July 2004
- Elvis was honest about his skill [Letter to the Editor]
From Robert Wilson of Deakin
(Canberra Times, July 8, 2004, p. 18)
Fifty years ago rock 'n' roll was born when a 19-year-old truck driver named Elvis Presley recorded his first song and the anniversary will make lots of fans feel old (CT, July 7, p18). One critic at the time commented acidly that Mr Presley was a powerful argument in favour of compulsory military service for teenagers. But full marks to Elvis for honesty. He is said to have remarked: "I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Rock'n'roll's 50th goes off with a bang
(Canberra Times, July 7, 2004, p. 18)
Rock and roll turned 50 yesterday, at exactly 11 am (2am Australian time [4am - 15 hours difference for Eastern Australia & Queensland - ed.]), when Elvis Presley's recording of "That's All Right Mama" wailed simultaneously over up to 1500 radio stations world-wide, organisers of the event in Memphis said. Stations carried the song as it was fed from Sun Studios Memphis, Tennessee. That is where Presley, a 19-year-old truck driver, and two other musicians, recorded what many historians call the first rock and roll song. ...
- Golf: Elvis golf classic is all set to rock at citywest
(Belfast Telegraph, July 6, 2004)
THE Irish Elvis Presley Fan Club launched their annual 'Elvis Presley Charity Golf Classic' last week with the helping hand of 'The King' himself, Jim Brown and Liverpool Legend, Ian Rush. The Golf Classic takes place at The luxurious CityWest Hotel, Dublin on Friday, 13 August and all proceeds will go to the St John of God, Menni Services, who care for children with an intellectual disability. Ian Rush along with other former Liverpool players Neil (Razor) Ruddock, John Aldridge and Nigel Spackman and celebrities including Joe Dolan, Red Hurley and Dickie Rock will be playing golf and attending the dinner and gala concert. The concert will showcase 'The Elvis Spectacular' featuring impersonators Jim Brown and Emerald Elvis. ...
- 1,250 radio shows mark Elvis song
(BBC News, July 6, 2004)
More than 1,250 US radio stations have celebrated a defining moment in rock 'n' roll by simultaneously playing Elvis Presley's debut single. "That's All Right" was recorded by Presley at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, 50 years ago on Monday. His guitarist Scotty Moore played a recording of the song from the studio, broadcast across the US by satellite. Up to 8,000 fans gathered in Memphis for the anniversary including musicians Isaac Hayes and Justin Timberlake.
Performers
Some global radio stations were also able to receive the broadcast of That's All Right at 11am local time (1600 BST) on Monday. Combining blues with rockabilly, the song is widely accepted as the first rock 'n' roll single. The broadcast kicked off a full day of music featuring Memphis greats and others. ...
- Elvis Presley, a Half-Century Later
By Bert Case
(WLBT 3, July 5, 2004)
It was 50 years ago today that Elvis Presley walked into Sun Records in Memphis and recorded his first hit song. It was called "That's All Right," and the flip side was "Blue Moon of Kentucky." Once those records were first played on WHBQ Radio in Memphis, Elvis' career was launched. Elvis is originally from Tupelo, Mississippi, but moved to Memphis in 1948 when he was 13. His high school choir instructor told him he couldn't sing, but he shot back "You just don't like my kind of singing." A lot of people, around the world did like his kind of singing and he transformed the face of music everywhere.
Darden Wade, who still sells his recordings at Be Bop records in Jackson, says a day doesn't go by that someone doesn't want some elvis music. Elvis had a magic that made young girls cry and scream that has not been matched by anyone else, since. Malcolm White is now probably Mississippi's best known music promoter, who says Elvis may have died in 1977, but his music is here to stay.
Elvis Presley Enterprises, is still enormously successful in selling products and conducting tours of his home at Graceland, where he died.
- Memphis Marks 50th Anniversary of Elvis' First Hit
By Fetzer Mills
(Yahoo! News / Reuters, July 5, 2004)
More than 1,250 radio stations across the United States celebrated one of the defining moments in rock 'n' roll on Monday when they simultaneously played "That's All Right," a tune recorded exactly 50 years ago by a young truck driver called Elvis Presley. Influential guitarist Scotty Moore, who played with the late "king of rock 'n' roll" on that track along with bass player Bill Black, kicked off the event at 11 a.m. CDT (12 p.m. EDT). Moore flipped a switch on a reel-to-reel tape at the legendary Sun Studio in Presley's adopted home town. The live feed was also broadcast globally by the Sirius satellite radio network. In attendance were such Memphis music luminaries as soul singer and songwriter Isaac Hayes, "Wooly Bully" singer Sam the Sham and boy-band singer Justin Timberlake. Memphis police estimated the crowd, which gathered for several blocks along the street in front of Sun Studio in the 90 plus degree heat, numbered between 6,000 and 8,000 people.
The playing of "That's All Right" kicked off a full day of music featuring Memphis greats and others. Moore led off the live music with an all-star band featuring Presley's first drummer, D.J. Fontana, songwriter and musician Billy Swan and country musician and Elvis tribute artist Ronnie McDowell. When asked if he had any idea that he was about to change the musical world when he walked into the studio that day 50 years ago, Moore replied, "You gotta be kiddin.' I already had a band and my only ambition was to play music." "That's All Right," written by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, was one of three tunes that Presley, Moore and Black recorded that day under the supervision of producer Sam Phillips. The others were "I Love You Because" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky." "That's All Right" became a local radio hit, and Presley was soon on his way to cultural immortality.
Swan, who had a No. 1 hit in the 1970s with "I Can Help," said, "It's nice to see Scotty get so much recognition. Elvis would have had a whole different sound if it hadn't been for Scotty and his guitar. They inspired so many people, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, the Everly Brothers. Everybody wanted to be Elvis. I wanted to be Elvis. The day's musical line up included a number of Memphis music legends including saxophonist Ace Cannon, Billy Lee Riley, and Sonny Burgess and the Pacers.
- Bill Elliott and Elvis Presley - On the Same Racetrack?
Only in Memphis: 50th Anniversary Celebration Combines NASCAR and Rock 'n' Roll for October Race
(The Auto Channel, July 5, 2004)
On the front steps of Sun Studio, and in harmony with today's worldwide celebration of "50 Years of Rock 'n' Roll," officials from Memphis Motorsports Park, along with Elvis Presley Enterprises, the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau and Action Performance Companies, announced that legendary NASCAR driver Bill Elliott will compete in the Sam's Town 'He Dared To Rock' 250 on October 23, 2004 at Memphis Motorsports Park -- in a specially-designed race car sponsored by Lucas Oil and Boyd Gaming Corporation's Sam's Town Tunica Hotel & Gambling Hall.
Elliott and officials from the track unveiled the No. 09 Elvis Presley "He Dared To Rock" Dodge at the legendary Sun Studio this morning, fifty years to the day that a young Elvis Presley stepped inside the studio to record the revolutionary "That's All Right." Also on hand at this once-in-a-lifetime celebration of Memphis music were "50 Years of Rock 'n' Roll Ambassadors" Justin Timberlake, Isaac Hayes, Scotty Moore and "Sam the Sham" Samudio. ...
- Poignant words for fallen officers
By BOB BESTLER
(Myrtle Beach Online, July 5, 2004)
When the Horry County Police Department started planning last week's tribute to three county police officers who had been killed in the line of duty, one of the first people they called was Herman Ross Fillingane. "Major David Avant had heard about Mr. Fillingane's poems and thought he might like to write something for the three officers," said Police Chief Johnny Morgan. "He wrote it, then he came down and read it at the ceremony. It was very well-received." Fillingane writes poetry for corporations and other institutions - McNeill Pharmaceuticals, for instance, bought a poem to send to parents of terminally ill children. He works out of his Murrells Inlet home and has written poetic tributes for literally dozens of famous people - President Ronald Reagan, former Dallas Cowboys football coach Thomas Landry, legendary NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt and Elvis Presley. ...
- OFF THE RECORD
By Pat Roller
(Daily Record, July 5, 2004)
ELVIS PRESLEY is about to become a wine. As the music industry celebrates today's 50th anniversary of his first recording sessions, California-based Signature Wines are bringing out a Blue Suede Chardonnay, A King Cabernet Sauvignon and a Jailhouse Red Merlot. But why stop there? Surely there are more vintage performers who deserve to beon a wine label. Raise your glasses to the Beatles' When I'm A '64 Bordeaux, the Rolling Stones' Rose Tuesday, and Abba's Reisling Queen. ...
- A magical, MUSICAL TOUR: Touring Memphis takes you on a trip through rock 'n' roll history
By Jonathan Perrow
(Times-Picayunne, July 4, 2004)
... Monday marks Memphis' "50th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll," celebrating the day that 18-year-old Elvis Presley walked in to Memphis Recording Service (later Sun Studio) on Union Avenue in 1954 and recorded "That's All Right," which became a hit. That's the short version. The beginnings of rock 'n' roll are actually a bit more complicated.
Driving through the Mississippi Delta from New Orleans to Tennessee is a great way to approach Memphis. It's a straight shot on I-55 (about 6 hours), bisecting rolling farm land, the terrain getting hillier and greener as you go. In the 1940s and '50s, dispossessed sharecroppers and poor cotton farmers -- white and black -- migrated from these outlying areas to urban Memphis in search of jobs, taking their music with them: spirituals, ballads and "field hollers." Rockabilly. Gospel. Country. The blues. It all filtered through Memphis, which became known as "the crossroads of American music." Hardship and inspiration, time and chance, changing cultural mores and economic realities swirled together in Memphis to create rock 'n' roll.
To get a fix on the birth of rock, head to the Memphis Rock N Soul Museum, curated by the Smithsonian Institution. Here, in a very well air-conditioned space (take a sweater), is a terrific audio and visual history of rock and soul music that puts the genres into cultural, social and geographical perspective. It vividly tells the stories of Sam Phillips, Elvis Presley, Sun Records, Stax Records, Hi Records, B.B. King, Johnny Cash, Otis Redding, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and many, many others. A headset and an MP3 player may be less personal than a human tour guide, but it's a good way to immerse yourself in the musical history of Memphis. You can listen to and learn about Beale Street in its 1950s heyday, WDIA Radio Station (the first black radio station with early DJs Rufus Thomas and, yes, B.B. King), Sputnik Monroe (a white wrestler in the '50s who fought against segregation) and Stax Records, an innovative record label that exemplified collaboration between black and white musicians on recordings by the likes of Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes. If you're at all interested in the history of rock 'n' roll, plan to spend a few hours here.
... Sun Studio offers a dose of the real thing, however, because the building looks and feels much like it did back in the 1950s. The tour -- conducted by a real person -- mixes audio with old stories, pictures and memorabilia and even gives you a chance to sing into the same old microphone that Elvis used while standing in the exact spot on the exact floor where he once made music history. It's also a working music studio that has held recording sessions for U2, Sheryl Crow and other contemporary rockers. Eat lunch at Sun Studios, grab some barbecue downtown at the famous Rendezvous, or do like I did and follow a lunch tip to Cafe Francisco, a Wi-Fi cafe that roasts its own brand of coffee right on the premises. (Unlike New Orleans, Memphis is not a town overrun by coffee shops.)
A member of the "Blue Suede Brigade," Memphis' friendly tourist-helpers who stroll the streets, directed me to the trolley and the historic Pinch district, rolling past crumbling buildings squeezed between fancy new restaurants. At the cafe, nestled in the spreading shadow of The Pyramid, I took a moment to consider the vivid juxtaposition of old and new that fuels this city's sleepy, yet somehow restless mood. The 1.3 million people of Memphis refer to themselves as Memphians but Memphis has gone by many names over the years. "Soulsville, USA," "The capital of the mid-South," "River City," "The Birthplace of the Blues." Built 30 feet above river-level, Memphis is named after the ancient Egyptian city on the Nile, capital of the old kingdom of Egypt until about 1300 B.C. In honor of this connection, the Pyramid Arena, a towering 32-story pyramid, was erected in 1991 to house sporting and entertainment events. Locals have mixed feelings about the $65-million glass and stainless steel behemoth, the third largest pyramid in the world, which sits with its future unclear near the Mississippi River. They sometimes call it "The Tomb of Doom" and say that the new FedExForum will render it all but completely obsolete.
... Nothing goes on forever like Elvis, however, and perhaps nothing says "Memphis" like Graceland, the home Elvis bought in 1957 for $100,000, where he lived until his death in 1977 and where he is buried alongside his parents. What's remarkable about Graceland is that it isn't a mansion. It's a glorified, modified, deified suburban house, an odd mixture of opulence and homey feel. It's also a mecca for 600,000 Elvis fans a year, making it the most popular home tour in America besides the White House. If you haven't seen it, don't resist. Get on the bus, put on the headset, walk the grounds, experience the legend -- you can even get an Elvis tattoo (don't worry, it'll wash off). What could more American? Or more rock 'n' roll?
There are other things to do in Memphis. River boat rides. Mud Island with its large scale model of the Mississippi river. Opera and ballet. The Memphis Zoo. The famous Civil Rights Museum built into the hotel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. A police museum. ...
- The heartbeat of Memphis: Details about travel to Memphis
By Ellen Creager
(Arizona Republic / Knight Ridder Newspapers, July 4, 2004)
Some people kneel and kiss the black-taped "X" where Elvis stood that fateful day. Others eat banana MoonPies in his honor at the Sun Studio snack bar. A few croon into the silver microphone that the King used. The faithful go to Graceland. But really, the memory of Elvis and the 50th anniversary of rock and roll are just good excuses to visit this languid yet emotional city on the rolling Mississippi.
On Monday, Memphis will mark the 50th anniversary of the moment that a young Presley recorded what often is called the first rock-and-roll song, That's All Right, changing the face of American music forever: "That's all right, Mama, that's all right for you That's all right, Mama, any way you do"
The history of Elvis is only part of Memphis' lore. Memphis is home to Beale Street, where the blues pour out of every bar and restaurant, warming even the coolest nights. Beale Street starts rocking by 4 p.m. and doesn't stop until long after midnight. ... Farther down the street, we found a free concert. And another one. And another one. Memphis musicians must not make much money, but they sure can play. ...
'Lifeless' Graceland
Then there's Graceland. Cynics have made fun of it for so long that I expected the worst. But here is what Graceland is not: It is not tacky. It is not tasteless. It is not low-class. The biggest strike against the graceful columned home is that, well, the spirit of Elvis isn't there. As the years have passed, Graceland has settled into a stiff museum display: The living room looks petrified. The pool room looks unplayed. Elvis' father's office looks ancient. The memorabilia seem to be shrinking and fading with time. I drifted through the house. It was nice. But with the singer gone for 27 years now, it was lifeless. Finally, I entered the garden, where the gravestones of Presley and his parents lay amid flowers. Visitors fell silent in respect for the dead. Then I heard a sob. I looked up, and there was a woman with curly brown hair who was bending heavily against the rail, weeping at Elvis' grave. She dabbed her eyes fiercely with a tissue, then looked around, embarrassed. Suddenly, tears stung my own eyelids, not for Elvis, but for her. In Memphis, somehow, that seemed all right.
- Museum at Jackson airport fulfills quest started in '95
By Billy Watkins
(Clarion-Ledger, July 4, 2004)
... B.B. King finally has a permanent home in Mississippi. So does Leontyne Price, Elvis Presley, Jimmie Rodgers, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Mary Wilson, Hank Cochran and Muddy Waters, along with many others. The Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame - in existence since 1998 but homeless - is set to open in the next week or so at the Jackson International Airport, where nearly 2 million travelers from all over the world pass through annually. An exact date depends on how quickly clean-up crews finish and two truckloads of memorabilia can be placed inside the 5,326-square-foot museum/restaurant, near the entrance to the airport's west concourse.
- All the way from Memphis: Elvis Presley, age 19, kick-started rock 'n' roll 50 years ago tomorrow
By David Hinckley
(New York Daily News, July 4, 2004)
At noon tomorrow, WCBS-FM (101.1), WREF (850 AM) and hundreds of other radio stations will play Elvis Presley's "That's All Right, Mama," marking the 50th anniversary of the blistering hot Memphis night on which he recorded it. They're paying this tribute because that recording, the happy child of absentminded noodling between Elvis and bass player Bill Black, is widely credited with launching rock 'n' roll as we know it.
Nailing down the "first rock 'n' roll record" is like trying to perform an appendectomy with an eggbeater, but "That's All Right, Mama" gets a spot in any discussion. Even though it was only a modest regional hit, it launched Elvis, who in turn brought this new rock 'n' roll critter to the masses. Rock 'n' roll's components were all teed up. Elvis put them together in a way, and in a package, that went where his predecessors could not have taken them. For a variety of reasons, some of them frustrating, Willie Mae Thornton's "Hound Dog" was never going to get out of the rhythm-and-blues room. Once Elvis got hold of it - with Black, guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana behind him - he not only opened the door, he kicked it clean off the hinges.
Nor was Elvis - who on July 5, 1954, was a $1-an-hour electrician - simply the messenger. His voice had both power and an almost ethereal lightness. He had a deep appreciation for R&B, country, gospel, pop and blues. He didn't just sing the music, he helped shape it. "He listened," says Fontana. "He was open to ideas. And when he got what he wanted, he knew it. He wasn't looking for perfection. He wanted the right feel." ...
- A little white lie: July 5, 1954 - when Elvis recorded `That's All Right Mama' - may be the birthdate of rock 'n' roll
By GREG QUILL
(Toronto Star, July 4, 2004)
"The coloured folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in the shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind 'til I goosed it up. 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 Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw."
- Elvis Presley in 1956
He was accused for decades of appropriating the music and performance style of countless neglected black American musicians who came before him, specifically Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. He was also credited by white music historians with having invented rock 'n' roll 50 years ago tomorrow with a single incendiary studio performance of the then septuagenarian blues belter's pedestrian ditty, "That's All Right Mama."
But Elvis Presley knew the truth - and spoke it - way back then, in the blistering heat of rock's big bang. An enigma to the world for his entire life, Elvis always knew who and what he was: The ineffably talented but otherwise accidental by-product of a peculiar confluence of cultural anomalies surging through the American South in the volatile years after the end of World War II. He emerged in an electric atmosphere charged with strange new radio sounds, alternating currents of rebellion and conservatism, and the promise of social and spiritual reconstruction.
Elvis at 19 was raw and unformed, a poor kid from the wrong side of Tupelo, Miss., who loved singing gospel hymns in church, clung to his radio and hung out in the record stores and honky-tonks of nearby music mecca Memphis, Tenn., absorbing every sound, gesture, sensation by osmosis. He drew in, like air, the seminal blues of a young B.B. King, Wynonnie Harris, Roy Brown, Ike Turner, Lonnie Johnson and Bobby "Blue" Bland; the jazz-tinged country swing of Bill Monroe and Bob Wills; the lonesome road ballads of Hank Snow and Hank Williams; the cool, detached attitude of his movie heroes James Dean and Dean Martin, whose pernicious croon he envied most of all. Elvis was no fool, but at such a young age he was putty in the hands of former radio deejay, studio engineer and visionary music marketer Sam Phillips, whose mission in 1950 in setting up the Memphis Recording Service had been explicit and unequivocal: "To record Negro artists in the South who wanted to make a record and had no place to go." ...
- That's not all right: Debate of rock's birth set anew with 50th anniversary pegged to Elvis song
By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
(Asbury Park Press / Associated Press, July 4, 2004)
As far as Elvis Presley songs go, "That's All Right," his very first record, wasn't among his biggest hits. In fact, the 1954 song wasn't even a hit at all. Yet tomorrow on July 5, 50 years to the day after it was recorded, media and fans will converge on Memphis for a blowout celebration to commemorate the song, which has been labeled by the city as the tune that started the musical and cultural phenomenon known as rock 'n' roll. ... But while Presley may be universally known as the King of Rock 'n' Roll, some consider it a stretch to anoint him the creator of a genre that mixed blues, R&B, country and even a bit of swing -- musical styles that were around long before Elvis. ...
- Debate over rock music's birth focuses on 1954 Elvis song
(Billings Gazette / Associated Press, July 4, 2004)
As far as Elvis Presley songs go, "That's All Right," his very first record, wasn't among his biggest hits. In fact, the 1954 song wasn't even a hit at all. Yet on Monday, 50 years to the day after it was recorded, media and fans will converge on Memphis for a blowout celebration to commemorate the song, which has been labeled by the city as the tune that started the musical and cultural phenomenon known as rock 'n' roll. But while Elvis may be universally known as the King of Rock 'n' Roll, some consider it a stretch to anoint him the creator of a genre that mixed blues, R&B, country and even a bit of swing - musical styles that were around long before Elvis. ...
I don't think anyone is calling this the very first rock 'n' roll song ever made, but it is the first time rock 'n' roll went global and exploded on the world scene," says Schorr, who bought Sun more than a decade ago (it remains a recording studio). "Everyone refers to it as kind of the opening shot of the big bang of rock 'n' roll that occurred in rock 'n' roll, which the other ones hadn't done yet." Others also suggest that more so than the music, "That's All Right" was perhaps the first time that American teens - more specifically, white teens - started embracing a new style of edgy, sexy black music as their own. "The rock 'n' roll explosion really starts when white kids were becoming immersed in black music," Kirkeby said. "Elvis was the catalyst for that, you have to give him that credit." Soul legend Isaac Hayes puts it more bluntly. "You've got to think about it at a time when black music was looked down upon by whites. People like Elvis got lambasted for singing that kind of music," he said. "It took a white guy to break it. Blacks couldn't break it." More than 1,000 stations around the globe are scheduled to play "That's All Right" at the same time on that date, and Memphis talent such as Justin Timberlake and Hayes are expected to perform during a concert. Throughout the year, there have been dozens of promotional tie-ins celebrating "That's All Right" as the start of rock 'n' roll, from Rolling Stone magazine covers to DVD and CD releases. ...
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