Carl Perkins can be held up as the epitome of a one-hit-wonder with his “Blue Suede Shoes,” but what a hit it was – launching by itself a completely new genre, rockabilly, and earning covers from prestigious contemporaries. Everyone from Elvis to the Beatles sang Perkins’ song, which he composed after an inspirational talk with his friend and fellow musician Johnny Cash. Cash related to him the story of military man that he met, who referred to his army-issue boots as “blue suede shoes.” Sometime later Perkins was at a dance when he observed a young man wearing blue suede shoes telling his pretty dancing partner that she should be careful not to scuff them. Perkins instantly started converting it into a song.

On this day, December 17, in 1955, Carl Perkins wrote his classic “Blue Suede Shoes,” the song he would be best known for.

Perkins’ musical growth came from his early childhood in a sharecropper family, toiling in the fields and listening to the spiritual songs of the workers. He started with a homemade guitar, imitating music heard from the Grand Ole Opry radio, and then bought a real one, although battered and barely usable. From playing at local bars on a couple nights a week (where the Perkins brothers were known as much for their fists as for their music), he found his way into a local radio station, his first break.