“Hold it, fellas.” After languidly singing the first line of “Milk Cow Blues,” Elvis Presley halted the proceedings. “That don’t move me,” he exhorted his sidemen. “Let’s get real, real gone for a change.”

And get real gone he did. Elvis strumming his ’42 D-18, Scotty Moore on an ES-295, and upright bassist Bill Black kicked into a jumping tempo and cut the appropriately retitled “Milkcow Blues Boogie.” It’s been simplistically stated that combining blues and country music resulted in rock and roll and, at that 1954 session at Memphis’ Sun Studio, Presley gave a vivid demonstration.

“Milk Cow Blues” dates back to bottleneck-slide guitarist Kokomo Arnold’s 1934 recording, and was covered in ’41 by Western-swing bandleader Johnnie Lee Wills, then by the Texas Playboys (led by his brother, Bob). Presley’s version resembled those renditions lyrically and melodically, but the mood and effect were another world.

Elvis/Memphis collects all 111 recordings Presley made in his hometown, from the 1953 demos he cut at Memphis Recording Service (later Sun) to 16 tracks recorded at his Graceland mansion in ’76.

The tracks for Sam Phillips’ Sun Records are among the truly essential in rock history. Previous Sun artists included bluesmen Little Milton and Junior Parker, but Phillips was looking for “a white man who had the Negro sound and feel.” After the 18-year-old truck driver recorded four syrupy love songs for his mother, Sun’s secretary, Marion Keisker, urged Phillips to check him out. The producer then enlisted Moore and Black, and after various misfires, Elvis messed around with bluesman Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right.” It clicked.

The subsequent selections reveal Presley’s eclectic tastes and range as a vocalist, as well as the adaptability and seasoning of the older Moore and Black. There are covers of rhythm and blues (Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” Arthur Gunter’s “Baby, Let’s Play House”), country (“I Forgot To Remember To Forget You”), and ballads (Lonnie Johnson’s “Tomorrow Night,” the Bing Crosby hit, “Harbor Lights”). Even more radical than “Milkcow,” the flip side of “That’s All Right” took bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon Of Kentucky” from a slow waltz to a hopped-up 4/4.

Elvis didn’t record in Memphis again until 1969, at American Sound Studio, where Reggie Young played the arpeggiated intro on “Suspicious Minds” and tasteful fills on the Dallas Frazier/Arthur Owen country-soul classic “True Love Travels on a Gravel Road.” They played Hank Snow’s country classic “I’m Movin’ On” at a casual pace before John Hughey’s pedal-steel shifted things into high gear. Later that year, James Burton joined Elvis’ Las Vegas band after having played on Dale Hawkins’ “Susie Q,” being highly visible as Ricky Nelson’s sideman, and logging numerous sessions including for Buffalo Springfield, Judy Collins, and Merle Haggard.

At Stax Studio in ’73, Burton opened the sessions by ripping three gnarly choruses on “Promised Land” (with Per-Erik “Pete” Hallin on Clavinet) then adding Mu-tron phasing to understated bends on Danny O’Keefe’s “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues.” Norbert Putnam’s melodic bass established Tony Joe White’s “I’ve Got A Thing About You, Baby.”

Disc 4 presents the entire 1974 “Homecoming Concert” in all its bombastic glory, from the “Also Sprach Zarathustra” intro (the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme) to the closing “Elvis has left the building” vamp. It’s a mix of rockers like Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman” and Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy,” country numbers like Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away,” a gospel section, and oldies medleys. When the singer pulls out Crudup’s “My Baby Left Me,” with Burton’s chicken pickin’ replacing Moore’s chords, he transports us back to ’56.

In ’76, Presley held sessions in Graceland’s den, famously known as the Jungle Room, with the road band’s Burton, bassist Jerry Scheff, and John Wilkinson on acoustic rhythm. His pseudo-operatic vocal on “Hurt” can’t match the emotion of Timi Yuro’s 1961 hit, while “Moody Blue” was his last Top 10 charter, albeit on Adult Contemporary. The grittier “Way Down” was recorded less than a year before his death at age 42.

The boxed set is replete with photos and liner notes by Memphis scholar Robert Gordon. With the exception of the Sun recordings, all tracks were newly mixed by Matt Ross-Spang, with overdubs stripped away.

There’s been a lot of revisionist history about the beginnings of rock and roll, written by people who didn’t experience it firsthand. Today, only those in their late 70s and 80s would have been consumers when Elvis hit the scene. He obviously didn’t invent rock and roll, but the effect he had was like nothing the Eisenhower generation had experienced. Remarkably, after signing with RCA, “All Shook Up” and “Jailhouse Rock” reached #1 on the Pop, Country, and R&B charts.

Without Elvis, would there have been Buddy Holly or Ricky Nelson? Would Chuck Berry and Fats Domino have crossed over to white audiences? Would the Beatles have existed as more than a skiffle group? Suffice to say, Elvis’ impact on music and culture was incalculable.

© 2024 Dan Forte; all rights reserved by the author.

This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.