Bobby Wayne - The Way To San Quentin (2026) [Hi-Res]

Rockabilly murder ballads from the Pacific Northwest! All largely unissued material that showcases Bobby Wayne’s deep timbered vocals seeping through stripped down, gritty prison tunes about killing lawyers, gun-slingin’ babes and life as public enemy no. 1.

The Way To San Quentin is a career spanning collection of the prison songs recorded by and largely written by rockabilly cult hero Bobby Wayne. Born Robert Wayne Snyder in Spokane, Washington in 1936, he is credited with exposing the Northwest to rockabilly with a bass-baritone voice often confused with Johnny Cash.

It's hard to say what held Bobby back from being a massive star, but his name might have had something to do with it. Throughout his career, he wasn’t the only Bobby Wayne on a stage or the radio. Others with the same name were also trying to hit it big. He's oddly not even the only Bobby Wayne in the rockabilly world. Crown Records, known for such cash grabs as "Tino La Tino" and "Al Herbert" (not to be confused with Herb Alpert) had their own rockabilly Bobby Wayne. We suspect it was a moniker as real as Jerry Kole (not to be confused with Jerry Cole). They even went as far as to release a Bobby Wayne tribute to Johnny Cash. Their Bobby Wayne was oddly the same person on the cover of their Don Lee albums, and that was the spittin’ image of Gordon Calcote too. Almost as if he was just some hunky blonde to put on the cover.

He was just fifteen when he first wrapped his hands around a guitar neck and let the strings talk back. Sixteen when he formed the Rocky Mountain Playboys, and a shy seventeen years old when LA clubs told him to pack it up and go back home. He rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest label heads, producers, and country musicians of the 20th century. Through all his small lucky breaks, lightning just never struck hard enough. He never forgot that spark. Rockabilly was a meteor across midnight, jolting his nervous system with a shot full of electric rock ‘n’ roll still captured on reel-to-reel tape.