The “Golden Hits Of The 50s”
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CARL PERKINS
“BLUE-SUEDE SHOES”
(Carl Perkins)
Sun 234
No. 2 May 19, 1956
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Carl Perkins (b. Apr. 9, 1932) was born the son of a dirt-poor sharecropper in Tiptonville, Tennessee.
His father, Buck, was crippled, and suffered from ill health after the removal of a lung. Times were
tough; by age 11, Carl was helping his family pick cotton 14 hours a day. When the crops were good
and Carl’s parents could afford it, they would buy batteries for the radio, and Carl would listen closely.
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“I started playing guitar when I was about six or seven,” Carl recalled in an exclusive interview. “I
always loved the sound of the guitar, and finally got me this old one from a black man named Uncle
John, who lived on the same plantation that my family did. I used to go over and listen to him play
a simple blues-type thing. I loved the way he pushed the strings. I’d practice up on Bill Monroe and
Ernest Tubb’s ‘Walking the Floor Over You’ and I’d add Uncle John’s blues licks. That’s where my
style came from.”
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In 1953, Carl formed his first band, the Perkins Brothers, with siblings Jay (rhythm guitar) and Clayton
(bass fiddle), plus “Fluke” Holland on drums. Forced to leave school to support his family, Carl worked
in a bakery, on a dairy farm, and in a battery factory–but all the while, the brothers kept practicing.
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The group sent some homemade demo tapes around to various labels, including Sam Phillips’ Sun
Records. In December 1954, Phillips granted the guys a 10-minute listen, and immediately thereafter,
a recording contract. “Movie Magg”b/w”Tum Around”(issued on Sun’s Flip subsidiary) and its follow-
up, “Gone, Gone, Gone” b/w “Let the Jukeboxes Keep on Playing,” both sold only locally. Carl’s next
single, however, proved to be a winner.
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“It was the easiest song I ever wrote. Elvis and Johnny Cash and myself were playing Perkins, Arkansas,
when John said to me, ‘Carl, you oughta write a song called “Blue Suede Shoes” …[Cash] said, ‘In the
Army, guys would line up for chow in their combat boots and somebody’d always say, ‘Man, don’t step
on my suedes.’ I thought about it, and about three weeks later, I was watching this couple jitterbug. I
noticed that this cat had on suedes, and at one point, he says to her, ‘Don’t step on my suedes.’ I knew
what I was gonna say right then … I couldn’t find any paper, so I took three potatoes out of a brown paper
sack, and wrote ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ on that sack, exactly as it is today.”
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“Blue Suede Shoes,” released on New Year’s Day of 1956, sold over a million copies, and by March of that
year, it was number one on the pop, R & B, and country charts. The same month, Elvis Presley recorded
a hit version of the song. Carl was set to appear on “The Perry Como Show” as the first rockabilly artist on
national TV. But enroute to the show, fate stepped in and dealt Perkins and those with him a cruel blow-
-he had a serious car accident that killed his manager, knocked Carl unconscious for three days, and laid
him up with four broken ribs and a fractured right shoulder.
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“They were gonna give me a gold record. Sam Phillips was already in New York… He was gonna
surprise me and announce to the world on ‘The Perry Como Show’ that my record was number one
on all three charts–something that rarely ever happened then. As a result of the wreck, I didn’t get
to make the show. I watched Elvis from my hospital bed do ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ I’ve been asked many
times how I felt about that. I always admired Elvis; I liked what he did. I knew he had the same feel
for the music that I did; we loved the same type of things. And nobody was topping anybody… I did
lay there thinking, ‘what if?’–but Elvis had the looks on me. He was hittin’ em with his sideburns,
flashy clothes, and no ring on his finger; I was married, with three kids. There was no way of keepin’
Elvis from being the man.”
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With most of his money gone to pay the hospital bills, Carl’s career momentum stalled. Depressed at
the loss of his brother–who had also been in the car accident and died of complications months later,
Carl started drinking heavily. He appeared in one of the earliest rock’n’roll flicks Jamboree (1957),
also writing and recording songs like “Boppin’ the Blues” (#70, 1956),”Your True Love”(#67,1957),
“Pink Pedal Pushers” (#91, 1958), and “Pointed Toe Shoes” (#93, 1959).
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“Matchbox;’ “Honey Don’t,” and “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” three of his compositions,were
recorded by The Beatles in one late-night session that Perkins attended in 1963; the tracks appeared
on The Beatles for Sale (1964) (U.S. version: Beatles ’65). Perkins also toured with Johnny Cash’s
traveling show from 1964 through 1976.
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Perkins who is still active performing and recording today–with sons Greg (bass) and Stan (drums)
co-authored his biography, Go Cat Go in 1997. When time allows, Carl can be spotted at his restaurant,
the Suede, in Jackson, Tennessee, or the Exchange Club Carl Perkins Center for the Prevention of Child
Abuse, founded in 1980.
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Acclaimed as one of rock’n’roll’s surviving legends, Carl was admitted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in 1987. He has been called one of the originators of rockabilly. But Carl steadfastly refuses to take
primary credit for this accomplishment.” [Sam] Phillips,Elvis, and I didn’t create rockabilly;
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it was just the white man’s response to the black man’s spiritualness. It was born in the South. People
working those cotton fields as I did as a youngster would hear black people singing… There’s a lot of cats
that was doin’ our things, and maybe better, that were never heard of–they’re the ones that created
rockabilly, the ones who never even got on record. We’ re just the lucky ones.”