What would be the first single, recorded on July 5, 1954, by Elvis Presley, Bill Black (on bass) and Scotty Moore (guitar), with Sam Phillips in the control room. Elvis is 19 years old.
Excerpt from Dave Marsh’s amazing Elvis
They hit the new sound while fooling around between takes. Elvis began to sing an Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup country blues, “That’s All Right”, and Scotty and Bill joined in. From the control booth came Sam’s voice, excited. “What are you doing?” They shrugged. “We don’t know.” “Well, find out …” Phillips commanded. “Run through it again.”
Every rock writer returns to “That’s All Right”, as though to the Rosetta stone. It’s not the greatest record Presley ever made, and it certainly is not the bluesiest. But it has something else: a beautiful, flowing sense of freedom and release. Elvis’ keening voice, so sweet and young, playing off the guitars, Scotty’s hungry guitar choogling along neatly until it comes to the break, where it simply struts, definitive, mathematical, a precise statement of everything these young men are all about. Is it art? Is it history? Is it revolution? No one can know, not anymore, unless they were there to hear it before they’d heard any of the other music Elvis made or any of the rock & rollers who followed him. Is it pure magic, a distillation of innocence or just maybe a miracle, a band of cracker boys entering a state of cosmic grace?
What’s most remarkable, given how assiduously pursued this sound had been, is its spontaneity and unselfconsciousness. “That’s All Right,” like the best of the later Sun material (its B side, “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” “Milkcow Blues Boogie,” “You’re a Heartbreaker”, and, most of all, “Mystery Train”), sounds casual, the kind of music you could hear any day or every day, the kind of sound that has always been familiar but is still surprising. These men are reaching that elusive noise and once they have it in their grasp, they simply toy with it, flipping the thing back and forth among them as if they have been playing with it all their lives.
The take they got was the take that went out. It’s a live recording, of course. There is one alternate take in existence. But this, what you hear here, is not engineered, manufactured, planned, or edited. That’s how it came out, when they were “fooling around”.
They listened to the song afterwards. Bill Black said, “Damn. Get that on the radio and they’ll run us out of town.”
I’ve got too many thoughts about this moment to fit coherently into a comment, (have to save them for my own blog some day!) but I will say that no one–and I mean no one–in the history of the recording business ever cut a record this astonishing with so little experience. Good Lord…we’re talking about a kid who had been rejected all over town (including effectively by Sam Phillips–who else in the Sun pantheon hung around a solid year before they got a shot of any kind at all?) He couldn’t get a real gig doing ANYTHING! And yet, the kind of ease he displays here is something hard-working genius pros spend their lives perfecting–with very few coming close to anything like this. So much going on! Dude might not have invented rock and roll but he opened up more possibilities than anyone else before or since and you can hear it all right there at the beginning. He must have worked awful hard to make it sound that easy!
I love how the song doesn’t really have an ending. The ending is, essentially, fudged. It doesn’t matter. What happened during the take was new – everyone knew it – who cares about coming up with a cool ending … it was the sound of those three guys together, and Elvis’ voice …
It’s so uncanny. I mean that literally. UNCANNY. The sound gives me goosebumps as I try to picture what it was like on that studio that night.
19 years old?
I mean no one–in the history of the recording business ever cut a record this astonishing with so little experience. Good Lord…we’re talking about a kid who had been rejected all over town (including effectively by Sam Phillips–who else in the Sun pantheon hung around a solid year before they got a shot of any kind at all?) He couldn’t get a real gig doing ANYTHING!
Sorry, NJ, but this simply doesn’t hold up. Elvis already had small gigs around Memphis before he teamed with Scotty and Bill. And Sam was interested from the first time he himself recorded Elvis (early 1954), although he may not have been too sure what would come out of it. The first time Elvis hit the Memphis Recording Studio (June 1953) he only met Marion Keisker. Elvis himself once said: “I was an instant success”. This is not too far from how things really developed.
I’m posting this here cuz it’s the newest Elvis note from our esteemed host and I JUST CAN’T STOP:
Yet another example of E’s far-ranging impact is a short story from one of my fave science fiction writers, Howard Waldrop. It’s called “Ike at the Mike”, and I won’t spoil its rather clever conceit. Let me just say it’s of a piece with Waldrop’s interests in Alternate History and pop culture (as evinced by his other stories like “Flying Saucer Rock N Roll” and “Save A Place in the Lifeboat for Me” which is about the deaths of Buddy Holly et al).
Oh, and from a seemingly unlikely place: John Trudell, poet, actor and activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM), has a track about E on his spoken word record GRAFFITI MAN called “Baby Boom Che”. Well worth checking out.
Jaime – thanks for the recommendations, they both sound really interesting!
Patrica…points all well taken. I should have placed more emphasis on “little”…I didn’t mean to imply he had none at all. I simply meant that compared to other monumental first “official” recordings (by say, Fats Domino or Chuck Berry or the Beatles, not to mention various jazz, blues and gospel greats…or put another way, Buddy Holly and Little Richard made lots of unexceptional sides before they found the magic), Elvis was extremely untested. By “real” gig I meant something that was regular, lasting and paid, which as far as I know he never had until he started touring after his first record was released. Didn’t mean to dis his actual experiences which were certainly valuable.