ELVIS PRESLEY AND THE BLUES
“Elvis and the Blues”… Elvis Presley revolutionized popular music by blending the Blues he first heard as a young man in Tupelo with Country & Western, Pop and Gospel.
Many of the early songs Elvis recorded for the Sun label in Memphis were covers of blues recordings, and he continued to incorporate blues into his records and live performances for the rest of his career.
He heard the Blues in Tupelo. There, the Presley family lived in several homes adjacent to black neighborhoods, and as a young man, Elvis Presley and his friends heard the sounds of Blues and Gospel coming from churches, clubs, and other venues.
According to Mississippi blues legend Big Joe Williams, Elvis paid particular attention to Tupelo blues guitarist Lonnie Williams. During his teenage years in Memphis, Elvis could hear the Blues on Beale Street, just a mile south of his family home.
Sam Phillips, for his part, had captured many of the new electrified Blues sounds at his ‘Memphis Recording Service’ studio, where Elvis began his career under Phillips’ ‘Sun’ label.
Phillips “flashed” when he heard Presley casually jamming along to Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup’s blues, “That’s All Right.” It appeared on Presley’s first single, and each of his other four singles for Sun Records also included a blues: Arthur Gunter’s ‘Baby Let’s Play House’, Roy Brown’s ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’, Little Junior Parker’s ‘Mystery Train’, and Kokomo Arnold’s ‘Milk Cow Blues’, recorded under the title ‘Milkcow Blues Boogie’, which he probably learned from a version by Western Swing musician Johnnie Lee Wills.
The sound achieved by Elvis inspired countless other artists.
Presley continued to record blues after his move to RCA in 1955, including “Hound Dog,” recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1952, Lowell Fulson’s “Reconsider Baby,” Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” and two more by Crudup, “My Baby Left Me” and “So Glad You’re Mine.”
One of the most important sources of Elvis material was African-American songwriter Otis Blackwell, who wrote ‘All Shook Up’, ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ and ‘Return to Sender’.
On Presley’s 1968 NBC appearance, he reunited with Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana in an attempt to return to his blues roots.
The trio resumed their early Sun recordings, and also performed other Blues songs, including Jimmy Reed’s ‘Big Boss Man’ and ‘Baby What You Want Me To Do’.
The Blues remained a feature of Elvis’s live performances until his death in 1977.
Source: 706unionavenue.nl
Information provided by Elvis Shop Argentina. https://www.facebook.com/elvis.shop.argentina/
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