Sam Phillips drummed impatiently with his fingers on his console. It was the second night in a row, the aspiring music producer sacrificed for a completely unknown singer. For a 19-year-old boy with a black shirt and greasy Hair who could sing decently, but apparently not. Also included guitarist Scotty Moore and Bassist Bill Black sipped on this summer evening, annoyed at her Cola. Actually, they had searched for their Band, The Starlite Wranglers, a talented singer, your candidate had disappointed so far, but. So far.
The candidate does not let the collective frustration, blödelte rum and grabbed a standing around the guitar. “That’s All Right, Mama”, he sang and improvised the Song of the black Blues singer Arthur Crudup, “that’s all right for you…” Then Moore and Black taken their instruments, accompanied the singer to producer Phillips head out of the door of the control room, stretching: “Trying to find a beginning, and does it again!” They played, and Phillips signed it. On the evening of this 5. July 1954 was listening to the Song for the first time on the Radio: one Minute and 53 seconds with the vocals of a teenager, whose name was soon to know the whole world: Elvis Presley.
It is this scene, so well described by Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick, in “Last Train to Memphis”, from the pretty boy Presley, the Pop icon Elvis. Because of the rock star, the sink 23 years later, in decadence and glory, and much too early to die, was only by this Single at all possible. The unexpected product of that July Session in Memphis turns out to be the big Bang of rock music. And as the starting point of a century career.
Classmates cut the strings of his guitar
In this case, the life of the exceptional artist had started so tragic As Elvis Aaron Presley on 8. January 1935 arrived in the small town of Tupelo in Mississippi to the world, did not survive his twin brother Jesse’s birth. His life is said to have visited the Elvis the grave of his brother regularly – in the Belief that its power had passed to him. His musical talent, he had to thank for that but probably less Jesse as a coincidence.
Elvis was ten years old when he was held for the first Time a guitar in his hands. Because of a tornado: on his birthday in 1945, the little Elvis have a bike desired. His mother Gladys was plagued by a cyclone the day before the Celebration, however, is the concern that the Boy could be flown to his wheel – an alternative gift had to be so.
Two days later, Elvis was rolling with his new guitar in the breaks between Lessons in the basement of his school, strummed merrily and sang Songs from the Radio: Folk, Country, Blues – the basic ingredients of Rock’n’. However, instead of the ten-year cheer, cut him a classmate of the strings. They had left it, would you have known, whose career as endangered.
Elvis’ ascent to the music icon started a little later still, in 1948 the Presley’s moved into the only 60 miles away, and Memphis, and yet in another world. Her son touched now in his spare time, by Metropolitan area and streets full of Bars, he heard Italian, Russian, Yiddish and a lot of music. Not far from the apartment of his parents, the house where his life radically changed was in the Union Avenue 706.
A certain Samuel Cornelius Phillips had set up two years after the move, the Presley with his assistant Marion Keisker, a recording Studio. In the “Memphis Recording Service” took Phillips with the Stars of the young Rhythm-and-Blues scene records. The business, however, Sam Phillips had a Problem, he brought in perhaps the most controversial sentence in the history of Rock: “I Could White find, the has the Sound and Feel of a Black, then I could make a Million dollars.” But he found only Black. Up to June 1953.
3,98 dollars for the first record plus taxes
This summer, an 18-year-old single child, with dark blond hair and pickeligem face on Phillips’ new Label, Sun Records was the attention: On a Sunday evening, the truck driver Elvis Presley visited the Studio, and under his Arm he wore a cheap guitar. He wanted to record a couple of Songs, he said Keisker and was able to get started immediately: 3,98 dollars plus tax, you let him the perky pop-hit “My Happiness” and the tearjerker “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. Then, the young singer took the recordings home with them immediately. Although he could not play error-free guitar, to read music, but Keisker made a note: “Good ballad singer”.
In January 1954 Elvis was back in front of the microphone, this time the Studio boss Sam Phillips was sitting in person at the mixing console. The Session should, however, be so insignificant, that the recordings are still missing. Hobby musician Presley, wearing his characteristic sideburns, got yet another Chance: On 26. June Keisker called him and asked if he had time. Throughout the afternoon, tried to Elvis on the Song “Without You” – and failed again. Nevertheless, Phillips gave the phone number of Elvis guitarist Scotty Moore, was looking for a singer for his Band.
This was the big Chance.
On 4. and 5. July was rehearsing the group with Elvis, and again the shots were not great – to 19-Year-old on the second evening, guitar in Hand, took and spontaneously the way to the century-musicians paved. “As I listened to Elvis for the first Time, I knew that we could come up with the Talent in his voice very, very far,” Phillips said decades later in an Interview. And indeed, After Presley’s recording of “That’s forwarded All Right, Mama” to DJ Dewey Phillips had played the Song on his radio show “Red Hot and Blue”, flooded calls the transmitter: Countless Teenagers wanted to know who had sung the song.
A “sextraordinäre personality”
Elvis’ rise was not well to stop. Two years later, after Phillips had sold the contract with the young talent for 35,000 dollars to the record company, RCA, was to become the Rock’n’Roll the cult of youth, and millions of business – and Presley, at the latest, with “Heartbreak Hotel” to the Idol of a Generation. He was now the “King of Rock’n’Roll” – for the MIRROR, and even a “sextraordinäre personality”.
Probably Elvis was his breakthrough of a new technology: Phillips left the recording with a slight time delay by means of two tape recorders running, and generated a wabbeliges Echo, the so-called “slap back”: Elvis’ voice sound so downright, as she would almost vibrate with emotions. In the coming years, the singer should use this effect again and again, he chuckled about many of the syllables of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” as choppy, to sing instead of normal. Artists and producers copied this reverberation time and again, he has been the hallmark of the young Rock’n’Roll Genres.
Elvis’ career was not, however, the brakes, and took after his military service in the US Army in the sixties to once again travel. With the body performances in films and television shows, he was stressed to the Idol and led to a series of sales records. As the 42-Year-old many years later on 16. August 1977 in his bathroom collapsed, and after years of eating addiction, tablet addiction and depression and died, ended a unique music Era. How exactly this had started with a spontaneous Gimmick on a Monday night in Memphis, there was still not known: The “Complete Sun Sessions” with the first recordings of Elvis Presley appeared only after his death.
The inquest showed that the man they called Elvis, wore at the time of his death a mass of clay-like consistency
in the colon. Coroner suspected that the almost three and a half center heavy colossus of Memphis in the last hours of life was no longer possible to make. Probably Elvis’ve massaged the Abortion of his hard-bodied body and a Aorta disconnected, which led to circulatory collapse. 17. August 1977 Elvis Aaron Presley was found dead in a bathroom of his estate Graceland dead. One of the greatest singers the world has ever heard, had died at the age of forty-two years, apparently to a bowel obstruction. The circumstances of his death – seeking his Eating, his Tablets use, his depression – have long since found its way into the Canon of American Folklore. The dead Elvis is globalized; as a joke, as a keychain, as a plasti-defined tear-Jerker. The dead Elvis is better known as the living. The Finale of his story can be dated. But, where did the Elvis of becoming one? The winners are recognized at the Start, in Sergio Leone’s gangster epic “once upon a time in America”. This is a beautiful lie. The winner in this case, remember that he acts first, so insignificant, like a child from the cellophane and there is little evidence that could ever change that. A good Start was not given to Elvis Presley truly. As he on 8. January 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi comes into the world, he has to miss a part of his soul already. His first-born twin brother Jesse Garon did not survive the birth. Time of his life should feel Elvis is a longing for the lost brother. In his standard work on “Last Train To Memphis,” writes biographer Peter Guralnick, Elvis had already visited as a child and later as an adult, again and again, the tomb of the twin. He was satisfied of the Faith, the power of the dead brother to go over to him. Truth or legend? History without myth barren, so still.
The first guitar is to be given to him by his mother, Gladys, his eleventh birthday, it says so in the Lore. Actually, Elvis wanted a Bicycle, but a day before his birthday, a mean Tornado was disappointed by Tupelo Gera. Ten years earlier, the storm that Mary had tasted there, 201 life. The mother is worried about her son; a gust of wind could blow easily from the wheel. So she buys him a guitar. This guitar takes Elvis to school. During the breaks he sits in the basement and klampft. To do this, he what he hears on the Radio sings. Hillbilly, Race Music, Country, Blues. The essence of the Rock’n’Roll. But the ancestors of his classmates, the crouching in a circle around him, still. If one speaks of it, Elvis had absorbed in his Childhood, the various Sounds and spat out, then the funny sound as it was. Once older students have cut the strings. As a child of simple people, Elvis grows up in a world full of opposites. The poor and the rich. Sinful and pious. Who on a Saturday night, the dolls are dancing, sitting in the Sunday morning, well-behaved in the Church. The fundamental contrast of his young years, is so obvious as it gets: black and white. His family, the White Trash, we would say today, lives in a black neighborhood. She is looking for a home in the Stranger. In music, the Apartheid finds its immediate expression. Songs and Styles are used for delimitation. Where you don’t sing your songs, because you do not let better. “Music helped the community to hold together,” writes Greil Marcus in his Essay “Mystery Train”. Music carries on the traditions and common values. It gives pleasure, wisdom, and protection. No other city in the United States is in the middle of the last century, so rich in music, as Memphis on the banks of the muddy waters of the muddy Mississippi. There are hundreds of radio stations and thousands of clubs. Sweating, sacred sounds and profane copulate in rhythms. Gospel music combines with the Blues. Country is kissed by Boogie. And a white radio station that is playing during the day, light classical music, finished his program at Night with black fabric. Something unheard of on the horizon. The boundaries are blurred, but they do not disappear.As the Presley family in 1948, leaving their little promising hometown of Tupelo with the goal of Memphis, Elvis is thirteen years old, like a spoiled single child, dark blonde, lanky, with pickligem face, in every way usually. Memphis miles to the North sixty West of Tupelo, and in a different world. From the Lauderdale Courts, a social housing project where the Presleys up, strips Elvis in the surrounding parts of the city.
A few Blocks to the North is the immigrant quarter of a Pinch, here is the Young Italian, Russian, Yiddish sounds, in the Main Street, the white top makes layer of shops, and a few corners, on Beale Street, not just the night clubs of the city, there is also the clothing store Lansky Brothers, which offers wide-cut suits and colorful shirts. Elvis will occasionally come back to. At the beginning of 1950, a certain Samuel Cornelius Phillips creates together with his assistant Marion Keisker in the Union Avenue 706 a recording Studio. It operates under the name Memphis Recording Service and offers what it promises. We record anything, anywhere, anytime, is the business idea. In short, we do everything. Sam Phillips, just twenty-seven years old, was born in Florence, Alabama. Actually, he wanted to be a lawyer, but as life goes, he deserved then at the Radio of his money. Prior to his career as a record producer, he worked as a DJ and talent scout. Of him the most famous and most controversial quote in the history of rock dates. “Could I have a White find that has the Sound and Feel of a Black, then I could make a Million dollars.” However, he is mainly Black. Sam Phillips is working with B. B. King, Rufus Thomas, Ike Turner, with all the local Stars of the young Rhythm & Blues-scene. His productions are feverish, wild, and arrogant. In the summer of 1953, Elvis Presley is an article in the local newspaper on this Phillips to the attention of the founded also his own record Label. It’s called Sun Records. On a Saturday, because Elvis is working on weekdays as a machinist, he enters for the first Time, the Sun Studio. Marion Keisker looked up from her typewriter and asks, Can I help you? Later, you will remember a shy boy who wants to record at his own expense a plate. It costs 3,98 dollars plus tax. Sam Phillips is not there. He sits in the Restaurant next door. Elvis will have to wait. He uses the opportunity. If you have need of at some point a singer…, he says to Mrs. Keisker, and she asks: What are you singing? I sing everything. And how they sound? I don’t sound like nobody.I sound like no one else. In the Studio, which is not much larger than a broom closet, singing Elvis in June of 1953 two Songs. “My Happiness”, a five-year-old perky pop-hit, and the tear-Jerker “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. Sam Phillips, he doesn’t get to this day, even to the face. The assistant operated the copy machine. Elvis can take his on acetate ready for recording. Mrs. Keisker is his phone number and makes a note for the file. “Good Ballad Singer”. Those private single, from the the legend claims that Elvis had sung on the birthday of his mother, only to appear again in 1988. The idea that she was thought of as a gift, is a romantic interpretation. The birthday of his mother back in June for two months. In January 1954, Elvis tried it again with Sun. Again for of 3.98 plus Tax. This time Sam Phillips sitting at the mixing console. He takes two Songs that come immediately back into oblivion. You are still missing today. The winners are recognized at the Start? Twice they have sent Elvis home. Don’t call us, we call you. But they do not report. The Only thing that stands Elvis from the crowd, are his sideburns. As he lets the hair grow, he flies off the Football Team. A success for someone who wants to be different. Three movies come to the cinemas: “from here to eternity”, “on The waterfront”, “East of Eden”. Your Stars hot Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, James Dean. To you it is not needed to make up the frustration, the Protest and the fear of their days and nights under the eyes. Elvis often goes to the cinema. 26. June, at twelve o’clock at noon, ringing in Presley the phone. Mrs. Keisker on the phone. If Elvis could come. Sam Phillips had brought the Demo of the song, he immediately wants to produce. His assistant remembered the boy with the sideburns. You work the whole afternoon to “Without You”, but the Boy grabs it. Sam Phillips gives his phone number to Scotty Moore, an ambitious guitarists looking for a singer for his Band. On 4. July, a Sunday, appears to be Elvis in Moore’s house. You samples all day. The spark is not jumping over, you want to try it the next day again in the Studio. On Monday evening they meet. You are only four. Bill Black, the Bassist; Scotty Moore, guitarist; Sam Phillips, the producer and the singer Elvis Presley. It is the 5. July 1954. The Session drags on and on. Phillips drums his fingers on the console. You decide to take a break. The musicians sipping on their Cola. Are you frustrated.