It’s surprising to find out that the man who would be touted the king was once a worker at a machine shop. He merely wandered into the recording studio in Memphis on his lunch hour so he could record two songs for his mother’s birthday present. That $3.98 investment became his ticket to stardom.
The first two songs he ever recorded where My Happiness and That’s When Your Heartaches Begin. This is why earlier in his career, Elvis Presley was often associated to singing the blues. It is also interesting to note that the owner of Sun Records, Sam Phillips was looking for a Caucasian man who could sing what most of the African Americans were listening to at that time which was the R&B style.
But Philips was quite hard to impress. The young Elvis didn’t get his vote when he recorded I’ll Never Stand In Your Way and Careless Love. But Elvis wasn’t the type to give up easily. He went back to the studio six months later, to sing `That’s Alright Mama’ because this was what Philips suggested. He had a band to back him up which consisted of Scotty Moore on the guitar and Bill Black on bass. This was when Phillips finally recognized the potential in Elvis Presley and decided to market him as the breakthrough star he was searching for.
Elvis signed on to Sun Records and eventually became part of the record company’s Million Dollar Quartet alongside Jerry Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins.
Elvis recorded five songs for the company and had reached out to Suns targeted audience by 1955. He was popular in the South. Col Tom Parker was his manager. Elvis’s manager knew how to sell his client. Parker started a campaign which ignited Elvis’s national exposure.
His first ever appearance was on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show on CBS. Then on the Steve Allen Show, he performed Hound Dog. From that performance, he earned the nickname Elvis the Pelvis because of his gyrating hips. The family oriented Ed Sullivan was worried about this at first, but he changed his mind when the ratings showed that 52 million people tuned in which would have been one out of every three Americans.
Parker wanted to steer Elvis clear from the holds of the Sun Records Company in order for him to make his own negotiations. It eventually ended with RCA buying Elvis contract for $40,000. That was huge at the time.
Elvis wasn’t yet 21 so it was his father, Vernon, who signed the contract. After that, Elvis didn’t have to sing the blues.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!