Peter Parcek, the dynamic blues guitarist whose latest album is Mississippi Suitcase.
Scott Moore and Elvis Presley onstage.
Guest Picker: Peter Parcek
A: My sister brought home early Elvis records on the Sun label with Scotty Moore on guitar. The concepts and guitar playing turned my head around. We were so excited we danced on the bed. In eighth grade, I listened to the radio out of Chicago and Memphis. The first LPs I purchased were The Best of Muddy Waters and Moanin’ in the Moonlight by Howlin’ Wolf. These albums made the hair on my body stand up. They provided the inspiration and impetus to play and changed my life (for the better).
Jazz giant George Benson’s third album, released in 1967.
Current Obsession: George Benson “The Cooker” on The George Benson Cookbook—it’s “bad” in the best sense, in phrasing, tone, and intensity. Then there’s Jimi Hendrix’s “Villanova Junction” on Live at Woodstock—he has a gorgeous tone and shows deep emotion. Other current obsessions include Django Reinhardt’s late-career electrified recordings from 1947 to 1953—gypsy jazz meets bebop.
Premier Guitar publisher Jon Levy, circa 1968.
Jon Levy, Premier Guitar publisher
A: The Beatles were the biggest influence, by far. My dad—a middle-aged Liverpool expatriate living in Chicago—took great pride in the band from his Merseyside hometown. He bought Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s as soon as they were released, and those records enjoyed endless plays on our living room stereo.
Current Obsession: Acoustic gigs. They’re exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I’ll grab my beloved Takamine and join friends onstage for impromptu sets with little provocation or preparation. It’s kind of addictive.
Managing editor Kate Koenig, during her Rick Wakeman years.
Kate Koenig, Premier Guitar managing editor
A: My greatest musical influence as a child was my dad. Memorable albums include Frank Zappa’s We’re Only in It for the Money, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, the Beatles’ Help and A Hard Day’s Night, and the Who’s Live at Leeds. Rick Wakeman’s exceedingly hammy Journey to the Centre of the Earth was blasted on weekend mornings to get my brother and I out of bed.
Current Obsession: Most recently, I’ve been focused on the work of Julian Lage. I’ve been taking lessons with our associate editor Jason, who has so wisely and graciously introduced me to a wide range of methods and techniques, including Lage’s “Twelve Observations About the Guitar.” I’ve also been doing my darndest to learn his “Etude,” the opening track on Squint.
Emsy Robinson Jr.
Reader of the Month: Emsy Robinson
A: The earliest artist, from my collective memory, would be Linda Goss and her album, It’s Story Telling Time. This record is a beautiful, warm collection of stories and songs about African folklore. I also grew up listening to Tracy Chapman’s debut, the O’Jay’s Ship Ahoy album, and The Bodyguard soundtrack.
Current Obsession: Today, I am enamored with the U.K. guitarist Mansur Brown. His style is heavy in modern fusion, but mixed with elements of North African melodies, trap, and alternative rock. His playing absolutely floors me. I also love Mk. Gee, who plays guitar for Dijon. His sound is wild and experimental.
For Moore, who began playing acoustic guitar with his family and neighbors when he was 8, the primary beacon for his style was Chet Atkins. Soon after learning his first rudimentary chords, Moore started copping jazz and country licks from records. By the turn of the ’50s, when he was nearing the end of the four-year Navy stretch he’d signed on for at age 16, Moore was taking stylistic and technical cues from the era’s best jazz guitarists, including Atkins, Hank Garland, and Harold Bradley—all of whom were making names for themselves in Nashville country sessions.
Although Scotty Moore was best known for playing the Gibson ES-295, he favored Chet Atkins models and Super 400s like the one shown in this circa-1958 promo photo for most of his post-Presley career.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
After exiting the service and settling in Memphis, Moore was playing his own speedy version of Atkins’ fingerpicked licks in his band the Starlight Wranglers when he was spotted by Sun Records’ founder Sam Phillips. Together with another Phillips recruit, bassist Bill Black, Moore entered Sun Studios with Presley in ’54. Soon thereafter, their scalding version of bluesman Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” propelled Presley and his Blue Moon Boys into the grueling lifestyle of road musicians, ricocheting through the South and Midwest in their sedan to eventually reach the national limelight. For a short time, Moore also managed Presley.
The key to Moore’s propulsive, percussive, yet melodic sound was his picking technique. He combined the use of a flatpick with his fingers to produce the rolling rhythm figures and slicing single-note juxtapositions on classic early Presley recordings like “Mystery Train” and “Good Rockin’ Tonight.” These instant radio smashes spread throughout the South, in particular, like magpies in flight, influencing a host of guitarists just a few years younger than Moore. Billy Lee Riley, Charlie Feathers, Sleepy LaBeef, and Eddie Cochran adopted and adapted Moore’s style and the wave they created became known as rockabilly.
Of course, Moore wasn’t the style’s only pillar. A handful of other Memphis musicians were forging their own guitar-based fusion of country, jazz, and blues, the most notable being Carl Perkins and the Johnny Burnette Trio. But it was the sound of Moore’s fat-bodied Gibson guitars—early on, an ES-295—that first boomed out of radios across the U.S., soaked in the slapback echo Phillips put on his studio tracks. To duplicate the sound live, Moore, again following Atkins’ lead, used a Ray Butts EchoSonic amp, which had a built-in tape unit. This was a stunning sonic evolution in live electric guitar, which also contributed to Moore’s cachet among pickers.
Eventually, Gibson issued a Scotty Moore signature ES-295, but when Moore cut “Baby, Let’s Play House,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and a slew of other hits that helped define rock ’n’ roll in 1954 and ’55, he was using a 1952 model he’d gotten in trade for a ’52 Telecaster at the Houck Piano Company in Memphis. In July 1955, he traded that iconic golden-hued axe for a ’54 Gibson L-5 at the same instrument dealership. From 1957 to 2004, he owned a series of Gibson Super 400s, including the 1963 model that Elvis Presley played on Elvis, his famed 1968 TV “comeback special.”
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Moore brandishes a Gibson L-5 alongside Elvis Presley and his fellow Blue Moon Boys during a 1956 TV performance of “Hound Dog.” At that point, he had traded his iconic ES-295 for this instrument at a Memphis music shop.
Moore also played Gibson Chet Atkins models, a 1938 Epiphone Spartan, Fender Esquires, an ES-335 reissue, and more L-5s. He received his first Atkins signature model—a prototype made by Gibson master builder Jim Hutchins—from its namesake. After he nearly lost the guitar in an airline snafu, Moore asked Hutchins to build him another, and that became his main stage guitar from 2002 to 2007.
While still with Presley, Moore cut sides with Jerry Lee Lewis at Sun, but he lost his famous gig in 1964. Sam Phillips fired Moore after he moved to Nashville and released his debut solo album, The Guitar That Changed the World, on competing label Epic Records. Moore and Presley reunited as part of the ’68 TV special, and afterwards Moore toured under his own name and played on many recordings by other artists. These include albums by blueswoman Tracy Nelson, ’70s pop hit-maker Billy Swan, blue-eyed soul man Charlie Rich, country legend Ernest Tubb, and, in the ’90s and 2000s, blues guitarslinger Joe Louis Walker, Stray Cats’ Lee Rocker, and Ron Wood. Over the decades Moore expanded into engineering and production. He reunited with his Presley bandmate, drummer D.J. Fontana, in 1997 to record All the King’s Men, an album that featured guest appearances by Jeff Beck, Joe Ely, the Mavericks, Steve Earle, and Presley’s favorite studio back-up singers, the Jordanaires. In 2000, Moore was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the sideman category for his tenure as a Blue Moon Boy with Presley. Three years later he released his final recordings, a two-CD set called The Mighty Handful, which coincided with his last public performances. He would never play publicly again, due to worsening struggles with arthritis.
Since then, Moore lived quietly in a wooded section of Nashville with his longtime partner, Gail Pollock, who died in November 2015. Among other honors, he was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, where Keith Richards accepted the honor on an ailing Moore’s behalf last year. Moore wrote two books about his experiences with Presley, partnering with co-author James Dickerson: 1997’s That’s Alright, Elvis: The Untold Story of Elvis’ First Guitarist and Manager, Scotty Moore and 2013’s Scotty and Elvis: Aboard the Mystery Train.
