Perkins wrote and recorded "Blue Suede Shoes" in 1956, and his version sold 2 million copies before Presley's rendition became a hit. He also wrote the rockabilly standard "Dixie Fried" and the songs "Honey Don't," "Matchbox" and "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," which were later covered by the Beatles.

His relationship with the Beatles lasted long after the group's breakup in 1970. Perkins sang a duet with Paul McCartney on the country ballad "Get It," a song off McCartney's 1982 album, "Tug of War." On the same record, he played rhythm guitar on the McCartney-Stevie Wonder hit duet, "Ebony and Ivory." Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr appeared with him in a cable TV special in London, "Carl Perkins and Friends: A Rockabilly Session." "George Harrison told me 'Man, you wrote your songs, you sang your songs, you played your guitar,'" Perkins said once in an interview. "'That's what we wanted to do.'" Perkins credited the Beatles and the Rolling Stones with taking rockabilly further than he thought it could go. "They advanced it so much," he said. "That rockabilly sound wasn't as simple as I thought it was." "They put a nice suit on rockabilly," he said in another interview. "They never really strayed from the simplicity of it. They just beautified it."

The son of a tenant farmer, Perkins grew up picking cotton, and was fascinated by the gospel music sung by blacks working in the cotton fields. He would also go behind the family chicken house and pretend he was singing on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. At 7, he began playing a guitar that his father had made from a cigar box, broomstick and baling wire. He wrote "Blue Suede Shoes" after hearing a boy telling his prom date not to step on his blue suede shoes. Perkins went back to his home in a housing project and wrote the song on a brown potato sack. Shortly after recording the song, Perkins was hurt in a traffic accident and spent a year recovering.

Kirk Covington has become recognized as one of the most versatile and dynamic drummers in the world. He has performed and / or recorded with many of the most gifted and revered musicians of all time including Joe Zawinul, Allan Holdsworth, Scott Henderson, Gary Willis, Robben Ford, Leni Stern and Tribal Tech.
Listen to an interesting drum solo by Kirk (realAudio)