Scotty Moore

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Scotty Moore

Winfield Scott "Scotty" Moore III (born December 27, 1931 near Gadsden, Tennessee

Gadsden, Tennessee

Gadsden is a town in Crockett County, Tennessee, Tennessee, United States. The population was 553 at the 2000 census....
) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six Strings , but Tenor guitar, Seven-string guitar, Eight-string guitar, Ten-string guitar, Eleven-string guitar, Twelve-string guitar, Thirteen-string guitar and doubleneck guitar string guitars also exist....
ist. He is best known for his backing of Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was an United Statesn singer, actor, and musician. A cultural icon, he is commonly known simply as "Elvis", and is also sometimes referred to as "List of honorific titles in popular music" or "The King"....
in the first part of his career, between 1954 and the beginning of Elvis' Hollywood years. He was ranked forty-fourth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Scotty Moore learned to play the guitar from family and friends at eight years of age.

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Winfield Scott "Scotty" Moore III (born December 27, 1931 near Gadsden, Tennessee

Gadsden, Tennessee

Gadsden is a town in Crockett County, Tennessee, Tennessee, United States. The population was 553 at the 2000 census....
) is an American

United States

Guitar

Elvis Presley

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the navy of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy currently has approximately 331,682 personnel on active duty as of 31 December 2008 and 124,000 in the United States Navy Reserve....
between 1948 and 1952.

Moore's early background was in jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
and country music

Country music

Country music is a blend of popular American music forms originally found in the Southern United States and the Appalachian Mountains. It has roots in Traditional music, Celtic music, gospel music, and old-time music and evolved rapidly in the 1920s....
. A fan of guitarist Chet Atkins

Chet Atkins

Chester Burton "Chet" Atkins was an influential American guitarist and record producer.His picking style, inspired by Merle Travis, Django Reinhardt, George Barnes and Les Paul, brought him admirers both within and outside the country scene, both in the United States and internationally....
, Moore led a group called the "Starlite Wranglers" before Sam Phillips

Sam Phillips

Samuel Cornelius Phillips , better known as Sam Phillips, was an United States record producer who played an important role in the emergence of rock and roll as the major form of popular music in the 1950s....
at Sun Records

Sun Records

Sun Records is a record label founded in Memphis, Tennessee, Tennessee, starting operations on March 27 1952. Founded by Sam Phillips, Sun Records was known for giving notable musicians such as Elvis Presley , Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash their first recording contracts and helping to launch their careers....
put him together with then teenage Elvis Presley. Phillips believed that Moore's lead guitar and double bass

Double bass

The double bass or contrabass is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow string instrument used in the modern orchestra. It is a standard member of the string section of the orchestra and smaller string musical ensembles in European classical music....
ist Bill Black

Bill Black

William Patton "Bill" Black, Jr. was an United States musician. He is noted for being Elvis Presley's bassist....
was all that was needed to augment Presley's rhythm guitar and lead vocals on their recordings. In 1954 Moore and Black accompanied Elvis on what was going to be the first legendary Presley hit, the Sun Studios session

The Sun Sessions

The Sun Sessions is a compilation of Elvis Presley recordings at Sun Records in 1954 and 1955. It was issued by RCA Records in 1976. It had been issued as "The Sun Collection" in the United Kingdom the previous year....
cut of "That's All Right (Mama)

That's All Right (Mama)

"That's All Right, Mama" is the name of the first single released by Elvis Presley, written and originally performed by blues singer Arthur Crudup....
", a recording regarded as a seminal event in rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a form of music that evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its roots lay mainly in rhythm and blues, Country music, folk music, gospel music, and jazz....
history. Elvis, Black and Scotty Moore then formed the "Blue Moon Boys". They were later joined by drummer D.J. Fontana. Beginning in July of 1954, the "Blue Moon Boys" toured and recorded throughout the American South and as Presley's popularity rose, they toured the United States and made appearances in various Presley television

Television

Television is a widely used telecommunication mass-media for transmitting and receiving moving , either monochrome or color, usually accompanied by sound....
shows and motion pictures

Film

Film encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the film industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects....
.

Moore played on many of Presley's most famous recordings including "Good Rockin' Tonight", "Baby Let's Play House", "Heartbreak Hotel

Heartbreak Hotel

"Heartbreak Hotel" is a rock and roll song performed by Elvis Presley, with Bill Black , Scotty Moore , D.J. Fontana , Floyd Cramer and Elvis on rhythm guitar as the main supporting musicians....
", "Mystery Train", "Hound Dog

Hound Dog (song)

"Hound Dog" is a twelve-bar blues written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1952. Other early versions illustrate the differences among blues, country music, and rock and roll in the mid 1950s....
", "Too Much" and "Jailhouse Rock

Jailhouse Rock (song)

"Jailhouse Rock" is a song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller that first became a hit for Elvis Presley. The song was first released as a 45rpm single on September 24, 1957, to coincide with the release of Presley's motion picture, Jailhouse Rock ....
".

In 1957, the musical group played in Canada for the first and the last time :

April 2 : Toronto
Toronto

Toronto is the List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population in Canada and the Provinces and territories of Canada Provincial and territorial capitals of Canada of Ontario....
April 3 : Ottawa
Ottawa

Ottawa is the Capital of Canada. The city has population of 812,000, the List of the 100 largest municipalities in Canada by population municipality in the country and second largest in Ontario....
August 31 : Vancouver
Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal city and major seaport located in the Lower Mainland of southwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is the largest city in British Columbia and the second largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest region....

Scotty Moore is given credit as the pioneer of the rock 'n' roll lead guitarist. Most popular guitarists cite Moore as the performer that brought the lead guitarist to a dominant role in a rock 'n' roll band. Although some lead guitarists/vocalists had gained popularity such as Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry

Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter.Chuck Berry is an influential figure and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music....
and blues legend BB King, Presley rarely played his own lead while performing, usually providing rhythm and leaving the lead duties to Moore. Moore was a noticeable presence in the Presley performances, strictly as a guitarist. As a result, he became an inspiration to many subsequent popular guitarists, one of the more vocal of these being Keith Richards

Keith Richards

Keith Richards is an England guitarist, songwriter, singer, record producer and a founding member of The Rolling Stones. As a guitarist, Richards is mostly known for his innovative rhythm guitar playing....
of the Rolling Stones. Moore, being quite introverted on stage, accomplished this almost exclusively through his performance and interpretation of the music.

In the 1960s, Moore released a solo

Solo (music)

In music, a solo is a piece or a section of a piece played or sung by a single performer. In practice this means a number of different things, depending on the type of music and the context....
album

Album

An album or record album is a collection of related Sound recording and reproduction or music tracks distributed to the public. The most common way is through commercial distribution, although smaller artists will often distribute directly to the public by selling their albums at live concerts or on their websites....
called The Guitar That Changed the World. He performed on the NBC television special

Television special

A television special is a television program which interrupts or temporarily replaces programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. Sometimes, however, the term is given to a special TV telecast of a theatrical film, such as The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments , as opposed to the telecasting of a film on a continuing mo...
known as the '68 Comeback Special
Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special

Elvis, starring Elvis Presley, was the title of a 1968 in television United States television special. It was directed by Steve Binder and produced by Binder and Bones Howe....
.

While with Presley, Moore initially played a Gibson

Gibson Guitar Corporation

The Gibson Guitar Corporation, of Nashville, Tennessee, USA, is a manufacturer of Steel-string guitar and electric guitars. Gibson also owns and makes guitars under such brands as Epiphone, Kramer Guitars, Valley Arts Guitar, Tobias , Steinberger, and Gibson Kalamazoo Electric Guitar....
ES-295, before switching to a Gibson L5

Gibson L5

The Gibson L-5 guitar was first produced in 1922 by Gibson Guitar Corporation, then of Kalamazoo, Michigan, U.S.A. under the direction of master luthier Lloyd Loar, and has been in production ever since....
and subsequently a Gibson Super 400.

For his pioneering contribution, Moore has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame

Rockabilly Hall of Fame

The Rockabilly Hall of Fame was established on March 21, 1997 to present early rock and roll history and information relative to the artists and personalities involved in this pioneering United States music genre....
. In 2000, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shores of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland Cleveland, Ohio, United States, dedicated to recording the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, and other people who have in some major way influenced the music industry, particularly in the are...
.

Mark Adam portrayed Moore in the 2005 CBS miniseries Elvis.

Scotty Moore

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