"After all those days in the cotton fields, the dreams came true on a gold record." The story of the mongrel mix of blues, country and pop that sold a million and became the original rock’n’roll anthem

Sam Phillips presents Carl Perkins with a Cadillac outside Sun Studios.

Some songs are straight-up classics, others break entirely new ground, a handful even make their way into the wider public consciousness. But it’s debatable whether any song has left as deep an impression on popular culture as Carl Perkins’s Blue Suede Shoes. The first proper rock’n’roll hit, it became the jump-off point for everything that followed.

Perkins’s close friend Elvis Presley recorded it himself soon after, taking it to the American masses via sensational TV appearances on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show and The Milton Berle Show, and it became the opening shot of his seminal debut album of 1956.