Rockabilly's Collins Kids: Still Young at Heart

Lorrie, who was selling real estate in Reno, admits that "it was something that I missed -- the traveling, the audience. I just missed the music. It was something we had done for most of our life. Also, I felt that's what I was put on Earth to do, to sing, and I wasn't doing it."

Larry still had a hand in the business as a writer, "and then I ignored that for a while. But neither one of us had any idea how hot we were in Europe -- we nearly lost our minds! They'd asked us several years in a row to come over there, but I kept saying no. Finally they just made an offer you couldn't refuse."

Except, he adds, "they didn't want to hear any of our new stuff or any of the songs I'd written. They wanted to hear 'Hot Rod,' 'Mercy,' 'Beetle Bug Bop' and 'Whistle Bait,' which is like a standard over there as far as rockabilly goes -- stuff that we'd written when we were 9, 10 years old. We thought: 'That's cool. Let's do that.' "

When the Collins Kids arrived in London in 1993 for the rockabilly festival, they were greeted by six huge bodyguards. According to Larry, "it was like stepping into 1954 and we were as hot as we'd ever been."

Raised in Pretty Water, Okla., as Lawrence and Lawrencine, the Collins children and their parents -- their father was a dairy farmer, their mom something of a stage mother -- moved to California in 1953. Talent scouts had told Lorrie she had great potential but couldn't do much with it in Pretty Water. Larry, who'd gotten a guitar at age 5, sometimes tagged along at auditions and talent shows in Los Angeles, but at that point, they weren't singing together.

At one particular show, both performed.

"I think that's the first time my dad came up with 'Don't embarrass me, son,' " Larry recalls to much laughter.

"It turned out I came in second, and Larry came in first," Lorrie says.

"Oh, she admitted the story, hallelujah," he interjects. (The Washington Post "made me do it," she says, chuckling.)

In February 1954, the now-partnered Collins Kids took part in a talent contest for "Town Hall Party" and were hired to perform the next day. They would appear in more than 40 episodes.

"One day I was riding my horse across the hills of Oklahoma," Larry notes. "Six months later we were doing a weekly television show in Los Angeles."

Within a year, the Collins Kids were with Columbia, releasing a stream of singles featuring Lorrie's exuberant lead vocals and Larry's high harmonies and tasty licks played on his custom-built double-neck guitar. Many of those licks he learned from the legendary Joe Maphis, King of the Strings and a regular duet partner on "Town Hall Party," with one favorite being the aptly titled "Fire on the Strings." Larry's speedy bass string runs would end up inspiring many California surf pickers in the early '60s.