Ten great Sun recordings unissued at the time - starting with "Put Your Cat Clothes On"

That is undoubtedly the greatest rock 'n' roll record not to gain a release around the time it was recorded. It had to wait sixteen years to see the light of day on on a compilation album - Sun Rockabillys: Put Your Cat Clothes On - released in the UK in 1973. The Perkins' track opened side one. I remember sticking the LP on my record player and thinking "Blimey! Where's this been hiding?" It's easy now to wonder what the hell Sam Phillips was thinking of - but it wasn't as if he didn't have an embarrassment of choice: the splendid "Matchbox" was recorded during the same session. (And, before you ask, yes - that is Jerry Lee Lewis on piano.)  

That wonderful, eye-opening compilation LP contained a slew of previously hidden gems, including this classic from The Killer himself:

Then there was this excellent 1957 version of "Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache" by Mr. Warren "Ubangi Stomp' Smith, the non-release of which is a genuine mystery:

More understandable, perhaps, was the non-appearance of this early Roy Orbison track - Orbison never really hit his stride at Sun, but he still managed to cut some great stuff:

I've known the first four tracks for decades, but I only became acquainted with the rest of the songs on this post after I started buying rockabilly compilation CDs from the HMV store in Oxford Street about eight years' ago. The best of the rest (for me, at least) is this   cool little rocker from Gene Simmons:

I've been meaning to cover this topic for months, and finally received the impetus to do so yesterday from an exchange with ex-KCS in the comments section of my recent post "Stranded in the Jungle" (here) which centred on Sun's secret weapon - slapback echo. The following song isn't part of my ten choices, because Sun couldn't have released it, as it was only 30" long. Known as "Unknown Tape Fragment", it's generally attributed to  Jimmy Wages, a singer/songwriter who recorded four complete tracks under producer Jack Clement, none of which were released. Wages didn't know whether that was him on this intriguing musical snippet - but he reckoned it could have been. As ex-KCS pointed out, the echo setting is odd, with the echo and the orginal sound at roughly the same level (obviously, the echo is usually quieter). Whatever was going on, I suspect that a full version would have been one of Sun's finest productions. As Hank Davis wrote on the That'll Flat... Git It! Vol. 17: Rockabilly from the Vaults of Sun Records CD sleeve:

Despite its fragmentary nature, the tantalizing snippet comes close to near-perfect rockabilly. The instrumental sound is wonderful and the swampy recording style only enhances the bluesy tension of the performance. 

Indeed. Here it is:

From what might have been back to what actually was. If that was Jimmy Wages, the guitarist would have been a chap called Ray Harris, who can be heard on his own unreleased Sun single, "Right Behind You Baby":

Here's hard-edged Sun stalwart Sonny Burgess rocking on out on the stomping "Find My Baby for Me":

Sun released two singles by Onie Wheeler, neither of them a patch on "Walkin' Shoes":

Jerry Arnold's "High Class Baby" was an example of a pre-recorded song bought by Sun, who held onto it for a while without putting it out. It eventually escaped into the wild via another label:

  

I was going to try to keep every artist to one track - but I can't resist including Jerry Lee Lewis and His Pumping Piano with "Let the Good Times Roll":