And a lot of the stuff he and Jerry Lee Lewis did was copied off Pinetop (Perkins) and what we were doing. The way (Elvis) moved his legs when he was singing, he got from me, because I’d do that when I played piano. Matt Murphy and Little Junior Parker were playing at this same club as me. “He’d come once or twice a week I didn’t even know he was going to other (black Memphis) clubs. I used to hide him behind the piano, because it was a black club and it was segregated. He would come in, and I’d smile and pull my piano out so he could sit there and people in the club wouldn’t see him. “Elvis used to drive a gravel truck, and park it by the back entrance of the West Memphis club where I was playing,” Turner recalled in his Union-Tribune interview. Sun honcho Sam Phillips had been searching for “a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel.” He hit pay-dirt with Elvis, who took plenty of mental notes in the Memphis clubs where Turner and other greats performed for black audiences. In the early 1950s, he recorded for Sun Records, the same label that signed Elvis in 1954.
“I knew Elvis before he became Elvis,” said Turner, a longtime San Diego County resident who died in 2007. Ike Turner, a largely unsung rock pioneer, recalled in a 1997 Union-Tribune interview how Presley would come to see him perform in Memphis. Elvis heard this same music played live at the black nightclubs he frequented as a teenager and young adult. King and Rufus Thomas, both of whom also sang live during their broadcasts. While Elvis was a fan of country music, he was even more inspired by blues, gospel and rhythm-and-blues, including the Memphis radio shows hosted by such local disc jockeys as B.B. But Elvis could reach an enormous national audience, and did.Īfrican-American artists like Blackwell were relegated to so-called “race music” record labels and radio stations, at a time when much of the U.S. Three of Elvis’ landmark early recordings - “All Shook Up,” “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Return to Sender” - were written by Otis Blackwell, who also wrote the Jerry Lee Lewis classics “Great Balls of Fire” and “Breathless.”Įlvis’ versions were almost identical to how Blackwell sang them on his demonstration recordings.
But, 40 years after his death, it’s still a relevant one in the case of this Mississippi-truck-driver-turned-global-superstar, whose career ignited in the mid-1950s.
Of course, asking if he was a thief is a provocative question.
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