Standing Over By The Record Machine: Third Man Vault’s Elvis Sun Sessions box set presents rock ‘n’ roll’s sacrificial birth, midwifed by Sam Phillips!
Presley’s rockabilly sides, like all rock ‘n’ roll, should be heard seven inches at a time, in mono….
Yeah yeah yeah, I get it. Continuing to call this “Rockabilly Week” at The ‘Stack is as patently absurd as the plot of my fave Looney Tune, Duck Amuck. I mean, two posts at the end of last week, then NOTHING?! Until TODAY?! In Daffy Duck’s words in that short linked above: “Thankth for th’ thour perthimmonth, bud!!”
Hey, whaddaya expect? I’m finishing up my book, and working 4-5 hours daily doing call center work from home. And finishing up The Book’s final draft (which happened two days ago!) has eaten up the bulk of the 3-4 hours I spend writing, before and after my dayjob shifts. So, sorry you had to wait a bit to read my magnum opus on that Third Man Elvis-At-Sun box! It’ll be worth it, once you hold The Tome in your hot little hands.
Anyway, guess Rockabilly Week now lasts until the end of the month, including that 19.55%-off-all-paid-subscriptions-for-life offer. More on that later. Meanwhile, time to dig into the Rosetta Stone of rock ‘n’ roll….
ELVIS PRESLEY – At 706 Union Ave: The Sun Singles 1954-55 box set (Third Man Records Vault Package # 59)(Sony Music Entertainment/Third Man Records)
This is it, Napalm Nation: Express, unadorned, 45 RPM documentation of the perfecting of rock ‘n’ roll, finally reproduced in the manner in which God intended it to be heard.
To all the jackasses braying right at this moment that Elvis Aaron Presley of Tupelo, Mississippi did not invent rock ‘n’ roll, that it was Little Richard/Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley/Sister Rosetta Tharpe/any-Black-individual-but-not-Elvis who cut the first rock ‘n’ roll record? You’re wrong, too. And right. All at once. But more on that in a bit. First, the whys-and-wherefores of this latest presentation of r’n’r’s Dead Sea Scrolls.
Elvis Presley At 706 Union Ave: The Sun Singles 1954-55 is freshly issued by Jack White’s Third Man Records in conjunction with Sun Records and Sony Music Entertainment. The latter have been custodians of Elvis’ recorded legacy since the megalith absorbed BMG, who bought RCA Victor eons ago. This lushly-appointed, limited edition box set for the Third Man Vault, the label’s subscription service, includes faithful reproductions of all five of Presley's original Sun singles on 7-inch 45rpm, pressed on a special yellow and black marble vinyl. The singles are housed in reproduction Sun 45 sleeves, and are accompanied by a bonus EP of four outtakes from the sessions. Additionally, you get a celebrational monograph about this being the Sun 45s’ 70th anniversary on torn parchment paper, plus all the usual gewgaws: Two linen-style postcards, one depicting Sun’s Memphis storefront, the other a detail of acoustic tile at Third Man’s Nashville studio, apparently identical to the tile inside Sun’s tracking room; a work shirt I.D.-style patch, embroidered “That’s All Right, Mama”; and a heavy-duty, milled nickel 45 adapter featuring an enamel rendering of the rooster from the Sun Records logo. It looks really swanky, with these singles spinning around it.
But are any of these five discs The Official First Rock ‘n’ Roll Record? No. That honor belongs to 1951’s “Rocket 88,” credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who were in reality Ike Turner’s Kings Of Rhythm, of Clarksdale, Mississippi. And yeah, it’s that Ike Turner.
But no, even Ike and his band didn’t invent rock ‘n’ roll. They were a vehicle driven by the man who truly invented rock ‘n’ roll, he who recorded “Rocket 88,” Sam Phillips. Elvis was just the vehicle for Sam to realize his ultimate vision, a delivery system if anything, just like Ike Turner’s Kings Of Rhythm. And if Sam didn’t exactly invent r’n’r either, he’s at least the doctor or midwife who delivered the squalling brat unto the world. Elvis Presley At 706 Union Ave’s contents represent the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, even if none of its exactly the first rock ‘n’ roll record. If any of that makes sense.
Sam purpose-built the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Ave., to record all the Black talent he heard up and down Beale Street. Memphis’ sorta mini-Harlem, Beale Street was where blues and rhythm & blues flowed like the Mississippi River. Sam opened his studio January 3, 1950 in the former premises of the Magic Throttle Company, automotive repair specialists in a district noted for a preponderance of auto-related businesses. What now echoed from that space was B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, James Cotton, Roscoe Gordon and Rufus Thomas, as well as the occasional country band knocking about town. The Black music just resonated more with Sam. You can hear how lovingly he recorded these artists — the music just dripped off their fingers like black honey, or rib grease and BBQ sauce. And he let the guitar players push their tiny, primitive tube amps as hard as they could go, until the distortion resembled screams of ecstasy at the height of passion, a climax of pure tone.
But what Sam was really after met at the intersection of the two streams emanating from 706 — twangy-ass country and gutbucket blues. It was a honky-tonk-cum-juke-joint of the mind and soul. As he kept telling his right hand person Marion Keisker, if he could just find a white boy who performed with all the gutsiness of these Black artists he loved, he’d make a million dollars.
That turned out to be Elvis Presley. Except as the story turned out, everyone but Sam Phillips made millions off Elvis, including Col. Tom Parker, RCA Victor Records, and “Elvis himselvis,” as local DJ George Klein used to introduce him.
But it’s not like Elvis arrived at 706 Union the fully-formed Hillbilly Cat — sideburns, Lansky Bros. finery, Mixmaster hips and all. This was a shy country boy with a pompadour full of Royal Crown Hair Dressing from Tupelo, Mississippi, entering Memphis Recording on his lunch break from his job running errands at Crown Electric, 475 N. Dunlap St. He wandered in like many, to record a one-off acetate for six dollars as a gift to his doting mother Gladys Presley. So introverted was this kid with the Tony Curtis haircut, all Sam was able to get out of him then and for the next several months was Dean Martin-style crooning, near-lifeless balladry. He basically had to goad The Hillbilly Cat out of Elvis Presley.
"We'd been there for a couple of hours, trying all kinds of stuff, and nothing was working,” recalled Scotty Moore, rock ‘n’ roll’s first guitar hero. “We were doin' these ballads and some country things, and Elvis just wasn't feeling it. Sam was gettin' a little frustrated, too. So we took a break, and me and Bill [Black, bassist] were just sittin' around fooling with our instruments. Elvis picked up his guitar and started messin' around with this blues lick, somethin' kinda jumpy. Bill joined in on the bass, and I started playin' along on the lead. It just kinda clicked, you know? It was different, it had some energy to it.
“Sam stuck his head out and said ‘What are you doing?' And we said, ‘We don’t know.’ ‘Well, back up,’ Sam said, ‘try to find a place to start, and do it again.'”
That “blues lick” the kid with the sideburns was “messin’ around with” was Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right,” given enough hillbilly twang to confuse everyone who heard it. In Roy Orbison’s words, "There was no reference point in the culture to compare it." Two nights later, they took Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” and made it resemble something from a Beale Street jukejoint, albeit hopped up on goofballs. And this became the template for each one of Presley’s Sun singles: The “rock” emphasized on one side, the “‘billy” on the other, while slippin’ and slidin’, peepin’ and collidin’ into each other until it was just one seamless thing. Sam Phillips was Dr. Frankenstein, and Elvis Presley was Sam’s Frankenstein’s monster. Rock ‘n’ roll, subgenus rockabilly, was the mayhem the monster kicked up. These five 45s were the clarion call which then attracted Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others, to 706 Union’s stoop.
Going forward, Elvis’ Sun singles followed the same format: Hillbilly-boogie-meets-R&B track on one side, country-tune-with-a-shot-of-rhythm-&-blues on the other. It was the rockers that worked best — the seismic “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” the sublimely boppin’ “Baby Let’s Play House,” the masterful/spooky “Mystery Train.” Personally, most of the more country-ish material comes off hokey to me, save for the noble “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone.” Then like a flash, he was gone, off to RCA/Hollywood/destiny, sold by Sam Phillips for $5000 dollars to save a business that could not pay their breakout star nor keep repressing his records. And Elvis Presley would shake the rest of the world as he had the South.
Third Man’s presentation of these sides reveals a lot. Surprisingly, Sam’s much-vaunted “slapback” tape echo is used a lot more sparingly than legend has it. Mind you, RCA fucked with the masters for years, especially when compiling them into the Elvis – The Sun Sessions LP in the mid-’70s, adding reverb to tunes which had no delay on them, such as “That’s All Right.” Jack White is noted for his attention to detail and sonic perfection in any of his reissues. Hence, for all their swirled-marble vinyl gimmickry, these singles are beautifully mastered in their original mono, ala that Stones singles box recently covered in this space. Like those Stones singles, the bass response is thicker, fatter than any version heard at 33 RPM, so you feel Bill Black’s every thump in your guts. Scotty Moore’s hollowbody Gibson floats like a butterfly and stings like an angry hornet’s nest, sitting at the nexus between Les Paul and the blues. Dispelling every nasty rumor Elvis couldn’t play, that the guitar was a mere prop, his acoustic guitar work holds it all together beautifully. Elvis is as solid a rhythm guitarist as Keith Richards, Joan Jett or any other master or mistress of the rock ‘n’ roll rhythmic arts.
But of course, the main attraction on any Elvis Presley record was the man’s singing. That voice could make the obituary section or stock reports sound amazing. If there was any hesitancy in “That’s All Right,” it was receding on “Good Rockin’ Tonight.” Come “Baby Let’s Play House,” it’s gone, man. Reeeal, reeeal gone. He’s all swagger and derring-do, beyond confident, playful. He’s made every teenage daughter of Dixie scream themselves hoarse and drench their panties, leaving every auditorium he and Scotty and Bill have been barnstorming smelling like the world’s biggest urinal. He knows his power, the havoc every thrust of his hips and tremor of his legs wreaks. He can now also play Sam Phillips’ slapback like Scotty digging into his Gibson. Check out his jivey, hiccupping delivery across “Baby Let’s Play House.” It’s his greatest record, until the blue-eyed soul colossus that was “Suspicious Minds” 14 years later.
But we can’t really say that, can we? Because that entirely negates the masterpiece of pure rhythm that is “Mystery Train.” Drummer Johnny Bernero was drafted in to toughen the beat, the way staff drummer DJ Fontana had been during Elvis, Scotty and Bill’s appearances on KWKH’s Louisiana Hayride. Fontana joined the band after. But now, Bernero’s giving Elvis’ final Sun single the click of his sticks, as Scotty’s galloping guitar figure drives the song down the track. There’s no echo except on Scotty’s axe, courtesy of the Ray Butts Echosonic amplifier he’d recently taken delivery of after hearing Chet Atkins play one. Featuring a built-in tape delay unit, Scotty figured the trio could now at least replicate some fragment of the Sun Studio sound onstage. Instead, Sam makes his beloved slapback sit this session out, as Scotty hogs all the echo, erupting in a pyrotechnic squall mid-song that sounds like a fusillade of notes with springs on their heels, bouncing all over your speakers. The entire band at this point is so tight after the endless one-nighters they’ve been playing all over the South, they sound like one big snare drum being struck on your forehead. Elvis alternates through a driving croon and “Baby Let’s Play House”’s hiccups, before a falsetto war whoop and a giggle cues the fade-out. Somehow, “Mystery Train” manages to sound eerie and celebratory all at once. It’s like everything great about America, rolled into a solitary 45 RPM A-side.
Months later, he’s off to RCA Victor, “Heartbreak Hotel” and his destiny. Music and culture worldwide would never be the same.
RCA took delivery of all of Sun’s Elvis tapes when it paid Sam Phillips $5000 for the lad’s contract towards the end of 1955. Some of the unreleased masters appeared on his 1956 debut LP, the same one which The Clash aped graphically for London Calling. Striking was the utterly funereal rendition of Rogers & Hart’s “Blue Moon,” which sounds as if it were recorded in a mausoleum. Scotty plucks pizzicato notes, Bill thumps along, and Elvis alternately moans and unleashes this unearthly falsetto wail inside a bottomless canyon of echo. Elsewhere on Elvis Presley is one of his 706 Union triumphs, “Trying To Get To You,” one of his greatest blues performances. Bernero hisses out a stripper beat, Scotty hotwires his guitar with barbed wire strings, and Elvis moans a tribute to carnal love and devotion that somehow manages to slip a sliver of gospel into the groove. The LP also included a swinging country trifle called “Just Because.” All three are paired with a fourth track unearthed many years later, “When It Rains, It Really Pours,” on Elvis Presley At 706 Union Ave’s bonus EP. The other burlesque blues from the Johnny Bernero era, how anyone involved felt “Rain” was substandard is unfathomable. It’s nowhere near as sublime as “Trying To Get To You,” but it holds its own against anything else on this set. All it needed was a little more upper midrange EQ sparkle and some slapback, and it would’ve been ready to go.
Elvis Presley At 706 Union Ave. really should be more widely available. An LP or CD does not do this music justice, forget any MP3 or WAV. Neither God, Sam Phillips, nor Elvis intended you to hear these sides as anything other than a 45 RPM seven-inch, absent any echo other than what Sam Phillips bestowed upon these original masters. And forget any “electronically reprocessed stereo” booshwah. Mono is Jah’s own audio reproduction system. No, this will be hard for the average consumer to locate, seeing as it’s only available to Third Man Vault subscribers. But Jack White’s earned himself a medal, a Grammy or maybe the Nobel Peace Prize for restoring Elvis’ Sun sessions to their original glory, and then some. If he can see his way to at least make these singles generally available, it would be a real public service. The entire world deserves to hear these records. Maybe war would stop, we’d find a cure for COVID and the common cold, and Donald Trump would be thrown into the world’s most dank gulag if we could all just hear “Baby Let’s Play House” like this.
Rockabilly Week Subscription Special continues – 19.55% Off!
That’s right, cats and kittens! In honor of all this pelvic thrust and slapback, all new subscribers can take 19.55% off (Get it?! Get it?! Huh?! Huh?!) from now until the end of April! And that will be your subscription rate for life, whether you choose a monthly sub (normally $5) or an annual one (normally $50). Just don’t ask me to do the math and tell you what your savings are – math ain’t my strong suit! So whaddaya waitin’ for? Hop on this special now, daddy-os and dolls! Let’s rock!
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