Carl Perkins - Greatest Hits '2021

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Turn Around
02. Honey DonT
03. Gone Gone Gone
04. Blue Suede Shoes
05. Boppin the Blues
06. Sitting on Top of the World
07. Sure to Fall
08. All Mamas Children
09. Let the Jukebox Keep on Playing
10. Movie Magg
11. Tennessee
12. Dixie Fried
13. Im Sorry Im Not Sorry
14. Matchbox
15. Your True Love
16. Thats Right
17. Glad All Over
18. Lend Me Your Comb
19. Everybodys Trying to Be My Baby
20. Forever Yours
21. Pop, Let Me Have the Car
22. Right String but the Wrong Yo Yo
23. Only You
24. Levi Jacket
25. Pink Pedal Pushers
26. Jive After Five
27. This Life I Live
28. Y-O-U
29. Pointed Toe Shoes
30. Highway of Love
31. I Dont See Me in Your Eyes Anymore
32. One Ticket to Loneliness
33. Too Much for One Man to Understand
34. L-O-V-E-V-I-L-L-E
35. Honey, Cause I Love You
36. The Fool I Used to Be
37. Sister Twister
38. Hambone
39. The Unhappy Girls
40. Anyway the Wind Blows
41. Hollywood City
42. Just for You
43. Whole Lotta Shakin Goin on Little Rich
44. Tutti Frutti
45. Shake, Rattle and Roll
46. Ready Teddy
47. Good Rockin Tonight
48. Thats All Right
49. Where the Rio De Rosa Flows
50. I Got a Woman
51. Hey Good Lookin
52. Jenny, Jenny
53. Long Tall Sally


 Read MoreHe was born to sharecroppers Buck and Louise Perkins (misspelled on
his birth certificate as Perkings) and was soon out in the fields picking cotton
and living in a shack with his parents, older brother Jay, and his younger
brother Clayton. Working alongside Blacks in the field every day, its not at all
surprising that when Carl was gifted with a secondhand guitar, he went to a
local sharecropper for lessons, learning firsthand the boogie rhythm that he
would later build a career on. By his teens, Carl was playing electric guitar
and had recruited his brothers Jay on rhythm guitar and Clayton on string bass
to become his first band. The Perkins Brothers Band, featuring both Carl and Jay
on lead vocals, quickly established itself as the hottest band in the
get-hot-or-go-home cutthroat Jackson, Tennessee honky tonk circuit. It was here
that Carl started composing his first songs with an eye toward the future.
Watching the dancefloor at all times for a reaction, Perkins kept reshaping
these loosely structured songs until he had a completed composition, which would
then be finally put to paper. Perkins was already sending demos to New York
record companies, who kept rejecting him, sometimes explaining that this strange
new hybrid of country with a Black rhythm fit no current commercial trend. But
once Perkins heard Elvis on the radio, he not only knew what to call it, but
knew that there was a record company person who finally understood it and was
also willing to gamble in promoting it. That man was Sam Phillips and the record
company was Sun Records, and thats exactly where Perkins headed in 1954 to get
an audition.

It was here at his first Sun audition that the structure of the Perkins Brothers
Band changed forever. Phillips didnt show the least bit of interest in Jays
Ernest Tubb-styled vocals but flipped over Carls singing and guitar playing. A
scant four months later, he had issued the first Carl Perkins record, Movie
Magg/Turn Around, both sides written by the artist. By his second session, he
had added W.S. Holland -- a friend of Claytons -- to the band playing drums, a
relatively new innovation to country music at the time. Phillips was still
channeling Perkins in a strictly hillbilly vein, feeling that two artists doing
the same type of music (in this case, Elvis and rockabilly) would cancel each
other out. But after selling Elvis contract to RCA Victor in December, Perkins
was encouraged to finally let his rocking soul come up for air at his next Sun
session. And rock he did with a double whammy blast that proved to be his ticket
to the bigs. The chance overhearing of a conversation at a dance one night
between two teenagers coupled with a song idea suggestion from labelmate Johnny
Cash inspired Perkins to approach Phillips with a new song he had written called
Blue Suede Shoes. After cutting two sides that Phillips planned on releasing as
a single by the Perkins Brothers Band, Perkins laid down three takes each of
Blue Suede Shoes and another rocker, Honey Dont. A month later, Phillips decides
to shelve the two country sides and go with the rockers as Perkins next single.
Three months later, Blue Suede Shoes, a tune that borrowed stylistically from
pop, country, and R&B music, sat at the top of all charts, the first record to
accomplish such a feat while becoming Suns first million-seller in the bargain.

Ready to cash in on a national basis, Carl and the boys headed up to New York
for the first time to appear on The Perry Como Show. While en route their car
rammed the back of a poultry truck, putting Carl and his brother Jay in the
hospital with a cracked skull and broken neck, respectively. While in traction,
Perkins saw Presley performing his song on The Dorsey Brother Stage Show, his
moment of fame and recognition snatched away from him. Perkins shrugged his
shoulders and went back to the road and the Sun studios, trying to pick up where
he left off.

The follow-ups to Shoes were, in many ways, superior to his initial hit, but
each succeeding Sun single held diminishing sales, and it wasnt until the
British Invasion and the subsequent rockabilly revival of the early 70s that the
general public got to truly savor classics like Boppin the Blues, Matchbox,
Everybodys Trying to Be My Baby, Your True Love, Dixie Fried, Put Your Cat
Clothes On, and All Mamas Children. While labelmates Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis
(who played piano on Matchbox) were scoring hit after hit, Perkins was becoming
disillusioned with his fate, fueled by his increasing dependence on alcohol and
the death of his brother Jay to cancer. He kept plugging along, and when Cash
left Sun to go to Columbia in 1958, Perkins followed him over. The royalty rate
was better, and Perkins had no shortage of great songs to record, but Columbias
Nashville watch-the-clock production methods killed any of the spontaneity that
was the charm of the Sun records. By the early 60s, after being dropped by
Columbia and moving over to Decca with little success, Perkins was back playing
the honky tonks and contemplating getting out of the business altogether. A call
from a booking agent in 1964 offering a tour of England changed all of that.
Temporarily swearing off the bottle, Perkins was greeted in Britain as a
conquering hero, playing to sold-out audiences and being particularly lauded by
a young beat group on the top of the charts named the Beatles. George Harrison
had cut his musical teeth on Perkins Sun recordings (as had most British
guitarists) and the Fab Four ended up recording more tunes by him than any other
artist except themselves. The British tour not only rejuvenated his outlook, but
suddenly made him realize that he had gone -- through no maneuvering of his own
-- from has-been to legend in a country he had never played in before. Upon his
return to the States, he hooked up with old friend and former labelmate Cash and
was a regular fixture of his road show for the next ten years, bringing his
battle with alcohol to an end. The 80s dawned with Perkins going on his own with
a new band consisting of his sons backing him. His election to the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in the mid-80s was no less than his due. After a long battle with
throat cancer, Perkins died in early 1998, his place in the history books
assured. ~ Cub Koda

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