Artist · chart history
Carl Perkins
Solo artist Tiptonville United States American pioneer of rockabilly music
Carl Perkins is an artist from Tiptonville. Carl Perkins has 6 chart appearances on 5 radio countdowns from 4 stations on RockLists, spanning 2001–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Blue Suede Shoes”, which appears on 5 lists with a best position of #308. The station that charted Carl Perkins most often is WFPK (Louisville, KY), with 2 appearances.
Carl Perkins, born in Tiptonville in 1932, started making records at the Sun Studio in Memphis in 1954 and helped pour the foundations of rock and roll while he was at it. He sang, wrote his own songs and played an electric guitar that sounded like country picking with a bad case of the jitters, and they called him the King of Rockabilly for good reason. "Blue Suede Shoes" is the one the whole world knows, but "Honey Don't", "Matchbox" and "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" came out of the same well.
The proof is in who came to borrow. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Ricky Nelson, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and the Beatles all cut his songs, and Charlie Daniels reckoned nobody embodied the rockabilly sound better, precisely because Perkins never changed it.
He didn't. In 1978 he went back to the source on Ol' Blue Suede's Back: Carl Perkins' Tribute to Rock and Roll, kicking "Blue Suede Shoes" around once more with the same bounce he had in the '50s. The honors piled up: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1987, he also holds places in the Rockabilly, Memphis Music and Nashville Songwriters halls of fame, and his recording of "Blue Suede Shoes" sits in the Grammy Hall of Fame. He died in 1998.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Carl Perkins on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blue Suede Shoes | 5 | #308 | – | – | |
| 2 | Dixie Fried | 1 | #1327 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Every countdown appearance
| Year | # | Song | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 970 | Blue Suede Shoes | WYEP Greatest Songs of All Time |
| 2023 | 308 | Blue Suede Shoes | 90.9 The Bridge Top 909 Songs of All Time |
| 2020 | 1661 | Blue Suede Shoes | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time |
| 2012 | 874 | Blue Suede Shoes | WXPN 885 Greatest Rock Songs (2012) |
| 2001 | 353 | Blue Suede Shoes | WFPK 2001 Greatest Songs of All Time |
| 2001 | 1327 | Dixie Fried | WFPK 2001 Greatest Songs of All Time |
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