Carl Perkins - "Lend Me Your Comb" (1957)

There is a reason why Sun owner/producer Sam Phillips thought he was as great as Elvis, a reason why the Beatles admired him and covered so many of his songs. At his best, he was as good a songwriter as Chuck Berry or Lieber and Stoller, while as weird and outrageous as Little Richard. A soulful, country-inflected songer, he was one of those original rockabilly guitarists who sounded like they had used barbed wire for guitar strings and like all originals, no one really managed to top his original versions.

He was a rebel, outlaw roackabilly and his songs were among the first the portray and address that image. Which is what set him apart from his peers in the original pantheon of fifties rock and roll greats. Little Richard was too much of a sexual deviant to be a rebel in that same mold while Chuck Berry just minded his commercial base too much so his approach was to portray rock and roll as the secret language of the entire teenage generation instead of a few select outsiders (not that his cocky guitar riffs didn't inspire thousands of rebels anyway). Jerry Lee Lewis came close but he didn't write any songs. Buddy Holly worked more within the mold and Elvis was, well, Elvis.

Having said that, there is a certain sense in which even songs like "Blue Suede Shoes", "Dixie Fried" and "Put Your Cat Clothes On" just shy away from the rampifications of taking the rebellion to the edge (in a way Richard would never hold back) which just adds to their power in the same way Perkins' guitar flashes like a pocket knife that is displayed but never actually used.

So you all just need to pick up a good anthology of his Sun Years to discover the true predecessor of Taking It All Back Home and while you're at it, listen to "Lend Me Your Comb", which isn't one of his greatest performances and which Perkins didn't even write it. But I think it's about time someone noticed that those chord changes at the end of the verses are the grandaddies of Merseybeat.