Hank Williams had his country, Ike Turner and Little Richard had their brands of rhythm ‘n’ blues, Fats Domino had his boogie-woogie, and Chuck Berry had his rockabilly. But it took a precocious adolescent, with a wooden spoon hanging out of his curled lips, to coalesce these styles into rock ‘n’ roll. Emerging from the crossroads of Tupelo, Mississippi, he had got the devil in him, and he was going to make sure everyone else would too.
To experience The Complete Sun Sessions is to experience the birth of The King. Recorded between 1953 and 1956, these songs are sung by an anonymous Elvis Aaron Presley, before his skin color and pelvis made a repressed America express their id, before the Colonel made him into a commodity, before Hollywood made him into a dancing monkey, and before the bright lights and decadency of Vegas made him into a corpse. Too many nowadays remember the dreary-eyed Elvis dressed in white attempting to repent for his sins, as he karate chopped his way through another bombastic rendition of his seminal yesteryear classics. This album compels the listener to remember the bright-eyed Elvis dressing queer, attempting to repent for the sins of America, as he broke down color, sexual, and political barriers with a new form of artistic expression that would capture the attention of the world.
There were no conventions for rock ‘n’ roll during these sessions, so Elvis simply made them up as he fashioned another number. He was defining himself as an artist, as he birthed rock ‘n’ roll. So experimentation with disparate genres, styles, and structures is obvious on nearly every track. Whether it be Elvis playfully hiccupping on the beginning of the lusty “Baby, Let’s Play House,” sorrowfully whistling for an entire verse on the melancholy “Harbor Lights,” or his complete re-imagination of Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” from a bluegrass waltz to a rock record with a jumpy rhythm and frantic tempo. But this experimentation is most lucid on “Milkcow Blues Boogie;” beginning as a generic, monotonous bluesy number, Elvis soon proclaims “Hold it fellas, it don’t move. Let’s get real, real gone for a change.” With that proclamation, the song, as if infused with some kind of divine jingle and jangle, does get “real gone” from what popular music was and to what music popular could be: dynamic, unconventional, and exciting.
One of the main strengths in Elvis’ career was his voice, and on these recordings it sounds as lively, invigorating, and evocative as ever. This is not the Elvis of his Vegas years, belting out numbers like a tragic, operatic character; here his voice is more assured of itself, giving the guitars and rhythm section room to breath and then exploding with emotion when needed. This blissful concord is best showcased on the slower ballads, which is not much of a surprise as young Elvis always dreamed of a career singing teary balladry. “Blue Moon” finds Elvis literally howling to the heavens to reciprocate his love, while his vibrato – bouncing between now and then and finally into oblivion – flawlessly captures his optimism and fears about the future on “Tomorrow Night.” Whether inspired by his penurious upbringing, the incessant and cruel teasing he was assailed with, by his peers, or his unrequited apparitions of grandeur, the passion in Elvis’ voice found on this album is without equal.
The innovation displayed on The Complete Sun Sessions was not Elvis’ sole doing. Sam Phillips, head of Sun Records, and influential music producer, flawlessly complimented Elvis’ raw talent, by employing now-famous production techniques, such as using a tape echo unit, and Elvis’ voice as an instrument by moving it around the sonic landscape of the instrumental, which each gave the record and Elvis’ voice a distinctive, memorable sound. Phillips also chose guitarist Scotty Moore, whose subversively splintered guitar riffs and runs helped forge a novel style of guitar play. Elvis would eventually produce his own records, due largely to Phillips generosity with his knowledge, but this album has Phillips’ creative fingerprints all over it.
By combining black with white, past with present, imagination with rebellion, Elvis catapulted a fresh, exciting form of music to a mainstream audience, whether it be called rock ‘n’ roll or by some other moniker. Elvis Aaron Pressley would soon become The King, and rock ‘n’ roll would soon blossom into a mature musical form with infinite reinterpretations, leaving The Complete Sun Sessions as an anachronistic reminder of what became of the twinkle in a young Mississippi boy’s eye.
