Elvis Aaron Presley was born on 8 January 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi. Each step of Elvis’ young life has been meticulously recorded:

His first public appearance, at the age of 10, when he sang ‘Old Shep’ at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair, and when he got his first guitar at the age of eleven.

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In 1948, the Presley family moved from Tupelo to Memphis. Elvis attended Hume’s High and went straight from excellent in music to D’s for Geography. When he left school and applied for a job, Elvis, the teenager, was already being noted as a ‘flashily “playboy” type’.

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The teenager literally stands out from the crowd. During the gospel nights at Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, one of the rare white faces between the audience, was that of the young Elvis. BB King recalls seeing the teenager prowling the predominantly black blues club on Beale Street.

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Besides his highly developed music taste, there was little to suggest that the young Elvis would become anything much. Driving trucks for the Crown Electric Company, chances were sparse for Elvis other than to live out his life in Memphis.

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Elvis was eager to learn what he sounds like on disc. For one summer day in 1953, all changed forever for the eighteen-year-old Elvis, when he walked into Sun Studios, paid his $4.00 and began recording the two songs he has chosen, the 1941 hit, The Ink Spot, “That’s when your heartache begins” and the “My happiness” 1948 Pied-Pipers ballad.
Marion Keisker, Sun Studio’s receptionist was quietly impressed with the boy’s voice. Marion asked Elvis who he thought he sounded like. Elvis replied, in a voice that will soon take the world by storm: “I sound like nobody!”

It is worth to remember that Elvis began recording and adopting black musicians and their music nearly a decade before Martin Luther King’s historic march on Washington and Bob Dylan’s songs protesting the iniquity of racism. Elvis’ love for R&B, blues, and the gospel was heartfelt, natural and honest. He was proud of his musical inheritance, although his background at the time, may not have granted him with a sophisticated understanding of the issues.

Elvis’ own attitude towards race has also been questioned at times, with faultfinders accusing him of stealing music away from his black initiators. The young Elvis always acknowledged his debt to the musicians who inspired him and less directly, in almost every one of his recorded instants, the older Elvis shouted his debt and commitment to black music.

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Nobody really knew what to do with young Elvis. Sam Phillips tried him out on everything, country, gospel, ballads and pop. He knew he had something, but he just seemed to be unable to hit on it.
In desperation Sam puts Elvis in touch with Scotty Moore, a guitarist and his friend, bassist, Bill Black.
Elvis still fails to unleash his bottled up musical frustration, despite a lot of encouragement from Scotty and Bill.

Suddenly from somewhere deep in the musical recesses of his memory, Elvis starts hammering “That’s All Right Mama”, on his cheap guitar. The song began as a blues, but Elvis placed something special on it. With a beat Scotty and Bill picked up on the groove – and in that one, stirring, spontaneous, shining moment, Rock ‘n’ Roll was born!

@frieda

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If you enjoyed the story about Elvis, then look out for part 3

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