Rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins was close at hand when the two currents that defined Southern music at midcentury—rhythm & blues and country & western—came together as rock and roll in the person of Elvis Presley. In fact, Presley's first release—"That's All Right (Mama)" b/w "Blue Moon of Kentucky"—inspired Perkins to head straight for the source of the music, Sun Records, and offer his services to owner/producer, Sam Phillips. Perkins was a native Tennessean who'd grown up in a sharecropping family in Tiptonville, a farming community north of Memphis. He'd been performing since the Forties in the Perkins Brothers Band, which included siblings Jay and Clayton, and was right on track with Presley in the synthesis of rock and roll from homegrown elements.