The Blue Moon Boys

Career

1953–1956: First recordings

In August 1953,, Presley checked into Memphis Recording Service, the company run by Sam Phillips before he started Sun Records. He aimed to pay for studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". He later claimed that he intended the record as a birthday gift for his mother, or that he was merely interested in what he "sounded like". Biographer Peter Guralnick argued that Presley chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Phillips was not there, so Presley's recording was produced and engineered by his secretary, Marion Keisker, who kept a demo copy of the recording In January 1954, Presley cut a second acetate at Sun—"I'll Never Stand in Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You"—but again nothing came of it. Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows, and another for the band of Eddie Bond.

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring to a broader audience the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused. At Phillips' behest, Keisker called Presley for an appointment at the studio almost a year later; he returned on June 26, 1954.

In June, he acquired a demo recording by Jimmy Sweeney of a ballad, "Without You", that he thought might suit Presley. The teenaged singer came by the studio but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing other numbers and was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and double bassist player Bill Black of the local country music band the Starlight Wranglers, to work with Presley for a recording session. The session, held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them." Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips (no relation) played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listener interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the remaining two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, (Dewey) Phillips asked him what high school he attended to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed that he was black. During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass song, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A-side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.

1956–1958: Commercial breakout and controversy

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA Victor in Nashville. Extending his by-now customary backup of Moore, Black, Fontana, and Hayride pianist Floyd Cramer—who had been performing at live club dates with Presley—RCA Victor enlisted guitarist Chet Atkins and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet. The session produced the moody "Heartbreak Hotel", released as a single on January 27. Parker brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS' Stage Show for six appearances over two months. The program, produced in New York City, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. After his first appearance on January 28, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA Victor's New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins' rockabilly anthem "Blue Suede Shoes". In February, Presley's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", a Sun recording released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart. Neal's contract was terminated and Parker became Presley's manager.

RCA Victor released Presley's self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks included two country songs, a bouncy pop tune, and what would centrally define the evolving sound of rock and roll: "Blue Suede Shoes"—"an improvement over Perkins' in almost every way", according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presley's stage repertoire, covers of Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists ... who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions of songs in the '50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases. It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for ten weeks. While Presley was not an innovative guitarist like Moore or contemporary African American rockers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argued that the album's cover image, "of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar ... as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music."

On April 3, Presley made the first of two appearances on NBC's The Milton Berle Show. His performance, on the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, California, prompted cheers and screams from an audience of sailors and their dates. A few days later, Presley and his band were flying to Nashville, Tennessee, for a recording session when an engine died and the plane almost went down over Arkansas. Twelve weeks after its original release, "Heartbreak Hotel" became Presley's first number-one pop hit. In late April, Presley began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The shows were poorly received by the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests, "like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party", a Newsweek critic wrote. Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, covering 15 cities in as many days. He had attended several shows by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Vegas and was struck by their cover of "Hound Dog", a hit in 1953 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became his new closing number.

1958–1960: Military service and mother's death

On March 24, 1958, Presley was drafted into the United States Army at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. His arrival was a major media event. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus; photographers accompanied him into the installation. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military service, saying that he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else.

Between March 28 and September 17, 1958, Presley completed basic and advanced training at Fort Hood, Texas, where he was temporarily assigned to Company A, 2d Medium Tank Battalion, 37th Armor. During the two weeks' leave between his basic and advanced training in early June, he recorded five songs in Nashville.

Presley was promoted to sergeant on February 11, 1960.

While in Bad Nauheim, Presley, aged 24, met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla said that Presley was concerned that his 24 months in the military would ruin his career. In Special Services, he would have been able to perform and remain in touch with the public, but Parker had convinced him that to gain popular respect, he should serve as a regular soldier. Media reports echoed Presley's concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared: armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top-40 hits, including "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the bestselling "Hard Headed Woman", and "One Night" in 1958, and "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number-one "A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959. RCA also generated four albums compiling previously issued material during this period, most successfully Elvis' Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

1960–1968: Focus on films

Presley returned to the US on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged three days later. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans. On the night of March 20, he entered RCA's Nashville studio (with Moore, Fontana, the Jordanaires, and members of the Nashville A-Team - but notably without Black) to cut tracks for a new album along with a single, "Stuck on You", which was rushed into release and swiftly became a number-one hit. Another Nashville session two weeks later yielded a pair of bestselling singles, the ballads "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", along with the rest of Elvis Is Back! The album features several songs described by Greil Marcus as full of Chicago blues "menace, driven by Presley's own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis' singing wasn't sexy, it was pornographic." The record "conjured up the vision of a performer who could be all things", according to music historian John Robertson: "a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold; a tempestuous, dangerous lover; a gutbucket blues singer; a sophisticated nightclub entertainer; [a] raucous rocker". Released only days after recording was complete, it reached number two on the album chart.

On May 12, Presley reappeared on television as a guest on The Frank Sinatra Timex Special. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley's first film since his return, was a number-one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later; it reached number 13 on the US pop chart and number 3 in the United Kingdom, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows in Memphis, for a benefit for 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA Victor presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records. A twelve-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley's next studio album, Something for Everybody. According to John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that defined country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley over the next half-decade, the album is largely "a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis' birthright". It was his sixth number-one LP. Another benefit concert, for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25 in Hawaii. It was Presley's last public performance for seven years.

1968-1969: Comeback and split

Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, none higher than number 28. Three of his six albums were in the top 40. His forthcoming soundtrack album, Speedway, would rank at number 82. Parker had already shifted his plans to television: he maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to finance Presley's first TV special and a movie.

Recorded in late June in Burbank, California, the special, simply called Elvis, aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the '68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small audience—Presley's first live performances since 1961. The live segments saw Presley dressed in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days. Director and co-producer Steve Binder worked hard to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC's highest-rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. Marsh calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance".

By January 1969, the single "If I Can Dream", written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album rose into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man." Binder said of Presley's reaction, "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, 'Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in.'"

Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio in eight years. As described by Marsh, it is "a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement." The album featured the hit single "In the Ghetto", issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley's first non-gospel top ten hit since "Bossa Nova Baby" in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: "Suspicious Minds", "Don't Cry Daddy", and "Kentucky Rain".

Partial reunions, other collaborations, and awards (1975–2009)

From the 1970s onwards, Moore and Fontana would occasionally reunite, though they would not use the "Blue Moon Boys" band name.

In 1975, Moore and Fontana reunited to record "E.P. Express" with friend Carl Perkins.

In August 1992, Moore and Fontana performed at Ellis Auditorium for a "Good Rockin' Tonight" show alongside Carl Perkins, the Jordanaires, James Burton, the Sun Rhythm Section, and Ronnie McDowell. They later took this show format on a small tour of England. In 1993, Moore, Fontana, and Carl Perkins performed at a telethon in Jackson, TN. Moore and Fontana also toured Europe with vocalist Bloomer Jenson, organized by the Elvis Presley fan club "It's Elvis Time". In 1994, Moore, Fontana, and Carl Perkins performed at the Jackson telethon again and were joined by McDowell.

In 1997, Moore and Fontana reunited to record the album All the King's Men, featuring guest appearances from the Bill Black Combo, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, Levon Helm and Jim Weider of The Band, Rick Neilsen of Cheap Trick, and others. In April 1999, Fontana and Moore toured the UK.

In 2001, Moore and Fontana recorded a version of "That's All Right" with Paul McCartney for the documentary Good Rockin' Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records.

In 2007, the Blue Moon Boys were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.

Members

Elvis Presley – lead vocals, rhythm and lead guitars, piano, percussion, bass guitar (1954–1968; died August 16, 1977)

Scotty Moore – lead and rhythm guitars, occasional backing vocals (1954–1968; died June 28, 2016)

Bill Black – double bass, bass guitar, occasional backing vocals (1954–1958; died October 21, 1965)

D. J. Fontana – drums, percussion, occasional backing vocals (1955–1968; died June 13, 2018)