Editing Carl Perkins (section)

===Early life===
Carl Lee Perkins was born on April 9, 1932, in [[Tiptonville, Tennessee]], the son of poor [[sharecropper]]s Louise and Buck Perkins (misspelled on his birth certificate as "Perkings").<ref name="autogenerated2">[https://www.rollingstone.com/artists/carlperkins/biography] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100226181247/http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/carlperkins/biography|date=February 26, 2010}}</ref> He had two brothers, Jay and Clayton.<ref>[[#gocatgo|Perkins, pp. 8–9.]]</ref> From the age of six, he worked long hours in the cotton fields with his family whether school was in session or not. The boys grew up hearing [[Southern gospel]] music sung by white friends in church and by black field workers and sharecroppers in the cotton fields.<ref name=pc8>{{Pop Chronicles|8|3}}</ref> On Saturday nights Perkins would listen to the ''[[Grand Ole Opry]]'', broadcast from [[Nashville, Tennessee|Nashville]] on his father's radio.

[[Roy Acuff]]'s broadcasts from the Opry inspired Perkins to ask his parents for a guitar.<ref>[[#legends|Naylor.]]</ref> Since they could not afford to buy one, his father made one from a [[cigar box guitar|cigar box]] and a broomstick. Eventually, a neighbor sold his father a worn-out [[Gene Autry]] guitar. Perkins could not afford new strings, and when they broke, he had to retie them. The knots cut his fingers when he would slide to another note, so he began bending the notes, stumbling onto a type of [[blue note]].<ref name="naylor118" /><ref name=":0">[[#gocatgo|Perkins, pp. 13–14.]]</ref>

Perkins taught himself parts of Acuff's [[The Great Speckled Bird (song)|Great Speckled Bird]] and [[The Wabash Cannonball]] having heard them played on the ''Opry''. He also has cited [[Bill Monroe]]'s fast playing and vocals as an early influence.<ref>[[#gocatgo|Perkins, pp. 11–12.]]</ref> Perkins also learned from John Westbrook, an African-American field worker in his sixties who played blues and gospel music on an old acoustic guitar. Westbrook advised Perkins to "Get down close to it. You can feel it travel down the strangs, come through your head and down to your soul where you live. You can feel it. Let it vib-a-rate."<ref name="naylor118" /><ref name=":0" />

In January 1947, the Perkins family moved from [[Lake County, Tennessee]], to [[Madison County, Tennessee|Madison County]], 70 miles from [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]], the largest city in West Tennessee and a center of a great variety of music played by both black and white artists.<ref>[[#gocatgo|Perkins, pp. 30, 55.]]</ref> At age fourteen, Perkins wrote a country song called Let Me Take You to the Movie, Magg. [[Sam Phillips]] was later persuaded by the quality of that song to sign Perkins to his [[Sun Records]] label.<ref>[[#gocatgo|Perkins, pp. 30, 68.]]</ref>