Carl Perkins
Carl Lee Perkins (April 9, 1932 – January 19, 1998)[1][2] was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. A rockabilly great and pioneer of rock and roll, he began his recording career at the Sun Studio, in Memphis, beginning in 1954. Among his best-known songs are "Blue Suede Shoes", "Honey Don't", "Matchbox" and "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby".
For other people named Carl Perkins, see Carl Perkins (disambiguation).
Carl Perkins
Carl Lee Perkins
April 9, 1932
Tiptonville, Tennessee, U.S.
- Guitarist
- singer
- songwriter
- Vocals
- guitar
1946–1997
According to fellow musician Charlie Daniels, "Carl Perkins' songs personified the rockabilly era, and Carl Perkins' sound personifies the rockabilly sound more so than anybody involved in it, because he never changed."[3] Perkins's songs were recorded by artists (and friends) as influential as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Ricky Nelson, and Eric Clapton, which further established his prominent place in the history of popular music. Paul McCartney said "If there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles."[4]
Nicknamed the "King of Rockabilly", Perkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He also received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]
Carl Lee Perkins was born on April 9, 1932, in Tiptonville, Tennessee, the son of poor sharecroppers Louise and Buck Perkins (misspelled on his birth certificate as "Perkings").[5] Beginning at the age of six, he worked long hours in the cotton fields with his family, whether school was in session or not. Siblings included brothers Jay and Clayton.[6] The boys grew up hearing Southern gospel music sung by white friends in church and by black field workers and sharecroppers in the cotton fields.[7] On Saturday nights Perkins would listen to the Grand Ole Opry, broadcast from Nashville on his father's radio.
Roy Acuff's broadcasts from the Opry inspired Perkins to ask his parents for a guitar.[8] Since they could not afford to buy one, his father made one from a cigar box and a broomstick. Eventually, a neighbor sold his father a worn-out Gene Autry guitar. Perkins could not afford new strings, and when they broke, he had to retie them. The knots cut his fingers when he would slide to another note, so he began bending the notes, stumbling onto a type of blue note.[3][9]
Perkins taught himself parts of Acuff's "Great Speckled Bird" and "The Wabash Cannonball", having heard them played on the Opry. He also has cited Bill Monroe's fast playing and vocals as an early influence.[10] Perkins also learned from John Westbrook, an African-American field worker in his sixties who played blues and gospel music on an old acoustic guitar. Westbrook advised Perkins to "Get down close to it. You can feel it travel down the strangs, come through your head and down to your soul where you live. You can feel it. Let it vib-a-rate."[3][9]
In January 1947, the Perkins family moved from Lake County, Tennessee, to Madison County, 70 miles from Memphis, the largest city in West Tennessee and a center of a great variety of music played by both black and white artists.[11] At age fourteen Perkins wrote a country song called "Let Me Take You to the Movie, Magg". Sam Phillips was later persuaded by the quality of that song to sign Perkins to his Sun Records label.[12]
Beginnings as a performer[edit]
Perkins and his brother Jay had their first paying job (in tips) as entertainers during late 1946 at the Cotton Boll tavern on Highway 45, twelve miles south of Jackson, Tennessee, starting on Wednesday nights. Perkins was 14 years old. One of the songs they played was an up-tempo country blues shuffle version of Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky". Free drinks were one of the perks of playing in a tavern, and Perkins drank four beers that first night. Within a month Carl and Jay began playing Friday and Saturday nights at the Sand Ditch tavern, near the western boundary of Jackson. Both places were the scene of occasional fights, and both of the Perkins brothers gained a reputation as fighters.[13]
During the next couple of years, as they became better known, the Perkins brothers began playing other taverns around Bemis and Jackson, including El Rancho, the Roadside Inn, and the Hilltop. Carl persuaded his brother Clayton to join them and play the upright bass, to complete the sound of the band.[14]
Perkins began performing regularly on WTJS in Jackson during the late 1940s as a sometime member of the Tennessee Ramblers. He appeared on the radio program Hayloft Frolic, on which he performed two songs. Sometimes one was "Talking Blues", as done by Robert Lunn on the Grand Ole Opry. Perkins and his brothers began appearing on The Early Morning Farm and Home Hour. Positive listener response resulted in a 15-minute segment sponsored by Mother's Best Flour. By the end of the 1940s, the Perkins Brothers were the best-known band in the Jackson area.[15] Perkins had day jobs during most of these early years, including picking cotton, working at various factories and plants, and as a pan greaser for the Colonial Baking Company.[16][17] His brothers had similar pick-up jobs.
In January 1953, Perkins married Valda Crider, whom he had known for a number of years. When his job at the bakery was reduced to part-time, Valda, who had her own job, encouraged Perkins to begin working the taverns full-time. He began playing six nights a week. Later the same year he added W.S. "Fluke" Holland to the band as a drummer. Holland had no previous experience as a musician but had a good sense of rhythm.[18]
Malcolm Yelvington, who remembered the Perkins Brothers when they played in Covington, Tennessee, in 1953, noted that Carl had an unusual blues-like style all his own.[19] By 1955 Perkins had made tapes of his material with a borrowed tape recorder, and he sent them to companies such as Columbia and RCA. But he used addresses such as "Columbia Records, New York City" and seemed dismayed at the lack of response. "I had sent tapes to RCA and Columbia and had never heard a thing from 'em."[20]
In July 1954, Perkins and his wife heard a new release of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" by Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black on the radio.[21] As the song faded out, Perkins said, "There's a man in Memphis who understands what we're doing. I need to go see him."[22] According to another telling of the story, it was Valda who said that he should go to Memphis.[23] Later, Presley told Perkins he had traveled to Jackson and had seen Perkins and his group playing at El Rancho.[20]
Years later, the musician Gene Vincent told an interviewer that, rather than Elvis's version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" being a "new sound", "a lot of people were doing it before that, especially Carl Perkins."[24]
Sun Records[edit]
Perkins successfully auditioned for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in early October 1954. "Movie Magg" and "Turn Around" were released on the Phillips-owned Flip label (151) on March 19, 1955.[25] "Turn Around" became a regional success, and Perkins was booked to appear along with Elvis Presley at theaters in Marianna and West Memphis, Arkansas.[2][26] Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two were the next musicians to be added to the performances by Sun musicians. During the summer of 1955 they had junkets to Little Rock and Forrest City, Arkansas, and to Corinth and Tupelo, Mississippi. Again performing at El Rancho, the Perkins brothers were involved in an automobile accident in Woodside, Delaware. A friend who had been driving was pinned by the steering wheel and had to be dragged from the burning car by Perkins. Clayton had been thrown from the car but was not seriously injured.[27]
Another Perkins song, "Gone Gone Gone",[28][29] released by Sun in October 1955,[30] was also a regional success. It was a "bounce blues in flavorsome combined country and R&B idioms".[31] The A-side was the more traditional country song "Let the Jukebox Keep On Playing".[32]
Commenting on Perkins's playing, Sam Phillips has been quoted as saying
Personal life[edit]
A strong advocate for the prevention of child abuse, Perkins worked with the Jackson Exchange Club to establish the first center for the prevention of child abuse in Tennessee and the fourth in the nation. Proceeds from a concert planned by Perkins were combined with a grant from the National Exchange Club to establish the Prevention of Child Abuse in October 1981. For years its annual Circle of Hope Telethon generated one quarter of the center's annual operating budget.[76]
Perkins had one daughter, Debbie, and three sons, Stan, Greg, and Steve.
Stan, Perkins' firstborn son, is also a recording artist. In 2010, he joined forces with Jerry Naylor to record a duet tribute, "To Carl: Let It Vibrate". Stan has been inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Greg played bass on stage alongside his father at the 1985 Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session concert in London.
Perkins died on January 19, 1998, at the age of 65 at Jackson-Madison County Hospital in Jackson, Tennessee, from complications from several minor strokes the previous month. Among the mourners at his standing room only funeral at Lambuth University were George Harrison, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Wynonna Judd, Sam Phillips, Ricky Skaggs, Brian Setzer, Garth Brooks, and Billy Ray Cyrus. During the service Billy Ray Cyrus and Billy Skaggs performed, and the funeral ended with George Harrison performing an acoustic version of "Your True Love".[77] Perkins was interred at Ridgecrest Cemetery in Jackson.
Perkins' widow, Valda deVere Perkins, died on November 15, 2005, in Jackson.
Guitar style[edit]
As a guitarist Perkins used finger picking, imitations of the pedal steel guitar, palm muting, arpeggios, advantageous use of open strings, single and double string bending, chromaticism, country and blues licks, and tritone and other tonality clashing licks (short phrases that include notes from other keys and move in logical, often symmetric patterns).[78] A rich vocabulary of chords including sixth and thirteenth chords, ninth and add nine chords, and suspensions, show up in rhythm parts and solos. Free use of syncopations, chord anticipations (arriving at a chord change before the other players, often by an eighth-note) and crosspicking (repeating a three eighth-note pattern so that an accent falls variously on the upbeat or downbeat) were also in his bag of tricks.[79]