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From Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Tuesday, January 20, 1998

Influential singer/songwriter Perkins dies Monday at age 65

By BILL KERNS
A-J Entertainment Editor

Carl Perkins, known to some as the godfather of rockabilly and forerunner of rock 'n' roll, died Monday in Jackson, Tenn. He was 65.

Perkins, the music pioneer whose song "Blue Suede Shoes" and lightning-quick guitar-playing influenced Elvis Presley, the Beatles and a slew of other performers, died at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital from complications related to a recent series of strokes, family spokesman Albert Hall said.

Perkins was "the godfather of rockabilly, the forerunner of rock 'n' roll and one of the nicest `big names' anyone could ever meet," said Bill Griggs, Lubbock-based music historian and former president of the Buddy Holly Memorial Society.

Perkins was no stranger to Lubbock and Eastern New Mexico, headlining three Buddy Holly birthday celebrations: in 1986 at the Budfest concert in Lubbock; in 1988 at Clovis, N.M.; and in September 1997 at an outdoor concert during the second annual Buddy Holly Music Festival in the Depot District in Lubbock.

Perkins chose to perform at the Holly festival despite suffering a stroke after signing that performance contract several months beforehand.

Debbie Ruddle handled hospitality and accommodations at the festival and recalled, "I got to visit with Carl a lot, and he was just one of the greatest humanitarians I was ever blessed to meet. There was so much more to him than just his music.

"When he was performing in Vietnam, he wanted to do something more and so he asked a general for permission to visit some of the injured soldiers in the hospital. He taped all of those conversations and, when he came back to the United States, he called those boys' parents and let them listen to those conversations.

"All some parents knew was that their son had been shot, but this way they could actually hear them talking. Those parents called Carl `a messenger of God' and it gave him a great feeling to be able to do this because he had kids of his own."

Ruddle and Griggs both noted that Perkins also had started a foundation for abused children in Jackson, Tenn. "No one asked him to do it," said Ruddle. "He saw the need and did it on his own, and he's helped raise about $200,000 a year for them."

Griggs added, "Elvis (Presley) took `Blue Suede Shoes' and made it his own, but it was Carl who wrote it. Carl also was the first recording artist to have a song on three Billboard charts -- rock, country and rhythm 'n' blues -- at the same time."

Holly performed in the 1950s when Perkins was climbing his own ladder of success. Griggs noted that Holly, too, recorded "Blue Suede Shoes."

Griggs added, "Carl and Buddy were alike, also, in that they never forgot their fans. Carl once told me that as long as there was one more hand sticking up from the crowd to shake when a show ends, `I'm not leaving until I shake that person's hand.' "

Perkins mentioned in September 1997 that he wanted to return to perform at the 1998 Buddy Holly Music Festival.

The tall, broad-shouldered Perkins was famed as one of the proponents of rockabilly music, a cross of rhythm-and-blues and country that came out of Sun Records in Memphis in the mid-1950s.

He also wrote some of the top hit records in rock 'n' roll and country music. A near-fatal traffic accident in 1956, coupled with Presley's rise, kept him from becoming a bigger solo star.

It was in 1956 when Perkins wrote and recorded "Blue Suede Shoes." His version sold 2 million copies before Presley's rendition became a hit.

Perkins also wrote the rockabilly standard "Dixie Fried" and the songs "Honey Don't," "Matchbox" and "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," which were later covered by the Beatles.

His relationship with the Beatles lasted long after the group's breakup in 1970. Perkins sang a duet with Paul McCartney on the country ballad "Get It," a song off McCartney's 1982 album, "Tug of War." On the same record, he played rhythm guitar on the McCartney-Stevie Wonder hit duet, "Ebony and Ivory."

Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr appeared with him in a 1986 cable TV special in London, "Carl Perkins and Friends: A Rockabilly Session."

He met the Beatles in 1964 during a British concert tour with another rock 'n' roll pioneer, Chuck Berry.

About his influence on the Beatles, he said in a 1985 Associated Press interview: "They advanced it (guitar playing) so much. That rockabilly sound wasn't as simple as I thought it was."

In another interview, he said the Beatles and Rolling Stones saved rockabilly in the mid-1960s when it was in danger of dying.

"They put a nice suit on rockabilly," Perkins said. "They never really strayed from the simplicity of it. They just beautified it."

In 1987, Perkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The son of a tenant farmer, Perkins grew up picking cotton in Lake County, where he listened closely to music sung by blacks as they worked in the fields.

As a youngster, he would retreat behind the family chicken house to pretend he was singing on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry.

At age 7, he began playing a guitar that his father had made from a cigar box, broomstick and baling wire.

He wrote "Blue Suede Shoes" after hearing someone telling his prom date not to step on his blue suede shoes. Perkins went home to his housing project in Jackson and wrote the song on a brown potato sack.

Shortly after recording the song, Perkins was seriously hurt in a traffic accident in Delaware and spent a year recovering and unable to capitalize on his mounting fame. During this time, Presley also recorded the song and earned much of the popularity that Perkins had been building.

"I was bucking a good-looking cat called Elvis who had beautiful hair, wasn't married, and had all kinds of great moves," Perkins said in 1986.

In tribute to the song, he usually wore blue suede shoes in public.

He spent 15 years battling alcoholism, saying he overcame it by hurling his last whiskey bottle into the Pacific Ocean in 1967 near Encino, Calif.

Perkins was a member of rock 'n' roll's fabled "Million Dollar Quartet." He, Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis met for an informal jam session in the 1950s that was later released as an album. In 1986, Perkins joined Cash, Lewis and Roy Orbison on the album "Class of '55."

Perkins also wrote "Daddy Sang Bass," which was a hit for Cash, and played in Cash's band from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

He said in the 1985 interview that his biggest thrill was getting a gold record for "Blue Suede Shoes."

"After all those days in the cotton fields, the dreams came true on a gold record on a piece of wood. It's in my den where I can look at it every day. I wear it out lookin' at it."

Perkins is survived by his wife, Valda, three sons and a daughter.

Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.