This Happened

 My apologies dear Readers for missing the 50th anniversary of an astonishing event.  On December 21, 1970 this happened:

According to Smithsonian Magazine, here's how it went down. A bored and restless Elvis had flown into Washington DC.  On the flight from LA, he'd scribbled a note to the President:

"Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out," he wrote. All he wanted in return was a federal agent's badge. "I would love to meet you," he added, informing Nixon that he'd be staying at the Washington Hotel under the alias Jon Burrows. "I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a federal agent."

After an early morning landing, Elvis and an aide took a limo to the White House where he dropped off his note at an entrance gate at 630am.    The letter ended up with Nixon aide Bud Krogh, who loved the idea and managed to persuade Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman.

Around noon, Presley showed up at the White House bearing a Colt .45 pistol in a display case as a gift for the President (it was taken from him before meeting with Nixon).

Smithsonian gives this account of the meeting:

Nixon's famous taping system had not yet been installed, so the conversation wasn't recorded. But Krogh took notes: "Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also those in the vanguard of anti-American protest."

"I'm on your side," Elvis told Nixon, adding that he'd been studying the drug culture and Communist brainwashing. Then he asked the president for a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

"Can we get him a badge?" Nixon asked Krogh.

Krogh said he could, and Nixon ordered it done.

Elvis was ecstatic. "In a surprising, spontaneous gesture," Krogh wrote, Elvis "put his left arm around the President [Nixon was not a touchy-feely guy] and hugged him."

Here is the President's thank-you for the gift:

And here is the badge that Elvis so desired:

Long Live Rock n Roll!

Sixty years ago today, Elvis Presley walked into Sam Philips' Sun Studios in Memphis for his first recording session.  After spending some time muddling around Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black recorded That's All Right which quickly became a regional hit though Elvis would not break nationally until the release of Heartbreak Hotel in January 1956 (for the full story see That's All Right).


In the three years after that seminal Elvis recording session all the basic building blocks of rock n roll were put into place via the first hit songs of several artists.  Before taking a look at the chronology, let's acknowledge two other 1954 recordings that helped start rock n roll - Shake Rattle n Roll by Big Joe Turner and Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley & The Comets.  The former reached #22 on the pop charts that year but while the latter had some chart success that year it did not become a mega-hit until it was re released in May 1955 after being featured on the soundtrack of the hit film Asphalt Jungle.

July 1955: Maybellene by Chuck Berry.  The first Chuck Berry Guitar Solo (TM) though not quite as polished as some of his later efforts (for instance, Johnny B Goode from 1958).  Berry deliberately and cannily targeted a white teenage audience with his songs, singing about cars, school, girls and just having fun, skillfully modulating the R&B sound in the process.  From his Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction:

"while no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Berry arguably did more than anyone else to put the pieces together. As rock journalist Dave Marsh wrote, “Chuck Berry is to rock and roll what Louis Armstrong is to jazz.” On “Maybellene” – Berry’s first single, released in 1955 – he played country & western guitar licks over a base of rhythm & blues. The distorted sound of Berry’s guitar captured the rough, untamed spirit of rock and roll."

In the live clip below you can watch Chuck doing his famous Duckwalk during the guitar solo.  On the other hand, maybe he just learned everything from Marty McFly. 

While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Berry arguably did more than anyone else to put the pieces together. As rock journalist Dave Marsh wrote, “Chuck Berry is to rock and roll what Louis Armstrong is to jazz.” On “Maybellene” – Berry’s first single, released in 1955 – he played country & western guitar licks over a base of rhythm & blues. The distorted sound of Berry’s guitar captured the rough, untamed spirit of rock and roll. The song included a brief but scorching solo built around his trademark double-string guitar licks. It kicked off Berry’s career in style and paved the way for a steady stream of classics over the next decade. - See more at: http://rockhall.com/inductees/chuck-berry/bio/#sthash.4xIwFuhr.dpuf

November 1955: Tutti Frutti by Little Richard (aka Richard Wayne Penniman).  Manic and unrestrained hollering from the wild man of rock n roll.  Pat Boone had a couple of hits recording tamed versions of Little Richard tunes, including Tutti Frutti.  Little Richard is relatively restrained in the video below.

January 1956:  Blue Suede Shoes by Carl Perkins.  Rockabilly strikes!  Covered by many other artists, including Elvis.
(Photo from the-jime.dk)
January 1956:  Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley.  Elvis becomes ELVIS! The followup single was a little toe-tapper called Hound Dog.

May 1956:  I Walk The Line by Johnny Cash.  The country sounds bleeds into the emerging rock era.


March 1957:  Bye Bye Love by The Everly Brothers.  Mixing pop and country with gorgeous harmonies which later influenced The Beatles.
(Photo from Huffington Post)

May 1957:  Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On by Jerry Lee Lewis.  Jerry Lee shook up a lot of older folks with this and his followup hit Great Balls of Fire which were considered too raucous and overtly sexual.

May 1957:  That'll Be The Day by Buddy Holly & The Crickets (originally recorded summer 1956). Melodic rock pioneer.

Suddenly, it was over.  In late 1957, Little Richard announced that God had told him to repent of his secular music career and he enrolled in Oakwood College to study theology later becoming a minister before returning to rock n roll periodically over the years.  On March 24, 1958 Elvis was inducted into the Army and disappeared for two years, returning to release a lot of schlock until reviving his career with a 1968 TV special.  In May 1958 news of Jerry Lee Lewis' marriage to his 13-year old cousin became public and his career collapsed.  Buddy Holly died (along with Richie Valens and the Big Bopper) in a February 1959 plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa and in December of that year Chuck Berry was arrested, and later convicted, for alleged violations of the Federal Mann Act (transporting underage women for immoral purposes; THC can think of many comments to add here but has decided that prudent silence is the best course).  Meanwhile, after two further hits in 1958, Johnny Cash disappeared from the pop charts for five years though he continued to have reach the country charts and Carl Perkins faded away after his initial success, though he retained his popularity in England and The Beatles were later to cover several of his songs. Only The Everly Brothers continued to churn out hits without changing their style.

The one essential artist who just misses this time period is Ray Charles.  Starting in 1953, Ray had sixteen Top 10 hits on the R&B charts but had not cracked the pop chart Top 10 until the release of What'd I Say in July 1959 which introduced soul and R&B into the rock n roll mix.

A few of these pioneers are still around.  Chuck Berry is 87 years old and only recently stopped touring.  Little Richard is 81, Don Everly 77 and defying predictions Jerry Lee Lewis is alive and still playing at the age of 78. 

Baby Let's Play House

Hubba hubba.

You may go to college
You may go to school
You may have a pink Cadillac
But don't you be nobody's fool

Elvis Presley; recorded in early 1955 when Elvis was still good.  This was his first single to make the charts, hitting #5 on Billboard Country Singles and it's Exhibit 1 for why parents thought Elvis' popularity signaled the end of civilization.  The song was written by Arthur Gunter in 1954.  In a nice touch, Elvis changed the line "you may get religion" to "you may have a pink Cadillac".  John Lennon lifted the line "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man" for Run For Your Life, a track from Rubber Soul.

Accompanying Elvis on rockabilly guitar is Scotty Moore who helped identify Elvis as a talent for Sam Phillips at Sun Records (for the ur-moment for Elvis, see That's All Right).  Here's a 2009 interview from GuitarPlayer.com with Scotty.  He plays some great licks along with chunka-chunka rhythm on this song.

A Little Less Conversation

A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me

That's All Right

Around 7pm on July 5, 1954 nineteen year old Elvis Presley walked into Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was the prior August when a shy Elvis first wandered into Sun and asked if he could record an acetate of himself singing and playing.  He paid the $3.98 (+ tax), recorded My Happiness, a 1948 pop hit, and left with the acetate.  For the next several months Elvis would occasionally show up at Sun to hang around, asking whether they knew a band that needed a singer or guitar player and recording an additional acetate according to the exhaustive account of Elvis' early years by Peter Guralnick in Last Train To Memphis (1994) from which much of this post is drawn. 

These brief encounters made an impression on Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records and producer at Sun Studios, a tiny record company with a heavy emphasis on R&B.  Phillips decided to invite Elvis in for a more formal recording session to see how he sounded on tape.  He asked Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass) to come for the session.

The July 5 session initially went very poorly. For a couple of hours they tried recording various ballads but it just wasn't working. The music wasn't right and Elvis sounded tentative in his singing. Then, while on a break, Elvis started singing parts of That's All Right (Mama), a blues song by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup.  Phillips was astonished that the kid even knew a blues song but he loved the way he made it sound.  They recorded a satisfactory version in just a couple of takes.

Scotty Moore remembered::

"It just sounded sort of raw and ragged.  We thought it was exciting, but what was it?  It was just so completely different.  But it just really flipped Sam - he felt it really had something.  We just sort of shook our heads and said 'Well, that's fine, but good God, they'll run us out of town!'"

This is the song.  You can hear how confidently Elvis plays with the melody and lyrics and the power in his voice which is quite a contrast to how tentative he sounded earlier in the evening.

Phillips knew he had something but what was it?  Was it too close to the "race" music that he specialized in recording and thus unacceptable for playing on white radio in the South?

On July 7, he invited his friend and the most popular radio DJ in Memphis, Dewey Phillips (no relation) over to hear the tape.  Dewey played a lot of gospel and R&B and had expanded his initial heavily black audience and started to attract white teenage listeners.  They listened repeatedly to That's All Right but Dewey did not commit himself.  The next morning, Dewey called Sam and told him he hadn't been able to sleep because he was thinking about the record and wanted two copies for that night's show.

That afternoon, Sam delivered two acetates (acetates are not records and there is no flip side) and Dewey played it for the first time around 10pm on July 8.  The reaction was instantaneous with phone calls and telegrams flooding into the show and Dewey began playing That's All Right over and over again.  Within a few minutes he called Elvis' home and got him to come to the station for an interview.

Dewey recounted their meeting in a 1967 interview:
  

"I had a couple of records cued up, and while they played we talked.  I asked him where he went to high school, and he said 'Humes' [a white school].  I wanted to get that out because a lot of people listening thought he was colored."

That's All Right became a regional (not national) hit after it was released as a single on July 19, Sam Phillips signed Elvis and his career was launched.  During late 1954 and into 1955 he built a fervent regional fan base while touring extensively in the South. In January 1956, Heartbreak Hotel (his first #1) was released, in June he provoked national controversy with his performance of Hound Dog on The Milton Berle Show and in July, Hound Dog was released as a single and rocketed to #1 where it stayed for a record eleven weeks (it was actually released as the B Side of Don't Be Cruel, which also became #1).  ELVIS! was born.  For more on Elvis read this earlier post.  His best recordings by far were with Sun and during his first year with RCA before he descended into dreck and self-parody.


Sam Phillips is one of the major figures in the creation of Rock n Roll.  In a brief period in the mid-50s he signed Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins (in December 1955 he sold Elvis' contract to RCA for $40,000 so he could focus on promoting Perkins).  Earlier in the 50s he was the first to record Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King and he also recorded and released what some consider the first Rock n Roll record, Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats.

The always entertaining Phillips talks about the origin of Sun Records and what he saw in Elvis Presley as a white singer with a black sound and crossover potential.  It also includes Sam and Scotty Moore talking about the recording of That's All Right: