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 The Jailbirds were formed as a trio in 1992.
At that time, Martin Manneck played the rhythm guitar and sang the lead vocals, Peter Geisthoff played the lead guitar, and Stefan Konitzer pounded the double-bass. Half a year later, ex-"Somethin'
Else"-drummer Lutz Berkenfeld joined the band, and the first gigs were planned soon.
In September 1993, the guitarist Peter Geisthoff left the band. Four weeks later, he was succeeded by Marcel Leist. After some
weeks of intensive rehearsals, the Jailbirds went to the recording studio for the first time.
In May 1996, the Jailbirds were forced to take a six-months break, because their lead singer Martin Manneck had had an
occupational accident. During this break, Marcel quit due to a change of job and left the band again.
After Marcel had quit, the Jailbirds were looking for an equally good musician to replace him and they found Fatmir Toska to
be the right man to take his place. The guitar player, who originally came from Albania, got used to his new job very quickly, and so the Jailbirds went to the studio again in December 1996 to
record the songs for the planned CD and some contributions to various compilations. The songs that resulted from this recording session were released on the debut CD "Don't You Cry" on
Tombstone Records. The CD was sold out after 10 months.
In August 1997, Fatmir left the band, and the former Jailbird Marcel helped out for some gigs. A
short time later, the Jailbirds got into touch with Maico Masjosthusmann, who played the drums with "Junior Marvel and his Hi-Flyers". It turned out very quickly, that the was an excellent guitar
player as well, and so he became the fourth man of the bunch.
Via the Internet, the album "Don't You Cry" made its way to the Swiss radio station Kanal K.
Somebody who worked at the radio station had read a review of "Don't You Cry" on a Seattle-based web site, and got into touch with the Jailbirds. The Jailbirds manager Maik Wydra
sent him a copy of "Don't You Cry" which then was presented during a Kanal K radio show. And promptly the album was elected as CD of the week.
After very successful appearances at the festivals in Munich and Brandenburg (two of the biggest
German Rockabilly festivals) in July and August 1998, the CD "Don't you cry" was repressed, but was sold out again in December.
 Because of this great success, the
Jailbirds went to the recording studio again. The recordings for long player No. 2 were completed in January 1999, and were released under the title "Viva Las Vegas" in April. In the meantime, a
number of Jailbirds songs had been released on various compilations, and the Jailbirds won the favour with an ever increasing number of fans during many live gigs in Germany and abroad; they
were, for example, the only German band at the 50th Rockhouse Meeting in Eindhoven, Holland.
In July 2000 – just in time for their appearance at the Rockabilly Meeting in Munich – their first CD
album, that had been sold out for quite some time, was released as vinyl record on Cherokee Records. And as early as in November, the vinyl version of their second album "Viva Las Vegas"
was released. Some previously unreleased material was released on the Cherokee Records compilation CD "Hot & Wild Vol. 1" in autumn 2001. (Continued below).
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