Take the Drive, Feel the Vibe
The Rockabilly Highway is US 45 South, running from I-40 in Jackson down through McNairy County to the Mississippi line, and on to Tupelo as Rockabilly Way. In the 1950s that strip of asphalt was dotted with night clubs and honky-tonks where rock, country and rockabilly artists played night after night. Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins came of age at either end of it.
The King at Bethel Springs
By September 1954 Elvis Presley had a single release on Sun Records and a growing following on Mid-South radio. His first live performance outside Memphis was booked at Bethel Springs School on September 17, 1954. In the small crowd that night was a young guitarist and songwriter named Carl Perkins. The two met in the parking lot of a rural schoolhouse in McNairy County, and the music they pioneered became rockabilly.
The Littlejohn Sessions
In a makeshift studio in Eastview, amateur sound recordist Stanton Littlejohn was the first to put a microphone on Carl Perkins, playing R&B tunes with a West Tennessee twang. Those recordings back up Perkins's lifelong claim that rockabilly grew out of rural Southern musicians breaking down the walls between black and white music, not out of a studio trick. Perkins also played the famous weekend jams at the Latta building in Selmer.
Daddy-O Dewey Phillips
Dewey Phillips was born in Crump and raised in eastern McNairy County, where he went to Adamsville High School. On Memphis radio station WHBQ his show Red, Hot & Blue played blues, country and R&B back to back, and he was the first to spin records by Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.
A year after Elvis came to Bethel Springs, a young Johnny Cash played Stantonville in 1955.
