THAT’S ALL RIGHT
ELVIS PRESLEY
ELVIS PRESLEY
Written by: Crudup
Recorded by: Elvis Presley (1954)
Recorded by: Elvis Presley (1954)
MISSISSIPPI-BORN ARTHUR ‘BIG
Boy’ Crudup was a competent
blues singer with a limited slide
guitar style and one of those careers that never
quite took off. His song ‘That’s All Right’ was
one of several he cut for RCA Victor in the late
1940s. In later years Crudup’s life seemed to
be dominated by resentment about the lack of
royalties from this and other compositions while
his patchy income as a performer usually had to
be supplemented with other paid work. Nineteen-
year-old Elvis Presley was a fan, and his début
single in 1954 was a cover of ‘That’s All Right’;
it offered spectacular proof of what the young
pretender could bring to a blues song. Presley’s
version starts off with his own purposeful acoustic
guitar and Bill Black’s bass and just gets better as
it goes on. Presley’s voice is supremely fluid and
confident, especially in the higher registers, and
Boy’ Crudup was a competent
blues singer with a limited slide
guitar style and one of those careers that never
quite took off. His song ‘That’s All Right’ was
one of several he cut for RCA Victor in the late
1940s. In later years Crudup’s life seemed to
be dominated by resentment about the lack of
royalties from this and other compositions while
his patchy income as a performer usually had to
be supplemented with other paid work. Nineteen-
year-old Elvis Presley was a fan, and his début
single in 1954 was a cover of ‘That’s All Right’;
it offered spectacular proof of what the young
pretender could bring to a blues song. Presley’s
version starts off with his own purposeful acoustic
guitar and Bill Black’s bass and just gets better as
it goes on. Presley’s voice is supremely fluid and
confident, especially in the higher registers, and
the driving sound is so good that this short record
seems as good a place as any to identify the birth
of white rock ’n’ roll. In rehearsal the song certainly
signalled the breakthrough performance for which
Sun Records’ Sam Phillips had been patiently
waiting as Presley, Black and electric guitarist
Scotty Moore fooled around with miscellaneous
material in his studio on July 5th, 1954. It was
this song that crystallized Phillips’ ambition
to find a white boy who could sing like a black
man. It also reflected Presley’s own remarkable
ability to retain songs he might only have heard
once on a race radio station. The single (credited
on the label to Elvis Presley, Scotty & Bill) was
released with a version of Bill Monroe’s bluegrass
song ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ on the B-side.
Subsequently Presley’s 1956 debut album, titled
simply Elvis Presley, contained 12 songs of which
The Beatles would incorporate seven into their
stage act. Paul McCartney has said of Presley’s
initial impact on them ‘That was the guru we’d
been waiting for. The Messiah had arrived’. ‘That’s
All Right’ became part of their repertoire and in
1963 they recorded their own frankly unremarkable
version for the BBC (it appears on the double
album The Beatles Live At The BBC, sung by
Paul with George playing a fair approximation
of Scotty Moore’s solo) but no Presley songs
ever made it to The Beatles’ studio albums.
seems as good a place as any to identify the birth
of white rock ’n’ roll. In rehearsal the song certainly
signalled the breakthrough performance for which
Sun Records’ Sam Phillips had been patiently
waiting as Presley, Black and electric guitarist
Scotty Moore fooled around with miscellaneous
material in his studio on July 5th, 1954. It was
this song that crystallized Phillips’ ambition
to find a white boy who could sing like a black
man. It also reflected Presley’s own remarkable
ability to retain songs he might only have heard
once on a race radio station. The single (credited
on the label to Elvis Presley, Scotty & Bill) was
released with a version of Bill Monroe’s bluegrass
song ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ on the B-side.
Subsequently Presley’s 1956 debut album, titled
simply Elvis Presley, contained 12 songs of which
The Beatles would incorporate seven into their
stage act. Paul McCartney has said of Presley’s
initial impact on them ‘That was the guru we’d
been waiting for. The Messiah had arrived’. ‘That’s
All Right’ became part of their repertoire and in
1963 they recorded their own frankly unremarkable
version for the BBC (it appears on the double
album The Beatles Live At The BBC, sung by
Paul with George playing a fair approximation
of Scotty Moore’s solo) but no Presley songs
ever made it to The Beatles’ studio albums.
‘That’s All Right’was the elusive piece ofaudio alchemy that Sam Phillips had long hoped
to hear in the Sun Studio: a black sound from
a good-looking white boy. Phillips didn’t
create it but he knew it the minute he heard
it.