During a gig, Perkins noticed a couple dancing near his stage and between songs heard a man’s stern voice go, “uh-uh, don’t step on my suedes!” Perkins noticed that the man was wearing blue suede shoes with a scuff mark on one. Perkins thought to himself, “Good gracious, a pretty little thing like that and all he can think about is his blue suede shoes.” Prior to this night, Johnny Cash introduced the idea of a “blue suede shoe” song to Perkins and his response to Cash was, “I don’t know anything about shoes. How can I write a song about shoes?” However, this incident sparked Perkins to get work on this song. He began writing it out as a nursey rhyme but settling on boogie rhythm. The lyrics, “Well, it’s one for the money… Two for the show… Three to get ready… Now go, man, go!” were sung and Perkins wrote the rest of the song on a brown paper potato sack titling is as “Blue Swade.” Perkins completed the song on December 17, 1955 and recorded it on December 19, 1955 for Sun Records.