By: Kidman J. Williams
Music legend Scotty Moore has died today at the ripe age of 84. Scotty Moore died in his home in Nashville and had been in pretty bad health for a while. Moore was so ill last October that he couldn’t attend his own induction into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones ended up accepting on his behalf.
For those of you that don’t understand the magnitude of Scotty Moore’s passing the clouds will weep, the thunder will applaud, and there will be some good rockin’ tonight in the heavens.
Scotty Moore played with Elvis Presley from his first session in the mid 50’s until 1964 when he left. Scotty Moore helped form what we know as Rock-n-Roll kiddies and he did it with a ferocious aggressive style that nobody had really heard before.
Scotty like others, had the ability to take country and blues and do what was known as rock music. He had a wide influence on such players like Keith Richards.
Richards once said of Moore that he first heard him on an English station, “There was Heartbreak Hotel and the station kept fading out on me so I kept running around the room trying to hear it. Basically it was that. Scotty was the one who turned me onto the thing. When I suddenly knew what it was that I really wanted to do.”
There are many musicians out there, now legends, who have similar stories of Moore and Elvis. His influence will never be forgotten in music.
Anytime you see a young man with some swagger jump up on a microphone, understand that that man on the mic…isn’t anything without that man laying down the sonic soul that propels the crowd. Thank you Scotty.
If Elvis Presley was the “King of Rock-N-Roll,” then you Scotty, you were definitely the King’s General of Rock-N-Roll.