In the near-total absence of breathing witnesses, it’s one of hundreds of quotes Apter pastes from a scrapbook of self-effacing interviews loaded with folksy, God-fearing gags and rose-tinted philosophy. Perkins’ targets of deflected glory include his lifelong sweetheart Valda and his bosom pal Cash, with whom he played gun wingman for nearly a decade, and who helped him kick the demon alcohol.
“There’s no better place in the world for a man to be number one than in his own home,” the family man demurs as yet another underachieving album claims Ol’ Blue Suede’s Back. “I am really so humbled when Eric Clapton and George Harrison say, ‘Carl, we like what you did,’” he declares as his wave of all-star TV tributes, Hall of Fame inductions and celebrity guest collabs peaks in the 1980s.
Carl Perkins performs on October 11, 1986 in Atlanta, Georgia.Credit: Getty Images
Years of addiction obviously allude to a darker side of the rockabilly king’s reign. Apter doesn’t underestimate the impact of his guitarist brother Jay’s passing from injuries sustained in that terrible car crash of ’56, but there’s precious little time for bad vibes in a book devoted to carrying its hero aloft on an updraft of feelgood rock ’n’ roll nostalgia.
That Perkins pocketed a ton of royalties from the Beatles’ cover of Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby, effectively nicked from a forgotten Alabama country singer named Rex Griffin, is glossed over too — karmically balanced, perhaps, by his later years of charity for abused children.
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All this toe-tapping later, and nearly three decades since his premature passing from cancer, aged 65, it would be churlish to deny the distinguished Southern gentleman’s lifelong plea that we refrain from besmirching his immaculately maintained footwear.
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