In 1953, an eighteen year old Elvis Presley walked into the Memphis Recording Service to cut a record, and the person who hit the record button was a woman named Marion Keisker. She ran the office, and she heard something in that nervous kid that she just couldn’t let go of.
She kept after her boss, Sam Phillips, to give the young man a real chance. In a very real sense, the whole story starts with her deciding Elvis was worth remembering.
Years went by. Elvis became the biggest star alive and got drafted into the Army. Marion took a very different path. She joined the Air Force, rose to the rank of captain and ended up posted all the way out in Germany, about five thousand miles from Memphis.
The women behind Sun Records
Then came 1960, and Elvis was in Germany too, holding a press conference as he got ready to leave the Army. In the middle of all those reporters and flashbulbs, he spotted a familiar face in uniform. Marion Keisker.
By the accounts that survive, he greeted her warmly, and when an officer bristled at her being so familiar with a soldier, Elvis didn’t miss a beat. He made sure the whole room understood there wouldn’t even be a press conference if it weren’t for this lady.
Elvis and Marion Keisker reunited in 1960
Plenty of people later took credit for discovering Elvis. He never forgot that before any of them, a woman sitting in an office pressed record and believed in him.