Review: Carl Perkins - Whole Lotta Shakin' (1958)
Tracks: 1) Whole Lotta Shakin’; 2) Tutti Frutti; 3) Shake, Rattle & Roll; 4) Sittin’ On Top Of The World; 5) Ready Teddy; 6) Long Tall Sally; 7) That’s All Right; 8) Where The Rio De Rosa Flows; 9) Good Rockin’ Tonight; 10) I Got A Woman; 11) Hey, Good Lookin’; 12) Jenny Jenny.
REVIEW
Sooner or later, every successful Sun artist had to leave Sun Records for the big time, just because such was the way of the world; few Sun artists, however, upon leaving their alma mater, ended up in such an ignoble position as Carl Perkins. Although Columbia Records, where he found himself together with his buddy Johnny Cash, still allowed him to put out a few original compositions as singles, the one and only LP he cut in the 1950s for the label was this clearly disappointing, if not downright dreadful, collection of covers. A single look at the tracklist shows that the record consists of almost nothing but major and well worn-out (by 1958 already) rock’n’roll hits for Carl’s Sun partners Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, as well as other notorious rock’n’rollers like Bill Haley and Little Richard. Naturally, the last thing the world needed in late 1958 was yet another take on the classics from an artist whose chief asset had always been songwriting, not impersonating.
I would not dare say that all of this sounds completely forced and unnatural, or that Carl was clearly not having himself a ball with at least some of this stuff — he may not have written these songs, but there is little doubt that he loved all of them, since they are so right up his own alley of interests. The problem is that he does not seem at all to be in real charge of the sessions. Although Columbia’s production values are slightly (only slightly) higher than those of Sun, the actual recordings are not at all beneficial for Carl. The sound is almost completely dominated by session players, such as the 47-year old Marvin Hughes, a veteran of Nashville piano playing, and the somewhat younger jazz saxophonist Andy Goodrich — both of them obvious, but hardly outstanding, professionals who loyally deliver the goods, but way too often end up drowning out Carl’s vocals and even Carl’s guitar playing to the point that it becomes unclear why the hell would Columbia Records even bother signing this guy up.
The only curious, and moderately successful, idea on the entire album was to turn ʽSittin’ On Top Of The Worldʼ, formerly played as a slow country-blues piece by everybody from the Mississippi Sheiks to Howlin’ Wolf, into a lightning-speed rock’n’roll number — thus, giving it essentially the same treatment that Carl earlier gave to Blind Lemon Jefferson’s ʽMatchbox Bluesʼ during his tenure at Sun. Unfortunately, while ʽMatchboxʼ managed to sound gritty and serious, with a guitar sound bordering on proto-punkish because of its angry vibe, this rendition, in comparison, is just a fun bit of frolick with no guitar solos and a barely discernible rhythm guitar part. If they could at least get somebody like King Curtis to complete the transformation of the song into Perkins’ answer to ‘Yakety Yak’, it would have made some kind of sense; the way it is, it takes most of it out of the original and adds little else.
Vocal-wise, Carl is in good form, but he never gives other people’s songs the same kind of sly, sexy reading that he usually gives his own. Every now and then, he tends to overscream (sometimes getting out of tune in the process), and, worst of all, as long as you preserve your basis for comparison and as long as the voices of Little Richard, Elvis, and even Jerry Lee Lewis doing the same songs still ring out in your head, Carl’s relative lack of power and singing technique remains a constant problem. On his cover of Hank Williams’ ʽHey, Good Lookinʼ, he does not even try: the original was all about making you swoon by drawing out those opening notes ("h-e-e-ey, good lookin’, wha-a-a-t you got cookin'..."), while Carl just swallows them completely — which is all the more strange, given that it didn’t used to be that bad: at least on songs such as ʽSure To Fallʼ he could show some impressive range.
The further down you go, the more it begins feeling suspiciously like an intentionally butchered hackjob: I do not know the details, but either Carl was just pissed off at his new label for demanding that he cover other people’s hits, or some things simply did not work out. He may have been uncomfortable with the new session band, or the new recording studio, or something else, but one thing is for certain: Whole Lotta Shakin’ is quite far from being the best possible introduction to the guy’s songwriting and overall charismatic genius. One might even want to go further and grumble that it is one of those albums which explains the beginning of the temporary decline of rock’n’roll in the late 1950s — with lackluster sessions like these coming from established icons, you’d certainly want to think that rambunctious rock’n’roll had passed its prime, and that it was high time to try out something truly new — like Chubby Checker, or Bobby Darin.
It must be added, for honesty’s sake, that even in terms of original songwriting Carl never achieved the same level of quality and immortality with Columbia as he did with Sun. Pretty much every textbook classic he did, about a dozen or so of them, was recorded during his Sun period; I don’t think that even one song from the Columbia years can boast as much publicity or covers by subsequent artists as that early golden bunch. You can clearly feel the difference yourself by comparing the early Sun version of ‘Pink Pedal Pushers’ and the Columbia re-recording of the same title (which, I think, was officially released earlier than the Sun recording, which lingered in the archives for some time). The former has a shallower, dirtier, more classic rockabilly-style sound; the latter is denser, deeper, cleaner, and ultimately, less inciting and seductive — lacking the original’s little scat intro and discarding its let’s-take-the-elevator-to-hell descending bassline.
At least it is good to know that in those troubled years for rock’n’roll, Carl never truly slipped into schmaltz (which would have been hard for him to do anyway due to his naturally rough voice, totally unfit for sugary crooning). But whether it was the fault of Columbia or simply that of the spirit of the times (it was certainly not related to his accident, which took place in early 1956 and was followed by a whole lot of raunchy classics for Sun Records), his act got cleaned up and stiffened all the same. It is things like these that truly make you believe in voodoo magic — doubtless, somebody must have placed a hex on rock’n’roll music by mid-1958 or something.
Only Solitaire: Carl Perkins reviews