Elvis Presley: The genesis of genius
New box set chronicles icon’s early years
Elvis Presley made his first professional recordings for Sam Phillips’ Memphis-based Sun Records label on Independence Day 1954. In December 1955, he left Sun for RCA Victor, propelling him to a national breakthrough, global stardom and rock ’n’ roll legend status. The 18-month period between those events — the genesis of Elvis Presley, if you will — is extensively chronicled in a new box set (out now from Sony/Legacy) titled A Boy From Tupelo: The Complete 1953-1955 Recordings.
“The motivation behind A Boy From Tupelo is to dispel the annoying perception of Elvis’ early success — at least in some quarters — as him having been someone who was just lucky to have been at the right place at the right time,” says box set producer and Elvis historian Ernst Mikael Jørgensen. “In music and in facts, we try and show that wasn’t the real story. That the notion of Elvis as just a ‘ lucky guy’ is, as Sam Phillips said, an injustice.”
To understand both the genesis and genius of early Elvis, Jørgensen spent decades researching and conceptualizing A Boy From Tupelo.
The box set offers the most comprehensive collection of his formative work ever assembled. It includes every Sun Records master and outtake, plus the songs that Elvis paid out of pocket to record at Memphis Recording Service before signing with Sun: My Happiness/That’s When Your Heartaches Begin and I’ll Never Stand in Your Way/It Wouldn’t Be the Same Without You.
The set expands beyond studio work to include all known Presley live performances and radio recordings from the era, as well as a newly discovered version of I Forgot to Remember to Forget, captured on the Louisiana Hayride in the fall of 1955.
“The overall thought was to make every element that has ever turned up available — whether they were poor quality, good quality, outtakes, masters, live recordings, everything,” Jørgensen says. “This way, we put it out there for everyone who wants to get a deeper understanding of how this music was created, and how Elvis went out on the road and tried to define what his musical style was.”
Essential to that understanding is the set’s accompanying 120page book, which is designed as an illustrated travelogue chronicling Presley’s first months as a professional through stories, rare photos and other bits of memorabilia and ephemera.
“We put together a calendar of the 18-month period he was with Sun. Each individual date may
“He had to prepare by going out there and learning tricks, engaging with audiences and developing himself.”
Historian Ernst Mikael Jørgensen
not mean anything to anyone, but if you compile those 95 or 98 show dates, you begin to see the full story emerge,” Jørgensen says of Elvis’ early touring efforts on the country music, regional fair and local dance circuits. “It was hard work, and every day: driving grueling distances to lowpaying shows, humble circumstances, with Elvis in some gymnasium, usually with no stage. To become the Elvis of Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel and what would follow, he had to prepare by going out there and learning tricks, engaging with audiences and developing himself.”
As a studio artist, Jørgensen notes, Elvis’ knowledge and instincts were fine-tuned from his very first Sun single, That’s All Right, a cover of an Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup song.
“Really, Elvis isn’t singing the Crudup song; his version is a mixture of five different Crudup songs. More importantly, it’s the emotions and style coming from it, which was far different from Crudup. It’s something that comes from the way Elvis plays it with his acoustic (guitar) driving the whole song. There was never anything before That’s All Right that sounded like it, and almost nothing that would sound like it later. It’s truly unique.”
The period covered in A Boy From Tupelo would set up Presley’s next chapter at RCA, which began with the recording of Heartbreak Hotel —a decision that Jørgensen again points to as evidence of the singer’s unerring creative instincts. “When he recorded Heartbreak Hotel, no one liked it — not Sam Phillips, and not most of RCA. They thought it was the wrong song to launch (his major label) career. It’s a song about a suicide, a bluesy number that didn’t seem like it would be a great commercial hit. But that’s exactly what it became. It was the most unlikely record to ever make it. But Elvis had a gut feeling for where to go and what to do with his music.”
Where the work of Elvis’ catalog goes next is Jørgensen’s job. After 20-plus years mining the Presley archives and telling his creative and musical tale, the producer remains excited.
“My job is keeping the story alive. You have to go back and retell it and find a fresh way to do it,” he says. He says the six stellar albums Elvis made in Nashville in the 1960s — often obscured by his campy film and soundtrack work from the same time — might be the next recordings ripe for reappraisal and reissue.
“Whatever record you’re talking about, there’s going to be more people that don’t have it than have it, even Michael Jackson’s Thriller. So there’s always someone out there to preach to about Elvis,” Jørgensen says. “With A Boy From Tupelo, I tried to be the chronicler and messenger rather than a preacher.
“The bottom line is that Elvis didn’t get lucky. People can listen and hear and read and see that he was no ordinary dude at any time. From the beginning — from before the beginning — he was extraordinary.”