Remembering Elvis Presley with our favorite songs

3. "That’s All Right (Mama)"

In his first recording session for Sun Records on July 5, 1954, Elvis and two session musicians spent hours coming up with nothing special. Then, during a break, Elvis started playing a blues song by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, but at twice the speed of the original rendition. The session musicians started playing along and Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records, came back into the studio excited with what he was hearing, and asked them to start over at the beginning so he could record it. This unrehearsed recording of just two guitarists and a bass player was sent to a radio station and was quickly made into a single. It became a regional hit. The song marked the beginning of Elvis’ stardom and some believe it marked the beginning of something much greater than that - the beginning of the rock and roll revolution. Rolling Stone magazine argued in a 2004 article that this recording was the first rock and roll record. They remark, along with their current placement of the song as No. 113 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, that “the single was the place where race and hillbilly music collided and became rock & roll.”