In the 1956 song “Dixie Fried,” Carl Perkins sings about a razor-toting rebel rouser named Dan who storms a honky-tonk on the edge of town. Flashing a quart of moonshine and slashing through the crowd ...

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's continue our week of interviews from our archive with R&B, rockabilly and early rock 'n' roll musicians and songwriters. Up next, we have Carl Perkins, one of ...

"CARL PERKINS: THE KING OF ROCKABILLY" by Jeff Apter (Citadel, 240 pages, $29). Carl Perkins is an unexpected choice of subject for the prolific musician biographer Jeff Apter, who lays out the life ...

"Carl Perkins, The King of Rockabilly" by Jeff Apter, Citadel, 240 pages Carl Perkins was not the best-looking singer in The Million Dollar Quartet, he ultimately did not sell as many records as the ...

Back then, rockabilly music was just coming into fashion, with "Blue Suede Shoes" being one of the first highly successful ...

A new era is born.

Let's get back to my interview with Carl Perkins, one of the originators of rockabilly. Perkins, who died in 1998, wrote "Blue Suede Shoes," the hit song sung by Elvis Presley, which became the first ...

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's continue our week of interviews from our archive with R&B, rockabilly and early rock 'n' roll musicians and songwriters. Up next, we have Carl Perkins, one of ...

Perkins, who died in 1998, wrote "Blue Suede Shoes," the hit song sung by Elvis Presley, which became the first Sun label record to sell over a million copies. He spoke to Fresh Air in 1996. This is ...