Whether or not you’re happy with him being anointed as the king of rock and roll, it’s hard to deny that Elvis Presley turned himself into one of the biggest names in music history by being one of the finest examples of an entertainer. There might have been better vocalists and guitarists fighting him for recognition at the very top, but what Elvis might have lacked in musicality, he made up for in his performing abilities.
Presley may have possessed charisma in spades, and that was evident from the start of his career, but his beginnings were just as humble as you’d expect any small, struggling artist to be. He didn’t ascend to his throne through divine right, nor was it an inherited position – no, Elvis had to fight to impress those who had the power to change his career trajectory.
During one session at the iconic Sun Records studio in Memphis in 1954, he was almost discarded and resigned to a lifetime of obscurity, and if it wasn’t for hearing a recording by an unknown artist, he perhaps wouldn’t have pushed himself and found the perseverance required to make it to the top.
The studio was known for having started the careers of the likes of Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison before him, and due to the fact that anybody could walk in and record their music, Elvis walked in and coughed up the $3.98 to have his first recordings pressed. Label founder Sam Phillips and producer Marion Keisker began to take note of the young singer and called him into the studio in July 1954 to record a song for the label after Phillips had dug out a track that he thought would be suited to him.
‘Without You’ was the song that Presley was ushered in to record, but Phillips was unconvinced by his rendition of the song, which was later discovered to have been recorded by Jimmy Sweeney. Frustrated at how he couldn’t seem to match the performance on the original or impress the discerning Phillips, Presley allegedly slammed his fist on the table, exclaiming, “I hate him! I hate him! Why can’t I sing like that?”
Presley returned to the studio to try his luck again the following day, but the moment of wonder didn’t come through his rendition of the aforementioned track, but instead an improvised rendition of Arthur Crudup’s ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ as he waited around for his backing band to get ready. This was the moment that struck both Phillips and Keisker as being the flash of brilliance that they were after, and once he had returned to the top to record a proper take of the song, it became his first single released on Sun Records.
The track itself didn’t perform outstandingly well on a national scale but earned the young Presley some notoriety within his home state of Tennessee. Of course, Elvis would go on to achieve enormous success shortly after, and by 1956, he had become something of a phenomenon. However, little remains of his failed demos of ‘Without You’, and if it wasn’t for his frustration at the unknown Jimmy Sweeney, perhaps Elvis wouldn’t have even had the chance to become the superstar that he was.