Scotty Moore
b. Winfield Scott Moore, 27 December 1931, Gadsden, Tennessee, USA. Guitarist Moore started playing at the age of eight and formed his first band while in the US Navy in 1948. After he left the service he joined the Memphis group Doug Poindexter And His Starlite Wranglers who also included bass player Bill Black. The band recorded Moore's My Kind Of Carryin On’ for Sam Phillips' Sun label and both Moore and Black played on several other Sun artists’ recordings. In June 1954 Phillips invited a young singer he was trying out to Moore's apartment to rehearse some songs. That man was Elvis Presley. A week later Moore, Presley and Black went into Sun studios to record together for the first time. As a trio (later a quartet with drummer D.J. Fontana) they recorded some of Elvis's finest recordings. When Presley was sold to RCA for a ‘king's ransom’, Moore and Black were taken on as his sidemen on a relatively meagre salary. Moore, had acted as a kind of unpaid manager before Bob Neal and then Colonel Tom Parker took over the role. While Elvis was tied up filming LOVING YOU Moore and Black headed for the Dallas State Fair where they performed as Scotty And Bill, Elvis’ Original Backing Group. Scotty also went to work for the small Memphis label Fernwood Records whose most successful record was Thomas Wayne's Tragedy. Moore himself released a solo single called Have Guitar Will Travel. During the same period he also did some sessions for Dale Hawkins at Chess. Unlike Black, Moore returned to play with Presley when he came out of the army in 1960, but not for long. Over the next few years he recorded infrequently with Elvis and went back to Sun as production manager. Later in the '60s he went to Nashville to start his own studio. Presley invited him back for the 1968 television special, which was the last time Moore played with, or even saw Presley. In 1970 Moore recorded an album with D.J. Fontana but by now he had virtually retired from playing to concentrate on production (most notably engineering Ringo Starr's BEAUCOUPS OF BLUES). He was enticed out of retirement by Billy Swan to play on his self-titled 1976 album and later played on Ral Donner's Elvis tribute album. By the '80s Moore had established a successful tape copying service in Nashville and rarely picked up his guitar.