Premier Guitar September 2016 | Page 30

| 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. premierguitar.com