Elvis Presley returns to the big screen this Friday in EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, the 2025 documentary follows his 2022 biopic, Elvis. It presents previously unseen footage from the concert films Elvis: That's the Way It Is and Elvis on Tour, together with audio of Presley telling his life story.
No moment was more vital to that story than the night Presley first teamed up with guitarist Scotty Moore to make his hit recordings for Sun Records in Memphis. As Moore told Guitar Player in our August 1974 issue, he was a session musician for Sun at the time.
“I was born in West Tennessee — Humboldt. My father and two brothers all played, so that's where my first interest came from,” he said. “I didn’t pursue it very much until I got into the service and formed a couple of bands.
“When I came out in ’52, I went to Memphis to work for my brother, who had a cleaning plant. And in my spare time I formed a band and met Sam Phillips [of Sun Records], and began getting into recording a bit.”
Dubbed the Starlight Wranglers, Moore’s band brought a country element to Sun’s stable.
“Sam had been into rhythm and blues before that, and with the band that I'd put together we started working on some country product. Bill Black was the bass player. The singer’s name was Doug Poindexter. We put one record out and were playing some of the clubs around Memphis.
“Then along came Elvis.”
It was July 5, 1954. Presley had been in Sun twice before, in August 1953 and January 1954, and cut two sides at each session. Nothing had come of those demos or of a third session at which Presley attempted a ballad called “Without You.” Nevertheless, Phillips was impressed enough to suggest Moore try working out a number or two with him.
“At the time, the music business was at a very low ebb, and we were all looking for something that would sell,” Moore told us. “Sam had me get hold of Elvis, and so Elvis came over to my house one Sunday afternoon. We sat around and played, and Elvis sang a little bit of everything — pop, country, R&B.
“So after that I called Sam and said, ‘Well, the guy sings good. He doesn't really knock me out, you know, but…’
Elvis came over to my house one Sunday afternoon. We sat around and played, and Elvis sang a little bit of everything — pop, country, R&B.”
— Scotty Moore
“So Sam says, ‘Let's go into the studio and see what he sounds like on tape.’
“So that's what happened, and the first record came out of that first session.”
That debut disc was “That’s All Right,” a rhythm-and-blues tune written and recorded by Arthur Crudup in 1946. With Presley on acoustic guitar, Moore on electric and Bill Black on standup bass, the three men whipped up a steady rockabilly rhythm that provided a sturdy foundation for Presley’s loose and energetic vocal style.
Moore couldn’t recall what guitar he played on the recording, other than it was a Fender.
“It was a Telecaster, a Broadcaster, a Lancaster — it was one of those ’casters, I do know that,” he said.
He played it through a custom-built EchoSonic amp made by Ray Butts, the man who invented the Filter’Tron pickup.
“Chet Atkins had one, I can't think who had the second, and I had the third one built,” Moore explained. “It had a tape, more like a slap-back effect — not the Echoplex we know of now with a repeater. But it just gave a little boost to the sound. It was awful good if you missed a note. It wouldn't come out so bad.”
“That’s All Right” gave Presley the boost he needed, but it was initially only a regional hit.
“The first one wasn't a nationwide thing. It was more in the Southwest: Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas,” Moore said. “We started doing some shows, and it was rough, it was wild. It wasn't an overnight success, by any means. But even in those early days the crowds were just as ecstatic as now, but not as large.
Nobody even had time to think after that. A phenomenon, really! I think I'm still getting shock waves out of it.”
— Scotty Moore
“Then we went to the [Shreveport] Louisiana Hayride and worked with the other acts that were on it. And then we did the first show with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and with that, coupled with the first record we did on RCA, ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ it was just like an atomic bomb going off.
“Nobody even had time to think after that. A phenomenon, really! And even being as close to it as I was, it's still hard for me to realize it. I think I'm still getting shock waves out of it.”
Their subsequent recordings for Sun came together as group efforts.
“It was a combination of everybody. We'd stop and say, ‘Let's see if this’ll work.’ But for the most part, once we'd get a rhythm pattern going that felt good with the way Elvis wanted to sing it, we'd work everything else in around that.
“The rhythm was the primary thing. Any lead work was really secondary at that point.”
Moore recalled Presley as “just an everyday guy — young and wild.”
“He only played rhythm guitar, what I call self-accompaniment.”
Presley’s main guitars in those early years included three acoustics: a 1942 Martin D-18, a 1955 Martin D-28 with a custom leather cover featuring his name, and a 1956 Gibson J-200 that he used frequently onstage in 1957.
“He played a little piano, too,” Moore noted. “He didn't consider himself a guitar player as such, but his playing did add to the group, because he played rhythm and more or less tied things together from the rhythm standpoint.
“But singing was always his first concern.”
Moore stayed with Presley full-time until the singer entered the Army in ’58, then resumed when Presley returned in 1959. They remained together through Presley’s televised ’68 Comeback Special.
“At that time he was going to Vegas for the first time and wanted myself, D.J. [Fontana, drummer] and the Jordanaires to go with him. But it was going to be a six-week bit, and you know what it means to be out of town that long — it's like starting over.”
