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Larry Collins, the prodigious child guitarist who worked with his sister Lorrie as the exuberant 1950s rockabilly duo the Collins Kids, died on Friday in Santa Clarita, Calif. He was 79.<\/p>\n
His death, in a hospital, was announced by his daughter Larissa Collins, who did not cite a cause.<\/p>\n
Although they didn’t sell millions of records or enjoy widespread radio play, Mr. Collins and his sister were ideally suited to the then emergent medium of television and became bona fide stars of the early years of live country music TV. As members of the cast of \u201cTown Hall Party\u201d \u2014 a popular TV barn dance hosted by the cowboy singer Tex Ritter in Los Angeles \u2014 they brought an untamed, proto-punk sensibility to the West Coast country and rockabilly scenes of their day.<\/p>\n
Larry was just 9 years old and his sister 11 when the siblings, clad in matching Western wear, became regulars on \u201cTown Hall Party\u201d in early 1954. \u201cTwo little bundles of bouncing T-double-N-T!\u201d was how Mr. Ritter introduced them when they took the stage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Lorrie stole the hearts of many of the adolescent boys in the audience. But it was often Larry, as video clips from the era attest, who stole the show \u2014 hopping, bopping and duckwalking around the stage while his sister sang unabashedly of adult situations and emotions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThey said I came out of my mama with one leg shaking,\u201d Mr. Collins said in a 2018 interview for <\/span>pleasekillme.com<\/a>, the companion website for a book of the same name about punk music. \u201cI had so much energy they didn\u2019t know what to do with me.\u201d<\/p>\n His hyperkinetic antics and high vocal harmonies animated the duo\u2019s performances \u2014 two-minute bursts of swagger and attitude that gave expression to the suggestive likes of \u201cHoy Hoy\u201d and \u201cHot Rod,\u201d both from 1958.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m only 14, but I\u2019m goin\u2019 on 15\/But I wanna be 16, so I can get me a hot rod,\u201d Ms. Collins declared, all swagger and attitude, as her brother laid down a series of headlong guitar riffs behind her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Collins played everything from jagged single-note sequences to reverb-drenched bass-string runs on his double-neck Mosrite guitar, a gift from his mentor, the West Coast guitar virtuoso Joe Maphis. Mr. Collins also appeared on \u201cFire on the Strings,\u201d an album of instrumentals recorded by Mr. Maphis (who also played a double-neck Mosrite) for Columbia Records in 1957.<\/p>\n Dick Dale, the man heralded as the \u201cking of the surf guitar,\u201d cited Mr. Collins\u2019s staccato fingerpicking as a major influence on his playing, and on the evolution of surf music.<\/p>\n But Mr. Collins\u2019s innovations as a guitarist extended beyond surf music and rockabilly. Noting similarities between his playing and that heard on touchstone punk recordings by the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, the guitarist Deke Dickerson argued that the Collinses\u2019 1958 single \u201cWhistle Bait\u201d anticipated punk rock by some two decades.<\/p>\n