The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [44]
I guess it was at high school commencement. I sang Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” I had a high voice, a tenor when I was a teenager. I had just piano accompaniment. I was pretty scared. I didn’t do anything else until after I got out of the Air Force.
Did you have a feeling at that time, when you went into the Air Force, that you were ever going to really get into music?
Yeah, I always knew. I really did. I always knew. I remember writing my brother when I was in the Air Force telling him that I’d be recording within a year after I was discharged. I wrote “Folsom Prison Blues” while I was in the air force in Germany. I wrote it one night after seeing a movie called Inside the Walls of Folsom. I also wrote “Belshazzar” and “Hey Porter” in the air force.
When you got back to Memphis, how did you get into the music business?
I found out about Sun Records in Memphis. They were getting pretty hot with Elvis about that time, so I called about an audition. I remember how scared I was the first time I walked into Sun. It was Sam Phillips and his secretary, Miss McGinnis. They didn’t even remember I had an appointment to record. I got the first of seven “come back laters.” I told Phillips that I wrote gospel songs. I thought “Belshazzar” was the best song I had to show him. He said, “Well, the market is not too good for gospel songs. Come back sometime when you feel like you’ve got something else.”
But we eventually got together, and I believe we recorded “Hey Porter” the same day. The first session was really something. Luther Perkins had a little secondhand Sears amplifier with a six-inch speaker. Marshall Grant had a bass that was held together with masking tape. I had a $4.80 guitar that I had brought back from Germany. Phillips had to be a genius to get anything out of that conglomeration.
Not long after “Hey Porter” was released, I was back in the studio recording everything I had written and some songs that I hadn’t written. It was exciting, things were happening so fast. I remember one day going into the studio and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis were both there. Carl Perkins came in a few minutes later, and the four of us stood around the piano singing hymns.
I think we sang for a couple of hours; and I understand Sam had the recorder on and there is something like ten hymns recorded by that “quartet.”
How did you get together with Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant?
We met at a garage where my brother worked. They were mechanics. They had just been fooling around with music. Roy told me they were both guitar players. Marshall had never touched a bass at that time. So, here we were: three guitar players. We tried to get Marshall to start playing the bass, and Luther agreed to try the electric guitar. We felt we needed the instruments to round out the sound.
How did you work out the arrangements?
I just had it all in my head. I’d show Luther the notes on the guitar, and he’d play it over and over until he learned it.
How did the Johnny Cash sound come about?
That boom-chick-a-boom sound? Luther took the metal plate off the Fender guitar and muted the strings because he said he played it so ragged that he was ashamed of it and he was trying to cover up the sound.
What did Phillips say when he heard the sound?
He thought it was really commercial. He just flipped over it.
How did you feel when you had the first record in your hand? It must have been a big day for you.
It was the most fantastic feeling I ever had in my life. I remember signing the recording contract the day the record was released. I had both the contract and “Hey Porter” in my hand when I left Sun that day. And I had fifteen cents in my pocket. I remember coming out of the studio and there was a bum on the street. I gave him the fifteen cents. That’s true. Then I took the record to the radio station, holding it like it was an old master painting. And the disc jockey dropped it and it broke. By accident. It was the next day till I could get another one. That was really heartbreaking.