Holland - a friend of Clayton's - to the band playing drums, a relatively new innovation to country music at the time. A scant four months later, he had issued the first Carl Perkins record, "Movie Magg"/"Turn Around," both sides written by the artist. 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. It was here at his first Sun audition that the structure of the Perkins Brothers Band changed forever. 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. 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 on promoting it. He was already sending demos to New York record companies, who kept rejecting him, sometimes explaining that this strange new hybrid of country and R&B fit no current commercial trend. Watching the dancefloor at all times for a reaction, Perkins kept reshaping these loosely structured songs until he had a completed composition, which would then finally be put to paper. It was here that Carl started composing his first songs with an eye toward the future. The Perkins Brothers Band quickly established itself as the hottest band in the get-hot-or-go-home cutthroat Jackson, Tennessee honky tonk circuit. He soon recruited his brothers Jay on vocals and rhythm guitar and Clayton on vocals and string bass. By his teens, Perkins was playing electric guitar, mixing R&B traditions with bluegrass and country techniques. Gifted a second-hand guitar, he took lessons from a local Black sharecropper, learning firsthand the boogie rhythm that he would later build a career on. Starting early in his childhood, he worked in the fields picking cotton and living in a shack with his parents, older brother Jay, and his younger brother Clayton. Prior to his death in 1998, Perkins was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and saw his landmark 1955 recording of "Blue Suede Shoes" honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.Ĭarl Lee Perkins was born in 1932 in Tipton, Tennessee to sharecroppers Buck and Louise Perkins (misspelled on his birth certificate as "Perkings"). He also composed hits for other performers, including "Daddy Sang Bass" for Johnny Cash, "I Was So Wrong" for Patsy Cline, and "Let Me Tell You About Love" for the Judds. While he was slow to gain the pop culture status of some of his Million Dollar Quartet peers (including Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis), he enjoyed extended revivals from the '60s onward, touring with Chuck Berry and influencing the work of countless artists like the Beatles, Brian Setzer, U2, and more. Along with Elvis Presley, Perkins helped define the early rockabilly sound and put Memphis' Sun Records on the map in the process with classic songs like "Blue Suede Shoes," "Matchbox," "Honey, Don't," and "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," all included on 1957's Dance Album. One of the quintessential rockabilly performers, Carl Perkins was a singer, guitarist, and songwriter whose humble sharecropping roots informed his twangy, boogie rhythm style and innovative blend of country and R&B.
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