Carl Perkins was a rockabilly revolutionary at Sun Records, cursed by bad luck and overshadowed by Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.
Perkins survived a deadly car crash and battles with the bottle to leave a lasting musical legacy, which will be depicted in the “One Night In Memphis” sold-out show coming to Savannah Center on Thursday.
“Carl wasn’t as good-looking as Elvis; wasn’t as wild as Jerry Lee and didn’t have the voice of Johnny Cash, but Carl was a major talent who made great music,” said John Mueller, of “One Night In Memphis.”
It’s a tribute to the early Sun Records stars: Perkins (played by Mueller), Elvis (Alex Swindle), Lewis (Blair Carman) and Cash (Neil Morrow).
“So many bad things happened to Carl and a lot of people don’t appreciate his music and how talented he was,” said Mueller, who created the stage show. It depicts one night in Sun Studios when Perkins, Presley, Lewis and Cash got together. In addition to singing, the four stars make small talk, joke around and reveal their passion for rock and roll.
“It’s an honor to play Carl’s music,” Mueller said in a telephone interview. “Most people know Carl from his big hit, ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ But Carl did a lot more than that. He was so talented. His records were a big influence on the Beatles, Eric Clapton, the Stray Cats. And you can still hear Carl’s sound in music today.”
Here is Perkins singing “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1956:
Perkins died at 65 in 1998. His hits included “Matchbox,” “Honey Don’t” and “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby” (all three covered by the Beatles); “Boppin’ the Blues” and “Your True Love.”
Perkins released “Blue Suede Shoes” early in 1956 and it raced to the top of the charts. Elvis covered the song a few months later and also had a hit.
Perkins and his brothers, Jay and Clay, played in a band and in March, 1956, they were driving to New York City to appear on “The Perry Como Show.” They never made it.
The car crashed into the back of a truck. Carl and his brother were seriously injured. Carl had a fractured skull and eventually recovered. But Jay had a broken neck. He never fully recovered and died two years later.
Elvis, meanwhile, exploded into a rock and roll megastar. A few days after the accident, Perkins watched Elvis sing on the “Tommy Dorsey” TV show and Carl knew that Elvis would be the king.
“I had a lot of questions to ask the good Lord, and I did,” Perkins told NPR. “I was lying in a cast; being flat on your back, you’re forced to look up. During my long days and nights of lying there I wondered and questioned: ‘Why did this happen to me when I was so close?’”
It’s all part of the bittersweet Perkins’ story.
“Carl had bad luck and bad timing,” Mueller said. “But he was so talented and such a nice guy. He worked hard in the music business. Carl and his brothers grew up in the cotton fields; played in a lot of gin mills and honky-tonks. Then, just as they were about to hit it big, they were in that awful accident.”
Perkins went through hard times during the 1960s when the hits stopped coming and the booze started flowing.
“I turned to alcohol very heavy,” Perkins told NPR. “I got to the point where I drank every day and it almost destroyed my family life.”
Things started to turn around in the late ’60s when he joined Johnny Cash’s band. Then, from the late ’70s until his death, Perkins’ popularity grew. He was finally appreciated as a rock and roll pioneer.
Perkins made TV specials with the likes of George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton. He co-wrote a hit with Cash called “Daddy Sang Bass.” Perkins made a record with Paul McCartney, and Carl was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. A year earlier, he joined Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison at the old Sun Studios for a new record, “Class of 55.”
It was all about the Sun Studio sound that Perkins helped create.
“Carl took country and rockabilly and turned it into something new,” Mueller said. “That sound he created became embedded into rock and roll.”
Near the end of his life, Carl Perkins understood his own legacy, as he said in a 1989 interview: “You know, when all this is over, and Carl Perkins is being laid to rest, I’d just like for anyone that walks by to say, ‘Well, when he did get his life together, and realized that he had more left than he lost by not getting to be a big superstar, the old dude really tried, and he left us a song that I really want to listen to again.”
And it starts like this: “One for the money/two for the show/three to get ready/Now go cat go.”
Villager Tony Violanti is a correspondent for Villages-News.com.
