| 1931-2016 |
OBITUARY
SCOTTY MOORE
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
A
t age 23, Scotty Moore joined
Elvis Presley and became a
lightning rod for the kinetic
energy of early rock ’n’ roll. He took the
musical influences of his rural childhood
upbringing in Gadsden, Tennessee, and
fused the country and blues elements
into a unique style that relied on
alternate picking, driving rhythms, and
short busts of call-and-response licks—all
juiced with the urban pace of his new
home in Memphis, a melting pot on the
Tennessee/Mississippi border where black
and white musical aesthetics simmered
and then sizzled into the Sun Records
sound. The mating of Moore’s guitar
and Presley’s voice made the latter’s
defining early singles—including “That’s
All Right,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,”
“Heartbreak Hotel,” “Jailhouse Rock,”
and “Mystery Train”—a template for
more than a half-century of musicians
to come: from Gene Vincent to the
Rolling Stones, Patti Smith, the Stray
Cats, Springsteen, and beyond. Moore
died on Tuesday, June 28, at his home in
Nashville. Although the cause of death
wasn’t announced at publication time,
the 84-year-old had struggled with health
issues for a decade. His final concert
appearance was in 2007.
With his work at Presley’s side from
1954 to 1964, Moore became one of the
original 6-string poets of rock ’n’ roll,
developing its template and influencing
guitar players who would grow to be
giants. According to Moore (in his book
Scotty and Elvis: Aboard the Mystery Train),
Keith Richards famously said, “When I
heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ I knew what I
wanted to do in life. Everyone else wanted
to be Elvis. I wanted to be Scotty.” That
was doubtlessly due to the mystery in
Moore’s dynamic guitar performance—a
universe unto itself, conjured from the
dark, gutbucket notes slinking under the
verses, illuminated by languid, abrupt
chiming tones, and gliding on swinging
flat-four chords. And then there’s the
“Heartbreak” solo—a flare that seemed to
28 PREMIER GUITAR SEPTEMBER 2016
step out of the tune’s depths of loneliness
to question the seeming inevitability of
the singer’s doom. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck,
and Jimmy Page are also among those
who’ve testified to the magnetic power of
Moore’s musical mojo.
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.
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
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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 postPresley career.
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