Blue Suede Shoes

“Blue Suede Shoes” is a song written and originally performed by Carl Perkins. Carl Perkins was born dirt-poor. His parents were sharecroppers. After listening to the Grand Ole Opry, Carl wanted to learn to play guitar. His dad made him his first one from a cigar box and broom handle and later managed to buy him a real guitar, although they were still very poor and couldn’t afford to buy new strings when the original ones broke. When this happened, Carl tied the ends together and then learned to bend the strings to get different notes and avoid running his fingers over the knots.

 Carl was a fan of bluegrass, and all things Bill Monroe. When he heard Elvis Presley sing “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, a Bill Monroe song, Carl found the kind of music he wanted to play. His first recording contract was with Sun Records and there he would eventually be identified as part of the Million Dollar Quartet along with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.

 As part of Sun Records, Carl got to tour with Elvis and Johnny and on one of these occasions Cash told him a story. While in the Air Force, Cash remembered a serviceman, C.V.Wright, who referred to his dress shoes as “Blue Suede Shoes”. And Johnny suggested that Carl should write a song about blue suede shoes. Carl initially rejected the idea (what did he know about shoes?) and neither Carl nor Wright could afford such an expensive pair of shoes. Perkins later told a story about playing at a sorority when he overheard a guy warn his date not to step on his suedes. Carl went home that night and wrote “Blue Suede Shoes” embellishing the lyrics with questions of what someone might prefer instead of them messing up his shoes, “Well, you can knock me down, step in my face / Slander my name all over the place / Do anything that you want to do/ But uh-uh honey, lay off of my shoes.”

 Elvis also had a hit with the song, and the Beatles had a hit with the B-side, “Honey Don’t.” And although Elvis is the person commonly identified with rockabilly (rock+hillbily), a genre incorporating elements blues, honky-tonk, western swing, and country. “Blue Suede Shoes” is considered one of the defining rockabilly records.

 With this illustration I tried to capture the look and feel of 1950’s album design and typography.