Memphis music studio ‘creates a new sound’ in 1954

Memphis, Tenn., record producer Sam Phillips was disappointed with the first studio session in June 1954 that brought together a pair of “Tennessee born and bred” musicians – guitarist Scotty Moore and bass player Bill Black – to play for the raw vocal talent of a teenager named Elvis Presley, a native of Tupelo, Miss.

 

Elvis Presley, Bill Black, Scotty Moore and Sam Philipps

The trio had spent several hours fiddling with different songs but had produced nothing that Phillips considered usable.

Scotty Moore said: “All of us knew we needed something...and things seemed hopeless. We were about to give up and go home when Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup’s ‘That’s All Right.’”

“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 I started playing with them,” Moore said.

Phillips, who was in the control booth, stuck his head out and asked, “What are you doing?” “And we said, ‘We don’t know.’”

“Well, back up,” he said. “Try to find a place to start and do it again.”

Moore said: “Phillips quickly began taping, as this was the sound that he said he had been looking for.”

Arthur William “Big Boy” Crudup was born in 1905 in Forest, Miss., about midway between Jackson and Meridian. He was a talented African-American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. 

Most white people had not grown up listening to Crudup’s kind of music, but Elvis had.

The search for another song to release along with “That’s All Right” at Sun Records fell to Bill Black, according to Scotty Moore.

“Bill came up with ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky.’ We’re taking a little break, and he starts beating on the bass and singing ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky,’ mocking Bill Monroe, singing in a high falsetto voice. Elvis joins in, starts playing and singing along with him.”

 

The threesome transformed Monroe’s slow waltz, written in 1945 and first performed by Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys, into an upbeat, blues-flavored tune. 

Sun Records’ Sam Phillips exclaimed: “BOY, that’s fine, that’s fine. That’s a POP song now!” Others saw it as “a barn-burning, bluegrass classic.”

During the next few days, the trio recorded “Blue Moon of Kentucky” in a distinctive style, employing an echo effect that Sam Phillips called “slapback.” A single was pressed on the Sun label with “That’s All Right” on the A-side and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” as the B-side.

 

The first radio deejay to “take a risk” and play the new Elvis record on the air was “Daddy-O” Dewey Phillips (no relation to Sam Phillips) at WHBQ (560 AM) in Memphis. 

He played “That’s All Right” for the very first time just after 9:30 p.m. on July 10, 1954.

The response from listeners was immediate, with phone lines lighting up asking for the song to be played again and again…as a diversion to the easy-listening pop of Teresa Brewer, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and other popular vocalists from this musical era.

In October 1954, Elvis, Scotty and Bill became Elvis Presley and the Blue Moon Boys, one of the premier acts on “Louisiana Hayride,” a live, Saturday night, country music radio show originating in Shreveport, La., broadcast by KWKH Radio (1130 AM).

The show was the “Grand Ole Opry’s” chief competitor, carried by 190 stations in 13 states.

 

Early in 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana, a local Shreveport percussionist, joined the group to complete the lineup of Presley’s classic quartet.

 Rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay.

 

Scotty Moore commented that Elvis never understood why the girls screamed out of control when he sang. Moore who told him why: “It’s your leg, man. The way you shake your left leg.”