Rock's Delivery Room

[chas smith R.I.P.]

By Robert Hilburn, LA Times Staff Writer

When Sam Phillips opened a storefront recording studio in a former auto glass shop here in 1950, there were lots of people whose first reaction was "It's a good thing he's keeping his day job at the radio station."

How could he ever compete with the major labels in New York and Los Angeles that had pop stars like Perry Como and Patti Page?
   
   
   
 But the doubters didn't know two things about Sam Phillips: First, he had an unshakable faith that "poor people's music" — the country and blues he loved growing up in the South — would revolutionize pop culture.

Second, he had the good fortune to set up shop just 12 blocks or so from the home of a young singer named Elvis Presley.

Those forces collided on a hot, humid night 50 years ago this week when Phillips went into his 18-by-32-foot studio on busy Union Avenue to see if he could capture the potential he heard in the shy, eager-to-please teenager with sideburns.

Future generations would think of rock 'n' roll as something that had always been around, like school bells and the World Series, but rock as we know it today was for all practical purposes born that night in Memphis.

In attempting to explain the magic of that moment, writers, musicians and fans have talked about all the elements that came together in one fateful week — including a spontaneous mixture of country and blues sounds that crossed cultural and racial boundaries.

Invariably, the focus has been on Presley, who went on to be the music's biggest star. Yet everything about the session was crucial — from the Memphis setting to the choice of Scotty Moore as a guitarist.

And nothing, people who were in Memphis at the time say, was more essential than Phillips, whose vision shaped that evening.

As Presley took his place at the microphone, Phillips was in the adjoining control booth, looking at him through a window. To avoid intimidating the youngster, Phillips, wearing his customary sport coat, had Presley face away from the window and sing directly at guitarist Moore and bassist Bill Black.

The studio wasn't air-conditioned, so it was sticky and uncomfortable as they got underway around 8 p.m. It was Monday, July 5, and fireworks were marking Fourth of July celebrations in nearby parks, a day late because the fireworks weren't allowed in the city on the Sabbath.

To help Presley relax, Phillips suggested he just sing some of his favorite tunes, and over the next four hours that meant mostly songs like a slow, hesitant version of "Harbor Lights," a top 10 hit for Bing Crosby four years before, and "I Love You Because," a country song Presley had learned from an old Ernest Tubb record.

Phillips' heart sank. This wasn't what he had been looking for.

As Presley kept doing pedestrian versions of various ballads, Phillips stopped the tape and started recording over it. Tape was expensive. Finally, he suggested that everyone take a break. The night looked like a lost cause.

So he was startled when Presley began strumming playfully on his acoustic guitar and singing an old blues tune Phillips recognized as Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right."

Phillips was obsessed with the country and blues sounds he heard as a boy in Florence, Ala. He'd even opened his studio to record the bluesmen from Beale Street, which was just a couple of miles away.

And now this sound was coming from a 19-year-old white singer.

Phillips swung open the control booth door and asked what was going on.

Just fooling around, Moore said.

"Well, it didn't sound too bad," Moore recalls Phillips replying. "Try it again. Let me get in there and turn the mikes on."

Presley taught the tune to the other two musicians, and after a couple of run-throughs, Phillips rolled tape. When they finished, Presley and the others didn't know what to make of this country/blues hybrid. They listened to a playback and turned to Phillips for a sign.

He was thrilled.

Phillips' oldest son, Knox, was only 9 at the time, but he clearly recalls his father's excitement when he played "That's All Right" for the family, something he rarely did with a new record.

"I still remember the joy on Sam's face," the young Phillips says. "It wasn't like he was just telling my mother, 'I like this, let me play it for you.' It was more 'This is the thing I've been searching for.' "

Memphis' mystique

Perhaps the sound that caught Phillips' ear that night could have been forged only in Memphis. It's less than three hours from Nashville, but the cities are so different that it's hard to believe you haven't crossed a state boundary when driving between them on Interstate 40. There's even an old saying: Nashville may be the capital of Tennessee, but Memphis is the capital of Mississippi.

For poor white boys like Elvis Presley in Tupelo, Miss., or the great blues singers from the Delta, roads and railroad tracks all seem to lead to Memphis — and Beale Street, arguably the country's leading showplace of black music for much of the first half of the last century.

Presley's parents moved there with their 13-year-old son in November 1948, hoping for work. They lived in Lauderdale Courts, a federal housing project in a worn-out neighborhood at the edge of downtown.

Walking those streets today, it's amazing to see how compact his world was 50 years ago. The red brick buildings of the project are still there, but they have been purchased by a private developer and are being turned into upscale apartments.

Presley's favorite movie theater, the Suzore No. 2, and favorite record shop, Charlie's, were within a couple of blocks of the apartment on Winchester. They've been torn down to make room for the Memphis Convention Center and the Pyramid arena. Gone too is the old Ellis Auditorium, where the wide-eyed Presley attended numerous gospel concerts and dreamed of joining a gospel group.

Most striking, the old apartment building was about equidistant from Beale Street, where you could absorb the excitement of the blues and other black music strains that filled the air, and Phillips' Memphis Recording Service.

Phillips first saw Beale Street when he was 19 and was drawn back by the sights and sounds in 1945.

Blessed with a great sense of oratory, he had toyed with becoming a minister or a criminal defense attorney. But when his father, a cotton farmer, died, he had to drop out of school to support his aunt and mother. His voice landed him a succession of jobs as a radio announcer, including one at a major Nashville station.

"If you look at Sam's résumé, you can learn a lot about his cast of mind," Knox says. "If you are in broadcasting, WLAC in Nashville is the place to be. It's a clear channel, 50,000-watt station that you can hear at night all the way to South America.

"And if he just wanted to open a recording studio, he could have done it in Nashville. That was one of the biggest recording centers in the country. But Sam goes from WLAC to WREC in Memphis, which most people would see as a step back because it's a smaller radio market. The reason is, he was on a mission."

Five years after he moved to Memphis in 1945, Phillips opened a studio and started recording many of the area's talented black artists, who were largely ignored by the major pop record labels. Even indie labels that specialized in blues and R&B merely sent producers to town for hotel room recording sessions.

Phillips' plan was to use his studio to record blues and R&B artists for such indie outfits as Chess Records in Chicago or Modern in Los Angeles. He started with jazz pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. and went on to find or record artists including B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Ike Turner and Howlin' Wolf.

The rent on the studio on Union Avenue, a street lined with many of the city's most successful car dealerships, cost $75 a month. Boldly, he took a 10-year lease.

After "Rocket 88," a lively novelty record he made with Turner and Jackie Brenston, became a No. 1 R&B hit for Chess in 1951, Phillips had the confidence to start Sun Records, but keeping it afloat was a struggle.

With just one employee, a receptionist-secretary who handled most of the books, Phillips worked endlessly. He didn't just record artists, he also had to drive hundreds of miles a week in a 1947 DeSoto, hoping to persuade DJs in the region to play the recordings on the radio and record shops to stock them.

All this helped push Phillips toward two nervous breakdowns, for which he received electroshock treatment.

Contributing to the stress was the racial tension of the time. In an age of strict segregation in the South, the idea of a white man working with black musicians caused friction. Co-workers at the radio station, Phillips' son says, made insulting comments along the lines of "You don't smell so bad today, Sam." The suggestion was that Phillips must not have been in the studio that day with blacks.

On the night he went into the studio with Presley, racial anxiety filled Memphis. The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark desegregation ruling, Brown vs. Board of Education, was little more than a month old. A letter to the editor in the Commercial Appeal newspaper warned blacks that pushing too hard too fast could lead to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Fourth of July celebration in the park that night was for whites only. A separate fireworks show for "coloreds" was scheduled for the next evening.

Integration, however, was already underway in music. White and black teenagers here and across the country were tuning in to radio shows that played the black and white, country and blues sounds that Phillips so embraced.

"If I can find me a white man who can sing like a black man" is a quote that has been widely attributed to Phillips, though there is no evidence he ever said that. Yet he started working with white country artists at Sun in 1953, hoping to have a wider base of customers.

"I had grown up on the South, and I felt a definite kinship between the white Southern country artists and the black Southern blues or spiritual artists," Phillips told me in 1981. "Our ties were too close for the two not to overlap.

"It was a natural thing. It's just that the record business in those days looked at the music as totally separate. They didn't realize that it was a natural exchange and that the public would eventually accept it."

To help pay the bills, Phillips also operated a recording service, taping weddings or graduation ceremonies and making vanity recordings for anyone who stopped in with $3.98. His first business card read, "We record anything — anywhere — anytime."

When Presley walked into the studio in the summer of 1953 to make one of those vanity records, Phillips had found the voice to meld his love of blues and country music — but it took him almost a year to realize it.

Change in the air

Traces of a rock revolution were already in the air when Phillips met Presley. Dozens of R&B singles, released on labels such as Atlantic, Chess and Specialty, had become underground favorites across America.

These records were embraced by teens, black and white, who were enjoying a post-World War II prosperity and freedom. The old social order was under attack.

Rebelling against the stiffness of mainstream culture, teens looked for something sexier and more explosive than the music of their parents. Later, their music, rock 'n' roll, would become the soundtrack for social movements, from civil rights to antiwar protests.

Conventional pop, including Kitty Kallen's sweet "Little Things Mean a Lot" and the Four Aces' dreamy "Three Coins in the Fountain," still topped the national charts that summer. But teens in Memphis were already grooving to the R&B sounds of such spirited records as the Chords' "Sh-Boom" and the Midnighters' scandalous "Work With Me Annie."

Still, there was no consensus yet about the essential elements of the music that DJs around the country were beginning to call rock 'n' roll, not even its chief instrument. Some records featured saxophones, others piano. Some records drew their appeal chiefly from exaggerated jump blues rhythms, others from doo-wop harmonizing.

Phillips was interested in the emerging teen sounds, but he wasn't looking to imitate them. He was searching for the sound he had been hearing in his head for years.

"Sam's strength wasn't in telling people what to play," former Sun guitarist Roland Janes said recently. "His gift was in recognizing it when something was good."

It was Phillips' good fortune to run into someone like Presley, who shared the same musical passions.

The teenager not only loved blues and country music, he'd even befriended some of the gospel singers at the Assembly of God Church in South Memphis, hoping to join their group.

None of that was apparent, though, when Presley stopped in to record two ballads, "My Happiness," a pop tune from the '40s, and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin," which had been recorded by the Ink Spots.

"He was very nervous," Phillips said in 1981. "He would sing a couple of words and then look over at me. But we finally got it together…. They came off good. It wasn't the type of song I was looking for, but his voice was sure interesting. I wrote his name down on a piece of paper — the only time I can recall doing that with a singer — and I mentioned the possibility of making a real record if we could find the right song. He lit up like a Christmas tree with 1,000 bulbs on it."

Presley kept stopping by the studio, often just talking to Phillips' receptionist, who sat at a desk in the front room. He even cut another vanity record, but he didn't get the call about a real recording session until the following June, when a Nashville publisher sent Phillips a new ballad that Phillips thought might be perfect for Presley.

It wasn't. Presley had trouble with the song, and Phillips thought the vocal was too plain.

Maybe he had been wrong about the kid.

Before taking Presley into the studio for possibly one last time, he asked Moore, a guitarist whom he admired, to size him up. It was Saturday, July 3, 1954.

Moore invited Presley to his house the next afternoon. Presley showed up dressed in the sporty duds he bought at Lansky Brothers on Beale Street: a white lacy shirt, pink pants with a black stripe down the legs and white buck shoes. He sang all or part of dozens of songs, mostly pop, country or R&B ballads.

Nothing sounded all that special to Moore, but two things impressed him:

"Most singers have to sing to the music, but Elvis had such great timing that he could carry the tune by himself," Moore says. "It was like he had a built-in metronome. Plus he knew every song in the world."

Moore reported back to Phillips with mixed feelings.

Finally, Phillips cut to the chase. Should he give Presley another chance in the studio?

"Sure," Moore replied.

Less than 30 hours later, Presley was recording the song that would launch his career.

A strange hybrid

Phillips was familiar with Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's original version of "That's All Right," but what Presley played with Moore and Black on July 5 was nothing like it. Crudup was in his early 40s when he recorded the song, but his vocal was so slow and sleepy that he could've been in his 70s. Presley's version rocked.

The recording was so captivating that most Presley fans over the years wouldn't even notice the words didn't make much sense.

Either because he forgot some of the lyrics or simply changed them in the studio, Presley left out the lines in Crudup's song that explained a woman has done her man wrong.

In Presley's version, it sounds like he is standing by his girlfriend despite his parents' objections, which was a common theme of early rock.

Well, mama she done told me, papa done

told me, too.

Son, that gal you're fooling with,

She ain't no good for you.

But that's all right,

That's all right,

That's all right now mama.

Any way you do.

There's a raw sex appeal and authority in Presley's vocal. Moore's memorable guitar break, influenced by the thumb and finger style of country guitarists Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, adds energy and color.

In "That's All Right," the guitar took its place as the essential rock 'n' roll instrument.

Where hundreds of rockers, from John Lennon to Bono, have talked about the magic of Presley's voice on the cut, an equal number of guitarists — from Keith Richards to Jimmy Page — have marveled over how Moore's solo made the guitar seem full of youthful promise and adventure.

"I think it's still one of the most exciting records you can put on a turntable," Phillips told me years later. "Listen to the vitality, the spontaneity."

Phillips took it all in that night. Long after the others had left, Phillips remained in the control booth, listening to the song. It wasn't just that the music pleased him aesthetically. It also touched him on a deeper level.

He found dignity and liberation in the blues and country music of his youth. He had seen how country music raised the spirits of working-class whites in weekend square dances, and he saw how singing spiritual and blues numbers eased the burden of blacks who worked the fields.

Finally, he had brought these traditions together.

But would anyone share his excitement? This wasn't blues. It wasn't country. It was some strange hybrid, and what DJ would play it?

He turned to his friend Dewey Phillips, whose nightly "Red, Hot and Blue" radio show on WHBQ was immensely popular with Memphis teens, for an opinion.

Dewey, no relation, dropped by the recording studio one night that week after his 9 p.m.-to-midnight program and listened as Sam played "That's All Right" over and over. He was intrigued, but he wasn't sure it was right for his upbeat R&B show. The next morning, though, he called Sam, saying he couldn't get "That's All Right" out of his head.

The DJ introduced "That's All Right" to his rabid listeners around 9:30, and they flooded the phone lines with requests to hear it again. By the end of the show, Dewey Phillips had played it 14 times, maybe more.

Kids started asking for "That's All Right" at local records stores the next day. Soon, Sam Phillips had orders for 5,000 copies. Within weeks it was a regional hit.

"I've heard people talk about that night just being luck," Knox Phillips says. "But Sam absolutely knew what he had when he heard it that night. His whole mind-set was geared toward that moment.

"I remember him telling my mother, 'We might have a little more money now…. You might even be able to get a fur coat."

The flip side

WHEN everyone returned to the studio later in the week to record the flip side of the "That's All Right" single, the musicians again struggled to come up with something that caught Phillips' ear.

You'd think that Phillips would have simply encouraged Presley to record another song in the same spirit as "That's All Right," but that wasn't his style.

"I could see people coming in thinking, 'Man, this is our opportunity. Let's not blow it. Let's give him some fancy licks or some Nat Cole stuff,' " Phillips said in 1981. "I wasn't interested in that. With Elvis, for instance, I wanted him tossing the music the way he felt it, not the way he thought he was supposed to sing to get it on the radio."

So Phillips just kept listening as Presley went through another round of pop and country ballads. Even after the strong response to "That's All Right," Presley obviously didn't realize what had made it work.

Moore remembers that Phillips was so disappointed that he didn't even tape most of the night. Was "That's All Right" a fluke?

The answer came, as it had the first time, during a break.

Black, who would later sell millions of records as the leader of the Bill Black Combo, was a jovial man who liked to clown around on the upright bass. During the break, he went into a zany version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky," one of the signature tunes of bluegrass founder Bill Monroe.

Rather than play it as a slow waltz as Monroe did, Black sped it up.

Presley recognized the song and began to sing:

I say blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shinin'.

Shine on the one that's gone and left me blue.

Phillips stuck his head out of the control booth, just as he had done the earlier night, and said, "That's the one!"

On July 19, "That's All Right" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" were released as Sun record No. 209. Billboard, the music business weekly, gave it a glowing review.

Though the record didn't get much attention outside the South, it sold about 20,000 copies, enough to encourage powerhouse Columbia Records to have one of its rising country singers, Marty Robbins, record his version of "That's All Right." Though far inferior to Presley's version, it did well enough, thanks to Columbia's hefty promotion budget and distribution system, to break into the country Top 10.

Phillips knew he'd always have trouble going up against the major labels, so in 1955 he sold Presley's contract to RCA for $35,000, which was reported to be the largest amount ever paid for a recording contract at the time. Phillips used that money to launch the careers of some other seminal country and rock figures, including Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Charlie Rich — who all came to 706 Union Ave., hoping to follow in Presley's footsteps.

No lightning bolts

As the only member of that 1954 recording session who's still alive, Scotty Moore, 72, is mobbed by fans whenever he makes public appearances, especially in Europe, where he recently played. They want to see him re-create those guitar licks or just talk about the magic of that night 50 years ago.

Moore lives just outside Nashville in a modest house whose walls are covered with photos and other reminders of the old days. He was in the studio with Presley when he went to RCA and recorded "Heartbreak Hotel," the first of 104 Top 40 singles — more hit singles than the Beatles and Michael Jackson combined — and he appeared in some of Presley's movies.

Fourteen years after Presley and Phillips entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 as part of its first induction class, Moore too was voted in.A shy, soft-spoken man, he often feels he disappoints fans when they ask him to relive the details of that night in Memphis.

He just smiled last month when asked if it felt like a lightning bolt went off that night in the studio. Lightning bolt, he shrugged. There weren't even lightning bugs.

Gail Pollock, a longtime friend, tried to help Moore when he struggled to describe how everything came together. "Maybe," she said, "God just smiled on them that night."

For his part, Phillips, who died in August at age 80, never claimed to be the father of rock 'n' roll, but he took pride in what he accomplished at Sun.

"It's really mind-boggling sometimes to think of how rock 'n' roll enabled us to bring this big world a little closer together," Phillips said late in his life. "It ended up doing more than all the damned diplomats did in all the years we've had diplomats. It's something to realize you had a part in all that. I mean, rock 'n' roll was supposed to ruin us, remember?"

[Tim Whitlock]

I never get tired of hearing the story .

[chas smith R.I.P.]

Me either.

[David Doggett]

Memphis has always been the capital of North Mississippi. It is said that the Mississippi Delta goes from the Duck Fountain in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis to the Mississippi River Bridge at Vicksburg. Sam Phillips' feel for the region, the history, the races, the music and the teenagers was presient and genius. He wasn't just at the right place at the right time, he consciously WENT to the right place at the right time, and against mainstream trends. Thank God he was there to find Elvis and to help him figure out which part of his talents had the magic.

I was living in Indianola, Mississippi in 1954, and we went to Memphis twice a year to buy clothes and go to the big movie theaters. Everyone, white and black, listened to the Memphis radio stations and dialed back and forth between the white and black stations. When Elvis hit, it reached right down to us kids in grammar school, and nothing was ever the same again.

[Bill Hatcher]

I just read a critics article on my Google news page. Crux of the article was that there should be a black father of rock and roll instead of the King. Don't you just love these liberal bed wetters.

Elvis always said that he took his influence from black blues/soul singers and from white country singers. The writer just can't stand it because Elvis was the start of the entire business of modern day rock and roll. The rest of those black dudes just played out of tune and mumbled stuff. Elvis and Sam Phillips took the groove that Elvis had formulated, the Chet Atkins influenced guitar of Scotty Moore, the absolutely nothing to do with anything drums of DJ Fontana and the bluegrass slap bass of Bill Black and smashed all that into something that nobody else had come up with to peddle to America. So if anyone can come up with the black father of rock and roll please let me know who it was.

If the same writer was alive in the 1700s he would have said the same thing about Bach, you know he just can't be the culmination of the Baroque period. Surely someone that Bach studied earlier on was REALLY the king of Baroque, just don't know exactly who.

[Bobby Lee]

You can't seriously compare Elvis to Bach!

[Donny Hinson]

Elvis was certainly a big influence on rock n' roll music, but I'm certainly not of the opinion that he (or Sam Phillips, for that matter) "invented" it. Seeds of that music were springing up all over the place. Elvis just had the "look" (face, body, and moves), and THAT got him the publicity that no one else could get.

[Bill Hatcher]

You have mis read what I wrote. I am comparing what the critic said today and what he would have had to come up with in order to try to find some down trodden earlier German composer that surely must be held in as high a regard just because Bach heard his work and was influenced by it.

Compare Bach to Elvis--mmmm......Well when Bach died they had to officially bring to an end the Baroque era and begin a totally new style because Bach pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of the musical room.
We all know that Elvis is not really dead so I guess they are both pretty cool.

Edit: I just reread the Time article by Christopher Farley. He sums up the article by saying Elvis deserves his place in the history of rock, just not at the beginning. Duh!<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Bill Hatcher on 06 July 2004 at 05:28 PM.]</p></FONT>

[Ken Lang]

For myself, having lived through that era, Elvis was the firestarter. He was the / between Frank Sinatra and us youngsters. Others had more influence on me, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee, even the Chuck Berry types later on.

In '64, the Beatles were the firestarters. They were the / between old R'N'R and the new. Somewhere ahead was a new group of firestarters, but by then I'd gone back to my country roots.

In country, the firestarters were Cash, Ray Price, Buck and the Hag. Later, maybe Ricky,Vinney and a few others.

For sure modern country has no firestarters. The fire has gone out. The kindling is gone. The embers have been stomped out by the dark suits in accounting and radioland, who lack the keen nostrils to smell a new firestarter, or the burning of the bottom of their own feet.

[Roger Rettig]

I love that story, too.....(and thanks, Chas, for posting the excellent article!)

Today I found myself thinking about that day in Memphis. What would that shy, slightly insecure boy who was not particularly popular among his peers have said if he had known that the World would be talking fifty years later about what he did that day?

I DO credit Sam and Elvis - they did something, albeit in a fairly haphazard way, that turned music around. Little Richard may have been the best singer, Chuck Berry the most literate, Jerry Lee perhaps the most talented - but Elvis had the Moment, and it was only after he sang 'That's All Right' that Cash, Rich, Lewis and Orbison beat a path to Sam's door.

That record still sends a chill down my spine - what a tragedy that Presley is most remembered for so much that was negative. Let's not chastise him for descending to the parody that his show became by 1970, and for that appalling and calculatedly exploitative TV Special that the rock historians seem to relish, with those schlocky Hollywood arrangements, and during which none of his old material came close to the groove of the originals.

My favourite record remains 'Mystery Train' - hearing that when I was thirteen years old in '56 was an Epiphany. A minute earlier I'd had no notion of Blues music - suddenly a new world was opened up for me! When I eventually did hear Junior Parker, as well as BB King and the others, I was dismayed - these guys weren't as good as Presley!

Scotty Moore's contribution is incalculable - although he was virtually replaced (or sidelined to second guitar) once RCA and Chet were at the helm, and they brought in Hank Garland; I'm convinced that his bubbling, and sometimes fumbled, style was a vital counterpoint to Presley - I can't imagine those 'sides' any other way! No disrespect to Hank intended - he made his own mark, and enriched Presley's music in a unique way - somehow, though, it's right that Moore is the name that's still recalled.

I just wish I'd been there, and not four thousand miles away in Muswell Hill, North London when it happened!

Rest in peace, Elvis - and Sam! It's a GREAT story......

Roger Rettig <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Roger Rettig on 06 July 2004 at 09:36 PM.]</p></FONT>

[David Doggett]

Umm, Bill, I would never agree that "The rest of those black dudes just played out of tune and mumbled stuff." They were as good or better at R&B as Elvis was at RnR. It was clearly Elvis' imitation of them that fathered RnR. One could easily argue that Elvis' music was whiter and not as good as the long line of pro R&B musicians that preceeded him (and Elvis would probably have agreed with that himself). They clearly are all the fathers of RnR (or maybe they are the grandfathers). But there was not any single one of them that stood above the others as The Father the way Elvis did for white RnR. In North Mississippi, Little Richard and Chuck Berry were as popular among white teens as Elvis (they did not preceed Elvis, but certainly followed in the footsteps of previous R&B).

But that is all about the music. You are right that Elvis started the commercial firestorm of RnR. And he did it by singing RnB with a white southern accent. Since the white audience is many times larger than the black audience, it was Elvis' white version of RnB that was able to take off commercially. Musically you can't really separate out the black and the white influences. That's the point. You could say that country music (which is mostly from the Scotch-Irish, not the Irish) had as much influence on RnR as R&B did, but country had itself been heavily influenced by black southern music for decades. I don't think it detracts at all from Elvis to recognize that he imitated previous R&B. He gave it his own twist. I don't think we can say which was more important in the mix, his twist or the R&B he imitated. If Elvis hadn't been there with his twist, Sam Phillips would have kept looking until he found someone else who could do something like that. But without the R&B precedents, it would have never happened.

Oh yeah, the firestarters in country music? Jimmy Rogers and Hank Williams.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by David Doggett on 06 July 2004 at 09:58 PM.]</p></FONT>

[Earnest Bovine]

What are some examples of Elvis records featuring Hank Garland?

[chas smith R.I.P.]

<SMALL>Well when Bach died they had to officially bring to an end the Baroque era and begin a totally new style because Bach pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of the musical room.</SMALL>

The same way that the Rennaissance ended with Palestrina, no one could do it better than those guys. Curiously enough, the first sonata allegro form was composed by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, J. S. Bach's 3rd son.

<SMALL>Elvis was certainly a big influence on rock n' roll music, but I'm certainly not of the opinion that he (or Sam Phillips, for that matter) "invented" it. Seeds of that music were springing up all over the place. Elvis just had the "look" (face, body, and moves), and THAT got him the publicity that no one else could get.</SMALL>

I don't think the article was making the point that Elvis was the beginning of Rock and Roll as much as Sun records was where it all started. You could make a case that Elvis was the most influential person in the start of rock and roll. Personally, I grew up in the north east and the local radio stations didn't play any "race music". We got stuff like "How much is that doggy in the window" . When the Rolling Stones released "Out of Our Heads", I had no idea that those were all covers and that they were "mining" the R&B from our own artists, that we didn't get to hear.

Here's an interesting quote about "Rocket 88" that includes a comment on Sam Phillips and Sun:

"Rocket 88", a rhythm and blues song from 1951 claimed by Sun Records owner and pioneer rock and roll record producer Sam Phillips as "the first rock and roll song".

The record was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, but the band did not actually exist. The song was written by Ike Turner and recorded by him with his band, the Kings of Rhythm. Brenston (1930-1979) was a saxophonist with Turner and also sang the vocal on "Rocket 88", a hymn of praise to the joys of the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 automobile, which had just been introduced in 1949. Brenston also was given author credit not Turner; it is now agreed that Brenston's contribution was overstated for obscure, non-musical reasons.

Working from the raw material of jump blues and swing combo music, Turner made it even rawer, starting with a strongly stated back beat and superimposing Brenston's enthusiastic vocals and tenor saxophone solos by "Raymond" and Brenston. The song also features one of the first examples of distorted, or fuzz guitar ever recorded. Reportedly, a speaker was damaged on Highway 61 when the band was driving from Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee but Phillips liked the sound and used it.

"Rocket 88" is the prototype for hundreds of other rock and roll records in musical style and lineup, not to mention its lyrics in which an automobile serves as a metaphor for romantic prowess.

The claim that "Rocket 88" was the first rock and roll record is perhaps overstated, but it was the second-biggest rhythm and blues single of 1951 and much more influential than some other "first" claimants. "Rocket 88" was successfully covered by Bill Haley and his Comets early in his career, leading to his own impact on popular music. Turner's piano introduction was copied note for note by Little Richard on his "Lucille" several years after that.'

[Jussi Huhtakangas]

Earnest, "Little Sister" is probably the best known Elvis/Hank Garland tune. Hank is also on "A Fool Such As I" , "I Need Your Love Tonight" and "A Big Hunk Of Love" to mention a few ( there are lot of them). Elvis loved Hank's guitar playing and used him on stage too, you can see him on the famous black and white clip of Elvis in his gold lamee jacket doin the gyrations.

[Roger Rettig]

Right, Jussi...

That session (June, '58) was scheduled during Elvis' Army 'leave', and calculated to provide material to see RCA through his Army service. 'I Need Your Love Tonight', 'A Big Hunk Of Love', 'I Got Stung', 'A Fool Such As I' and 'Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby' were the titles recorded. 'Little Sister' was recorded three years later, along with 'His Latest Flame'; '...Sister' being notable because Hank borrowed Harold Bradley's Fender Jazzmaster for that song - he felt his Gibson wasn't giving him the tone he needed for the song.

Scotty wasn't present at the 6/58 session - neither was Bill Black, but Floyd Cramer, Bob Moore, Chet (co-producer) and Buddy Harmon, who played in addition to D J Fontana, were; Chet was, apparently, determined to have a productive and professional session, so booked the Nashville 'A team' for the date.

Interestingly, Elvis himself was by this time starting to realise that his original musicians were somewhat limited in the studio - they would continue to be called, but would be augmented in Nashville by the above-listed players, and by L.A. players on the RCA Hollywood dates.

The concert with the gold jacket (with Hank AND Scotty, asd well as Boots Randolph and Floyd Cramer) was the 3/25/60 Pearl Harbor benefit show.

One of my favourite post-Sun sessions has to be the April, 1960 dates that produced the 'Elvis Is Back!' album - Hank's all over that, too.

RR

[Bill Hatcher]

Earnest. "Little Sister"!! Hank borrowed Harold Bradleys Fender Jazzmaster because he did not own a solid body guitar and knew that his jazz boxes would not be the sound needed.

Compared to Elvis, the blues cats were just mumbling. This is in no way denegrating to them. It's just one of the reasons why they never had the sucess that the purist want them to have. Elvis came along and sang the same song that Crudip sang right? Difference--Elvis had a total package that appealed to the masses rather than to just a small group of bluesheads. Phillips was right. All he needed was a white guy who could take the groovy "mumbling" of these bluesmen (who we now 50 years later think of as pioneers who fifty years ago were not held in as high esteem)and sell it to mass white audiences. This is not a racial thing. He was a business man. This has been going on in the music world for a long time. The Rolling Stones are nothing more than Chess/King imitators and proud of it. SRV--Albert King/Hendrix influenced. Barry Gordy aimed his records at mass markets and tried to discourage Marvin Gaye from recording his protest songs. Rap sells more to white teens than black teens. It's money and Phillips was a hustler that had the vision to capitalize on the Elvis does Big Mama Thornton thing. Still going on today in the record biz.

Bottom line--Howlin Wolf, Crudip, Thornton, Muddy Waters etc. did not sell a billion records, star in umteen cheezy movies, sell out concert halls all over America till he died and on and on. Elvis is the King and the start of big time commercial R/R like him or not.

A visit to the Sun Studio is recommended if you are in the Memphis area. The studio does not have the original gear (it is in the R/R hall of Fame) but everything else in the room is basically identical to what it was.

If you never got a chance to see Elvis then you really missed seeing rocks' true icon. He was pretty amazing.

[David Doggett]

Yes, Elvis is the King. It took a white kid like him to break the R&B derived RnR sound out of the South. But I can assure you that the white kids in North Mississippi that I grew up with did not think Elvis' black R&B predecessors (that we all listened to on the black stations like WDIA) were "mumblers who played out of tune." This does not characterize Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Muddy, Howling Wolf and B.B. King. Before and after Elvis, we loved the black stars. My first four RnR 45s, that I bought in grammar school, were Hound Dog, Bebopalula, School Days, and one of Little Richard's (Tuuty Fruity I think). Half white, half black. I love Elvis, but I don't think he succeeded because he was better than the black R&B musicians, he succeeded because he had a bigger white audience to appeal to than the smaller black audience of R&B. Even in the South, where we listened to R&B before there was RnR, me and my white friends only listened to R&B on the radio, and we didn't buy black artists' records until after Elvis. He made it okay. Oh yeah, and we never bought Pat Boone, no matter what color he was.

[Bill Hatcher]

Know what you mean. I grew up in the middle of Alabama. I remember going with my sister and buying Hound Dog when it came out. James Brown was next, and then the 60s pop and country. The old blues "mumblers" are cool and the more sophisticated among them like TBone Walker are even greater. Wonderful musical times back then.

[Roger Rettig]

I think it's significant that Elvis made a huge impression on listeners with that first record before they ever caught a glimpse of him - musically, he was the real deal.

Let's be honest, though, his incredible success was also due to his physical beauty - that was his edge, and that must have been what drew Tom Parker to pursue a contract with Presley; there's ample evidence that the 'Colonel' cared little or nothing for the quality of the music, failing as he did to credit Scotty, Bill and DJ with any importance.

RR

[Donny Hinson]

I would have expected the article to mention Elvis' first manager (Scotty Moore!). It was the commission from Elvis' gigs in '54 and '55 that allowed Scotty to quit his day-job, and go into music, full-time. Also, the indeterminable role of Marion Kiesker (the secretary who recommended Elvis to Phillips), seemed glossed over.

I lived through this era, too, and had a hard time differentiating exactly when R&B changed to R&R (still do). Some of Elvis' early material reminded me of Fats Domino, some reminded me of Little Richard (both of these guys were making money at R&B music while Elvis was still in school.) Some of it was gin-mill country, too. So, I'll capitulate that he <u>was</u> the first successful white R&B singer, but I don't just don't feel that either he or Sam was responsible for the "birth" of R&R. There was too much going on elsewhere, in New Orleans, New York, Nashville, Memphis, Chicago, Houston...all over. Young people's tastes were changing, rebelling against all those traditional post-war roots.

Like so many others, I stood in a theater line in 1956, waiting to see him in "Love Me Tender". (This was most people's first chance to see him, other than his brief TV appearances.) Yeah, he was a big up-and-coming star, but none of us could have guessed how long his star would shine. The movie's four songs weren't anything special, but somehow...he was! His influence and personality were tremendously significant, but with or without Elvis or Sam, rock 'n roll was still on it's way, IMHO. It was being born all over the country, and it was not as much a musical change as much as it was an attitude change. It was just "time".

That's the way I see it.