#78 Elvis Presley, 'The Sun Sessions' (1976)

Previously #11

On 18 July 1953, a young 18-year-old Memphis kid walked into Sun Record Company. He paid $3.98 to record a double-sided demo as a birthday gift for his dear mum. The fact that the family didn’t own a record player was besides the point. After recording a second demo, he was brought to the attention of Sun Studios owner, Sam Phillips. Phillips invited the young man to join Scotty Moore and Bill Black in studio to record some songs. Phillips had thought that Blues music, performed predominantly by black musicians, crossed with Boogie-Woogie and Country music would be very popular with white kids if presented in the right way. After hearing the songs recorded by the trio, he knew he had found the sound he was looking for.

Phillips wanted to gauge public reaction, so he took the recordings to Memphis radio station, WHBQ. ‘That’s All Right Mama’ received its first play 8 July 1954 and so the career of Elvis Presley was launched. 6,000 copies of ‘That’s All Right / Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ were pre-ordered immediately and shipped 11 days later. The trio charted across the South, where they would tour extensively. One organisation, however, that they failed to impress was the famous Grand Ole Opry. They failed the audition, weren’t invited back and Presley was even allegedly told by the talent agent there, Jim Denny, to “go back to driving a truck.” In November 1955, Phillips sold the contract to RCA for $40k, the highest sum ever paid for a recording contract at that stage and as they say in the classics, the rest is history. These 15 songs are amongst the most important in music history. As I’ve previously discussed, Elvis would go on to influence everyone from The Beatles to Elton John to Bruce Springsteen, and let’s face it, practically every kid with a guitar across the mid-late ‘50s and early ‘60s and beyond.

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