cover image Go, Cat, Go!: The Life and Times of Carl Perkins, the King of Rockabilly

Go, Cat, Go!: The Life and Times of Carl Perkins, the King of Rockabilly

Carl Perkins. Hyperion Books, $27.45 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-7868-6073-9

The man who wrote ""Blue Suede Shoes,"" and who will forever be associated with the seminal early rockabilly of Memphis's Sun Records label, has always raised a question mark in rock histories: Why, when his lead-guitar playing was so extraordinary and his songwriting talent so obvious, did he never become a celebrity on the magnitude of his label-mates Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Elvis? In this unusually pricey amalgam of biography and autobiography (on which McGee holds sole copyright), Perkins and McGee (a music journalist making his book debut) continually play at that puzzle. Born in 1932 as a sharecropper's son in Tiptonville, Tenn., Perkins had a perfect primary education in American roots music: he grew up picking cotton alongside his family, internalizing field spirituals, and as a teenager made music with his brothers in rough-hewn ""tonks."" When his ""Blue Suede Shoes"" single sold a million copies in 1956, Perkins found himself singularly unequipped for stardom: married with two children, he disliked mob scenes and had no PR sense. As the Sun years fade, the narrative spins ever faster: the ten years 1969-1979 are dealt with in as many pages. Ultimately, the Perkins/ McGee collaboration hinders narrative flow, with McGee's third-person prose, full of historical and critical insight, frequently disrupted by Perkins's unilluminating homilies about death, love and self-reliance. Photos, discography not seen by PW. Author tour. (May)