When Dorsey Burnette died suddenly on August 19, 1979 he left a mixed musical heritage. He left a son, Billy Burnette - currently a member of Fleetwood Mac; he left some 376 published songs that had been recorded by artists like Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Glen Campbell, Waylon Jennings and even Stevie Wonder; and he left a large number of recordings, made over a twenty five year period that ran the gamut from lukewarm country to foaming at-the-mouth rockabilly.
Dorsey was born in Memphis on December 28, 1932 to Willy May and Dorsey Burnette Sr. He grew up in the Lauderdale Courts area of the city, a public housing project that from 1948 until 1954 was the home of Gladys and Vernon Presley and their withdrawn boy child, Elvis. In 1939, when Dorsey Jr. was six and his brother, Johnny, was four or five, Dorsey Sr. gave his sons a pair of Gene Autry guitars. In an unerring foretaste of things to come, they broke them over each others' heads. "Dad went out and bought us two more guitars," recalled Dorsey to Sanford Brokaw. He said, 'Learn to play those guitars. You can be like the folks on the Grand Ole Opry if you want to...I learned the G, C and E chords...When the strings broke we'd use baling wire."
Dorsey was older than Elvis by a little more than two years, and he hung out with an older crowd that included Jimmy Lee and Jesse Lee Denson, sons of the pastor of the controversial Poplar Street Mission. Jesse Lee later recorded for Vik as Lee Denson. Jimmy Lee recalls Dorsey as a badass kid, violent and not very bright. He served time with Jesse Lee in a reform school in Nashville for incorrigible truancy, according to Jimmy Lee.
Certainly, if Dorsey Jr. saw a way out of the projects, it was via his fists rather than his guitar. At a 1949 Golden Gloves championship in Memphis, he met Paul Burlison, another would-be fighter. They found out that they had a mutual interest in music, but could do little about it together for a while because Burlison went in the Army until 1951. Dorsey and Johnny played as a duet, and Dorsey recalled to Sanford Brokaw that an appliance store sponsored them on KWDI, West Memphis, in the late '40s. Jimmy Lee Denson remembered that Dorsey and Johnny Burnette, Jesse Lee Denson and Johnny Black would play gigs around Memphis, and at basement parties at Lauderdale Courts.
Music did not provide a living, though; at most gigs they only got beer money. Meanwhile, Dorsey worked as a cotton picker, a riverboat deckhand, a fisherman, carpet-layer, and electrician.
Meanwhile, Dorsey, Johnny and Paul Burlison began playing together both as a trio and as part of other groups. Occasionally, they were joined by steel-guitarist Albert Vescovo, who lived down the street from Burlison, and by fiddler Tommy Seeley, who later played with Doug Poindexter. Vescovo would later join Johnny Burnette on his tour of England (and perhaps elsewhere) in 1962.
It was the Burnette brothers, Burlison and Seeley who went to Corinth, Mississippi to cut a record for the Von label in Booneville. The session was underwritten by Eddie Bond's father, Bill Bond, and A&R'd by Corinth radio personality, Buddy Bain, who later recorded for Meteor. That record, Go Mule Go/You're Undecided, was released in 1954. Burlison once said that Von pressed 200 copies; even if that's an underestimate, it barely counted as a recorded debut at all.
Dorsey recalled that he auditioned some songs at Sun. "Sam Phillips turned 'em down. They weren't very good, anyhow," he told Sanford Brokaw. Burlison later insisted that the group didn't audition at Sun. If they didn't, of course, they were one of the few Memphis groups that passed by 706 Union Ave. without going in, but it's more likely that Burlison and the Burnettes were only a loose aggregation until 1955-56, and that Dorsey went to Phillips by himself or with Johnny. In an article for 'TV Radio Mirror' in 1961, Johnny recalled to Helen Bolstad that he and Dorsey had auditioned for Sun, and had been chased back onto the street when the fiddler's bridge broke. Burlison recalls the same incident, but places it during the recording of Go Mule Go.
This much we know: In late 1955, Dorsey was working at Crown Electric as an apprentice electrician. Burlison was also there as a journeyman electrician. By that point, one of Crown's go-fers, Elvis Presley, had quit to join Lousiana Hayride touring packages, and was making a big noise locally. Dorsey, Johnny and Paul Burlison were playing with Doc McQueen's western swing band at the Hideaway Club, when they decided to take the example of Elvis, Scotty and Bill to heart and form themselves into a rock and roll trio.
In March 1956, the trio bypassed local record labels, local radio and local television, and took a crack at the brass ring in New York. As Paul Burlison recalled to Aaron Fuchs, there was an added incentive to try New York because he and Dorsey had been laid off from Crown, and hoped to get jobs through the electricians union there: "We had to have another permanent job. We couldn't make it on what they were paying us Friday and Saturday night at the Hideaway, so we thought, until things picked up in Memphis, we'd come to New York and work awhile."
After driving through some of the worst snowstorms to hit the Northeast in years, the trio arrived in New York and took rooms at the YMCA. Dorsey and Paul started work as electricians while Johnny worked in the garment district. They found out about the Wednesday night auditions for the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and joined the endless queue of jugglers, ventriloquists and other hopefuls content to settle for even less than 15 minutes of fame.
Someone in the Mack audition crew thought that the Burnette trio might reach the same market as Elvis Presley, 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. Between the second and third appearance they found a manager or, more specifically, a manager found them. Bill Randle, a top rated dee-jay on WERE, Cleveland, phoned his friend Henry Jerome, then a band leader at the Hotel Edison, and told him to watch the Burnettes on television. Jerome signed them to a management pact and secured them a contract with the Coral division of Decca Records.
By December 1957, the original Rock & Roll Trio was no more - and even the revamped line-up would not survive for long. With the lack of chart success, the inevitable squabbles set in. Henry Jerome had started billing the group as 'Johnny Burnette & the Rock & Roll Trio' on records and on live dates, which incensed Dorsey who had taken the lead on a few songs including "Sweet Love On My Mind". Dorsey wanted to retain the more democratic name 'Rock & Roll Trio' despite the fact that the group became a quartet with the addition of Tony Austin on drums. After a fight in Niagara Falls, Dorsey quit the band just a week before the group was due to perform in Alan Freed's 'Rock! Rock! Rock!' movie.
Dorsey handed back his band uniform and returned to Memphis. He recruited a lead guitarist and a bassist, and switched from bass to rhythm guitar - by then the accepted norm for a singer. Calling themselves Dorsey Burnette and the Rock & Roll Trio, they briefly toured the South before calling it quits.
During or after his stint with his own trio, Dorsey recorded a demo session at Sun with Fabor Robison (owner of Fabor Records, co-owner of Abbott Records and sometime manager of Johnny Horton and Jim Reeves among others). "After I did the [session], he told me I could go to the Louisiana Hayride or come out to California to do Town Hall Party," Dorsey told Brokaw. "I had boxed in Shreveport, but I had never been to California, so I decided to come out to L.A."
Dorsey's son, Billy, remembers the relocation: "It was like 'The Grapes of Wrath'. My dad went to California, got settled and sent for us, and we came out in one of those little Nash Ramblers. Our dog died in the desert. My uncle [Johnny] came out shortly after that. My grandparents came, and we were all in the same house."
Dorsey continued to work as an electrician, and continued writing songs. One of the first takers was Ricky Nelson. In 1961, Johnny recalled how they had pitched tunes to him: "We bought a street map showing where the stars lived," he told Helen Bolstad, "land spotted Ozzie and Harriet's house. David was pulling out on his motorcycle, and Dorsey called, 'Hi David, is Ricky home?' David said [Ricky would] be back in a few minutes. "They waited an hour, and introduced themselves as Ricky Nelson pulled in. He remembered the Burnettes' recording of The Train Kept A'Rollin', and invited them to audition on the spot. He later recorded Waitin' In School, Believe What You Say, It's Late, Just A Little Too Much and eight other songs - mostly Dorsey's compositions. The success of Waitin' In School got the Burnettes an Imperial Records contract that led nowhere. While affiliated with Imperial and its publishing arm, Commodore Music, they also wrote for R&B shouter Roy Brown (Hip Shakin' Baby) Sonny Anderson and Jackie Walker.
In 1959 Dorsey pitched Tall Oak Tree to Ricky Nelson who turned it down, saying it was too religious. Dorsey recorded it himself, and it became his first release on Era Records and his first solo hit. Tall Oak Tree broke five months before Johnny struck gold with Dreamin' on Liberty. Coral Records promptly released an old Trio recording, Blues Stay Away From Me, under the name 'Johnny and Dorsey Burnette' to try and get a little after-the-fact mileage from the group. Dorsey followed Tall Oak Tree with Hey Little One before his career went stone cold.
The only Era recording that makes you sit up and take notice is Great Shakin' Fever, a song from the pens of Gerald Nelson and Fred Burch, who had scored with Tragedy in 1959. At some point during his Era deal, Dorsey also worked with Red West. Together, they wrote This Hotel, and co-owned a label, unimaginately dubbed Wesburn. Red later resisted the temptation to write "Dorsey: What Happened?"
"Herb Newman at Era Records sold Dorsey's contract and the masters of his last two Era sessions to Dot Records in May 1961. The Era contract had a fleeting postscript in 1966, when Newman released Dorsey's versions of Suddenly There's A Valley/Wayward Wind, two lucrative copyrights held by his publishing company (Newman had also written Wayward Wind)
Dorsey recorded prolifically for Dot: three singles and an album during a six-month contract, but nothing caught the public ear. After his Christmas single, A Country Boy In The Army stiffed, he was released. One unissued song, Little One, probably featured an eight year old Billy Burnette, who saw his first record released at roughly the same time on Dot, under the pseudonym 'Billy Beau'.
The Dot contract inaugurated a sad personal and professional downslide for Dorsey, probably exacerbated by Johnny's drowning death in 1964. He got onto the usual merry-go round of booze and pills. There were over a dozen label affiliations between the end of the Dot deal and his death in 1979; the most successful was with Capitol. By that point, Dorsey was a born-again Christian, and a born-again hillbilly. "I decided to go back to my roots," he told Bob Kirsch at 'Billboard'. Like Jerry Lee Lewis, he insisted that even his rockabilly recordings had been country.
In a swift kick of irony, the success of the Capitol recordings in the country market led Dorsey to be voted 'Most Promising Newcomer' by one of the country music organisations. After Capitol, Dorsey signed with Tamla-Motown's short lived country division, Melodyland, and a tax write-off label, Calliope, before he joined another ex-rockabilly, Jimmy Bowen, at Elektra.
The first Elektra single had barely hit the market when the news broke of Dorsey's death from a heart-attack on August 19, 1979 at his home in Canoga Park, California. Shortly before he took the Stairway to Heaven, Dorsey was rumoured to have recorded with Led Zeppelin. Delaney Bramlett organised a benefit concert for Dorsey's widow. Kris Kristofferson, Tanya Tucker, Glen Campbell and Roger Miller appeared. Bob Dylan was supposed to show - but didn't. Even with 376 published songs, Dorsey didn't die wealthy. "He signed everything they put in front of him," said Bramlett. "It's really a shame. He died with very little."
Despite his hits on Era, Capitol and other assorted labels, Dorsey Burnette's reputation seems to be best served by his recordings with the Rock 'n' Roll Trio, and some of the better entries in his publishing catalogue, like As Long As I Live. The Dot recordings profiled here were a strange mixture of lukewarm pop, and towering Jackie Wilson influenced ballads, with a few nods towards the quasi-religiosity of Tall Oak Tree that had been so successful for him the previous year.
Times were changing, and ol' Dorsey Burnette from Memphis, Tennessee, lately of greater Los Angeles, was changing with them.
COLIN ESCOTT, October 1990.
PRINCIPAL SOURCES: "Johnny Burnette" by Helen Bolstad, 'Tv-Radio Mirror', June 1961. "Dorsey Burnette: Early Days in Memphis" by Sanford Brokaw, 'Country Song Roundup', June 1978. "Tear It Up" by Dan Nooger, 'New York Rocker', November 1979. "The Johnny Burnette Trio" by John Blair & Tom Henneberry, 'Time Barrier Express' +27, April/May 1980. "Billy Burnette Rekindles Family Magic" by Robert Palmer, 'Rolling Stone', 11/27/80 "Johnny Burnette & the Rock And Roll Trio" by Aaron Fuchs, 'Goldmine' September 1982. The clippings file of the Showtime (Toronto) Archive. Paul Burlison interviewed by Colin Escott, 1989.
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Wayne Russell and Bill Millar.
ROCKIN' ON THE BEACH AND IN PRISON WITH DORSEY
I remember it was summer 1978, and my friend Jerry Sikorski and I were on the beach in Santa Monica. Jerry and I were both members of Ray Campi's Rockabilly Rebels, and we had a couple of six packs of beer and two acoustic guitars with us....Jerry and I didn't have too many original songs worked up yet so we stressed songs by boppin' hillbilly greaseballs from the '50s. In our galaxy of rock 'n' roll stars, none shone as brightly to me as the Johnny Burnette Rock 'n' Roll Trio....
So we were on the beach, rockin' and drinkin' when this big dude ambles over to us. Apparently, he had been sleeping a few towels over from us, and I guess our howling woke him up. Anyway, we look up and there's this big truck driver looking guy with long greased-back hair smiling down at us with hand extended. "Hi, I'm Dorsey Burnette," he said with a slight southern accent. Jerry and I couldn't believe it.
Dorsey appeared as if he too had been doing some drinking that day, and after introducing ourselves he sat down and started wailing out a somewhat drunken but wild version of Blue Suede Shoes. His voice was still strong and powerful. We offered him a beer and he took it, and we started doing snatches of every Trio song we could think of. Dorsey was obviously delighted to hear this stuff, and he yelled over to his wife, "Honey, these guys know Johnny and Trio stuff" Dorsey started showing us some of the original guitar licks from the songs we were doing and singing some of the Ricky Nelson stuff he wrote....Finally his wife declared that it was time to go...
We ran into him again about a year later. The Campi band got a booking at - of all places -- Chino Prison (a minumum security institution outside L.A.). On the bill with us was Dorsey Burnette, who looked very fit and remembered that day on the beach...Dorsey appeared visibly moved by the fact that we were doing the [Trio] songs, and he mentioned that we reminded him of Johnny's wild performances back in the '50s.
When Dorsey got up to sing, he did mainly modern country favorites...but the best part was when he dedicated his last song to his "little brothers", and proceeded to jump right into Tear It Up. The crowd went wild. His voice was raw and savage, and he was having so much fun with the song that he kept on jamming. Unfortunately, the prison officials had decided that the show had already run too long, and simply cut the power off to the stage. Dorsey was really angry and stopped just short of having a tantrum...
During subsequent years, I heard local stories about Dorsey's erratic behavior at joints like the Palomino Club, and fights he'd get into, perhaps fueled by his heavy ingestion of booze and pills, and finally we heard about his death of a heart attack at much too early an age.
All those Memphis cats seemed to die way too young.
COLIN WINSKI
(Excerpted from the letters page of "Discoveries" magazine, October 1989, reprinted by permission of the publisher).
Thanks to: Wolfram Ebell for the use of his demos, Wayne Russell, Colin Winski, Jerry Osborne & Adam Komorowski.
Photos Courtesy Of Michael Ochs Archives, Venice, CA
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Also available: Johnny Burnette Trio - Rockabilly Boogie (BCD 15474)
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Great Shakin' Fever (1992) -