The Rock and Roll Trio - Early

Early

The trio together with Tommy Seeley and Albert Vescovo had their first recording session with the Von Theater in Boonville, which booked the Burnettes and other talent from out of town. Hayden Thompson, who also recorded for Von, has asserted that the label was unconnected with the theatre. Music writer Adam Komorowski, however, states that the label owner Sam Thomas had named the label after the theatre. The session was arranged and paid for by Eddie Bond's father, Bill Bond, who wanted to manage the band. The Record Exchanger No. 26, however, noted that the session was set up and A & R’d by Buddy Bain, a disc-jockey and performer in Corinth, Mississippi. Their first single was “You’re Undecided”(any early indication of their rockabilly style) backed with Go Mule Go (Von 1006), released under the name Johnny Burnette. It sold fewer than 200 copies. There is some disagreement over the year in which this single was released. The Guinness Book Of Rock Stars suggests that the year was 1953, but other sources suggest 1954, and others suggest November 1955.

The trio were said to have auditioned for Sun Records but were turned down by Sam Phillips, apparently because they sounded too much like Elvis Presley. Whether or not this audition took place, however, remains a matter of dispute. Dorsey Burnette has stated that they recorded a demo session for Sun. He said, “We took Sam Phillips some songs and he turned ‘em down, but they weren’t very good anyway.” In an article for ‘TV Radio Mirror’, Johnny Burnette recalled that he and Dorsey had auditioned for Sun Records and had been chased back onto the street when the fiddler’s bridge broke. No tapes of any such audition have ever been found, although this could be explained by the fact that Sam Phillips was prone to record over tapes. More importantly, however, Burlison later insisted that the group did not audition at Sun at all, and he recalled the incident of the fiddler’s bridge taking place during the recording of Go Mule Go. If they did not, they were one of the few KWEM regulars not to do so. As the trio was only a loose aggregation until 1956, then it is possible that the Burnettes may have auditioned at Sun without Burlison. Sources also vary as to the time of the alleged audition. Some suggest 1954, but others have put it in early 1956, with only Dorsey and Johnny Burnette present.

From 1954 to February 1956, the trio played at the Hideaway Club in Middleton, Tennessee with the Doc MacQueen Swing Band. As well as their work with the band they were to have an intermission spot of their own, and by 1956 the trio had built a strong reputation in and around Memphis. But the earnings from these session did not provide them with enough on which to live, and so all three had daytime jobs. Both Paul Burlison and Dorsey Burnette were working for the Crown Electric Company as journeyman and apprentice electrician respectively, and Johnny held down a number of jobs, including one selling dishes and appliances door to door, another as a 'Repo Man' and also as a deck hand on barges traversing the Mississippi River. In February/March 1956, Paul Burlison and Dorsey Burnette were laid off from Crown Electric. As they both needed to secure regular pay-cheques, they decided to drive to New York in the hope of gaining jobs there through the electrician’s union.

Paul Burlison was to later recall that “they could not make it alone on what they were being paid on Friday and Saturday nights at the Hideaway. So we thought, until things picked up in Memphis, they would go to New York and work awhile.” After discussing the move with their wives and other family members, the trio drove to New York through one of the worst snowstorms to hit the Northeast in many years. They stopped off briefly in Brownsville in order to inform Doc McQueen of their move. McQueen is reported to have said, “Let me know if you make it big.”

When they arrived in New York, they took rooms in the YMCA. Paul and Dorsey started work as electricians, and Johnny worked in the garment district. They then found out about the Wednesday night auditions for the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, and they joined the endless queue of show business hopefuls. Elvis Presley had only hit the big time in late January 1956, and someone in the Mack audition crew thought that the Burnettes and Burlison might reach the same market. So they were given the fast track and appeared on the show, which was networked nationally by ABC. They won three straight appearances in April and May 1956, which gained them a slot on the finalists’ tour in September 1956. A newspaper clip on the day after their third win on the Ted Mack Show referred to them as "the Rock and Roll Boys from Memphis”. No one had seen anything like it. Burlison's stinging lead guitar, combined with Johnny Burnette's frenetic voice and Dorsey's high energy bass sound. The result was a driving musical style that caused television listeners to stop and listen.

Between their second and third appearances, they were spotted by Bill Randle, who was a top rated disc-jockey on WERE, Cleveland. Randle telephoned his friend Henry Jerome, who was a band leader at the Hotel Edison at the time, and he told Jerome to watch the trio’s next appearance on television. Jerome was sufficiently impressed by what he saw that he contacted the Burnettes and Burlison and signed them to a management contract. He got Johnny a daytime job as an elevator operator at the Hotel Edison and moved the trio there from the YMCA. He secured a contract for the trio with GAC (General Artist Corporation) and with the Coral division of Decca Records. Paul Burlison was to say later that he believed that they made a mistake by signing with Coral Records. "Capitol Records was after us, ABC Paramount, Chess and Decca," Burlison remembered. "I wanted to go to Capitol but they said it didn't matter, a hit record would make us rich."