Last Train to Memphis

by Peter Guralnick

  As a final footnote, the Hi Hat was, evidently, a “higher class of joint,” and the reason for the tryout in the first place, according to Ronald Smith, was that the owners, Tom and Mary, an older couple who had formerly been Arthur Murray dance instructors, wanted to institute a classier policy of entertainment, featuring waltzes and popular music. Since Eddie Bond by his own admission was strictly a country singer, and Elvis at this stage was strictly a pop singer, it seemed to be a perfect fit. Ron put the dismissal down to jealousy to some degree, but Eddie told Charles Raiteri in the Goldmine interview, “The big shots that run this place… sat at the front table like they was runnin’ the Peabody and just stared at us…. I called ’em the ‘Board of Directors.’ [That] night… [the] old lady says, ‘I’ll tell you what you gone do. You gone get rid of that snaky-lookin’ fella. If you don’t, I’m gone fire all of you.’ ” Bond thought it was something of a matter of personal hygiene as well. “Elvis wasn’t the cleanest guy you’d find, I’ll guarantee you,” he told Raiteri, further explaining the owners’ distaste.

  “We came very close”: Elvis, too, spoke of how close the couple came to marriage. “I got out of school, and I was driving a truck. I was dating a girl and waiting for her to get out of school so we could get married,” he said in a 1972 interview, only one of many times he referred to Dixie in similar fashion in subsequent years.

  “I was in doubt”: March 26, 1956, interview.

  “She said, ‘Can you be here?’ ”: 1972 interview.

  Sam had picked up an acetate: This account is based primarily on interviews with Sam Phillips in 1979 and 1990. In the 1990 interview Sam told me that Wortham had an uncle who was a guard at the prison, and the uncle steered Wortham toward another prisoner, a short-termer, perhaps white, who recorded the acetate.

  The role that this one-sided acetate has been assigned in history is quite different than the actual song will bear. Marion, I’m sure putting together two different stories, and knowing Sam’s evolving thinking nearly as well as Sam himself, always said that this was the moment at which Sam realized his vision: “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars,” she quoted Sam correctly, though, as she always said, the quote was missing Sam’s underlying vision and irony (“Sam could not have cared less about the money”) when it subsequently appeared in print. Far more misleading, however, is the context in which the quotation has generally been placed. All it takes is one listen to the acetate (which is in the possession of Dr. John Bakke at Memphis State and which was heard in part in the BBC documentary Presley: “I Don’t Sing Like Nobody”) to realize that there could have been nothing less overtly African-American-sounding than this particular acetate or this particular song. Moreover, Elvis had given no one, least of all Sam Phillips, reason to think that he was drawn to black music in particular at this point.

  Unquestionably, Sam Phillips heard something different in his voice, and there is equally little question that Phillips was coming to recognize at this time both the limitations of the “race” market and the unlimited possibilities, and untapped potential, in the popular appetite for African-American culture. One other side note of contention: Marion always said that Sam wanted to put out the demo as it was but couldn’t find the singer. Sam has consistently denied that. You couldn’t put out a record in that form, he has said, and the singer was secondary to the song in this case anyway. Listening to the demo tends to confirm Sam’s view, though who knows—Sam Phillips prized originality above all else, and he may have heard something sufficiently different here to tempt him to put it on the market.

  “I guess I must have sat there”: Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley Speaks!, p. 10.

  On the evening of Wednesday, June 30: In addition to interviews with Dixie Locke, James Blackwood, and Jake Hess on the crash and their own (and Elvis’) reaction to it, I have relied on the accounts in the Memphis Press-Scimitar and Commercial Appeal, July 1–3, 1954.

  “THAT’S ALL RIGHT”

  All quotes from Sam Phillips, Marion Keisker, Scotty Moore, and Dixie Locke are from the author’s interviews, unless otherwise noted.

  The group, which had existed in various configurations: Background on the Starlite Wranglers from interviews with Scotty Moore, Bobbie Moore, and Evelyn Black, as well as Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins’ Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.

  how they “could get on MGM”: The quotation is from “Scotty Moore: The Guitar That Changed the World,” interview by Robert Santelli, Goldmine, August 23, 1991.

  Sometime around the middle of May: The dating, and the circumstances, are primarily from interviews with Scotty Moore.

  “I told him I was working”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Scotty Moore (MVC/MSU).

  After a few minutes: The repertoire is based on various interviews with Scotty Moore over the years, the conversation on Scotty’s description of Elvis’ manner, with likely topics supplied in interviews with Scotty, Bobbie Moore, Evelyn Black, and Johnny Black. The whole question of whether Elvis knew Bill (he was certainly meeting Scotty for the first time) before they got together on this occasion is a somewhat vexed one. By all logical standards he should have known Bill, having lived across the street from Bill’s mother for the past year or so and having known Bill’s brother Johnny for quite some time. There is no question that Bill’s wife, Evelyn, recognized Elvis, but neither Scotty nor Bobbie was aware of Bill’s knowing Elvis, and Elvis always denied any prior acquaintance in his early interviews. It certainly seems possible that theirs was a nodding, but not a speaking, acquaintance. “[He] intended to use my brother on the fiddle,” Bill told Bob Johnson in 1956 (Elvis Presley Speaks!, p. 10), but whether this was the literal truth or simply family politics is impossible to say.

  The next night everybody: This description of the first night in the studio is based primarily on extensive interviews with Scotty Moore and Sam Phillips. The actual order of recording is impossible to determine, but Lee Cotten makes a good case for “Harbor Lights” coming first in his All Shook Up: Elvis Day-by-Day, 1954–1977, and there is little question that “I Love You Because” was recorded at the first session, prior to “That’s All Right.” Interestingly, Elvis’ friend from the Courts, Buzzy Forbess, was under the impression that Elvis recorded “Blue Moon of Kentucky” first, a piece of misinformation fostered by Elvis when the record came out in what must have been a moment of embarrassment. “I never sang like [that] in my life,” Elvis told Jet magazine in 1957, “until I made that first record…. I remembered that song because I heard Arthur (Big Boy Crudup) sing it and I thought I would like to try it. That was it.”

  “This is where the soul of man never dies”: Robert Palmer, Deep Blues, p. 233.

  It was a slap beat: Colin Escott, liner notes to Bill Black Combo album.

  “we couldn’t believe it was us”: Elvis Presley Speaks!, p. 10.

  “It just sounded sort of raw”: Trevor Cajiao interview with Scotty Moore for “We Were the Only Band Directed by an Ass,” Elvis: The Man and His Music 10, March 1991, p. 19.

  “We thought it was exciting”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Scotty Moore (MVC/MSU).

  “It got so you could sell a half million copies”: Edwin Howard, “He’s Made $2 Million on Disks—Without a Desk,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, April 29, 1959.

  The next night everyone came to the studio: The exact chronology of these two nights is guesswork to a certain extent. There are no written records. I have Elvis singing “Blue Moon” (though he probably did not record an acceptable take of it until mid August), because he was singing the song when he first met Scotty and Bill, and at this point they were casting about, somewhat desperately, for a second side. We know that Dewey broke the record on the air at least by the Friday after it was first recorded, but which night exactly is somewhat open to conjecture. I have tried to follow what seemed to me the most logical progression, based primarily on the most persuasive of Sam
Phillips’ accounts of how, and why, he contacted Dewey.

  “Dewey [was] completely unpredictable”: Johnson’s comments are constructed from columns in the Press-Scimitar on August 22, 1956; October 1, 1968; and June 20, 1972, all of which cover much the same ground.

  “Dewey loved to argue”: Interview with Dickey Lee, 1988.

  Dewey opened a Falstaff: This account of Dewey and Sam’s meeting is based primarily on interviews with Sam Phillips in 1988, 1989, and 1991.

  “He fixed the radio”: Elvis Presley, prepared by the editors of TV Radio Mirror, 1956, p. 21.

  The response was instantaneous: Carlton Brown, “A Craze Called Elvis,” Coronet, September 1956. This seems the most considered account of the overwhelming reaction.

  “hearing them say his name”: Elaine Dundy, Elvis and Gladys, pp. 180–181.

  “Mrs. Presley, you just get”: Elston Leonard, “Elvis Presley: The New Singing Rage,” Tiger, c. 1956, p. 13.

  “I was scared to death”: Elvis interviewed on Dewey’s death in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 29, 1968.

  “Sit down, I’m gone interview”: Stanley Booth, “A Hound Dog to the Manor Born,” Esquire, February 1968.

  It was Thursday, July 8: The story has been told many times, but this seems to me the most logical date by the sequence of events described. Recording would appear to have definitely taken place on Monday, July 5. Leaving some time for it all to settle in, one would imagine that Sam’s meeting with Dewey would logically wait until Wednesday, which would leave Thursday for the actual making of an acetate before the Thursday-evening show. But obviously, this is only informed conjecture, and likely to remain so.

  “I told him I loved it”: Larry Johnson, “Memories of Elvis Shared by Close Friend,” Trenton Herald Gazette, August 17, 1978.

  “Sometime during the evening”: Bill E. Burk, Early Elvis: The Humes Years, p. 131.

  Another classmate, George Klein: Interview with George Klein, 1989.

  “We spent three or four nights”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Scotty Moore (MVC/MSU).

  “All right, boys”: Interview with Carl Perkins, 1979.

  “That’s fine now”: This can be heard in conversation between takes on the album, The Complete Sun Sessions.

  “like a little kid at Christmas”: Telephone interview with Ed Leek, 1988.

  Jack Clement, who was singing: Interviews with Jack Clement, 1978, 1989.

  On Saturday, July 17: This can be dated because it was Dewey and Dot Phillips’ sixth anniversary.

  Dixie rode with him on his route: Various interviews with James and Gladys Tipler, including Elvis by Jerry Hopkins; Jerry Hopkins’ interviews with the Tiplers (MVC/MSU); the 1987 BBC television documentary Presley: “I Don’t Sing Like Nobody”; and “Elvis Presley: The New Singing Rage” by Elston Leonard in Tiger, c. 1956.

  She had hoped: Interview with Marion Keisker, 1981.

  “I’ll never forget”: Burk, Elvis: A 30-Year Chronicle, p. 7.

  “I was scared stiff”: Paul Wilder interview, August 6, 1956.

  “It was really a wild sound”: 1972 interview.

  “I came offstage”: Paul Wilder interview.

  When Elvis referred to “my manager,” the interviewer asked him who his manager was at the time. Momentarily flustered, Elvis stammered, “Bob… Bob Neal,” who became his manager several months later. It’s hard to say for sure whether it was in fact Neal or Sam Phillips, who clearly was there to provide reassurance and inspiration, who explained the crowd reaction to him, but given the context, and the fact that Neal was the “manager” of the show, it seems likely that it was Neal who, essentially, pushed him back out onstage.

  Elvis sang “Blue Moon of Kentucky” again: What he sang for his encore is purely supposition at this point. Scotty said they could have sung “I Love You Because,” because they had rehearsed it—but he doubted that they did. In his recollection “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” were not simply the only songs that they knew well enough to perform in this kind of setting, they were the only songs that the audience would have wanted to hear. No one else that I have interviewed to date, or whose interview I have read, has offered persuasive testimony to the contrary, but there may well be someone out there who actually knows!

  “It was a real eye-opener”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  he had traveled between sixty-five thousand and seventy-five thousand miles: Trevor Cajiao, “The Most Important Man in the World: Sam Phillips Talks to Now Dig This,” pt. 2, Now Dig This 84, March 1990, p. 17.

  “I remember talking”: Escott and Hawkins, Good Rockin’ Tonight, p. 67.

  “He played my r&b records”: Escott interview of Sam Phillips as quoted in ibid. and Charles Raiteri liner notes to the Dewey Phillips air checks album, Red Hot & Blue, on the Zu Zazz label.

  “Paul Berlin was the hottest”: Now Dig This, p. 20.

  “One night I left Houston”: Ibid., edited down from a more discursive account, with permission.

  “The current greeting”: Cowboy Songs, June 1955.

  “I thought, Surely, no”: Interview with Ronny Trout, 1991.

  Johnny Black was in Texas: Interview with Johnny Black, 1990.

  Ronnie Smith called up for Eddie Bond: Interview with Ronald Smith, 1993.

  he brought the record out to the Rainbow skating rink: Vince Staten, The Real Elvis: Good Old Boy, p. 92.

  The Songfellows, Elvis told her: There are persistent rumors that Elvis tried out again for the Songfellows at around this time. Neither Sam nor Scotty nor Dixie nor James Blackwood recalled a specific tryout, but it would not be unlike Elvis to compartmentalize his activities in such a way that they would not be aware of it.

  Vernon Presley offered the most specific recollection. “Later, after he made a couple of records professionally,” Vernon declared in his January 1978 Good Housekeeping article with Nancy Anderson, “Elvis came to me and said, ‘Daddy, you know the Song Fellows? They want me to join them now.’ My answer to that was, ‘To hell with the Song Fellows! You’re doing good with what you’re got going, and I don’t believe I would change.’ ”

  “They taught him how to stand”: Interview with Bobbie Moore and Evelyn Black, 1993.

  “It was kind of like we adopted him”: Interview with Bobbie Moore, 1992.

  they played out at the Kennedy Veterans: Ibid.

  “My mother brought a group out once a month”: Interview with Monte Weiner, 1993.

  “He wanted us to come out”: Tiger.

  According to Reggie Young: Interview with Reggie Young, 1989.

  “Sleepy Eyed John was all into Ray Price’s”: Interview with Jack Clement, 1989.

  “he didn’t play with bands”: Elizabeth Kaye, “Sam Phillips: The Rolling Stone Interview,” Rolling Stone 467, February 13, 1986, p. 56.

  On the strength of these credentials: Jim Denny’s role was detailed in interviews with Sam Phillips in 1979, 1988, and 1990.

  Others were noticing: Mike Seeger interview with Carter Stanley, spring 1966, as quoted in Bluegrass: A History by Neil V. Rosenberg, with additional material from Rosenberg; also, “Joe Meadows: Mountain State Fiddler” by Ivan M. Tribe, Bluegrass Unlimited, October 1978.

  “All of our distributors”: Interview with Chick Crumpacker, 1989.

  “My bell-cow area”: Interview with Brad McCuen, 1988.

  “This was the first we could see”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Scotty Moore (MVC/MSU). In addition I interviewed Scotty, Dixie Locke, George Klein, and a number of bystanders about the performance.

  In Florida, Lee Denson: Interview with Jimmy and Lee Denson, 1989.

  GOOD ROCKIN’ TONIGHT

  All quotes from Sam Phillips, Marion Keisker, Scotty Moore, and Dixie Locke are from the author’s interviews, unless otherwise noted.

  Jim Denny had finally succumbed: Sam first met Jim Denny in 1944 when he applied for a job as an announcer at WSM, the Opry’s mother station. When he didn�
��t get the job, and his future partner, Jim Bulleit, did, Bulleit sent him down the street to WLAC, where Bulleit had already won a job that he was now going to pass up.

  In the meantime Sam had also heard: Interviews with Sam Phillips, 1979, 1990, 1991.

  Twenty-one-year-old bass player Buddy Killen: Interview with Buddy Killen, 1989.

  Marty Robbins saw evidence: Alanna Nash interview with Marty Robbins in her book Behind Closed Doors: Talking with the Legends of Country Music, p. 443.

  when Elvis spotted Chet Atkins: Interview with Chet Atkins, 1988.

  Probably of all the Opry legends: Interview with Sam Phillips, 1988.

  But when they met Monroe: Interviews with Sam Phillips and Bill Monroe, 1980. Also Neil Rosenberg’s Bluegrass: A History describes the meeting, as does Bluegrass 1950–1958: Bill Monroe, the Charles Wolfe and Neil Rosenberg booklet that accompanies the Bear Family boxed set of Monroe’s music of the same name.

  There were two additional surprises: Interviews with Marion Keisker, 1981, and with Bobbie Moore and Evelyn Black, 1993.

  Before leaving, Sam conferred briefly: Interview with Sam Phillips, 1988.

  This contradicts the well-known version that has Denny telling Elvis to go back to driving a truck—but then so does the account of every eyewitness that I have interviewed. The almost universal acceptance of the story by members of the music community who were not present appears to be based on two factors: Denny’s personal chilliness and somewhat autocratic manner, and Elvis’ genuine dislike of the man for that reason. But Denny, if anything, was giving Elvis a break, not denying him one, and if it would not have been out of character for him, in another well-known part of the story, to have referred slightingly to Elvis’ music as “nigger music,” such attitudes were common, as Chet Atkins has frequently pointed out, in many segments of the country music community at that time. The story that Elvis cried all the way back to Memphis is based on thirdhand testimony; as Marion Keisker said, “There was only Sam and Elvis and me in the car. We were in good spirits. I’d like to see where that other person was sitting.”