Rockabilly emerged in the 1950s as young country musicians infused their music with rhythm and blues, emphasizing the electric guitar over instruments such as the steel guitar, fiddle, and banjo. Originally called hillbilly bop or cat music, it blossomed across the South, especially in Memphis, Jackson, Tennessee, Tupelo, Mississippi, and the towns between them. Adamsville-born DJ Dewey Phillips promoted the style on his nightly WHBQ Memphis radio show, while Earl Latta's Ford dealership on Selmer's town square hosted Saturday night jamborees featuring rockabilly singers alongside traditional country performers. Musicians including Carl Perkins, Eddie Bond, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Burnette developed their skills in clubs along U.S. Highways 45 and 64, and before the interstate system was completed those two-lane routes made Selmer and McNairy County central to rockabilly music. Presley's first Sun Records recordings in Memphis in 1954 and 1955 helped codify the sound, and his January 1955 appearances in Booneville, Corinth, Sheffield, and Bethel Springs influenced Perkins, who had signed with Sun Records in October 1954 and was awaiting release of his first record when he saw Presley perform in Bethel Springs. Perkins's home recordings, made by fiddle player Stanton Littlejohn in Eastview in 1951 and again in 1952 or 1953, probably predated Presley's recordings and suggest that Perkins independently formulated the rockabilly style. In 2008, Shawn Pitts at Arts in McNairy commissioned Selmer-born photorealist artist Brian Tull to paint a 20-by 120-foot mural in Selmer celebrating McNairy County's role in rockabilly's beginnings, and he completed it between February and June 2009 using Phil and Ray Doll Hummer as models. Its unveiling launched the annual Rockabilly Highway Revival music festival, Highway 45 was later named Rockabilly Highway and Rockabilly Way by the Tennessee and Mississippi legislatures, and a second mural based on singer Eileen Rose with guitarist Rich Gilbert was completed in June 2012.