Bobby Sikes & the Rhythm Rebels, Coleman

BOBBY SIKES & THE RHYTHM REBELS- You've Left A Broken Heart b/w Rolling Stone (Rebel 101)

Brownwood, Texas falls just outside of the geographic focus of LoneStarStomp, but I'm gonna reel it on in for this post on Bobby Sikes. The Sikes Brothers- Bobby and Rick- were from Coleman, a half-hour west of Brownwood and put together the Rhythm Rebels in the late 1950s working Abilene TV for a short stretch in the early- to mid-60s and pretty much owning the Brownwood / Coleman bar scene for the remainder of the 60s. For a band that played as much as they did and were was popular as they were, the Rhythm Rebels left behind little evidence of their existence in the form of recorded sounds. There were a couple of records on Rebel, one or two more on Nashville, and another on the Sims label. Perhaps it was the fact that the Rebels were so busy, so wild, on the road that little time was left for the studio.

According to a 2001 Texas Monthly story on Rick Sikes, Bobby died of kidney failure back in the 90s. And aside from his being a Rhythm Rebel little else is commonly known of his life as a musician, which would in all likelihood be overshadowed by his brother's part-time exploits in casing banks while touring Texas.

Whether Rebel 101 was serious or intended as a 'leg pull' it is today obvious that Bobby is a white boy with a country blues bent. Though not disjointed enough to label as "outsider" in 2010, it does veer extraordinarily close. But there's just a bit too much pride for it to be too much of a goof and a little too much talent for it to be too 'broken', a genre of the blues that got its legs with the work of Jon Spencer and the Gibson brothers some 20 years back. Weird to think that all these combos in the 90s working this style intended to be some sorta Howling Wolves filtered through a busted mono AM radio speaker. Bobby Sikes, and countless others no doubt, got there long before.