Explores the factors — musical and cultural — that led to the birth of American rock 'n' roll music in the early 1950s. Covers in detail the genres, styles and people that converged to create this new music.
Memphis: Part 2
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From the course by University of Florida
Music's Big Bang: The Genesis of Rock 'n' Roll
36 ratings
From the lesson
A tale of three cities: Memphis
The delivery room of rock 'n' roll
Meet the Instructors
Professor David CarlsonExecutive Director of the Center for Media Innovation + Research and Cox/Palm Beach Post Professor of New Media Journalism
College of Journalism & Communication: Center for Media Innovation
Now we bring our attention to Elvis Presley.
I mean, he was the cat's meow, the bee's knees, the bomb, the man.
With all due respect to the many artists we have covered so
far in our class, Elvis Aaron Presley is by far the most important figure.
No kidding.
He was born in Mississippi and died in Memphis.
Or did he really die?
I rest my thought.
Now if you don't get that joke,
you don't realize what a cultural phenomenon Elvis Presley became.
For years after his death, there were Elvis sightings at Kmarts and
convenience stores from Anchorage to Zambia.
There is even an Elvis based religion.
Google it, you'll find out.
Now whether you like Elvis' music or not,
whether you think his movies were wonderful or awful, he was the catalyst.
He was the first guy to find the magic mixture.
In some ways, it was a great turnabout.
He did black music in a white style and white music in a black style.
And the result was the holy grail of the record business, crossover.
Music that appealed to both white and black audiences.
Let's listen to Don't Be Cruel while we explore a little Elvis trivia.
[MUSIC]
The two figures most responsible for
launching Elvis' career are right there, Sam Phillips and Marion Keisker.
Sam Phillips was eager to bring the sound of African American music
to a wider audience, and Elvis was of course the perfect choice to do that.
Marion Keisker was the first person to record him.
She was alone in the office when Elvis Presley came in and
recorded two songs for a fee of $3.25.
Her exchange with Elvis on that day is legendary.
Marion wrote this.
She said, what kind of singer are you?
Elvis said, I sing all kinds.
She asked, who do you sound like?
Elvis said, I don't sound like nobody.
Elvis intended the record he made as a gift for his mother.
And also, perhaps had a slim hope of being discovered by Sam Phillips.
It was Marion Keisker who talked Sam Phillips into
giving Elvis a real audition.
Here is the very first recording he did,
the 1953 record that he made for a fee of $3.25
[MUSIC]
So what's really up with Elvis?
What is he?
Is he a musical subversive?
A catalyst for change?
A mutant, a punk?
He meant different things to different people.
He was a symbol of fill in the blank, depending on who you are and
what you like and what you don't like.
He was well mannered, charming,
and very courteous, eventually winning over nearly all of his detractors.
Remember Sinatra, as we will discuss throughout Elvis Presley
was a nice guy, and that was actually part of the problem.
He made a lot of hair scratching moves in his career, but
that still didn't stop him from being the King of Rock and Roll.
At the same time, Elvis was a weirdo and that was part of the problem too.
American poet William Carlos Williams once wrote,
the pure products of America go crazy.
Elvis perfectly fit that statement.
He lived the American Dream, from rags to riches.
And it apparently drove him crazy.
Well, what was all the fuss about, you may ask.
Elvis, so what?
You have to see his feet in order to get it.
So let's watch this video.
[MUSIC]
I just love it.
It perfectly sums up the reaction of the kids, the girls screaming, and the parents
looking totally shocked, completely sums up what was Elvis, what Elvis was.
He was a catalyst for the cultural revolution that was rock and roll.
Elvis Presley was a central figure in defining rock and roll as a musical genre.
He made it a touchstone of the youth culture.
Which led, and this is important, to new acceptance and
appreciation of black culture through a white person.
He opened the door for rock and roll music.
He opened the door for black music to be accepted by whites.
Now, here are Elvis, Sam Phillips, and two guys you might want to remember.
Sam Phillips teamed Elvis Presley up with Scotty Moore, the guitarist and
Bill Black, the bassist.
They backed Elvis on what was going to be the career-making sessions
held at Sun Studio.
It was sort of a match made in heaven, frankly, because
not only were they great musicians, they had great chemistry together.
Elvis' very first record was That's All Right,
Mama on one side and Blue Moon of Kentucky on the flip side.
Now, you might want to remember that record and those two songs.
Because no other recordings before them blended black music influences,
blues, R&B and gospel, and white music influences, country and
western and hillbilly, quite like Elvis Presley did on these recordings.
His first record is a prime example, so
we're gonna hear both songs from the record.
[MUSIC]
So, That's All Right, Mama is a classic blues song done in a white way.
And by way, I mean the performance style.
So, let's hear the original by Arthur Big Boy Crudup.
[MUSIC]
On the other side of Elvis's first 45 release,
Blue Moon of Kentucky is a country song,
frankly a bluegrass song, but it is performed in a black way.
See what you think when you listen to the Elvis version and then the original.
[MUSIC]
So here is Bill Monroe's version of that song, the original, from 1947.
[MUSIC]
Not to sound stereotypical, but those songs have great crossover appeal.
And that's why those first Elvis sessions at Sun Studio are considered even
more legendary than his chart-topping major hits later in his career.
Another important figure in the making of Elvis as a superstar
was a popular Memphis disc jockey named Dewey Phillips.
Dewey Phillips played Elvis' songs on local radio and helped him gain exposure.
Elvis was an unknown, independent artist.
And in that era, disc jockeys were responsible for
finding local talent and popularizing those performers' music.
In his early days as a deejay, Dewey Phillips played to black audiences.
But he searched for the white audience as well.
And Elvis was the first white performer that he regularly played on the radio.
Now, he actually had Elvis come to the station to be interviewed on the air and
he carefully asked Elvis what Memphis high school he had attended.
The answer told the audience in a highly segregated city
of Memphis that Elvis was white.
No matter how he sounded, just because of which high school he had attended,
that told the audience that he was a white fellow.
Now, to be fair,
we should note that Elvis' early recordings sold in limited quantity.
Few songs charted nationally.
But the impact of these records is immense.
So let's give them a listen.
These are his early Sun hits, in chronological order.
[MUSIC]
This one is called Milkcow Blues Boogie.
[MUSIC]
Here's You're a Heartbreaker.
[MUSIC]
Let's play, Baby, Let's Play House.
[MUSIC]
You're right, I'm left, She's Gone.
[MUSIC]
And Mystery Train.
[MUSIC]
The only song that charted number one on any chart among his
Sun Recordings was this next one, called I Forgot to Remember to Forget,
which topped the country chart in 1956, no 1955, right?
[MUSIC]
Now, one of the reasons these didn't chart is that to be on the Pop Singles Hot
100 Chart, a record has to sell and receive airplay on a national level.
Elvis didn't have that exposure yet.
He received airplay and sold some records, but only in the south.
You can see from the record numbers here that Sam Phillips was not
releasing anywhere near as many records as a major label might.
Now, here's a fact most people don't know.
Elvis was not a songwriter.
He was a singer.
A song stylist, if you will.
He never actually wrote a song in his entire life.
All of these songs were either recorded by someone else first or
written by someone else for Elvis.
There's not a single composition by Elvis himself.
He was credited as a song writer on nine songs during his career,
but he didn't actually write those.
The purpose of those credits was royalties.
Elvis Presley's strength comes from his performances.
Now, if you're interested in more about Elvis, and we're actually gonna talk more
about Elvis, but here's an album with the original versions of all the songs
that were later recorded by Elvis Presley, compiled on one CD.
Also, there is a CD of the Sun recording, all of them on one single CD.
And this particular CD was ranked number 11 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list
of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Higher than any of his later records with a major label.
That's how influential his Sun recordings are, and certainly high praise.
Now Elvis' ascent to superstardom begins, and
the evil prince of darkness enters the story.
No, not Ozzie Osbourne.
That happens to be his nickname too.
The villain here is a Dutch illegal immigrant named Andreas Van Kuijk,
more famously known as Colonel Tom Parker, who lived in,
much of his life anyway, in Temple Terrace, Florida.
When we come back, we'll talk about Colonel Parker.
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