‘I was an overnight sensation. A year after my first recording, they called me back.’
Elvis Presley on stage, 1970s
We all know that ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ was Elvis Presley’s first Sun record and that it was a very impressive start to his recording career. Although it only had local success at first, it was a turning point in the development of popular music.
But how does this debut stack up to other stars, past and present? Here we compare ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ to other recording debuts which are listed in date order.
There is the question as to what is a first record – with Elvis it could be ‘My Happiness’ and similarly with others, it could be their first home recording, if it has surfaced. This listing includes both but by and large, it is the first commercial outings. Was it immediately apparent that these artists would become major stars? Admittedly, this question is being asked with hindsight as we know what happened to each and every one of them.
We all have to start somewhere – so let’s see how many stars started at the top. Just for fun, there is a rating for the tracks, going from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most impressive.
Harry James and his Orchestra featuring Frank Sinatra – ‘From the Bottom of My Heart’ (1939)
On 13 July 1939, Harry James and his Orchestra had a recording date at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. They had a new vocalist and they recorded ‘From the Bottom of My Heart’. When it was first issued as a 78rpm, the label read, ‘Harry James and his Orchestra with vocal refrain’. The singer doesn’t come in for 50 seconds but then there is a sweet and romantic verse from Frank Sinatra. It’s Frank on his best behaviour, but the potential is clear and it is a 7.
Hank Williams – ‘I’m Not Coming Home Anymore’ (1942)
Hank Williams was 18 years old and wondering whether he should sound like Roy Acuff or Ernest Tubb but on this showing, he sounds like a young Hank Williams trying to sound older. The song was recorded in the Highbridge Radio and Shoe Shop in Montgomery, Alabama in April 1942 and probably played on radio station WSFA. It is Hank’s first known composition and is about a man leaving his family because his wife has been cheating, a neat twist so early in his career. There are too many crackles and hisses to enjoy it fully but it’s a good song, worth a 6, so why didn’t Hank revive it during his MGM years?
Hank Williams – ‘Calling You’ (1947)
Hank Williams’ first single, released in 1947 on the small Sterling label, was a gospel song he had written and he performed it with call-and-response from the Willis Brothers. It sounds like Hank all right and Billboard referred to the ‘real spiritual qualities in his pipes’. The B-side, ‘Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)’ is typical of his ‘love lost’ compositions. He got better at it but I agree with Billboard, so score it a 7.
Ray Charles – ‘I Love You, I Love You’ (1949)
Eighteen-year-old Ray Charles fronted a jazz trio, very much based on Nat ‘King’ Cole’s. This is a confident debut of a song written by someone Ray knew in blind school. The B-side is Ray’s own, ‘Confession Blues’ where Ray sounds much older than his years. A confident start but nothing too original about it, but 6.
Al Martino – ‘Here in My Heart’ (1952)
Inspired by his friend Mario Lanza, Al Martino showed enormous confidence on his first recording, made when he was 25 years old. Just listen to the final notes! It was released on the small BBS label in Philadelphia and transferred to Capitol for national distribution. When the UK published its first sales chart in November 1952, it was No.1 and yet a few weeks before, Al Martino was totally unknown. Al Martino went into hiding when the Mob wanted a slice of his career and he never regained the momentum. Still a powerful 8.
Elvis Presley – ‘My Happiness’ (1953)
See previous chapter, but the voice and the sincerity is there. A 7.
Elvis Presley – ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ (1954)
One vocalist, two guitars and a stand-up bass, no drums, and yet it remains one of the most dynamic records ever made. Producer Sam Phillips realised that adding echo increased the excitement. A lot of things came together here, all channelled through an astonishingly good-looking boy. It was a brilliant debut that led the way for Elvis and the whole of popular music. Sun Records’ rising sun logo was never more appropriate than here. The film director David Lynch described it as like ‘being hit by a truck filled with happiness’. An unqualified 10.
Chuck Berry – ‘Maybellene’ (1955)
Chuck Berry had been working as a guitarist in several bands around St Louis, Missouri but he was desperate to record his own songs. He impressed the Chess brothers in Chicago and his first single was about fast cars and fast women (that is, the very essence of Chuck Berry) and called ‘Maybellene’. It was a confident composition with Chuck adding to the dictionary with ‘As I was motivatin’ over the hill’. It’s an immensely confident performance, although the song doesn’t have a great guitar riff like ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ or ‘Johnny B. Goode’. As well as being a No.1 R&B hit, it made the US Top 10, so it was an astonishing debut for a black performer in 1955. Definitely a 9 and I might have gone the full 10 if I liked the song more.
Barbra Streisand – ‘You’ll Never Know’ (1955)
When holidaying in a resort in the Catskills, Barbra Streisand’s mother wanted to make a private recording with a local pianist and she told Barbra that she could sing something as well. The 13-year-old Barbra sang ‘You’ll Never Know’ with a confidence that belied her years, confidently playing with the phrasing of the song, but you might think it was a boy soprano. She said, ‘I had planned a simple ending but I got carried away.’ Clearly a talent to watch. Barbra’s first record did not come until some years later, after she had already been on Broadway and performed on major TV variety shows. Already a 7.
Everly Brothers – ‘Keep-A Lovin’ Me’ (1956)
Chet Atkins liked the sound of the two brothers and saw how they could make teenage records which could appeal to country fans. He couldn’t justify a whole three-hour session with them and he told them to turn up at the end of a session by Carl Smith. Carl’s group, the Tunesmiths, heard the four songs that Don Everly had written and accompanied them straight away. No second takes, that was it, and it was all done and dusted within half an hour. It’s hillbilly and like Hank Williams, but those harmonies are in place. A solid 6.
Gene Vincent – ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ (1956)
Who’d ever heard of a girl called Be-Bop-A-Lula and what are red blue jeans? The song had been based around a comic book heroine, Little Lulu and written by a patient in the next hospital bed to Gene Vincent, Donald Graves. Gene gave him $25 for the song and he sang it on the radio in Norfolk, Virginia. In May 1956 he and his musicians went to Nashville and cut it with producer Ken Nelson for Capitol. The drummer Dickie Harrell screamed because he wanted his mother to know he was there. Oodles of echo and a classic debut unlike anything that had gone before (except ‘Heartbreak Hotel’). Clearly Gene had great potential but he was beset by personal problems and couldn’t build on his success. As for the record, a stunning 10.
Buddy Holly – ‘Blue Days – Black Nights’ (1956)
Strongly influenced by Elvis Presley’s success, the hot kid on the block in Lubbock was signed to US Decca and invited to Nashville to record with his musicians. The best track was a risqué ‘Midnight Special’, which was held back at the time. The single was ‘Blue Days – Black Nights’ from Lubbock songwriter, Ben Hall. The song was well recorded, with Sonny Curtis copying Chet Atkins’ style on the guitar break. The Billboard reviewer said, ‘If the public will take more than one Presley or Perkins, as it well may, Holly stands a strong chance.’ It’s an excellent rockabilly record but it’s just as well that it didn’t make it, as he adopted a more defiant, less country style for ‘That’ll Be the Day’, his chart-topper with the Crickets the following year. Definitely something there, so 8.
Tom and Jerry (Simon and Garfunkel) – ‘Hey Schoolgirl’ (1957)
Sixteen-year-olds Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel trying to sound as much like the Everly Brothers, as possible, and it worked. The single climbed into the US Top 50 and sold 100,000 copies. Tom and Jerry were has-beens at 17. Whatever happened to them? 6.
The Quarrymen (Beatles) – ‘That’ll Be the Day / In Spite of All the Danger’ (1958)
There is a tourist plaque to mark Percy Phillips recording this in his home studio in Kensington, Liverpool, in 1958. Considering how naff a lot of British rock’n’roll was at the time, this is a decent cover of the Crickets’ hit. The B-side, written by McCartney / Harrison is of more interest and the song is structured around ‘Tryin’ to Get to You’. Worth a 7 and they hadn’t even gone to Hamburg.
Johnny Kidd and the Pirates – ‘Please Don’t Touch’ (1959)
Johnny Kidd had written both songs for their first single, recorded on 18 April 1959, and released on 8 May. They were ‘Please Don’t Touch’ and ‘Growl’, but the group’s manager, Guy Robinson, added himself as a songwriter to create the amusing but misleading credit of Heath Robinson. As with Gene Vincent’s ‘Be-bop-a-Lula’ and Elvis Presley’s ‘That’s All Right, Mama’, ‘Please Don’t Touch’ was a very impressive recording debut. It defined his signature sound, very rhythmic but tough and menacing. The song referred to ‘shaking’, a common theme in Kidd’s lyrics. The growl at the end has been copied from Conway Twitty’s ‘It’s Only Make Believe’. The B-side was even called ‘Growl’ and was a continuation of ‘Please Don’t Touch’, but dynamic in its own right. The single only reached No.26 on the UK charts, but it’s worth a 7.
The Beach Boys – ‘Surfin’’ (1961)
The Pendeltones recorded their first single at Hite Morgan’s home studio in Hollywood in September 1961 for the small Candix label. They had a song written by his son Bruce, ‘Luau’, lined up for the A-side, but when Dennis Wilson remarked, ‘No one has written a song about surfing’, lights lit up all around. Brother Brian wrote ‘Surfin’’ and it sounds like a doo-wop record with surfing lyrics and Four Freshmen harmonies. When the single was released, the Pendeltones were surprised to find that they had become the Beach Boys. Making No.75 on the US chart, the Beach Boys were up and running and the components of their glorious surfing hits were in place. An 8.
Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan (1962 LP)
There are numerous tapes of Bob Dylan performing in friends’ apartments but nothing was released at the time. When he was signed to Columbia Records in November 1961, he cut a whole album for producer John Hammond in two days. It’s just Bob with his guitar and harmonica and the tracks included ‘House of the Risin’ Sun’, which inspired The Animals. His own songs were talking blues and a tribute to Woody Guthrie. It could only be Dylan, no doubt about that; he’s 20 and sounding 70, and nobody else was sounding like that in 1961 (except some old blues men). Most of us wanted to follow him down. 9.
The Beatles – ‘Love Me Do’ (1962)
You could write a whole book on the Beatles’ recordings before October 1962, the official releases being with Tony Sheridan, but this is where they stood on their own eight feet. The talent is unquestionably there and although ‘Love Me Do’ is a fairly routine R&B song, the vocals and the playing are so attractive. The single made the UK Top 20, giving the impression that with the right song, they would go far. An 8 but I could be persuaded to go higher.
The Kinks – ‘Long Tall Sally’ (1964)
The Kinks’ new manager Larry Page was told by the promoter Arthur Howes that the Beatles were storming audiences with ‘Long Tall Sally’, and yet they hadn’t put it on record. Rather than use a Ray Davies song for their debut single, Page told the band to work up ‘Long Tall Sally’, which they perform to the rhythm of ‘Lucille’. It’s okay and sold reasonably (No.42 in Melody Maker) but it needed a harder, more uninhibited sound. Not to worry: it would soon be all Ray and all of the knight. A 5.
The Beefeaters (Byrds) – ‘Please Let Me Love You’ (1964)
Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark were working as the Jet Set and when asked to make a single, they didn’t want it to prejudice a more permanent deal. The Beatles had stormed America and so they wanted an English name, which they found on the label of a gin bottle. Folk-rock with Beatle harmonies and ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah’. Give them 5, but the magic, swirling ship is only a year away.
Tom Jones and the Squires – ‘Chills and Fever’ (1964)
Tom had been singing around the clubs in South Wales for some years and he had built up a powerful singing voice. He took Ronnie Love’s moderate US success, ‘Chills and Fever’ (1961, US 72) and added his own spin, singing it far, far better than the original. Not a hit, but unmistakably Tom Jones and success was only another single away. As we shall see, Elvis greatly admired Tom but despite his tremendous talent, popular music would have been just the same without him. A 7.
Davie Jones and The King-Bees (David Bowie) – ‘Liza Jane’ (1964)
The washing-machine millionaire, John Bloom, backed this band and helped them secure a Decca contract. A Juke Box Jury panel of Diana Dors, Jessie Matthews, Charlie Drake and Bunny Lewis (how knowledgeable can you get?) voted this fairly routine British R&B track a Hit. As a result, David gave up his day job in an advertising agency, as pop stars didn’t catch the 8.10 from Bromley every morning. Dick James could have had his publishing but he told the publicist Les Conn to get ‘this long-haired git out of my office’. Not a bad single but nothing that says David Bowie about it, and he went through an Anthony Newley phase before he got there, so only a 4.
Bluesology (Elton John) – ‘Come Back, Baby’ (1965)
Elton John takes the lead vocal on his own song, ‘Come Back, Baby’ although ‘the only love I’ve ever had’ is taken from Arthur Alexander’s ‘You Better Move On’. It’s okay but had Elton realised that somebody else should be writing his words? No real indication that this is Elton John; the vocal mannerisms came later, so 4.
Bobbie Gentry – ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ (1967)
Bobbie Gentry’s original song was seven minutes long and Capitol producer Kelly Gordon reduced to it to five verses and four minutes, thereby adding mystery – will we ever know what was thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge? It topped the US charts, sold three million copies and Bobbie won three Grammys (Best solo female performance, best contemporary vocal, and best new artist). An eerie arrangement from Jimmie Haskell stokes up the tension. A brilliant debut, couldn’t have been better so 10 out of 10 for that. Trouble is, Gentry was never as inventive again.
Elton John – ‘Young, Gifted and Black’ (1970)
At the same time that Elton was developing a solo career, he was making ends meet by recording covers of potential hits for the cheapo-cheapo Chartbusters album series. The idea was to sound as much like the original artist as possible but Elton sounds like Elton John even when singing ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, which is worth a 7.
Bruce Springsteen – Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)
After making scores of demos in New York and London, Bruce Springsteen finally made his debut in 1973 with an album of his own songs including ‘Blinded by the Light’ and ‘Growin’ Up’. Full of energy and crammed with lyrics, this was Bob Dylan revved up. A remarkable debut to be sure, but his songs had become more measured and he knew where he was going lyrically, melodically and stylistically by the time of Born to Run (1975). You could also say that he was overdressed on the album cover. Still, this debut album certainly said: ‘I’m open for business’ and many wanted to come inside. An 8.
Kate Bush – ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1978)
Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd had spotted Kate’s potential when she was only 14 and encouraged her to continue songwriting and take dance lessons and singing classes. After her O-levels (10 passes), she impressed EMI with her catalogue of 60 songs. She wrote ‘Wuthering Heights’ after seeing the film on TV. The song was a testament to the range and force of her voice as she became Cathy with a high-pitched wail. She was the spirit who had returned for Heathcliff. It was so far off the beaten track that anything could have happened but she had a UK No.1 and a highly unusual career beckoned, almost as strange as David Bowie’s. Her recording debut had been so well-planned that she seemed like a seasoned performer but it was her first record so an 8 for that, my drawback being the amount of artifice that surrounds her and her songs.
Amy Winehouse – ‘Stronger Than Me’ (2003)
It’s hard to ignore hindsight when we look at Amy Winehouse today and her drug use and tortured relationships prompted many of her songs. She looks amazing in the video for her first single, ‘Stronger Than Me’, a jazz-edged soul ballad about a wayward boyfriend. Maybe she saw herself as a rebooted Billie Holiday as it does have a 1940s night club feel about it. The single only made No.71 but the potential is unquestionably there. Shame she didn’t take her own advice with ‘Rehab’. A 9.
Adele – ‘Chasing Pavements’ (2008)
Adele posted some demos online in 2007 and such interest was shown in them that she won a Brit before she had even released a record. Her debut album, 19 (her age at the time), was released in January 2008 and she had a UK No.2 with ‘Chasing Pavements’. She is a so-called blue-eyed soul singer like Dusty, but despite millions of album sales, there is nothing truly distinctive about her and maybe that vocal is too calculated – the result, perhaps, of stage school. Still, it’s an astonishingly confident start, so 8.
Sam Phillips didn’t grasp Elvis Presley’s potential immediately. Elvis had gone into the Memphis Recording Service in July 1953 and he may have returned twice before Sam took any notice. This suggests that Elvis was liking what he was hearing. In January 1954, perhaps as a birthday present to himself, he returned and recorded two country songs, ‘I’ll Never Stand in Your Way’ and ‘(It Wouldn’t Be the Same) Without You’, on a two-sided 78 rpm.
‘I’ll Never Stand in Your Way’ was a bitter-sweet song, rather like ‘Half as Much’, that had been recorded by Billy Walker and given a lavish pop treatment by Joni James. ‘(It Wouldn’t Be the Same) Without You’ had been recorded by western actor Jimmy Wakely and gone pop with a former vocalist from the Louis Prima band, Lily Ann Carol. The best recording of ‘I’ll Never Stand in Your Way’ is by Ray Charles on Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volume 2 (1962).
In interviews, Marion Keisker had mentioned another acetate, ‘Casual Love Affair’, but the recording has never emerged. What’s more, I can’t find any song of this title on the songwriting websites, ASCAP and BMI, so, more than likely, it is a mistake. It is unlikely that Presley would have walked into Sun with an original song.
In any dictionary of quotations, you will find Sam Phillips’ oft-repeated wish to Marion Keisker and indeed to anyone who would listen, ‘If I could find a white boy who could sing like a black man, I’d make a million dollars.’ There were many black artists who had crossed to the pop charts (Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, the Ink Spots), but Sam was probably referring to the watered-down versions of R&B songs by white artists that had become pop hits. If he could have found a white boy who could give the songs the same feel as the originals and ooze sex appeal, his troubles would be over. Marion had the answer but Sam didn’t like being told what to do. Eventually he relented and decided to find out for himself.
The majority of the performers on Sun Records had been black but Sam did record some white acts. He had cut some sides for the 4 Star and Gilt Edge labels and released a few singles on Sun. The Ripley Cotton Chompers recorded ‘Blues Waltz’ (Sun 190, but oddly, Sam had started his label with Sun 174) in September 1953. Sam put ‘hillbilly’ on the label to indicate that it was a country record. A few months later he released Earl Peterson, Michigan’s Singing (and yodelling) Cowboy with ‘Boogie Blues’ (Sun 197).
In 1992, Jim Dawson and Steve Propes wrote a fine book, What Was the First Rock’n’Roll Record, published by Faber and Faber, and since then, there have been several CD collections posing the same question. There are many contenders, including Fats Domino’s ‘The Fat Man’ from 1950, which is little different from his later style; ‘Rocket 88’ by Jackie Brenston with his Delta Cats recorded at Sun in 1951; and several possibilities from Muddy Waters, Hank Williams and Johnnie Ray. There is no definitive answer and I like to cite Frank Sinatra’s ‘The Huckle Buck’ (1949) if only because Frank hated rock’n’roll so much.
Under various names, Bill Haley and his musicians had been recording since 1947. Originally a country band specialising in western swing, they had had some success with their white cover of ‘Rocket 88’ and they were finding a young audience as Bill Haley and his Comets. They recorded some dance tunes like ‘Rock the Joint’ and ‘Crazy, Man, Crazy’ for the Essex label and they moved to the more prestigious US Decca label in 1954. On 12 April 1954 they recorded ‘Rock Around the Clock’ at the Pythian Temple studio in New York City. The song had been recorded previously by Sonny Dae and his Knights and its rhythm owed much to Hank Williams’ ‘Move It on Over’, but it received little publicity and didn’t sell. Haley’s producer Milk Gabler knew it was a hit song. They cut the song with a great guitar solo from Danny Cedrone, inspired by Les Paul’s work on ‘How High the Moon’. The single was released in May 1954 and it, too, didn’t sell initially. The record label said it was a ‘novelty foxtrot’, but we record fans knew better and this dance record became the clarion call for the new music, rock’n’roll.
The following month, 34-year-old Danny Cedrone fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. He never knew the impact that his record would make as an international chart-topper and the first great rock’n’roll hit. Bill Haley, a pudgy 30-year-old, seemed a most unlikely person to be spearheading teenage music but that’s the way it was. His looks and personality undoubtedly made it easier for Elvis Presley as the figurehead for rock’n’roll.
It is surprising that two key records of rock’n’roll – ‘Rock Around the Clock’ and ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ – were made, quite independently, within a few weeks of each other.
In May 1954, Sam released a single by a six-piece country band, Doug Poindexter and the Starlite Wranglers. Poindexter was a good country singer and he and his lead guitarist, 22-year-old Scotty Moore, had written ‘My Kind of Carryin’ On’ (Sun 202). It sounds risqué for its time as Poindexter sings ‘You cute little bugger’, only he doesn’t sing that at all – it is ‘You cute little booger’, a light-hearted southern term for somebody irritating. (Another Sun artist, Onie Wheeler, cut ‘A Booger’s Gonna Getcha’ in 1956.) It sold 300 copies, all locally, as Sam didn’t have inroads into the country market. They would have been fun to watch as their bass player Bill Black dressed in hayseed clothing and was the comedian of the group.
Winfield Scott Moore III, known as Scotty, was born in Gadsden, Tennessee, a small community close to Jackson, on 27 December 1931. He had been playing guitar since he was eight and he formed his first band in the navy. He played a hollow-body Echoplex and with the Starlite Wranglers, he was developing his own style, incorporating what he had heard on R&B records.
Sam Phillips was impressed by Scotty’s talent and enthusiasm and he thought that Scotty should check out Elvis Presley and see what he had to offer. Scotty invited Elvis to his home and asked Bill Black to join them. Sam had a demo of a ballad, ‘Without You’, that might suit Elvis. Elvis may have worked on it, but we don’t have any recordings – but then Sam did, on occasion, erase what he didn’t want and reuse the tape.
Scotty Moore: ‘Elvis came over to my house and he sang Eddy Arnold, Al Hibbler, pop, country, blues – all stuff he had learned off the radio. Bill Black, who lived down the street from me, came over and we told Sam that he had a nice voice and could sing anything. Sam set up recording sessions at night ’cause Bill and I had day jobs. We were there to provide background music, just to see what his voice would sound like on tape. This was an audition and that’s why the whole band didn’t go in – it was just the three of us.’
On 5 July 1954 at the Sun Studios in Memphis, Elvis, Scotty and Bill started with ‘I Love You Because’, a romantic ballad written and recorded by the blind singer, Leon Payne and a hit record for Ernest Tubb. They were serious about recording this song, as several takes have been preserved, but Elvis was unsure about whether to include a narration. Scotty played some jazzy chords, very much in the Willie Nelson style of later years.
They tried a second ballad, ‘Harbour Lights’, written in 1937 by the Irish lyricist Jimmy Kennedy and the Austrian composer Wilhelm Grosz. The song had been recorded by Rudy Vallee, Bing Crosby and Guy Lombardo and had been a US hit No.1 for Sammy Kaye in 1950. This time Elvis was whistling.
Neither whistling nor narrations did it for Sam Phillips and he wanted something up-tempo. Scotty Moore: ‘We tried anything anybody could think of and that he knew the words to, and we came up with ‘That’s All Right, Mama’, by chance, by luck if you will. It’s refreshing to hear it now. It’s so simple, there’s no production to speak of and it’s just three guys doing the best that they could.’
Elvis knew several songs by Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup and he had suggested ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ from 1946. Sam had taken a break and by the time he returned, Elvis, Scotty and Bill had a solid rhythm going. Eureka!
‘What are you doing,’ asked Sam Phillips.
‘We don’t know,’ they replied.
‘Well, whatever it is, go back to the beginning.’
Sam turned on the recording machine and the rest is hysteria.
Commentators have had a field day with this recording: after all, the ‘mama’ in the song switches from a mother to a girlfriend. Is it so significant? I don’t think so. This blues song lent itself to a new arrangement: there is no social significance in its title and the fact that it became Elvis’ first record, although there’s no doubting the perfect symbolism.
It’s surprising that one of the greatest rock’n’roll records was made without drums. There are only three instruments: an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar (Elvis) and a double-bass. Sam Phillips made it more exciting by adding slapback, an electronically delayed echo: that is, playing the music back on itself a split second later.
Elvis is surprisingly high-pitched and he has so much rhythm in his voice. The lyrics have been changed so that the ‘mama’ in question switches from mother to girlfriend. He has reworked Crudup’s verse about ‘the life you’re living’ and changes it to ‘the gal you’re foolin’ with’. It’s possible that the lyrical changes were unintentional: Elvis may not have heard the record for some time. Crudup didn’t mind the new version, later saying that ‘He made it into a hillbilly record but I liked it.’
Sam Phillips knew he had captured something magical. He told them to return the next evening and they would work on something else. Just one song was chosen that second night or, to put it this way, only one song was retained.
Bill Monroe, as much as anyone, was the father of bluegrass music and he had been a regular on the Grand Ole Opry since 1939. He was a dour, stubborn man who had written and recorded a waltz to his home state, ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, in 1946 while Flatt and Scruggs were in his band. At first Elvis recorded it slowly like Monroe, but he sounded uneasy. They sped it up and at the end of a fast take, Sam said, ‘That’s different, that’s a pop song.’ Purists mightn’t like it but any controversy was publicity, and Sam had two fine sides: ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’.
In 1970, when Elvis was asked, ‘Do you ever pull out any of those old records from the Sun label and listen to them?’ he replied, ‘They sure sound funny, boy, they gotta lotta echo on them.’ Sun’s slapback echo, which was based on a tape delay, was an important feature, and echo would play its part in rock music for evermore. John Lennon was never happy unless he had it on his voice. Fellow Sun performer Charlie Feathers said, ‘Knowing how to use and record that slapback is important. You had dead mikes when Bing Crosby used to sing and everything was smooth and level. You had much more of an edge with a slapback.’
Even though it would take Sam a couple of weeks to arrange pressing and marketing, he took an acetate to 28-year-old Dewey Phillips (no relation) who fronted the radio show, Red Hot And Blue, for WHBQ in Memphis on 7 July. He was so impressed that he told Sam that he would play it that evening. Elvis, bashful about hearing himself on the radio where his friends would hear him, went to the cinema and watched a 1946 Oscar-winning film about veterans coming home from war, The Best Years of Our Lives, starring Fredric March and Myrna Loy.
Not only was Dewey impressed with the forthcoming single but so were the listeners. They called the station wanting to know when this record would be available. Dewey played it again – and again. He put out a call for Elvis to come on the show, and Vernon went to find him. When he finally arrived, Dewey told him how much he loved the record and played it again. Elvis signed Dewey Phillips’ acetate, his first autograph.
There was no hurry to get Elvis on the road. His first known appearance was at the Bon Air, a little honky-tonk in Memphis, on 17 July 1954. Doug Poindexter played with his Starlite Wranglers and Elvis was a guest vocalist.
The single was released on Sun 209 on 19 July 1954. It sold well locally and was No.4 on the city’s sales chart. Sam Phillips did not have the contacts for wider distribution as he had been concentrating on black singles and he should have leased it to a major label. Although it sold 20,000 copies, it failed to make the US country charts, possibly because the chart compilers didn’t consider it country. It didn’t sell enough to make the pop charts either.
What should be on the R&B chart, what on the country and what on the pop? Although they may have been compiled with the best of intentions, they can now be seen as a form of segregation: effectively, let’s isolate the black records. Nat ‘King’ Cole put it very succinctly: ‘Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.’
But what genre was Elvis? Pop, R&B, country or a mixture of all three? B.B. King said, ‘I saw Elvis at Sam Phillips’ studio and he sounded very country to me. He didn’t sound black to me at all.’
Broadcaster and singer, Rufus Thomas: ‘I couldn’t see Elvis’ potential at first – he was a white boy trying to sing black and it didn’t reach me, but after he got himself together, I was the only black disc-jockey who was playing his records. Then the station stopped me from playing Elvis because they thought that black people did not like him. There was an all-black show that WDIA gave every year for black handicapped children because there were no schools for them. We took Elvis to one of the shows and the black people stormed the theatre and wanted to get to him. I went back to playing Elvis as obviously the Programme Director didn’t know what people wanted to hear. If you are choosing your music because of the colour of someone’s skin, it is just plain stupid.’ The show to which Rufus was referring was be the WDIA Goodwill Revue at the Ellis Auditorium in Memphis on 7 December 1956.
The single sold enough for Elvis to go shopping. He told Dane Marlowe in 1956: ‘I got my driving licence at 17 and bought my first Cadillac after ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ started to sell. It was a used model and the first night I took it out, it caught fire. Sure, it was ruined. That’s life.’
At the end of July 1954, Elvis was added to a Slim Whitman show, promoted by Bob Neal, at the Overton Park Shell, an open-air amphitheatre in Memphis. Slim Whitman was a huge country star who had made the pop charts with ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’ and ‘Indian Love Call’, although his ‘Cattle Call’ curdled the milk. Slim was 30 but seemed older. So far, 1954 had been a great year for him as he was riding high with ‘Secret Love’ and ‘Rose-Marie’, but then he came to Memphis. He recalled, ‘I’d heard ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ but all I really knew was that a fella called Elvis Presley was going to be on the show. I could hear he was doing well so I went into the wings and I could see he had his own way of doing things. Back then he was singing to the same people as us, but the news got around and the teenyboppers started coming.’
An up-and-coming country performer, Billy Walker, was on the bill. He was enjoying his first country hit with ‘Thank You for Calling’. ‘Elvis said to me, ‘I’m nervous. I can’t keep myself from shaking,’ and I guess doing those movements was how he let his nervous energy out. He made his nervousness part of the act. I thought he was dynamite from the word go and he knocked the audience out. I remember going back to the Louisiana Hayride and telling Horace Logan about him. He tried him out and soon had him under contract.’
Bob Neal was an avuncular DJ in his mid-thirties who worked on WMPS in Memphis and had a record store and a talent agency, Memphis Promotion at 160 Union Avenue. Back then disc jockeys often had conflicting or dovetailing interests (depending on how you view it) and Alan Freed and Dick Clark were extreme examples.
Bob Neal’s wife, Helen, was at the Overton Park show and told him, ‘This isn’t just another singer. This boy’s different.’ Bob checked him out and found that Scotty Moore was his manager but in a very loose way. For example, it was only on the day of the show that Elvis, Scotty and Bill realised that they were not in the American Federation of Musicians – they joined just before they appeared.
Elvis was entitled to a 3% royalty on retail sales of the single but Scotty and Bill only got session fees, hence the more stage shows the better – they had agreed 50% for Elvis and 25% each for Scotty and Bill after expenses. Scotty wasn’t keen on a manager claiming 15% but after a few months, he realised that Bob Neal would get them considerably more work. Indeed, Scotty has revealed that his total earnings for 1954 were only $2,250 and most of that came from working at a dry cleaner’s.
In the middle of August 1954, Elvis returned to the Sun studios and the only track to be retained was his version of a 20-year-old Hollywood song, ‘Blue Moon’. It was a strange choice and an even stranger recording. Lorenz Hart had tried different lyrics for one of Richard Rodgers’ melodies and his fourth attempt, ‘Blue Moon’, hit home. It was a huge success for Helen Ward with Benny Goodman and his Orchestra. Elvis’ version was as weird as anything Captain Beefheart was to record. Possibly, it is Elvis trying to be Slim Whitman and getting it wrong, which is often how creativity occurs. His ‘Blue Moon’ was eerie, drenched in echo and intensely atmospheric. If it had been released at the time, no one would have known what to make of it. Even now, it is defiantly one of a kind.
The next session on 10 September 1954, led to six songs being recorded. At first they tried a slow ballad associated with the blues singer Lonnie Johnson, ‘Tomorrow Night’. It’s a good, romantic performance from Elvis. It was not issued at the time and in 1965, it appeared in a dreadful, overdubbed version. Seek out the original which was finally released in its unadorned state in 1985. Around the same time, LaVern Baker was recording the same song for Atlantic in New York City, being released on the B-side of her hit, ‘Tweedle Dee’.
Jimmy Wakely wrote and recorded ‘I’ll Never Let You Go (Little Darlin’)’ in 1943 and this is Elvis having fun, as he loved going from a slow tempo to a fast one. Then there is the up-tempo ‘Just Because’, first recorded by Dick Stabile in 1937. Most likely, Elvis knew the polka treatment by Frankie Yankovic and his Yanks. Elvis takes this at a very brisk tempo. A line I didn’t get for some years was ‘You laughed and called me ole Santa Claus’. Elvis attempted ‘Satisfied’, a gospel song, written and first recorded by Martha Carson and then a 1953 single for Johnnie Ray. Elvis’ recording has been lost and although there is supposedly a version on YouTube, it’s not Elvis, but an imitator.
The New Orleans singer/songwriter, Roy Brown, performed his spirited ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ on a show with Wynonie Harris’s band. Wynonie, a fine R&B showman, was so impressed that he recorded it himself in December 1947, and both versions were successful. With the omission of the verse about ‘Sweet Lorraine’ and ‘Sioux City Sue’, the song became a rock’n’roll anthem. Wynonie’s original rocks almost as hard as Elvis and much more convincingly than Pat Boone. Roy Brown himself sounds like Elvis on his 1952 cut, ‘Hurry Hurry Baby’, but his career came to a sharp stop after being ostracised for suing his manager.
Elvis loved many popular singers of the day including Dean Martin, Johnnie Ray and Dinah Shore and so did the other rock’n’rollers. They were respectful and there were no interviews in which they said they wanted to knock them off the charts. Contrast this with the punk rockers of 20 years later who publicly loathed contemporary heroes like Rod Stewart and Yes.
Elvis called Dean Martin his favourite singer, and there is an element of Dino in many of Elvis’ ballads. He was the straight man to comedian Jerry Lewis, but he carved his own career as a smooth Latin balladeer. His early hits include ‘Powder Your Face with Sunshine’, ‘If’, ‘That’s Amore’ (with lyrics written by Jack Brooks from Liverpool), ‘You Belong To Me’’ and ‘I Don’t Care If the Sun Don’t Shine’ from the film, Scared Stiff, which was given a cheerful Dixieland arrangement. It had originally been written for Walt Disney’s Cinderella but had not been used. Elvis gave it a radically different arrangement for Sun, but later he did revert to the Dixieland sound in King Creole.
The last songs from the session comprised the next single (Sun 210) – ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ and ‘I Don’t Care If the Sun Don’t Shine’. As you can tell from the catalogue numbers, there had been no Sun releases since ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ two months previous. Admittedly, the summer is a slow period for sales but why wasn’t Sam Phillips releasing product by his regular performers like Little Milton, Rufus Thomas and The Prisonaires? Some say that he had found the Holy Grail and lost interest in everybody else. Whilst that’s possible, the answer is simpler than that: cash flow. Selling records was a cut-throat business. Sam relied on distributors to put his records into the stores but they were slow to pay and he had cash-flow problems. He knew he stood a good chance of breaking into the white market with Elvis Presley and then his problems would be over.
Between August and November, Elvis played about a dozen shows at the Eagle’s Nest in Memphis for $10 a night. They worked out well and he built up a following, but a booking in Gladewater, Texas was a disaster. Elvis, Scotty and Bill travelled 250 miles there and 250 miles back to play for 20 people.
On 2 October 1954 it was the big one: Elvis had landed an appearance on WSM’s weekly Grand Ole Opry. It was broadcast live from the Ryman Auditorium and the programme was split into segments with Elvis being allocated to Hank Snow’s portion of the show. Backstage, it wasn’t so hot. Bill Monroe had heard Elvis’ ‘Blue Moon on Kentucky’ and wanted to break his jaw. Once Elvis had hit it big, Monroe recast his arrangement of ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ to match Elvis’.
No one knows for certain how Elvis came to be booked for the Opry, but it could be that Colonel Parker was involved at this early stage. Hank Snow told me, ‘Tom Parker suggested that we opened a booking agency together. We called it both Jamboree Attractions and Hank Snow Enterprises, and he said to me, ‘I know a young feller Elvis Presley who is tearing the hearts out of teenagers in those clubs. We ought to bring him to the Opry. He did ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ on my late show on the Opry, but he didn’t disturb the audience very much. They didn’t understand what he was doing and he went away very discouraged. That was the only time he was ever on the Opry.’
Hank Snow introduced him as the Hillbilly Cat, but it seems that this cat was not up to scratch. Jim Denny, who booked the performers for the Opry and had fired Hank Williams in 1952, told Elvis that he should go back to driving a truck.
Not to worry. Grand Ole Opry was followed that very night by another country show, Ernest Tubb’s Midnight Jamboree, broadcast from his record store. It’s not good programming to have the same person on consecutive shows but never mind. Ernest asked Elvis on air what his ambitions were, and he said, ‘I’d like to make some money so I can buy my mother and Daddy a nice house to live in.’ That’s playing to the gallery for you, although he was to do just that.
Ernest Tubb was not as conservative as the other performers and had been the first to use electric instruments on the Opry. He told Elvis: ‘Don’t worry, you did a fine job. The audience doesn’t get it yet but they will.’ When Elvis returned to Memphis, he wrote Ernest a letter thanking him for being the only person who had been nice to him in Nashville.
The rival show to the Opry, though not as popular, was the Louisiana Hayride, broadcast for KWLH from the Municipal Memorial Auditorium in Shreveport. The show had made its impact by taking on Hank Williams after the Opry had fired him for bad behaviour. It was less conservative than the Opry and featured more rising stars, so it was the right place for Elvis Presley, even though his music was so radical.
Dominic Joseph Fontana, known as D.J., had been working as a drummer around Shreveport wherever he could, sometimes laying down the beat for striptease artists, which helped when playing for Elvis’ bumps and grinds. He reflects: ‘I was the first drummer on the Louisiana Hayride and, like the Opry, they were trying to modernise it a bit. We started with a snare drum with a stick and a brush and we introduced the rest of the kit bit by bit. Eventually, we had the whole kit on the stage. A lot of artists didn’t want a drummer because they were from the old school, which was fine by me. Sometimes I sat there for four hours playing nothing at all.’
On 16 October 1954, Elvis Presley was introduced by Frank Page during the Lucky Strike Guest Time. Page referred to his first record sky-rocketing up the charts (which it wasn’t) and Elvis then performed ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’. A recording of his performance exists and you can tell that this time, Elvis had it nailed.
D.J. Fontana recalls, ‘When Elvis came on the Hayride, he looked stranger than most with his purple shirt and sideburns, ducktail and greasy stuff. He was a good-looking kid and he had a charisma about him, but he didn’t do too well because it was a country-orientated older crowd. They saw him running across the stage and decided he was a nut, but after a couple of weeks, they were telling their kids, ‘You gotta see this boy’. The crowd changed completely – we got the young kids coming in and that helped him a lot.’
Presley did well enough to be invited back the following week. They returned for a third time on November 6. Elvis’ only ever commercial was on the Hayride that night. He plugged Southern Maid Donuts and sang the jingle,
‘You can get them piping hot after 4pm,
You can get them piping hot,
Southern Maid Donuts hit the spot,
You can get them piping hot after 4pm.’
But not if Elvis was there first! Sadly, like most of his Hayride performances, a recording doesn’t exist.
Another up and coming artist Sleepy LaBeef performed alongside Elvis on the Hayride: ‘Elvis was performing one night with Scotty and Bill – it was before D.J. Fontana came along with the drums – and it was dependent upon Elvis playing rhythm guitar while Scotty played lead and Bill the upright bass. He broke some strings on his guitar and he called to the wings for another. His reputation as to how he would work a guitar over had preceded him, so George Jones told him where to go, he wasn’t borrowing his guitar. My wife was very tender-hearted and she lent him my guitar. He scratched it and defaced it. If I’d known how big he was going to be, I would have kept the guitar, but I sold it for $90, and, even then, I only collected $50 of it.’
Elvis, Scotty and Bill signed a contract with the station manager, Horace Logan, to appear for 47 of the next 52 Saturday nights on the Hayride. Elvis would receive $18 for each appearance and Bill and Scotty, getting a reasonable $12 each. The contract was witnessed by Vernon and Gladys Presley.
In 2004, there was a CD release on Red Line called Concert Anthology 1954–1956, which featured seven of Elvis’ appearances on Louisiana Hayride. You can tell that both the band and the audience are enjoying themselves and you can hear Bill Black yelling on ‘I Don’t Care If the Sun Don’t Shine’ as he mounts his double-bass or performs some other crazy antic.
Even on the first songs in October 1954, the girls are screaming for Elvis. He performs ‘Hearts of Stone’ and ‘Tweedle Dee’, neither of which he cut for Sun. He gives jokey song titles and says he is ‘sick, sober and sorry’. The bonus CD takes the vocals from six songs and gives them a new backing from Danny B. Harvey and two of the Stray Cats – Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom. They give Elvis a hotter accompaniment and they work surprisingly well.
Elvis undertook a short West Texas tour with Tillman Franks and Billy Walker, who recalled, ‘I took him on a tour with me to West Texas. ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ had been a big record in Memphis but it hadn’t sold anywhere else. Now he was on the Hayride which had two 50,000 watt stations carrying it and we played West Texas which was 600 miles from Memphis. They agreed to play for $150 a day plus $10 car expenses.’
At last Sam Phillips was issuing new Sun singles although the releases by Malcolm Yelvington (‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-dee-o-dee’) and the one-man band, Dr. Ross (‘The Boogie Disease’) were not big sellers.
Sam Phillips owned a recording studio, but he did not record Elvis Presley as often as you might expect. Although the long-playing album was coming into fashion, Sun Records had not released any of them and so Sun only needed eight tracks a year – four singles. The next session was on 10 December 1954 and Elvis recorded three (or was it four?) songs.
The first was a gem: ‘Milkcow Blues Boogie’, which had been recorded by Sleepy John Estes (1930) and Kokomo Arnold (1934). It’s a blues song that would be politically incorrect today: a poor farmer has lost his cow, but that cow turns out to be his woman. Elvis has fun with the song, starting slow and then speeding up, and making that wonderful observation, ‘Hold it, fellas, that don’t move me. Let’s get real, real gone for a change.’ Elvis sounds very hip and maybe Elvis’ greatest acting performance was as himself.
This curious song became a rock’n’roll favourite, being recorded by Eddie Cochran, Ricky Nelson and Jody Reynolds. Going on a few years, there is a terrific version from Steve Marriott’s All Stars.
Paul McCartney: ‘When I first heard Elvis’ records, I had no idea what the roots of songs like ‘Milkcow Blues Boogie’ were. For some time, I assumed that he’d written them himself. Then I found out it was the black guys like Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup.’ That’s an odd comment from Paul as I’d have thought he would have been reading the labels.
Next up was some Texas honky tonk; ‘You’re a Heartbreaker’, which had been written and recorded by Perk Williams with Jimmy Heap’s band in 1952. A slow, ballad version from Jo Ann Greer with trumpeter Ray Anthony hadn’t been a hit. Elvis found a third way to do the song – it’s very playful, with Elvis dropping some lines and changing others.
We can see exactly how Elvis worked, with the numerous takes of a slow burner, ‘My Baby’s Gone’. Two local musicians, Stan Kesler and Bill Taylor had written this song around a jingle for Campbell’s Soup. It wasn’t quite working and so Elvis, Scotty and Bill upped the tempo and changed it into ‘I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone’. Sam Phillips may have had faith in the original interpretation as he made a copy of ‘My Baby’s Gone’ for Dewey Phillips to play on WHBQ.
On 18 December 1954, Elvis Presley was back in Gladewater, Texas for a live broadcast of Louisiana Hayride, which has been preserved, but presenting Elvis at the Hayride was a logistical nightmare. D.J. Fontana: ‘Hank Snow and Webb Pierce would be the headliners because they’d had No.l records. They put Elvis on right before the intermission and when he got through, everybody was outside looking for him, so then they asked him to close the show.’
It was hard for even established country stars to follow Elvis Presley. Scotty Moore: ‘The hard part for Elvis was that he was a fan of all these guys. He loved country music and he had a respect for his elders. He didn’t like them having a bad time because of him.’
Hank Snow: ‘Elvis was a good Christian boy, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink and he was very, very polite – an example of the good, true, honest American boy. He and my son Jimmie were about the same age, so they would chum around together. He would sit in my home and play the piano and sing songs, just another great kid. We did several tours together and I could see he was headed for stardom.’ His son, Jimmie Rodgers Snow, who had been named after the pioneering country singer, became a minister and then denounced rock’n’roll.
Singer and songwriter Mitchell Torok: ‘Elvis had such appeal and such charisma. The black hair was falling on his face and he wore pink shirts with black ties, and black and white shoes. Before Elvis, it had been string ties, rhinestones and cowboy boots. You put a picture of Ray Price next to Elvis Presley and you’ll see what I mean. Elvis was booked to close the first half on a lot of the touring shows, but the fans would still be screaming for him when the main act came out and they had to change it round.’ This comment suggests that Elvis was experimenting with hair dye rather earlier than we might think.
Elvis celebrated his twentieth birthday with his third single which combined ‘Milkcow Blues Boogie’ with ‘You’re a Heartbreaker’ (Sun 215). On the same day, Sun released some very good black gospel from the Jones Brothers (‘Look to Jesus’) and a rewrite of ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ from Billy ‘The Kid’ Emerson, ‘Move, Baby, Move’. Emerson was an excellent blues writer and his ‘Crazy ’bout an Automobile’ became a mainstay of Ry Cooder’s stage act. The B-side of his single was ‘When It Rains, It Pours’.
In January, coming back from a gig in Arkansas, Elvis, Scotty and Bill had no money on hand to pay for petrol and they asked a cinema if they could play between movies for $5.
On 31 January 1955, Elvis played at Bethel Springs, Tennessee. The drummer W.S. Holland, who later played for Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, was there. ‘The first time I saw Elvis was in Bethel Springs. We were playing a little club down that way, and we knew that Elvis, Scotty and Bill were coming to the high school gym. We asked if we could start a little late and we went and saw him. At that time, he didn’t seem much greater or much different from anybody else, but I soon realised that he had the right look, the right movements and a lot of things that the rest of the guys didn’t have.’
Carl Perkins was playing with his brothers, Jay and Clayton, on that show. Clayton thought Elvis was gay and Jay thought he was a sissy, but Carl thought, ‘He’s got a contract with Sun Records,’ and was determined to get one for himself.
Eddy Arnold had had a country hit with ‘I Wanna Play House with You’ and this phrase inspired a new blues song, ‘Baby Let’s Play House’, which was written and recorded by Arthur Gunter in 1954. Elvis loved its coy smuttiness and he recorded it on 5 February 1955. Bradford musician Brendan Croker: ‘Who in England would have said, ‘Baby, let’s play house’? It’s American language at its best and a beautiful description of a future sexual relationship.’
Elvis’ stuttering performance is a classic and once again, you can tell that he is having fun in the studio. Johnny Burnette liked it so much that he totally ripped off the record in ‘Oh Baby Babe’ for Coral in 1956. The Beatles stole a verse from the song for ‘Run for Your Life’. At the same session, Elvis recorded Ray Charles’ ‘I Got a Woman’ and ‘Tryin’ To Get to You’, which had been recorded by the Eagles in 1954, but he was to return to these songs later.
Colonel Parker had a satellite office for Jamboree Attractions in Chicago and Scotty, not realising it was Parker, wrote to the company asking about gigs in Chicago. Parker’s right-hand man, Tom Diskin, sent him a condescending reply, ‘There are few outlets for hillbilly entertainers in this area around Chicago.’
That might have been that, but Parker himself realised Presley’s potential after seeing him in Memphis at the Ellis Auditorium on 6 February 1955 when he was fourth on the bill. Parker told Presley that he wouldn’t get anywhere with Sun.
Later in February 1955, Elvis was playing in San Angelo, Texas, watched by Jerry Naylor from the Crickets: ‘I saw Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black come to the centre of the stage and start with ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ at the San Angelo Auditorium and the audience was on its feet. They were shouting for him and his legs were shaking and the girls liked that. He knew he had something to give and I knew I was seeing the world change.’
There is a live recording of Elvis Presley at the Eagle’s Hall in Houston on March 19 of that year, and both ‘I Got a Woman’ and ‘Baby Let’s Play House’ are in his repertoire. From around this time, there is a live performance of ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ and a studio outtake of the Clovers’ ‘Fool, Fool, Fool’ which rivals Charlie Feathers for its hiccupping.
Charlie Feathers: ‘Buddy Holly tried to get on Sun and he would listen to my records. He would listen to me with my hiccup and he put it into ‘Peggy Sue’, so who copied who?’ But what about Elvis Presley’s ‘Baby Lets Play House’ (1955) and Gene Vincent’s ‘Woman Love’ (1956) and ‘Lotta Lovin’’ (1957)? As well as having a great hiccup, Elvis is close to breaking down with laughter on his recording of ‘Baby Let’s Play House’
‘Baby Let’s Play House’ and ‘I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone’ was released as the fourth Sun single in April 1955. All singles today have absurd barcodes as catalogue numbers but diehard fans know the numbers of Elvis’ Sun singles by heart, this one being Sun 217. Also, the Sun singles credit Scotty and Bill.
As yet, Elvis Presley had not appeared on the US country charts. Marty Robbins, nearly 30 years old, had had a few country hits for Columbia. Talk about opportunism but he copied ‘That’s All Right, Mama’, using Presley’s lyrics, adding some fiddles and reducing the echo, so Marty didn’t come across this song for himself. Marty took it to No.7 on the US country chart, even though Elvis was not represented at all. He followed it with Chuck Berry’s ‘Maybellene’, a straight rock’n’roll performance which made No.9.
In May 1955, some big shows were lined up for Elvis, supporting Hank Snow on the All Star Jamboree, promoted and arranged by Colonel Parker. Country singer Wanda Jackson: ‘I wrote to my cousins who lived in the south-western part of Texas that I would be working with Webb Pierce and someone called Elvis Presley. They wrote right back, they couldn’t believe it, and could they get backstage and meet him. Because I’m female, I was like the rest of his fans. He was so great, he was so dynamic and he had such charisma. We dated for a little while and we became very good friends.’ Sorry, I couldn’t get Wanda to say what ‘good friends’ meant.
Country performer Tommy Collins: ‘In Jacksonville, Florida, someone had built a stage at the home place of the baseball team, the Diamonds, and the show was headlined by Andy Griffith with Ferlin Husky, Marty Robbins and myself. When Elvis performed, people started coming in from the bleachers and they were going crazy, they were trying to tear his clothes off. Andy Griffith said, in his North Carolina drawl, ‘It’s an orgy’, and even Colonel Parker was not prepared for this reaction. There was very little security, very few policemen, and I remember one woman who was in her forties trying to tear off one of Elvis’s shoes. Colonel Parker picked Elvis up, put him on his shoulder and started knocking his way through the crowd to get him to safety.’
The local publicist for the tour was Mae Boren Axton, who was highly impressed with the effect that Elvis had on audiences. She interviewed him and told him that she would like to write his first gold record.
In June 1955 Elvis, Scotty and Bill were booked into the Radio Ranch Club in Mobile, Alabama. Ray Sawyer, who found fame in Dr. Hook, was there: ‘Elvis was the first country rocker. They booked him into a big honky tonk in Mobile, Alabama, and he was supposed to start at eight o’clock, but it was ten o’clock and he still wasn’t there. Everybody was getting mad and cussing, and then a pink Cadillac pulled up at the front and everyone ran to the door. Scotty and Bill were in the front, and Elvis got out with a pink coat and that look that he had. Bill and Scotty went straight to the stage; all they had was one amp ’cause Elvis didn’t play through an amp – he played acoustic guitar and Bill played upright bass. As they got ready, Elvis went back and forth through the audience, didn’t say nothing, just walking, looking at people, ’cause this was before the people went nuts. He had only had a few records out and everything he did came from black music – Fats Domino and Joe Turner, ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ and ‘Flip, Flop and Fly’. We all knew he was something special. I was 19 years old and a drummer at the time and he came to the end of the bar and ordered a beer and put a cigar in his mouth. He was only two people away from me, and I wanted to say, ‘Hey, man, do you need a drummer?’ I often wonder what would have happened if I’d asked him. He might have said, ‘Yeah, boy, let’s go’.’
At long last, the compilers at Billboard had determined that Elvis Presley’s releases qualified as country and from July, ‘Baby Let’s Play House’ could be listed, reaching No.5 in a four month period with ‘I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone’ on the listing for three weeks.
Stan Kesler, who often worked at Sun, had a new song, ‘I Forgot to Remember to Forget’, which he had written with a new Sun performer, the rockabilly singer, Charlie Feathers: ‘Stan Kesler had a tune that he wanted to show Elvis, ‘You Believe Everyone but Me’, but I didn’t think it was suitable. He mentioned another title, ‘I Forgot to Remember to Forget’, but he didn’t have anything else on it. I said, ‘Man, that’s an unusual title. Let’s get on with this song.’ We put it on a home recorder and we took it to Sam Phillips, and he didn’t like it at all. I took it to Elvis and he said, ‘You’ll never write a song as good as this again.’’ Charlie, meanwhile, had kept ‘You Believe Everyone but Me’ for himself: it would have been fine for Elvis but I guess Charlie wanted his own piece of the action.
Charlie would never be more than a footnote in the history of popular music but in June 1955, Sun Records released the first single by Johnny Cash, ‘Cry! Cry! Cry!’ and ‘Hey, Porter’. It took its time but in November, it was in the US country charts.
Although Elvis liked ‘I Forgot to Remember to Forget’, he wasn’t sure about it – maybe it was too conventional for him. Anyway, Elvis cut it on 11 July 1955. As well as Elvis, Scotty and Bill, there was drummer Johnny Bernero, who played in a western swing band and worked for Sam at $15 a session. Bernero could have toured with the trio but he didn’t want to leave his wife and family and his job across the road at The Memphis, Light, Gas and Water Corporation – he kept Memphis going.
Next Elvis moved onto ‘Mystery Train’, which had been recorded by Little Junior’s Blue Flames for Sun in November 1953. Little Junior was Herman Parker and both he and Sam were credited, although the track was derived from the prison song, ‘Worried Man Blues’, recorded by the Carter Family in 1930.
Little Junior’s Blue Flames’ treatment is bleaker but less intense than Presley’s, which raised the tempo. The inspiration for Scotty Moore’s guitar riff can be found on the B-side of Little Junior’s record, ‘Love My Baby’. Sam Phillips was to say, ‘‘Mystery Train’ was the greatest thing I did with Elvis.’ They completed the session by returning to ‘Tryin’ to Get to You’ with Elvis on top form.
The fifth and final Sun single, ‘I Forgot to Remember to Forget’ and ‘Mystery Train’, was released in August 1955 on Sun 223. Released on the same day was the first single from a new Sun artist, Carl Perkins – ‘Let the Jukebox Keep on Playin’’ and ‘Gone Gone Gone’. Had Sam Phillips found another Elvis and indeed, an Elvis who could write his own songs?
Perhaps because it was more conventional, ‘I Forgot to Remember to Forget’ topped the US country charts for five weeks and was on the listing for nine months. In addition, ‘Mystery Train’ made No.11. Paradoxically, Junior Parker had been frustrated by having no new releases on Sun in 1954 and had moved to Duke.
Over in New York, the songwriter Mort Shuman heard ‘Mystery Train’ for the first time: ‘I was in a bar with Doc Pomus and he asked me to play ‘Mystery Train’ by Elvis Presley on the jukebox. I was very interested because it was something new, something different and the beat was really driving, really great. Doc was flipping out. He thought Elvis was the greatest.’
Rockabilly performer, Sleepy LaBeef: ‘I loved the real, get-down-and-get-it, freight-train sound of Elvis on Sun Records. He got the beat from the old southern gospel songs and the only thing that was different was the lyrics. I’d had the same experience of singing in the southern churches, where they really put their body and soul into what they were doing.’
British musician Joe Brown: ‘The Sun records are amazing ’cause it comes straight from the heart. You can hear it, it’s straight from the heart onto the tape and that’s the end of it. No highfalutin producer has got his greasy hands on it and mucked it around.’
On 3 August 1955, Elvis Presley returned for a homecoming concert in Tupelo. An astonishing 22,000 turned up and the National Guard had to control them. He was given the key to the city by the mayor, which was shaped like a life-size wrought iron guitar. He wore a velvet shirt made by his mother.
The excitement was mounting and the UK rock’n’roll Marty Wilde says, ‘There’s a wonderful album with Elvis doing ‘Tweedle Dee’ and ‘Maybellene’ on the Louisiana Hayride. The magic aura comes across and you can tell that he desperately wants success. It’s absolutely impossible to keep that fire in your belly all the time, and it’s no surprise that he lost the buzz by the time he had left the army.’
D. J. Fontana: ‘Elvis had some shows in East Texas, which was only 100 miles away from Shreveport and the Hayride, and he asked me to play drums. He kept giving me work when they could afford someone else. They weren’t making much money. I was the highest paid guy in the band at the time. I was getting $100 a week: they had to pay for the transportation and the rooms and they were splitting the rest three ways. Elvis, Scotty and Bill often didn’t have anything left and I’d be loaning them ten bucks. It was that tight.’
Rock’n’roll singer Tommy Sands: ‘We worked on shows together around Houston and Shreveport. He was thrilling the crowds even when he was unknown. He would be on stage for no more than 30 seconds and the girls would be out of their chairs and rushing the stage, just like they did later when he became famous. The Beatles had success like that too but it wasn’t the same kind of female adoration that Elvis enjoyed. Colonel Parker wasn’t really interested in the music but he loved the idea of somebody who would excite the public whatever they might be doing.’
On 15 August 1955, Elvis Presley agreed his first contract with Colonel Parker, but the arrangement with Bob Neal continued until 15 March 1956. After that, Bob Neal ran his talent agency and he managed Johnny Cash from 1958.
At first Elvis was playing country shows but he needed a different audience. Colonel Parker signed him to a demanding contract: demanding because all the onus was placed on Presley: ‘As a special concession to Colonel Parker, Elvis Presley is to play 100 personal appearances within one year for the special sum of $200 including his musicians.’ As Elvis was still under 21, the contract had to be signed by his parents. Vernon approved but Gladys was suspicious and there are few photographs of her with the Colonel, and none where she seems to be at ease.
In September 1955, Elvis Presley had his final Sun session with the Billy Emerson blues song, ‘When It Rains, It Pours’. You can hear Elvis’ laughter when a take goes wrong and he makes a joke about Carl Perkins. They didn’t finish the recording because Sam wanted to discuss business with Elvis, perhaps because the Colonel wasn’t around. Elvis was to return to the song in 1957.
On 8 September 1955 Elvis signed a new contract with the Louisiana Hayride; this time he was getting $200 for each appearance. This illustrated the bargaining power of Colonel Parker, but it was also restrictive. Parker wanted to make him a major star so why tie him to Shreveport each week?
Tommy Sands: ‘I remember one very bright thing that Elvis said to me while we were waiting to go on stage at the Louisiana Hayride. I was worried about something and he said, ‘I’ve got a rule, Tom, I never worry about things I can’t control.’ That has stuck with me through the years as it is very good advice.’
On 15 October 1955, Elvis played the Cotton Club in Lubbock, Texas. Sonny Curtis went with Buddy Holly: ‘Elvis was wild, man, he was something else. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was so much magnetism there. We all freaked and fell immediately in love with him. Buddy Holly, in particular, fell in love with Elvis’s style and the day after Elvis left, we started playing his music. Buddy played the part of Elvis, and I was Scotty. I already had a Chet Atkins style, which is roughly what Scotty Moore was doing. That’s where you employ the thumb to play the rhythm, and you play the melody with the fingers. You have the rhythm and the melody going at the same time, and so one guitar player can sound like two.’
These days nobody calls the clean-cut and clean-living Pat Boone a rock’n’roll singer but he was one of the first rock’n’roll stars and he had his first US hits with ‘Two Hearts’ (No.16) and a cover of Fats Domino’s ‘Ain’t that A Shame’ (No.1) in 1955. To say he wasn’t a rock’n’roll singer is changing history – he was, but he wasn’t a good one, being better suited to romantic ballads with a beat such as ‘I’ll Be Home’ and ‘I Almost Lost My Mind’, both 1956 hits.
Bill Haley and his Comets’ record of ‘Rock Around the Clock’, but not the group itself, was included in a film about juvenile delinquency in the Bronx, The Blackboard Jungle, which starred Glenn Ford and a young Sidney Poitier. Well, when I say ‘young’, I should explain that this school has the oldest looking pupils I’ve ever seen. The J.D. (juvenile delinquents) movie (as the genre came to be known) was proclaimed degenerate and it was withdrawn from the Venice Film Festival. The controversy didn’t hurt it as soon youngsters were going to the film and jiving in the aisles whenever ‘Rock Around the Clock’ was playing.
In October 1955, Elvis was up north playing in Cleveland with Pat Boone and Bill Haley and the Comets. How appropriate that they should be in Cleveland, now the home of The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame. Haley had the biggest record of the year with ‘Rock Around the Clock’, while Boone, six months older than Elvis, had broken through and gone to No.1 with his cover of Fats Domino’s ‘Ain’t That a Shame’.
Pat Boone says of Elvis, ‘We were two Tennessee boys and the first time we met, he was my supporting act in Cleveland, Ohio. The industry people thought he was going to be a star, and I’d heard one of his records, (Sings) ‘Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shinin’’ on a country jukebox in Texas. He didn’t sound like a rock’n’roller to me, so I thought the promoter, Bill Randle, had really missed this time. Elvis went on ahead of me. He was shy until he got on stage, and then he just exploded. At first, the Cleveland high-school kids didn’t know what to make of him with his turned-up collar and his long, greasy hair swooped down on his forehead. Elvis originally put his collar up to hide some acne on his neck. He looked like a guy that would be on a motorcycle or from the poor part of town. He’d sing his song and say, in a hillbilly twang, ‘Thank you very much and now I’d like to do another number for you…’, and these kids would be covering their mouths and snickering. But when he began to sing again there was an electricity about it. They liked him very much and I had to follow him. I might have had a hard time with my narrow tie, little button-down shirt and white buck shoes, but I’d had a couple of hit records.’
Unlike Pat Boone and Bill Haley, Elvis defined the attitude and the swagger of rock’n’roll. Pat Boone was uncomfortable with being at the head of a teenage rebellion, while Bill Haley looked way too old. Haley had no idea what to do next and despite some good records, all he could do was rock around the clock again.
On 17 November 1955, Elvis, Scotty and Bill were interviewed before a show in Texarkana, Arkansas which also featured Johnny Cash. Bill Black, under Colonel Parker’s orders, was handling the photo concession and said, ‘I will have four or five million of them.’
Now that Parker had control of Presley, he could put his record contract on the market. Decca offered $5,000, Dot $7,500, Mercury $10,000, Columbia $15,000,Atlantic $25,000;, and then RCA-Victor clinched it on 20 November 1955 with $35,000 and a $5,000 advance against royalties for Elvis himself. Elvis bought his mother a pink Cadillac, although she couldn’t drive. ‘You may have a pink Cadillac, but don’t you be nobody’s fool,’ warns Elvis in ‘Baby Let’s Play House’.
It doesn’t sound much for Elvis’ contract, but it was an unprecedented figure for the time. The contract passed over his Sun recordings, whether released or not. Losing no time, RCA reissued the ‘Mystery Train’ single on December 2 and reissued the other four on December 20.
It is now known that the deal was more complicated than RCA’s press office made out. Steve Sholes at RCA detested Colonel Parker but was persuaded by the music publishers, the brothers Julian and Jean Aberbach, that this was the way forward.
The Aberbachs had launched the Hill and Range publishing company in 1943 with an emphasis on country music. ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ was one of their songs. They put up $15,000 of the purchase price in exchange for Presley recording many more of their songs, which we come to in the next chapter. They set up Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, with Presley owning 50% and brothers Julian and Jean owning 25% each. When Elvis got his cheque, which turned out to be an advance against royalties, he bought himself a pink Cadillac. Elvis was becoming a Cadillac salesman’s dream.
The selling of Elvis Presley’s contract is regarded as one of rock’s great mistakes, but it was a considerable sum and Sam Phillips wanted the money to expand his business – he built a second studio – and he also felt that he had potential stars in Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. The balance he invested in a new hotel chain, Holiday Inn, which made him rich, so maybe it was not so dumb after all.
Sam had great visions for Sun – in December 1955, he released Charlie Feathers’ ‘Defrost Your Heart’; Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’; and Carl Perkins’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. Within a few months, he would have Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis on his books.
The Sun roster can therefore be seeing as nurturing different strands of rock’n’roll; Sam Phillips did not want everyone to sound the same and his greatest contribution was in encouraging self-expression. Presley covered all bases and Cash was always more country than rock. Feathers and Perkins are associated with rockabilly, a label which combined rock with hillbilly, the old name for country music. Carl Perkins said, ‘Rockabilly is a country man’s sound with a black man’s rhythm.’
By and large, rockabilly is white country music played by southern boys, usually with an up-tempo beat. The teenage lyrics tend to be playful and inconsequential. Much of the early Elvis on Sun is rockabilly. It is the intermediate stage to commercial rock’n’roll.
Charlie Feathers didn’t want much else. He said, ‘The Elvis that I knew died in ’55. RCA didn’t know how to record Elvis. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ sounds bad when compared to anything he did at Sun. You listen to ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ next to ‘Mystery Train’, oh lordy, no. I wish you could have seen Elvis with Scotty and Bill: the band he had when he died was just a dime-a-dozen band.’