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Elvis Presley · S2 E4
That's All Right
July 5, 1954. A loose jam during a break in the session. Sam Phillips hits record. Rock and roll is born
July 5, 1954. A session at Sun Studio has been going nowhere for hours when Elvis Presley picks up his guitar during a break and starts fooling around with an old blues song by Arthur Crudup.
"That's All Right" (Elvis Presley, '68 Comeback Special, NBC, 1968). Fourteen years after this song was born during a break at Sun Studio, Elvis plays it again in front of a live audience. The loose, electric energy is still there. This is where it all started.
Before the Break
For hours, Elvis, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black have been trying to record ballads and country songs that Sam Phillips can release as a single. Nothing is clicking. Elvis sounds stiff, Scotty can't find the right feel, and the room is dying. Then Phillips calls a break, and everything changes.
Sources
Guralnick, Peter. "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley." Little, Brown, 1994.
Moore, Scotty, and James Dickerson. "That's Alright, Elvis." Schirmer Books, 1997.
“All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and then I joined in. Just acting the fool.”
— Scotty Moore
That's All Right, Elvis Presley (1954)
Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup recorded the original in 1946 as a standard twelve-bar blues, but what Elvis, Scotty, and Bill do to it is something else: faster, looser, with Scotty Moore's guitar skittering across the top in a way that sounds neither country nor blues. Phillips hears it from the control room and tells them to back up and do it again so he can get it on tape. Listen for how breathless the recording sounds. That's not sloppy playing, that's three guys discovering something in real time.
Sources
Guralnick, Peter. "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley." Little, Brown, 1994.
Jorgensen, Ernst. "Elvis Presley: A Life in Music." St. Martin's Press, 1998.
TAP TO REVEAL: Did Sam Phillips know immediately that he had something special?
I Love You Because, Elvis Presley (1954)
The ballad Elvis, Scotty, and Bill were trying to record earlier that same evening, before everything fell apart and something better took its place. Leon Payne wrote this as a straightforward country love song in 1949, and Elvis delivers it exactly that way: sweet, earnest, and completely forgettable. This is what a failed session sounds like. Play it back-to-back with 'That's All Right' and you can hear the exact moment a country ballad singer turned into something the world had never heard.
I Love You Because, Elvis Presley (1954)
"I love you because you understand, dear, every single thing I try to do." Read the lyrics while you listen. This is Elvis before the lightning struck: a nice country ballad sung by a nice young man with a nice voice. Compare it to the song that followed it that same night and you can hear the distance between trying to fit in and finally letting go.
July 5, 1954: The File
What were Elvis, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black doing when they stumbled onto 'That's All Right'?
Phillips has the tape, but 'That's All Right' is only one side of a single. Every record needs a B-side, and he needs something that sounds completely different to prove this kid isn't a one-trick accident. Next: Elvis, Scotty, and Bill attack a bluegrass waltz by Bill Monroe and turn it into something that makes even less sense than the A-side.
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