Howling to the Moonlight on a Hot Summer Night: The Tale of the Stray Cats

Music writer McKittrick (Gimme All Your Lovin’) delivers a forgettable retrospective of rockabilly revival group the Stray Cats. Singer Brian Setzer, bassist Lee Rocker, and drummer Slim Jim Phantom began playing together in the late 1970s at working-class bars on Long Island, developing a sound that was “far more country, less polished, wilder” than most of the era’s music. After struggling to attract interest from record labels, they moved to London in 1980 and garnered a dedicated following before returning stateside and hitting the U.S. charts with 1981’s “Stray Cat Strut.” The low ceiling of the rockabilly genre precipitated their 1984 breakup, however, as the band became convinced that even popular rockabilly artists such as Eddie Cochran had a limited shelf life. They eventually reunited and broke up several more times (they got back together again in 2018 and remain active). Despite the book’s serviceable background on rockabilly—a genre that grew from country and R&B in the 1950s, and briefly counted Elvis Presley among its early stars—McKittrick’s static prose and beat-by-beat rehashing of individual concerts sap the narrative of momentum and fail to build a convincing case for the importance of the Stray Cats. This paint-by-numbers band biography falls short. (Oct.)