{"id":55717,"date":"2016-02-06T06:29:32","date_gmt":"2016-02-06T11:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=55717"},"modified":"2024-08-21T07:54:51","modified_gmt":"2024-08-21T11:54:51","slug":"honey-dont-that-revolutionary-chord-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=55717","title":{"rendered":"Carl Perkins&#8217; &#8220;Honey Don&#8217;t&#8221;: The Chord Change That Shook the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_TMF3eK2ojY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nBelow is an exchange from the documentary &#8220;Good Rockin&#8217; Tonight,&#8221; a celebration of Sam Phillips and Sun Records, featuring interviews with many of the Sun artists (Rufus Thomas, Billy Lee Riley, Scotty Moore, Sonny Burgess). The &#8220;gimmick&#8221; of it was that current artists (Robert Plant, Rob Thomas, Paul McCartney, Third Eye Blind) recorded songs made famous by the artists at Sun. So Paul McCartney recorded Elvis&#8217; first song &#8220;That&#8217;s All Right.&#8221; Robert Plant recorded &#8220;My Bucket&#8217;s Got a Hole In It,&#8221; and on and on. <\/p>\n<p>Ben Folds chose Carl Perkins&#8217; great song &#8220;Honey, Don&#8217;t.&#8221; &#8220;Honey Don&#8217;t&#8221; was written by Carl Perkins, and first recorded by him in 1955 &#8211; clip above &#8211; and, later, the Beatles performed it quite a bit in their earlier years. <\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iRGPaqOATGU\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><p>In the exchange below, Ben Folds talks to Jack Clement, the Sun Records engineer, about why he wanted to record this particular song. It had to do with one chord change, a chord change seen as so weird at the time of its first recording that people were actually afraid of it. What did the chord change <i>mean<\/i>? Could you just &#8230; <i>do<\/i> that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jack Clement, Sun Engineer:<\/strong> I like that song. I was at Sun when ol&#8217; Carl [Perkins] cut that. Sam [Phillips] was running the board.  I hadn&#8217;t been there all that long.  But I was there and I remember that song real well. I always liked that funny chord change in it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben Folds:<\/strong>  Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jack<\/strong>:  What key is that it in?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben<\/strong>: It&#8217;s in E.  It goes from E to a C.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jack<\/strong>:  It goes to C.  Right.<\/p>\n<p>[<i>Ben Folds demonstrates the chord change from E to C.<\/i>]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jack<\/strong>:  That&#8217;s an ear-grabber, you know?  I do remember everybody was excited about that song and they all liked that change from E to C.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben<\/strong>:  That&#8217;s basically why I wanted to play it.  It was kind of unusual for that time, I think. That&#8217;s a strange &#8230; It&#8217;s weird for now.  Cool chords.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Robert Sledge, standup bass player:<\/strong> It&#8217;s an awesome song.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben Folds:<\/strong>  Yeah, it&#8217;s a great song.<\/p>\n<p>[<i>Robert Sledge demonstrates the chord change in question.<\/i>]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Robert<\/strong>:  In an interview I heard that [Carl&#8217;s] guitar player said, &#8216;Man, you can&#8217;t do that. It&#8217;s just not right.&#8221;  And Carl said, &#8220;I can do it.&#8221; The guitar player said, &#8220;It&#8217;s just not right. I don&#8217;t know if I want to play that.&#8221;  And he did it anyway and made history. And it just goes to show you you&#8217;ve got to take some chances.<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PBPcWgNFyG0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Below is an exchange from the documentary &#8220;Good Rockin&#8217; Tonight,&#8221; a celebration of Sam Phillips and Sun Records, featuring interviews with many of the Sun artists (Rufus Thomas, Billy Lee Riley, Scotty Moore, Sonny Burgess). The &#8220;gimmick&#8221; of it was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=55717\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[2432,2715],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55717"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133842,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55717\/revisions\/133842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}