ALBUM REVIEW: Elvis Presley - The Sun Sessions

    Between 1953 and 1955, a then unknown musician cut 24 tracks at the Memphis Recording Service building in Memphis, Tennessee, today known as the Sun Studio. The musician in question was a boy from Tupelo in Mississippi, a hillbilly with a love of blues and black music and with a distinct voice; of course, that man was Elvis Presley. Ultimately, Presley only stuck with Sun Records for those few years before moving to RCA Victor, where he would stay for the remainder of his life, but the reverence around his Sun recordings remained, until RCA themselves issued a collection of the recordings in 1976, just a year before Presley's death. The acclaim held for these recordings remains apparent even nearly seventy years after the fact - Elvis was certainly not the first to play rock and roll, something he would say himself, but the songs displayed in this collection showcase how Presley certainly lays his claim to the genre's growth and popularity. Far from the bloated rhinestone of his late career, the Elvis on display throughout these recordings is lively, bursting with energy, and with a hint of danger all at the heart of it. The spirit of rock and roll is captured in just a handful of singles and a few great cuts, as is the reason why Elvis ever was the King in the first place.

     The first thing you may notice with this particular collection is that it does not contain all 24 songs cut at Sun Studios - barring some that were excluded for whatever reason (including personal demos that Presley had recorded in 1953), some tapes were simply lost after such a long passage of time (including an early version of Elvis running through "I Got a Woman"). So, what is on this collection? Elvis' first five singles, both the A and B sides, as well as some extra cuts that made it onto Elvis' first proper studio album. Sure, it's nothing you couldn't find by looking hard enough, but having it all in one neat place was certainly a benefit - seeing Elvis in his most formative years all across a single disc. Much of the album's sound is the result of only three musicians, with Elvis on vocals and acoustic, Scotty Moore on electric guitar, and Bill Black keeping rhythm on bass; a drummer pops in on a few songs and Elvis switches to piano for one tune, but it's about as basic a formula as one could get for rock music. Still, it's clear that the group need not worry about a lack of power - throughout the entirety of the sessions, Moore and Presley and Black are ripping and roaring through their selection of songs, often with such energy that it still manages to sound daring and ecstatic nearly seventy years later. This is all built upon by the fact that Scotty Moore is a skillful guitar player, and one that would prove to be highly influential, and the same can be said for Elvis' hot vocal ability. His voice cracks and soars and croons all throughout this album in hills and valleys of performances, from the speedy rocker to the subdued ballad. The set of musicians, although small, is able to carry the record proper, and it's all held together with that rockabilly production tactic of slapback reverb - for what it's worth, quite a bit of the songs sound pretty good for the 1950s.

    Of course, Elvis wasn't a songwriter (with some very slim and usually odd exceptions), but early on he was certainly a master of making a song his own - you want proof? Look no further than his debut single in "That's All Right", a song that started as a slower-paced blues song by Arthur Crudup that, under Elvis' lead, became a faster, more triumphant rock song. You can hear this trend all throughout the entire album - Elvis is bursting with energy, and infuses it right into renditions of these songs, from a take on the arguable first rock song with "Good Rockin' Tonight" to the enduring, chugging rhythm of "Mystery Train". But of course, Elvis isn't all energy sometimes, and more quiet reflective moments such as "I Forgot to Remember to Forget" or the gentle "I Love You Because" are a great opportunity to showcase the other side of the Tupelo boy. Still, Elvis was second to none when it came to rockers at the time, and it wouldn't be until his time with Sun ended that he could be successfully matched - not long after the release of his final Sun single in "Mystery Train", Little Richard released "Tutti Frutti", with Chuck Berry's "Maybellene" having released prior. Nearly all of the material recorded during these sessions, be they released as singles or reused on RCA's first album with Elvis, are great numbers, but perhaps the greatest of these is "Baby Let's Play House". Few other Elvis songs from this era embody the spirit of what Presley was when starting out - the song is a certifiable rocker, with Moore giving it his all, Black's bass keeping a fantastic rhythm, and Presley's voice at its sharpest and most lively, from his low rumblings to his voice cracks. It carries an air of danger throughout the song, coated in slight double ententes which only become more emphasized by Elvis' vocal performance. It's a highlight of the Sun era, and a brilliant moment in his career.

    Elvis would leave Sun Records in November of 1955, when label founder Sam Phillips sold his contract to RCA for an at time time record amount of $35,000 - for what it's worth, Phillips said he never regretted his decision to do so. After his departure to RCA, Elvis would begin a gradual climb from modest success to The King, but his beginnings with Sun reflect all of the things that helped make Elvis so fantastic in the first place. Presley and his clique of backing musicians are filled with energy and passion, and the music that Elvis performs is coated in a certain element of riskiness and forward-thinking sound. Even if Elvis Presley didn't invent rock music (something that he himself would attest to), the series of recordings that Presley made at Sun helped establish rock music as a genre in a way that would define said genre in the years to follow. It's a historic compilation from Presley, and one that showcases a young musician on the brink of greatness.

RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯

Listen to The Sun Sessions.