Winfield Scott Moore III (December 27, 1931 – June 28, 2016) was an American guitarist who formed The Blue Moon Boys in 1954, Elvis Presley's backing band.

The Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards said of Moore:When I heard "Heartbreak Hotel", I knew what I wanted to do in life.

A fan of the guitarist Chet Atkins, Moore led a group called the Starlite Wranglers before Sam Phillips at Sun Records put him together with then-teenage Elvis Presley.

The trio was completed with double bass player Bill Black, who brought a "rhythmic propulsion" that much pleased Phillips.

[9] In 1954, Moore and Black accompanied Elvis on what would become the first Presley hit, the Sun Studios session cut of "That's All Right", a recording regarded as a seminal event in rock and roll history.

[11]During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing an echo effect that Sam Phillips called "slapback".

Subsequently, Elvis's popularity rose amongst teenage girls, they began touring nationwide, appearing on distinguished programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show, which, at the time, was the hallmark for success for young artists.

On April 3, 1956, they performed "Shake, Rattle and Roll," "Heartbreak Hotel," and "Blue Suede Shoes" on The Milton Berle Show.

Presley was prohibited from doing the gyrations that elicited screams from the audience, which would produce good reviews, but those were nothing compared to the scandals Elvis and the band would face.

"[17] Moore played on many of Presley's most famous recordings, including "That's All Right," "Good Rockin' Tonight," "Milkcow Blues Boogie," "Baby Let's Play House" (where Elvis introduced the vocal stutter to the music pundits), "Heartbreak Hotel," "Mystery Train," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Hound Dog," "Too Much,""Jailhouse Rock," and "Hard Headed Woman."

[24] Colonel Parker didn't interfere but RCA Victor executive Steve Sholes, who had little regard for the ability of Presley's band, hoped the separation would be permanent.

In an accompanying interview, Presley revealed that during the previous two years, people had tried to convince him to get rid of his band so from his point of view he had stayed loyal to them.

"[26] Moore and the Blue Moon Boys performed (and had additional small walk-on and speaking roles) with Presley in four of his movies (Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, and G.I.

In 1964, Moore released a solo album on Epic Records called The Guitar That Changed the World, played using his Gibson Super 400.

"[33] On the 1961, post-Army Presley single "Little Sister," "Scotty Moore comes up with his greatest post-Sun guitar lick and not only converts a comparatively humdrum Pomus-Shuman teen love triangle number into the best of Elvis's early sixties hits but (together with D.J.

"[34] According to Presley discographer Ernst Jorgensen, however, Hank Garland was the lead guitarist on the song, while Moore played acoustic guitar.

[35] Moore is given credit as a pioneer rock 'n' roll lead guitarist, though he characteristically downplayed his own innovative role in the development of the style.

"Carl Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old.

"[36] Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as "essentially... an Elvis Presley construction:" "the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country.

"[37] In "That's All Right," the Presley trio's first record, Moore's guitar solo, "a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion.

He became an inspiration to many subsequent popular guitarists, including George Harrison, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.

[citation needed] Earlier on, Scotty used a '52 Telecaster, which he traded at the Houck Piano Company in Memphis for the now-iconic gold-colored Gibson ES-295[40] (nicknamed "The Guitar That Changed the World").

As a member of Lee Rocker's Big Blue, Eldred also helped bring Moore (then semi-retired) aboard as a guest on that group's first album.

He co-wrote the instrumental "Have Guitar Will Travel" in 1958 with Bill Black, which was released as a 45 single, 107, on the Fernwood Records label.