NASHVILLE BABYLON: ELVIS The Pharoah Of Seas And Lips

[The following is excerpted from the book, COUNTRY: The Biggest Music In America by Nick Tosches, published by Stein & Day Publishers.]

Monday, July 5, 1954. Rock-and-roll exists. Sam Phillips, Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black are in Sun’s poky, 30-by-20-foot studio messing with “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” a song Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys had cut for Columbia in 1945. Phillips has that weird bastard sound in the dampness of his brain, and he looks at Presley and hopes.