Jack Leroy Wilson Jr. was a tenor with a four-octave range and was nicknamed “Mr. Excitement”. He was a prominent figure in the transition of rhythm and blues into soul and was considered a master showman, and one of the most dynamic singers and performers in pop, R&B, and rock & roll history. Although he had a rising career before, he was instrumental in the beginning of Motown Records and the “Detroit Sound”.

Wilson’s powerful, electrifying live performances rarely failed to bring audiences to a state of frenzy. His live performances consisted of knee-drops, splits, spins, back-flips, one-footed across-the-floor slides, removing his tie and jacket and throwing them off the stage, and a great deal of basic boxing steps (advance and retreat shuffling, and one of his favorite routines, getting some of the less attractive women in the audience to come up to the stage and kiss him. Wilson often said:

If I get the ugliest girl in the audience to come up and kiss me, they’ll all think they can have me and keep coming back and buying my records.

“Lonely Teardrops” was written by the Detroit songwriting team who wrote Wilson’s first several hits -- the duo of Tyran Carlo (the pen name of Wilson’s cousin Roquel Davis) and a pre-Motown Berry Gordy Jr., along with Gwendolyn Gordy (Berry’s sister). It was originally intended by Gordy to be recorded as a ballad. After recording it, Wilson and Brunswick Records executives felt the song lacked something. It was then given to veteran Decca Records arranger Dick Jacobs who re-arranged it into the smash hit it became. They co-wrote and produced six other songs for Wilson. At the time, Gordy was a struggling songwriter, but this song -- his first Top-10 hit as a songwriter -- gave him the confidence to rent a building in Detroit and start the Tamla label, which would become Motown.

The first of these hits written by the trio and which became a modest R&B success (many years later, an international smash hit) was “Reet Petite” in 1957.

Jackie Wilson gained initial fame as a member of the R&B vocal group Billy Ward and His Dominoes. Wilson went solo in 1957 and scored over 50 chart singles that spanned the genres of R&B, pop, soul, doo-wop and easy listening, including 16 R&B Top 10 hits, in which six R&B of the repertoire ranked as number ones. On the Billboard Hot 100, Wilson scored 14 top 20 pop hits, six of which reached the Top 10. Jackie Wilson was one of the more important and influential musical artists of his generation.

Wilson dropped out of high school at age 15, having been sentenced to detention in the Lansing Corrections system for juveniles twice. During his second stint in detention, Wilson learned to box and began competing in the Detroit amateur circuit at age 16. After his mother forced Jackie to quit boxing, Wilson was forced by her father to marry Freda Hood, and he became a father at age 17. It is rumoured that Wilson had fathered at least 10 other children before marrying Freda. He began working at Lee’s Sensation Club as a solo singer, then formed a group called the Falcons that included cousin Levi Stubbs, who later led the Four Tops.

The 1940s Blues singer Roy Brown was a major influence on him; and Wilson grew up listening to the Mills Brothers, the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan and Al Jolson. Jackie Wilson’s stagecraft in his live shows inspired James Brown, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, as well as a host of other artists that followed. Presley was so impressed with Wilson that he made it a point to meet him, and the two instantly became good friends. In a photo of the two posing together, Presley’s caption in the autograph reads “You got you a friend for life”. Wilson was sometimes called “The Black Elvis”.

After his string of early 1960’s hits, his career and sales experienced a lull. In 1966, Jackie Wilson scored the first of two big comeback singles with the established Chicago soul producer Carl Davis with “Whispers (Gettin’ Louder)” and “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher”, ( No. 6 pop hit in 1967, became one of his final hits); followed by “I Get the Sweetest Feeling”.

A key to Jackie Wilson’s musical rebirth was Chicago soul producer Carl Davis insisting that Wilson no longer record with Brunswick’s musicians in New York; instead, he recorded with legendary Detroit musicians normally employed by Motown Records and also Davis’ own Chicago-based session players. The Detroit musicians, known as the Funk Brothers, participated on Wilson’s recordings due to their respect for Davis and Jackie Wilson.

By 1975 Wilson had continued to record singles that found success on the R&B chart, but found no significant pop chart success.

On September 29, 1975, Jackie Wilson was one of the featured acts in Dick Clark’s “Good Ol’ Rock and Roll Revue”, hosted by the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He was in the middle of singing “Lonely Teardrops” when he suffered a massive heart attack. When he collapsed on stage, audience members applauded as they initially thought it was part of the act. Clark sensed something was wrong, then ordered the musicians to stop the music. Cornell Gunter of the Coasters, who was backstage, noticed Wilson was not breathing. Gunter was able to resuscitate him and Wilson was then rushed to a nearby hospital.

Medical personnel worked to stabilize Wilson’s vital signs, but the lack of oxygen to his brain caused him to slip into a coma. He briefly recovered in early 1976, and was even able to take a few wobbly steps but slipped back into a semi-comatose state. Wilson was deemed conscious but incapacitated in early June 1976, unable to speak but aware of his surroundings. Wilson was a resident of the Medford Leas Retirement Center in Medford, New Jersey, when he was admitted into Memorial Hospital of Burlington County in Mount Holly, New Jersey, due to having trouble taking nourishment, according to Wilson’s attorney John Mulkerin.

Jackie Wilson died on January 21, 1984, at age 49 from complications of pneumonia. He was initially buried in an unmarked grave at Westlawn Cemetery near Detroit. In 1987, a fundraiser by a Detroit radio station collected enough money to purchase a headstone.

In 1999, Wilson’s original version of “Higher and Higher” and “Lonely Teardrops” were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame; “Higher and Higher” (#246) and “Lonely Teardrops” (#315) are both are on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. “Lonely Teardrops” became an across-the-board national Top 10 Pop smash (#7) and a #1 hit on the R&B charts. It is ranked as the 57th biggest U.S. hit of 1959.

In 2005, Jackie Wilson was voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame and on August 17, 2013 Jackie Wilson was inducted into the Official R&B Music Hall of Fame.

Hits: 17

This song is indeed one of the threads that ties the tapestry of Rock N Roll, Rock, Heavy Metal, et al, together. It has started some of the biggest names playing together and remains a seminal work in the history of music. Those are fairly strong statements, so let’s explore the story of this song.

Written by Tiny Bradshaw and first recorded by his band in 1951, the lyrics are based on “Cow-Cow Boogie”, a 1942 song about a singing cowboy. Bradshaw rewrote lines, such as “a ditty he learned in the city” and “get along, get hip little doggies, and he trucked ’em on down the old fairway”, to meet his new scenario. Although the King Records single lists “Bradshaw-Mann” as the songwriters, reissues and subsequent recordings of “The Train Kept A-Rollin'” credit Tiny Bradshaw, Lois Mann (a pseudonym of King Records’ owner Syd Nathan), and Howard Kay. BMI, the performing rights organization, lists the songwriters/composers as “Myron C. Bradshaw, Sydney Nathan, and Howard Kay”. According to music historian Larry Birnbaum, “Mann’s name was plainly added to allow Syd Nathan to siphon off a share of the publishing royalties, as label owners routinely did in those days; as for Kay, his identity remains a mystery”.

In 1956, Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio reworked Bradshaw’s song using a rockabilly/early rock and roll arrangement. The Trio’s version features guitar lines in what many historians consider to be the first recorded example of intentionally distorted guitar in rock music, although blues guitarists, such as Willie Johnson and Pat Hare, had recorded with the same effect years earlier.

The song continued to be played by many groups for the next nine years until, in 1965, the Yardbirds decided to record their version and introduce it into the early days of Rock. It is based on Johnny Burnette’s adaptation, with the Yardbirds’ lead guitarist Jeff Beck, who is a fan of early rockabilly, said that he introduced the song to the group: “They just heard me play the riff, and they loved it and made up their version of it”. Giorgio Gomelsky, the group’ first producer, states that Sonny Boy Williamson II’s use of blues harp to imitate train sounds during his 1963 UK tour with the Yardbirds also inspired the band’s adaptation of the song. Two combined takes of Keith Relf’s vocal were overdubbed with some differences in the lyrics.

In June 1966, bassist Samwell-Smith left the Yardbirds to become a record producer. His initial replacement, well-known studio guitarist Jimmy Page, soon switched to guitar with second guitarist Dreja taking over on bass. With both Beck and Page on board, the Yardbirds had one of the first dual lead guitar teams in popular rock. Movie director Michelangelo Antonioni saw the group’s September 23, 1966, performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London and, being impressed with their version of the song, requested that they perform “Train Kept A-Rollin'” for his upcoming film “Blowup”. Unable to secure the movie performance rights from the song’s publisher, singer Keith Relf wrote new lyrics, renamed it “Stroll On”, and included credits to the five band members. The Yardbirds also introduced an updated arrangement to go with the new lyrics.

Shortly after Keith Relf and Jim McCarty left the Yardbirds in mid-1968, Jimmy Page searched for new musicians for a successor band. When the future members of Led Zeppelin rehearsed together for the first time in 1968, the first song they played was “Train Kept A-Rollin'”. In “When Giants Walked the Earth”, biographer Mick Wall quotes Page:

[W]e did ‘Train’ … It was there immediately. It was so powerful that I don’t remember what we played after that. For me it was just like, ‘Crikey!’ I mean, I’d had moments of elation with groups before, but nothing as intense as that. It was like a thunderbolt, a lightning flash – boosh! Everyone sort of went ‘Wow’.

In an interview with Q Magazine January 2008, John Paul Jones recalls this was the first ever song he played with Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Bonham after joining Led Zeppelin:

I can remember the first song I played with Led Zeppelin in a tiny basement room in Soho in 1968, with wall-to-wall amps. That was ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’,’ the Yardbirds song, which I didn’t know at the time. But I knew immediately, ‘This is fun.’

They never recorded it in the studio but played it frequently during tours.

In 1974, Aerosmith brought “Train Kept A-Rollin'” into the hard-rock mainstream. Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Tom Hamilton had performed the song prior to joining Aerosmith. Perry recalled,

“Train Kept A-Rollin” was the only song we had in common when we first got together. Steven’s band had played ‘Train’ and Tom and I played it in our band … It’s a blues song, if you follow its roots all the way back … I always thought if I could just play one song, it would be that one because of what it does to me”. Perry’s band began performing the song regularly after he had been moved by the performance of “Stroll On” in Blowup;

Tyler recalled his band opened for the Yardbirds in 1966:

I had seen the Yardbirds play somewhere the previous summer with both Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page in the band … In Westport [at their supporting gig on October 22, 1966] we found out that Jeff had left the band and Jimmy was playing lead guitar by himself. I watched him from the edge of the stage and all I can say is that he knocked my tits off. They did ‘Train Kept A-Rollin” and it was just so heavy. They were just an un-fuckin’-believable band.

“Train Kept A-Rollin'” was included on Aerosmith’s second album “Get Your Wings”. It consisted of two different versions of the song. The first part was slower, “more groove-oriented”, while the second was a spirited rocker. To give the second part more of a live sound, producer Jack Douglas overdubbed crowd noise from “The Concert for Bangladesh” recordings. Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, who worked with Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, were brought in to record the guitar parts. According to Hunter:

We [Wagner and I] wanted to keep the solos equal so we’d sit down … and go through the material so it was totally even … We didn’t want it to look like there was a rhythm guitar player and a lead guitar player, because that’s what we both did.

Hunter later elaborated:

Aerosmith was in Studio C of The Record Plant and I was doing work with Bob Ezrin in Studio A. I had a long wait between dubs and was waiting in the lobby. Jack Douglas popped his head out of Studio C and asked ‘Hey, do you feel like playing?’ I said sure, so I grabbed my guitar and went in … I had two run thru’s [sic], then Jack said ‘great that’s it!’ That turned out to be the opening solos on ‘Train Kept A Rollin’.

The Johnny Burnette Rock and Roll Trio rendition of “Train Kept A-Rollin'” is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s exhibit of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Music historian Larry Birnbaum notes the song’s lasting appeal and discusses renditions by Jeff Beck, Dread Zeppelin, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, Foghat, Guana Batz, Haymarket Square, Colin James and the Little Big Band, Riot, Métal Urbain, Hanoi Rocks, Motörhead, Nazz, Shakin’ Stevens and the Sunsets, Skid Row, Screaming Lord Sutch, Sugarloaf, The Tragically Hip, Twisted Sister, and the Up. He sums up the various influences and versions:

As it evolved from ragtime through jazz, boogie-woogie, big-band swing, small combo rhythm-and-blues, rockabilly, blues-rock, acid rock, heavy metal, punk, thrash, psychobilly, and points beyond, ‘Train Kept A-Rollin” became increasingly wild and dissonant, as if each performer were trying to surpass the intensity of the previous one. Through all the transformations, the essence of Bradshaw’s original survives — a semblance of the melody, a smattering of the lyrics, and the immortal refrain ‘The train kept a rollin’ all night long’, a cogent sexual metaphor for power and endurance.

Hits: 67

While this is commonly known as her “signature song”, it isn’t even a direct cover of the original song. In fact this was her 48th Billboard hit, in a career that had already brought her fame as a singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her sultry delivery, impeccable timing and bluesy intonation, Lee had already earned her respect of jazz greats while her commercial hits won her legions of admirers. Versatile and prolific, she has become one of the swing era’s most recognisable voices, famous for such hits as “Why Don’t You Do Right” and “It’s a Good Day”, the latter being one of her many original compositions.

“Fever” was written in early 1956 by R&B singer/songwriter Eddie Cooley and pianist Otis Blackwell (under the pen name John Davenport). Blackwell made many contributions to the early rock’n’roll canon, including “All Shook Up”, “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Great Balls Of Fire”, among others. The pair persuaded a young, new R&B singer named Little Willie John to record it. Little Willie had originally resisted recording the song. The 18 year-old did not find it to his liking, expressing particular displeasure at the use of finger snaps throughout. Fortunately, the handlers of the young and temperamental artist talked him into doing the tune. Released on King Records, John’s interpretation was a well-conceived straightforward R&B arrangement featuring foreboding tenor saxophones, a heavy driving beat and bluesy backing vocals. John’s recording of “Fever” became one of his biggest hits, reaching No.1 on the R&B charts and No.24 on the pop charts in 1956.

Willie John stayed with King Records until 1963, when the label dropped him, allegedly due to behavioral problems. A combination of factors caused Little Willie’s life to continue on a downward spiral. The partying youngster’s taste for alcohol and gambling led him to frequent somewhat seedy environments, where he sometimes had to endure heckling on account of his short height (about 5’4″). In 1964, John was arrested after a fight in which he attacked another man with a bottle. He jumped bail and left town. Two or three years later another altercation resulted in him allegedly stabbing to death another man which resulted in John receiving a manslaughter sentence. He jumped bail once again, but was finally arrested in May of 1965. Little Willie John ended up spending most of the next two years of his life in prison. They were also his last two years: he died there at the age of 31.

Born Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920), known professionally as Peggy Lee, she was a jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress, in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman’s big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and performer. During her career, she wrote music for films, acted, and recorded conceptual record albums that combined poetry and music.

Peggy Lee’s cover of “Fever” not only breathed new life into the R&B classic, but revitalised her career. While Lee remained a favourite singer among jazz fans, her swing-era pop vocals had begun to lose relevance among younger audiences. Her subdued yet sensual take on “Fever”, however, spoke directly to a younger crowd while bearing all the wit and sophistication of the coolest jazz records.

While being based on the Cooley/Blackwell song, her version had significant lyrical and instrumental arrangement differences. Since her early beginnings as a dinner club and nightclub singer in the 1940’s, she had intended this song to mainly be a song she could perform live in those environments. She discarded about 10 lines of the original lyrics and wrote many additional lines, Lee came up with new lyrics that chronicled lovers through the ages (including the verses beginning “Romeo loved Juliet,” and “Captain Smith and Pocahontas”). Failing to copyright her new lyrics, Lee’s additions were credited to the original writers, Cooley and Blackwell. The finger snaps, sparse arrangement and satirical storytelling echoed the voice of the Beat Generation. Lee understood this new era and her place in it, and wanted to tap into the burgeoning rock’n’roll audience. She used Beat slang in lyrics such as “Julie, baby, you’re my flame” and “Daddy-o, don’t you dare”, as she swings in a perfect R&B tone over a West Coast “cool school”-inspired arrangement.

Peggy Lee’s version peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and spent a total of 12 weeks on that chart. It set a peak at number five on the UK Singles Chart where it first appeared on August 15, 1958. Lee’s recording of “Fever” was a multiple nominee at the very first Grammy Awards ceremony in 1959. “Fever” was nominated for Record Of The Year and also garnered a Best Arrangement nomination, which was questionably bestowed on Jack Marshall, who had not actually been involved, rather than on Peggy Lee. A third nomination at the ceremony was strictly for Lee, in the category of Best Vocal Performance, Female.

Lee was nominated for twelve Grammy Awards, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit “Is That All There Is?” In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

She received the Rough Rider Award from the state of North Dakota, the Pied Piper Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the Presidents Award from the Songwriters Guild of America, the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Singers, and the Living Legacy Award from the Women’s International Center. In 1999 she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Lee continued to perform into the 1990s, sometimes confined to a wheelchair. After years of poor health, she died of complications from diabetes and a heart attack on January 21, 2002, at the age of 81. She was cremated and her ashes were buried in a bench-style monument in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Hits: 66

El Paso is considered one of the premier gunfighter songs and is one of the most well known Country & Western ballads. The song was first recorded in 1959 by Marty Robbins and released on the “Gunfighters Ballads and Trail Songs” album.

Though the song is Country & Western, it also charted in first position on the US Billboard Hot 100 for 1959. The song has been covered by bands like the Grateful Dead, who first covered the song in 1969. This is a live version from Oklahoma City in 1972:

There have been many versions of this song. There was the original full-length, an abridged version, and an edited version -- all done by Robbins. The abridged version was because the song was as long as it is and Columbia Records wasn’t sure if DJs would play a song that long.

The song is about a love triangle and sung from the perspective of a cowboy who was in love with a young lady named Feleena (Felina), a Mexican dancer. He finds her dancing with another man and calls him out. He then shoots unnamed man and goes on the run after stealing a horse (a hanging offense).

Because his love is stronger than his fear of death, he returns to the scene of the crime and ends up getting shot in his saddle. Feleena finds him and he dies in her arms after one last little kiss.

Marty wrote two sequels to the song but neither received much acclaim.  The first was “Felina (From El Paso)” which tells the story of Felina, the girl in the story.

The other is “El Paso City” which tells the story from the perspective of a person flying in an airplane over the city of El Paso.

This song is notable as it was one of the longer songs during the day and it is one of the earliest songs to cross the charts and make it as both a C&W and Pop song.

Hits: 21

In the history of popular music over the 20th century there have been very few examples of a definitive song that can be identified as changing music for all time since. This is one. The significance of this song cannot be understated and exemplifies a major turning point in music, which in itself is a personification of societies culture at that time. While the “first rock and roll song” is still a debate to be had (we covered that subject here), there can be little debate in regards to the impact this song had. Here’s two and a half minutes that changed the world.

In fact, that appearance almost didn’t happen. Notice Carl’s older brother Jay, on rhythm guitar, has a neck brace on. They were initially supposed to appear on the Perry Como Show in March 1956, just a few months after the song was released. On the way there, they were involved in an accident which left a truck driver dead, Jay Perkins broke his neck and sustained internal injuries, while Carl fractured his shoulder and skull. His younger brother Clayton, playing the upright bass, was not injured. Clayton was always a very difficult person to deal with from the time he was a teenager up until the time Carl threw him out of the band in the early 60’s. Clayton was out of control and unable to get along with anyone at that point. He later became a bum living at the local railroad yards in Jackson, Tennessee. Alcohol might have also played a role in his later suicide.

While researching for this article, I came across a much better writer than myself, Sharon Lacey, who wrote a very good synopsis of this song for Rebeat.com. I’m going to turn this story over to her:

Picture the scene: It’s late 1955, and Elvis Presley is onstage wowing the small crowd in Amory, Mississippi. He’s been on tour with Johnny Cash, but this night is special because another Sun Records artist, Carl Perkins, is also on the bill.

Cash and Perkins, both in their early 20s, their hair slicked and quiffed and looking cooly handsome are backstage hanging out, chatting about songwriting, when Cash tells Perkins a little story that will change rock ‘n’ roll history.

The country legend years later described just what he said to Perkins:

I was in the Air Force in Germany, and I had a black friend named C.V. White from Virginia. He’d get dressed up for a three-day pass, and in his mind, when he put on his clothes to go out, his black shoes were blue suede shoes. He would say, ‘Man! Don’t step on my blue suede shoes; I’m goin’ out tonight.’ Carl Perkins and I were in Amory, Mississippi, with Elvis. Now Elvis, of course, was hotter than a pistol… and Carl hadn’t had a hit. He’d had two country records. He asked me to write a song with him. I said, ‘You take this idea, and write it yourself.’ This ‘blue suede shoes’ line that my buddy used to say had been in my mind ever since I went to Sun. I told Carl about it, and he said, ‘That’s the one I’m looking for,’ and he wrote it that night. He started it backstage, but he went home and finished it.

Perkins himself recalled things a little differently. In his 1996 autobiography, “Go, Cat, Go!”, he claims he was unconvinced by the idea, telling Cash, “I don’t know nothin’ about them shoes.”

But just days after Cash told him the story, Perkins was onstage playing a dance in Jackson and heard a kid dancing at the front of the stage warning his girlfriend, “Don’t step on my suedes!” The idea resurfaced in Perkins’ mind and, later that night, inspired by this incident, he sat down and wrote “Blue Suede Shoes.”

Perkins was only 23 when he wrote what would become one of the most important rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time, but already he had come far from his impoverished start.

Born in April 1932 in Tiptonville, Tennessee, to share-croppers, it was while working the fields as a child that he heard the workers singing the gospel songs that gave him his love of music. That, along with the country music he heard on the radio, influenced him to learn guitar, taught by an older African-American bluesman, “Uncle” John Westbrook. At a young age, Perkins already had gospel, country, and blues in his life, and all would prove a major influence on his later music.

He began writing songs at 14 while working during the day at a dairy. At night, he and his older brother, Jay, began playing in honky-tonks and taverns, with his younger brother Lloyd later joining the group on bass.

Eventually, Perkins was able to give up his day job and become a full-time musician, but it wasn’t until 1954 when he heard Elvis on the radio singing a song the Perkins brothers had also been performing — Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” — that he was inspired to travel to Memphis where he successfully auditioned for Sam Phillips and became a part of the Sun Records roster along with Johnny Cash and, of course, Elvis himself.

Perkins had a few minor hits, but everything changed that fateful night on December 17, 1955, when he wrote “Blue Suede Shoes.” After writing the lyrics on a brown paper bag, he went into the studio just two days later and recorded it in two takes.

Phillips, at the helm, wouldn’t let Perkins record any more, telling him, “Do you hear that? You burnt it! We’re not changing anything; this record’s a smash!”

They also didn’t wait to release it: The vinyl hit shop shelves on January 1, 1956, backed with “Honey Don’t” (a song the Beatles would later cover). It took a couple of months for the track to catch on, but by March 3, it had entered the Billboard Charts and quickly gained momentum, becoming one of rock ‘n’ roll’s first big crossover hits topping the country charts and making it to #2 on both the R&B and pop charts. (There, it was held off by Elvis’ first hit for RCA, “Heartbreak Hotel,” proving once again all roads lead back to Elvis.)

“Blue Suede Shoes” not only defied genres, it also tapped into the rise of youth culture in the 1950s: the new wave of teenagers looking for their own fashion and music in the post-war years. The lyrics, “You can do anything, but lay off of my blue suede shoes” may well have been poking fun at that self-obsessed kid at the dance, but it was probably true that looking cool was at the center of a lot of teens’ lives (just as it is today).

While obviously humorous, the rebellious lyrics that put a pair of swish shoes over stolen cars, slander, and even liquor, were still undeniably appealing to the new generation of rock ‘n’ roll-loving kids. Plus, imagine in 1956, turning on the radio and hearing those opening lines, “Well, it’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go, cat, go” followed by those distinctive guitar strums and, even then, it must have been clear that this song was a game-changer.

Not surprisingly, with its success, Perkins was suddenly in huge demand, and he was booked to make his big TV debut on The Perry Como Show. Unfortunately, while driving to New York to appear on the show, Perkins and his band were involved in a terrible car accident, which left him and his brother Jay with serious injuries. (Jay would tragically die a few years later in 1959 of a brain tumor.)

The band did eventually make it onto the show months later, but there’s no doubt that, by taking Perkins out of the limelight and leaving him unable to promote his hit single just as it was gaining momentum, the accident hampered the song’s success. That said, it still managed to spend 21 weeks on the charts and, by April, Sam Phillips rewarded him with a new Cadillac for being the first Sun Records artist to sell over a million copies.

Meanwhile, Elvis had also recorded his own more upbeat version of “Blue Suede Shoes” (leaving out the pauses in the intro) just weeks after Perkins’ record was released. It became the first track on his classic self-titled debut album, released in March 1956. He held off releasing it as a single, however, until September of that year due to his friendship with Perkins, waiting until the original had peaked in the charts.

Surprisingly, given its fame today, at the time, Elvis’ version only managed to reach #20 on the pop charts. Elvis did sing “Blue Suede Shoes” on TV three times that year, though, including a fantastic, raucous version on The Milton Berle Show, and it became a staple of his stage shows. He also re-recorded the song for the soundtrack of his 1960 film, “G.I. Blues”. All of which helped put the Elvis version at the forefront of the public’s consciousness and, to this day, many people associate it only with Elvis.

After the success of “Blue Suede Shoes,” Perkins turned down offers from other labels and went back to Sun to record many great rockabilly favorites such as “Boppin’ the Blues,” “Dixie Fried,” and “Matchbox” but never managed to have another big pop hit.

He still had many more legendary moments though. On the day he recorded “Matchbox,” Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash visited him in the studio, and the infamous “Million Dollar Quartet” session was born.

Then, in 1964, while touring in the UK with Chuck Berry, the Beatles invited Perkins to a recording session at Abbey Road. George Harrison, in particular, was a huge fan; Perkins’ 1958 debut LP “Dance Album of Carl Perkins” was a huge influence on the young guitarist. But the whole band was excited to meet him, so excited they decided to record some of his songs that day, including “Matchbox,” “Honey Don’t,” and “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” as well as (according to Perkins) a cover of “Blue Suede Shoes” that has never been released. He remained friends with the whole band, and Paul McCartney later asked Perkins to duet with him on the track “Get It” from his 1982 album “Tug Of War”.

Funnily enough, Perkins himself never owned a pair of blue suede shoes, but Elvis did have a pair specially made for himself in 1956 after his version of the song shot up the charts. Elvis wore them regularly onstage for a few years. When he returned home after his service in the Army, he kindly gifted the shoes to his road manager, Joe Esposito. Decades later, they ended up in a Las Vegas Elvis museum until, in 2013, the blue brogues sold for an incredible $76,800 at auction. With shoes as expensive as that, you certainly wouldn’t want anyone stepping on them!

As for Perkins, despite pretty much saving Sun Records after Elvis left for RCA, he had to sue Sam Phillips in the 1970s after belatedly discovering that he had cheated him on the royalties for “Blue Suede Shoes” as well as his many other songs. Thankfully, the case was eventually settled, and Perkins was finally and rightfully given control of his own songs, including his most enduring hit.

Johnny Cash remained a faithful friend for years after, recording Perkins’ song “Daddy Sang Bass” in 1968 and taking him on the road with him for over a decade. (Perkins was the opening act for Cash’s legendary Folsom Prison and San Quentin shows.)

During the ‘80s and ‘90s, though, Perkins began getting the recognition he deserved for his contribution to rock music. In 1986, a televised concert featuring George Harrison (in his first public performance in over 10 years), Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Dave Edmunds, and of course, Carl Perkins himself celebrated the 30th anniversary of “Blue Suede Shoes.” There’s also Olivia Harrison (George’s wife), Barbara Bach (Ringo’s wife), and Pattie Boyd (Clapton’s wife and George’s ex-wife).

The same year, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1987, Perkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the “500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll“.  It was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2006. The board annually selects songs that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” In 2004, Perkins’s version was ranked number 95 on Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”

He continued to record and perform live, continuing the tradition of playing with his family when his sons Greg and Stan joined his band. Sadly, Perkins battled ill health for much of his final years and died of cancer in 1998, aged just 65 years old.

Of course, Carl Perkins was far more than his most famous song, but its influence and power is undeniable. Without “Blue Suede Shoes” and its phenomenal success, the history of rock ‘n’ roll may well have been very different. Now, go, cat, go!

Hits: 22

This was written in 1947 by the Country & Western guitarist and songwriter Merle Travis. It is based on the experiences of his coal-mining family. His brother, John Travis, wrote him a letter about the death of Ernie Pyle, a war correspondent who had just been killed covering combat. John likened Pyle’s job to that of a coal miner, writing: “It’s like working in the coal mines. You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” Merle incorporated his brother’s words into the chorus.

Merle also remembered something his father once said about the practice of paying miners in “scrip” credit vouchers that could only be used at the company-owned general store. He told a neighbor, “I can’t afford to die. I owe my soul to the general store,” inspiring the lyrics:

“Saint Peter don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store”

A reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. Under this scrip system, workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with non-transferable credit vouchers which could be exchanged only for goods sold at the company store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay. In the United States the truck system and associated debt bondage persisted until the strikes of the newly formed United Mine Workers and affiliated unions forced an end to such practices.

Released on Capitol’s 1947 LP “Folk Songs From The Hills”, the song almost immediately began to generate controversy, causing Travis himself, problems, in the anti-communist, Cold War hysteria of the late forties. Some in government saw songs dealing with workers’ woes, and folk music “activists” as potentially subversive. It made no difference that Travis was a true American patriot. Veteran Capitol producer, Ken Nelson, who worked at WJJD radio in Chicago in the late forties, recalled in a 1992 interview that FBI agents advised the station not to play Travis’ records, because they considered him a “communist sympathizer,” which was, of course, completely untrue.

Merle Travis -- already celebrated as a guitar innovator and songwriter -- was immortalized by the song. In later years, when performing the song himself, he altered the final stanza to, “I owe my soul…to Tennessee Ernie Ford.” On July 29, 1956, he returned to his boyhood home of Ebeneezer, Kentucky, to unveil a granite monument the town built to immortalize his accomplishments, including Sixteen Tons. He died in 1983. In 1991, his ashes were buried under that monument, and remain there to this day.

Tennessee Ernie Ford (Ernest Jennings Ford) was born in 1919 in Bristol, Tennessee. Ford began his radio career as an announcer at WOPI-AM in Bristol. In 1939, the young bass-baritone left the station to study classical music and voice at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in Ohio. With the start of WWII, Ford entered  in the United States Army Air Corps, became a First Lieutenant, and served as a bombardier on a B-29 Superfortress flying missions over Japan. He was also a bombing instructor at George Air Force Base, in Victorville, California.

The war’s end found Ford in San Bernardino and then Pasadena, California, where he worked as a radio announcer. While working an early morning country music show, he created the character of “Tennessee Ernie,” a cartoonish hillbilly. When a talent scout from Capitol Records heard his shtick, Ford soon found himself with a recording contract. He continued his work in radio and television while his recording career blossomed. “The Ford Show”, hosted by Tennessee Ernie Ford, ran from 1956 until 1961 on NBC. Ford’s program was notable for the inclusion of a religious song at the end of every show; Ford insisted on this despite objections from network officials who feared it might provoke controversy. Network officials stepped back when the hymn became the most popular segment of his show.

He earned the nickname “The Ol’ Pea-Picker” because of his oft-used catch phrase “Bless your pea-pickin’ heart!” and his television show was later known as “Hello, Pea-pickers”.

While his wider fame was from this song, he was also well known for his Country (he released almost 50 country singles through the early 1950’s) and Gospel songs he loved. In 1956 he released “Hymns”, his first gospel music album, which remained on Billboard’s Top Album charts for 277 consecutive weeks; his album “Great Gospel Songs” won a Grammy Award in 1964.

Out of the public eye, Ford and wife Betty contended with serious alcohol problems; Betty had had the problem since the 1950s as well as emotional issues that complicated both their lives and the lives of their sons. Though his drinking began to worsen in the 60’s, he worked continuously, seemingly unaffected by his heavy intake of whiskey. By the 1970’s, however, it had begun to take an increasing toll on his health, appearance and ability to sing, though his problems were not known publicly. After Betty’s substance abuse-related death in 1989, Ernie’s liver problems, diagnosed years earlier, became more apparent, but he refused to reduce his drinking despite repeated doctors’ warnings.

On September 28, 1991, he fell into severe liver failure at Dulles Airport, shortly after leaving a state dinner at the White House hosted by then President George H. W. Bush. Ford died in H. C. A. Reston Hospital Center, in Reston, Virginia, on October 17 – exactly 36 years after “Sixteen Tons” was released, and one day shy of the first anniversary of his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

On March 25, 2015, Ford’s version of the song was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, and was awarded a gold record. In 11 days following its release, 400,000 singles are sold. Demand for the song was so great, that Capitol geared all its pressing plants nationwide to meet the deluge of orders. In 24 days, over one million records were sold, and “Sixteen Tons” became the fastest-selling single in Capitol’s history. By November, it had captured the top spot on every major record chart in the country, and by December 15 (less than two months after it’s release) more than 2,000,000 copies were sold, making it the most successful single ever recorded. T. E. Ford was awarded three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for radio, one for records, and one for television. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1990. Ford received posthumous recognition for his gospel music contributions by adding him to the Gospel Music Association’s Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1994.

The song has been recorded or performed in concert by a wide variety of musicians. The list is quite long but here’s just a few notable ones:

1955: Sung live by Elvis Presley in his early 1950s concerts, but never recorded.
1955: B.B. King & His Orchestra
1957: The Platters recorded the song
1960: Bo Diddley released a version on his album Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger
1966: Stevie Wonder recorded a version influenced by Motown and soul music
1973: Jerry Reed recorded a version
1987: Johnny Cash released a country version
1990: A rendition of the song by Eric Burdon
2014: ZZ Top performed the song on their tour with Jeff Beck.

Hits: 56

The first vinyl records, released around 1900, were 10-inch, 78 RPM records. This song is specifically about the Blues recordings found on those records, and yes, wink, wink, it is a double entendre. “Big Ten-Inch (Record Of The Blues)” was composed by Fred Weismantel and became a big hit on the R&B charts during 1952 for tenor-sax player and singer Bull Moose Jackson.

Benjamin Clarence Jackson, aka Bull Moose Jackson, was born in 1919 in Cleveland. A violin-playing child prodigy who favored the saxophone, Jackson joined the sax section of Lucky Millinders big band as a teenager. A bandmate famously said Jackson looked like a damn bull moose, and the nickname stuck. Shortly thereafter, Jackson stepped up to the microphone one night in Texas to sing after Wynonie Harris was a no-show. Jackson brought down the house.

Bull Moose Jackson was most successful in the late 1940s. He is sometimes considered a performer of dirty blues, because of the suggestive nature of some of his songs, such as “I Want a Bowlegged Woman”, “Nosey Joe,” “Get Off The Table Mable (The Two Dollars Is For The Beer)”, and of course this song. Soon, Bull Moose had a reputation for risque material. It drove crowds crazy, but not record buyers. Look at the top-selling singles of 1952 and you won’t find “Big Ten-Inch (Record Of The Blues)” anywhere. That’s because radio stations wouldn’t touch it.

In the early 1980’s the Flashcats, a blues band that performed in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, regularly included “Big Ten Inch Record” in their performances. A local DJ reputedly told the Flashcats that he knew Bull Moose Jackson, and the band’s frontman, Carl Grefensette, found him catering at Howard University. Grefensette convinced Jackson to perform with them, and they quickly became a sensation in western Pennsylvania. Jackson then made the Flashcats his backing band and began a revival of his career. He also recorded a comeback album, Moosemania! (1985).

But Jackson cheerfully performed “Big Ten-Inch” every night on tour with his band, The Buffalo Bearcats, which he had been fronting from the late 1940s well into the 1950s.

During the 1980s, Jackson, then in his 60s, had an extremely successful run performing in the United States and internationally. But despite his growing fame and notoriety, Jackson grew tired of the travel grind and he retired. He fell ill with lung cancer in 1987 and retired from the touring circuit in the spring of 1988. An old girlfriend of his came back to care for him during his final illness. He died in Cleveland on July 31, 1989.

Most of us probably heard “Big Ten-Inch Record” (renamed slightly due to copyright concerns) performed for the first time by Aerosmith on the band’s third album, 1975’s “Toys In The Attic.”

It was Aerosmith‘s drug dealer Zunk Buker who introduced them to this song. He heard the Bull Moose Jackson version on the Dr. Demento radio show and sent the band a copy of the song. Steven Tyler was struggling to come up with lyrics for the album “Toys In The Attic” tracks, so adding a cover to the set took some pressure off of him.

Aerosmith used a horn section on this song, which included a bass saxophone played by Stan Bronstein. They also brought in Scott Cushnie to play the piano. Cushnie got the gig because he used to play in a band with Aerosmith‘s producer Jack Douglas. The band planned a more contemporary version of this song when they set out to record it, but that plan changed when they got in the studio. Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford:

We were basically just doing it as a two-guitar, rock and roll approach. We were up in the studio recording it, and we were listening very heavily to the original version of the song, which was very similar to what we ended up with when we ended up bringing the horn section in. We decided, ‘Let’s actually make it sound a little more period. Let’s have the horns on it and make it sound more like the original version that we heard.’ So that was quite a transformation, going from this straight-ahead guitar thing to almost a big band sound. And it really worked.

In 2001, they were the musical guest on Saturday Night Live and performed this song. A great rendition, with Tyler ‘honkin’ on bobo’, throwing in a little scat singing at the end, and Brad Whitford taking over most of the lead guitar duties.

Hits: 65

This was recorded with one of the most acclaimed blues groups in history: Little Walter Jacobs on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Elga Edmonds (also known as Elgin Evans) on drums, and Otis Spann on piano. The band recorded a series of blues classics during the early 1950s, some with the help of the bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon.

Known as the “father of modern Chicago blues”, Muddy Waters’ influence was tremendous, not just on blues and rhythm and blues but on rock and roll, hard rock, folk music, jazz, and country music. His use of amplification is often cited as the link between Delta blues and rock and roll. He is one of the legends of the Blues, having known and played with other artists revered by Blues fans ever since.

As his history is well-documented, I will just give an overview of his life and encourage all to search out the details.

Born McKinley Morganfield in a cabin on the Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi around 1913 -1915, by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. His grandmother, Della Grant, raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth. Grant gave him the nickname “Muddy” at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek. “Waters” was added years later, as he began to play harmonica and perform locally in his early teens.

He had his first introduction to music in church:

I used to belong to church. I was a good Baptist, singing in the church. So I got all of my good moaning and trembling going on for me right out of church.

By the time he was 17, he had purchased his first guitar.

I sold the last horse that we had. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents, I kept seven-fifty and paid about two-fifty for that guitar. It was a Stella. The people ordered them from Sears-Roebuck in Chicago.

His first known recording was in 1941 when Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians.

He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house, and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody’s records. Man, you don’t know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, ‘I can do it, I can do it.’

In 1943, Muddy Waters headed to Chicago with the hope of becoming a full-time professional musician. Big Bill Broonzy, then one of the leading bluesmen in Chicago, had Muddy Waters open his shows in the rowdy clubs where Broonzy played. This gave Muddy Waters the opportunity to play in front of a large audience.

In 1944, he bought his first electric guitar and then formed his first electric combo. He felt obliged to electrify his sound in Chicago because, he said:

When I went into the clubs, the first thing I wanted was an amplifier. Couldn’t nobody hear you with an acoustic.

Two years later, in 1946, he recorded some songs for Columbia Records, with an old-fashioned combo consisting of clarinet, saxophone and piano; Muddy Waters’ name was not mentioned on the label. Later that year, he began recording for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, which later became Chess Records. By 1948, his first recordings “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home” became hits, and his popularity in clubs began to take off.

The rest, as is said, is history. His discography is extensive and represents his pioneering of bringing the Delta Blues to his new brand of electric Chicago Blues.

Now, back to “I’m A Man”.

“I’m a Man” was released as the B-side of “Bo Diddley”, his first single in April 1955. The single became a two-sided hit and reached number one in the Billboard R&B chart. It was inspired by Muddy Waters’ 1954 song “Hoochie Coochie Man”, also written by Willie Dixon.

The song makes reference to hoodoo folk magic elements and makes novel use of a stop-time musical arrangement. This musical device is commonly heard in New Orleans jazz, when the instrumentation briefly stops, allowing for a short instrumental or vocal solo before resuming. It became one of Waters’ most popular and identifiable songs and helped secure Dixon’s role as Chess Records’ chief songwriter. The stop-time riff was “soon absorbed into the lingua franca of blues, R&B, jazz, and rock and roll”, according to musicologist Robert Palmer, and is used in several popular songs. When Bo Diddley adapted it for “I’m a Man”, it became one of the most recognizable musical phrases in blues.

Bo Diddley modified the song’s signature riff for his March 1955 song “I’m a Man”. He reworked it as a four-note figure, which is repeated for the entire song without a progression to other chords. Music critic and writer Cub Koda calls it “the most recognizable blues lick in the world”.

Muddy Waters, not to be outdone, responded two months later with an answer song to “I’m a Man”, titled “Mannish Boy”, partly as a jab at Diddley as he was younger and had “borrowed” his riff. Waters recalled:

Bo Diddley, he was tracking me down with my beat when he made ‘I’m a Man’. That’s from ‘Hoochie Coochie Man.’ Then I got on it with ‘Mannish Boy’ and just drove him out of my way.

Emphasizing the origin of Bo Diddley’s song, Waters sticks to the original first eight-bar phrase from “Hoochie Coochie Man” and includes some of the hoodoo references.

Many British bands have covered “I’m A Man”, including The Who, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page and The Yardbirds, among many others.

Two of the more well known versions in the US were by the Spencer Davis Group and Chicago. This was the final Spencer Davis Group release to feature Steve Winwood, who left to form Traffic.

Chicago’s cover arrangement features an extended percussion and drum section with a total run time of 7 minutes and 40 seconds, and is based around the distortion-heavy blues-rock guitar of Terry Kath, the drumming of Danny Seraphine, the bass of Peter Cetera, the soaring Hammond organ of Robert Lamm and the horn players periodically switching over to auxiliary percussion instruments, such as claves, cowbell, maracas, and tambourine. Kath, Cetera and Lamm each sing a verse apiece (not singing the lyrics as they were originally written, but as they misheard and/or revised them).

Bo Diddley’s original “I’m a Man” is ranked number 369 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2012 the song, along with the self-named A-side song “Bo Diddley”, was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry list of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” American sound recordings. In 2018, “I’m a Man” was inducted into the Blues Foundation Blues Hall of Fame as a “classic of blues recording”.

Hits: 40

“Summertime Blues” was written by Eddie Cochran and his good friend, songwriter, and future manager Jerry Capehart who had helped him get a record deal. Capehart explained the inspiration for this song :

There had been a lot of songs about summer, but none about the hardships of summer.

They wrote the song in 45 minutes. It was recorded on March 28, 1958 at Gold Star Recording Studios in Hollywood, California. With this song, Cochran was established as one of the most important influences on rock and roll in the 1950s, both lyrically and musically.

Eddie Cochran, only 19 years old when he recorded this, sang both the vocal and bass vocal (the “work-a-late” portions, Cochran’s tribute to the Kingfish character from the Amos and Andy television series), played all the guitar parts, and added the hand clapping with Sharon Sheeley, his girlfriend and future fiancée. She was a young (age 17) songwriter herself, having written Ricky Nelson’s #1 hit “Poor Little Fool”. She really wanted to help Eddie on his record, but had trouble getting the rhythm. Eddie helped her out by showing her how to clap. Connie ‘Guybo’ Smith played the electric bass and Earl Palmer drums.

Here he is on Town Hall Party television program shortly after he recorded the song. Town Hall Party was a country music radio and television show broadcast in Southern California.

Cochran was born October 3, 1938. His parents were from Oklahoma, and he always said in interviews that his parents had some roots in Oklahoma. He took music lessons in school but quit the band to play drums. Also, rather than taking piano lessons, he began learning guitar, playing country and other music he heard on the radio.

He quickly moved on to the popular Rockabilly style. Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, dating back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the South. As a genre it blends the sound of Western musical styles such as country with that of rhythm and blues. Other important influences on rockabilly include western swing, Boogie-woogie, jump blues, and electric blues.

In July 1956, Eddie Cochran’s first “solo artist” single was released by Crest Records. It featured “Skinny Jim”, now regarded as a rock-and-roll and rockabilly classic. In the spring of 1956, Boris Petroff asked Cochran if he would appear in the musical comedy film “The Girl Can’t Help It”. Cochran agreed and performed the song “Twenty Flight Rock” in the movie. In 1957 Cochran starred in his second film, “Untamed Youth”, and he had yet another hit, “Sittin’ in the Balcony”, one of the few songs he recorded that was written by other songwriters (in this case John D. Loudermilk).

Another aspect of Cochran’s short but brilliant career is his work as backup musician and producer. In a session for Gene Vincent in March 1958 he contributed his trademark bass voice, as heard on “Summertime Blues”. Gene Vincent was an American musician who pioneered the styles of rock and roll and rockabilly. His 1956 top ten hit with his Blue Caps, “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, is considered a significant early example of rockabilly. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Here he appears on the same Town Hall Party show.

It was “Be Bop A Lula,” in fact, that John Lennon was playing at the 1967 garden party where he first met Paul McCartney, and it was Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” that Paul taught John to play that same afternoon, shortly after being invited to join Lennon’s Quarrymen. At least one Beatle, George Harrison, saw Eddie Cochran in Liverpool during his final tour, and both his guitar-playing and his stage persona made a strong impression.

He was standing at the microphone and as he started to talk he put his two hands through his hair, pushing it back. And a girl, one lone voice, screamed out, ‘Oh, Eddie!’ and he coolly murmured into the mike, ‘Hi honey.’ I thought, ‘Yes! That’s it—rock and roll!’

In early 1959 two of Cochran’s friends, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, along with the Big Bopper, were killed in a plane crash while on tour. Cochran’s friends and family later said that he was badly shaken by their deaths, and he developed a morbid premonition that he also would die young. He was anxious to give up life on the road and spend his time in the studio making music, thereby reducing the chance of suffering a similar fatal accident while touring. Financial responsibilities, however, required that he continue to perform live, and that led to his acceptance of an offer to tour the United Kingdom with Gene Vincent in 1960.

Gene Vincent was traveling alongside Eddie Cochran in the cab to London after what would prove to be Cochran’s final performance. Also in the cab were tour manager Patrick Thompkins and Eddie’s fiancée Sharon Seeley. On Saturday, April 16, 1960, at about 11.50 p.m., while on tour in the United Kingdom, 21-year-old Cochran was involved in a traffic accident in a taxi travelling through Chippenham, Wiltshire, on the A4. The speeding taxi blew a tire, the driver lost control, and the vehicle crashed into a lamppost on Rowden Hill. Cochran, who was seated in the centre of the back seat, threw himself over his fiancée Sharon to shield her and was thrown out of the car when the door flew open. He was taken to St Martin’s Hospital, in Bath, where he died of severe head injuries at 4:10 p.m. the following day. She survived as did Gene Vincent, however he would break a leg and walk with a limp for the rest of his life, but beyond that, the only serious injuries among the passengers were Eddie Cochran’s.

The list of known artists that have covered “Summertime Blues”, and played it in concerts, is extremely long. Just some of them include Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Tom Petty, Rod Stewart, T. Rex, Cliff Richard, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes, the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Rush, Simple Minds, George Thorogood, Guitar Wolf, Paul McCartney, Alan Jackson, the Move, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Hallyday and U2.

Two notable, and well known, versions were by The Who (on their 1970 standout “Live At Leeds” album) and Blue Cheer (early pioneers of what would become the Metal genre) in 1968.

“Summertime Blues” is listed as number 74 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 1987, Cochran was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His pioneering contribution to the genre of rockabilly has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. On September 27, 2010, the mayor of Bell Gardens, California, declared October 3, 2010, to be “Eddie Cochran Day” to celebrate the famous musician who began his career when living in that city.

Hits: 31