Scotty Moore

...

Elvis stuff, but I, I really got into that, uh, '50s, you know, stuff with Scotty Moore playing, playing guitar and, and all, and uh, you know, and Ch- and Chuck Berry.

Yeah.

Oh, man, Chuck Berry was my first guitar hero.

Who's the best guitarist? A lot of people talk about Clapton, Dave Gilmour.

I don't want to say all these stupid voices of brilliant guitarists, but you've got people like Dwayne Eddy, Les Paul, Shet Atkins, Dick Dale, Scotty Moore of Elvis fame to some extent.

He's a different type of guitar hero, of course, as well.

Dwayne Eddy recorded an album with Richard Hawley and his band later on.

Series

regulars include Michael St. Gerard as Elvis, as I mentioned, Millie Perkins, who co-starred with Elvis in Wild in the Country as Gladys Presley, Billy Greenbush as Vernon Presley, and Jesse Dabson as Scotty Moore, Blake Gibbons as Bill Black, Kelly Williams as Maddie Walker, a.k.a. Dixie Locke, and Jordan Williams as Sam Phillips.

Now, we're watching right now episode three.

It's called The Locket.

Yeah.

And also just to the sense of the timeline, this is roughly ahead of July 30th, 1954 when Elvis first played the Overton.

Because as they're starting to make out here in the car, Scotty and Bill show up because they went looking for him to give him the news that they're going to be playing with Slim Whitman.

at the Overton park shell.

Everything.

You know, it's like, yeah, you go back to, to, y- yeah, you have Scotty Moore, then you got The Beatles, then you got Hendrix and Page, but then there's Eddie, and there's a reason we call him The King.

You know what I mean? It's just, oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

The set list for this concert is nearly identical.

The bass is a bass from the 50s, and one of the guitars was even signed by Scotty Moore, Presley's guitarist for the 1956 show.

For Perkins, this isn't just another tribute.

Looking at this man who at the time in 56 was 21 years old, blowing up into this huge phenomenon, and yet he comes back and gives back to his childhood community.

I didn't know quite where I was going.

And then I heard Scotty Moore, Elvis' guy, play the solo on Heartbreaker Tale.

And then Elvis with the look and the whole deal.

I thought...

Oh man, A Date With Elvis.

Fair enough, that's a good one.

Because when you mention guitar players, Scotty Moore.

It's a difficult question again because Cliff Gallop and Scotty Moore, they were different, but they were great rockabilly players.

Like, just, Elvis didn't have...

You know what? Maybe it was Scotty Moore's.

I've read too many books to keep track.

I know, right? [laughs]

I, I, I bought what's called a, a Gibson 295, uh, in about 1985, '86.

And because it's known as a Gibson Scotty Moore, and I'd seen that Elvis Presley's guitar playing it... guitar player playing it, Scotty Moore.

Every time I picked up that guitar, I was just playing rockabilly on it.

Yeah.

Elvis, or any of the musicians involved, envisaged that they were in fact laying down a blueprint for a whole new revolution in popular music when they cut this and other early tracks.

The country finger-style pick-in of the legendary Scotty Moore, the late Bill Black's two-in-the-bar slap-walking bass, and the alternating sticks-on-snare rim-drumming or tub-thumping backbeat of DJ Fontana were soon to be absorbed by a whole new generation of copyists." It was a revelation to rehear the raw excitement that they projected behind Presley, whose voice was still completely naive and unadulterated by the demands of commercialism that were later to become imposed on him.

I found this a really interesting piece because, you know, we talk about the image of Elvis and how it just bursts onto the scene later.

But it wasn't until being an Elvis fan for 15, 20 years that I really got into the minutiae of how those early recordings were so distinctive and groundbreaking just in the way they were made and the styles of musicianship.

Really?

I mean, he played with Scotty Moore and he had all those guys on there.

Yeah.

I mean, uh-