WORDS BY JACK WATKINS
“Carl Perkins was the first rock’n’roll singer there ever was, even before Bill Haley,” said Gene Vincent in a late interview. “Even Elvis will admit it if you ask him. Bill Haley will admit it as well, and if it hadn’t been for that crash when he wrecked his back, Carl Perkins would have been the biggest rock’n’roll singer ever.”
Strictly speaking, the earliest, previously unreleased, recordings made before the artist joined Sun in 1954 on the new vinyl LP from Bear Family, Discovering Carl Perkins – Eastview, Tennessee 1952-53, don’t entirely reinforce Vincent’s argument. They actually confirm him as an authentic country performer whose vocalising was underpinned by a keen and soulful sense of the blues, or as he would have put it, “blues with a country beat.” His Good Rockin’ Tonight, possibly cut a year or two before Elvis Presley got to work on his version for Sun, is delivered as a swinging, churchified country blues boogie. He sings Eddy Arnold’s There’s Been A Change In Me and his rough, lazy drawl seems closer to Jimmie Rodgers than the smoother, more finished style of Arnold (an effect maybe exaggerated by the primitive recording). Among the other tracks on the 10” disc are rare outtakes from Perkins’ earliest Sun days. It’s the raw energy of these, especially the cherished Gone, Gone, Gone, that remind the listener of his talents as one of the most elemental of the early rockers, who had long claimed that he’d been performing rock’n’roll before he heard the Hillbilly Cat was doing the same.