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. Sam Phillips was persuaded by the quality of that song to sign Perkins to his Sun Records label. At age fourteen Perkins wrote a country song called 'Let Me Take You to the Movie, Magg'.

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. 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 has 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 to buy one, his father made one from a cigar box and a broomstick. Roy Acuff's broadcasts from the Opry inspired Perkins to ask his parents for a guitar. On Saturday nights Perkins would listen to the Grand Ole Opry, broadcast from Nashville on his father's radio. 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. Siblings included brothers Jay and Clayton. Beginning at the age of six, he worked long hours in the cotton fields with his family, whether school was in session or not. He also received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.Ĭarl 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'). 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.

Paul McCartney said 'if there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles.' Among his best-known songs are ' Blue Suede Shoes', ' Honey Don't', ' Matchbox' and ' Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby'.Īccording 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.' 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 prominent place in the history of popular music. A rockabilly great and pioneer of rock and roll, he began his recording career at the Sun Studio, in Memphis, beginning in 1954. Carl Lee Perkins (Ap– January 19, 1998) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter.

Hillbillys playing rock roll