I've been youtubing around, found a good bit of footage of Gene Vincent (Be Bop a Lula) and Eddie Cochrane from the 50s. The "Beatles at the BBC" album has started me on this sort of roots search, not that I made a conscious effort to do this, but there you go! It's worth a look if you like the early stuff, sorry I don't have URLs, but they're easily found.

It was Eddie Cochrane that did "20-flight Rock" in 1956 or 57, it appeared in a movie called Blackboard jungle. It's got like a million words in it, and apparently it was the fact that Paul knew all of them and could play it well when he met John in 1957 that impressed John enough to invite Paul to join the Quarrymen.

Eddie Cochrane could put on a show, IMHO from those old BxW 50s TV clips! Also, there's a clip of Paul doing 20-Flight Rock on the web (it's part of his promo for MAF), just him and an acoustic, it just is mindblowing to think that this is just how he played it to John 50 years ago (and I think might have been this song that Paul said after he played it in this clip " ... of course Eddie Cochrane did it much better than I just did ..."). Eddie Cochrane also did "Summertime Blues", and a few other hot numbers that were pretty famous, it's really sad that he died at 21 years old (in a car crash in England ... "He blew his mind out in a car").

Gene Vincent had a band called the "Blue Caps", they were HOT! Also, their lead guitarist was really good, and it blew me away to hear him do screams leading into the solos ... they were just like Paul does, like leading up to the break in Can't Buy Me Love. Also, their bassist had incredibly long hair for back then, it was hanging all over his face.

... and Bryan Ferry! I somehow got over to his stuff, he recorded a song called Gene & Eddie. I never realized it, but this guy (from the Stray Cats) is like a walking memorial to this Rockabilly stuff, and it's pretty clear that he is completely psycho sicko about Eddie Cochrane and Gene Vincent ... even his guitar looks like Eddie Cochrane's! I think the Beatles would probably have liked this guy, and the Stray Cats.

Sorry about rambling on like this, I just got back into town from a trip, it's late, I'm tired, and so I guess I'm a bit wordy here. I'm just blown away by how much this rockabilly stuff influenced the early Beatles. It's lots of fun to watch and listen to also!

I think I got started on all this by following links from the sig of a certain one of this forum's senior members (over 7100 posts) - thank you, pc31!