Paul Burlison
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Paul Burlison (February 4, 1929-September 27, 2003) was a pioneer rockabilly guitarist and a founding member of The Rock and Roll Trio. Burlison was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, where he was exposed to music at an early age. After a stint in the United States Military, Burlison teamed up with Johnny and Dorsey Burnette to form the The Rock and Roll Trio. The band released several singles, but failed to attain chart success. The Trio disbanded in the fall of 1957 and Burlison moved back to Tennessee to start a family. There he started his own electrical subcontracting business which he ran faithfully for twenty years, taking a break when the Trio reunited in the early 1980's. He released his only solo album in 1997, which received positive reviews. Burlison remained active in the music scene until his death in 2003.
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[edit] Biography
Burlison and his family lived in Brownsville until 1937. During the floods of that year, miserable economic conditions prompted the Burlison family to move to Memphis, Tennessee.
In 1938, his brother-in-law, Earl Brooks began to teach him to play the guitar. As well as learning Brooks’ Country influenced techniques, he also drew inspiration from watching Jesse Lee and Juanita Denson perform. Later, he would frequent the Blues joints along Beale Street. While he was still in high school, he would travel to the outskirts of West Memphis, Arkansas, in order to watch Chester Burnett, the Howlin' Wolf play.
Burlison also developed an interest in boxing and began training at the Dave Wells Community Center under the instruction of trainer, Jim Denson. He was to win the local welterweight championship. Whilst competing in the 1949 Golden Gloves tournament, Denson introduced him to another young boxer, Dorsey Burnette.
Dorsey Burnette would become a Golden Gloves welterweight champion. He had a younger brother, Johnny Burnette, who was a Golden Gloves lightweight champion fighter. Both brothers had a deep interest in music and it was through their mutual interest in both music and boxing that the three were to become close friends.
Towards the end of the 1940’s Burlison enlisted in the United States Armed Forces. Some sources say that he joined the Navy with a discharge date in 1949 and others that he joined the Army with a discharge date in 1951. One source has his induction date into the US Army as 1951.
[edit] Formation of the Trio
After his discharge, Burlison returned to Memphis, where he would subsequently begin a daytime job at Crown Electric as an electrician. Crown Electric would also employ Dorsey Burnette as a journeyman/electrician and a young man named Elvis Presley as a truck driver.
Burlison did not lose his interest in music and he began picking up blues session work at a pre-Elvis Sun Records, where he recorded with various black artists, most notably Howlin' Wolf. He also found work playing with Clyde Leoppard and the Snearly Ranch Boys and he was also heard on the radio with Don Paul. Later, he would join the Shelby Follin Band, with whom he would play until 1954. For a few months he and band-mate Smokey Joe Baugh also performed with Howlin' Wolf on radio KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas.
Burlison began or renewed his friendship with the Burnette Brothers, depending upon which discharge date is correct. All three had an interest in music and in 1952 or 1953 they formed a group, which may have been called "The Rhythm Rangers" at that time. Johnny Burnette sang the vocals and played acoustic guitar, Dorsey Burnette played bass and Burlison played lead guitar. In 1956, the three young men moved to New York, where they managed to get a recording contract with Coral Records and become known as The Rock and Roll Trio.
The Trio had five recording sessions between May and July 1956; two single records were released, one in June and the other in July 1956. Despite promotional appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, Steve Allen's Tonight Show and Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, these singles failed to make the charts.
The Trio then went on a summer tour with Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent, picking up a drummer, Tony Austin, who was a cousin of Carl Perkins on the way. On September 9, 1956 they appeared in the final of the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour at Madison Square Garden. A third single was released in October 1956, but it failed to chart.
In the Fall of 1956, at a gig at Niagara Falls a fight broke out and Dorsey Burnette quit the group. He was rapidly replaced by Johnny Black, the brother of Elvis’s bassist Bill Black. The revised line-up appeared in Alan Freed's movie Rock, Rock, Rock, where they played "Lonesome Train (On A Lonesome Track)". This was released as a single in January 1957, but it failed to produce any chart success.
In March 1957 the group had its final studio session and despite the release of two more singles and a 10" LP, the Trio still failed to have any chart success. The Rock and Roll Trio officially disbanded in the fall of 1957.
[edit] Brief hiatus
After a brief trip to California to join the Burnette Brothers, Burlison returned to Memphis and retired from the music business to start a family. In 1960, he also started his own electrical subcontracting company, “Safety Electrical” devoting his time and energy to his business and to his family for the next twenty years. His company was successful and in subsequent years, he also operated a mail-order business specializing in rare recordings.
The Burnette brothers moved to California and continued to have sporadic success in the music industry until the end of the decade. In 1960, Johnny Burnette had two major hits as a solo artist with “Dreamin’” and "You're Sixteen," and Dorsey Burnette had Top 30 and Top 50 hits, again as a solo artist, with “Tall Oak Tree” and “Hey Little One”.
After “Dreamin’” had become a hit, Johnny Burnette offered Burlison a spot in his road band, but Burlison refused. By 1963, Johnny’s career was in decline and in an effort to revive it he wanted to reprise some of the old material. Burlison joined Johnny on a short swing through the Mid South after his regular guitarist broke two of his fingers. They even planned to go to England together, but Burlison fell ill and he went back to Memphis and his contracting business.
[edit] Rock and Roll revival
Paul Burlison returned to the music scene in the 1980s, first with Johnny Black and Tony Austin in a recreation of the “Trio”. He also launched his own Rock-A-Billy record label to release Johnny Burnette’s Rock and Roll Trio and Their Rockin’ Friends from Memphis, an all-star tribute to the memories of Johnny and Dorsey Burnette featuring local legends like Eddie Bond, Jim Dickinson and Charlie Feathers.
In 1986, Burlison joined the Sun Rhythm Section, an oldies group, which included amongst others D J Fontana, Elvis’s former drummer. In 1990, he signed on with Rocky Burnette’s rockabilly revival band.
[edit] Solo album
In 1997, Burlison cut his first ever solo LP “Train Kept A-Rollin'” on Sweetfish Records as a tribute to The Rock and Roll Trio. The LP contained eleven tracks, three of which, Train Kept A-Rollin', Lonesome Tears in My Eyes, and Lonesome Train (on a Lonesome Track), had been featured on The Rock and Roll Trio’s original 1956 album. The album featured such guest artists as Rocky Burnette (Johnny’s son), Billy Burnette (Dorsey’s son) of Fleetwood Mac, Rick Danko and Levon Helm of The Band, David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas, and Conrad Rozano of Los Lobos, Mavis Staples, and Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds.
[edit] Death and legacy
Paul Burlison died on 27 September 2003 in Lake Horn, Mississippi after a long battle with cancer. He was interred in Hinds Chapel Cemetery, Lake Cormorant, Mississippi
Many guitarists have claimed to have been influenced by Paul Burlison. These include Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Additionally, The Beatles, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith have played cover versions of The Rock and Roll Trio's hits, often with special emphasis on Burlison's guitar riffs.
Burlison is probably best remembered as a pioneer rock and roll guitarist, who deliberately recorded a distorted "fuzztone" electric guitar sound. In May 1956, Burlison used this technique on such tracks as "The Train Kept A Rollin’" and “Honey Hush”, which were recorded for Coral Records in New York City.
In the 1950s, the electric guitar was a new technology and a distorted electric guitar sound was not considered by the music industry to be an artistic decision, but rather a sign of incompetent unprofessionalism. A distorted electric guitar did not come to be the signature sound of rock'n'roll until the late 1960s. Burlison's decision to record with a distorted electric guitar sound in 1956 was revolutionary for the time.
Burlison said that he had discovered the fuzztone sound by accident. In March 1956, just before the Trio was to go onstage at a gig in Philadelphia, he dropped his Fender Deluxe amplifier backstage and unknowingly knocked loose a vacuum tube. Once on stage, the Trio was surprised by the distorted sound coming from Burlison's amplifier, but kept playing anyway.
Afterward, Burlison inspected his amplifier, discovered the loose tube, and noticed it was making only partial contact. The distorted, fuzzy guitar sound went away when the tube was fully inserted and operating properly. Burlison discovered he could get the fuzztone sound at will by wiggling the tube out to hang "just so." He also discovered he could not get this sound with other amplifier models available at the time.
The fuzztone guitar sound was, however, not entirely unknown in the 1950s, as it had been used by Sam Phillips of Sun Records in 1951, when he produced the record “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats. Some claim that Burlison was the first rock’n’roll guitarist to use this technique but this assertion of a historical "first" assumes, among other things, that "Rocket 88," was not a rock-and-roll song, but rather a rhythm and blues song.
Paul Burlison's pioneering contribution to rock-and-roll has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
[edit] External links
- Burlison, Paul. "Remembering Guitarist Paul Burlison." Interview by Terry Gross (Philadelphia, 1987). Fresh Air with Terry Gross, rebroadcast 3 October 2003. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1454083
- Paul Burlison at the Rockabilly Hall of Fame
- Info on Paul Burlison's Guitar and Amp at The Rockabilly Guitar Page
[edit] References
- Official Paul Burlison Homepage - For general information including boxing, early years and later years
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Arena/6527/PaulBurlison.htm
- Paul Burlison by Howard A Dewitt. - Early years, Rock and Roll Trio, US Navy/1949 discharge date.
http://www.rockabillyhall.com./PaulBurlison.html
- Paul Burlison by Jason Ankeny - For general information, personnel changes in The Rock and Roll Trio, US Army/1951 discharge date, later years.
http://launch.yahoo.com/ar-270126-bio--Paul-Burlison
- Dorsey Burnette by Bruce Eder – For 1951 induction date into the US Army.
http://launch.yahoo.com/ar-269076-bio--Dorsey-Burnette
- Paul Burlison, Train Kept A-Rollin' by The Black Cat for details of 1997 LP “The Train Kept A-Rollin.
http://www.rockabilly.nl/artists/index.htm
- Paul Burlison: Train Kept A Rollin' -- extracted from Guitar Shop, 1997 – For details of Paul Burlison - Train Kept A Rollin' - 1997 - Sweetfish Records
http://www.theband.hiof.no/albums/train_kept_a_rollin.html
- Johnny Burnette's Rock 'n' Roll Trio – For early years, 1963 tour with Johnny Burnette and service in US Navy. No discharge date given but the wording implies 1949.
http://www.history-of-rock.com/burnettes.htm
- Rock Billy Boogie/Johnny Burnette Trio by Colin Escott (Sleeve notes to Bear Family CD BCD 15474. AH) - For details of Johnny Black, Tony Austin, 1963 tour with Johnny Burnette and 1951 discharge date from US Armed Forces
- The Johnny & Dorsey Burnette Discography website by Gilles Vignal and Marc Alesina – For the name Rhythm Rangers
http://www.burnettebrothers.user.fr
- Johnny and Dorsey/The Burnette Brothers by Adam Komorowski (Sleeve Notes to Rockstar CD RSRCD 005) – For Paul Burlison’s 1957/1958 trip to California.
