54 Facts About Carl Perkins

Carl Lee Perkins was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter.

Carl Perkins's recording of "Blue Suede Shoes" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Carl Lee Perkins was born on April 9,1932, in Tiptonville, Tennessee, the son of poor sharecroppers Louise and Buck Perkins.

On Saturday nights Carl Perkins would listen to the Grand Ole Opry, broadcast from Nashville on his father's radio.

Roy Acuff's broadcasts from the Opry inspired Carl Perkins to ask his parents for a guitar.

Carl Perkins taught himself parts of Acuff's Great Speckled Bird and The Wabash Cannonball having heard them played on the Opry.

Carl Perkins has cited Bill Monroe's fast playing and vocals as an early influence.

Carl Perkins learned from John Westbrook, an African-American field worker in his sixties who played blues and gospel music on an old acoustic guitar.

In January 1947, the Carl 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.

At age fourteen, Carl Perkins wrote a country song called Let Me Take You to the Movie, Magg.

Free drinks were one of the perks of playing in a tavern, and Carl Perkins drank four beers that first night.

Carl Perkins persuaded his brother Clayton to join them and play the upright bass, to complete the sound of the band.

Carl Perkins began performing regularly on WTJS in Jackson during the late 1940s as a sometime member of the Tennessee Ramblers.

Carl Perkins appeared on the radio program Hayloft Frolic on which he performed two songs.

Carl Perkins had day jobs during most of these early years including picking cotton, working at various factories and plants and as a pan greaser for the Colonial Baking Company.

In January 1953, Carl Perkins married Valda Crider, whom he had known for a number of years.

When his job at the bakery was reduced to part-time, Valda, who had her own job, encouraged Carl Perkins to begin working the taverns full-time.

Malcolm Yelvington, who remembered the Perkins Brothers when they played in Covington, Tennessee in 1953, noted that Carl had an unusual blues-like style all his own.

Later, Presley told Carl Perkins he had traveled to Jackson and had seen Carl Perkins and his group playing at the El Rancho.

Carl Perkins successfully auditioned for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in early October 1954.

Again performing at El Rancho, the Carl Perkins brothers were involved in an automobile accident in Woodside, Delaware.

Sun released another Carl Perkins song, "Gone Gone Gone", in October 1955, which became a regional success.

Also in the autumn of 1955, Carl Perkins wrote "Blue Suede Shoes" inspired by seeing a dancer get angry with his date for scuffing up his shoes.

Carl Perkins had sustained three fractured vertebrae in his neck, a severe concussion, a broken collar bone, and lacerations all over his body.

Jay Carl Perkins had a fractured neck and severe internal injuries.

Carl Perkins returned to live performances on April 21,1956 beginning with an appearance in Beaumont, Texas, with the Big D Jamboree tour.

Appalled by what he had seen and felt, Carl Perkins left the tour.

On February 2,1957, Carl Perkins again appeared on Ozark Jubilee, singing Matchbox and Blue Suede Shoes.

Carl Perkins made at least two appearances on Town Hall Party in Compton, California, in 1957, singing both songs.

Carl Perkins released That's Right, co-written with Johnny Cash, backed with the ballad Forever Yours, as Sun single 274 in August, 1957.

The 1957 film Jamboree included Carl Perkins performing Glad All Over.

That same year, Carl Perkins was cast in a Filipino movie produced by People's Pictures, Hawaiian Boy in which he sang Blue Suede Shoes.

Carl Perkins performed often at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas in 1962 and 1963.

In May 1964, Carl Perkins toured Britain with Chuck Berry with the popular, young rock group, The Animals backing them.

Carl Perkins had been reluctant to undertake the tour, convinced that as forgotten as he had become in America, he would be even more obscure in the UK and did not want to be humiliated by drawing meager audiences.

Carl Perkins released Big Bad Blues backed with Lonely Heart as a single on Brunswick Records with the Nashville Teens in June, 1964.

In 1968, Cash recorded the Carl Perkins-written Daddy Sang Bass which incorporates parts of the gospel standard Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Carl Perkins played lead guitar on Cash's single A Boy Named Sue, recorded live at San Quentin prison.

Carl Perkins spent a decade in Cash's touring revue, often as an opening act for Cash as at the Folsom and San Quentin prison concerts where he was recorded singing Blue Suede Shoes and Matchbox before Cash took the stage.

Carl Perkins appeared on the television series The Johnny Cash Show.

Carl Perkins appeared with Cash on the popular TV country series Hee Haw on February 16,1974.

In 1981, Carl Perkins recorded the song "Get It" with Paul McCartney.

In October 1985, Carl Perkins performed on stage in London for a television special, Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session, with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Dave Edmunds, Lee Rocker, Rosanne Cash and Ringo Starr.

Carl Perkins sang 16 songs plus two encores, in an extraordinary performance.

Carl Perkins was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985.

Carl Perkins was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in recognition of his pioneering contributions to the genre.

Carl Perkins returned to the Sun Studio in Memphis in 1986, joining Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison on the album Class of '55.

In 1989, Carl Perkins co-wrote and played guitar on the Judds' number-one country hit, "Let Me Tell You About Love".

In 1993, Carl Perkins performed with the Kentucky Headhunters in a music video remake of his song Dixie Fried filmed in Glasgow, Kentucky.

Carl Perkins had one daughter, Debbie, and three sons, Stan, Greg, and Steve.

In 2010, he joined forces with Jerry Naylor to record a duet tribute, "To Carl Perkins: Let It Vibrate".

Carl Perkins died on January 19,1998, at the age of 65 at Jackson-Madison County Hospital in Jackson, Tennessee, from complications from several minor strokes the previous month.

Carl Perkins wrote his autobiography, Go, Cat, Go, published in 1996, in collaboration with music writer David McGee in 1996.

Carl Perkins was honored with the Lifetime Achievement award during the Tennessee Music Awards event in 2018 at the University of Memphis Lambuth in Jackson, Tennessee.