WHO is El Destroyo?

by Robert Prevendar

When Rockin’ Billy Dean Cochran rolled into Hong Kong he was on the lam. He hadn’t had time to pack much but a few guitars and a Zippo lighter that was previously owned by Gene Vincent. Billy Dean is the kind of guy that never has to look very hard for trouble, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before it found him in such a legendary city of trouble. Sure enough, he’d barely burned through his first pack of smokes when he ran across Da Countess, a whisky toting lady who had spent years drifting around like the far away snows of the upper Midwest of the US, where she got locked up... for the first time. She did two months in the Anoka Pokey for walking out of a Minneapolis record shop with a 45’ of Wanda Jackson’s “Fujiyama Mama” under her hat. When she got out, she spent a couple weeks sleeping in the back room of a pawn shop, where she started messing around with a bass guitar that had been hanging on the wall since 1959. She was hooked.

When they met, Rockin’ Billy Dean and Da Countess instantly knew that they were cut from the same denim – true blue Rock ‘n’ Roll. When Billy Dean asked her if she knew any drummers, she informed him that her main man, Bubba, was her ONLY drummer. They had met in Chicago some years ago and lived together above the old Checkerboard Lounge. You could say Bubba is some kind of Rock ‘n’ Roll fanatic. He once spent 26 days in a dark room trying to recapture the exact drum sound from the Sun Records recording of Carl Perkin’s “Matchbox.” When he finally stumbled out into the afternoon sunlight he discovered Autumn had turned into Winter and it was time to get out of Chicago. He and Da Countess packed up their gear worked their way down to Memphis, through all the chitlin’ cicuit joints, on to Oklahoma, El Paso, and Bakersfield…eventually washing up in Hong Kong.

Billy Dean lives and breathes music, whether busking on street corners or rockin’ Carnegie Hall, seeing him play is like standing close to the blue flame of a Rock ‘n Roll blow torch. Together with the rock solid rhythm section of Da Countess and Bubba they are

“El Destroyo, the band that ate Hong Kong"

and they slam out a unique brand of Rockabilly that is as tough as nails, tight as a noose, and raucous as a prison riot. Musically speaking, they’re not the kind of band you want to meet in a dark alley. Check them out fast, before their pasts, or the law, catch up with them.