Scotty Moore
Much more than Elvis’s sideman, TG pays tribute to a rock ’n’ roll pioneer, and the man who made Keef want to play lead guitar
Winfield Scott “Scotty” Moore III, who died on 28 June 2016, can lay a very good claim to the title of most important guitarist that ever lived. Influenced by the country jazz picking of Merle Travis and Chet Atkins, he conspired with a young truck driver called Elvis Presley to create a new strain of white blues called rockabilly. Working out of producer Sam Phillips’ legendary Sun Studio at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis [still operating today], Moore defined the sound of rockabilly guitar on tracks such as That’s All Right, Good Rockin’ Tonight and Mystery Train. He also helped define the role of the sideman and lead guitarist, “filling the holes” as he humbly described it, leading the way for kids such as George Harrison, Keith Richards and Jeff Beck. “You’ve gotta hear Scotty Moore on Elvis Presley’s Sun sessions,” said modern rockabilly icon Brian Setzer. “He was truly amazing and he was making it all up right there.”
“Elvis Presley–what the hell kind of a name is that?”
Elvis didn’t invent rock ’n’ roll. Gospel artist Sister Rosetta Tharpe was knocking on its door in the late 40s, Bill Haley & His Comets had a smash hit with Shake, Rattle & Roll in 1954, and Sam Phillips had already cut the accepted first rock ’n’ roll 45, Jackie Brenston And His Delta Cats’ Rocket 88, at Sun Studio in 1951.
No, Elvis Presley made rock ’n’ roll feral, sexual and dangerous. The well-trodden legend is that Sun producer Sam Phillips was looking for a white kid that could sing black. Sam got his wish on 5 July 1954, when Presley, Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black started fooling around with an old Arthur Crudup tune called That’s All Right. Presley propels the song with his acoustic and Black slaps his bass, while Moore adds some improvised Travis picking, cool trills and the guitar solo that established the rockabilly blueprint.
The song convinced Phillips that he had a star on his hands, and that his decision to team Elvis with Scotty and Bill was inspired; although Moore wasn’t immediately convinced when he heard the young singer’s unusual name…
What’s remarkable about the intensity of the rhythm on That’s All Right and many other tracks that the trio cut at 706 Union Avenue is that it takes a while to dawn on listeners that there are no drums.
Under the influence
“The record that made me want to play guitar was Baby, Let’s Play House by Elvis Presley,” said Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page of the Sun sessions track. “I just sort of heard two guitars and bass and thought, ‘Yeah, I want to be part of this.’ There was just so much vitality and energy coming out of it.”
Scotty Moore’s guitar style on the Sun Studio recordings exerted a huge influence on other English guitarists including Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Johnny Marr of The Smiths and rockabilly addict and Stray Cats producer Dave Edmunds. Over in the States, Tele master and Joe Bonamassa mentor Danny
“Everyone else wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty” Keith Richards
Gatton was so obsessed with Moore that for a while he was even convinced that he’d found his Sun-era Gibson ES-295. He hadn’t.
The most obvious disciple of Scotty Moore was John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival who aped his idol’s Sun-era sound and style on tracks such as Bad Moon Rising and Don’t Look Now (It Ain’t You And Me). The tribute was so close that Fogerty once jokingly thanked Moore for not suing him. Later, Scotty, catching sight of Fogerty at a music show, crept up behind the CCR frontman, grabbed him in a bear hug and said, “Gimme back my licks, John!”
The Big Bang…
The sides that Scotty Moore cut with Elvis at Sun Studio made the The King a sensation in America’s Deep South but it took a move to RCA Records to make him a true international star.
On 10 January 1956 at the RCA Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, Elvis and the boys cut Heartbreak Hotel, a recording that sent a jolt of electricity through every teen that caught it on the radio. The song inspired John Lennon’s famous “before Elvis there was nothing” quote and changed the lives of his fellow future Beatles Paul McCartney, George Harrison and kids such Mick Jagger and Richards.
Crucially, when it made its debut on the UK charts in May ’56, parents and the music press hated it. “If you appreciate good singing, I don’t suppose you’ll manage to hear this disc all through,” commented one reviewer for The New Musical Express.
In some regards Heartbreak Hotel was an unlikely teen smash. The slow tempo and
sinister lyrics, inspired by a line in a genuine suicide note [‘I walk a lonely street...’], weren’t typical rock ’n’ roll fodder, but Presley’s delivery and Scotty Moore’s startling guitar solo hooked the kids. “It was dangerous,” said Byrds guitarist Roger McGuinn of Moore’s solo. “It scared everybody’s parents, which was part of the attraction...”
The guitar that changed theworld
These days, we automatically associate rockabilly music with Gretsch guitars; Eddie Cochrane and Stray Cat Brian Setzer can take the lion’s share of the credit for that. Yet, Scotty Moore, like his fellow Sun Records artist Carl Perkins, was a Gibson guy.
To be more exact, Moore kicked off his playing career with a ’52 Fender Esquire before trading it in the following year for his now iconic gold Sun-era Gibson ES-295 [serial number A-12290]. He cut the deal with Ed Fitzpatrick, the president of the OK Houck Piano Co, a music store at 121 Union Avenue in Memphis.
Moore’s ES-295 was made in 1952, the first year of production, and originally came fitted with a combined wrap-a-round bridge and trapeze tailpiece arrangement that made the guitar tough to play and intonate. The guitar was soon pimped with a separate trapeze tailpiece and floating Melita bridge; the latter an over-engineered chunk of metal that was standard equipment on many 50s Gretsch models.
In Scotty’s hands, the combination of the ES-295’s twin single-coil P-90 pickups, heavy gauge tape-wound strings and Travis-style picking created the rockabilly guitar blueprint. There’s just one more element missing from that classic equation...
Slap happy…
While the slapback echo on the earliest Sun cuts was produced by Sam Phillip’s in-house tape machine, Scotty Moore soon discovered that Chet Atkins was getting the same effect direct from his amplifier.
“I heard one of Chet’s instrumentals on the radio,” Moore recalled. “His guitar had the same slap, but it was a little bit different to what I was hearing Sam do with us. Someone told me that he got a new amp. I kept digging and finally got the guy’s name who built it and called him. His name was Ray Butts. He lived in Cairo, Illinois. I believe mine was the third one.”
According to Scotty Moore’s fantastically detailed website, the guitarist purchased his custom-built 25-watt Echo Sonic amp with built-in tape delay on 24 May 1955. It was ordered by him on 20 January that year and the $495 asking price was financed through our old friends the OK Houck Piano Co, where he negotiated a $65 trade-in for his ’52 Fender Deluxe. The amp made its debut in July ’55 on the recording session for Elvis, Scotty and Bill’s ultimate rockabilly masterpiece Mystery Train. It’s a performance that changed the world. “All I wanted was to be able to play and sound like that,” said Keith Richards. “Everyone else wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty.”
“There was just so much vitality and energy coming out of it” Jimmy Page