Das Mischpult SILVESTRIS – Ein Vollröhren-Mischpult für ... - EMSP

Abschlußbericht Mixed Signal Baugruppen 2008/9 Mischpult SILVESTRIS (Teil 1) Einführung
Was Elvis appreciative of his musicians’ work? If you played something good would he say, ‘Hey, I
really liked that, can you do that again?
“Oh yes, sure.”
What about Elvis’ own guitar playing? He could strum a few chords, but the acoustic guitar on the
records, is that him or is it you?
“On the early things on Sun it’s him, and then later on, on RCA, occasionally he would play or, like you
mentioned before, he would turn the guitar over and just keep time on the back of it.”
Hank Garland came into the picture later on, and the band got bigger…
“Yes, the band got bigger. Hank came in and did a lot of recordings, which I was glad of because it
gave me some relief. And I was a great fan of Hank’s. He was a great player, and he was just
beginning to get the notoriety that he really deserved when he had his terrible car accident.”
Do you think Elvis would have been a good character to have lived into his old age?
“No, that’s one thing I’ve always said, that with his vanity and with his looks, I don’t think he could have
grown gracefully into old age. I don’t think he’d have wanted to jump off a cliff or anything, but I think
it bothered him – you know, the weight gain and things like that.”
As members of the band, were you, D.J. and Bill idolized?
“If we were, we didn’t know it.”
Well, you would have been if you’d come here…
“We’ve found that out in the last ten days. We were talking just last night about how the people here
seem to love us, and I said, ‘Well, I don’t really take that personally – more that we were connected
with a happening.’ That’s the way I feel about it.”
But had it not been that actual set of people – Sam Phillips, the band, Elvis and The Jordanaires – the
chemistry might not have been such that it worked. And who knows, Elvis might not have become
the phenomenon that he did…
“It’s quite possible, I mean, it was a fluke that it all happened, because that kind of music was being
played all through the South East – Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee. And a good example
is Carl Perkins: we didn’t know it until years later, but Carl and I were born and raised within fourteen
miles of each other, and I’m only about three, or four months older than he is. Carl and his brothers
were playing up around Jackson, Tennessee, and we called it honky-tonk music. There were very few
groups that stayed together as a unit all the time; you just got together and played what were current
country hits, current pop hits, with whatever instrumentation you had. But you had to play them all
well enough for people to dance to, because that’s what you were there for.”
Did you have any writing ability, and did you ever get any chance to write songs for Elvis?
“No, I guess it just wasn’t my thing.”
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