At first, Setzer played rockabilly covers in a band called the Tom Cats with his brother drummer Gary and bassist Bob Beecher however, Setzer soon abandoned that group to join up with newly rechristened school friends Lee Rocker (born Leon Drucker) and Slim Jim Phantom (born James McDonnell). The Stray Cats were formed by guitarist/vocalist Brian Setzer in the Long Island town of Massapequa, New York, in 1979. The group's fall was nearly as swift their ascendency - by the end of the '80s, they had fallen apart - but the Stray Cats made an indelible impact, sending the rockabilly revival into the mainstream and setting the pace for the music's continuation over the ensuing decades.
For a few years in the early 1980s, the Stray Cats were one of the hottest bands in rock & roll, racking up Top Ten hits - "Rock This Town," "Stray Cat Strut," "(She's) Sexy + 17" - with the aid of the newly founded MTV, which found their retro fashion visually kinetic. It took some time - and a trip across the Atlantic - for them to succeed, but when they did, it was beyond all expectations. That was by the design of Brian Setzer, Lee Rocker, and Slim Jam Phantom, a trio of Long Island renegades who were attempting to keep the fire of old-time rock & roll burning during the height of punk and new wave. Sporting bodacious pompadours, tattoos, and leather jackets, the Stray Cats looked like a rockabilly band straight out of central casting.
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