Evergreen

108 EVERGREEN Autumn
Presented
by Evergreen’s
very
own
disc jockey,
Bill “The Beat” Baxter
As the stories behind the
hit records described in
this series have shown, the
ideas for songs can come to writers
and musicians at any time and in
any place. When
23-year-old American
singer-songwriter Carl
Perkins was booked
to play at a dance in
Jackson, Tennessee, in December
1955, the sort of event he and his two
brothers in the band had played at
dozens of times before, he couldn’t
have imagined that a chance remark
he overheard would inspire him to
write a song that has become one of
the classics of rock and roll. Today,
that song — “Blue Suede Shoes” — is
as recognisable as a children’s nursery
rhyme and, alongside “Roll Over
Beethoven”, “Johnny B. Goode”, “All
Shook Up” and “Long Tall Sally”,
remains one of the all-time greats.
u
J ke Box
‘Blue Suede
Shoes’
Born in Tennessee in 1932, the son
of sharecroppers, Carl’s early life was
one of grinding poverty, and when
not at school he and his brothers
Jay and Clayton would spend hours
toiling in the fields —
12 to 14 hours a day
during the summer.
Music, with the
pictures it painted of
other lives, the emotions it stirred
and the way in which it could raise
spirits even when everything seemed
hopeless, provided a great escape. For
Carl, this was gospel music in the
church on Sundays, haunting work
songs by the pickers in the cotton
fields, and the greatest treat of all:
songs from the Grand Ole Opry, the
legendary country music show from
Nashville which the family listened
to on the radio on Saturday nights.
Keen to emulate the performers
he heard, Carl asked his parents