Johnny Burnette

 Born March 25th, 1934, in Memphis, Tennessee, Johnny was a husky baby who demonstrated his vocal powers with his first screams and wails. The second son of Dorsey Sr. and Willie Mae Burnette, he was so musical that his mother skimped and saved to buy him a guitar when he was 5 years old. The family lived in a bulging little four-room frame house, which according to Johnny, "Dad built it hisself and it looked like a matchbox. You could throw a cat through it."

As Johnny was quoted in his Liberty Records bio, "The git-tar became my life. All I could play were the D, G and C chords but I never stopped playing them. A much older girl who played the git-tar well lived right near me and I used to practice with her. I didn't care too much for school but I loved strumming that git-tar. All day long I was just pickin' and grinnin'."

Talking about school, after graduating eight grade from Blessed Sacrament parochial school, Johnny attended Catholic High School and did not attend Humes High School with Elvis Presley, as per the legend written in news reports as early as 1956. However, as "Aunt Alberta" recently recalled for me, Johnny and Dorsey used to take their guitars and hang out on the front lawn of Humes, singing and playing with a casual group that often included Bill Black, sometimes Scotty Moore, and, for a song or two, even a young Elvis Presley. Alberta, who did go to school with Elvis, married Dorsey Burnette.

While in high school, Johnny Burnette racked up a series of extraordinary athletic achievements, becoming Catholic High's angry linebacker on the football team, its flashy guard on the basketball five, and its uncompromising welterweight boxer. The football team was "the lowest class football team in Memphis, but a determined one," recalled Johnny, who earned a reputation for fighting every play as if he were in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. This led to what became a celebrated tackle by Red West, a friend of Elvis' who decided to deal with the ferocious Burnette early during a game. "Well," Johnny recalled, "Red knocked me out on one of the first plays of the game." It was evident in the matter-of-fact manner Johnny recalled it, that had Johnny had the first opportunity, it would have been Red carried off the field.

But that was nothing compared to what happened to Johnny when, enroute to a drive-in movie, he pulled over to help a trapped driver stuck in a 1933 hot rod that had skidded off a slippery road and crashed. As Johnny fiercely twisted open the hot rod's door, another car piled up and sent Johnny tumbling on his back, shaken but unhurt. Then, as he picked himself up, a drunken driver plowed another car into the already chaotic scene and sent Johnny hurling 80 feet through the air. A policeman, a little child and two women were also injured in the chain-reaction accident, but only Johnny was given slim odds of pulling through. For three days he laid in a coma, with ruptured liver and shattered ribs. For three months he was a tortured convalescent.

Upon his recovery, Johnny Burnette sang and played music with renewed energy. He organized his first band in high school and after his public debut at the Millington Naval Base, he was soon playing countless benefits and "date money" gigs. And, dating with the abandon of any high school hero, he needed that date money often.

His only professional rebuff came when he waited by the door of the famed Grand Ol' Opry, and told Hank Snow, "I'd like to get on Grand Ol' Opry." Snow regarded the young teenager benevolently and said, "Well, son, it takes thirty or forty years to get on here."

However, Johnny knew he didn't need 30/40 years to prove himself as a boxer, and soon became an outstanding lightweight and welterweight boxer who fought his way to a Memphis City Golden Gloves championship.

THE BEST OF JOHNNY BURNETTE, You're Sixteen
Discovering the music of Johnny Burnette is like finishing an Agatha Christie novel only to find the last page was torn out. The music on this release, dating from the end of the Fifties to shortly before Burnette's tragic death in 1964, is that of an artist in transition. With these performances, one can hear Burnette move from rough-edged rockabilly to slickly produced pop. He forged a singularly charming hybrid of those styles, one which is all his own. The compilation as a whole sounds more like Volume One of a chronological series than a final testament to the man's talents.

From an early age, Johnny Burnette (born March 25, 1934, in Memphis, Tennessee) was fascinated by music. By the time he reached his teens, he would often occupy himself by playing his guitar for hours on end. However, as the Fifties rolled around he got sidetracked into boxing, a career in which his older brother Dorsey had already experienced some success. Fortunately for music fans, sixty dollars and one broken nose later, Johnny quit the ring and set his sights on the stage.

Contrary to legend, Johnny Burnette did not go to high school with Elvis Presley (Note: see INSIDE THE JOHNNY BURNETTE STORY on this site for full details), nor did he work for Presley's employer, Crown Electric. He mainly worked as a deck hand on barges traversing the Mississippi River. Dorsey, having given up boxing as well, worked on other Mississippi barges, as an oiler. Although they worked separately, each of them would bring his guitar on board and write songs during his spare time. Once back home in Memphis they would perform those and other songs together at local bars, with a varying array of sidemen.

Dorsey eventually left the Mississippi behind to work for Crown Electric. Besides meeting Elvis there, he also met Paul Burlison, guitarist for the Memphis Four.

Although it has been reported that Elvis Presley's trio inspired Johnny Burnette to form one, it seems more likely that the opposite was the case, since Burnette formed his trio in 1953. Johnny persuaded Dorsey and Paul Burlison that they should pool their musical forces. The new group, calling itself The Rock And Roll Trio, featured Johnny on lead vocals and guitar, Dorsey on stand-up bass, and Paul Burlison on lead guitar. (Later, record labels would bill them as Johnny Burnette And The Rock And Roll Trio," and after that as "The Johnny Burnette Trio.")

In early 1956, a couple of years after an unsuccessful single on a tiny local label, the trio decided to seek its fortune in New York City. Although legend has it that they went there solely to audition for the "Ted Mack Amateur Hour" TV show, their original reason for heading north was to get new day jobs. Dorsey and Paul had been laid off due to a slowdown of the Memphis economy, and the electricians' union had offered to find them work in New York.

One night, while Dorsey was viewing sci-fi fare in a Times Square movie house, Johnny and Paul decided to attend a taping of the "Ted Mack Amateur Hour." Once they took their seats in the audience, they found themselves wishing they were onstage instead. Afterwards, they questioned an usher and were led to a staffer, who told them to attend and audition being held that week. Years later, Paul Burlison recounted the story to Goldmine magazine: "We got to the audition and there was a line going all across the lobby, all the way up a flight of stairs, and all the way down a hall to a door. People coming out said they were booked solid for the next few months and no one would get on 'til after that. 'Okay, boys, you've got six minutes to do your stuff - and out. That's all you've got.' I plugged the guitar and the amp in real fast.'

Burlison needn't have worried, for the trio made such an impression on the judges that they were invited to appear on the show the very next week. For the next few months the trio appeared to be living a classic success story. They won on the "Ted Mack Amateur Hour" three weeks in a row, earning them a string of tour dates.