“CARL PERKINS: THE KING OF ROCKABILLY” by Jeff Apter (Citadel, 240 pages, $29).
Carl Perkins is an unexpected choice of subject for the prolific musician biographer Jeff Apter, who lays out the life of the atypically modest rock star in “Carl Perkins: The King of Rockabilly.”
Apter credits “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” the scandalous biography about supreme hedonist Jim Morrison of The Doors, as his first inspiration. That 1980 best-seller by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarman, chronicles the live-fast-die-young life of the notoriously unstable Morrison, who rarely met a drug he didn’t love, especially alcohol, until his death in 1971 at age 27.
Perkins, who lived to be 65, is the anti-Morrison. The legend who gave the world “Blue Suede Shoes” did share the prosaic disease of alcoholism with Morrison, but that’s about it. Although Apter relates few drunken escapades by Perkins, the ones he does reveal are not barn burners:
“Carl found a secluded spot near his house in Jackson [Tennessee], where he’d park, sit and drink. … [Wife] Valda eventually found out where Carl was hiding out, and when it got dark, she’d send someone to track him down.”