Years before millions of people knew Elvis Presley with a guitar hanging around his shoulders, the instrument entered his life almost by accident.
On January 8, 1946, Elvis turned 11 years old in Tupelo, Mississippi. According to Graceland, he wanted a bicycle, but his parents could not afford the one he wanted. His mother, Gladys, persuaded him to accept something else instead: a guitar.
The guitar cost $12.95 at the Tupelo Hardware Company. For an 11-year-old boy, it probably felt like a compromise. In hindsight, it became one of the most important gifts of his life.
Elvis began learning to play, and for years that guitar remained one of the few instruments he owned. He played throughout his teenage years and carried his growing love of country, gospel and rhythm and blues with him when the Presley family moved from Tupelo to Memphis in 1948. But having a guitar did not mean anyone was predicting superstardom.
In fact, shortly before Elvis finally broke through, he experienced a rejection that must have made the possibility of a music career seem even more distant.
Hear One of Elvis Presley’s Earliest Recordings
By 1954, Elvis was 19 and desperately trying to find a place for himself in music.
He had already paid to make private recordings at the Memphis Recording Service, connected to Sam Phillips’ Sun Records, but nothing immediately happened with them. Then Elvis auditioned for a local gospel vocal group called The Songfellows. He did not make it. According to accounts of Elvis’s early life, he went home afterward and told his father, Vernon, “They told me I couldn’t sing.” Songfellows member Jim Hamill later explained that Elvis’s problem was not necessarily his ability to sing lead. He said Elvis struggled at the time with the harmony required to fit into a quartet.
That distinction hardly mattered to a young man hoping someone would finally give him a chance. And the rejection was not his only one.
Elvis also auditioned for Memphis musician Eddie Bond, who was looking for a vocalist. Bond turned him down too. Elvis later recalled being advised to stick with driving a truck because he was not going to make it as a singer. At the time, Elvis was working for Crown Electric.
Imagine how ordinary his future could have looked at that moment. He was a teenage truck driver with a guitar, a few homemade recordings and at least two failed auditions. Then came July 5, 1954. Elvis entered Sun Studio with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. The session initially struggled to produce what producer Sam Phillips was searching for. Then Elvis began playing Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” in a loose, energetic style. Moore and Black joined him. Phillips heard something. That performance was recorded that night, and Graceland identifies July 5, 1954 as the date Elvis recorded “That’s All Right” at Sun.
Elvis Presley – “That’s All Right”
Suddenly, the qualities that had apparently failed to fit neatly into someone else’s singing group became part of Elvis’s greatest strength. He did not sound exactly like the other singers around him. His voice carried gospel, country and rhythm and blues. His performances had an energy that was difficult to place inside an existing category. Instead of fitting perfectly into someone else’s formula, Elvis was beginning to create one of his own. And the turnaround happened remarkably fast. Only a few months separated the young man being rejected by the Songfellows from the recording session that launched his professional career.
Within another two years, Elvis Presley would become one of the most famous entertainers in America. That makes the guitar story even more remarkable. At 11, Elvis wanted something else for his birthday and walked away with a $12.95 guitar. At 19, a singing group rejected him. Then Sun Records finally heard what everyone else had missed. The boy who did not originally want the guitar and the teenager who was told he couldn’t sing kept going until the world could no longer ignore him.