy, logging hundreds of regional performances. In 1959 Bob Lyons, owner of the modest hometown imprint Bobbin Records, spotted the group and elected to document their material; the resulting single “Rock & Roll Blues” b/w “Gambling Man,” captured in Lyons’ garage studio, is now viewed as a late-period rockabilly landmark and earned positive notices in Billboard and Cashbox. Its number-eight placement on the St. Louis charts prompted a follow-up, “Teen Town” b/w “Green Stuff.” Local prestige also allowed the band to share bills with visiting national artists such as Jesse Belvin, Brenda Lee, the Isley Brothers, and Little Richard whenever those acts reached St. Louis.
Despite robust stage success, Blattner’s releases failed to register nationally, and even a 1960 move to Nashville’s larger K-Ark label left the situation unchanged. Adapting to shifting tastes, he renamed the Teen Tones the Twist Tones in the early 1960s before later adopting the broader Jules Blattner Group moniker. He also issued his debut album, A Musical Tour of Gaslight Square, titled after St. Louis’s central music district and released on the Norman label in 1964; that company belonged to producer and entrepreneur Norman Weinstrorer, who had worked with Buddy Holly during the latter’s early Coral Records period. By late 1964 Blattner himself appeared on Coral, debuting with an intense reading of Chuck Berry’s “No Money Down” that drew strong critical response yet scant sales. The following year he and his band supplied uncredited accompaniment for Berry on the incongruously titled In London album, which incorporated Blattner’s “Butterscotch Twist” under the revised title “Butterscotch.”
Although his style of rock & roll fell from national favor in the latter half of the 1960s, Blattner sustained a viable stage career. Recording breakthroughs remained elusive, though he came close to meaningful chart entry in the early 1970s while signed to Buddah Records, where one of his three albums—an expansive, psychedelic-conceptual project issued long after its stylistic moment—appeared under the reversed-name credit Seluj Renttalb. Activity diminished only during the disco-dominated second half of the 1970s, when live work evaporated; he took a conventional daytime job temporarily, yet resumed regular performances by the 1980s and has continued uninterrupted, maintaining a minimum of two weekly engagements well into his sixties and earning recognition as a St. Louis musical institution. At the close of the 1990s the German Buffalo Bop label reissued his Bobbin sides across two classic-rockabilly compilations, while his version of Berry’s “No Money Down” surfaced on Bear Family’s That’ll Flat Git It!, Vol. 9 anthology. In 2004 the German Hydra Bck imprint released a comprehensive Jules Blattner CD collection spanning his early rock & roll and rockabilly recordings through the mid-1960s.
Despite robust stage success, Blattner’s releases failed to register nationally, and even a 1960 move to Nashville’s larger K-Ark label left the situation unchanged. Adapting to shifting tastes, he renamed the Teen Tones the Twist Tones in the early 1960s before later adopting the broader Jules Blattner Group moniker. He also issued his debut album, A Musical Tour of Gaslight Square, titled after St. Louis’s central music district and released on the Norman label in 1964; that company belonged to producer and entrepreneur Norman Weinstrorer, who had worked with Buddy Holly during the latter’s early Coral Records period. By late 1964 Blattner himself appeared on Coral, debuting with an intense reading of Chuck Berry’s “No Money Down” that drew strong critical response yet scant sales. The following year he and his band supplied uncredited accompaniment for Berry on the incongruously titled In London album, which incorporated Blattner’s “Butterscotch Twist” under the revised title “Butterscotch.”
Although his style of rock & roll fell from national favor in the latter half of the 1960s, Blattner sustained a viable stage career. Recording breakthroughs remained elusive, though he came close to meaningful chart entry in the early 1970s while signed to Buddah Records, where one of his three albums—an expansive, psychedelic-conceptual project issued long after its stylistic moment—appeared under the reversed-name credit Seluj Renttalb. Activity diminished only during the disco-dominated second half of the 1970s, when live work evaporated; he took a conventional daytime job temporarily, yet resumed regular performances by the 1980s and has continued uninterrupted, maintaining a minimum of two weekly engagements well into his sixties and earning recognition as a St. Louis musical institution. At the close of the 1990s the German Buffalo Bop label reissued his Bobbin sides across two classic-rockabilly compilations, while his version of Berry’s “No Money Down” surfaced on Bear Family’s That’ll Flat Git It!, Vol. 9 anthology. In 2004 the German Hydra Bck imprint released a comprehensive Jules Blattner CD collection spanning his early rock & roll and rockabilly recordings through the mid-1960s.
Albums