On this day, July 8, 1954, an Elvis Presley record was played on the radio for the first time.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Hat tip, the CBS radio news at 6:00 p.m. I heard this on WTOP.

1954 – PRODUCER SAM PHILLIPS TOOK AN ACETATE RECORDING OF ELVIS PRESLEY SINGING ‘THAT’S ALL RIGHT’
Posted on 2:45 PM by STU SWEATMAN

Elvis

1954 – Producer Sam Phillips took an acetate recording of Elvis Presley singing ‘That’s All Right’ to Memphis radio station WHBQ DJ Dewey Phillips. He played the song just after 9.30 that evening, the phone lines lit up asking the DJ to play the song again.

[dchill]

1. Play it again!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Thank ya. Thank ya vera much.

Elvis - lousiana hayride - 1954 " That's all right"
1,114,206 views•Oct 14, 2008

cindycindy35
911 subscribers

Esibizione e intervista

Elvis Presley - That's All Right ('68 Comeback Special Official 50th Anniversary HD Remaster)
3,051,115 views•Oct 23, 2018

Elvis Presley
1.6M subscribers

Buy/listen: https://elvis.lnk.to/68ComebackSpecial!tar

About the track:

{snip}

This group covered it too.

That's All Right (Mama)
68,318 views•Jul 5, 2018

The Beatles
4.49M subscribers

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group

That's All Right (Mama) · The Beatles

[Docreed2003]

3. And where was 18 yo Elvis that night?

In the movie theater near his house, calming his nerves.

He was that nervous.

Dewey Phillips loved the song so much he played it, I think 14 times in a row.

Elvis parents had to run up and down the isles of the Suzore theater to find him to get him down to WHBQ's station at the Hotel Chisca. Elvis would do his first interview that night. It wasn't until he gave his high school name that listeners knew he was white.

Bassist Bill Black said, after recording the album, "Damn. Get that on the radio and they'll run us out of town."


The recording of that song has always been fascinating to me because of how simplistic it was and yet earth shattering. It was recorded late at night on July 5th. Sam Phillips had finally agreed to give Presley, whom he considered an average "ballad singer" a chance in the studio, on the urgings of Marion Keisker, Sam's assistant at Sun. The recording session had been essentially a bomb up until that song. It was so bad and so hot in the studio they had taken a break and Elvis, after taking a drink of Coca Cola, hopped up and started jumping around the studio playing "That's All Right". It was a song he knew well from his neighborhood and it was meant to be a joke to make Scotty Moore and Bill Black laugh. They joined in on the number and Phillips walked back in the sound booth just in time to hear them playing it and lost his mind. Essentially asking "Where the hell had that been all night". It was the culmination of the "sound" Phillips had been trying to achieve at Sun and his instincts were spot on. They recorded the song in just a couple takes after that....the rest is history.

[sandensea]

4. And the rest, as they say, is history