In the Dust #4: Elvis Presley ‘The Sun Recordings’
Once a week In The Dust rolls up its sleeves and digs to the back of the rack to find that record, the one you never knew you always wanted, the one that’s lost, but not forgotten. (Listen via Spotify)
Elvis.
Enough said, right? If you’re still reading at this point, let me say that this is not the bloated, bacon-banana-peanut-butter-fried-donut sandwich King that the name draws to mind. This is Elvis Aaron Presley, an aspiring young singer from Memphis, Tennessee, moonlighting as a truck driver just to keep his head above water.
Presley, at the age of 13, moved with his family to Memphis where he immediately immersed himself in the music scene, absorbing country, honky-tonk, western swing and, most notably, R&B and the blues. Throughout high school, Presley was berated and discouraged by music teachers claiming that he had no aptitude for music, but by the time Presley graduated he was determined to pursue a career in music regardless. With blind confidence, he scrapped up $3.98 and went to Sun Records to record two sides. This is the point in the story where, for other artists, one would say “and the rest was history,” but that’s not the case.
On July 18th, 1953, Presley recorded his first two sides, “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. The receptionist, Marion Keisker, upon Presley’s arrival, asked him what he sang. He said “all kinds.” “I don’t sing like nobody,” he continued. After recording his sides, Keisker recorded his name on the acetate and added, “Good Ballad Singer. Hold.” Presley received one copy of the recording, which he gave to his mother, who, at the time, did not even own a record player.
Early the next year, on January 4th, 1954, Presley recorded two more sides, “I’ll Never Stand In Your Way,” and “It Wouldn’t Be The Same Without You”. These, much like the first two sides, were flops. It appeared that no one was interested in Elvis Aaron Presley the ballad singer.
After several failed auditions as a vocalist for local bands, Presley told his father, “They told me I couldn’t sing,” echoing the words of his old teachers. It is then Presley got a job big-rigging at the Crown Electric Company. He continued to try out for other local groups but was rejected every time, bandleaders citing that Presley should stick to being a truck driver “because you’re never going to make it as a singer.”
Sam Phillips, Sun Records President, saw what he believed to be a hole in the market, but could not find the right man to fill it. Keisker remembers, “Over and over…Sam saying, ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Phillips had acquired a copy of “Without You”, and he could not identify the vocalist. Keisker reminded Phillips of the young truck driver, the one from Memphis, the good ballad singer, and Phillips invited Presley back to Sun Records for a tryout of sorts.
On May 26th, 1954, Presley returned to Sun Records. In his audition, he failed to do the recording justice. Phillips asked Presley to run through a few other songs in his repertoire. Phillips was less than enthused, but Presley expressed a spirited interest in finding a back-up band and Phillips obliged. He contacted two Memphis, western swing musicians, Winfield “Scotty” Moore, guitar, and Bill Black, slap bass. It is at this point in the story where, for other artists, one would say “and the rest was history,” but that is again not the case.
Presley was set for another audition, one with Moore and Black, at Moore’s house. Again, like Phillips, Moore and Black were less than enthused, but Elvis expressed a spirited interest in a recording session with the two, and they obliged. The session was held on July 5th and lasted late into the night. With exception of what was then considered a mediocre country ballad, “I Love You Because,” the session was largely felt to be unsuccessful. That is until Moore and Black were packing to leave. Elvis struck into Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s Alright Mama,” and started “acting the fool”.
Moore remembers:
“All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open … he stuck his head out and said, ‘What are you doing?’ And we said, ‘We don’t know.’ ‘Well, back up,’ he said, ‘try to find a place to start, and do it again.”
And the rest was history.
Phillips had found the sound he was looking for, and frantically began checking levels and taping. “Damn. Get that on the radio and they’ll run us out of town,” Black remarked. Phillips did just that.
It premiered three days later on a local radio show to such a response that the DJ 
played it repeatedly for the last two hours of the show and later had Elvis himself in for an interview, in which he asked him to identify his high school so listeners could identify his color. Sun Records received over 6,000 advanced requests for the record, with a pop, 4/4, rock and roll version of slow waltz, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” to be pressed as the b-side.
So began the career of Elvis Aaron Presley, some would say with an act of minstrelsy, others would say with pure dumb luck and raw, unrefined genius.
Presley recorded more than twenty songs between 1953 and late 1956 for Sun Records. Of them, 18 “Elvis Presley” sides survive, two are lost, and the rest are billed to The Million Dollar Quartet, of recent Broadway fame. Of the songs credited solely to Presley (with Moore and Black), several the author believes to be among the finest of his career. It is no surprise, when listening to these recordings, that so many have had such issue with Presley’s singing. It is unique, ahead of his time in many senses, and strangely contemporary in others.
“That’s All Right,” Presley’s first hit, a slippery, top-down, walking-bass country blues bears moments of clear attraction to a young Roy Orbison (later to record with Sun Records), Presley’s silky vibrato wafting above of the slap-clang pound of the bass and thin, lick-heavy guitar, which, when taking the two together, appear to inspire the unrestrained grunge-wop, western rock and roll of a “Maybelline” era Chuck Berry to-come. When taken as a whole, the effect is a sound reminiscent of Johnny Cash in his days with the Tennessee Two (also later to record with Sun Records). “That’s all right, mama,” Presley sings, foreshadowing his own breaking stardom, overarching influences and legions of followers and imitators, “I’m leavin’ town, baby / I’m leavin’ town for sure / Well, I didn’t want you to be a-bothered with me a-hangin’ ‘round your door / Well, that’s all right / Well, that’s all right now, mama,” the acetate a fitting gift for his mother, a gesture of reassurance that he will make it, and a prescient stiff-arm to those who come after, inviting them to play in his wake, because he’ll be watching from the top, shaking his head, knowing they can’t do it like the King.
In 1955, a young Buddy Holly saw Presley perform in Lubbock, Texas. This left a sizable impression on Holly, as he then began to incorporate the country, rockabilly for which much of his music with The Crickets is known. Chances are very good that
Holly’s attention was most closely drawn by, “I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine,” a song that sounds as if it could’ve been recorded by Holly himself and simply mislabeled as Presley. “I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine” exhibits the archetypal, up-and-down slap-bass of the Sun Records sound, coupled with bright, cutting guitar chords, occasional finger-picking and well-bent, Holly-esque solos of classic rock and roll simplicity. Presley rarely visits his lower register, singing of love for his baby in a high, dizzying vibrato akin to Holly’s performance of “Modern Don Juan”, bridging the gap between Presley’s newfound fame as a young, pop sensation and his earlier ballad-driven sensibilities, ostensibly eliminating doubts of his ability to adapt “all kinds” of music for the current market, simply because he “don’t sound like nobody else,” yet.
The song previously felt to be mediocre and difficult to market, “I Love You Because,” shows a particular interesting side of the “good ballad singer”. Elvis adopts a languid, melancholy croon that would later be heard issuing over audiences at the Copa Cabana and all over Vegas, Atlantic City, and other destination hot spots from the microphone of Dean Martin. Presley’s delicate, sliding vocal line is complemented by the striking, metallic and swinging jazz-cum-reverberated rock fingerpicking of Moore. Presley, in a sense, lets it all hang out, expanding to fill the sonic space, and putting his own unusual styling so strongly in the forefront that when he warbles, “No matter what the world may say about me / I know your love will always see me through / I love you for the way you never doubt me / But most of all I love you because you’re you,” it is distinctly as if he is in conversation with himself, echoing the same blind confidence that he first took with him to Sun Records, refuting the opinion of countless music teachers and bandleaders and even Phillips himself, continuing that, “No matter what the style or season / I know you’re heart will always be true.”
Over the course of the Sun Recordings, Presley successfully tackles a multitude of genres from sentimental ballad, to western swing, to country and country blues, to rockabilly, to even bluegrass waltz and blues standards like “Milk Cow Blues”, reworked into the boogie-woogie “Milkcow Blues Boogie”. With each song we hear a different, but equally poised and unyielding Elvis, singing unlike no one else in his day. It is apparent that Elvis is still finding his voice, but he is in no hurry. He is making everything his own, and as he does so cycles through vocal performances that will inspire countless singers for decades. Many have claimed Buddy Holly to be the single most influential figure in rock and roll. Others have said Roy Orbison or Chuck Berry. Perhaps, those with that claim did not go back far enough.
Written by Ben Brundage. Check out Ben’s Tumblr: Damned Fine Lion
Album Stream: Nerves Junior ‘As Bright As Your Night Light’
Hit play. Hit play right down there next to the creepy man-rabbit that looks like he just leapt out of one of Donnie Darko’s trippy parallel universes. Now, don’t touch your computer for a while. I recently stumbled across Nerves Junior via The Decibel Tolls. This blog is written and operated by a man who calls himself Kenny Bloggins.
Kenny knows Louisville, the hometown of Nerves Junior. Kenny knows music, and Kenny knows how to write. Because I know all of these things to be true, I will simply refer you HERE. While you’re listening to As Bright As Your Night Light, read Kenny’s words. These are the best two pieces of advice that I can give you today. It’s not much, but it’s something.
Written by Rob Peoni
Thought on Tracks 
In The Dust #3: John Coltrane ‘A Love Supreme’
Once a week In The Dust rolls up its sleeves and digs to the back of the rack to find that record, the one you never knew you always wanted, the one that’s lost, but not forgotten. (Listen via Spotify)
This is the Holy Grail.
I wish I could leave it at that, but a record this dense, of this magnitude, of such indescribable brilliance—while with opaque brevity seems the only effective way to approach it, this record deserves more.
John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme in a single day, on December 9th, 1964, at Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The personnel list is a veritable who’s who of hard bop: Jimmy Garrison on double bass, McCoy Tyner on piano and Elvin Jones on drums. The album is structured as a four-song suite and clocks in at a trim 33:02, but as many physicists contend that an entire universe can exist in a single atom of one’s fingernail, so does a universe in every note of A Love Supreme.
At the albums center is a single concept and a single motif. Coltrane writes in his liner notes to A Love Supreme, “This album is a humble offering to Him. An attempt to say “THANK YOU GOD” through our work, even as we do in our hearts and with our tongues.” It is indeed a spiritual album, a prayer, one over the course of which Coltrane embarks on a quest for understanding and purity. Through this suite, Coltrane wishes to establish a communion with God and express to Him a realization that neither his talent nor his horn are his own, but rather gifts from Him, and for that he is grateful.
Coltrane establishes this communion in a sequence reminiscent of said prayer. Of the structure, Coltrane writes:
The music herein is presented in four parts. The first is entitled “Acknowledgement,” the second, “Resolution,” the third, “Pursuance,” and the fourth and last part is a musical narration of the theme, “A LOVE SUPREME,” which is written in the context; it is entitled, “Psalm.”
Part I, “Acknowledgement” is Coltrane’s “Dear God.” It begins with a gong, a call to attention, over which Coltrane floats a repetitive fanfare that is a loose variation on the piece’s central theme. From beneath Coltrane’s rooster-crow, Elvin Jones washes his way into focus with dusty cymbal crescendos and rolls. It is then, in the deep groove of Garrison’s double bass, we first hear the central motif: “ba-dum ba-dum, ba-dum ba-dum.” Garrison leads this motif as it is repeated four times. Jones then strikes the beat. It is repeated four more times and Tyner joins with a smattering of complementary chords. It is repeated eight more times, as if to set the stage for the main attraction, and Coltrane returns, sliding onto the forefront of the aural canvas with break-neck modulated variations, at which point Garrison retreats and all proceed to follow the master. Coltrane’s horn seems to cry out with the repressed anguish of every past transgression, first in a spitfire wailing, like a pressurized liquid breaking its seal, and later in controlled four-note bleats, as if he has nothing more to confess, no more tears to cry, and is now apologizing to Him, pleading that he’s been a believer all along. These four-note bleats slowly recede into the most visceral, penetrative moment of the album: a vocal refrain from Coltrane himself of the albums theme: “A Love Supreme,” a final acknowledgement, a moment of peace in knowing that if one can muster confession, He can muster forgiveness.
Part II, “Resolution,” begins, as did Part I, with Garrison leading, this time alone. He rapidly plucks sharp pairs of repeating notes with palpable determination, generating a forward momentum, on which Jones, Tyner and Coltrane can simultaneously jump. They attack with a purposeful and
deliberate ferocity, one that they effortlessly maintain throughout “Resolution,” one that echoes the very title of the movement itself. Coltrane has concluded his address to God, not-so-literally acknowledging own misdeeds and misgivings and His grace and power, and graduated to discussing with God what he believes he can do to atone and gain His favor. Coltrane’s resolve comes in the form of two fervent, insistent solos, both foreshadowing and echoing each other respectively, and separated by, as if from His own lips, a strict, capable, and somehow patiently impassioned retort from the keys of McCoy Tyner. Coltrane pleads to be a better man, promising that by giving ownership of his talent and craft away to a higher power, he will become a conduit for Him, and thus more powerful himself. The movement bookends how “Acknowledgement,” began not with a bang, but with a whimper: Jones crashes hard, then rolls softly and washes into the ether as the band slowly and carefully descends and side 1 hisses to a close.
“Pursuance,” Part III of the suite, the beginning of the second side and the centerpiece of the album, is Coltrane’s response to what he proposed in “Resolution.” It begins, appropriately enough, with a drum solo from Elvin Jones. Jones was once asked how he and Coltrane are capable of making the music they do. Jones famously responded, “To play the way we play, you have to be willing to die for the motherfucker.” Jones’s solo is a perfect example of this, and a fitting retort to “Resolution.” He begins in empty space, tapping inquisitively on his ride cymbal and tentatively on his toms until runs begin to materialize, along with his confidence and direction, which take their shape before you as if by magic. He slowly emerges from an ambient whisper to practically scream, “We told you about it, now watch us do it!” From the first notes out of Coltrane’s horn, a walking bounce of sorts, it’s clear that “Pursuance,” is pure action! Coltrane sets this tone and immediately passes it to Tyner for further exposition. Tyner sprints his way up and down the keyboard, tickling wind-chime runs that he breaks with terse, round chords as Jones rides hard and Garrison walks the bass behind him. Coltrane breaks back in over Tyner with fire and brimstone. Inaction is sin! No more propositions! Each member of Coltrane’s band asserts that suggestions and hints have occupied their place in this suite and now it is time for execution. And heads do roll.
Part IV, “Psalm,” is the spire on the church, as the cherry is to the sundae. In his description of the suite, Coltrane refers to “Psalm” as a ‘musical narration’ of his devotional poem of same name as the album, included in the liner notes. The poem reads as follows:
A Love Supreme
I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord.
It all has to do with it.
Thank you God.
Peace.
There is none other.
God is. It is so beautiful.
Thank you God. God is all.
Help us to resolve our fears and weaknesses.
Thank you God.
In You all things are possible.
We know. God made us so.
Keep your eye on God.
God is. He always was. He always will be.
No matter what…it is God.
He is gracious and merciful.
It is most important that I know Thee.
Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts,
fears and emotions—time—all related …
all made from one … all made in one.
Blessed be His name.
Thought waves—heat waves—all vibrations—
all paths lead to God. Thank you God.
His way…it is so lovely…it is gracious.
It is merciful—Thank you God.
One thought can produce millions of vibrations
and they all go back to God … everything does.
Thank you God.
Have no fear…believe…Thank you God.
The universe has many wonders. God is all. His way…it is so wonderful.
Thoughts—deeds—vibrations, etc.
They all go back to God and He cleanses all.
He is gracious and merciful…Thank you God.
Glory to God…God is so alive.
God is.
God loves.
May I be acceptable in Thy sight.
We are all one in His grace.
The fact that we do exist is acknowledgement of
Thee O Lord.
Thank you God.
God will wash away all our tears…
He always has…
He always will.
Seek Him everyday. In all ways seek God everyday.
Let us sing all songs to God
To whom all praise is due…praise God.
No road is an easy one, but they all go back to God.
With all we share God.
It is all with God.
It is all with Thee.
Obey the Lord.
Blessed is He.
We are from one thing…the will of God…
Thank you God.
I have seen God—I have seen ungodly—none can
be greater—none can compare to God.
Thank you God.
He will remake us … He always has and He
always will.
It is true—blessed be His name—Thank you God.
God breathes through us so completely…so gently
we hardly feel it…yet, it is our everything.
Thank you God.
ELATION—ELEGANCE—EXALTATION
All from God.
Thank you God. Amen.
Coltrane, in his ‘musical narration’, effectively “plays” these words to close the suite. Over the thick, heavy pulse of Tyner’s chords, the asymmetrical, tympanic rolling of Jones’s drums, the sizzling splash of his cymbals, and the flurried thumping of Garrison’s bass beneath Jones, Coltrane pours his soul from his horn, echoing the messages of each previous movement, and speaks of new life emerging from them. “I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee O Lord. / It all has to do with it. / Thank you God,” he sings, repeating his “Acknowledgement.” “One thought can produce millions of vibrations / and they all go back to God … everything does. / Thank you God. / Have no fear … believe … thank you God,” he sings, colored with the promises of “Resolution.” “No road is an easy one, but they all / go back to God. / With all we share God. / It is all with God. / It is all with Thee. / Obey the Lord. / Blessed is He. / We are from one thing … the will of God … thank you God. / I have seen God – I have seen ungodly – / none can be greater – none can compare to God. / Thank you God,” he sings as we retrace the steps along the road of “Pursuance.” He concludes both his ‘musical narration’ and his poem, “ELATION-ELEGANCE-EXALTATION / All from God. / Thank you God. Amen,” and he summons from his horn a cry of mad and tearful ecstasy, like Baldwin’s John in Go Tell It On The Mountain, writhing on the floor of a Calvinist Church, screaming, disoriented and exhausted, aching from the intense mental trial of being saved. Coltrane’s last breath passes in a flurry of notes and dies softly, as if he is drained of it, and with it the last of him is gone. He will continue to blow his horn, but he will not own it, and it will not be his breath that fills it. It will be His.
Written by Ben Brundage. Check out Ben’s Tumblr Damned Fine Lion.