Paul Burlison - Formation of The Trio

Formation of The Trio

After his discharge, Burlison returned to Memphis, where he would subsequently begin a daytime job at Crown Electric as an electrician. Crown Electric would also employ Dorsey Burnette as a journeyman/electrician and a young man named Elvis Presley as a truck driver.

Burlison did not lose his interest in music and he began picking up blues session work at a pre-Elvis Sun Records, where he recorded with various black artists, most notably Howlin' Wolf. He also found work playing with Clyde Leoppard and the Snearly Ranch Boys and he was also heard on the radio with Don Paul. Later, he would join the Shelby Follin Band, with whom he would play until 1954. For a few months he and band-mate Smokey Joe Baugh also performed with Howlin' Wolf on radio KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas.

Burlison began or renewed his friendship with the Burnette Brothers, depending upon which discharge date is correct. All three had an interest in music and in 1952 or 1953 they formed a group, which may have been called "The Rhythm Rangers" at that time. Johnny Burnette sang the vocals and played acoustic guitar, Dorsey Burnette played bass and Burlison played lead guitar. It was during the early fifties that the group would play in and around Memphis at the local honkytonks. These were the days of the jitterbug and bop, and to keep the honkytonk managers happy without the big band, and to keep the patrons on the dance floor, the group would play an upbeat version of blues and country called rockabilly. In 1956, the three young men moved to New York, where they managed to get a contract with Coral Records and record their rockabilly music under the name The Rock and Roll Trio.

The Trio had five recording sessions between May and July 1956; two single records were released, one in June and the other in July 1956. Despite promotional appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, Steve Allen's Tonight Show and Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, these singles failed to make the charts. The Trio then went on a summer tour with Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent, picking up a drummer, Tony Austin, who was a cousin of Carl Perkins on the way. On September 9, 1956 they appeared in the final of the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour at Madison Square Garden. A third single was released in October 1956, but it failed to chart.

In the Fall of 1956, at a gig at Niagara Falls a fight broke out and Dorsey Burnette quit the group. He was rapidly replaced by Johnny Black, the brother of Elvis’s bassist Bill Black. The revised line-up appeared in Alan Freed's movie Rock, Rock, Rock, where they mimed to "Lonesome Train (On A Lonesome Track)". This was released as a single in January 1957, but it failed to produce any chart success.