Early Wiggle

Just before Christmas I visited a friend in Scotland who is also a doo wop and rock'n'roll fan. I brought a magazine with me which had an article about some new Carl Perkins finds - four roughly recorded sides predating his time on Sun - so was delighted to learn he already had the 10 inch Bear Family album (above) which contained these, along with some Sun alternate takes already issued on CD.

The magazine had described one of the newly unearthed sides, a version of Good Rockin' Tonight, as a "country blues boogie" or something of that sort. I'm not quite sure to what extent such a categorisation differs from plain ol' "rockabilly", but listening to the performances the question becomes academic: even if he hadn't quite arrived at the full-blown assurance of his later recordings with Sam Phillips, he was already well on the way by the early fifties.

For those who love Carl Perkins the three previously unheard sides on which he is leader, including a cover of Drinking Wine Spo-Dee O-Dee, are fascinating: you get a strong sense of how he must have played for audiences in the honky-tonks, as his intonation and pacing, especially on the Eddy Arnold song There's Been a Change in Me (written by Cy Coben), suggests he is imagining a crowd in his head.

A fourth tune on which he is a sideman, a traditional number called Devil's Dream, is also included on the album: pleasing enough of its kind though unremarkable, I suspect, unless you know of the association. But I'm very glad I had the chance to hear all these sides, and having loved Perkins from an early age it was especially pleasurable to be listening with someone who also understood his importance. Short samples of all four sides can be found on the Juno Records website here.

The release has also had the effect of correcting an error which may have been peculiar to my mind. It's some time since I read Perkins' autobiography Go Cat Go, which I remember as being pretty good, putting Carl's thoughts into self-contained sections so that author David McGee was freer to write about him in the third person. But what I thought I'd retained from the book, or possibly from some reference in another book or magazine, was that when Perkins first heard Elvis he thought: "I could do that!" and boldly made his way to Sun Records instanter.

Which is, I suppose, more or less what happened ... except that my fuzzy recollection was that Perkins hadn't put himself to the test already, just had some kind of mystical certainty, uncorroborated by experience, that his talents and inclinations must  perforce lie in the same direction. What these newly unearthed recordings make clear - or perhaps just confirm for more careful or retentive readers - is that Perkins was already doing that: he just needed someone like Sam Phillips to encourage and draw out his talent more fully.

Actually, maybe I'm not alone in that supposition. A press release on the Bear Family website  declares:

Those records make it clear that he was far from the clueless hillbilly who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the rockabilly revolution. In fact, one of the four songs he recorded was Good Rocking Tonight, perhaps two years earlier than Elvis Presley cut it at Sun!

By sheer coincidence, a couple of days ago I happened upon Andrew Hickey's podcast A History of Rock in 500 Songs for the first time, and one of the episodes is dedicated to Blue Suede Shoes. I will probably write about this series when I've investigated it further, but it's worth noting here his comparison of Elvis's cover with the original. (The transcript is not mine but is taken directly from his website, here, where you can read it in full or listen to the podcast.)

Perkins' version of "Blue Suede Shoes" and Elvis' had a few crucial differences other than just their performer. Perkins' version is more interesting rhythmically at the start -- it has a stop-time introduction which essentially puts it into six-four time before settling into four-four. Elvis, on the other hand, stayed with a four-four beat all the way through. Elvis' performance is all about keeping up a sense of urgency, while Perkins is about building up tension and release. [...] It seems to stall after every line, as if it's hesitant, as if he doesn't really want to get started. But at the same time that gives it a rhythmic interest that isn't there in Presley's version. Perkins' original is the more sophisticated, musicianly, record.

Mr Hickey, who studied the history of popular music at university, recently guested on an Elvis-related podcast and told its hosts that a lecturer once apologised to students before playing a Carl Perkins track, assuring them that they were only being subjected to this for educational purposes and that no one was expecting them to enjoy it for its own sake. If that isn't a cue for setting up your own podcast to ensure such a situation never happens again in our lifetime I don't know what is.

Which seems a fitting moment to resurrect a post from my dialogue with Clarke Davis on the Doo Wop Shop board. At the time this was written I only had a web TV and the tiniest of keyboards - a strong disincentive to embellishing one's thoughts. Yet I don't think there's anything I would add today.

I go way back with Carl Perkins, loving those economic guitar solos (possibly because I could hear George Harrison in them - Beatles were of course Numero Uno in my early years, listening to the records my elder brothers bought, our father's disapproval bonding us further). Can anything be simpler, neater than the solo in Movie Magg? And maybe - unlike doo wop - there is a sense of writing more directly from experience. There's a very strange Perkins track, Her Love Rubbed off on Me, done when he was drunk (according to Go Cat Go) that is confusing but conveys the sense of real, unedited experience - and a lot of his songs were originally improvised in the tonks, the book says. I think it was Ringo who said that when Carl sings you believe him.

With Carl Perkins I feel, as I also feel about Louis Armstrong, that it's a voice that's known to me: like Ringo, I trust it. Like a friend or family member. And Blue Suede Shoes is still infectious when other records have become dulled by overfamiliarity. There is a kind of purity of heart about some of Carl's stuff, as well as the raunchier, hellraising Dixie Fried.