Rockabilly pioneer Billy Lee Riley, 74, returned to the stage Sunday at the Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival for his first performance since a third hip replacement operation and quintuple-bypass emergency heart surgery in February threatened to silence the Sun Records legend forever.

Riley and two of his band members — drummer J.M. Van Eaton and keyboardist Larry Donn — are among the last survivors of the classic 1950s rockabilly era that also produced Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. Lewis performed on the Sam’s Town Stage in Tom Lee Park two hours after Riley.

“We’re like a club, and it’s a club nobody else can join,” said Donn from the stage, before taking the mike for a version of his obscure but prized 1959 single “Honey Bun.” “When we’re gone, that’s it.”

Backstage, Riley — a wildman in the 1950s and ’60s whose onstage antics made Elvis look tame — affirmed Donn’s sentiment. “Better get this while you can, ’cause we’re dropping,” he said.

Sunday, however, Riley showed no signs of dropping any time soon, despite an occasional hitch in his vocal delivery that matched the John Wayne hitch in his step. The rythym of his singing was slightly off on the rock and roll chestnuts as “Bo Diddley” and “Roll Over Beethoven,” but he came alive when tearing through such classics from his own catalog as “Red Hot,” “Trouble Bound” and “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll,” recorded at Sun in 1956 and 1957 with his band, The Little Green Men, which included Van Eaton. In a Good & Plenty-colored pink and black suit, two-toned shoes, pearl-patterned black socks and an unswept silver mane of all-natural hair, Riley was resplendent.

Riley’s lead guitarist, Ronnie Vandiver of Bolivar, Tn., who has played with Billy Lee for eight years, said the singer actually was in better spirits now than two years ago, when he needed a cane to take the Memphis in May stage. “He was really on the edge there for a while,” said Vandiver, 52, a native Memphian who formerly played in the well-remembered Antenna Club punk/new wave-era outfit Neon Wheels.

Riley’s band also included bass player Barry Shaw.

During what he called “my first show after my ordeal,” Riley was watched from the wing of the stage by several family members, including his wife of 33 years, Joyce Riley; his daughter, Angela Johns, 31; and his granddaughter, Lauryn Johns, 5, who refused to join her grandfather onstage for “Red Hot” despite his repeated coaxing and the crowd’s cheers of encouragement.

Mrs. Riley said her husband entered St. Vincent’s in Little
Rock on Feb. 20 for his third right-side hip replacement in recent years. (He also has had two back operations.)

The next day in the hospital, Riley experienced chest pains, and doctors discovered “his heart was in distress,” Mrs. Riley said. A heart attack followed.  An emergency quintuple-bypass operation was performed Feb. 25. If he hadn’t already been in the hospital at the time of his heart attack, he may have died, “so that third failed hip turned out to be a blessing in disguise,” Mrs. Riley said.

Sixteen days later, Riley — a native of tiny Pocahontas, Arkansas — returned to his Jonesboro home. He felt “miserable,” he said, but now the pain has disappeared. “I had this show booked, and I wasn’t gonna let my fans down,” said Riley, whose early afternoon set was performed before a smallish but enthusiastic group that included several people in T-shirts with the distinctive Sun logo. “I said, ‘I got a show to do, and I gotta be there.”’ (Sunday marked Riley’s 13th Beale Street Music Festival performance.)

Vandiver said no rehearsal was required: The band has played together so often, they only had to show up and join their leader onstage. The last time Riley had performed for an audience before his hospital stay was during a November tribute to Jerry Lee Lewis at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. (In the 1950s, Riley played guitar and harmonica on numerous sessions for Lewis and other sun artists.)

Said Riley, to his cheering fans after concluding with his signature song, “Red Hot”: “That’s our show for this year, and we hope we’ll see you again next year.”