By the end of the 1940s, the Perkins Brothers were the best-known band in the Jackson area. Positive listener response resulted in a 15-minute segment sponsored by Mother's Best Flour. Perkins and then his brothers began appearing on The Early Morning Farm and Home Hour. He also appeared on Hayloft Frolic, on which he performed two songs, sometimes including "Talking Blues" as done by Robert Lunn on the Grand Ole Opry. Perkins began performing regularly on WTJS in Jackson during the late 1940s as a sometime member of the Tennessee Ramblers.
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Carl persuaded his brother Clayton to play the upright bass to complete the sound of the band. ĭuring the next couple of years the Perkins brothers began playing other taverns around Bemis and Jackson, including El Rancho, the Roadside Inn, and the Hilltop, as they became better known. Both places were the scene of occasional fights, and both of the Perkins brothers gained a reputation as fighters.
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Within a month Carl and Jay began playing Friday and Saturday nights at the Sand Ditch tavern, near the western boundary of Jackson.
#SOUND ON LONELY SCREEN FREE#
Free drinks were one of the perks of playing in a tavern, and Perkins drank four beers that first night. One of the songs they played was an up-tempo country blues shuffle version of Bill Monroe's " Blue Moon of Kentucky". Perkins and his brother Jay had their first paying job (in tips) as entertainers at the Cotton Boll tavern on Highway 45, twelve miles south of Jackson, starting on Wednesday nights during late 1946. It was that song that eventually persuaded Sam Phillips to sign Perkins to his Sun Records label. At age fourteen, he wrote a country song called "Let Me Take You to the Movie, Magg". Now in closer proximity to Memphis, Perkins was exposed to a greater variety of music. In January 1947, the Perkins family moved from Lake County, Tennessee, to Madison County. You can feel it travel down the strangs, come through your head and down to your soul where you live. Westbrook advised Perkins to "Get down close to it. 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. He also cited Bill Monroe's fast playing and vocals as an early influence. Perkins taught himself parts of Acuff's " Great Speckled Bird" and " The Wabash Cannonball", having heard them played on the Opry. 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. Perkins could not afford new strings, and when they broke he had to retie them. Eventually, a neighbor sold his father a worn-out Gene Autry guitar. Since they could not afford one, his father made one from a cigar box and a broomstick. Roy Acuff's broadcasts inspired him to ask his parents for a guitar.
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On Saturday nights Perkins would listen to the Grand Ole Opry on his father's radio. He grew up hearing southern gospel music sung by white friends in church and by black field workers working in the cotton fields. Beginning at the age of six, he worked long hours in the cotton fields with his family, whether school was in session or not. Perkins was born in Tiptonville, Tennessee, the son of poor sharecroppers Louise and Buck Perkins (misspelled on his birth certificate as "Perkings"). He also received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. Paul McCartney said "if there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles." Ĭalled "the King of Rockabilly", he 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. Amongst his best-known songs are " Blue Suede Shoes", " Matchbox" and " Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby".Īccording to 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." Perkins's songs were recorded by artists (and friends) as influential as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash and Eric Clapton which further established his place in the history of popular music. Carl Lee Perkins (Ap– January 19, 1998) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist who recorded most notably at the Sun Studio, in Memphis, beginning in 1954.