July 18, 1953:
A young Elvis Presley walked into the Memphis Recording Service, home of Sun Records, located at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. At the time, anyone could pay a small fee to record a personal acetate, and Elvis did just that — spending $3.98 to cut a double-sided disc featuring the songs “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.” Some lore suggested he was recording the acetate as a birthday gift for his mother, Gladys Presley.
However, many biographers have questioned this explanation. For one, the Presley family did not own a record player at the time, making it unlikely that Gladys could have listened to the acetate. Additionally, Gladys’ birthday was in April, months before the recording session took place. It was also later discovered that the acetate never actually reached her hands, further fueling speculation that Elvis’ real motive was to get noticed by someone at Sun Records — most notably its owner, Sam Phillips.
Though Phillips wasn’t at the studio that day, Elvis had a stroke of luck. Marion Keisker, Phillips’ trusted assistant, was there and took the time to speak with him. Impressed by the young man, she wrote down his information and noted that he was a “good ballad singer.” Years later, she would recall their brief exchange: “I said, ‘What kind of singer are you?’ He said, ‘I sing all kinds.’ I said, ‘Who do you sound like?’ He said, ‘I don’t sound like nobody.’”
That encounter would turn out to be the beginning of something extraordinary.
