BILL & SUE-ON HILLMAN: A 60-YEAR MUSICAL ODYSSEY
Hillman Book Project: ~ Roots Section and Gigs Section
Presents
SCOTTY MOORE
www.hillmanweb.com/elvis/band/scotty.html
SCOTTY MOORE: Dec 27, 1931 – June 28, 2016
Stars Behind the Sun ~ Once in a Blue Moon
Hillman Gig Notes Excerpt
https://www.hillmanweb.com/book/gigs/10.html#stars
We attended a special early '70s Elvis show in a much more intimate Vegas showroom setting than that of the real Elvis show we had just seen over in the huge International. Instead of the King's big show band, with full orchestra and large array of backup singers, this show featured the stripped down band that had backed Elvis in the '50s: Scotty Moore, DJ Fontana and The Jordanaires.Scotty, one of my guitar idols, played all the famous Sun records echo guitar riffs. The Jordanaires sang the backup vocals we had heard so many times on so many hit records in their perfect gospel/pop harmonies. There was no Bill Black on doghouse bass -- he had died back in 1965 -- but original drummer DJ Fontana and a fill-in bass player kicked out the rhythms that had supercharged Elvis on so many tours of the Southland, the Louisiana Hayride shows and his historic TV appearances all through the '50s.
There were numerous authentic costume changes, the vocals were right on for all the hits, and all the familiar moves were there. For anyone who had come under Elvis's magic in the '50s this was a dream come true -- a trip back in time to the glory days of rock 'n' roll. There was only one small problem with this show. Elvis was played by look-alike, sound-alike, move-alike tribute artist Rick Saucedo. . . but. . . "It was a night oo-oo what a night, It was it really was such a night."
Scotty Moore: 10 Essential Songs "People don't know what they want until they hear it," Scotty Moore once said. After the world heard Moore, who died Tuesday at age 84, it became clear that his sound was in high demand. As Elvis Presley's lead guitarist in the Fifties and Sixties, he helped solidify the guitar's role as a focal point and foil for the lead singer within a rock & roll context and influenced multiple generations of players that followed in his wake. With his quick licks, fierce solos and lithe rhythms, Moore provided the perfect backdrop for Presley to burst to the fore with his wide array of soon-to-be-legendary histrionics. Before there was Keith and Mick, before Page and Plant, before Morrissey and Marr, before Axl and Slash, there was Scotty and Elvis.
“Mystery Train,” “Jailhouse Rock” and other era-defining tracks
from Elvis Presley’s right-hand guitar man
Ref: Rolling Stone
Elvis Presley and Scotty Moore rehearse for their appearance on the Milton Berle Show
at the NBC Burbank studios on June 4 1956 in Los Angeles California.Moore wasn't just a pioneering rock guitarist; he was also one of the best. (In Rolling Stone's ranking of the 100 Greatest Guitarists, Moore comes in at Number 29.) Throughout a given song he would alternate between impressively cool detachment and intense, explosive passion. As he played, he wove together a wide range of different blues and country flavors and in doing so, created something truly
unique.Beyond the multitude of Number One singles, you need only listen to the diverse array of pupils who studied his every move on wax to get a sense of his lasting legacy. "Tone is the thing," Jeff Beck said. "That's something that came from Scotty Moore, who once told me, 'Get some better tone and you're
there.'" Keith Richards was equally effusive, if not more to the point, when he wrote in his autobiography, Life, that "Scotty Moore was my icon.""I'm very proud of how much the music has held up over the years," Moore told RS back before he was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. So it has. Here are 10 of his greatest contributions to rock & roll.
Elvis Presley, "That's All Right" (1954)
It all began with this one song. After months of trying to get his attention, in the summer of 1954, Elvis Presley finally managed to convince Sun Records head Sam Phillips to give him a shot. The producer thought the young man might have some promise, so Phillips called up his friend Scotty Moore to see if he'd be interested in doing something with him. Presley and Moore, along with bassist Bill Black, hit it off and shortly thereafter a recording session was booked for July 5th. When they got into the studio however, things just weren't clicking musically. It was only when Elvis began singing a snippet of the Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup song "That's All Right" in between sessions that any kind of spark lit up in the room. "All of a sudden," Moore told Presley's biographer Peter Guralnick, "Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool too, and I started playing with them." It was a moment pure improvisation, but an inspired one. The song was released as Presley's first single, and served as the launching point for his eventual ascent to King of Rock & Roll status.
Elvis Presley, "Good Rockin' Tonight" (1954)
For Elvis' second Sun single, Phillips chose the semi-obscure jump-blues number "Good Rocking Tonight," originally written by R&B singer Roy Brown in 1947. While Presley sounds clearly energized on the track, it's Moore's pair of expressive guitar solos, coming first around the :40 mark and again a minute later, that steal the show. "They were completely off the cuff," Moore explained of his approach to soloing. "You might get a bass riff or something, as a hook for the song, but the solos were strictly ad lib. Even now I'll go back and I can't play note for note what I played then. I can get the general feel of it but I can never go back and hit it note for note. It just doesn't feel right."
Elvis Presley, "Mystery Train" (1955)
When it debuted in August 1955, "Mystery Train" actually hit the shelves as the B side to another song, "I Forgot to Remember to Forget." While the lead single was just fine, the flip side refused to be ignored: "Mystery Train" is a mesmerizing fusion of country and rock that's since become an enduring classic in both fields and eventually landed at Number 77 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Much of the song's lasting appeal comes courtesy of the almost otherworldly tone that Moore pulled from his trusted Gibson ES-295. "'Mystery Train' became like a signature thing for me," Moore explained. "That was the first one I played through my custom-made amplifier. It had the same slapback effect that Sam had been using on the overall record."
Elvis Presley, "Baby Let's Play House" (1955)
"Baby Let's Play House" is one of the more plainly sexually suggestive songs in Elvis' oeuvre. When he warbles, "Come back baby/I wanna play house with you," you don't really need to read between the lines to understand what he's getting at. Moore lends the playful cut a light musical touch that runs counter to Black's brooding, very present bass line. Shortly after it debuted, the song climbed all the way up to Number Five on the Billboard Country Singles chart, but as fate would have it, "Baby Let's Play House" actually ended up having an even more important impact overseas. "The record that made me want to play guitar was 'Baby, Let's Play House,'" Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page recalled in 1977. "There was just so much vitality and energy coming out of it."
Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel" (1956)
In 1956, the pressure was really on for Elvis. He had just signed a new deal with RCA Records for the then almost unheard of sum of $40,000 and his new bosses were expecting him to deliver hits. Rather than be cowed, however, Presley came into the studio brimming with confidence: It was he who suggested that they record the song "Heartbreak Hotel," and it was he who advocated that it be released against some of the wishes of the suits upstairs. History, of course, proved Presley right. When the song debuted in January, "Heartbreak Hotel" wasn't just a hit; it was a phenomenon. People simply couldn't get enough of Presley's moody crooning, or of Moore's jangly, echo-drenched guitar. The call-and-response dynamic between the two men was never stronger or more engaging than it was on "Heartbreak Hotel." This chemistry imbued the song with a distinctive intrigue that audiences found irresistible.
Elvis Presley, "Blue Suede Shoes" (1956)
Presley's take on "Blue Suede Shoes" wasn't intended as a vindictive shot at his former label and personal friend Carl Perkins; according to Scotty Moore it was birthed out of real admiration. "It's been claimed that RCA and Colonel Parker were trying to get Elvis to do the song," Moore said, "But he did it more as a tribute thing than anything else. He had been talking to the band about it, and then he just decided he wanted to do it." In Perkins' hands, "Blue Suede Shoes" was a relatively laid-back rocker with a distinctive, countrified flair. Presley's version lifts the tempo while dispatching with most of the song's subtler charms. Moore is particularly in your face here, offering up a pair of nasty, rollicking solos near the beginning and middle of the track. In the end, Presley's take on the song helped Perkins out tremendously by giving him a much needed financial boost as he was recovering from injuries sustained in a brutal car accident on March 21st, 1956, that nearly cost him his life.
Elvis Presley, "Jailhouse Rock" (1957) N/A
From the very first crack of the snare drum, combined with Moore's distinctive two-note intro, everything about this hit single screams attitude. "'Jailhouse Rock' was supposed to be like prisoners breaking rocks on a rock pile," drummer D.J. Fontana explained in his 2002 memoir. "Scotty and I got over in a corner and I'd play the first beat and he'd play the one in the middle. We were actually just piddling around with it. They had the mics on and they asked what we were doing. So we said, 'Well, we don't know. We were just trying to find something that you could use for the soundtrack to make it sound like a chain gang smashing rocks.' So they said, 'Man, whatever you were doing just then, that's great. Don't touch it. That's exactly what we need.'"
"Have Guitar Will Travel" (1958)
By 1958, Elvis was without question the biggest star in music. Under the watchful gaze of his manager Colonel Tom Parker, money was rolling in like it never had before. As Moore saw it, however, not enough of the newfound gains were making it into his bank account, despite his obviously critical role in helping to put together so many of the King's biggest successes. As a salaried employee, the guitarist felt undervalued and so he, along with bassist Bill Black, decided to quit. With little else to do in the meantime, Moore and Black entered a recording studio to cut a single under the moniker the Scotty Moore Trio. Titled after the Fifties television show Have Gun – Will Travel, "Have Guitar Will Travel" reveals an adventurous side of Moore that was only really hinted at on all those Elvis recordings. It's an odd listen, to say the least, but a critical artifact of late-1950s rockabilly.
Thomas Wayne Perkins, "Tragedy" (1958)
After sowing his wild oats in the Scotty Moore Trio, the guitarist decided to set aside his ambitions for wider stardom, and in an interesting turn elected to try his hand at running a record label all on his own. "With a guy named Ron Wallis I started Fernwood Records," he said. "The first thing we recorded was 'Tragedy' by Thomas Wayne." Thomas Wayne Perkins was actually the brother of Johnny Cash's chicken-picking guitar player Luther Perkins. Moore saw promise in the young man's abilities as a singer, so he rebilled him as Thomas Wayne, and put him together with a backing band named the DeLons. For his first single, Moore picked out a song written by Gerald H. Nelson and Fred B. Burch titled "Tragedy." It was a mournful rocker, but an effective one. Moore produced the song himself while also contributing a bit of guitar. It ended up becoming a huge national hit peaking at Number Five on the Billboard Hot 100 the year after it was released. Unfortunately, in the years to come, neither Thomas Wayne Perkins nor Moore's Fernwood Records were able to duplicate the stunning success of their one-hit wonder.
"Mean Woman Blues" (1964) N/A
As the mid-Sixties approached, Moore was working full-time as the production manager for Sam Phillips Recording Service. Essentially, he was tasked with supervising nearly every facet of the actual recording process that went on under the studio's roof. While generally happy with his role, at some point Moore decided he wanted a piece of the limelight himself. He called in drummer D.J. Fontana, along with sax player Boots Randolph and Elvis' oft-utilized singing group the Jordanaires, signed a deal with Epic Records, and cut an album titled The Guitar That Changed the World. When it was released in 1964, the record landed with a thud. Audiences simply didn't have an appetite to listen to Presley's former bandmates without the King crooning away up front. While much of the album comes off as a trite imitation of Elvis biggest early hits, some of the songs carry a distinct and interesting modern Nashville flair. This is never more true than on the closing track, "Mean Woman Blues," which features an impressive array of guitar acrobatics that would make Chet Atkins blush. In the end, The Guitar That Changed the World cost Moore a lot more than he bargained for: When his boss Sam Phillips found out about the project, he summarily showed him the door.
SCOTTY MOORE REMEMBERED On June 28, 2016, Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley's longtime guitarist died at his home in Nashville, aged 84. Moore had been in poor health in recent months. He formed the Starlite Wrangers with bassist Bill Black and in 1954, Sun Records impresario Sam Phillips paired Moore with a teenaged Elvis Presley. Together, along with Black, they recorded Presley's first single, 'That's All Right (Mama).'
John Einarson Facebook MemoryBorn December 27, 1931, Winfield Scott "Scotty" Moore III, joined his first group was Doug Poindexter & the Starlite Wranglers. He played on the first Sun Studios session with Elvis Presley and went on to a lengthy career with Presley, playing on many of his most famous recordings including 'Baby Let's Play House', 'Heartbreak Hotel', 'Mystery Train', 'That's All Right', 'Hound Dog' and 'Jailhouse Rock'. He is best known for his backing of Elvis Presley in the first part of his career, between 1954 and the beginning of Elvis's Hollywood years.
Rock critic Dave Marsh credits Moore with the invention of power chording, on the 1957 Presley song "Jailhouse Rock", the intro of which Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana, according to the latter, "copped from a '40s swing version of 'The Anvil Chorus'." Moore was ranked 29th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2011. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2015. The Rolling Stones' lead guitarist Keith Richards has said of Moore, "When I heard "Heartbreak Hotel", I knew what I wanted to do in life. It was as plain as day. All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like that. Everyone else wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty."
Moore's early background was in jazz and country music. A fan of guitarist Chet Atkins, Moore led a group called the "Starlite Wranglers" before Sam Phillips at Sun Records put him together with then teenage Elvis Presley. The trio was completed with bass player Bill Black, who brought a "rhythmic propulsion" that much pleased Phillips. In 1954 Moore and Black accompanied Elvis on what would become the first legendary Presley hit, the Sun Studios session cut of "That's All Right", a recording regarded as a seminal event in rock and roll history.
The session, held the evening of July 5, 1954, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.
Phillips rhythm-centered vision led him to steer Moore away from the pretty finger-picking style of Chet Atkins, which he deemed fine for pop or country, but not for the simple, gutsy sound Phillips was aiming at. "Simplify" was the keyword. Moore played on many of Presley's most famous recordings, including "That's All Right", "Good Rockin' Tonight", "Milk Cow Blues Boogie", "Baby Let's Play House", "Heartbreak Hotel", "Mystery Train", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Hound Dog", "Too Much", "Jailhouse Rock", and "Hard Headed Woman". He called his solo on "Hound Dog" "ancient psychedelia".
During the filming and recording of Loving You in Hollywood in early 1957, Moore and Black drove the boredom away by jamming with Presley in between takes, but they usually saw little of Presley, who stayed only a couple of floors away from them. They grew hurt and resentful at the separation, which they came to perceive as willfully organized. They did not accompany Presley on the soundtrack recordings for his first movie, Love Me Tender, because 20th Century Fox had refused him to use his own band, with the excuse that they could not play country. By December 1956 they were experiencing financial difficulties, because there had been few performances since August: when there were, they received $200 a week, but only $100 when there were not. Moore and his wife were forced to move in with her three sisters and brother-in-law.
Tension came to a climax right after the September 1957 sessions for Presley's first Christmas album. Moore and Black had been promised an opportunity to cut tracks after the session, on Presley's studio time. Yet when the session was over, they were told to pack up. That same evening, the duo wrote a letter of resignation. They had only had one raise in two years, and with the lack of personal appearances had to live off $100 a week. They also felt the Colonel was working against them. They had been denied virtually all access to Presley, and felt as if "they were no longer even permitted to talk to him." Colonel Parker did not interfere, but RCA executive Steve Sholes, who had little regard for the ability of Presley's band, hoped the separation would be permanent.
Back in Memphis, a journalist found out and interviewed the duo. Presley responded with a press statement wishing them good luck, saying things could have been worked out if they had come to him instead of bringing it to the press. In an accompanying interview, Presley revealed that during the last two years people had tried to convince him to get rid of his band, so from his point of view he had stayed loyal to them.
In 1964, Moore released a solo album on Epic Records called The Guitar That Changed the World, played using his Gibson Super 400. Moore reunited with Fontana and Presley for the NBC television special known as the '68 Comeback Special, again with his Gibson Super 400 which was also played by Presley. This special was the last time these musicians would play with Presley, and for Moore it was the last time he ever saw him.
On September 21, 1957, Elvis Presley's longtime guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black left the King's band, dissatisfied over being denied pay raises by manager Colonel Tom Parker. Drummer D.J. Fontana stays on. Moore and Black reporters they were flat broke and couldn't afford to continue in the King's court. Though that schism healed, things were never the same.
Moore was suspicious of Parker from the start, refusing to use Parker's preferred title "Colonel" (a made-up honorific). Moore stuck to "Tom." Whether this bothered Parker is not known, but it wasn't long before he began gradually disassociating the musicians from Presley, the rising star. Parker killed a long-planned instrumental album and sought to further move Moore and Black from being partners to salaried sidemen, paying them piecemeal for recording sessions and tours, and badly at that.
Then, in December 1968, Presley made his famous NBC "comeback special." He turned to Moore and Fontana for the show's most famous segment, an informal round-table jam in which the lithe, leather-clad singer revisited his '50s musical roots. He even commandeered Moore's Gibson Super 400 for one number. The special gave Presley's career a second wind, but was the last time he worked with Scotty Moore.
"Afterwards, we went out to his house for dinner," more recalled, and he called D.J. and me into another room and asked if we'd like to do a European tour, something he really wanted to do," Moore says. Presley said he wanted to book a big block of studio time, too, to record with Moore in Memphis." Parker put the kybosh on those plans. In early 1969, the final break occurred when Parker offered Moore, Fontana, the Jordanaires and other longtime Presley backups insulting wages to drop what they were doing and back Elvis at a Las Vegas concert. When they all balked, Parker put together a new band. Moore put his guitar away for almost a quarter of a century. Sad.
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