Yeah, we was playing country music back in, ah, in the early Forties and Fifties but Ernest Tubb, people like this, and they had songs out, I liked them and everything but you just couldn't, you couldn't dance to it too good. So, well, I just kept in those places like this [music] Ernest Tubb music was kind of [music] like that. So then, I, I don't know about you all but I know how I feel, I can't dance to that kind of music myself. So then I started listening to this kind right here and you can just tell that [music] it just, it just got, it [music] so the other guitar would take a run where I go [music] So it had a feel to it, it had a feel to it. It had a feel and, and you could dance to it. You could move, move your body, you stand there dance with your girl, she'd move and you could move and, and it had a lot of feeling to it. So I guess that's why I liked it so good and most people that I've run around with liked it real good. And, ah, but we couldn't play it at home.

Give us that Ernest Tubb stuff.

[music]

Tell us a little bit about the poverty, the kind of background you all came from.

Well we was coming right out of the Depression in the Forties and, ah, every, nobody had any money. Really it was till after the war that people had any money were during, all during the war, World War II which started in 1941, everybody was poor. Depression was, was bad and the only people that, ah, really had anything, really had anything was people lived on farms and had their own food and cows and hogs and stuff. People lived in Memphis I mean it was really, in towns and cities, was just really bad off. They didn't have any jobs and, and the families was working and trying to make ends meet and it was just, it was just a real tough situation. And so the kids, if you got like my first guitar I played two dollars for, my first guitar was a little three-quarter size guitar with straighted up off the neck of about that high, I bought it up there on Pond Street. My mother gave me two dollars go buy a pair of shoes, I had a hole in my shoes, I went up there and bought a guitar, guitar hid it under the bed. But I, I had the guitar. When she'd go to work during the day I'd get the guitar out and play out. And, ah, and, ah, but it was just, times was just tough and all the projects like, we lived in subsidized housing, projects, we lived in Logdale Court, I mean in Mark Terrace and Elvis and Bill Black and Jimmy Denson, Lee Denson, it had, out on, was on Bick Records, had New Shoes, he, they lived over there in, in Logdale Courts and they were subsidized. It was all subsidized housing. Everybody was, mostly back in those days, I knew I was living in subsidized housing, one, some, some type of subsidized housing. Now the people who had money of course they lived out in the edge of town around, you know, in different places but, but once it lived in, inside the city, the downtown areas of the city, ah, they, nobody had any money that I knew of, I just didn't know anybody had any money. You know the parents would work all week and the old man drank, well, he'd go out and spend most of the money on Friday and Saturday nights and you'd do without the rest of the week, you know, what, what you had left over. Your mama worked, your mama had to work too but she'd bring home the groceries, the old man drank up the beer. So, so, it was just tough. I mean it was just tough times back in those days, you know, and, ah, ah. I guess the kids that's all they had to do. I mean you, you go out and have street fights and get your guitar and start playing. So I didn't want to get in trouble so I got a guitar and started picking guitar. And, ah, all my friends, most of my friends did because, so we all came out of the same mold, seem like, all everybody I knew, Johnny Dorset Burnett, Elvis, Bill Black, Sky Moore. They all came out of the same type environment. So, ah, I guess that's why with the blues it fit us just as much as it did the black because we was going through hard times just as much as they were. You know, it just, ah, ah, I guess it's just a feeling at that time, it's a feeling you had. You did have the blues, everybody had the blues right along about that time. I remember my daddy talking about when they would, just before they moved to Memphis, he said, the went rabbit hunting one day and he said he, he was, he said he shot a rabbit and six other people shot at it at the same time. So you know, you know things were getting bad when there was six people after one rabbit, so. That was some tough times.

We want to hear you describing hearing Elvis for the first time. Did you tell me that you were at his first show? Can you describe the first time you heard him play and your reaction and the reaction of the audience.

Well, actually the first time I heard him play, it was on the record, going to work one morning.

Well the first time I had heard, the first time, blah, blah, blah. The first time I heard Elvis on the air when I was going to work one morning. And, ah, and they was playing, "That's Alright Mama", Dewey Publix was playing it on his program. And, ah, and, ah, you know, ah, you know, I worked at Crown at the same time but you know I didn't even know his name at the time. I seen him around up at, at Crown Electric Company. I worked at Crown Electric Company, see, I was going to work one morning, they said, this boy here is a Memphis boy, Elvis Presley, you know. I seen him up there. And, ah, but I heard that song and I said, gosh, what a sound, you know. I was going to work, I was driving, I had the radio on and I said, wow, that knocks me out, you know. Then he called it out, Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black. And I said, that's that boy, he's an electrician, I said, he's not electrician yet 'cause he works at the shop and he's just a material boy. I said, he's not electrician yet, I know. I said but I know who they're talking about, I said, works down in the shop, you know. So he worked down there, he put up material and swept the floor and put up material and brought material down to a job to the electricians like conduit and stuff like this he would bring down to a job to people. But the music just knocked me out, you know, till next time.

But that song really knocked me out.

But that song would have knocked me out, "That's Alright Mama". I tell you, I, I just, I could hear each instrument, each one was complementing each other on that song. You could hear the bite slap, you could Scotty Moore, you could hear El, Elvis playing the rhythm, his singing. And it just knocked me out. And, ah, I didn't see him for, Elvis Presley, I didn't see Elvis for a few weeks, ah, till after the song came out. And then I saw him one day out on a job and I told him I really liked his record, you know, I said, man, that sounds great, you know. And he kind of dropped his head, said, thanks, thanks, thanks a lot man. You know, you know, he was kind of shy like, you know, he kind of shook his head, you know, he's always shaking his shoulders a little bit, you know his collar turned up a little bit, you know, about halfway was back, back there like that, you know, he, like that, you know, he'd turn the collar about halfway up, down like that, you know, he walked around like that. So, ah, we had our work clothes on, you know, so. So anyway next time I seen him I went to one of his shows, the first, I guess about the first show he put on in Memphis was out at the Shell, at, over the Park Shell at Memphis. And, ah, ah, a lot of country stars was on there with him out there, ah, in fact, I think Hank Snow and bunches of people, Grant Ropper was on the same show and so Elvis was on the show, Bob Neal booked him out there I think. Booked, he in Memphis that books people. And, ah, but I remember when we was backstage with him talking to him back, back, backstage there talking.

Just say the first time you saw him in a live show.

Well the first time I actually saw him in live performance was at the Shell Tier, Shell over to the park. And, ah, ah, it was just a lot of, a lot of other people in the same show with him out there. And, ah, ah, but he was scared. Before the show we was, we was backstage back there talking to, to Scotty and Bill, 'cause I knowed Bill ever since we was just little kids, Bill Black and we was all sitting back there talking, you know. And, and, ah, so you know, he, ah, he, ah, he was really scared. He was really scared because nobody likes to play their hometown I don't think too much, I don't. But, you know, and all everybody that knows you, you know, all them ol’ boys jealous of you and the throwing bananas at you. So Elvis, he was really nervous but, you know, Scotty was more nervous than Bill, than, than Elvis was when they went out on stage. Scotty, he was playing the guitar and he was standing up and his leg was just shaking like this. I was, we was, 'cause we was kidding him, you know, and ribbing him and everything you know. And, ah, but we went backstage, looking at, back, back behind the curtain. And, ah, so after he did, "That's Alright Mama" …

We was standing backstage and, ah, when Elvis and Scotty and Bill went out on the stage so we was standing back there watching him. And, ah, he went out and sing a couple of songs then he sing, "That's Alright Mama". So, ah, and he started in that de, de, de de, de, da, da, de, shaking his legs. And all the girls said, ahh, screaming, holding their head, you know, and everything and hollering and going on. So he went off the stage, you know, so, ah, they, they just kept on applauding, everybody just kept on applauding. We're going, wow, did you see that? Johnny Burnett was out there whistling, Joyce Burnett was there standing with us. We was all standing there watching him, you know, we said, man, look at that. You know and they called him back about three times. He went back and he'd go right back and every time he go back out there, he'd go right dat, dat, dee, dee, di, do, dee. He'd do that right there and then he'd go from there on, you know, finish the song out, you know. And, ah, they'd just scream and holler, you know, and he came off the stage. Boy, he was just all tickled, tickled, you know, just real happy and everything. And Scotty had a big beam with his face. Bill was real satisfied. And, ah, so, ah, we congratulated him, you know, and was talking to him, congratulating him and everything. And so he was off then. He was, he was there and he was, just seemed like he just bloomed into a, seemed like he just come right out of his shell, right there, that night, he just came right out of that shell, right out of that shell. And he just wasn't the same person after that, so. And from there on he just got to be a giant, he just got to be, well, I don't think people in Memphis really knew how big he was till after he died. People start coming from all over the world, getting cards and letters and everything.

What do you think he was doing that made him such a giant, made him popular so fast? What was he doing that was so different?

I think the teenagers, people was looking for some, something kind of like him 'cause James Dean had got killed and, and, ah, I think they was looking kind of a, it's not really a rebellious thing, it's just something different than their parents did and their older brothers and sisters did. And I think it's the generation that came along right at that time just, they just wanted a leader or somebody that, ah, that, ah, was daring to do, to be different. That's what I think.

This style was really catching on and you can demonstrate what it is and how it's different from country.

Alright, then after Elvis was, "That's Alright Mama" then his style was, started catching on with all the little, the bands around Memphis and stuff 'cause we kind of got in on it too. But, ah, we was doing a lot of stuff, ah, ah, kind of up tempo, everybody started going with up tempo type of stuff instead of the real slow country type stuff, started going to the up tempo type stuff in the country music. And we started going to stuff like this. [music] Stuff like that, alight. Then we started going back and still we would watch the dance floor and we would do, putting more boogie stuff into, to the thing and into the song. And then they would dance more. And they would, would put more feeling into it. So we started going into a thing like this when we call it, that's what we call Rockabillie. [music] So it, it had a beat, is a country flavor but it still had a beat to it. So people when they was coming out of the jitterbug into the bop, that's the time it was going from a jitterbug in the Forties to the Fifties into the bop, was jitterbugging, big band, jitterbug into the bop. So they could do the same thing with the bop, they could with jitterbug, they just didn't slide the girls through their legs and do all that stuff like that. But they could still jig it back and go through the same movements, with the jitterbug with the, the movements of the feet. And still get the same flavor by doing that type, that type of stuff like that. [music] You could slow it down. Or you could speed it up, according to, if you, you watched the audience out on the floor and if you see which one when it danced filled the dance floor up, you know that they'd like it. If you, you could tell by the tempo by watching the audience, the people dancing out there. You could just watch. If you started slow and half of them got out there and danced, then, ah, then the next time you play it. You speed it up a little bit as if the whole dance was full of people, you know if they liked that better. So we just kind of set the tempo by the way the people danced. So, ah, so the fast part, it goes, [music] they would have danced fast, you just go back and then you back and slow it down, you just go back to the slow part. [music]