But our absolute favorite was their arrangement of Blind Boy Fuller's "Step It Up and Go." This is rockabilly in its infancy.

The band almost single-handedly invented the rockabilly genre, although at the time it was referred to as country boogie. Fred Maddox was one of the first musicians to use the slap technique on the upright bass, and that slap-bass sound became rockabilly's rhythmic backbone.

While the band limped along during the World War II years as three of the brothers were drafted, their full reformation in 1946 marks a watershed in country music history as the band became not just a West Coast phenomenon but legitimate nationwide stars.

They toured constantly. Look closely in the Record Ranch section the next time you're at Cactus Music and you'll notice a photo of the band taken during an in-store performance in Houston in the early '50s.

To quote former disc jockey James "The Hound" Marshall, "The music they made was wild and anarchic, their stage act full of much ad libbed goofing off, bizarre comedy, sound effects and all manner of mania. They sounded like no other group before or since, much of their output was pure rock'n'roll a decade before most of America had heard of such a thing." *

To complete the circle, Merle Haggard's original lead guitarist, Roy Nichols, was formerly the lead guitarist for Maddox Brothers and Rose, America's Most Colorful Hillbilly Band.

* For those interested in a detailed, well written history of the band, check out The Hound Blog.