The bigger the song, the cloudier the lore that surrounds it, and such was the case for the story about the country legend who helped inspire one of Elvis’ greatest hits. We might typically associate “Blue Suede Shoes” with the King of Rock and Roll, but depending on who you ask, country music icon Johnny Cash was the creative inspiration behind the enduring track.
Of course, if you were to ask the credited songwriter Carl Perkins’ bandmates, they might have a different story to tell.
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Johnny Cash’s Side of the Story
In his 1999 memoir Cash: The Autobiography, Johnny Cash recounted talking to Carl Perkins one night after a show he shared with Elvis Presley. According to Cash, the crowd was so adamant about Perkins returning to the stage that Presley cut his set short just to appease them. After Cash commended Perkins on his ability to win over the crowd (certainly no small feat while sharing a bill with Elvis), Cash said Perkins replied, “Yeah, but there’s one thing missing. He’s got a hit record, and I don’t.”
“There was no arguing with that, and it got me thinking,” Cash continued. “A little while later that night, I told Carl about C.V. White and the blue suede shoes. C.V. White was a Black airman from Virginia I’d known in Landsberg—he told us the initials stood for “Champagne Velvet,” but none of us ever knew the truth—and one night, he said this one thing that really struck me. When we got a three-day pass, we’d get out our best uniforms, polish our brass, and spit-shine our shoes.”
Cash said that on one three-day pass eve, White approached him and asked how he looked. “‘Like a million dollars,’ I’d tell him,” Cash wrote, “and it was true. ‘You look great, C.V. You look really striking.’ One night he laid the line on me at that point. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘just don’t step on my blue suede shoes.’” After Cash protested that his shoes were, in fact, Air Force standard black, White supposedly replied, “No, man. Tonight they’re blue suede. Don’t step on ‘em!” Thus, “Blue Suede Shoes” was born.
Not Everyone Agrees The Country Icon Was Behind Elvis’ Hit Song
Johnny Cash’s story is a charming example of how the greatest American rock standards came from the unlikeliest of places, but not everyone agrees that’s how “Blue Suede Shoes” truly came to be. According to Carl Perkins’ bandmate and drummer, W.S. “Fluke” Holland, one aspect of the story was accurate. “In 1955, we were all on the same booking agency, so the Cash and Perkins bands became really close buddies on the tour.”
“This particular time, we were driving John’s green ‘53 Plymouth in Arkansas with Carl and John in the back. He propped his leg up on the back of the front seat and said, ‘Carl, we oughta write a song about some shoes.’ A little bit further on, he went: ‘Why don’t we write it about some blue suede shoes?’” According to Holland, Perkins didn’t immediately love the idea, and the conversation about the shoe song died down.
Holland said the topic of blue suede shoes came up three days later at a hometown gig in Jackson, Tennessee. “There wasn’t a stage, so we just set up in the corner with Carl’s amplifier on the floor. Somebody danced real close to the amplifier, and we heard this boy howl at his girlfriend, ‘Don’t step on my new shoes!’ Carl went home that night and wrote the words to “Blue Suede Shoes,”” Holland explained (via Louder Sound).
Regardless of who came up with the idea, neither songwriter Carl Perkins nor country legend Johnny Cash, who helped inspire the song, would receive as much success from one of Elvis’ greatest hits as the King of Rock and Roll himself, who cut his famed version of the track one year after Perkins in 1956.
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