A novel that dogs the history of Rock Music. Join Elvis in Memphis.
The Blues Muse: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781518621147: Books
Memphis
Somehow I’d bypassed Memphis. Although I’d passed through and busked a bit I hadn’t stayed long enough to get my feet under the table. Most folks caught it on the way up, stayed a while and made their mark. It was like a staging post on the way to Chicago. The Wolf rolled in and out on his way to Chess.
I had rekindled a shred of ambition. I’d heard about this talent scout called Sam Phillips who checked out the local R&B and Country acts. He was acting for the Chess and Vee-Jay labels in Chicago. If he liked you he sent you on. But he’d also been recording his own talent and had set up his own studio with the Sun Record Label and Memphis Recording Service.
I wasn’t sure about the chances of a recording career but I had hopes of getting into the house band and ambition enough to want to move into recording. I thought there might be an opening there for me. Sam sounded like the kind of guy who knew what he wanted. He’d recorded the Wolf and Rufus Thomas. I thought I might just get lucky.
Sam Phillips seemed happy enough to hear me out. He listened to my guitar and said he liked it but I soon figured that he did not want to record me. He was busy looking for something different. I didn’t fit the bill. If I wanted to record I’d have to pay for the pleasure and that wasn’t what I wanted. I also found that there were no openings for soundmen or scouts. I had no way forward and my contacts were simply not opening any doors.
But Beale Street was a revelation. It was jumping. The place was packed with marks and every bar, club, bordello and street corner was pumping out a different sound. It reminded me of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. This was my kind of place.
The only trouble was that every other Joe Soap had the same idea. The place was packed out with musicians all trying to claw a living. It was jumping but it was sure hard to find a place to jump in.
I drifted back to Sun Studio more in hope than expectation. I guess there was one of my old buddies who had the same idea. As I ambled near to the place with no clear plan in mind a truck drew up outside and out jumped a young lithe figure I knew well. He hadn’t changed much since those days in Tupelo; the same crazy style, long greased hair, sharp clothes and sideburns. The only difference was that now he was clutching a beat-up old acoustic guitar.
Elvis saw me staring and recognised me straight away. He came right on over and gave me a hug, asked how I was doing and flashed that same lopsided grin that I remembered so well. I explained that I was plum full of luck, just that none of it was of the good kind. I was looking for work.
Elvis stood back from me looking concerned and thoughtful. He asked if I’d driven trucks.
‘Sure,’ I lied, after all driving was driving, trucks were no different to cars.
It looked as if there was a possibility of a job. My spirits rose.
I asked what he was up to. He grinned with that lip raised and quivering and lifted his guitar.
‘I’m here to record a song for my Ma,’ he explained. ‘Gonna be a birthday surprise.’
The Memphis Recording Service was one of Sam Phillip’s spin offs. For a few dollars you could go in and record a couple of sides and walk out with a record of your own. It was highly popular. Elvis thought that it would send his Ma crazy to hear him on record.
I accompanied him in.
Sam Phillips was not there but Marion Keisker, his secretary, ran the business when he was not around. She organised the recording booth. Before we could start Marion had to get a few details down.
‘What sort of style do you sing?’ Marion asked.
‘I sing all kind of songs,’ Elvis answered with a bemused frown.
‘Well who do you sound like?’
‘I don’t sound like nobody,’ he replied shuffling around awkwardly.
I concurred with that. Elvis didn’t look, move or sound like any white cat I’d ever met.
I sat at his feet in that booth as Elvis cleared his throat, fidgeted around and got his guitar just how he wanted it. Inside that booth the bubbly Elvis was absent. He was subdued, serious and nervous, a little overawed. He’d wanted Sam Phillips to hear him sing and had hopes of being recorded properly. That was not to be. But he wanted this to be good for his mother. He joked around a bit to settle his nerves and then the red light came on.
Elvis strummed his guitar and sang. The first number was ‘My Happiness’ and then he went straight in to ‘That’s When Your Heartaches Begin’.
When he’d finished we came out. Elvis was excited and buoyed up. He hadn’t made any bad fluffs. It had gone well. He was sure his mother was gonna love it.
Marion had also been impressed. I watched as she wrote ‘Good ballad singer. Hold’ next to his name. I knew that meant she was certain to play it to Sam.
We went back the next day to pick up the demo and Elvis clutched that acetate in its plain paper cover to him, delighted at what he’d done. His mother was more than delighted.
I was not so sure. I’d heard that voice. It was good, but I reckoned that he needed to get the material right. Back in Tupelo we’d been seeing all those great Blues guys who could really jive it up. I would have preferred him to be doing some of that hard-ass stuff.
Elvis was as good as his word and got me working making deliveries. I made good money.
‘Hey Elvis,’ I asked as we were working together, ‘why don’t you record some of that great stuff we were listening to? You know……. The Jimmy Reed and Arthur Crudup.’
Elvis paused and looked thoughtful.
I knew he could do it and I knew Sam Phillips was on the look out for a white guy who could sing like a black guy. He made no secret of it. He always said that The Wolf was the greatest talent he’d ever recorded and if he’d have been white he’d have made Sam a billion bucks. I thought Elvis had the potential.
Over the ensuing months I worked as a truck driving delivery man and often teamed up with Elvis. We tore up the town and had a good time. Elvis liked to drive wild, live wild and catch the best acts in town and Memphis had all the best acts going. He had wide tastes. One time it’d be the glorious smooth voice of Clyde McPhatter and another it was the wild Little Richard or a country act like Bill Monroe. Elvis didn’t seem to mind what colour they were or what type of music they were playing. As long as it was good and it moved him he was happy. When he heard that music he couldn’t sit still. His whole body jerked into rhythm. It shook him to the core. There was nothing he could do about it.
I think Elvis had all but given up on Sam coming through. He’d been in and recorded another demo – ‘Just to hear the sound of my voice’ – he told me. But I could sense the disappointment. Music was in him and it had to come out.
We were together when Elvis got the call. Marion had finally persuaded Sam to give him a chance. Sam was not convinced. He liked the voice he heard but to him it was nothing that special.
I sat in the corner of the studio looking up at the weird switch-back ceiling with the insulation tiles hanging off. Sam assured me that it was like that to create the sound. It stopped it echoing. I was dubious but then you couldn’t argue with the quality of the recordings he was getting out of it. They were different.
Sam had a bit of an idea of what he wanted. He placed Elvis in the centre with his guitar and brought in a guitarist called Scotty Moore and a bass player called Bill Black. I don’t know. I didn’t get it. Those two guys looked square to me. They didn’t look like they could cut it. Elvis looked so cool he stood out between those two. He was young, sharp and keen. They looked jaded, boring and out of touch. I couldn’t see them cutting it with the kids or jiving up a storm. I didn’t know why Sam had brought in a couple of black musicians. With someone like Ike Turner behind him Elvis could let it all go and shine.
I was being proved right. It wasn’t happening. The guys weren’t gelling. Elvis was nervous and subdued and what they were producing was sending the mossies to sleep. It was late into the night and Sam was just on the point of giving up.
‘Take a break’, he said in exasperation and disappeared off.
When the guys in the studio were alone Elvis started fooling around and singing ‘That’s Alright Mama’ in his most uncontrolled and exuberant fashion, jumping, shakin’ and thrashing that guitar any old how. Scotty and Bill responded and they all let rip.
In the control room Sam nearly blew his top. That was the sound he had been dreaming of. He shouted for Marion to press record.
In the studio the unleashed Elvis was having a ball. All the nervous tension was gone. He let it loose. In a couple of takes they had it and a new sound was born. Elvis had married that Blues of Arthur’s with a jumped up rhythm and created a monster. A few days later Dewey Phillips played it non-stop on his Memphis radio station and that was all she wrote.
Elvis was no longer a truck driver but was driving all over the State. He was in demand and it looked like the girls wanted to tear him apart and eat him up raw.
As for me, my truck driving days were over too. I think Elvis pulled a few strings and got me a couple of gigs with the Ike Turner band and a few with Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who were really just the Ike Turner band with Jackie singing. They’d had a big hit with ‘Rocket 88’, that many were saying was the first record to create the sound that Elvis did so well, but I was not so sure. What Elvis did was something special and original. He’d created Rockabilly single handed. I felt it had come out of a general movement. The kids were ready for a new sound. Many of the cats were moving in that direction. There were Louis Jordan, Bill Haley, Hank Williams, Roy Brown, Clyde McPhatter, Rufus Thomas, Big Mama Thornton and a host of others. Elvis just pulled it together and rode the crest of that wave.
It was an experience I wouldn’t have missed for the world. I caught a number of those shows where Elvis exploded and Scotty and Bill were wild men. Elvis was magnetic. He was bursting with electricity; it ran through him, jerked him and poured out of him in a torrent. There was a seminal force, a howling beast inside him, a primeval energy that he’d tapped into. I don’t even think he was aware. He just let it loose and it controlled him and he allowed it to take him over. He gave himself to it and became one with it. It was primitive, innate and total. The screaming was unreal and they were right – there wasn’t a dry seat in the whole building! Those were the days when Elvis was real and totally unreal, before he started getting too massive and TV and fame turned him, made him conscious of what he was doing, and made him into a parody of himself.
I saw him when he was raw, savage and untamed. It consumed him. He left me in his wake and I was washed up on Beale Street again busking for dimes.