This article delves into the life and career of Carl Perkins, a key figure in the early days of rock 'n' roll, who often gets overshadowed by contemporaries like Elvis Presley. Despite his lack of scandal and dramatic downfall, Perkins' influence and consistency are highlighted in this chronicle of his journey.
When history comes gunning for rock ’n’ roll’s ringleaders, Carl Perkins is the man most likely to elude cancellation. To this day, most trace history’s trajectory back to Elvis Presley . It was only the Beatles’ oft-professed fandom that rescued a few more of his clean-cut toe-tappers from the deluge circa ’64.
There’s naturally more to the Tennessee gent’s cotton-cum-guitar-pickin’ story, spanning as it does the hillbilly haylofts and honky-tonks of the ’40s to duets with Bono and Tom Petty in the ’90s. But pry as we might into the leaky shotgun shack of his Bible-belting plantation roots, it’s hard to find intrigue, much less scandal to hang him for. That’s Sydney rock journalist Jeff Apter’s main hurdle in this worthy chronicle of the Sun Records trailblazer. In the absence of your classic arc to glory, perdition and redemption, the author finds virtue instead in Stoic consistency as he pursues a meticulous six-decade chronology of the rockabilly cat’s road, every flop album just a pothole en route to, er, another shot of. The drama peaks early. It was a Carl Perkins recording session that spawned one of the great artefacts of the early rock ’n’ roll era, when Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis joined him around the Sun Records piano for a December 1956 jam released after 25 years of legal wrangling as “The Million Dollar Quartet” December 4, 1956 in Memphis, Tennessee. But Perkins’ stock had already stalled by then, thanks to a terrible car accident nine months earlier that stole his momentum just as Blue Suede Shoes took off. Modest to a fault, the songwriter always voiced praise and gratitude for his stupendously handsome, hip-shaking buddy’s comprehensive hijacking of his signature song. “Any person playing this kind of music was so fortunate that we had a guy to open the door like Elvis,” he said much later.
Carl Perkins Rock 'N' Roll Elvis Presley Music History Sun Records
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