(1953) Sun ''My Happiness'' (Acetate) Elvis Presley

Details

Description

DEMO RECORDING FOR ELVIS PRESLEY
AT THE MEMPHIS RECORDING SERVICE 1953

SUN RECORDING STUDIO
706 UNION AVENUE, MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE 38103
PRIVATE RECORDING: SATURDAY JULY 18, 1953
PRODUCER AND RECORDING ENGINEER - PROBABLY MARION KEISKER

According to the 'Memphis Recording Service Volume 1' the date of this demo session is August 22 1953.

Elvis Presley walked into the Memphis Recording Service to record a four-dollar acetate. Elvis knew he had a good voice, and he was hoping to be discovered by Sam Phillips. Phillips was not in that day, but Marion Keisker was. The first song that Elvis Presley recorded at the Memphis Recording Service was "My Happiness". The second number was "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". Marion Keisker remembered Elvis Presley walking in dressed in dirty coveralls and with grease under his fingernails. "I never believed that story about his being a truck driver", Keisker would say six weeks before her death on December 29, 1989. "Truck drivers don't have grease under their fingernails". Then came that famous first conversation:

"What kind of singer are you".
"I song all kinds".
"Who do you sound like?".
"I don't sound like nobody".
"Hillbilly?".
"Yeah, I sing hillbilly".
Who do you sound like in hillbilly?".
"I don't sound like nobody".

"My Happiness"/"That's When Your Heartaches Begin" were lathe-recorded directly onto a ten-inch aluminum acetate disc. Soon after recording the demo, Elvis took it over to the East Jackson Avenue in Memphis, home of Ed Leek and his grandmother to play it for them. He left the demo with Leek and never asked for it back.

The acetate of "My Happiness"/"That's When Your Heartaches Begin" surfaced in 1988. It was found in the possession of Edwin S. Leek Jr., a classmate of Elvis at Humes High School. Leek says that it was he who urged Elvis to walk into the Memphis Recording Service to make the demo in July 1953.

Marion Keisker took the four dollars from Elvis Presley, then asked Sam Phillips if he wanted to record the young man, or did he want her to record him. "Sam snapped at me, 'Can't you see I'm bust. You do it", Marion Keisker would relate just before her death. "I had tears well up in my eyes. I almost cried. But that wasn't like Sam. He must have had something else bothering him at the time".

Marion took Elvis inside the tiny studio, turned on the machine, and Elvis Presley began recording "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". Impressed with what she was hearing, Keisker flipped on the Ampex tape recorder while Elvis was singing. Later, she would ask him for his name and address, putting it away in the files on her desk. "To make sure I remembered which one he was, I wrote 'Timothy Sideburns' on the paper", she recalled.

Sam Phillips insists it was he, not Marion, who recorded that first disc. "The truth of the matter is that I made the demo record of "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". I made the little record. He came in with his guitar; Marion was in front and I was in the control room". As further proof, he says that "I wouldn’t take anything away from Marion; I never had a better friend in my life. But Marion didn't know how to make an acetate record and she didn't try to".

"MY HAPPINESS"
Composer: - Betty Peterson-Borney Bergantine
Publisher: - A.S.C.A.P. - Chappell Music Incorporated
Matrix number: - WPA5-2531 - 10 Inch Acetate - Not Originally Issued (2:32)
Recorded: - July 18, 1953
Released: - August 1990
First appearance: - RCA BMG (CD) 500/200rpm PD 82227-1-1 mono
THE GREAT PERFORMANCES
Reissued: - 1999 RCA BMG Music (CD) 500/200rpm 0786367675-1-1 mono
SUNRISE

"My Happiness" had been a pop record, a country record, and a jazz record before Elvis got to it; his version was sung as a kind of half-confident plaint.

"My Happiness"

Evening shadows make me blue
When each weary day is through
How I long to be with you
My happiness

Every day I reminesce
Dreaming of your tender kiss
Always thinking how I miss
My happiness

A million years it seems
Have gone by since we shared our dreams
But I'll hold you again
There'll be no blue memories then

Whether skies are grey or blue
Any place on earth will do
Just as long as I'm with you
My happiness

A million years it seems
Have gone by since we shared our dreams
But I'll hold you again
There'll be no blue memories then

Whether skies are grey or blue
Any place on earth will do
Just as long as I'm with you
My happiness

Name (Or. No. Of Instruments)
Elvis Presley - Vocal and Acoustic Rhythm Guitar (Martin Dreadnought 18)
Only one copy, i.e. no tape left at the Sun studio

© - 706 UNION AVENUE SESSIONS - ©