Introduction

THE ESSENTIAL SUN COLLECTION (1999; 1955-1958)
CD I: 1) Movie Magg; 2) Turn Around; 3) Let The Jukebox Keep On Playing; 4) Gone, Gone, Gone; 5) Blue Suede Shoes; 6) Honey Don't; 7) Sure To Fall; 8) Tennessee; 9) Boppin' The Blues; 10) All Mama's Children; 11) Dixie Fried; 12) I'm Sorry I'm Not Sorry; 13) Your True Love; 14) Matchbox; 15) That's Right; 16) Forever Yours; 17) Glad All Over; 18) Lend Me Your Comb.

CD II: 1) Honky Tonk Gal; 2) Perkins Wiggle; 3) You Can't Make Love To Somebody; 4) That Don't Move Me; 5) Lonely Street; 6) Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby; 7) Somebody Tell Me; 8) Sweethearts Or Strangers; 9) Kee­per Of The Key; 10) Be Honest With Me; 11) Caldonia; 12) Her Love Rubbed Off; 13) You Can Do No Wrong; 14) Put Your Cat Clothes On; 15) Roll Over Beethoven; 16) Only You; 17) Pink Pedal Pushers; 18) Right String Baby, Wrong Yo-Yo.

Sun Records' limited capacities were only enough to allow one LP record for Carl, right at the end of his tenure — everything else that he did for the label only came out as singles. Fortunate­ly, the CD era has allowed for some convenient packaging: the double-disc Essential Sun Collec­tion puts together approximately 90% of the officially released stuff (and, for that matter, works much better than the deceptively titled single-disc Complete Sun Singles, which actually omits at least three or four essential A-sides). All of Dance Album is here, along with most of the A-sides, B-sides, and some obscurities that never made it onto that LP — essential indeed, and more or less all the Carl Perkins that a regular rockabilly admirer would need to have.
In fact, maybe even a little more than necessary. With just a few exceptions, all of the songs here are fun, but if you rearrange them in approximate chronological order, there is very little develop­ment going on once the man hits his peak — never managing to go beyond the golden summit of the ʽBlue Suede Shoes / Honey Don'tʼ single from early 1956. Sam Phillips was a good guy, but once his protegés reached relative perfection with a certain formula, he showed little interest in pushing them to new heights, and thus, there is hardly any wonder in the fact that Carl's records sold less and less after the initial ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ boom.
At some point, Carl even got stuck with a «songs about clothes» formula: ʽPut Your Cat Clothes Onʼ and ʽPink Pedal Pushersʼ are both thematically related to ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ (the former even namedrops the shoes in question), but neither manages to hit as hard. ʽPut Your Cat Clothes Onʼ, with an unmistakable Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano, is the fastest Carl ever played, but as fun as the song is, it is just fun — lacking the parent-scary swagger and defiance of ʽShoesʼ. ʽPink Pedal Pushersʼ goes in a completely different direction, trying to be sexy and even a little salacious, but the truth is, Carl Perkins has too much of that «innocent country boy» spirit within him to sound fully believable when singing mid-tempo rockabilly about a girl who "comes strut­ting down the street in her sophisticated style" and going "ooh woppa doo-dah" as if he himself were one of the cats who "started gazing and called her out". Again — fun stuff, but hardly a genuine knockover of the kind that Elvis or Jerry Lee could do in their sleep.
But do not get me wrong: I am only trying to put the tip of the finger on some of the reasons why Carl's luck ran out so quickly, even way before the first wave of rock'n'roll started getting thin around 1959-60. Other than that, his Sun records are quite consistent, although I am not a big fan of the country ballads like ʽForever Yoursʼ: they are done in Carl's usual «rough» style, with shoddy Sun-style production, but do not have the oddly minimalistic «from-the-bottom-of-a-well» feel of the same type of songs on Elvis' early singles.
Some of the lesser known oddities include ʽHer Love Rubbed Offʼ, an interesting, even some­what innovative attempt at crossing rockabilly with a mambo beat and seeing what happens (the seams show, but the song still cooks up a voodooistic aura that is quite unusual for our country boy); ʽThat's Rightʼ, co-written with Johnny Cash around a nagging little riff whose repetitive ring works on the brain with an almost drone-style effect; and ʽSomebody Tell Meʼ, a previously unreleased outtake (I think) whose very length is staggering — 4:22! (other than that, it is a con­servative piece of blues boogie).
Of course, each and every one of these songs features one or more guitar solos from the man, and they are almost always the main point of attraction: instead of fluent, uninterrupted lines, Perkins likes playing these ragged, broken-up series of licks that sound like flurry dialogs or trialogs, never repeating each other — no wonder he became one of Harrison's favorite players, even if George's playing style eventually drifted far away from this approach (not on the early Beatles records, though, where George's «Perkins licks» are easily recognizable even on quite a few non-Perkins covers — something like ʽCan't Buy Me Loveʼ, for instance). To the modern listener's ear, like most guitar solos from the classic rockabilly era, they could sound clumsy and feeble, but they do have that unbeatable advantage of an almost child-like, giddy exploration of the capaci­ties of the instrument — which makes the whole experience far more precious than listening to many a modern player who has already had those capacities presented to him on a platter.
Overall, this is just another hour and a half of Sun Records greatness, with Sam Phillips' echoey, downhome, «lo-fi» production as an added bonus — in a sense, everything sounds like crap, but it's healthy, fresh, nutritious crap straight from the oven, a much better proposition than the glossy, synthetic, orchestrated pop crap of the big studios. And it was, after all, the only environment in which Carl Perkins actually found himself thriving, even if his records did not sell, so thumbs up all the way.
WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN' (1958)
1) Whole Lotta Shakin'; 2) Tutti Frutti; 3) Shake, Rattle & Roll; 4) Sittin' On Top Of The World; 5) Ready Teddy; 6) Long Tall Sally; 7) That's All Right; 8) Where The Rio De Rosa Flows; 9) Good Rockin' Tonight; 10) I Got A Wo­man; 11) Hey, Good Lookin'; 12) Jenny Jenny.
Every Sun artist had to leave Sun Records sooner or later, just because that is the way of the world and all, but few Sun artists, upon leaving their alma mater, suffered as ignobly as Carl did. Although they still let him put out original compositions as singles, the one and only LP he cut in the 1950s for Columbia was this openly dreadful collection of covers — take one look at the tracklist and you will see that it consists of almost nothing but big, well-worn-out (already by 1958) rock'n'roll hits for Little Richard, Bill Haley, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The last thing the world needed in late 1958 was yet another take on the classics from somebody whose chief asset was songwriting, not impersonating.
I wouldn't dare to say that it all sounds totally forced, and that Carl wasn't having himself a ball with at least some of this stuff — he may not have written these songs, but he obviously had to love them, since they are so right up his alley of interests. The problem is that he does not seem at all to be in real charge of the sessions. Although Columbia's production values are slightly (but only slightly) higher than those of Sun, the actual recordings are not at all beneficial for Carl. The sound is almost completely dominated by session players — a piano guy (Marvin Hughes) and a sax guy (Andrew Goodrich) — who are not bad, per se, but hardly outstanding, and end up drowning out Carl's vocals and guitar to the point that you are no longer exactly sure of who the hell is Carl Perkins and why we should bother with his brand of rockabilly in the first place.
The only curious, and somewhat successful, idea on the entire album was to turn ʽSittin' On Top Of The Worldʼ, formerly played as a slow country-blues piece by everybody from The Missis­sippi Sheiks to Howlin' Wolf, into a lightning-speed rock'n'roll number — giving it the same treatment that Carl gave to Blind Lemon Jefferson's ʽMatchbox Bluesʼ during his tenure at Sun. Except that ʽMatchboxʼ sounded «gritty», whereas this rendition is just a fun, forgettable frolick with nary a guitar solo in sight — just the sax. If they could get King Curtis at least...
Vocal-wise, Carl is in good form, but he never gives other people's songs the same kind of sly, sexy reading he gives his own — every now and then, he tends to overscream (sometimes getting out of tune in the process), and, worst of all, as long as you remember Little Richard, Elvis, and even Jerry Lee doing the same songs, Carl's relative lack of power and singing technique remains a constant problem. On the cover of Hank Williams' ʽHey, Good Lookin'ʼ, he doesn't even try — the original was all about drawing out those opening notes ("h-e-e-ey, good lookin', wha-a-a-t you got cookin'..."), whereas Carl just swallows them completely; strange, because it didn't used to be that bad, at least on songs like ʽSure To Fallʼ he could show some decent range.
At the end of the day, it does begin to feel suspiciously like a hackjob; I know the details not, but either Carl was pissed off at his new label for demanding that he cover other people's hits, or, if not, then something simply did not work out. Maybe he was uncomfortable with the new session band, or the new recording studio, or something like that, but one thing's for certain: Whole Lot­ta Shakin' is quite far from being the best possible introduction to the guy and explanation of his genius. In fact, it is one of those albums that sort of explains the beginning of the temporary de­cline of rock'n'roll in the late 1950s — with lackluster sessions like these coming from estab­lished icons, you'd want to think, sure enough, that rock'n'roll had passed his prime, and that it was high time to try out something truly new, like Chubby Checker, or Bobby Darin. Thumbs down; no need to hunt this down, unless you're on an epic quest to collect every single version of ʽReady Teddyʼ and ʽLong Tall Sallyʼ ever recorded.
RESTLESS: THE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS (1958-1969; 1992)
1) Pink Pedal Pushers; 2) Rockin' Record Hop; 3) Jive After Five; 4) Just Thought I'd Call; 5) Where The Rio De Rosa Flows; 6) Because You're Mine; 7) That's All Right Mama; 8) Pop, Let Me Have The Car; 9) Levi Jacket (And A Long Tail Shirt); 10) Honey 'Cause I Love You; 11) Pointed Toe Shoes; 12) L-O-V-E-V-I-L-L-E; 13) Sister Twister; 14) Hambone; 15) All Mama's Children; 16) Just Coastin'; 17) Restless.
For more than a decade, Columbia's degree of interest in Carl was such that they did not let him record even one proper LP (dismayed as they were, perhaps, with the failure of Whole Lotta Sha­kin', as completely predictable as it was). He did manage to keep on putting out singles, on a rather steady basis in the late 1950s, then dwindling down to a tiny streak in the 1960s, alterna­ting between rockabilly and country, but hardly showing any big interest in all the new exciting developments in music — as this sampler, released in 1992 and containing a highly diagnostic, if far from complete, selection of those singles, amply shows.
The selection in question is at least a huge improvement on the disaster of Whole Lotta Shakin', and is far more recommendable for those who like Carl in particular and early rock'n'roll in gene­ral. Many of the songs are self-written, most of them are not as heavily obstructed by misguided production, and Carl's singing and guitar playing are generally in focus. Starting out with a new, «rockier» version of ʽPink Pedal Pushersʼ, and ending with the title track, released in 1969 and sounding every bit as if it could have been released in 1959 (with the possible exception of the backup singers and their slightly more modern touch of gospel-soul) — Restless rolls along at a restless pace indeed, and will be good clean fun for all those who just want to have fun.
Still, it seems perfectly clear to me why these singles, nice as they are, could never hold a candle to the Sun-era classics. All of them got Carl Perkins sort of «institutionalized» — the songs are not trying to delve into the subconscious, but are consciously written and recorded according to the set-in-stone rockabilly formula. Something like ʽRockin' Record Hopʼ, even if it tries to com­bine a rollicking Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano melody with a poppy, almost surf-like guitar solo to see what happens, still remains slightly «experimental» only in form rather than in the spirit — and most of the other songs do not have even that. The titles of the songs speak for themselves (ʽJive After Fiveʼ, ʽPointed Toe Shoesʼ, ʽLevi Jacketʼ etc.) — betraying them as doomed attempts to cash in on a formula that was quickly becoming outdated; and the lyrics, moods, and melodies have little chance of delivering the same amount of excitement as ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ or ʽHoney Don'tʼ. In other words, do not expect to find anything here except for creative stagnation. This is «technically solid», «responsible» work, and I cannot rule out that Carl himself may have been proud of some of it, but it did not woo the public back then, and there is hardly any hope that these singles will be regarded as «forgotten gems» any time soon.
By the early 1960s, Carl could be occasionally budged to expand his horizons — Otis Black­well's ʽSister Twisterʼ deals (somewhat ironically) with you-know-what, and ʽHamboneʼ is a satirical dialog on the perils of stardom, recorded in the style of Bo Diddley — but much of his stuff also sounds as if he was secretly envying his more successful Sun-era pals like Elvis and Johnny Cash. Unfortunately, he did not have the creative genius and «social foresight» of Cash, and certainly nothing even close to the Great Promotional Machine that was programmed for the eternal rule of The King — trying to compete with either of these two, instead of focusing on his own thing, was like trying to corner a tank with a wooden spear. No doubt, a sympathetic wooden spear, worthy of a small, respectable thumbs up, but even the most diehard Carl Perkins fan, I think, would have to eventually admit that all the promotion in the world could not have helped this kind of material conquer it all over again.
ON TOP (1969)
1) Superfool; 2) I'm Gonna Set My Foot Down; 3) A Lion In The Jungle; 4) Baby, What You Want Me To Do; 5) Soul Beat; 6) Riverboat Annie; 7) Champaign, Illinois; 8) Power Of My Soul; 9) Brown Eyed Handsome Man; 10) C. C. Rider.
This is fun! In the wake of Elvis' «comeback» triumph in the late 1960s, record companies sud­denly decided that there may be some sort of market for the formerly out-of-fashion rockabilly veterans, after all, and few living rockabilly veterans were more out of fashion than Carl Perkins, so Carl Perkins was among the first ones to be given a chance to re-prove himself with a brand new LP. Titling it On Top was, perhaps, a bit of a stretch, but who knows? It might have helped it sell a few dozen more copies. Some people, as they walk into record stores, do feel themselves instinctively attracted to whatever seems to be «On Top», even if it really doesn't.
Top or bottom, though, the album is quite surprisingly good — and quite unpredictable, if you judge Carl's chances by the uneven and stylistically obsolete material he had been putting out for Columbia throughout the 1960s. The sound has been upgraded to match the times: you have elec­tric organs, fuzz effects, even wah-wah pedals, and, of course, the entire arsenal of late Sixties musical production to help Carl get along. But, much more importantly, On Top introduces sty­listic diversity and various modest elements of experimentation. In fact, apart from Carl's singing and some of his trademark guitar licks, the album is almost unrecognizable as coming from a «Perkins line of production» — and not at all in a bad way!
Original compositions here are few and far in between, but it does not matter: the idea here is not to prove that Carl Perkins can still dazzle the world with his songwriting, it is to prove that he can survive in the world of 1969, entertaining people by combining the usual fun Carl Perkins spirit with new forms of music-making. So he covers something like Chuck Berry's ʽBrown Eyed Handsome Manʼ, backed by a moody electric organ and playing a bunch of wah-wah solos, and it comes out all right — giving the song a gruffer, grumblier aura than the oh-so-happy original, but then, when you think of it, the lyrics of the song have always allowed for an «uncomfortable» interpretation of the message.
The true highlights of the album, however, are of a more recent origin. There is ʽChampaign, Il­linoisʼ, another wah-wah-driven blues-rocker, co-written by Carl with Bob Dylan during the lat­ter's Nashville phase; the hookline ("I certainly do enjoy / Champaign, Illinois") walks the line between silly, threatening, and phonetically irresistable, and may easily linger on in your head for weeks. There is Ronnie Self's obscure swamp-rocker ʽLion In The Jungleʼ, here adorned with an extra piano riff borrowed directly from the Beatles' ʽHey Bulldogʼ for extra «ferociousness», and sung by Carl in a delightfully insinuating tone. And then there is what could only be construed as Carl's own answer to Creedence's ʽProud Maryʼ — ʽRiverboat Annieʼ, which even uses some of the same chords, and packs every bit as much fun as the Fogerty song, though not as much of its stateliness and anthemic nature. ʽSuperfoolʼ, written by a friend of Carl's, is also a great rocker, once you get past its first-few-bars gimmick of incorporating the ʽEntry Of The Gladiatorsʼ theme into the organ accompaniment. And ʽPower Of My Soulʼ, an exercise in «minimalistic Memphis soul», as we might call it, is quite a touching number — much better, I'd say, than most of Carl's formulaic attempts at country balladeering throughout the decade.
All in all, these sharply restricted 25 minutes (and the people at Columbia are being generous!) are well worth your attention if you are at all interested in learning how all them 1950s rockers used to fare in the «past their prime» years, and why is it that we almost never know anything about those periods. Much of it has to do with non-musical reasons, such as lack of proper pro­motion and predictable prejudice — in all honesty, On Top, while nowhere near «cutting edge» for 1969, is still every bit as good as a whole swarm of second- and third-rate records by rock artists put out that year that we still remember. I mean, just off the top of my head, I'd take On Top any day over something like Steppenwolf's At Your Birthday Party or Mott The Hoople's self-titled debut. But who'd give it to me without my having to dig it out? Nobody. Which is why this particular thumbs up does really matter. Now you go and dig it out.
MY KIND OF COUNTRY (1974)
1) Help Me Dream; 2) You Tore My Heaven To Hell; 3) One More Loser Going Home; 4) Goin' To Memphis; 5) Lord I Sinned Again Last Night; 6) Just As Long; 7) (Let's Get) Dixiefried; 8) Honky Tonk Song; 9) Love Sweet Love; 10) Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town; 11) Never Look Back.
I am not too sure precisely what this title is supposed to mean. If this is really his kind of country, then what exactly would be not his kind of country? A proper logical reading would suggest that, by 1974, the genre of country was dishonored and spoiled beyond recognition, and that Carl's honorable mission, undertaken against all odds, was to restore it to the glory that it used to be. Another, equally justified, logical reading would be that it really was Carl's and nobody else's kind of country — that he himself was reinventing the genre, like Hank Williams or, say, Willie Nelson, and promoting this reinvention in a not-so-humble manner.
Unfortunately, one single listen to this rather uninspiring set of songs is quite enough to let you know that neither of these readings applies, the title simply being a hollow PR gesture, probably imposed on Carl by the label (he was briefly hooked up with Mercury at the time) rather than his own invention. Yes, this is country music, played and arranged rather typically for the early 1970s. Yes, there is not a lot of fiddle or banjo here; slide guitars, keyboards, and subtle orches­tration take their place, meaning that the sound leans more towards the roots-/folk-rock fashion of the epoch than «classic» «old style» country. But that does not make the songs more interesting.
The only thing that redeems the record is that several decades of performance have shaped Carl into a highly expressive, «mature» singer. His voice has deepened a little, gained more thickness and power, so that he fares much better now with sustaining notes and modulating the pitch in mid-air — singing these generic country tunes expertly, with feeling, and, most importantly, in a completely natural manner (no exaggerated Southern drawl or manneristic yodelling). In other words, the songs are generic country, but without any «arch-generic» country trademarks — perhaps from that point of view, after all, this is his kind of country.
Not all of this is sentimental mid-tempo / slow-tempo balladry, either. There is a fairly gritty rendition of ʽGoin' To Memphisʼ by Johnny Cash (arranged as if it were an R'n'B standard by the likes of Jimmy Reed), a rollicking, if rather superfluous, re-recording of Carl's own ʽDixie Friedʼ, and a fun resurrection of the old ʽHonky Tonk Songʼ. The covers do not add a lot to the originals, but it definitely makes more sense to hear these songs sung by Carl than, say, ʽWhole Lotta Sha­kin' Goin' Onʼ, since they do not require letting your hair down and Carl has always had that problem about letting his hair down (not having that much of it to begin with).
Still, compared to the genuinely promising self-reinvention of On Top, My Kind Of Country is a relative disaster — showing that the man was neither able nor willing to capitalize on that new sound, and preferred to retreat back to the tried and true. Lack of ambition is nothing to sneer at, of course, but art without ambition is usually boring (unless one is able to turn «lack of ambition» itself into the biggest ambition the world has ever seen, like J. J. Cale), and My Kind Of Coun­try is a textbook example of that kind of boredom.
OL' BLUE SUEDE'S BACK (1978)
1) Rock Around The Clock; 2) That's All Right Mama; 3) Kaw Liga; 4) Tutti Frutti; 5) I'm In Love Again; 6) Blue Suede Shoes; 7) Be Bop A Lula; 8) Maybellene; 9) Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On; 10) Hang Up My Rock'n'Roll Shoes; 11) Shake, Rattle And Roll; 12) Rock On Around The World.
Right, like anybody really needed «Ol' Blue Suede» back in 1978 — at the height of the disco / punk / New Wave explosion — and with a bunch of well-worn rockabilly standards at that. At least he could have tried to give us another On Top, but for some reason, United Artists wouldn't have it, and we ended up with something stupidly labeled «Carl Perkins' Tribute To Rock'n'Roll» — stupid, because how can somebody who actually invented rock'n'roll (or at least, a significant part of it) pay tribute to rock'n'roll? Imagine «Bob Dylan Covering The Wallflowers: A Tribute To My Son Jakob Dylan», or something like that.
Adding injury to insult, Carl's backing band for the album is stiff and uninspiring; his guitar sound is a little weird, too, much of it sifted through a special «chorus effects» box that was probably intended to «modernize» the songs for a somewhat more techno-savvy audience of 1978 (Kraft­werk fans and all that jazz), but it does not look like Perkins himself was totally at home with it, or, at least, it is not altogether evident that this particular effect, responsible for a «glassy» tinge to the sound, is exactly what he's been waiting for all these years in order to prove that he can still cut it in an impressive manner.
There is exactly one new song, placed in the anthemic final spot: ʽRock On Around The Worldʼ (what else could we be expected to do?), a well-meaning, but quickly forgettable piece of echoey twist with the old gimmick of introducing the instruments one-by-one, as if to demonstrate the proper way a rock'n'rolling atmosphere should be cooked up. Speaking of demonstration, the ori­ginal record, as well as some of its reissues, came packed together with bits of narration — Carl introducing each song with a brief story or moral, as one of several «rock'n'roll lessons», and, in fact, Ol' Blue Suede's Back does perhaps work better as a textbook, written by the old master for the youngsters, than a musical album as such. Except that even from that angle, it may have worked in 1978, being fresh and all, but who'd need a 1978 textbook on the music of 1956 in 2014? That's downright esoteric.
Luckily, in 2003 Sanctuary Records decided to re-release this long forgotten clunker as part of a 2-CD package (Jet Propelled) that also includes some fun live tracks recorded for the BBC as well as, most importantly, 13 additional songs from a follow-up album to Ol' Blue Suede that never materialized — even though, song by song, it is much more interesting than the «rock'n'roll tribute»: an actual new album with some country and folk oldies interspersed with some originals in an almost intriguing way. It even includes a corny, but totally heartfelt tribute to the freshly departed you-know-who — ʽThe Whole World Misses Youʼ is probably a bit too overtly senti­mental and textbookishly-gallant to make you shed an honest tear for The King, but Carl was a simple contry boy at heart, and besides, he did probably want to record a tribute for Elvis that would sound like an overblown Elvis ballad itself. However, it is really all those newer country-rock tunes, adapted by Carl to his own stylistics, like Steve Earle's ʽMustang Wineʼ, that provide the bulk of the fun — and although the backing band remains stiff, it still sounds like he's actually interested in doing these songs, rather than having one more go at ʽTutti Fruttiʼ. In short, it is to­tally unclear why and unjust that Ol' Blue Suede's Back was officially released, while this un­titled follow-up remained on the shelf — even if, judging from a charts-only point of view, they probably had more or less equal chance to cause a ripple among record buyers (none).
Consequently, if you see Jet Propelled, have a go at it — but don't bother with these rockabilly re-recordings; like 99% of «greatest hits» re-recorded by artists twenty to fifty years on, their only point of attraction was to prove to contemporaries that the artist was still alive and cookin'. Since Carl has not been alive and cookin' for quite some time now, Ol' Blue Suede's Back is no more than a historical curio.
BORN TO ROCK (1989)
1) Born To Rock; 2) Charlene; 3) The Rain Might Wash Your Love Away; 4) Hambone; 5) A Lifetime Last Night; 6) Cotton Top; 7) Baby, Please Answer Your Phone; 8) Till I Couldn't Stand No More; 9) Don't Let Go; 10) Love Makes Dreams Come True.
As the Eighties rolled about and rock music started to develop a historiographic tradition for the young 'uns, Carl Perkins was dutily enshrined, wrapped in plastic, and revered for his 1950s backlog, while at the same time politely prevented from putting out new material, lest the legend be soiled and tarnished by subpar additions. Admittedly, the man himself had little interest in catching up with the rest of the world, not to mention having to battle with personal problems, such as alcoholism, so it's not as if he had all that much to offer. In fact, most of his public pre­sence at the time was linked to his far more famous disciples — he worked on a Tug Of War song with Paul McCartney (ʽGet Itʼ was quite a fun little number), and then took part in a 1985 rock show with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Dave Edmunds (A Rockabilly Session, now available on DVD and quite a fun little concert).
Whatever albums he did release, though, were few and far in between; never charted; quickly went out of print; and more than often never went back in print again. Apparently, after the rather ridiculous 1978 «comeback» album he no longer stooped to recording collections of «golden oldies», aside from such oddities as 1996's Go Cat Go, which was really more of an all-star tri­bute to Carl than a proper Carl record; but it is not easy to ascertain what exactly he did record, given that most of his discographies are fairly messy, and some even contradictory.
Out of this mess, as one last cohesive nugget, I will fish out Born To Rock, a 1989 album that Universal Records actually released on CD, so you can find a digital equivalent somewhere out there if you put in a little effort. At that time, in the late Eighties, Carl did a little collaboration with The Judds (Naomi and Wynona, that weird country duo of mother and daughter where you couldn't really tell who was the mother and who the daughter), so, in retaliation for his services, he got their producer and bandleader to produce a new record all for himself. If you know what The Judds sound like — and you'd better not — you'll probably smell disaster in the air, but, for­tunately, Carl never let those other guys get the best of him, and thus, Born To Rock sounds no­thing like a typical Eighties' album.
If it doesn't quite sound like a typical Carl Perkins album, either, it is mainly because Carl does not play a lot of guitar on it, or, at least, a lot of lead guitar. I am not sure if this is due to health problems that he was going through at the time, or if it was a conscious decision on his part, but take heed, my friend: Born To Rock is a Carl Perkins album with very little Carl Perkins lead guitar on it (most of it found on the title track). He sings, he covers, he composes (a bit), but the days of jubilant six-string noises are mostly over.
But nevertheless, Born To Rock is a fun ride if you can get it. Carl Perkins can be boring when he simply re-records his old hits, or when he limits himself to generic country, yet whenever he puts his mind to the task of coming up with something a tad less predictable, his charm, humor, and subtlety always make it work. And work it does, particularly on the new songs co-written by Carl with his sons, Stan and Greg Perkins. The title track is in the man's classic rockabilly style, with anthemic, humorously self-aggrandizing lyrics to boot; ʽCharleneʼ is a re-write of some Chuck Berry number, accommodated to Carl's needs and riding on a simple, but effective pattern from piano player Bobby Ogden; and the two country ballads, although hampered somewhat by unnecessary backing vocals, still sound unusually heartfelt and «humanly» tender — perhaps be­cause they were freshly written by the Perkins family rather than borrowed from the usual Nash­ville conveyer belt. ʽLove Makes Dreams Come Trueʼ, in particular, is the kind of song that I usually cannot stand because of all the corn syrup, but Carl's vocal delivery indicates that he real­ly cared — it's one of those rare occasions on which he could rival Johnny Cash in terms of emo­tionality and direct human appeal, so to speak.
There are a few re-recordings of Carl's older obscurities as well (ʽHamboneʼ, ʽCotton Topʼ), and a couple new songs from outside songwriters that are relatively easy to forget, but on the whole, not a single tune here is unlistenable — if anything, the importance of Born To Rock is in show­ing that, until the very end, Perkins preserved a decent sense of taste, and, unlike many others, never allowed himself to be dragged into suspicious avenues. Synthesizers, drum machines, questionable technologies, pop-metal guitars, adult contemporary — forget about that. Cleaner production, sharper mixing, occasional straying away from the stereotypical rockabilly formula, that is allowed, but the man simply would not allow anybody to try and turn him into something he was not, and in the end, it paid off handsomely. Had he «sold out», he would probably not have actually sold many more records, but soiled his reputation. As it is, I am happy to say that I still have to hear a «bad» Carl Perkins album. Boring, yes, as the man pretty much let go of his songwriting skills past 1960 — but «bad», as in «embarrassingly» or «ridiculously» bad, never (well, Ol' Blue Suede Shoes comes close, perhaps, but still, even those re-recordings were «un­necessary» rather than «awful»). So take this last thumbs up as referring not just to Born To Rock as an album, but to Carl's mes­sy, obscure, and sometimes quite gratifying post-1960 career in general. Sometimes charisma and integrity may actually mean more than songwriting skills and dazzling musicianship — I'd say Carl is a prime example to illustrate that statement.

CHAMPION JACK DUPREE

VOL. 1: 1940-1941 (2009)
1) Gamblin' Man Blues; 2) Warehouse Man Blues; 3) Chain Gang Blues; 4) New Low Down Dog; 5) Black Woman Swing; 6) Cabbage Greens No. 1; 7) Cabbage Greens No. 2; 8) Angola Blues; 9) My Cabin Inn; 10) Bad Health Blues; 11) That's All Right; 12) Gibing Blues; 13) Dupree Shake Dance; 14) My Baby's Gone; 15) Weed Head Woman; 16) Junker Blues; 17) Oh, Red; 18) All Alone Blues; 19) Big Time Mama; 20) Shady Lane; 21) Hurry Down Sunshine; 22) Jackie P Blues; 23) Heavy Heart Blues; 24) Morning Tea; 25) Black Cow Blues.
William Thomas Dupree was quite an interesting character back in his days — for one thing, it's not that often that a musician temporarily abandons his career to become a boxer, which he did in the late 1920s and from which he gained his "Champion Jack" nickname. Eventually, he got beat up, and since that happened at about the same time that he crossed paths with fellow blues pianist Leroy Carr, he seemingly decided that punching them keys was, after all, a safer job than pun­ching faces — nevertheless, he was smart enough to keep the "Champion" moniker for PR rea­sons, even if there was hardly anything champion-like about his playing the blues.
Well, one thing that does look champion-like is the sheer quantity of recordings that the man had done: spanning the pre-war era of shellac 78"s and onwards all the way until his death in 1992, he kept pumping out product at a breathless pace, despite never having shown any compositional genius or truly outstanding musicianship. Hunting down all of his mammoth discography is a nearly hopeless and, most importantly, thoroughly ungrateful task. That said, there is nothing particularly unpleasant about his style either: in small doses, Champion Jack Dupree is always palatable, and his historical importance cannot be denied.
Most of the man's pre-LP-era output is now conveniently available in the form of a 4-volume CD package, released in 2009 on the JSP label and annotated by blues expert Neil Slaven; since these 4 volumes cover more than a decade of music-making, I will comment on each separately, even if you can probably guess that the Champion's style did not evolve too seriously over those years. That style is simple — blues and boogie piano playing, with minimal accompaniment: on the first 17 tracks here, the only additional player is bassist Wilson Swain, with guitarist Jesse Ellery joining the duo for the last eight. Dupree is a fun player, a decent entertainer, but with fairly simple technique (well, I guess you can't easily combine piano practice with a boxing career) and a nice, but unexceptional, singing voice, so there's not much difference between all these tracks, except for the base patterns — here he plays slow 12-bar, there he plays fast barrelhouse boogie, and here he... oh no, not another slow 12-bar?...
Anyway, there are a few tracks here that still deserve special mention. ʽCabbage Greensʼ, recor­ded here in two slightly different versions, is a variation on the old ʽCow Cow Bluesʼ boogie that most people probably know as Ray Charles' ʽMess Aroundʼ — and this gives us a good pretext to compare Dupree's playing with Ray himself, not to mention its more than obvious influence on a certain white guy named Jerry Lee Lewis: make the necessary chronological adjustments and you will see that this is as wild as it gets for 1940, just as Jerry Lee was as wild as it could get for 1956. In terms of fun and recklessness, he clearly beats Leroy Carr (who wasn't much about rompin' and stompin') and is closer in style to Pete Johnson, the notorious sidekick of Big Joe Turner, although I'd say that Dupree's playing is rowdier and more «populist», whatever that could mean under the circumstances.
More importantly, there's ʽJunker Bluesʼ here, written by Dupree's piano mentor Willie Hall (better known under the professional moniker of Drive 'Em Down) and, as far as I understand, originally recorded by Dupree himself. This one is particularly important for launching the career of Fats Domino nine years later — when he borrowed the melody wholesale and changed the controversial lyrics from "They call me, they call me the junker / Cause I'm loaded all the time" to the far safer "They call me, they call me the fat man / Cause I weigh two hundred pounds". If you had any doubts, the song goes on to be loaded with references to reefer, cocaine, needles, and feeling high, so god bless good old OKeh records for having the guts to release it in 1940, when, apparently, middle-class white audiences were not the target audience for this kind of stuff.
For that matter, the very titles of the songs alone show that Champion Jack was not the kind of guy to shy away from socially relevant topics and spend all his time on woman issues: there's ʽChain Gang Bluesʼ, there's ʽAngola Bluesʼ (referring to Louisiana State Penitentiary, not the African country), and there's ʽWeed Head Womanʼ (hmm, is this one more of a woman issue or a weed issue?). As time goes by (and the Champ's slowly rising popularity makes him more of a household name), these rough subjects do get more and more eclipsed by standard, polite-mouthed blues thematics, though, and ʽJunker Bluesʼ becomes ʽHeavy Heart Bluesʼ, with a slight accompanying drop in tempo and energy. Still, on the other hand, he gives Leroy Carr's ʽHurry Down Sunshineʼ a faster and rockier spin (as well as a completely different set of lyrics), meaning that, even if he was willing to tone down the scathingness of the words, the same did not apply to the boogie power of the music.
VOL. 2: 1941-1945 (2009)
1) My Cabin Inn; 2) Bad Health Blues; 3) Gibing Blues; 4) Dupree Shake Dance; 5) My Baby's Gone; 6) Jackie P Blues; 7) Black Cow Blues; 8) Jitterbug; 9) Slow Boogie; 10) Mexico Reminiscences; 11) Too Evil To Cry; 12) Clog Dance; 13) Rum Cola Blues; 14) She Makes Good Jelly; 15) Johnson Street Boogie Woogie; 16) I'm Going Down With You; 17) FDR Blues; 18) God Bless Our New President; 19) County Jail Special; 20) Fisherman's Blues; 21) Black Wolf; 22) Lover's Lane; 23) Walkin' By Myself; 24) Outside Man; 25) Forget It Mama.
In all honesty, the continuing life story of Champion Jack Dupree from 1941 to 1945 is far more interesting than the music that he recorded in between the rising and falling tides. In particular, in between the first batch of recordings on this disc (tracks 1–10, from late 1941 to early 1942) and the second one (tracks 11–25, from 1944 to 1945) Dupree was drafted into the Navy, where he spent time working as a cook before allegedly falling into the hands of the Japanese and spending two years as a PoW — just how true that part of the story is, nobody really knows. Whatever be the circumstances, May 1944 finds him back in New York City, and by April 1945, his studio routine recommences properly on a regular basis. Not only that, but in April 1945, he is laying down one of the most unique blues singles of his era: ʽFDR Bluesʼ, a 12-bar obituary, as the A-side, and ʽGod Bless Our New Presidentʼ, a 12-bar welcome for new guy Harry Truman, as the B-side. Talk about blending in with the times.
As for the actual music, the first seven tracks are just alternate takes of previously recorded tunes; marginally more interesting is the next one, ʽJitterbugʼ, where the Champ joins forces with the legendary duo of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry — provided you can even hear Sonny's har­monica at all, since the sound quality of the 1942 session is atrocious; at least it is fairly evident that the three are having good danceable fun in the studio. From the same session, we have ʽSlow Boogieʼ, which seems more like a demonstration of Dupree's simple, but effective technique rather than anything else; and ʽMexico Reminiscencesʼ, a mish-mash of random Latin motives that the man possibly picked up on some short trip across the border — curious that this sort of homebrewed self-entertainment was even captured on tape, but I guess we all need to hear an old time urban blues pianist practicing Mexican melodies in the middle of World War Two at some point in our lives. The oddest track of 'em all, though, is the May 1944 recording ʽClog Danceʼ, where Dupree is rattling the old piano to the merry sound of some unidentified female «clog-dancing» (very loudly) and whooping like there was no tomorrow — nice to know that the Japanese imprisonment did not lower the Champ's spirits one bit.
From then on, the 1945 tracks are standard blues-and-boogie fare, and even the «presidential single» is mostly notable for its lyrics — mood-wise, there's no way you could tell the «sad» lament for FDR from the «happy» welcome for Harry Truman. "I sure feel bad, with tears run­ning down my face / I lost a good friend, was a credit to our race" and "Stand behind our new President Truman, each and every one of you / Because you know that's what FDR would want us to do" are delivered with exactly the same emotion (codename «boy, I sure hope that paycheck is coming soon») and tag the offering as a hilarious historic oddity. Nevertheless, the very next recorded song is ʽCounty Jail Specialʼ, implying that the Champion is never going to turn into a pawn of the system — he just wants his paycheck, that's all — and will forever stay committed to being the true Champion of the underdogs and the dispossessed. Including sexually dispossessed, that is, since most of the other songs are about being cheated out of his woman, either directly (ʽWalkin' By Myselfʼ) or through seedy innuendos (ʽFisherman's Bluesʼ).
Unfortunately, little can be said about the musical side of these latter tracks — they all feature Dupree playing solo piano and singing, and even though the Japanese prisoner camp did not rob him of his piano skills, it sure didn't help improve them, either: same enjoyable, but predictable chords all over the place. We would have to really wait until the end of WWII before the guy started packing more meat into these arrangements.
VOL. 3: 1945-1949 (2009)
1) You've Been Drunk; 2) Santa Claus Blues; 3) Gin Mill Sal; 4) Let's Have A Ball; 5) Going Down Slow; 6) Hard Feeling; 7) How Long, How Long Blues; 8) Mean Old Frisco; 9) I Think You Need A Shot; 10) Bad Whiskey And Wild Woman; 11) Bus Station Blues; 12) Love Strike Blues; 13) Wet Deck Mama; 14) Big Legged Mama; 15) I'm A Doctor For Women; 16) Cecelia, Cecelia; 17) Going Down To The Bottom; 18) Fifth Avenue Blues; 19) Highway 31; 20) Come Back Baby; 21) Chitlins And Rice; 22) One Sweet Letter; 23) Lonesome Bedroom Blues; 24) Old Woman Blues; 25) Mean Mistreatin' Mama; 26) Featherweight Mama; 27) Day Break.
Nothing much happening on this particular volume, either, except that, after the first three tracks, the Champion is consistently accompanied on guitar by Brownie McGhee — sometimes as part of a trio, sometimes in a slightly larger band: a special landmark is ʽCecelia, Ceceliaʼ (sic!), where, for the first time ever, Dupree uses an ensemble of backing vocalists, a full rhythm section and a guest sax player. Reason? Well, the song itself is nothing but a lyrical rewrite of ʽCaldoniaʼ, recorded one year earlier by Louis Jordan, and, evidently, this was Dupree's first stab at imitating the big band jump blues approach of Jordan, which was quickly gaining ground as a replacement for the antiquated urban blues stylistics.
In fact, the liner notes do state that Dupree was finding life in New York particularly hard in the late 1940s, what with public interest moving away from strict blues (for which Chicago was becoming the main playground) and into the sphere of something more boogie-danceable. Never­theless, the stubborn artist ploughed on, reluctant to move out of his favorite city, and even found occasional opportunities to make recordings, usually on small local labels. The «big band» stint with ʽCeceliaʼ was actually good for about four tracks — after that, it is back to small scale once again, with the same batch of similar-sounding blues and boogie tunes as always.
That said, some of these duets between Jack and Brownie rise notably above the average level: see ʽBad Whiskey And Wild Womanʼ (sic!), a reflection on the subject of "by the year 1963, I wonder what will become of me?" with Brownie echoing the singer's dark forebodings with some suitably grumbly lead lines in between some verse lines and allaying his worst fears with lighter, gentler, ripplier lines in between others — and also pushing Dupree as a pianist to try his best with a flourish-laden solo that seems to show off more than his standard technique. You do have to make an effort to sort them out from the chaff, though: much more often, it's just Jack boxing the keys over and over, concentrating on his verbal innuendos (ʽWet Deck Mamaʼ, ʽBig Legged Mamaʼ — the latter would soon turn into ʽBig Leg Emmaʼ and stay that way forever) rather than on varying his playing style, because nobody was buying his records anyway, so why bother?
The most unusual track on this volume is the last one — a moody slow blues entitled ʽDaybreakʼ, with Brownie playing a strangely distorted electric guitar and then, very soon, yielding the spot­light to the anonymous bass player, who plays a catchy, fluent, and, most importantly, loud jazzy melody, as if he were Willie Dixon or something. The weirdest thing is that we seem to know the names of the bass players for all the previous sessions (Count Edmondson first, and then Cedric Wallace of Fats Waller's fame), but not for this particular one. It's probably That Perfect Bass Player Who Came From Heaven, and then went back again after laying down this one perfect bass track. What made him descend upon Champion Jack Dupree, of all people, remains a mystery — just one more odd chapter in the already befuddling life story of this guy.
VOL. 4: 1951-1953 (2009)
1) Deacon's Party; 2) My Baby's Comin' Back Home; 3) Just Plain Tired; 4) I'm Gonna Find You Someday; 5) Goin' Back To Louisiana; 6) Barrel House Mama; 7) Old, Old Woman; 8) Mean Black Snake; 9) The Woman I Love; 10) All Night Party; 11) Heart Breaking Woman; 12) Watchin' My Stuff; 13) Ragged And Hungry; 14) Somebody Changed The Lock; 15) Stumbling Block Blues; 16) Highway Blues; 17) Shake Baby Shake; 18) Number Nine Blues; 19) Drunk Again; 20) Shim Sham Shimmy; 21) Ain't No Meat On De Bone; 22) The Blues Got Me Rockin'; 23) Tongue Tied Blues; 24) Please Tell Me Baby; 25) Walkin' Upside Your Head; 26) Rub A Little Boogie; 27) Camille.
The final volume in the series traces our Champion's adventures in the early Fifties, with at least four different small-size labels in New York City (Apollo, Gotham, King, Red Robin), each of which wasted no time in dropping the Champ after two or three tenaciously commercially un­successful singles — released under at least five different band names and pseudonyms (in­cluding «Big Chief Ellis & His Blues Stars», «Meat Head Johnson & His Blues Hounds», and «Lightning Junior & The Empires»), before finally giving it up and returning to using his original moniker for two sessions in 1953.
Now one might indeed argue that the lack of success was due to New York's general lack of interest in the blues at the time (jazz was really where it was at), but then again, let's admit it, all these sides that Dupree cut at the time weren't exactly the epitome of notability or originality, even though, with Brownie McGhee at his side for most of these sessions, Dupree had a good guitar backing, and on some of these tracks, they are also joined by Brownie's younger brother, Stick, the guy who, some say, was single-handedly responsible for inventing rock'n'roll with his classic recor­ding of ʽDrinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Deeʼ back in 1947.
As «Meat Head Johnson & His Blues Hounds», they almost came close to replicating that sound with ʽOld, Old Womanʼ, where, at the beginning, you will be hearing some angry distorted guitar chords coming right out of the (future!) Keith Richards chordbook; and it gets even better on ʽShake Baby Shakeʼ from 1953, with both Brownie and Stick on guitars and the Champ laying on a groove that would, of course, only three years later morph into the classic ʽWhole Lotta Shakin' Going Onʼ groove of Jerry Lee Lewis. If only the Champion could show the same punch that the Killer would show... but the days of true rock'n'roll wildness were still ahead, and these cats had to show some decorum, because even with all of New Yorkish tolerance towards black musicians, politeness in playing dance music was still a necessary prerequisite for not being run out of town. Still, there's as much rock'n'roll drive in these tracks here as you could only wish for 1953. Also, ʽShim Sham Shimmyʼ totally rules, with a bombastic drum beat, guitar more distorted than on any given Chuck Berry tune, and cool jazz-boogie runs from Stick that totally presage Alvin Lee of Ten Years After in tone and style, if not in flash.
Still, the majority of these tracks is not proto-rock'n'roll, but slow 12-bar blues, and here, there is nothing more to add unless you really want to start analyzing the lyrics — some of which are quite interesting from the point of historical studies in the evolution of political correctness (ʽTongue Tied Bluesʼ), or from the point of folkloristic studies of the evolution of text (the song that we usually know as ʽLouiseʼ, because this is the name under which it crossed the Atlantic and fell in the hands of The Yardbirds and others, is here called ʽCamilleʼ... come to think of it, the only words it shares with ʽLouiseʼ are in the chorus, but the chorus coincides completely). Also, if I am not mistaken, ʽAin't No Meat On De Boneʼ has a New Orleanian, Mardi Gras-like carnivalesque groove to it (think Professor Longhair), which makes it somewhat of an oddity in the Champion's New York-era material.
Bottomline is, none of this material ever sold much, despite a few of the tracks truly being on the cutting edge of the rock'n'roll movement for 1951-53, but you just gotta admire the guy's tena­ciousness — he eventually spent almost fifteen years on the fringes of New York's musical life, jumping from label to label and making a living by any means he could. It was, in fact, nothing short of amazing that despite all his shortcomings, he was eventually able of securing himself a short-lived contract with no less than Atlantic Records themselves around 1959 (perhaps through the Stick McGhee connection?), at which point we end the story of this 4-CD package and move on to the next exciting (or not so exciting) chapter in the life of the Champion.
BLUES FROM THE GUTTER (1958)
1) Strollin'; 2) TB Blues; 3) Can't Kick The Habit; 4) Evil Woman; 5) Nasty Boogie; 6) Junker's Blues; 7) Bad Blood; 8) Goin' Down Slow; 9) Frankie And Johnnie; 10) Stack-O-Lee.
Probably the single best known album of the Champion's career — if only for being, well, the first album of the Champion's career: Blues From The Gutter, released at the tail end of the Fifties, opens a long, long, long, and largely ignored string of LPs, and back then it had the benefit of intro­ducing Dupree to a fresh new audience, one that was actually interested in hearing him play, as opposed to all those singles from the 1940s, released in the face of a largely indif­ferent and highly limited New York public. Above all, it was his debut for Atlantic Records, and that in itself was a guarantee that the man would be heard world-wide — in fact, reliable sources state that Blues From The Gutter made a fairly deep impression on none other than Brian Jones himself, even if in the grand scheme of things it was probably not too significant.