Honoring The King at 91

Classroom experiment would have made Sam Phillips smile

EDITOR’S NOTE: Writing this on what would have been Elvis Presley’s 91st birthday, I think he would have enjoyed knowing about this assignment.

The painting was up on the classroom wall, just to the left of the teacher’s desk in the far corner of the classroom. There was no identifying caption underneath, just the yellow Sun Records label on the odd triangular-shaped building at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, a painting I’d always hoped some kid would ask me about. Nobody ever did.

With the school year nearly over, the major tests and stories and plays covered, I was trying to think of a way to send these kids, all minorities, mostly all African-American, out of my classroom with some hope, maybe even a dream, some idea that would carry them through the steamy Florida summer, maybe even into the fall when they’d be starting college or maybe a new job.

Sun Studios at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis, Johnny Cash started.

I’d promised them that when June rolled around, they’d be a different kid than the one who walked into my room back in August. It was a boast, sure, but teachers have to have goals, too. It might be a bit corny to admit that, but it was true. Ask ‘em.

Since they’d worked so hard for me, almost every one of them, I was looking at that painting one afternoon and had an idea. Since some of the music recorded in that odd-shaped building happened some sixty plus years ago came from a bunch of folks not much older than them, young people with talent and dreams who walked into Sun Studios ready, whether they knew it or not, to address the world, why not let them hear what the fuss was all about?

Sam Phillips was there to greet them, to turn the tape recorder on as they stood before the microphone in that little dinky room with the oddly constructed ceiling and record what came out of their mouths.

All these years later, what would my kids think of what they recorded? It sure wasn’t hip hop. What would they hear? Could they connect with these songs from all these years ago? Does the Sun Studio spirit still get through?

The assignment was this: Create your own record label and give a listen to these eight songs, all but one recorded inside this building Sun Studios in Memphis. Rank them in the order you’d release them to promote your new label.

You won’t know anything about the artists. You’ll just have to go by what you hear. But I will tell you that every single one of these artists went on to fame and fortune.

They loved the idea, had lots of fun coming up with their label names and when I started playing the songs, they couldn’t have been more attentive.

I started as I should have with Elvis Presley’s first hit, “That’s All Right, Mama” which I always thought was appropriate that it was recorded the day after Independence Day, July 4, 1954. “I was one,” I told them. Smiles across the room.

From there, it was an array of Sun hits, Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Dixie Fried” then Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” and “I Walk The Line” and the one song Elvis recorded in Memphis at RCA Studios that everybody loved, “Hound Dog.”

The results were fascinating. Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” got the most No. 1 votes but right behind it was Elvis’s “That’s All Right, Mama” — which surprised me — along with Elvis’ unstoppable “Hound Dog” and Johnny Cash’s “I Walk The Line” and Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” When the last song played, they all clapped. Somewhere Sam Phillips was smiling! So was the teacher.

“It’s fun,” one said. “They sound like, free,” added another. “They don’t sound like they hadn’t done this before,” added a third. “This was all done in this one building?” asked one kid, pointing to the painting.

“Yup,” I told him, pointing to a poster of the young Elvis on the back wall. “One of these guys went from making $18 a week driving a truck for Crown Electric straight out of high school to making more money than all of these guys put together. You might have heard of him. Elvis Presley. And it all happened because he gave himself a chance, going into Sun Studios to record a couple songs for his mother.

“At the time, he was so shy, hardly anybody at his school even knew he sang. Once the folks at Sun Studio heard him, they wanted to hear more. And the rest, well, is history.

I’d been waiting to do this all year. I walked over to that painting and pointed to it, just before the bell rang.

“Now, please pass in your assignments,” I told them.“Then, go find your own Sun Studio.”

There was only one king, Elvis Presley. Happy birthday, Elvis!