Paul Burlison: A 1978 Interview With the Rock 'N Roll Trio's Rockabilly Wildman

JasO

In 1978, Solid Smoke, a small indie label in San Francisco, anthologized the original mid-1950s Rock ’n Roll Trio recordings as the Tear It Up album. A copy reached me at Guitar Player magazine, and I jumped at the opportunity to interview one of rock’s unsung guitar innovators. In essence, the guitarist on those recordings, Telecaster devotee Paul Burlison, holds two distinctions in American music history. As a founding member of the Rock ’n Roll Trio, he helped pioneer Elvis-era rockabilly and, through a fortuitous amp accident, he introduced the sound of distorted guitar to live rock audiences. He may also have been the first to employ amp distortion on a rock record (more on this in the article linked below).

At the time of our conversation, Paul was living just south of Memphis in Walls, Mississippi. A heavily edited version of our May 30, 1978, conversation was published as one of my Guitar Player "Pro's Reply" columns. I've just completed a complete transcription of the interview, which is too long to post here. If you're interested, here's a link for this free-for-all post:

https://jasobrecht.substack.com/p/paul-burlison-the-complete-rock-n

Jfingers

I enjoyed that, cheers.