22 Elvis Presley “(Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame”

“Every Elvis has his army” sang Elvis Costello, but as influential and important as Elvis Costello, Elvis Presley will always be the Elvis. 

There are only a few artists that can have a whole industry devoted to them, and really only the Beatles can compare. But the idea of the artist Elvis carries so much baggage, it’s hard to get to what made him so remarkable to begin with. 

I posted earlier that Little Richard and Elvis Presley had a similar story with their first recording sessions. The similarity is found when both session were going nowhere and were really quite boring. But on a break, when the pressure of making something impactful and permanent was removed, real music was found. 

Elvis had stopped by Sun Records to record a little song for his mother, supposedly for her birthday. He had a nice enough voice and, more importantly, a mannerism to his performance that showed he wasn’t stuck in one particular type of music, i.e., he listened and took inspiration from both “hillbilly” (later renamed to Country music) and “race” (Later renamed to Rhythm and Blues) music, showing us that once again history is full of horrible things. 

This is prime time for American apartheid, and segregation was the law in the south. Enforcement of segregation went beyond bathrooms and diners, but included the culture one was often allowed to partake in. Elvis grew up in this time, but thanks in no small part to his mother allowing him to listen and engage with whatever music he was interested in, his career took a much different path than folks like Pat Boone. When you look at that time period, the history of what led to rock and roll, and then pictures of Elvis, you might get the idea that here is another white person stealing music from black artists. This was not the case with Elvis. He always credited the artists who created the songs he sang and encouraged his listeners to go and find the original black artists and recordings. Does this give everything a pass? No. “Elvis was a hero to most, but he didn’t mean shit to me,” is still a relevant lyric in Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.” Institutional racism may well be a factor in Elvis’ success, but individual racism doesn’t really fit with the way he conducted himself.

Back to Sun records…

The story is that Sam Phillips believed he could solve all racism in the US if he could find an artist that could be white but sing like the black artists. There is so much wrong with that proceeding sentence I don’t even know where to begin. Sam Philips was like that. During the Cuban missile crisis in the 60s, he thought he could solve it all if he could just talk with Castro, so he called Cuba. He didn’t manage to speak to Castro, but he did talk to Castro’s brother. Needless to say, it didn’t help. 

Elvis was brought to him by Marion Keisker who worked with Phillips at Sun records as the sound he was looking for. So, Phillips brought him in to record with Scotty Moore on guitar and Bill Black on Bass (no drummer) and it was dull, dull, dull. 

Until there was a break. Phillips started winding up some tape, the trio were fooling around by the soda machine, and Elvis picked up an acoustic guitar and started banging out a version of a blues song “That’s All Right (Mama)” by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. Phillips knew the song, but how did this kid know it? And what was he doing to it?

He told the trio to figure out where to start so that he could record it as a song. They then needed another side, and so they decided on “Blue Moon of Kentucky” a waltz by Bill Monroe. And Elvis messed with that song too, making it an uptempo blues song in 4/4. I’m not going to use either of those for this playlist, but they’re worth your time to listen to the originals and then listen to what Elvis did to them. 

The song I chose for this is “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame.” Why? For one, I really love when The Smiths played this as the intro to their song “Rusholme Ruffians” on their live album Rank. Second, it’s a great track. It utilizes the Bo Diddly beat to a nice effect.* It’s also, to my listening ears, the closest that Elvis ever got to capturing the early magic of those Sun recordings after he stopped recording with Sam Phillips. 

*If you’re unsure what the Bo Diddly beat is, well, it’s the drum groove in the verses of this song. We’ll also cover Bo Diddly later and go into the beat in more detail then. My homework now? I have to figure out how to use language to describe a beat…