Carl Perkins - Blue Suede Shoes (The Johnny Cash Show - Jan 21, 1971)

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Carl was born to sharecroppers Buck and Louise Perkins and was soon out in the fields picking cotton and living in a shack with his parents, older brother Jay, and his younger brother Clayton. When Carl was gifted with a secondhand guitar, he went to a local sharecropper for lessons, learning firsthand the boogie rhythm that he would later build a career on. By his teens, Carl was playing electric guitar and had recruited his brothers Jay on rhythm guitar and Clayton on string bass to become his first band. The Perkins Brothers Band, featuring both Carl and Jay on lead vocals, quickly established itself as the hottest band in the get-hot-or-go-home cutthroat Jackson, TN, honky tonk circuit. It was here that Carl started composing his first songs with an eye toward the future. Watching the dance floor at all times for a reaction, Perkins kept reshaping these loosely structured songs until he had a completed composition, which would then be finally put to paper. Perkins was already sending demos to New York record companies, who kept rejecting him, sometimes explaining that this strange new hybrid of country with a black rhythm fit no current commercial trend. But once Perkins heard Elvis on the radio, he not only knew what to call it, but knew that there was a record company person who finally understood it and was also willing to gamble in promoting it. That man was Sam Phillips and the record company was Sun Records, and that's exactly where Perkins headed in 1954 to get an audition.

Phillips didn't show the least bit of interest in Jay's Ernest Tubb-styled vocals but flipped over Carl's singing and guitar playing. A scant four months later, he had issued the first Carl Perkins record, "Movie Magg"/"Turn Around," both sides written by the artist. By his second session, he had added W.S. Holland -- a friend of Clayton's -- to the band playing drums, a relatively new innovation to country music at the time. Phillips was still channeling Perkins in a strictly hillbilly vein, feeling that two artists doing the same type of music (in this case, Elvis and rockabilly) would cancel each other out. But after selling Elvis' contract to RCA Victor in December, Perkins was encouraged to finally let his rocking soul come up for air at his next Sun session. And rock he did with a double whammy blast that proved to be his ticket to the bigs. The chance overhearing of a conversation at a dance one night between two teenagers coupled with a song idea suggestion from labelmate Johnny Cash inspired Perkins to approach Phillips with a new song he had written called "Blue Suede Shoes." After cutting two sides that Phillips planned on releasing as a single by the Perkins Brothers Band, Perkins laid down three takes each of "Blue Suede Shoes" and another rocker, "Honey Don't." Three months later, "Blue Suede Shoes," a tune that borrowed stylistically from pop, country, and R&B music, sat at the top of all charts, the first record to accomplish such a feat while becoming Sun's first million-seller in the bargain.

Ready to cash in on a national basis, Carl and the boys headed up to New York for the first time to appear on The Perry Como Show. While en route their car rammed a truck, putting Carl and his brother Jay in the hospital. While in traction, Perkins saw Presley performing his song on The Dorsey Brother Stage Show, his moment of fame and recognition snatched away from him. Perkins shrugged his shoulders and went back to the road and the Sun studios, trying to pick up where he left off.

The follow-ups to "Shoes" were, in many ways, superior to his initial hit, but each succeeding Sun single held diminishing sales, and it wasn't until the British Invasion and the subsequent rockabilly revival of the early '70s that the general public got to truly savor classics like "Boppin' the Blues," "Matchbox," "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," "Your True Love," "Dixie Fried," "Put Your Cat Clothes On," and "All Mama's Children." While labelmates Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis (who played piano on "Matchbox") were scoring hit after hit, Perkins was becoming disillusioned with his fate, fueled by his increasing dependence on alcohol and the death of his brother Jay to cancer. His election to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the mid-'80s was no less than his due. After a long battle with throat cancer, Perkins died in early 1998, his place in the history books assured.

~ Cub Koda, Rovi

Category:

Education

Tags:

• oldies
• rock
• rockabilly
• pop

[John1948TwoC]

That boy can play guitar! Besides being a great song writer and singer.

[thecubanism]

All competent musicians, I always look at the drummer, if he holds his sticks in the match grip then I know I 'm in for some good music, be it rock or swing.

[brewjake]

mannnnnnnnnnn where is his microphone????? This sounds awesome!

[cacaomo]

"I loved it. He did it faster than I did; it had a real groove to it. I still like it today and sometimes catch myself unconsciously speeding it up and doing it his way. Ain't that strange? But I had no idea he was gonna record it and when I saw him do it live on television, I gotta admit that I felt real proud." -- Carl Perkins

[kinneyshoe]

Carl at his best

[literauntie]

Such a rockabilly legend...one man's disaster is another man's opportunity...who would have thought that a car-crash could so benefit Elvis' career and put a dent in Carl's. Thanks for the posting, John.