ROCKABILLY filly Imelda May will keep the beat at Sin City, Swansea on Saturday.

The sassy lass with the smoky voice and the perfect 1950s hairdo has the kind of grounding in the genre that should keep her around for longer than the debut album, Love Tattoo — and that was a good one. Early-career gigs with Mike Sanchez and in a burlesque club have given Imelda's act polish.

Growing up in the 1980s as an Elvis, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran obsessive — "I bought my first leopard print coat at 15, and the gangs on the corner would be staring" — must have been a challenge, but music was an early love for her.

"I heard Billie Holiday, and that blew my mind. My brother took me to HMV and I bought my first Billie album, and I listened to it back to front."

Her first professional singing gig wasn't the most glamorous affair — she sang on an advert for Findus fish fingers at 14, but it was enough to let her know what she wanted to do for a living.

"A girl in The Liberties was in the music business, and she got me this ad, where I sang, 'Betcha never put your finger on a crunchier crumb!' I got £40 for it," says Imelda.

Another stint saw her singing in burlesque clubs: "I'd sing while the girls were onstage. One of them used to take an angle grinder to her crotch and would produce a shower of sparks. One day a spark flew down my throat when I was singing," she said.

These days she moves in different echelons — with spots on Jools Holland's show, where she was spotted by Jeff Beck and snapped up to support him.

Listen to Imelda May

"It's all gone mental lately," she says in a Dublin accent that 10 years of living in London has failed to shift.

"Elbow asked me to join them on their tour, as a result of Later."

Local rock 'n' roll enthusiasts will be familiar with her husband Darrell Higham's energised playing, thanks to his stints at the Windsor Club, Neath. He is no stranger to sending the rockabilly sound off on a tangent, and as co-author of an Eddie Cochran biography himself, he has grounding in the minutiae of the genre.

Tickets cost £13. 50 from Derricks or Sin City.