Introduction

Before Elvis, there was nothing.

John Lennon
There is no one in the history of popular music and few in all of American myth or
reality whose presence is so absolute, monumental, and overwhelming as that of
Elvis Presley. In the 1950s, he loomed over popular music like a colossus, a figure of
such size and authority that he made those around him appear insignificant by the
sheer magnitude of his success and celebrity. He made history, changed history, and, in
the process, became a part of history. He was a legend in his own lifetime and grew
famous beyond the experience of any performer who came before him. Before the 1950s
ended, he had changed the direction of popular music forever and made rock and roll
the dominant form of musical expression in America. He became the Once and Future
King of Rock and Roll and his claim to that throne, though challenged, has never been
repudiated.
Attempting to understand Elvis Presley, his music, or the enormity of his stardom is a
daunting task, far more difficult and troublesome than with any other performer of the
past or present. His career spanned over twenty years and produced more important
landmarks and turning points in rock and roll history than anyone else. To complicate
matters even further, he continues to be popular and live on despite or perhaps in
denial of the fact that he died in 1977. His records continue to sell, his movies are
still watched, and his image continues to peer out at us from the covers of super-market
tabloids, book jackets, and our television screens as though he were a living and
breathing presence in our time rather than a figure from the past. It is as though death
was merely another event in the ongoing progress of his fame and one of no greater or
lesser importance than any other. Of course, this robs us of the ability to gain much
objective distance or detachment to understand or even grasp the substance of the
man and his accomplishments.

For the most part, the reasons for his success, his unparalleled fame, and the enormity
of his impact on our culture remain hidden and unrevealed. As to the man himself, he
was and is, ultimately, a mystery. Someplace behind the myth and the legend there is
probably a truth, but it is unlikely that it will ever be revealed to usor understood if it
were. As Nick Tosches noted in Country (1977):
In an age bereft of magic, Elvis was one of the last great mysteries, the secret of which
lay unrevealed even to himself. That he failed, fatally, to understand that mystery gives
anyone else little hope of doing so. After all, the truest mysteries are those without
explanations.
About all that can be said of Elvis Presley with complete certainty is that he was not like
anyone else and that no American life had ever been quite like his.
His legacy, of course, is his music and, in times to come, it is the music that will
continue to matter. Long after the memory of his fame, celebrity, and stardom finally
vanishes, the songs will remain. But in the 1950s, Elvis was the principal symbol of
change in a time when change was all-important. He was the first of the great rock and
roll superstars, a herald of things to come, and the central figure in the musical
revolution that brought rock and roll into the popular mainstream. He was and is
the King of Rock and Roll and his place and importance in the cultural history of the
twentieth century can never be overstated or exaggerated.

Tupelo, Mississippi

Gladys, Elvis, and Vernon Presley

Michael Ochs Archives/
Getty Images

Elvis Aaron Presley was born in East Tupelo, Mississippi on January 8, 1935. He came
into the world poor and cut-off from most of the benefits of life in America but not from
the hopes and dreams that shape the American consciousness. Gladys Love Presley, his
mother, was one of eight children born to a poor Mississippi sharecropper and his
invalid wife. Vernon Presley, his father, came from a similar background and is usually
described as a failed Mississippi sharecropper. In the social and economic hierarchy
of the South, this meant that the Presley family lived in near-equal status to that of the
Pennimans of Macon, Georgia, who gave the world Little Richard, and the Turners of
Clarksdale, Mississippi, whose son, Ike, made what many believe was the first rock and
roll record in 1951.
The Presleys, of course, were different from the Pennimans and the Turners in that they
were white and the Pennimans and Turners were black. But, despite the perceived
advantage that this distinction in color would seem to have provided the Presleys, in
matters of day-to-day living, there was very little that separated these families from one
another. They all worked hard, persevered in the face of constant misfortune, found
strength in god and the church, and never surrendered their hopes to despair. But, for
all of them, poverty was the central reality of their lives and they just couldnt seem to
escape from its grasp.
In certain ways, white poverty like the Presleys was more difficult and debilitating than
black poverty. For one thing, poverty in the African American community was a fact of
life, something common to all black Southerners and not a reflection of ones personal
worth or merit. To be black in the South meant being poor and deprived of any
opportunity to alter or improve ones condition; it came as an expectation and an
inescapable reality of Southern life. But white poverty was different. It was viewed as a
mark of personal failure or fault, as if poverty could only be arrived at by a lack of
ambition or a conscious decision to embrace it. For the Presleys, poverty was something
that could never be understood or accepted as a simple fact of life. It was always a
hardship endured with the added burdens of guilt, doubt, and self-reproach.
The Presleys were religious people and it was the church that provided them with their
greatest measure of strength and hope. They were members of the First Assembly of
God, a Pentecostal Church. Colloquially, Pentecostals were known as Holy Rollers

because their services were frequently characterized by spontaneous displays of

physical expression including jumping up-and-down, writhing on the floor, shaking
side-to-side, and other manifestations of ecstatic possession. Their services were also
rooted in song and the church brought music into the life of the Presley family. It was
the church that introduced Elvis to music and gospel would be the music that he loved
most throughout his life. When I was four or five, Elvis remembered, all I looked
forward to was Sundays, when we all could go to church. This was all the singing
training that I ever had.
In 1946, Elvis mother bought the boy a cheap guitar for his eleventh birthday at the
Tupelo Hardware Store. Elvis wanted a bicycle but they couldnt afford it. A year
before, he had won fifth place in a song contest at the Mississippi/Alabama State Fair
singing Old Shep and his mother thought music might be something to keep the boy
occupied and out of trouble until better times finally came.
Of course, there was no rock and roll when Gladys Presley bought Elvis that guitar and
as expansive as her dreams for her son may have been, it is doubtful that she foresaw
music as a career for the boy, let alone something that would bring him wealth and
fame. One day he would change the course of popular music in America because his
mother bought him that guitar, but when he was eleven, it was just a gift for a poor boy
whose family couldnt afford a bicycle.

Memphis, Tennessee

Vernon, Elvis, and Gladys Presley

Getty Images

We were broke, man, broke, and we left Tupelo overnightwe just

headed for Memphis. Things had to be better.
Elvis Presley on his familys move from Tupelo to Memphis

In 1948, when Elvis was thirteen, the Presley family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
Although Memphis was only seventy miles north of Tupelo, it was an utterly new and
different world from the one that Elvis had come from. Tupelo was a small rural
farming community with a population of barely 8,000, while Memphis was a major
Southern city with over a quarter of a million residents. There was work and
opportunity in post-war Memphis and the move was made in hopes of improving the
familys economic situation.
However, things didnt get much better for the Presleys in Memphis. Vernon found only
marginal jobs and the family moved into public housing the projects provided
by the Memphis Housing Authority. They became country people in the city, strangers

in an unfamiliar world that was not their own, and continued to live in want and
dependence.
In Memphis, most of Elvis schoolmates remember him as being shy, distant, and
something of a loner. He was poorer than most and held a lot of odd jobs to help with
the familys finances, which gave him less of a social life than most of his peers. He was
not popular, had few friends, and, frequently, was teased and made the butt of jokes.
But he was not without his dreams and in Memphis they were given a material shape,
something that could be seen and experiencedalthough indirectly, at a distance, and
still as an outsider.
By the time he entered his junior year at Humes High School, Elvis had begun to affect a
style that set him further apart from his classmates, yet brought him attention and
notice for the first time. He wore loud flashy clothes that he bought at Lansky Brothers,
a store on Beale Street, whose patrons were mostly black. His hair was long, slicked
back, and he began to grow sideburns in emulation of his teenage heroes James Dean
and Marlon Brando. He was what was then called a hillbilly cat, a Southern
pejorative describing a kind of red-necked hipster or, more disparagingly, a white boy
who flirted with stepping over the line that separated black from white.
But what made him most different was his love for musicand the kind of music that
he loved. He listened to white gospel groups like The Statesmen and The Blackwood
Brothers Quartet, country artists like Hank Snow and Eddie Arnold, pop singers like
Teresa Brewer and Perry Como, and, of course, black blues and gospel singers. He sang
in church and even managed to gain some level of popularity after singing in the annual
high school talent show during his senior year. I wasnt popular in school. I wasnt
dating anybodyAnd then they entered me in this talent show, and I came out and did
my [first number], Till I Waltz Again With You, by Teresa BrewerIt was amazing how
popular I became after that. Unfortunately, Elvis would graduate from high school less
than two months after that performance.

The First Recordings

Sunrise
Courtesy of
Sony Music Entertainment

What kind of singer are you?

I sing all kinds.
Well, who do you sound like?
I dont sound like nobody
Marion Keiskers questions and Elvis Presleys answers
at his first visit to The Memphis Recording Service in 1953

In the summer of 1953, when he was eighteen, Elvis walked into the studios of The
Memphis Recording Service, a subsidiary of Sam Phillips Sun Records, to make his first
recording. In addition to making professional recordings on the Sun label, Phillips
made cheap acetates as a means of bringing in a little extra revenue. For anyone who
would pay $3 for one side or $4 for two, The Memphis Recording Service would provide
a studio and cut a record. Elvis told Marion Keisker, Phillips associate, that he wanted
to make a record for his mothers birthday. However, Gladys Presleys birthday was
actually in April, so this was probably a pretext to mask his shyness in desiring to do
something so self-conscious as to make a recording of his own voice. She asked him,
What kind of singer are you? I sing all kinds, was his reply. Well, who do you
sound like? she asked. I dont sound like nobody.

And he didnt sound like nobody. Even on those first two sides,My
Happiness and Thats Where Your Heartaches Begin, there was something unique and
special in the quality of his voice. It was a pleasant voice with the expected sound of the
country and gospel roots that Elvis had come from but there was something else there,
a plaintive indefinable quality that you could hear in the blues but seldom encountered
in any white singer of his time. She wrote Good ballad singer. Hold next to his
misspelled name on the office copy of the record.
My Happiness (1953)Elvis Presley
Thats When Your Heartaches Begin (1953)Elvis Presley

Thats All Right

The King of Rock and Roll:

The Complete 50s Masters
Elvis Presley
Courtesy of
Sony Music Entertainment

Ten months after Elvis first came to the Memphis Recording Service, Marion Keisker
remembered the shy uncomfortable boy who didnt sound like nobody and suggested
that Phillips audition him to make a demo recording of a song called Without You
that Sun had recently acquired. Elvis had returned to the Memphis Recording Service
on January 4, 1954 and cut two additional sides, Ill Never Stand In Your Way and It

Wouldnt Be The Same Without You, but neither managed to show much improvement
over the two songs recorded during the previous summer. Still, Marion Keisker thought
that there was something worth pursuing and she convinced Sam Phillips to give Elvis
an audition. She called on June 26th and asked if Elvis could be there by three. Elvis
would later joke, I was there by the time she hung up.
The audition failed but Phillips, who had recorded such blues legends as Howlin Wolf
and Little Junior Parker, liked the boy and also heard something in his voice that was
special and worth pursuing. Phillips later said, I have one real gift and that gift is to
look another person in the eye and be able to tell if he has anything to contribute, and if
he does, I have the additional gift of being able to free him from whatever is restraining
him. At the audition for Without You, Sam Phillips spent time talking to the boy and
asked him to try other songs in hopes that he could free him and open him up to the
potential was little more than a suspicion on Phillips part.
Years later, Marion Keisker would only remember how shy and awkward Elvis was at
the audition. Phillips remembered Elvis as far more than shy or simply uncomfortable
at their first meeting. He tried not to show it but he felt so inferior. He reminded me of
a black man in that way. His insecurity was so markedly like that of a black person.
Elvis was probably, innately, the most introverted person that ever came into that
studio.
Phillips was now taken with the idea of trying to find whatever it was that he suspected
Elvis had bottled up inside of him. He teamed Elvis with Scotty Moore, a twenty-one
year old guitar player who, like Elvis, had listened to everything from country to blues,
and Bill Black, an upright bass player who had played with Moore in clubs. The three of
them met on Saturday July 4, 1954 at Scotty Moores house and worked through a wide
variety of material Marty Robbins, Billy Eckstine, Hank Snow, and anything and
everything else they could think of trying to find a groove and tap into something
that would be worth recording. They didnt know it at the time but they were searching
for something that had never been heard before something far more than different
and something that would change the very nature of popular music in America.

The next evening, July 5, 1954, they went to the studio at Sun Records and worked at
actually trying to record with Sam Phillips acting as producer and engineer. Again,
they had very little luck and were becoming increasingly frustrated. Between takes,
Elvis began to sing Thats All Right, an Arthur Big Boy Crudup blues song, and
Moore and Black joined in. They were just fooling around and had no idea that they
had just taken the first step towards a musical revolution. What are you doing? asked
Phillips from the control room. Scotty Moore replied, We dont know. In what may
have been the most important decision ever made in popular music, Phillips said, Well,
back up, try to find a place to start, and do it again.
Two hours later, the first Elvis Presley recording for Sun Records, Thats All Right, was
finished and on Thursday evening Dewey Phillips of WHBQ played it on his radio
show. The phones started ringing almost immediately.
Thats All Right (1954)Elvis Presley
The men who made Thats All Right, in the summer of 1954 must have had some sense
that their recording was different and unconventional, but there is no evidence that they
thought it special or important beyond whatever personal significance it may have
carried for each of them. But it was special and, in time, people would see it as one of
the most important events in the history of popular music. As Dave Marsh observed
in Elvis (1982):
Every rock writer returns to Thats All Right, as though to the Rosetta Stone. It is not
the greatest record Presley ever made, and it certainly is not the bluesiest. But it has
something else: a beautiful, flowing sense of freedom and release, Elvis keening voice
playing off the guitars, Scottys hungry guitar choogling along neatly until it comes to
the break, where it simply struts, definitive, mathematical, a precise statement of
everything these young men are all about. Is it art? Is it history? Is it revolution? No
one can know, not anymore, unless they were to hear it before theyd heard any other
music Elvis made or any of the rock n rollers who followed him. Is it magic, a
distillation of innocence or just maybe a miracle, a band of cracker boys entering a state
of cosmic grace?

It was, of course, art, history, and revolution all rolled into one. It was an
unselfconscious attempt on the part of Elvis, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black to fuse all of
the music that they had ever heard into a new style that would fit not only Elvis talents
but their own tastes, interests, sensibilities, and feelings. They clearly saw and heard
things differently than their parents, but, before Thats All Right, there was no single
expression that gave voice to the whole range of experience and feeling that they carried
with them. For them, it was like opening a door and entering a room filled with pieces
of the past re-arranged in such a way that it seemed wholly new and fresh but still
familiar and knownas though upon entering they knew that they had been there
before. In a very short period of time, they would open that door to an entire generation
and in so doing would change the course of popular music in America.

The Early Sun Recordings

Elvis at Sun
Courtesy of
Sony Music Entertainment

Sam Phillips signed Elvis to a formal contract with Sun Records on July 26, 1954 and
focused all of his energies on making Elvis Presley recordings into hits. Although Elvis
would only be at Sun for sixteen months, Phillips would release five singles, record
thirteen additional sides that would be released later by RCA, and worked through

dozens of additional songs that may have been recorded but were lost in an inventory
clean out at RCA in 1959.
The recording sessions at Sun were all similar to that first session that produced Thats
All Right. Elvis, Bill, and Scotty would work through a number of different songs in a
very loose and unstructured way. Songs were rehearsed and explored during the
session rather than prepared in advance. As a result, many of the Sun sessions lasted
for hours and often went on until the early hours of the morning.
This was not the way most recordings were made in the 1950s. Studio time was costly
and most producers held artists to strict schedules and demanded that material be
rehearsed, set, and worked out before bringing it into the studio. But Phillips believed
that his job was to open up an area of freedom within the artist himself, to help him to
express what he believed his message to be. As a consequence, sessions at Sun
proceeded whenever, however, and in whatever manner best served the artist.
Phillips also believed that by allowing an artist to follow his creative instincts in the
studio, there was a feeling of excitement and energy that could be generated and
actually heard on the final recording. Phillips experience with blues artists had taught
him that the emotion and raw intensity that a singer could impart to a song was often
more important than a crisp, but studied, rendering brought out by too much rehearsal
and preparation. Elvis thrived under Phillips tutelage and, perhaps for the first time in
his life, had found a place where he belonged and felt really alive.
Despite the energy and excitement produced by Thats All Right, the known sides
produced during Elvis sixteen months at Sun did not focus solely on the country
infused blues that characterized that first groundbreaking recording. At the session that
produced Thats All Right, Elvis, Scotty, and Bill also cut Harbor Lights, a straight pop
tune; I Love You Because, a country ballad that had been a hit for Leon Payne in 1949
and again for Ernest Tubb in 1950; and Blue Moon of Kentucky, an up-tempo version of
Bill Monroes bluegrass classic. OnlyBlue Moon of Kentucky, would be released by Sun
as the country song that backed Thats All Right.
Blue Moon of Kentucky (1954)Elvis Presley

Phillips recording strategy was evident in all five of the Elvis Presley records released
by Sun: record an R&B song backed by a more mainstream recording that was at least
country in flavor. Four of those mainstream sides were pure country Blue Moon of
Kentucky, Youre A Heartbreaker, Im Left, Youre Right, Shes Gone, and I Forgot To
Remember To Forget. The fifth mainstream recording, I Dont Care If The Sun Dont
Shine, was actually written for the 1949 Disney version of Cinderella, but wasnt used in
the film. Although I Dont Care If The Sun Dont Shine was not a country song per se,
Elvis version adopted an approach that made it sound like a country song.
While the country sides were an obvious hedge against the more risky R&B recordings,
each had an element of innovation and approach that set them apart from other country
tunes of the time. Where the influence of country on the R&B recordings may have
been more obvious, there was an influence from rhythm and blues that found its way
into all of Elvis country recordings released by Sun. Tempos tended to be faster than on
most country records made in 1954 and 55 and there was an obvious emphasis placed
on rhythm in all of those recordings. Some of the innovations, like the change in Blue
Moon of Kentucky from 3/4 waltz time to 4/4 time, were striking and truly inventive.
Others were less conspicuous, but all of the Elvis Presley country sides released by Sun
bore the stamp of a new artist with new ideas about country music.
However, it was the R&B sides that Elvis made at Sun that broke new ground. Elvis
second R&B recording at Sun was a contemporary hit by Wynonie Harris of Roy
Browns Good Rockin Tonight, which was recorded in September 1954, followed
by Milkcow Blues Boogie in November or December, and Baby, Lets Play House in
February 1955.
Good Rockin Tonight (1954)Elvis Presley
Baby, Lets Play House (1954)Elvis Presley
If anything was apparent in the R&B recordings that Elvis made in his first seven
months at Sun, it was that he grew in both confidence and ability with each session.
Although Thats All Right may have been the breakthrough recording, by the time he
cut Baby, Lets Play House in February 1955 the ideas explored in the first record were
beginning to coalesce into a distinctive and assured new style. In Baby, Lets Play

House Elvis was able to deliver a line like Id rather see you dead, little girl, than to be
with another man with an authority that was only hinted at inThats All Right. Scotty
Moore and Bill Black had also become a solid backing unit and Moores solos had found
a drive and insistence that would become the model for most rock and roll guitarists in
the 1950s. And the balance and tension between the black and country elements
that Elvis, Scotty, and Bill were able to produce by early 1955 finally captured the sound
that Sam Phillips had long imagined would bring African American music into the
popular mainstream. However, the task of convincing the popular mainstream to accept
a white country band playing rhythm and blues would to prove to be a far more difficult
task than actually making the recordings.

The Marketing of Elvis

"The Elvis Presley Show"

Hatch Show Print
The Country Music Hall of Fame

Once Thats All Right went into release, Sam Phillips went about the business of
promoting his new artist to radio stations and distributors throughout the South.
However, Thats All Right, Good Rockin Tonight, Baby, Lets Play House, and other

early Sun recordings didnt catapult Elvis to immediate stardom. They got him some
notice and attention, especially around Memphis, but they didnt open-up America to
Elvis and the wave of change that was about to break upon the countrys consciousness.
For one thing, the songs were so different and new that distributors and radio stations
really didnt know what to do with them. Although most white radio stations in the
South were far more comfortable playing Elvis country sides than his rhythm and blues
songs, his country songs were still influenced by R&B and altogether different from the
recordings of Hank Snow and Eddy Arnold that set the standard for country music in
the mid-1950s. And although Elvis country recordings were different and interesting,
they werent going to start a musical revolutionor be anything more than a set of
respectable first recordings by a young and inexperienced artist.
The rhythm and blues songs were even more problematic. No matter how rockin or
bluesy the sound of Elvis, Scotty, and Bill may have been, they were still white country
boys and their instrumentation and style of playing was country and inconsistent
with the expectations of a black audience accustomed to the sound of Wynonie Harris
and Louis Jordan. Although the sound of country music would be an important
component in the development of rhythm and blues in the mid-1950s, it wouldnt find a
clear expression until Chuck Berry would exploit it in songs like Maybellene over a
year later. In 1954 and 1955, the radio stations and record stores that served the African
American audience were no more accepting of the idea of a white rhythm and blues
artist than their country counterparts would have been of a black country singer.

Elvis in Concert

Elvis Presley in Concert

Olympia Theater
Miami, Florida 1956
Charles Trainor/Time & Life Pictures
Getty Images

The modest sale of records and the routine accomplishments on radio were only a small
part of Elvis early professional career and not trustworthy indicators of what was
beginning to happen. In his concert appearances, he was experiencing and
encouraging responses in his audience that frequently rivaled and occasionally
overshadowed those of the artists who held top billing on the engagements that he
played. Carl Perkins, who would record Blue Suede Shoes at Sun in late 1955, saw Elvis
play a high school auditorium two months after Thats All Right was released and was
struck by his uniqueness, This boy had everything. He had the looks, the moves, the
manager, and the talent. And he didnt look like Mr. Ed like a lot of the rest of us did.
In the way he looked, way he talked, way he acted he really was different.
By early 1955, Elvis was already being mobbed by teenage girls. Their enthusiasm for
his overt sexuality and the forbidden music that he sang quickly escalated to near

hysteria and gave his concerts a draw and energy that belied the relatively insignificant
sale of his records. Teenaged audiences found him to be not only exciting but a means,
or perhaps an excuse, to release their own pent-up fantasies and desires into his music.
Girls fainted, screamed, tore at his clothes, and drove themselves into a state of frenzy
wherever he performed. He was, for them, an opportunity to break from the
conservative blandness of their parents music and indulge in the experience of music
that was more physical and exciting without taking that almost impossible step of
actually embracing black rhythm and blues. Without knowing it, these teenagers were
inexorably moving away from Tin Pan Alley and mainstream country towards Ruth
Brown and Big Joe Turnerbut ever so slowly and cautiously. Elvis made that
movement much easier because he was young, white, and had already taken that step.
And, of course, there was the way that he moved.
The idea of a man bumping and gyrating his hips when he sang was truly revolutionary
in 1956. Elvis always maintained that the way he moved was simply a natural and
uncontrollable consequence of the music that he sang. He told television interviewer
Hy Gardner, if you like it, and you feel it, you cant help but move to it. Thats what
happens to me. I have to move around. I cant stand still. Ive tried it, and I cant do it.
Of course, with Elvis, it went far beyond just being moved by the music. His moving
around was a calculated and self-conscious part of his stage persona. Even the most
naive and innocent viewer could see that he was well aware of what he was doing,
toying with sex and his audiences fantasies about both him and themselves like a cat
playing with a mouse. By the summer of 1955, the moves were planned,
choreographed, and executed with a kind of knowing grin that belied any sense of their
being merely spontaneous. Which is not to say that they werent natural. They were as
true to his being as the songs that he sang, but to believe that he moved that way by
accident rather than design was to miss the point.
During the first six months of 1955, Elvis, Scotty, and Bill toured constantly. They
traveled throughout the South and ventured as far north as Cleveland. They played six
and sometimes seven days a week. In show after show and town after town, the size of
their audiences kept getting larger and largerand most of that growth in audience was
made up of teenage girls. At a concert in May in Jacksonville, Florida, Elvis finished his

set with the casual remark, Girls, Ill see you all backstage and hundreds rushed the
stage. By the time Elvis had found shelter in the locker room of the Gator Bowl, his
clothes were in tatters and they had even taken his shoes.

Enter the Colonel

Col. Thomas A. Parker

Time Life Pictures/
Getty Images

None of Elvis appeal and potential was lost on Col. Thomas A. Parker who arranged
the bookings for Jamboree Attractions, the company that handled Elvis first major tour
in 1955. Parker was a Southern huckster who had been everything from a carnival
barker to the promoter/manager of such respected country stars as Eddy Arnold and
Hank Snow. The Colonel smelled success and profits when he first saw the effect that
Elvis had on an audience and quickly moved in to become the then twenty-year-old
singers personal manager. Sam Phillips, who held Elvis recording contract, saw his
discovery as a star at Sun but was struggling to promote Elvis beyond regional success.
The Colonel had a much broader view of his new clients commercial potential. Movies,
television, and a major recording contract were just the beginning of the plans that the
Colonel had in mind and, despite his cornball delivery and good ol boy style, he was
clever and shrewd enough to actually make it all happen. Parker told Harry Kalcheim

at the William Morris Agency that he believed Elvis could succeed on stage, screen, and
in recorded music if exploited properly.
Although Sam Phillips, the innovative record producer, may have wanted to keep Elvis
at Sun, Sam Phillips the businessman, understood that his tiny label had neither the
capital nor the promotional machinery to break his artist to a national audience. Finally,
after months of pressure from Parker, Phillips agreed to allow the Colonel to pursue the
sale of Elvis recording contract to a major label. Phillips set a figure of $20,000 as a
minimum for negotiations and Parker immediately set the wheels in motion to make
Elvis Presley a national star.
A story has circulated for decades that shortly before Elvis came to Sun, Sam Phillips
remarked to Marion Keisker, If I could find a white man with the Negro sound and
feel, I could make a million dollars. Whether the story is true or not and Phillips
always denied that he had made the comment Sam Phillips seems to have lacked the
gamblers instincts to promote Elvis exclusively as a white rhythm and blues singer and
risk everything on songs that had that Negro sound and feel. For every Good Rockin
Tonight and Baby, Lets Play House at Sun, there were those relatively safe country and
western sides like Blue Moon of Kentucky and I Dont Care If The Sun Dont
Shine recorded to pitch Elvis to the traditional mainstream country market.
Col. Parker was far more of a gambler than Sam Phillips. In later years, it was rumored
that the Colonel lost millions at the gaming tables in Las Vegas and that his business
decisions were often directed by his need to cover his debts to mobsters and the Mafia.
In the beginning of his relationship with Elvis, Parker was willing to take extraordinary
risks and bet everything on the possibility that his young client from Memphis might be
the golden opportunity of his career. Parker dropped all of his other clients and focused
all of his efforts to secure a contract for Elvis with a major label and promote him
through appearances on television and in motion pictures.
Although Sam Phillips may have been a true visionary who understood Elvis unique
talents and could bring them out in the studio, he was not mercenary or brazen enough
to exploit those talents narrowly and to their greatest advantage. Only Col. Parker had a
clear vision of just how big Elvis could be and what it would take to make that vision a

reality. To Parker, exploitation was the essence of promoting talent and he seemed to
understand from the beginning that the only thing wrong with Sam Phillips dream was
that the payoff could actually be bigger larger than a million dollars.

The Later Recordings at Sun

The Sun Sessions

Elvis Presley
Courtesy of
Sony Music Entertainment

After Baby, Lets Play House was recorded in February of 1955, Elvis would only return
to the Sun Studios three more times. In March, he cutIm Left, Youre Right, Shes
Gone and in July he recorded I Forgot To Remember To Forget, Mystery
Train, and Trying To Get To You. All were released as Sun singles except Trying To Get
To You, which would be later released by RCA on his first LP. In November, When It
Rains, It Really Pours was recorded as a possible B-side for Trying To Get To You but
negotiations for the sale of Elvis recording contract were already underway and the
planned sixth Sun single was never released. When It Rains, It Really Pours would not
be released until 1983, almost thirty years after it was recorded.
In all of the songs recorded in March, July, and November of 1955 at Sun, there is a
remarkable sense of control and polish in Phillips production and Elvis, Scotty, and
Bills performances were well in advance of their earlier efforts. Thats All Right, for all

of its virtues, was still a rough and obviously early attempt to fuse a variety of
influences into a new style, but songs like Mystery Train and the unreleased When It
Rains, It Really Pours were fully realized blends of blues and country into something
distinctive and new.
Mystery Train (1955)Elvis Presley
One of the myths of Elvis early recordings, not unlike the myth associated with his
movements as a performer, is that they were somehow spontaneous and produced
purely by instinct rather than conscious effort. That may have been true with Thats All
Right, but it was certainly not the case with his later Sun recordings. The songs were
developed over long sessions that left room for hours of experimentation and making
very deliberate choices as to how to best shape and focus a song. What is most
remarkable about the level of control and conscious direction that these songs were
taking is that there was no model for them to follow; this was something completely
new and they were creating it as they went along. In essence, Sam, Elvis, Scotty, and Bill
had now found their footing in this new music and not only knew what they were
doing, but how to do it.
Marion Keisker, who was not a producer or performer, may have understood things
with perhaps greater clarity than anyone else in those early days. About the new music
that was being created in the tiny Sun studio and the many influences that were playing
a part in the creation of that music she said, It was like a giant wedding ceremony,
where feuding clans had been brought together by marriage. By 1955, the marriage
was beginning to produce rather striking results.

The First RCA Recordings

Elvis Presley
Courtesy of
Sony Music Entertainment

During 1955, the Colonel began to lay the groundwork for the emergence of Elvis as a
national star. He shopped his client to the major New York labels and engineered a
bidding war between RCA, Columbia, and Atlantic for Elvis recording contract. In the
end, RCA won out and Elvis contract was sold by Sun for $35,000 with a $5000 royalty
paid to the singer. This was the largest sum ever paid for a relative unknown by a major
label and significantly more than had ever been paid for a country singer, even an
established star.
For Sam Phillips, the sale to RCA was a tremendous deal even though it appears to have
been one of the greatest blunders in music history in light of what happened. The sale
figure was significantly higher than the $20,000 minimum that Phillips had set as a
negotiating point and more than Sun, without any national distribution of its own,
could have ever gleaned by selling Elvis records through major distribution companies.
The sale brought Sun out of debt and Phillips invested a substantial portion of his
money in the new Holiday Inn motel corporation that was forming in Memphisand
probably made more from that investment than he would have ever realized from the
sale of Elvis Presley records on the Sun label. But whatever the wisdom of Phillips sale,
Col. Parker had completed the first step in the creation of what he was already calling
Americas newest musical sensation.

On November 22, 1955, RCA Victor signed Elvis Presley and within days began to
promote I Forgot To Remember To Forget/Mystery Train as the first release on the new
label. As part of the arrangement made with Sam Phillips, RCA had acquired all of the
recordings made at Sun and immediately began to re-release the five Sun singles on the
RCA label. All five Sun singles were re-released in December of 1955. By midDecember, the promotional power of RCA revived interest in the single and it began to
move up in the country charts. By February of 1956, I Forgot To Remember To Forget hit
number one on the Billboard Country Chart giving Elvis his first national Number One
record.
RCA had been represented in the negotiations for Elvis contract by Steve Sholes, the
Director for Artists and Repertoire of the labels Country Music Division. Initially,
Sholes had been drawn to Elvis because of his success, limited though it may have been,
in the country music market in the South. However, as Col. Parker plied his negotiating
skills, Sholes began to be intrigued by the potential for the young singer to move into
the pop charts with his rhythm & blues songs. In part, this accounted for RCAs
decision to sign a relative unknown for such a large sum of money. However, it also put
Sholes reputation and standing at the label on the line because if Elvis failed, it would
be a very costly mistake. As a consequence, Sholes personally took charge of the
production of Elvis early recordings for RCA with the help of Chet Atkins, the chief of
the labels Nashville recording operations. Rarely has a young artist with so little
experience been accorded the luxury of working with such an experienced and
accomplished production team as Elvis had from the beginning at RCA. And rarely has
a production team of such stature found itself in territory as unfamiliar and perplexing
as that encountered by Sholes and Atkins in those early Presley sessions.
Steve Sholes and Chet Atkins were seasoned veterans in Nashville, but their
background was in country music and neither had any experience with rhythm and
blues. Furthermore, the whole idea of rock and roll music was not only new and
unfamiliar to them, but also a bit disagreeable and at odds with their musical tastes.
Sholes and Atkins were not teenagers and, although they recognized Elvis talent, they
were at something of a loss when it came to understanding what it was that he did, why
teenagers seemed to like it, or how they might help him do it better. Sam Phillips, likely

because of his long experience in recording blues and R&B artists, was able to bring out
those qualities in Elvis that made his songs come alive in the studio, but the production
team at RCA simply had no idea how to realize the true potential of their newest
acquisition.
The result of all of this was that Elvis was allowed an unusual amount of freedom and
latitude in the studio for a young and inexperienced artist. Since he had a clearer sense
of what he was trying to accomplish than either Sholes or Atkins, they let him take the
lead and guide and shape his own recordings from the very beginning. Bones Howe,
who engineered most of the Presley sessions for RCA in the late 1960s and 70s, noted in
Jerry Hopkins Elvis: A Biography (1971):
Elvis produced his own records. He came to the session, picked the songs, and if
something in the arrangement was changed, he was the one to change it. Everything
was worked out spontaneously. Nothing was really rehearsed. Many of the important
decisions normally made previous to a recording session were made during the
session. What it was was a look into the future. Today everybody makes records this
way. Back then Elvis was the only one. He was the forerunner of everything thats
record production these days.
Elvis first recording session with RCA was held in Nashville on January 10th and 11th
of 1956. Steve Sholes supervised the session and Chet Atkins guided the recording
operation, but for all intents and purposes, Elvis served as his own producer. Drummer
D. J. Fontana joined Scotty Moore and Bill Black for the first time, forming the core of
the band that would back Elvis on all of his studio recordings for RCA in the 1950s. On
the first day, they recorded Mae Boren Axtons Heartbreak Hotel, Ray Charles rhythm
and blues classic I Got A Woman, and the Drifters Money Honey. These songs were
already a part of Elvis live act and he had a very clear idea of what he wanted to do
with them.
Heartbreak Hotel (1956)Elvis Presley
These sessions were long and driven by Elvis insistence to work and re-work each song
until he was pleased with it. It was a normal industry practice to record four songs,

enough for two singles, during a three-hour studio session. Elvis first session went nine
hours and produced only five songsand only one, Heartbreak Hotel had the potential
to be an A-side release. This would prove to be common practice at all subsequent Elvis
Presley recording sessions. Even with mediocre material, Elvis would pursue his sense
of a song until he captured it. He was a perfectionist in the studio and proved to be
more than capable of shaping his own material, even in his first session.
The perfectionist demands that Elvis placed on himself and the musicians and
vocalists who backed him continued through the recording sessions at RCA that
followed in 1956. In July, Elvis returned to New York to recordHound Dog, Dont Be
Cruel, and Any Way You Want Me (Thats How I Will Be). Hound Dog, which Elvis
had been performing on the road for months, took an unprecedented thirty-one
takes. Dont Be Cruel, a new song by Otis Blackwell that Steve Sholes brought to the
session, took more than twenty-four takes until Elvis was satisfied. In all, it took six
hours to record the three songs.
Dont Be Cruel (1956)Elvis Presley
Although the time and effort put into recording Elvis Presley songs was unusual and
expensive by industry standards in 1956, the results quickly proved to be worth the
investment. Heartbreak Hotel hit Number One on the 10th of March and held that
position for eight weeks. I Want You, I Need You, I Love You also hit Number One
andDont Be Cruel/Hound Dog, Elvis first double-sided rock and roll single, would
become the largest selling record of his career. It was a two-sided hit with both songs
listed as capturing the Number One position. Dont Be Cruel/Hound Dog held the
Number One position for eleven weeks until another Elvis Presley song, Love Me
Tender, finally pushed it out of the Number One slot. Eventually,Dont Be
Cruel/Hound Dog would sell over four million copies and be the only single released
before 1985s We Are The World to achieve quadruple-platinum status.
In 1956, Elvis placed eleven songs into the Top 40, four of which went to Number One.
He held the Number One position for twenty-five weeks and by the years end
accounted for almost two-thirds of RCAs total popular record sales. His first
album, Elvis Presley, was released in March, went to Number One, and became the first

long-playing record in history to sell over a million copies. His second album, Elvis,
released in October, also went to Number One and repeated the feat of selling more
than one million copies. Put simply, no artist in history had so dominated the popular
music charts as Elvis Presley did in 1956.

Television

Elvis on CBS
September 9, 1956
CBS Photo Archive/
Getty Images

At the same time that Elvis was getting started at RCA, Col. Parker began to plan for a
media blitz to coincide with the release of his first recordings on the new label. What
the Colonel understood was that Elvis was far more than just another singer of music
for teenagers and, more important, that he was a phenomenon of sight as much as
sound. Parker had carefully noted that his clients looks, defiant stance, and sexiness
had been crucial to his success with audiences and grasped that he had to be seen to be
believed.
In December of 1955, less than two weeks after Elvis joined RCA, Col. Parker signed a
contract for four appearances (with an option to add two more) onStage Show, a
Saturday night variety show hosted by the famous bandleaders, Tommy and Jimmy

Dorsey. Stage Show was produced by Jackie Gleason as a lead-in to his own show, The
Honeymooners. The Elvis Presley television appearances, slated to begin in late January
and run for the following four weeks, were viewed by the Colonel as an important part
of his strategy to introduce Elvis to the eyes and ears of America. However for Jackie
Gleason and the Stage Show staff, this was a routine booking of no greater or lesser
importance than any other. In December of 1955, Elvis was just another unknown new
artist who sought some exposure on television to get his career started and promote his
recordings.
However, after his first appearance, it would be clear that Elvis was not just another
unknown new artist and that his television appearances would be anything but
routine.

The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show

The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show

February 4, 1956
Michael Ochs Archives/
Getty Images

On January 28, 1956, Elvis Presley appeared on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show for the
first time. He was introduced by Cleveland disc jockey Bill Randall, who noted without
the slightest trace of conviction that this virtually unknown ex-truck driver from
Memphis, Tennessee was about to make television history. But thats precisely what
happened.
Although Elvis first television appearance was not seen by a particularly large audience
neither Elvis nor Stage Show had much of a following at that point it did start a
buzz in the press and the entertainment industry. Despite the fact that he was
obviously nervous and awkward in his first outing on national television, he struck a
nerve and elicited an immediate and favorable response from both the studio and
the viewing audiences. His choice of songs, Big Joe Turners Shake, Rattle And
Rollsegued into Turners Flip, Flop And Fly and Ray Charles I Got A Woman, was
unusual and even daring for television but, again, had registered positively. And, of
course, the way he sang and moved got people talking about the hillbilly
performer who sings like a Negro.
Shake, Rattle And Roll (1956)Elvis Presley
On his second Stage Show appearance, Elvis sang Little Richards Tutti Frutti and
Arthur Gunters Baby, Lets Play House, two songs that he had recorded at Sun in 1955.
Although Elvis first RCA recording, Heartbreak Hotel, had shipped two weeks earlier
on January 27, he had yet to sing it on television. It seems that there was reluctance on
the part of CBS to let Elvis sing Heartbreak Hotel because it was morbid and
depressing.
On his third Stage Show appearance, Elvis finally sang Heartbreak Hotel (along
with Blue Suede Shoes) and things began to change. Sales of the single improved and it
was decided to promote the record more aggressively on his remaining television
appearances. The following week, he sang the B-side, I Was The One, on Stage
Show and two weeks later Heartbreak Hotel/I Was The One entered the pop charts at
#68. On March 24, Elvis made his last appearance on Stage Show and again
sang Heartbreak Hotel. Two days later, the song broke into the Top Ten.

The following months confirmed to RCA and Col. Parker that television was a device of
extraordinary power for promoting and marketing Elvis Presley records. He had
sung Heartbreak Hotel on three of his six appearances on the Dorsey Brothers Stage
Show and again on his April 3 appearance on The Milton Berle Show. By mid-April it had
sold over one million copies, then on April 28 it hit Number One on the pop charts,
where it would remain for the next eight weeks. By the end of May, it would also top
the country and jukebox charts and hold the Number Five position on the R&B charts.
One week after Heartbreak Hotel went to Number One, his first album, Elvis Presley,
captured the Number One spot on the album charts. Elvis Presley would stay at Number
One for ten weeks and remain in the charts for an unprecedented forty-eight weeks.
Television, it seemed, was all that Col. Parker had hoped it would beand more.

The Gathering Storm

Rev. Robert Gray denoucing Elvis Presley

Jacksonville, Florida
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

While television was certainly the primary factor in advancing Elvis early career, it also
fed a growing sense of public uneasiness about the songs that he sang, the way that he
performed them, and the effect that rock and roll music was having on Americas
youth. Unlike the controversy that accompanied Bill Haleys(Were Gonna) Rock Around
The Clock the year before, the storm that was slowly gathering around Elvis went far
beyond questions of good taste and rock and rolls possible influence on juvenile
delinquency. Where Haley had presented a very white version of black rhythm and

blues, Elvis had managed to capture the essential style and substance of the blues
tradition in both his recordings and performances. Peter Guralnick, in his liner notes
for The Sun Sessions, noted that Elvis was always a naturally assimilative musician,
with an acute sense of style. The black rhythm-and-blues style, he has had in hand
and throat and body from the very first, along with the heavy breathing, urgent
exuberant vocalism and verbal articulation that goes along with it.
But the problem was not that Elvis could sing rhythm and blues better or more
authentically than other white singers, the problem was that he forcefully and
unapologetically brought this kind of music into millions of American households at a
time when racial separation was a central fact of life in America. In the process, he was
challenging some of the most entrenched and established conventions of American
society and many began to see him as more of a propagandist than an entertainer.
Although half of the songs that he had recorded were country tunes, all of the songs
performed on television were blues, rock and roll, or ballads done in a blues style. He
had taken songs by Joe Turner, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter and the
Drifters, and other black artists, performed them without concession or regret, and left
millions of teenagers begging for more. Initially, these songs that Elvis performed on
television may have seemed exotic and eccentric, but by April they had become
disquieting and even threatening. It was as if his insistence on performing rhythm and
blues songs were part of a conscious scheme to bring African American music into
mainstream white culturewhich, of course, is exactly what it was.
Questions began to be raised about the propriety of Elvis performances and the effect
that they were having on public morals. Criticism about his suggestive and
insinuating movements followed each and every performance. Parents groups began
to complain about the effect that he had on teenagers who went wild at his
performances and seemed to abandon any sense of moral restraint in their behavior.
His critics also began to express their concern about the broad social implications of a
performer who chose to cross so many lines racial, sexual, and moral and do so
with such willful disregard for their importance. After all, those lines maintained the
status quo and kept order in post-war America.

But the faint rumblings of discord that began after Elvis appearances on Stage
Show were just the beginning. Before the summer of 1956 had even arrived, Elvis would
find himself in the midst of a storm of outrage and protest unlike anything that he or
any other popular artist had ever encountered.

The Milton Berle Show

The Milton Berle Show

June 5, 1956
Bettman/Corbis

After the success of the six appearances on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, Col. Parker
signed Elvis for two engagements on The Milton Berle Show. Although Milton Berle,
Mr. Television, was not the star that he had been in the early 1950s, his show was still
popular and had a substantial viewing audience that was much larger than that of the
Dorsey Brothers. In his first appearance on The Milton Berle Show, Elvis sang Heartbreak
Hotel, andBlue Suede Shoes from the deck of the U.S.S Hancock in San Diego. As had
happened on Stage Show, the ratings went up, record sales soared, audiences were
thrilled, and critics continued to be baffled by his appeal and the speed at which his star
had risen.

On June 5, one month later, Elvis returned to The Milton Berle Show and sangHound
Dog for the first time on television. Hound Dog was to be his next single for RCA,
slated to be recorded and released in July. It was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike
Stoller and had been a rhythm and blues hit for Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton three
years earlier. Elvis had actually heard the song for the first time in Las Vegas where it
was performed as a novelty number by a lounge act, Freddie Bell and the Bellboys.
Hound Dog (1956)Elvis Presley
When Elvis performed Hound Dog on The Milton Berle Show on June 5, 1956, he
attacked it with his characteristic gyrations and flailing arms. But midway through the
performance, he slowed the tempo and executed a most deliberate bump and grind,
clearly mimicking a striptease dancer. To say that he drew attention to those
insinuating movements would be an extraordinary understatement. Although
intended as something closer to self-parody than an assault on the publics morals,
Elvis performance of Hound Dog would finally fan the smoldering flames of
controversy into a firestorm of protest.

The Storm Breaks

Screaming Fans Outside of an

Elvis Presley Concert in 1956
Charles Trainor/Time & Life Pictures
Getty Images

While the performance of Hound Dog on The Milton Berle Show had been clearly and
intentionally designed as a kind of joke built on the controversy that had arisen around
his performance style, the effect proved to be humorous only in part. The studio
audience was stunned but clearly thrilled by the audacity of the moment. Their
applause and excitement attested to the fact that they understood the innocence of the
joke but their nervous laughter also revealed a measure of shock and disbelief in their
endorsement. The response of the critics was another story.
Ben Gross in The New York Daily News reacted to the bump and groin antics of Elvis
Presley by noting that he (Elvis) gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar,
tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos.
Gross also found Elvis to be appalling musically and was amazed that Berle and
NBC-TV should have permitted this affront. Jack OBrien in The New York JournalAmerican found The sight of young (21) Mr. Presley caterwauling his unintelligible
lyrics in an inadequate voice, during a display of primitive physical movement difficult
to describe in terms suitable for a family newspaper to have caused the most heated
reaction since the stone-age days of TV. Jack Gould in The New York Times noted that
Elvis might possibly be classified as an entertainer. Or, perhaps quite as easily, as an
assignment for a sociologist. Hedda Hopper of the Hearst Syndicate simply found the
performance lewd and obscene.
The controversy rose to the level of a national debate within a matter of days.
Politicians, religious leaders, parents groups, television and radio personalities,
educators, editorial writers, and just about every other social commentator in America
entered the fray to decry the evil of rock and roll music and condemn its most public
practitioner. Elvis was now a corrupter of youth, a destroyer of moral values, and the
reigning symbol of all that was wrong in American society.
However, as public outrage mounted, record sales skyrocketed. Col. Parker was now
faced with the dilemma of trying to balance the negative public reaction to Elvis
performance of Hound Dog against the publicity value of a national controversy that
was actually boosting record sales. In many ways, the balancing act that would
proceed for the next few weeks would be a crucial determiner of Elvis future and the
future of rock and roll in the cultural mainstream. To have outrage overcome or

overshadow Elvis astounding success on television, radio, and in record stores would
have slowed the momentum that Col. Parker believed was now essential to taking his
client to the very top of the entertainment business. But to tamper with those qualities
that had propelled Elvis to such early success was to risk robbing him of his power and
appeal as a performer. RCA informed Col. Parker that the negative press Elvis had
received was of little consequence because of his great talent and the Colonels keen
business sense but for the first time things were not proceeding according to plan.
Elvis career and the future of rock and roll were being decided by events over which
neither the Colonel nor his client had any real control.
Personally, Elvis was deeply hurt by the attacks because he felt that he had done
nothing wrong. As he noted in an interview two weeks after the appearance on The
Milton Berle Show, colored folks been singing it and playing it just like Im doin now,
man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in the shanties and their juke
joints, and nobody paid it no mind til I goosed it up. I got it from them. Down in
Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now,
and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, Id be a music
man like nobody ever saw. One thing was sure: Elvis was indeed a music man like
nobody ever saw. The question now was whether he could survive the controversy
and still remain true to himself and his music.
A booking had already been set for The Steve Allen Show in July and Allen publicly
announced, There has been a demand that I cancel him from our show. As of now he
is booked for July 1, but I have not come to a final decision on his appearance. If he does
appear, you can rest assured that I will not allow him to do anything that will offend
anyone. Col. Parker and Allen decided that Elvis should once again perform Hound
Dog but this time in a manner designed to quell public fears and reassure them that
Elvis was neither a threat nor a menace to public morals.

The Steve Allen Show

The Steve Allen Show

July 1, 1956
Getty Images

Elvis appeared on The Steve Allen Show dressed in white tie and tails. The idea was to
present him in a comedic contrast that played a low-culture entertainer off against highculture trappings. Obviously, the idea was also to humble Elvis before a national
audience. But Elvis, though embarrassed and nervous for the first time since his initial
appearance on national television, did as he was told and tried to make the best of an
uncomfortable situation. He opened with I Want You, I Need You, I Love You and
managed to actually invest the song with some feeling although it was impossible to
hide his obvious humiliation. As soon as the song was over, a basset hound was
wheeled onstage and Steve Allen announced that Elvis was now going to singHound
Dog.
When the song ended there was little response from the studio audience, at least in
comparison to what usually followed an Elvis Presley performance. It seemed as if
everyone shared in the singers embarrassment and took as little pleasure in the joke as
Elvis. But something had been accomplished by the ill-conceived idea of having Elvis
perform Hound Dog in tails to an actual hound.
Elvis, perhaps for the first time in all of his television appearances, seemed terribly
human and vulnerable instead of brash and rebellious. The fact that he handled the
situation so professionally and with such grace left an indelible impression on the
audience. Rather than a defiant and insolent miscreant, the audience caught a glimpse

of a shy, respectful, and humble young man who was willing to endure an entire
evening of public humiliation because that was what was asked of him. He had shown
respect, deference, and courtesy in a situation that would have pushed most people to
anger and exasperation. In contrast, Steve Allen appeared to be something of a bully
who had consciously and cruelly attempted to humiliate Elvis on national television.
Allen had promised at the beginning of the show that the audience was going to see a
different side of your (Elvis) personality tonight and they hadalthough not the side
that Allen had intended.
Elvis not only survived The Steve Allen Show, he came out of it stronger with his career
firmly back on track. The controversy that surrounded him did not go away; in fact, it
would last throughout his career and continue for many years after his death. But
after The Steve Allen Show, things were different. Many would find it increasingly
difficult to dislike Elvis as a person even though they continued to dislike his music and
the way that he performed it. Those who continued to rail against him now appeared to
be mean-spirited and intolerant in contrast to the young man who seemed so warm
and sincere on television. His charm and vulnerability brought him sympathy in the
face of the attacks directed at him and his fans rallied around him as though devotion to
Elvis and the defense of rock and roll were matters of extreme importance and
consequence.

The Ed Sullivan Show

Ed Sullivan
Photograph by
Maurice Carnes LaClaire
Courtesy of
The Library of Congress

Ed Sullivan took special note of what had happened on The Steve Allen Show. Sullivan
was one of the most powerful and influential figures in show business in 1956. He
hosted the most popular variety show on television and wrote the entertainment
column for The New York Daily News, the largest newspaper in the city. His opinion
carried substantial weight in the press and gaining a slot on his television show brought
performers before the largest audience in America. In short, Ed Sullivan was able to
make or break a performer and Presley had become of particular importance and
interest to him.
Sullivan was conservative, cautious, and scrupulous in his support or rejection of talent
for his show. He felt that he had a moral obligation to present performers who would
be both welcome and unthreatening to the millions of Americans that his show reached
every Sunday night. Consequently, after Elvis appearance on The Milton Berle Show, he
made it known that Elvis Presley would never appear on his show as a kind of promise
to his audience that he would not allow their sensibilities to be challenged or upset by a

young upstart with new and radical ideas. But what had happened on The Steve Allen
Show caused Sullivan to seriously rethink what he had said.
For one thing, although the controversy that surrounded Elvis continued, there was a
perceptible softening of public opinion towards the young man as an individual and
that needed to be taken into consideration. It was one thing to block an artist that was
universally disliked but quite another thing to prevent an artist from reaching an
audience that genuinely was interested in seeing him. But of far greater importance to
Sullivan was the fact that The Steve Allen Show aired opposite his show on Sunday nights
and for the first and only time, Allen had beaten Sullivan in the ratings on the
night of Elvis appearance. Not only had Allen bested Sullivan, he had done it by a near
two-to-one margin.
Two days after Elvis appearance on The Steve Allen Show, Sullivan would say that he still
had no interest in booking the singer but he was already in negotiations with Col.
Parker to do just the opposite. Eight days later, the deal was struck and Sullivan
announced that Elvis Presley would make three appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in
the fall and winter. Elvis was to be paid $50,000 for the three shows, compared to the
$1250 that he received for each Stage Show appearance just a few months earlier.
Further, it was agreed that Elvis would retain complete control over the choice of
material that he would sing and the musical production of his songs. In June, Ed
Sullivan had stood up to the rising tide of Elvis Presley and, one month later, was swept
away by the sheer force it.
While Ed Sullivans agreement to book Elvis Presley on his television show may appear
to be a matter of only minor importance, it was actually one of the major turning points
in Elvis career and, consequently, in the history of American popular music. To begin
with, it was less of an agreement than a complete surrender to Elvis, rock and roll, and
the change in American culture that now appeared to be unstoppable. Elvis would be
showcased on American televisions premier entertainment program not as a
curiosity, a novelty, or a passing fad but as an accepted and recognized star of the
first magnitude.

Like most major moments in popular musics history, the acceptance of Elvis Presley
into the fold of mainstream culture had little to do with art, artistry, or enlightenment
on anyones part. It was a business decision that was based almost exclusively on the
market. Elvis and rock and roll had become too big a force in the market to ignore or
resist, and as a result Ed Sullivan had capitulated to the realities of dollars and cents. It
was also a quintessentially American moment and one that had its mythic properties:
the poor country boy had triumphed over the rich city sophisticates, the carnival
huckster had outmaneuvered and outsmarted the supposedly clever industry, and the
money had fallen out on the side of the common folk. Battles about rock and roll music
would continue to be fought for many years but the war was effectively overand rock
and roll had won.

The First Appearance on The Ed Sullivan

Show
The winds of change had shifted and popular music was now set on a radically new and
different course. Rock and roll would, in the coming months, come to dominate
popular music and popular culture in a way that was unimaginable only a short
time earlier and Elvis Presley would be the agent of that change and the catalyst for
what would grow into a cultural revolution.

The Ed Sullivan Show

CBS Photo Archive/Hulton Archives
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Elvis made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday September 9, 1956.
Sullivan himself was absent due to a recent automobile accident and actor Charles
Laughton hosted the show. A remarkable 82.6 percent of the viewing audience tuned in
to The Ed Sullivan Show that evening an estimated 53 million people the largest
audience in television history up to that point.
In the eighteen months that followed his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Elvis
Presley came dominate American television, popular music, and motion pictures as no
artist in history had beforeor would again. Twelve of the single recordings released
during this period would sell over one million copies and five would reach Number
One on the pop charts. Each of his first four albums went to Number One on the album
charts and each sold well in excess of one million copies. At one point, five of the Top
Ten recordings in America were Elvis Presley records and he managed to capture the
Number One spot, simultaneously, on the country, pop, and R&B charts not once, but
three times in 1957. For all intents and purposes, Elvis Presley was popular music
between September of 1956 and March of 1958.
Although he would only make two more appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and on
television in the 1950s on October 28, 1956 and January 5, 1957 Elvis would, each
time, set new records for the size of the television audience. Remarkably, the record set
by his final appearance in January would stand until 1964, when the Beatles made their
first appearance on American television, again on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Although television, as Col. Parker had planned, would prove to be the most important
factor in making Elvis Presley the biggest star in American history, it was the motion
picture industry that held the greatest personal attraction for Elvis and would prove to
form the central aspect of the Colonels plans for Elvis future. Where television had
provided the springboard to launch Elvis career, the Colonel saw Hollywood as the
means to advance and sustain that career for decades.

Hollywood

Love Me Tender
20th Century Fox
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

In March of 1956, just as Elvis career was beginning to build, Col. Parker had taken his
client to Hollywood to open up the third front in his three-pronged attack on Americas
cultural sensibilities. The Colonel saw Hollywood as the key component in the overall
media plan to promote and market Elvis. In the Colonels plan for the future, motion
pictures would be the base upon which everything else would rest. Movies would be
the place where songs were to be presented and would, in turn, promote the sale of
Elvis Presley records. Movies would also elevate Elvis above the status of a mere
recording artist and achieve the loftier distinction of movie star. And, of course,
motion pictures would be a more lasting and profitable place to showcase his
clients talents and bring them before a global audience. For Elvis, Hollywood would be
the ultimate reward for all of his efforts. For Col. Parker, Hollywood was the final step
in his plan to make sure that Elvis was properly exploited.
Col. Parker moved quickly and within weeks of Heartbreak Hotel, capturing the
Number One spot on the charts, Elvis was signed to a three-picture contract with Hal
Wallis at Paramount. The deal was simple and straight forward: $100,000 for the first
film, $150,000 for the second, and $200,000 for the third with no percentage of the gross
or any of the profits that might be realized going to Elvis. Nothing spectacular by
Hollywood standards, but an extraordinary offer for a boy who less than a two years
before had been driving a truck to make living.

In Hollywood, Elvis experienced the distilled essence of the American Dream first
hand. It was, after all, the place where most of Americas dreams were manufactured
and made material. As an usher three years before in a Memphis movie theater, Elvis
had lived those dreams vicariously just like millions of other American teenagers. The
myths and epics that shaped his consciousness came, not from literature or history, but
from the screen. His rebelliousness echoed that of Marlon Brando in The Wild One and
James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause and his sexiness came as much from the on- and
off-screen personas of Dean, Brando, Tony Curtis, and Robert Wagner as from the
bloodlines of the Presleys. He, like most of his generation, was a product of the movies
and now, at twentyone, he was about to become a movie star and live the role that he
had secretly played out a thousand times in his fantasies.
However, in Elvis, Hollywood saw only a quick profit and the ability to capitalize on his
celebrity as it had countless times with other overnight success stories. There was, of
course, no effort made to make him an actor or take him too seriously. He was merely a
commodity that was to be bought, packaged, and sold as quickly and simply as
possible. In his naivet, Elvis thought that he wouldnt be asked to sing in his movies.
He had been given an acting screen test and, surely, he reasoned, that meant that they
intended for him to act. But the reality was that Hollywood was interested in Elvis only
in terms of his box office draw and neither Hal Wallis nor Col. Parker intended to risk
his star persona on stories or characters that ventured very far from the audiences
expectations of what he was or, perhaps more properly, what they believed him to be.
For his first film, Paramount loaned him out to Twentieth Century-Fox for a low-budget
Western called The Reno Brothers starring Richard Egan and Debra Paget. Although
Elvis initially thought that he wouldnt be asked to sing in his movies, the day after
filming began, he was in the studio with Ken Darby, who was hired as musical director,
to record three songs. The first was a re-write of the Civil War ballad Aura
Lee, titled Love Me Tender, which became the new title of The Reno Brothers once RCA
agreed to release the song in advance of the opening of the film. Elvis would eventually
perform four songs in the film. Love Me Tender was pushed through production and
released only four months after Elvis had signed his contract at Paramount,
undoubtedly out of fear that the Elvis craze would pass before the film could

capitalize on it. Love Me Tender was a critical disaster, panned by every major critic in
the United States, and Elvis was singled-out for his lackluster screen debut. But, at the
box office, Love Me Tenderout-grossed every film made in 1956 with the exception of
George Stevens Giant, which starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and the late James
Dean in his final screen appearance. Elvis may not have won over the critics, but he was
a certified movie star after his first outing on the silver screen.
Love Me Tender (1956)Elvis Presley
His second, third, and fourth films (Loving You, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole) were all
completed within the next fourteen months. After the success of Love Me Tender,
Hollywood realized that Elvis was a far more potent box office commodity than they
had ever imagined and quickly moved to take advantage of his box office potential. The
initial three-picture deal was immediately re-negotiated and extended to a ten-year
three-picture-a-year contract with a wealth of star-favored provisions to entice and bind
him to the power and profit of Hollywood. He was given an escalating salary for each
picture with a guaranteed share of both the gross receipts and any profits that his films
would yield. The terms of the contract and the extraordinary box office performance of
his movies made Elvis one of the highest paid actors in motion picture history.
Unfortunately, the Colonel failed to negotiate any artistic say for Elvis in his pictures.
The selection of scripts, songs, co-stars, directors, and even costume considerations were
left to Hollywood power brokers who had no interest in disturbing the crude, but
terribly profitable, formula that had worked so well in Love Me Tender. Elvis was
reduced to the level of a contract player, albeit, a very highly paid one.
To say that Hollywood was distrustful of Elvis creative input is a gross understatement.
No star of this period had as little control over the films that he made as Elvis and no
star worked under as demanding a production contract. The result was a string of
highly successful but irredeemably awful films that monopolized his time and drained
his creative energies for more than a decade. As Stanley Booth noted in his essay A
Hound Dog To The Manor Born, All (of Elvis films) have two things in common: none
have lost money, none is contingent, at any point, upon reality.

Although its glamour and allure would fade in time, Hollywood stood as the jewel in
the crown of both Elvis and Col. Parkers dreams of stardom and success in 1956 and
57. Television made Elvis a household word and provided him with the opportunity to
capture the largest and most devoted audience of any performer in history. Records
served as the coin of the realm in the Kingdom of Elvis, making him rich beyond
imagination and insuring that his voice would be heard for decades to come. But
movies would certify his stardom and transcend the impermanence of his youth and
mortality capturing his presence and persona for all time on celluloid. For all of its
frustrations and artistic compromises, Hollywood would dominate Elvis creative life for
the next ten years, become the near-exclusive showcase for his talents as a performer,
and act as the driver and determiner of almost everything that he did.

The Second and Third Appearances

on The Ed Sullivan Show
Elvis made his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in late October of 1956. This
time, Sullivan was present as the host and Elvis sang Dont Be Cruel, Hound
Dog, Love Me, and Love Me Tender.
Love Me Tender was set to open eighteen days later and the Sullivan Show worked as a
powerful vehicle to promote the film to a national audience. In the week that followed
his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, RCA announced that Elvis had sold over ten
million singles, the largest sale of any artist in a single yeara year that was not yet
over. RCAs investment in Elvis had proven to be one of the wisest in the companys
history. By years end, Elvis recordings accounted for nearly two-thirds of RCAs total
single sales and his albums outsold those of all other RCA artists combined.

Ed Sullivan and Elvis Presley

Backstage at
The Ed Sullivan Show
CBS Photo Archive/Hulton Archive
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Elvis last appearance on the Sullivan Show in January of 1957 capped his first year in
what Col. Parker called The Big Time. In what would become a landmark in
television history, the CBS censors demanded that for his last appearance Elvis only be
shown from the waist up as a defense agasinst and punishment for what they
pronounced were his lewd and suggestive movements. Rather than diminish interest
in those movements, the spectacle of Elvis being shown from the waist up only
intensified the audiences curiosity about what was going on below the bottom edge of
their television screens. He sangDont Be Cruel, Too Much, When My Blue Moon
Turns To Gold Again, and finished with Thomas A. Dorseys gospel standard, (There
Will Be) Peace In The Valley.
At the end of the show, Ed Sullivan came out, quieted the audience, and said, Elvis,
ladies and gentlemen, inasmuch as he goes to the Coast now for his new picture, this
will be the last time that well run into each other for a while, but I wanted to say to
Elvis Presley and the country that this is a real decent, fine boy, and wherever you go,
Elvis, all of youwe want to say that weve never had a pleasanter experience on our

show with a big name than weve had with you. So now lets have a tremendous hand
for a very nice person.
Sullivans kind words may have been a penance that he had to pay for his earlier
refusals to book Elvis, but he seemed terribly genuine and sincere in his praise for the
young man. Elvis had no prior knowledge that Sullivan was going to do this and was
so touched and taken by Sullivans gesture that he seemed dazed and bewildered at the
moment that it occurred. The moment was not lost on the public who saw beneath the
arrogance and bravado of Americas first rock and roll rebel and caught a fleeting
glimpse of a shy young man who wanted nothing more than to be thought of as
decent.
Again, television had revealed one of those contractions in Elvis personality as it had a
few months earlier on The Steve Allen Show. On one hand, he was the living
personification of a rebellion among Americas youth that struck out at everything that
the Establishment stood for and prized. But, on the other, he was just a simple country
boy who desperately wanted to be respected and regarded as something more than just
a hick who had made good. As America was beginning to understand, the
phenomenon called Elvis Presley was dense, deep, and complicated by a myriad of
contradictions and paradoxes.
Elvis Presley, although neither by design nor intent, had become the most public
expression of teen angst in post-war America and the most public expression of the
power of change to a society that was slowly coming to realize its inevitability. As he
had pushed aside the conventions and restrictions that governed acceptable taste in
everything from music to dress, he was supported by a growing army of young people
who saw in him their own wants and dreams made material and manifest. However, he
was also, as Ed Sullivan had said, a real decent, fine boy who wanted only to be
accepted and understoodand in that he was also little different from the millions of
his fans who once again saw their lives reflected in his. Despite their desire for change,
teenagers were still products of the Establishment they wished to alter and they
desperately wanted to be recognized and acknowledged as serious contributors to their
society rather than as childish miscreants who merely behaved badly and wasted their
time on rock and roll music.

To his teenage fans, Elvis was the real life embodiment of fictional characters like Johnny
in The Wild One and Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause and, in time, the society-at-large
would realize that Elvis was a harbinger of what was to come and something of an
emissary from a future that America was ill prepared to accept or ready to embrace. In
the 1960s, the full force of the change that Elvis represented and helped to instigate
would be felt as youthful rebellion changed to social revolution. Years later,
Leonard Bernstein would say, Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth
century and, in 1957, America was just beginning to understand the power of that
force.
By the end of January 1957, Elvis Presley had, in one short year, swept away the
established traditions of mainstream pop and replaced them with something that would
not only become the new standard in popular music but would still be in place fifty
years later. He had conquered television, motion pictures, and recorded music and in
the process become the most famous and successful artist of his time. It seemed then, in
early 1957, that his triumphs and accomplishments were sure to go on forever but, of
course, that was not to be the case.

The Army
To: Elvis Aron Presley
Selective Service Number: 40 86 35 16
Mailing Address: Graceland
Highway 61 South
Memphis, Tennessee
GREETINGS:
You are hereby ordered for induction into The Armed Forces of the
United States and to report to Room 215, 198 South Main Street,
Memphis, Tennessee at 7:45 AM on the 20th of January 1958 for
forwarding to an armed forces Induction center.

Two days after his last appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on his twenty-second
birthday, Elvis Presley was reclassified 1A by the Memphis Draft Board and he was
ordered to report for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States on December
18, 1957. The seemingly unstoppable rise of Elvis Presley had been brought to a
screeching halt.
There are many who still believe that military conscription was used as a kind of
weapon against Elvis to stop his ever-growing popularity or punish him for daring to
upset and disturb the equilibrium of post-war America. This is probably not as farfetched an idea as it might sound. In the 1950s, local draft boards held the power to
determine who would be called for service and who would not. Most draft boards
chose inductees by lot but there was no public policy or order that prescribed how
choices had to be made or that they be decided in a fair or evenhanded way. The head
of the Memphis board hinted that there was more to Elvis being called than the mere
luck of the draw. He proclaimed in an unusual show of public spite, After all, when
you take him out of the entertainment business, what have you got? A truck driver.
There were many in the United States who hated Elvis for what he had done and feared
what he might do if left unchecked and unchallenged. The logic seems to have been
that a stint in the Army might be just the thing to set him straight and bring him back
down to the level of other mere mortals. And, of course, there was the hope that, once
out of the public eye, he might simply be forgotten.
Remarkably, Elvis never fought being drafted or sought special treatment beyond
requesting a sixty-day postponement of his induction to allow him to finish King Creole.
He may have been Americas most public rebel but rebellion was not something that he
had consciously chosen or arrived at as a deliberate act. His rebelliousness came,
merely, as a natural consequence of his background, something that he simply felt, like
his music, and when he was called upon to serve his country, he complied. Ive
worked in factories, drove a truck, cut grass for a living, and did a hitch in a defense
plant. Ill do whatever they tell me, and I wont be asking no special favors.

Elvis Presleys Induction

Into the U.S. Army
Hulton Archive
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The way in which he answered the call to military service would alter much of the
publics perception of the young man who had stolen Americas children with his
swinging hips and savage music. Both the Marines and the Navy offered him special
treatment in return for an early enlistment, but he turned them down. When it came to
assignments once he was actually in the Army, he refused the Special Services where he
could have continued his life as an entertainer and opted, instead, to serve his time in
the tank corps as a regular soldier. He sought no special treatment and received none.
He would make his way in the Army as he had in civilian life, starting at the bottom and
working his way up through the ranks on the merits of his own accomplishments.
When he completed his tour of duty in 1960, he was a sergeant.
While in the Army, he was a model soldier who took orders, suffered through boot
camp, stood guard duty, served his time, and never questioned authority. Although his
military service may appear to be another of the ironies in his life and nature, it was
probably just the opposite. Elvis had always been insecure and probably did see
himself as inferior as Sam Phillips had observed at their first meeting. Despite what
appeared to be a public attack on authority, he had always bowed to authority whenever
it presented itself to him. Whether it was his father and mother, Colonel Parker, or the
Government of the United States; he did what he was told and seldom offered any
resistance, even when it clearly was in his best interest to do so. The terms of his

contracts with RCA and Paramount as negotiated by Col. Parker were far from what one
would expect between an artist of his stature and the companies that profited from his
talents. His recording contract with RCA called for two albums and eight single sides
each year. His film contracts tied him to three films each year for ten years. To be sure,
he was paid handsomely for his work, but it was always a relationship that functioned
more like a job than a professional calling. And he seemed to think of it as job.
Lloyd Shearer, who worked for Life magazine, once suggested during an interview that
Elvis think about interrupting his career and go to college. Elvis replied, I dont spect
you ever been poor. We Presleys we been poor as far back as I can remember and
rejected even the notion of something that, to him, was as far-fetched an idea as getting
a college education. Opportunity had already knocked upon his door and he was not
about to do anything that might jeopardize his future.
During the two years that Elvis was in the Army, RCA offered previously recorded and
repackaged material, likeElvis Golden Records, in an effort to keep his popularity alive.
Paramount also delayed the release of King Creole to bridge some of the gap that would
now appear in his movie contract. But, the reality was that Elvis was no longer a public
person and his career was to be on hold until 1960.