Records That Changed Me
On August 16, 1977, I was climbing into the camper in my grandfather’s backyard when my Uncle Frankie told me that Elvis had died. He looked sad, so I tried to act sad too. In the days that followed, I learned more about the King than I ever cared to know: that he died on the toilet, that he gained weight in his later years, that Elvis impersonators existed. I never really got the whole Elvis thing, and still don’t. I can name, and make solid cases for, at least 5 artists or bands that were more important than Elvis.
So imagine my shock three years later when I heard “The Sun Sessions” for the first time. This was not the Elvis I thought I knew. This was pre-fame, hungry, raw, sex-soaked Elvis recording with two buddies in a room the size of my dining room. “The Sun Sessions” is rhythm stripped and reduced, concentrated and pure, the most physical music I have ever experienced: the relentless spanking of Bill Black’s stand-up bass, that mysterious double clicking throughout (it wasn’t the drummer, because they didn’t have one*), the criminally underrated Scotty Moore’s counterpoint guitar filling the cracks, and then Elvis, in full command, deconstructing language at the same time he is inventing a new one. Examples, you say? Go listen to what he does to the word “baby” on “Baby, Let’s Play House.” Or watch what happens to your body when he stops “Milkcow Blues Boogie” to say “let’s git reeeeal real gone for a change” and then proceeds to throw the whole shebang into overdrive. Or how nothing in real life or music feels more like a train than “Mystery Train.”
I made a pilgrimage to Sun Studios when I was in Memphis a few years back and stood in the spot Elvis did (well, the spot where Sam Phillips asked him to stand) when he recorded these songs. The experience did nothing to humanize or lessen the god-like awe I feel for what he did there. At that moment, I truly knew what “The King” meant. I care not a lick for anything Elvis did after he left the army, and that’s most of it. But “The Sun Sessions” makes up for all the wretched excess. If you’ve never heard it, I envy what you will experience if and when you do.
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* There are drums on two tracks: “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone” and “I Forgot to Remember to Forget.”
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