Robert Gordon at the Bowery Electric

At the peak of the New York punk rock scene in the late 1970s, Robert Gordon puzzled music fans by leaving a group that was on the verge of becoming popular, the Tuff Darts, to become a solo rockabilly singer. While the audience for punk rock was growing, there was not much of an audience for a rockabilly revivalist at the time, and even with later associations with guitarists Link Wray and Chris Spedding, Gordon won and maintained only a cult audience.

Gordon convincingly revisited his rockabilly repertoire tonight at the Bowery Electric. Hardly recognizable now from his early-career James Dean-type photographs, a heavier and graying Gordon is no longer looking like a retro-fit novelty. Accompanied by a simple but very able guitar-bass-drums trio led by Rob Stoner, the now 66-year-old Gordon proved he was not a throwback but a classic. Gordon’s performance was centered on his rich, masculine baritone on long-forgotten country ballads and pre-British Invasion rock and roll songs like “I’m Leaving It Up to You”, “Sea of Heartbreak” and “Rockabilly Boogie.” He closed the evening with a rousing version of the song Marshall Crenshaw wrote for him, “Someday, Someway.” Hopefully this performance will not be a one-shot, but the beginning of a return to many live performances.