NASHVILLE, June 29 (UPI) — Rock guitar pioneer Scotty Moore, an original member of Elvis Presley’s band has died after several months of declining health. He was 84.
Moore, hugely influential and the last surviving member of Presley’s first band — which included bassist Bill Black and producer Sam Phillips, is considered one of the creators of the sound of rock and roll.
“Everyone else wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty,” said Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
Born in Gadsden, Tennessee, Moore picked up the guitar at eight years old. He moved to Memphis in the 1950s after he got out of the Navy and formed his first band, the Starlite Wrangers with Bill Black. In Sun Records’ Sam Phillips put Moore and Black together with Elvis Presley, then still a teenager. The group’s first single, “That’s All Right (Mama),” was meant to be an audition, but instead became rock history.
Moore told Rolling Stone in 2010, “Sam said, ‘Call this guy up and get him to go over to your house and see what you think of him.’ So he came to my house on the Fourth of July. It was kind of a pre-audition.”
He was inducted as part of the inaugural group of celebrated sidemen in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
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