Have you watched the Ken Burns documentary, Country Music? Look, maybe you think you don’t like country music enough for that. Fair. But if you like music at all, you might want to check it out. It’s a fantastic cultural artifact and the one lesson I, as a music lover but not a musician, took away was how much music influences other music across genre boundaries.

[Maybe because genre boundaries are for the marketers, not the musicians? At one point, vocalist Brenda Lee is interviewed for the documentary and says, “When a singer is absolutely passionate about what they do, I don’t think you should pigeonhole them because if you ask us artists, when it’s all said and done, it’s music. That’s all it is.”]

An example of music influence jumping the curb: At the beginning of their respective careers, do you know who used to tour together? Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. The King of Rock and Roll (soon to be) and The Man in Black (probably already was). In fact, Cash is the one who met someone who wore blue suede shoes, a story he must have told Carl Perkins, and then Presley’s version, on his debut album, blew it up. Now. Picture Johnny Cash singing… “Blue Suede Shoes.” There’s no way he didn’t, right?

Elvis’s own pair of blue suede shoes sold at auction for $150,000 in 2024.

He was a size 10.5.