The Quintessential Elvis
“Who doesn’t need this in their record collection?” AM “Presley was one of the most naturally gifted performers his genre ever knew, and was the performer who truly brought the music to the people as no one had before or since.” AM “The Sun Sessions stands as the quintessential Elvis Presley album.” RV
“Elvis never made coherent albums, and any collection of his greatest hits dissolves into lovable fluff.” EW’93 However, this collection of the first songs he recorded is “another story – soaring, fresh, and, thanks to their drop-dead confidence, more staggering than any music he ever made later.” EW’93 This collection “captured a force of nature: untutored, unsophisticated, but somehow brilliant.” BL These songs are “full of raw vitality and youthful attitude” EW’12 and serve as “the birth certificate for rock’s once and future king.” RV This is “the most important collection of rock ‘n’ roll tracks ever recorded.” CC
Music That Changed the World
“There aren’t many rock albums that feature music one can honestly say changed the world as we know it, but that is, if anything, a modest appraisal of the contents of Elvis Presley’s The Sun Sessions.” AM “Elvis certainly didn’t invent rock & roll, and he wasn’t even the first white guy to play it,” AM but he “was (with little room for argument) the single most important artist in the history of rock & roll.” AM “Much as Louis Armstong did for jazz, Elvis created a distinctive new way to play the music that combined a number of influences,” AM including R&B, country, pop, blues, and gospel. He found “a common ground between them that was his and his alone.” AM That “hybrid has become a commonplace of American popular culture [such that] it is difficult to understand how alien his music was in 1954.” CE-59
Sun Records
In the summer of 1953, Elvis Presley entered what was then called Memphis Recording Service to record “My Happiness” as a gift for his mother. TM He also performed “That’s When Your Heartache Begins” “to his own simple guitar accompaniment.” CC He was back in January 1954 to record “Casual Love Affair” and “I’ll Never Stand in Your Way.” CC
The singer had an impact on Sam Phillips, the head of Sun Records, and brought him back again. While Presley didn’t do much with the song “Without You,” Phillips and guitarist Scotty Moore “heard something…and were intrigued enough to book another session.” TM
That date – July 5, 1954 – would become one of the most important in rock and roll history. That night, Elvis, Moore, and bassist Bill Black “worked through many of the tunes Presley knew, mostly middle-of-the-road pop like ‘Harbor Lights.’” TM The trio then started riffing on Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” while Phillips was away from the boards. When he returned, he asked them to do it again.
“After a handful of takes, Elvis Presley’s first single was on tape, and the world of popular music was changed forever.” CCElvis had “connected the rhythmic gait of rock and roll directly to that of jump blues and R&B, and made the result sound like the most natural thing in the world.” TM
Phillips “once boasted that if he could find a white singer that could sing, sound and feel ‘'like a negro’ that he’d make a million dollars.” AD Phillips had much to do with shaping Elvis’ early sound. Phillips produced five singles with Elvis that were released in 1954 and 1955. The impact of those singles wasn’t immediately felt, but once Elvis hit big, his work with Sun Records resurfaced, largely filling out Elvis’ early albums for RCA Records. As for that million dollars, Phillips fell short, making $35,000 when he sold Elvis’ contract to RCA. However, the value these songs had in shaping rock and roll is priceless.
The Songs
The Sun Sessions gathers his five singles from the Sun years and, adds various outtakes from the era, depending on the version of the collection. The resulting “album captures Elvis in his first flush of greatness,” AM collecting “his first, and arguably most important, recordings into one convenient package.” AM “One can hear the thrill of discovery and experimentation on every cut” AM as “Elvis [is] first learning to put his ideas together in the recording studio.” AM He “burst into these sessions, raring to go… his delivery is tense sounding, a result of nerves perhaps, but this tension is released into a collection of stunning vocal performances.” AD “If Elvis would sound stronger and more savvy with time, he never sounded freer or more excited with the possibilities of his own voice as he does on this material.” AM “The sheer enthusiasm Elvis brings to these Sun recordings is audible” AD as he is about to unleash rock and roll on the world.
Here are thoughts on the individual songs from the album.
“My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartache Begins”
It has been widely reported that Elvis’ first Sun session was in the summer of 1953 when he entered the studio to record this pair of songs for his mother’s birthday. Considering that her birthday was in the spring, it is more likely that he made the record for himself to hear how he sounded. CE-60
“Harbor Lights” “and “I Love You Because”
At the same session that produced “That’s All Right,” Elvis put these songs to tape. On “Harbor Lights,” Elvis was trying to croon but “could only manage an insecure whine…the immature sound of a voice that has yet to find itself.” CE-63 He also applied his attempted crooning to “I Love You Because.”
“That’s All Right”
After a break, Moore reported that “Elvis started singing a song, jumping around, acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass and started acting the fool too, and I started playing with ‘em. Sam…stuck his head out [from the control booth] and said, ‘What’re you doing?’ We said, ‘We don’t know.’ ‘Well back up,’ he said, ‘try to find a place to start and do it again.’” CE-63
The song was “That’s All Right,” an R&B tune recorded by Arthur Crudup in 1947. Elvis infused it with his country twang, marrying the country music of typically white performers with the R&B music of typically black performers. “It still sounds audacious, as if the players themselves can’t believe what they’re doing.” TL They “transformed the song from a laboured complaint into a celebratory jubilee.” CC “It came together so perfectly, so seemingly accidental…so pure in its essence.” PG-115
“Blue Moon of Kentucky”
It was Bill Black who suggested that for the B-side, they do “the same thing with a country number that they had done on the Arthur Crudup blues.” PG-115 Bill Monroe’s “stately bluegrass waltz ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’” CE-64 was transformed from its hillbilly roots into “hellfire rockabilly” TM when Elvis started playing it “like an uptempo blues tune.” CC It represented a performance that was “so loose and raw, so genuine in the emotion and excitement.” AD Phillips was “electrified by what he heard” CE-64 declaring, “Hell, that’s fine! That’s different! That’s a pop song now!” CE-64
“So taken was Bill Monroe by The King’s interpretation…Monroe re-recorded the track to make it sound like Presley.” RV On these and others, Elvis “forever burn[s] his imprint into classic spirituals and bluegrass favorites.” RV
“Good Rockin’ Tonight”
The A-side of Elvis’ second single was another slab of “very assured sounding and hugely enjoyable rock-n-roll” AD via “an R&B song heavy with sexual overtones.” CE-72 It is a cover of another oft-cited candidate as one of rock-n-roll’s first songs. The “uptown, citified blues” CC song “Good Rockin’ Tonight” was written and sung by Roy Brown in 1948. Singer Wynonie Harris had a #1 R&B hit with it that year.
“I Don’t Care if the Sun Don’t Shine”
“In a display of true musical eclecticism, Presley picked…a tune from Walt Disney’s 1949 animated film Cinderella” CE-72 for the B-side. It “sounded like another hillbilly song waiting for a fresh tank of gas.” CC “The strange dichotomy between the innocent and the profane that would exercise such a fascination over teenage girls two years later was played out in microcosm on Presley’s second single.” CE-72
This was “the first record to bear evidence of the Presley swagger. He is playful, obviously full of energy and enthusiasm.” CE-72 The song also features the first use of percussion on a Presley record – either bongos played by Phillips’ neighbor Buddy Cunningham or Presley thumping on the back of his guitar. CE-72
“You’re a Heartbreaker”
You’re a Heartbreaker, the A-side of Elvis’ third single, “boasts a great, assured Elvis vocal in contrast to other, more tense performances.” AD It was Elvis’ “most sedate country performance to date.” CC
It was written by Jack Sallee, the manager of the Ruffin Theatre in Covington, Tennessee. He went to Sun to record some promos for a hillbilly jamboree he hosted on Friday nights. Phillips lamented to him that he needed some original material for Elvis and Sallee made a demo of “You’re a Heartbreaker.” It was his first and last published composition. CE-72
“Milk Cow Blues Boogie”
“This is a wonderful example of Elvis’ unfettered exuberance on the one hand, and of his calculated craft.” PG-121 Moore and Black are “struggling to keep pace as Elvis drives them forward with a vocal that hiccups and swoons up and down the octaves with barely contained delirium at its heart.” CC
This was originally the 1930s’ blues song “Milk Cow Blues” by Kokomo Arnold. It had been covered many times, “most notably in western swing versions by Bob Wills and his brother Johnnie Lee. Here Elvis makes it his own, with a beautiful slow beginning that should prove once and for all what a great blues singer he could be.” PG-121
“I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone”
This song, which borrows the melody from a Campbell’s Soup ad, was written by trumpeter Bill Taylor and steel guitarist Stan Kesler from the Snearly Ranch Boys in West Memphis. CE-73 It was “conceived as a slow blues” CE-73 but reworked into “a medium-tempo hillbilly shuffle.” CE-73 Elvis recorded the song at the same session as “You’re a Heartbreaker.”
“Baby Let’s Play House”
The original was released in 1954 by Nashville’s Arthur Gunter and hit #12 on the R&B charts. It sported a “countrified charm, enhanced by Gunter’s mellow delivery.” CE-75 It was based on a country hit by Eddy Arnold. CC
Elvis’ version was “marketed as a country record, though it fit few definitions of country music.” CD-75 It was his “most aggressive performance on disc to that point.” CE-75It “introduces a note of pure play” PG-125 with “its utterly uninhibited, unpredictable, insensate declaration of joy.” PG-125 Scotty Moore enhanced it “with two bristling solos that were light-years from his fingerpicking roots. The car radio had obviously been tuned to R&B stations along the road.” CE-75
“I Forgot to Remember to Forget”
For Elvis’ fifth single, Phillips would draw again from his own roster of artists. In this case, he tapped “I Forgot to Remember to Forget,” a country song composed by Stan Kesler, who’d co-written “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone.” The song “strikes a cheerful pop tone in the face of heartbreak.” PG-125 “Elvis sang with the flair of a Lefty Frizzell or a George Jones.” CC It became Elvis’ first #1 country hit.
“Mystery Train”
This was a song Junior Parker recorded for Sun two years earlier. It was actually another Junior Parker song, “Love My Baby,” which Phillips originally presented to Elvis. The King’s take on “Mystery Train” and “That’s All Right” are both arguably the apogee of Elvis’ Sun years – each “came together, so perfect in its imperfection.” PG-132 Both are “totally together, tight performances and the voice of Elvis is very rich and the musical backings creating much excitement.” AD In general, it’s on the faster cuts “where Elvis really is himself, really pours his voice out.” AD
“Mystery Train” “overflows with such spontaneity and excitement, it feels like it must have been done in one take. The song rocks and rolls with such rollicking grittiness.” RV It is “as pure, full, and perfect as any record that had ever topped the charts.” CE-78
Notes:
Regarding the multiple variations of the Sun recordings: they started with The Sun Collection in 1976. This collection included alternate versions of “That’s All Right” and “Milk Cow Blues.”
Then came The Sun Sessions, which bumped those two extra versions in favor of alternates of “I Love You Because”, “I’m Left, You’re Right, I’m Gone,” and “When It Rains, It Really Pours.”
In 1987, The Complete Sun Sessions was released, adding “Tomorrow Night,” “Harbor Lights,” and “When It Rains, It Really Pours” to the original collection as well as alternate takes, bringing the total song count to 28.
In 1999, a 38-song, double-disc collection called Sunrise included all of Elvis’ recordings at Sun. The first disc is devoted to the original takes while the second is focused on alternate takes, including live cuts from 1955 and private demos from ’53 and ’54.
Songs that had not appeared on The Complete Sun Sessions included “My Happiness,” “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,” “I’ll Never Stand in Your Way,” “It Wouldn’t Be the Same without You,” “Fool, Fool, Fool,” “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” “Money Honey,” “Tweedle Dee,” and “Hearts of Stone.”
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