Guitar Tricks Insider November / December Issue | Page 22

S
ome records change your life
forever. From the moment you first
hear them, they act like lightning
rods that connect your soul to your
fingers, setting you on an inevitable
pathway towards your guitar playing
destiny. These audio talismans
trigger that certain something inside you
that lets you know picking up a guitar and
learning how to play it is something you
were meant to do.
CLASSIC CORNER: BACKTRACK
One guitarist who gladly seconds the
pleasure of that emotion is Dave Edmunds,
the noted Welsh rockabilly stylist/producer
best known for his No.1 1970 hit, “I Hear You
Knocking,” FM radio favorites like “Crawling
from the Wreckage,” “Girls Talk,” and
“Slipping Away,” and his brief stint fronting
the early ’80s pub-rock super group Rockpile
(“Teacher Teacher”), which also featured
Scottish guitarist Billy Bremner, British
bassist Nick Lowe, and Welsh drummer,
Terry Williams.
In fact, it should come as little surprise
that during his formative years, Edmunds
immediately absorbed the playing and
compositional style he heard on some of
the most seminal rockabilly records of the
1950s. “I had a Merle Travis EP of just
guitar instrumentals [1956’s The Merle
Travis Guitar],” Edmunds recalls. “I also had
the Jerry Lee Lewis Sun album [released
in 1958], and the Carl Perkins Sun album
[1956’s Dance Album of Carl Perkins].
That Perkins record is a good album; I love
that one. Every track on it works for me.”
Edmunds ultimately got to work with Carl
Perkins himself in October 1985 when he
acted as musical director for Blue Suede
Shoes: A Rockabilly Session, a televised
concert from London that also featured
Edmunds contemporaries Eric Clapton,
George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. For
Edmunds, it was a lifelong dream come
true. “To me, Carl Perkins was somewhere
on another planet!” he exclaims. “I never
thought I’d work with him one day. You
always thought those rockabilly guys were
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NOVEMBER / DECEMBER