0:02 [SPEAKER_01]: In 2015, musical artist Jack White paid $300,000 for a $78 RPM record at auction. 0:10 [SPEAKER_01]: The record was of Elvis Presley, singing songs my happiness, and that's when your heart begins. 0:16 [SPEAKER_01]: It was the first record Elvis Ever made. 0:19 [SPEAKER_01]: That $300,000 price tag is a far cry from the $4 that Elvis originally paid to make the record as Sun Studio, a place I recently visited. 0:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Elvis wanted to hear what his voice sounded like on vinyl, so he sang those popular songs and gave the 78 to his mother as a gift. 0:37 [SPEAKER_01]: The rest, as they say, is history. 0:41 [SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't already, you should go back and listen to the previous episode, and that conversation, Crocodile Hall, and Zoe Duran, tour guides and audio engineers at Sun Studio told the story of Sam Phillips, and Marion Kisker, founding the studio in 1950. 0:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Over the years, Sun was the recording home to musicians, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, 1:10 [SPEAKER_01]: But the engineer who first put that Elvis track on acetate, that's a mystery. 1:18 [SPEAKER_03]: There's always been an argument about who actually recorded Elvis first, was it Sam or Maryan, and they both disagreed about that until the day that they died. 1:26 [SPEAKER_03]: There's evidence for both sides of the story too. 1:29 [SPEAKER_03]: We take the line here at Sun that Maryan was the first one to record him. 1:33 [SPEAKER_03]: In my opinion Peter Gralnik did some incredible research where he goes in and discovers 1:38 [SPEAKER_03]: The original 78 of Elvis's song, My Happiness, and that's when your heartache begins that he recorded here, and there were two copies, which was somewhat unusual because Sam was unimpressed with Elvis's performance. 1:51 [SPEAKER_03]: When he first heard it, so why would he make a second copy for himself? 1:55 [SPEAKER_03]: whereas Marion made two copies the story goes because she loved Elvis's voice so much and she was so enthusiastic and excited to show him two Sam that she made the second copy to specifically show Sam. 2:09 [SPEAKER_03]: Which he agreed was a strange thing. 2:11 [SPEAKER_03]: That seems to be a point in favor of her being the person who first recorded Elvis. 2:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine not being impressed with Elvis's voice? 2:19 [SPEAKER_01]: The King of Rock and Roll is an icon, and has sold over 500 million records worldwide, but he might have been unknown if not for one of Sam Philips's publicity stunts. 2:31 [SPEAKER_03]: So, Elvis found out about this place originally because a band called the Prison Airs came in here and recorded, again going back to what you were speaking about it being Jim Crow era. 2:39 [SPEAKER_03]: The Prison Airs were a quintet from the state pen in Nashville, Tennessee. 2:45 [SPEAKER_03]: At that point in time, the governor, Frank Climit of Tennessee, was quite a bit more progressive than what you see in the Southern States today. 2:54 [SPEAKER_03]: He believed that the prison system should be more about rehabilitation. 2:58 [SPEAKER_03]: then that it should be about punitive measures. 3:00 [SPEAKER_03]: So he was trying to enact opportunities for people who had been imprisoned to focus on whatever they would have wanted to be outside. 3:08 [SPEAKER_03]: So a man named Johnny Bragg starts this quintet called the Prisoners and Sam Phillips finds out about the Prisoners. 3:14 [SPEAKER_03]: So he immediately starts negotiating with the ward and trying to figure out how exactly he can get these Prisoners or prisoners down to Memphis from Nashville and record them. 3:25 [SPEAKER_03]: So finally, 3:25 [SPEAKER_03]: Dr. Long negotiations that have to go all the way to the governor's desk, he's able to get them to come down to Memphis and record this. 3:32 [SPEAKER_03]: They record a song called Just Walking in the Rain, which is one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs that has ever been recorded here. 3:39 [SPEAKER_03]: They were also walked in that day, still in shackles and chains with an arm guard behind them, recording this beautiful ballad, and so there's some local press that the studio gets. 3:51 [SPEAKER_03]: Elvis sees in the paper that there's a recording studio in town. 3:54 [SPEAKER_03]: And he also sees that this band has just come in and recorded a beautiful love ballad, which was right up Elvis's alley. 4:02 [SPEAKER_03]: If you listen to the first two recordings he made here, you can see why he would hear a band like the prisoners and think that's going to be my place. 4:10 [SPEAKER_03]: But Sam was always much more interested in originality. 4:13 [SPEAKER_03]: The thing for him about the prisoners that was interesting is this is new. 4:17 [SPEAKER_03]: This is different like bringing a group of prisoners into record. 4:20 [SPEAKER_03]: is something, what was it he would always say? 4:22 [SPEAKER_03]: If you're not doing something different, you're not doing anything at all as what he would say. 4:26 [SPEAKER_03]: So Elvis comes in, he records these two ballots, and Sam just completely disinterested. 4:31 [SPEAKER_03]: But he would continue to come here to the studio and hang out in Marion's office, kind of try to peek through the windows, see what's going on. 4:38 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a story I Turner would tell who also recorded here, the very first rock and 4:44 [SPEAKER_03]: He tells the story about Elvis hanging out at what until about two months ago was a poncho's Mexican restaurant in West Memphis, Arkansas, where all of the black clubs were at the time, and Elvis would hang out by the back door, which was where all the musicians would go and smoke, and he would just stand there and watch I turn her, and I remember looking down and wondering who this young white kid is, the hanging out by the back door. 5:08 [SPEAKER_03]: So Elvis always had a wide variety of interests in music. 5:13 [SPEAKER_03]: and he had grown up right along with black people. 5:16 [SPEAKER_03]: So it was a community that he had a familiarity with from also being coming from a very poor background himself. 5:22 [SPEAKER_03]: So he continues to come in here. 5:23 [SPEAKER_03]: Marianne is just absolutely head over heels, thinks he's going to be an incredible star. 5:30 [SPEAKER_03]: But he's also what's kind of lost to history in our world where he did become this almost god-like figure is that at that time, 5:38 [SPEAKER_03]: Elvis was an acne scarred kid who wore the weirdest clothes and had the strangest name that anybody had ever heard was obsessed with gospel music and R&B music which was not something you often saw in white people his age at the time and he has all of this wide birth of this knowledge and he's just once it's so bad so he keeps coming back he keeps coming back. 6:00 [SPEAKER_03]: Finally Sam says to Mary in one day he's just been moaning about how he's got this idea for a rock 6:07 [SPEAKER_03]: You can't figure out who he wants to use as a singer. 6:10 [SPEAKER_03]: It's been about a year, a year and a half since Elvis first came in and recorded my happiness. 6:15 [SPEAKER_03]: And that's when your heart aches begin here. 6:17 [SPEAKER_03]: And Marion says to Sam again, what about Elvis? 6:21 [SPEAKER_03]: Why don't you give him a chance? 6:23 [SPEAKER_03]: And so Sam talks to Scotty Moore who was Elvis's original guitar player. 6:27 [SPEAKER_03]: And he's like, I want you to take Elvis, and I want you to audition him, and they go to a place that is now a restaurant called Café Eclectic, and just above there there was this rehearsal space that Scotty and Bill would rehearse in. 6:40 [SPEAKER_03]: And so they get together, they go through every song that Elvis knows. 6:44 [SPEAKER_03]: And Scotty comes back to Sam, and he says, I think there could be something here. 6:48 [SPEAKER_03]: I think it'll be worth doing the recording session. 6:50 [SPEAKER_03]: Let's do the recording session. 6:52 [SPEAKER_03]: So Elvis comes in, Sam places them around the room, and he's just nervous as I'll get out. 6:57 [SPEAKER_03]: He's pacing the floor, tugging at his hair, and just really in his nerves. 7:03 [SPEAKER_03]: And he's playing everything you can think of, all these soft ballads and country songs. 7:09 [SPEAKER_03]: which is really way more his background than anything else and Sam is just sitting back there letting him get it out and giving him a chance. 7:16 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean he's a young kid. 7:16 [SPEAKER_03]: He's like 19 at this point maybe 20 years old at most and Sam's given him his chance and his opportunity but he's really unimpressed and he can see that the session isn't going in the direction that Sam really wanted it to go. 7:29 [SPEAKER_03]: So he walks out of the control room and here into the studio and he says to the group, why does everybody just go take a break? 7:35 [SPEAKER_03]: So Bill puts his instrument, his upright bass down, Scottie's putting away his guitar and Elvis just nervously jumps in to this version of that's all right, Mama, which was a song by Arthur Big Boy Credit, who was a gut-bucket blues performer that Sam was absolutely obsessed with, he loved Arthur Big Boy Credit song. 7:54 [SPEAKER_03]: Never recorded here, but it was one of his favorite blues musicians. 7:57 [SPEAKER_03]: And... 7:58 [SPEAKER_03]: Elvis must have known that to some degree. 8:00 [SPEAKER_03]: Sam was also a proselytizer and would often run into this room and say, make it sound more like this and he'd play Arthur Bigboy Credit Records too. 8:09 [SPEAKER_03]: So it's also possible that he had at some point in the night said to him, do you know anything like this? 8:14 [SPEAKER_03]: But Elvis jumps into that's all right, mom, and he's just kind of bouncing around the room, goofing off and Scotty starts goofing off along with them and then Bill picks his base back up and they start playing and they're playing at this much faster tempo than the song actually is. 8:27 [SPEAKER_03]: and moving around and Sam runs out of that room and he says, whatever you're doing, faster and louder. 8:35 [SPEAKER_03]: But he does this song and Sam is immediately impressed with, that's all right, Mama. 8:40 [SPEAKER_03]: So he makes a 78 acetate of it and he takes it to this man. 8:44 [SPEAKER_03]: We have a photograph in here. 8:45 [SPEAKER_03]: A man named Dewey Phillips. 8:46 [SPEAKER_03]: Dewey was a very popular radio DJ here in Memphis. 8:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Do we fill-ups of no relation to Sam, by the way, is a wild character and an often overlooked figure in the history of Rock and Roll? 8:58 [SPEAKER_01]: Our cover him in the next episode. 9:00 [SPEAKER_03]: And so, Dewey Phillips is taking the record that Elvis records that night. 9:04 [SPEAKER_03]: That's all right. 9:05 [SPEAKER_03]: And he plays it, and immediately the phone lines light up. 9:09 [SPEAKER_03]: He also is very particular and noting that the song he's just played is by an artist from Hume's High, which is a coded way to let the audience know. 9:19 [SPEAKER_03]: That was a white boy that you just heard while the phones are lit up. 9:23 [SPEAKER_03]: It's rumored he played the song anywhere from 14 to 27 times that night. 9:27 [SPEAKER_03]: and he calls Elvis his mother at home to try and find Elvis to bring him into the studio because I mean it literally is like the same and that thing you do or they're just running through from here on their son on the radio for the first time but Elvis was so nervous about his music being played on the air that he'd gone to the movies and he was just at the movies watching one movie after another had no idea that people love the song so much they're calling and calling and asking it to be played again and again. 9:56 [SPEAKER_03]: And so, Dewey says to Gladys, he's like, go get that boy from the theater and you bring him to me. 10:02 [SPEAKER_03]: Gladys and Vernon take Elvis down to the hotel Chisco where Dewey would broadcast from, which is still a building that stands here in Memphis. 10:09 [SPEAKER_03]: It's now an apartment unit. 10:11 [SPEAKER_03]: And he sits Elvis down, he says, are you nervous, boy? 10:15 [SPEAKER_03]: And of course he is, and they start talking, and Elvis says to him at the end of them, conversating. 10:21 [SPEAKER_03]: So when is my interview supposed to start Mr. Phillips? 10:24 [SPEAKER_03]: He's like, boy, you've been on the air this whole time. 10:26 [SPEAKER_03]: So do he's another important character, and then really from there, so much of it. 10:30 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the rest is the history with Elvis that we kind of know of. 10:34 [SPEAKER_03]: He's skyrockets locally, it goes down and is kind of laughed out of the oppree originally, which I feel goes to show that they've always had poor taste. 10:42 [SPEAKER_03]: And then eventually goes to the Louisiana hayride and actually gets on the hayride and they love him in Louisiana. 10:50 [SPEAKER_03]: He just goes over so well and does show after show, ultimately, that's where Colonel Tom becomes involved as well, is... 10:58 [SPEAKER_03]: Colonel Tom is just lost in artists. 11:00 [SPEAKER_03]: Colonel Tom, of course, being the manager of the Elvis at what would have until the end of his life. 11:05 [SPEAKER_03]: Colonel Tom had just lost his artist, Hank Snow, and he always considered himself to be a one-woman manager, or excuse me, a one-man manager, a one-person. 11:15 [SPEAKER_03]: And so he won it. 11:16 [SPEAKER_03]: He's looking for an artist, and he sees this kid that started blowing up regionally, and he approaches Sam, and he says to him, 11:23 [SPEAKER_03]: I'd like to purchase Elvis's contract. 11:25 [SPEAKER_03]: And Sam says, quote, some ridiculous number that he doesn't think Colonel Tom will ever be able to get and a deadline. 11:31 [SPEAKER_03]: And he says, you've got to get me $40,000 by this date. 11:37 [SPEAKER_03]: If you don't have it, the deal is off. 11:38 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not selling his contract. 11:40 [SPEAKER_03]: So Colonel Tom starts calling every single record label he can. 11:43 [SPEAKER_03]: He goes to RCA, and RCA is like, we've never paid anywhere near this much for an artist, for an unknown. 11:51 [SPEAKER_03]: That seems like a horrible deal. 11:53 [SPEAKER_03]: Originally, it looks like it's not going to happen, but in the 11th hour, Colonel Tom, as he was with his wily ways, is able to get the deal on, 12:01 [SPEAKER_03]: takes the money to Sam, they sign the contract at the Peabody, and then come back here, get their pictures taken. 12:07 [SPEAKER_03]: The photograph that we have on the wall here are from that evening, where Elvis had the contract signed. 12:14 [SPEAKER_03]: That Sam and Elvis above the organ standing in the control room, and Elvis is holding the Martin guitar and Sam, who didn't play guitar at all, appears to be trying to show Elvis how to make a chord, which is a funny little photo, because he didn't know what he was talking about. 12:31 [SPEAKER_01]: About three years after Elvis burst onto the scene, another rock and roll pioneer began his career. 12:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Jerry Lee Lewis required his hits, great balls of fire, and whole lot of shaking going on, as Sun Studio, but he could never reach Elvis's level. 12:49 [SPEAKER_03]: Jerry always, I guess, has, I mean, he's always had kind of a bit of a god complex. 12:53 [SPEAKER_03]: He feels like he is God's gift to this earth, which I would imagine is probably why he's treated people in the way that he has in his life. 13:01 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you can just Google him to see all of the different things that Jerry has turned. 13:05 [SPEAKER_03]: He was, I think, a bit jealous of Elvis and Elvis' success, and also that Elvis was guilty of a lot of the same sorts of things that Jerry was, but he seemed to always be the golden boy that could get away with some of those, that sort of behavior. 13:19 [SPEAKER_03]: And there's a story of Jerry one night drunkenly driving to Graceland and demanding to be led in and brandishing a pistol. 13:27 [SPEAKER_03]: And obviously the guard that's working Graceland that night, he's like, Buzz Elvis, I want to see him. 13:32 [SPEAKER_03]: I want to talk to him. 13:33 [SPEAKER_03]: and the security guard calls Elvis, and he says, hey, Jerry Lee Lewis is here, he wants to see you, and Elvis is immediately, no, he sounds drunk, I don't want to see him, so Jerry Lee leaves, and he wrecks his car somewhere in Mesmit, Mississippi, where he's found by the police and taken in. 13:48 [SPEAKER_03]: But they had a rivalry, I would guess after he left here is really when that began, because of course, Elvis skyrockets to this massive amount of fame that I think Jerry Lee's always wanted to see for himself. 14:02 [SPEAKER_02]: I want to say I heard that one of Lewis's tours overseas was canceled when they learned more about his private life. 14:07 [SPEAKER_02]: It was sort of going to be like a make or break moment exactly. 14:11 [SPEAKER_02]: And the news got out and lost all of his dates. 14:13 [SPEAKER_03]: So he was playing in England at the time, and Judd Phillips, who was Sam's brother and Jerry Lee's manager for a long time in his career, Jerry had married his first cousin at the age of. 14:25 [SPEAKER_00]: 12. 14:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Non-consent even by legal standards. 14:28 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and he marries her and Judd sits Jerry down before they go to England eating he tells him like you this is this is your sister This is your family. 14:39 [SPEAKER_03]: This is not your wife. 14:40 [SPEAKER_03]: You do not tell the press that this is your wife There's do not mention this because they understand how 14:47 [SPEAKER_03]: how that's going to go over. 14:48 [SPEAKER_03]: Of course, Jerry Lee gets off the plane, his arms around Myra, the press is asking him, who's this? 14:52 [SPEAKER_03]: And he's like, this is my wife, Myra, people start asking questions and he does end up getting, I think he plays to more and more dwindling crowds and then gets the whole thing canceled, comes back and starts making gospel records, which was the formula he 15:07 [SPEAKER_03]: gospel in country, really, country records more so, which was the formula he kind of followed his whole career when he was on the outs in public society, was he'd go back and make country records again, and then he'd go back to rock and roll when he'd won the crowds back over. 15:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Elvis and Jerry Lee formed half of the famed million dollar quartet. 15:27 [SPEAKER_01]: The other half included Carl Perkins, known as the King of Rockefeller in Johnny Cash. 15:33 [SPEAKER_00]: from the stories that I've heard, it was Johnny initially came in trying to sell the appliance to Marion, and that was how he ended up kind of an angling his way to audition with Sam. 15:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I would say you would be able to say the story better on how he was waiting on the steps, and they all wanted to do gospel music. 15:55 [SPEAKER_03]: Johnny Elvis, Carl, and Sam just had no interest in that. 15:59 [SPEAKER_03]: He didn't think it was something he would be able to sell. 16:02 [SPEAKER_03]: It didn't grab his attention or excite him. 16:04 [SPEAKER_03]: And that was really one of the core principles to him and his artist was if you're going to come in with something, make it yours. 16:13 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't want you to be doing what you think you should be doing. 16:17 [SPEAKER_03]: I want you to be doing what you are. 16:19 [SPEAKER_03]: And so he initially rebuffs Johnny. 16:22 [SPEAKER_03]: Johnny comes back and comes in with... Do you remember what the first song he did was? 16:27 [SPEAKER_03]: I'd have been a big river. 16:29 [SPEAKER_03]: It's different, I believe, in the movie than it is. 16:32 [SPEAKER_03]: I know. 16:32 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I've read all the books, but it's also been five years since I started to read those. 16:36 [SPEAKER_03]: So I'd have to look it up to see which song it was. 16:38 [SPEAKER_03]: Might have been cry cry cry. 16:40 [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't walk the line. 16:41 [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't walk the line. 16:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. 16:43 [SPEAKER_00]: might have been cry cry cry that he came in and got and recognized. 16:48 [SPEAKER_03]: Sam wasn't a big country music fan either. 16:50 [SPEAKER_03]: He really didn't understand or see the point. 16:54 [SPEAKER_00]: There's also a loose rock and roll R&B. 16:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He really wasn't into anything other than those kind of genres. 17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: unless it was something new. 17:04 [SPEAKER_03]: But Johnny had a different sound. 17:06 [SPEAKER_03]: He didn't sound like Nashville. 17:07 [SPEAKER_03]: And see that's the thing that Memphis and Nashville have always kind of had this weird rivalry that goes both directions, but Memphis gets a little more loud about it because we're often a forgotten city to some people. 17:19 [SPEAKER_03]: And that dates back, I would argue back to then because Sam wasn't interested in sound of like Nashville. 17:26 [SPEAKER_03]: He wanted Memphis to be what Memphis is, so if you're going to do country music, I want to hear it in a different light, and I think it's in arguable that Johnny Cash brought aside out to country music that wasn't really existing at that moment in time. 17:40 [SPEAKER_01]: One night, that group got together for the most famous jam session in rock and roll history. 17:46 [SPEAKER_03]: So the night this picture was taken Carl Perkins, who is in black in the photograph holding a guitar, and he's also the person who wrote Blue Swade Shoes. 17:54 [SPEAKER_03]: He's in here working on a song called Matchbox, which would later be covered by the Beatles. 17:58 [SPEAKER_03]: It's one that Ringo sings up, I believe they recorded it in Germany. 18:02 [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a great example of Sam's brilliance as an audio engineer because if you listen to the Beatles version of Matchbox versus the version that Carl cut here, you can really hear the vibrancy and liveliness that this room has that's tougher to get out of wherever they were recording in Germany. 18:20 [SPEAKER_03]: But so Carl's in here working on Matchbox and he's working with the brand new session piano player that has just shown up one day from Louisiana. 18:28 [SPEAKER_03]: The story goes that he'd sold a few dozen eggs with his father to be able to afford the gas from Louisiana to Memphis. 18:36 [SPEAKER_03]: And they get up here and that man's name is Jerry Lee Lewis. 18:40 [SPEAKER_03]: He's in stripes in the photographs standing behind Carl Perkins. 18:43 [SPEAKER_03]: And he's the session piano player that night. 18:45 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, 18:47 [SPEAKER_03]: Elvis always loved to, he'd just get a whim and he'd go anywhere. 18:52 [SPEAKER_03]: There's stories of him flying to get a peanut butter banana sandwich. 18:55 [SPEAKER_03]: I believe in Denver or somewhere out west. 18:59 [SPEAKER_03]: Finally, some agreed to do that and he would just get a whim and he'd go do something. 19:03 [SPEAKER_03]: I've had people walk up to me and tell me some of the wildest stories after a tour of places and times they've seen Elvis like pulling up at a stoplight and then there's Elvis. 19:12 [SPEAKER_03]: He waves at you before he rides off into the night. 19:15 [SPEAKER_03]: Some people still say that that happened. 19:16 [SPEAKER_03]: There's also a great story of him showing up at funeral homes because they, at that time, the ambulance drivers were being dispatched from funeral homes so he would go, they'd be there until early in the morning, he would go hang out with these EMT drivers at the time at the funeral homes just until early in the morning, you know, a woman came in once and said her dad worked at a funeral home where he would just frequent at odd hours of the night because he would be up lonely and want to go hang out. 19:40 [SPEAKER_03]: But that night he decides to come here to the studio. 19:44 [SPEAKER_03]: He's also on the rise because he's just had a hit with can't help falling in love. 19:49 [SPEAKER_03]: No, no, no, no, no. 19:50 [SPEAKER_03]: Don't be cruel as what it was. 19:51 [SPEAKER_03]: Which was also the very first song that Sam heard him record post-son, that Sam heard it and thought he's going to be just fine. 19:59 [SPEAKER_03]: It took them a while. 20:01 [SPEAKER_03]: RCA also was ready to hire Sam to come from Memphis to Nashville and produce the sessions because Elvis was having such a difficult time in studio B at RCA to get 20:13 [SPEAKER_03]: into the groove. 20:14 [SPEAKER_03]: They also couldn't figure out how Sam was getting the slapback tape sound because that had not yet been popularized as a technique within the audio world. 20:22 [SPEAKER_03]: But Elvis comes up here to the studio and immediately the session stops. 20:26 [SPEAKER_03]: He starts hanging out and Sam has this great idea. 20:29 [SPEAKER_03]: He makes two phone calls. 20:30 [SPEAKER_03]: His first phone call is to Johnny Cashett's house. 20:32 [SPEAKER_03]: And he tells Johnny, you gotta get down here. 20:34 [SPEAKER_03]: Elvis is down here. 20:35 [SPEAKER_03]: And Johnny is not in his traditional all black because he was getting ready to go and do some Christmas shopping that evening. 20:42 [SPEAKER_03]: but he comes up to the studio, he also needed to pick up his check, he says. 20:45 [SPEAKER_03]: So he comes to the studio, and Sam also had called the Memphis Press Cemetery, which was a local newspaper here in Memphis, until about, I guess, the... 20:55 [SPEAKER_03]: I know they were still around when Elvis passed because they have, we sell newspapers that are from the day. 21:01 [SPEAKER_03]: He died that the Simitar also put out, but he calls the Memphis Pressedimeter. 21:05 [SPEAKER_03]: They send out a photographer and a journalist. 21:08 [SPEAKER_03]: They take several different photographs. 21:09 [SPEAKER_03]: Sam gets the press in here. 21:11 [SPEAKER_03]: They take their photos. 21:12 [SPEAKER_03]: They talk to Sam and Elvis. 21:14 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a little right up in the Memphis Pressedimeter with a tagline that says $1 million quartet. 21:19 [SPEAKER_03]: And that's where the history of that comes from. 21:22 [SPEAKER_03]: But after that, the press leaves and Elvis, he loved sitting around the piano and just starting gospel jams. 21:29 [SPEAKER_03]: He would often do it to warm up before recording sessions with the quartets that he hired to record or the RCA had hired to record with him. 21:37 [SPEAKER_03]: And it was kind of a warm-up exercise. 21:38 [SPEAKER_03]: It was also just a true passion of his. 21:40 [SPEAKER_03]: There's stories of him just sitting at home and suddenly he would break out into gospel songs. 21:45 [SPEAKER_03]: And so they sit in here and they're all just kind of trade and like musicians do and they all got their instruments 21:51 [SPEAKER_03]: They're trading song for song. 21:53 [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to hear the moments from that night that have been unreleased either due to copyright or just image control too to hear. 22:01 [SPEAKER_03]: I'd love to hear how they were. 22:02 [SPEAKER_03]: There's about 78 minutes that have been released on CD and vinyl. 22:07 [SPEAKER_03]: It was originally released by Shelby Singleton, who Sam sold the son record label to in 1969. 22:13 [SPEAKER_03]: And Shelby was sued by every single one of their record labels because they were all owned by different record labels at that time. 22:22 [SPEAKER_03]: And so it didn't get an official proper release until I believe 2006 when RCA bought the rights from all of their record labels and released it under the RCA label. 22:31 [SPEAKER_03]: But you can actually hear the audio of them in here hanging out. 22:34 [SPEAKER_03]: It's really cool historical document because they're really just kind of talking. 22:38 [SPEAKER_03]: It's not really something you would necessarily pick up and listen to for your favorite song. 22:44 [SPEAKER_03]: Although the more I hear it, the more I've heard of it, there's songs that really do just stick in your head from that night of them sitting in here recording. 22:52 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a bit, maybe not controversial, but argued on whether or not Johnny was here when the tape started rolling, because you never hear his voice, you never hear him talk. 23:02 [SPEAKER_03]: He says that he's on the recording, but he was just singing in a hyphal set of voice, but it's all, I would imagine that also could possibly be to make sure that he got paid too when they bought those rights. 23:13 [SPEAKER_03]: they were hanging for four hours. 23:15 [SPEAKER_03]: The audio recording that we have releases just those 78 minutes. 23:19 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. 23:20 [SPEAKER_03]: I've never gotten to hear the original tapes. 23:22 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think they've ever been released in any capacity. 23:26 [SPEAKER_03]: It's only 23:27 [SPEAKER_03]: some of the songs I'm sure they would have done would have been copyrighted or still, and I don't know that they might be all that we have, too. 23:35 [SPEAKER_03]: It's never really been discussed on is there any missing tape that the public doesn't have from that, and I personally don't know. 23:42 [SPEAKER_01]: That's how history works sometimes. 23:44 [SPEAKER_01]: We're left wanting more, but grateful for the stories we do have. 23:48 [SPEAKER_01]: In the next episode, we'll hear more about some of the Sun Studio moments, a changed music history,
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