Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” had been recorded on the Sun label in January of 1956, and had climbed all three of the national charts (on a very steep curve): country & western, pop, and r&b. It was that r&b placement that got everyone in a tizzy. Perkins was, generally, positioned as a country & western singer, and he considered himself that as well. Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, encouraged Perkins to speed up his songs, and put that beat in them that distinguished the new style that nobody even knew what to call yet. <\/p>\n
When “Blue Suede Shoes” started selling on all charts, Philliips felt vindicated, and everyone, from music journalists in big snotty cities like LA and NY, to black artists and other music labels started taking notice. The fact that the African-American population were buying the song in droves – not to mention the fact that white kids were buying r&b albums – gave everyone the sense that something was changing in a huge way. Dominating all three charts was brand new (even Elvis hadn’t done that, at least not yet, although it was coming along at about the same time) and nobody quite knew what it meant or what to do. <\/p>\n
This was before Nashville began its crackdown on these “rockabilly” bozos dominating their charts. Nashville didn’t approve of the sound (where was the steel guitar in these songs? <\/em> is a simplified version of Nashville’s attitude) or the frank sexuality and did not appreciate that the Nashville Gods had somehow lost the say-so on what was a “hit.” <\/p>\n “Blue Suede Shoes” was an organic phenomenon. It was the biggest national hit on the Sun label. It wasn’t just a hit in the States, it went to #1 in the UK too. The B-side was “Honey Don’t”, one of my favorite Carl Perkins’ songs. With “Blue Suede Shoes”, Sam Phillips went crazy trying to keep up with the demand (Sun Records was poor, even with the influx of cash from selling Elvis to RCA for $35,000, the highest price ever paid for an artist ever), and the demand for Carl’s song stretched everyone to the limit. <\/p>\n Carl Perkins was scheduled to make his national television debut on The Perry Como Show<\/em> in March, 1956, but on his way there he got into a horrific car accident and almost died. (The guy in the other car DID die, and Carl’s brother fractured his neck and eventually died: that was how bad it was). Elvis, who had been performing his cover of “Blue Suede Shoes” (and had held off on releasing it in respect to Carl) sent a note to Carl in the hospital asking if there was anything he could do to help. While Carl was in the hospital, his “Blue Suede Shoes” went gold. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” came out around the same time, and went to #1 on the pop and country chart, but Carl’s “Blue Suede Shoes” beat him on the r&b charts. In between January and April, “Blue Suede Shoes” sold over a million copies. Everybody – Sam Phillips – everybody – was astonished – the thing was a runaway train. Even Elvis’ songs had not generated this much money and recognition in their first releases. <\/p>\n While Carl was in the hospital, Elvis had started performing “Blue Suede Shoes” on his television appearances (which had to be upsetting to Carl, although he was also a realist, he understood that Elvis had to move forward with his own version while Carl was out of commission.) But interestingly, Elvis’ version (which everyone seems to know better than Carl’s, and the song seems to be associated entirely with Elvis) never charted as well as Carl Perkins’ original version. The song’s progress was like a fever burning: and with Carl’s version the fever was at its height. Elvis’ version happened while the fever was breaking, the hubbub burning itself out. <\/p>\n Carl was back to performing in April and in May came the long-delayed appearance on The Perry Como Show. He performed “Blue Suede Shoes” and at that point, the song had done what it was going to do on all the charts, and the furor had started to die down. Also: Elvis’ rise became the biggest story ever. RCA was putting out his songs and millions of copies were sold even before these songs were released. That had never happened before. Things were getting distinctly strange. So when Carl made his television appearance, maybe the perception was that Carl was following in Elvis’ blue suede shoes, when in a lot of respects it was the other way around. Not really, but that may have been the perception. Maybe that’s why Elvis’ version is better known, added to the fact that Elvis had become a popular figure in the imagination – not just in reality – and his fame had exploded to such absurd surreal heights in 1956. Carl Perkins did not have the “It” quality that Elvis had, that exotic sensual bizarre star-power. Very few artists do. <\/p>\n I prefer Carl’s version of the song. That “Go, cat, go!!” still leaps off the speakers, and Carl had viewed that as a mistake during recording: he wasn’t supposed to say “cat”, that was not what he wrote. Phillips said, “Nope, we’re gonna leave it in.” Carl Perkins describes in his autobiography all the little mistakes in the recording, things he would mention to Phillips as they were recording: “But Mr. Phillips, that guitar part has a goof in it. But Mr. Phillips, I messed up the words… ” Sam was like, “Who the hell cares, son. The energy in the thing is what matters. This is a DIFFERENT record.” (“Different” was his highest praise.) <\/p>\n The story of “Blue Suede Shoes” is one of the most important stories in 20th century American music because it represented the real crossover break-through, something already anticipated a decade before by Hank Williams who “broke out” of Nashville into a larger audience in a way that had not happened with country “hillbilly” stars before, and building and building, representing a cultural sea-change made possible by stronger radio signals bringing local artists to a national audience. Crossover was starting, with artists like Rufus Thomas, whose “Bear Cat” – an “answer” to Hound Dog – was the first hit on the Sun label, and other r&b guys making inroads into national charts. And then the Big Kahuna that was Elvis Presley. Little Richard has said that his songs were never played on mainstream radio until “after Elvis.” He always gives Elvis credit for that, for the fact that r&b – seen as a style played strictly on “race” stations, known as “race music”, for a black audience, went mainstream. R&B, the coin of the realm in black music along with gospel, BECAME pop music. Very few people saw that coming. People who knew about such things had hoped for it, black musicians but also white visionaries who set up labels to get these r&b guys out into the world. It was the teenagers – white and black – buying these albums in a feeding frenzy who REALLY made that happen. All of this music was played on the radio – “race” stations and otherwise. One of the DJs at one of the first black-owned radio station in Memphis (of course), said: “You cannot segregate the airwaves.” Revolutionary, really. <\/p>\n Elvis did not get there first. Elvis never claimed that and always gave credit to the artists who had inspired him, gospel, country and rhythm and blues, but Elvis brought the music (mixing it all up, playing country songs with an r&b feel, playing pop songs with the fervor of a country preacher, etc.) into the white mainstream. <\/p>\n It needed to happen. And you needed a figure who could make that happen. It was a confusing time. Nothing was foreordained. Everything seemed to exist in a vague yearning: that something would break, something would start to coalesce, that r&b – as important to American culture as country – as well as the gospel-Baptist-preacher style that was so important to this kind of music as well as the vibrant rambunctious culture that existed outside of Patti Page and Frankie Laine – would start to flow into the white mainstream. <\/p>\n These dirt-poor white boys like Carl and Elvis and Johnny Cash and Jerry lee Lewis – all came from Baptist Pentecostal “church” backgrounds – speaking in tongues and all that – and lived in poor areas with black churches on the corner, the music pouring out into the air on Sundays. So the ‘crossover” existed in the culture already. Similar to Ray Charles saying that one of his major influences was Hank Williams and that he was inspired by the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts. Back, forth, back, forth. But this “mixing” was a local issue, it hadn’t cracked through to the rest of the world. <\/p>\n Sam Phillips had had small hits with his black artists but there seemed to be a “ceiling” to how many records those artists sold, since radio stations were scared of the sound, and outside of the population already buying those records, nobody else was buying. <\/p>\n Then all that changed. Little Richard, and other geniuses, rushed through the door blasted open by Elvis. Elvis’ RCA stuff, and earlier stuff like “Baby Let’s Play House” were national hits that climbed the charts. Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel competed with each OTHER on every single chart in the spring of 1956. (No wonder Nashville was pissed. Their entire Billboard chart was filled with Elvis singles. Get that grease-bomb off of here. He doesn’t use steel guitars!) <\/p>\n But Carl’s “Blue Suede Shoes” got there first in the biggest most attention-getting way.<\/p>\n Here’s Perkins performing “Blue Suede Shoes” on The Perry Como Show.<\/p>\n \n