Welcome to episode thirty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This one looks at "Mystery Train" by Elvis Presley. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.



Resources

As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.

There are many, many books about Elvis Presley out there, but the one I'm using as my major resource for information on him, and which has guided my views as to the kind of person he was, is Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, generally considered the best biography of him.

I'm also relying heavily on another book by Guralnick -- Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll -- for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records.

The Colonel by Alanna Nash is a little more tabloidy than those two, but is the only full-length biography I know of of Colonel Tom Parker.

All the Sun Records excerpted here -- the ones by Junior Parker, Elvis Presley, Rufus Thomas, and Johnny Cash, are on this ten-disc set, which charts the history of Sun Records, with the A- and B-sides of ninety of the first Sun singles for an absurdly low price.

And this three-CD box set contains literally every recording Elvis made from 1953 through 1955, including live recordings and session outtakes, along with a handsome book.

Patreon

This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?

Transcript

We talked a few weeks back about how Elvis Presley got started in the music business, but of course Elvis was important enough to rock and roll that we're not going to stop there. Today we're going to look at the rest of his career at Sun Records -- and at how and why he ended up leaving Sun for a major label, with consequences that would affect the whole of music history. We're going to tell a tale of two Parkers.

The first Parker we're going to talk about is Junior Parker, the blues musician who had been one of the Beale Streeters with Johnny Ace, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and B.B. King.

Junior Parker had been working with Howlin' Wolf for a while, before in 1952 he formed his own band, the Blue Flames (which should not be confused with all the other Flames bands we've talked about -- for some reason there is a profusion of Flames that we'll be dealing with well into the seventies). Ike Turner discovered them, and initially got them signed to Modern Records, though as with many Modern Records acts they were recording mostly in Sam Phillips' studio.

Turner contributed piano to the Blue Flames' first single, "You're My Angel":

[Excerpt: Junior Parker and the Blue Flames, "You're My Angel"]

But after that one single, Parker and his band started recording directly for Sun records.

The first single they recorded for Sun was a minor hit, but wasn't particularly interesting -- "Feelin' Good" was basically a John Lee Hooker knock-off:

[Excerpt: Little Junior's Blue Flames: "Feelin' Good"]

But it's their second single for Sun we want to talk about here, and both sides of it. The A-side of Junior Parker and the Blue Flames' second Sun single is one of the best blues records Sun ever put out, "Love my Baby":

[Excerpt: Junior Parker, "Love My Baby"]

That record was one that Sam Phillips -- a man who made a lot of great records -- considered among the greatest he'd ever made. Talking to his biographer Peter Guralnick about it decades later, he said “I mean you tell me a better record that you’ve ever heard,” and Guralnick couldn't.

But it was the B-side that made an impression. The B-side was a song called "Mystery Train".

That song actually dates back to the old folk song, "Worried Man Blues", which was recorded in 1930 by the Carter Family:

[excerpt: "Worried Man Blues", the Carter Family]

The Carter Family were, along with Jimmie Rodgers, the people who defined what country music is. Everyone in country music followed from either the Carters or Rodgers,