CHARLIE FEATHERS
I didn't start the song. Stan Kessler came while we were working on a song 'I Been Deceived' where he played steel on. He had a song called 'You Believe Everyone But Me' he wanted me to do and then take it up and try to get Elvis do the song.
At that time he mentioned a song he had started 'I Forgot To Remember To Forget'. There was something about that title I liked and said 'Man, that title you mentioned on that song is great.' I went over to his house the next day and we got in there and we played a little and I learned 'You Believe Everyone But Me' but that song didn't move me too well. So I said, let's get in this thing here, 'I Forgot To Remember To Forget'. We finished it up right there. I put the melody to it and Stan put the biggest part of the words down.
I took it up, but Sam didn't think much of it and it stayed up there two or three months until he finally recorded it and it then turned out to be one of the best things he had done at the time. I was up there when they cut it and Elvis wasn't doing it right. He tried it several times, but Sam didn't think it was right. So we went downtown for lunch, came back and all the time I was sitting there. I'd hum the song, I was humming the song to Elvis and I was showing him that he actually did the song wrong. He was doing the bridge in the song wrong. I got out there and when he came to the bridge I motioned at him, kinda indicated and he did it that way and Sam said "Without a doubt, that's it!" He liked it then and that was it.
It won all kind of awards, it was the number one record at the time. Elvis had never had one in the top ten at that time, so it was his first. Also, 'I Forgot To Remember To Forget' was the first millionseller, but it was on Sun and RCA combined, you see. They re-released it when he went to RCA because they didn't know how to record him, they thought they had the wrong artist. 'I Forgot To Remember To Forget' was real big and I've seen a check down there at Sun records for 2,000 dollars which rightly belonged to Stan Kessler and me. Stan might have got his, 'cause he stayed on there way after me, but I haven't seen one lousy cent yet!
| In Charlie's words (1979)
|
I was seventeen years old when I first came to Sun Records. Sam Phillips was just recording black artists. He was selling ten or fifteen thousand of some of the records. He didn't have no idea then about findin' a white man who could sing like a black man. I met Elvis way before he came to Sun. He was livin' on Alabama Street. A lot a poor people was livin' on Alabama at that time. Elvis and I had this sorta fan club who were telephone operators. In the picture where I'm holding the guitar, Elvis was sitting right beyond the girl dancing on my left. It's funny there ain't no pictures of him there because he spent a lot of time there. But I bet you sure could find out from those telephone operators that he was there. Elvis dyed his hair black and kept it black. He did it 'cause Tony Curtis' hair's black, and Tony Curtis was Elvis' idol. I seen him in a movie last night; had his hair just like Tony Curtis. You know the RCA Elvis wasn't the Elvis I knew. They didn't know what they got when they got 'im. They didn't believe he was being recorded with just three pieces, so they send Webb Pierce down to see him, and he blew 'em right off the stage with them three pieces. They had to sign him. They got all kind of pictures on the wall - even Hank Williams and he never did record there. My picture isn't on the wall. Though I never did have a big record outta there. I did write "I Forgot To Remember To Forget" which was Elvis' first million seller. Now, no one would admit that it was a million seller in those days cause RCA wanted to have the first million seller on him. So Sam went along. He didn't mind not having to pay people as much. So "Heartbreak Hotel" is supposed to be Elvis' first million seller. "I Forgot To Remember To Forget" was at the top of the charts for 43 weeks! You mean to tell me that ain't a million seller? You know, in the later years I didn't keep up with Elvis and them people. I think there's a lot of people that did not know Elvis, but they know him now! There's some boogie-woogie people out there making up a lotta stuff. You have to be a fan to buy something, but you do not have to be a fan to sell it. Now they got people over in front of Elvis' house trying to tell you they got a leaf that fell off a tree in his yard and he kissed it! |
|---|
| STAN KESSLER
Songs recorded by Elvis I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone (with Bill Taylor)
|
|---|
Southern producer Stan Kessler is best known for forming two of the industry's most renowned studio groups -- the American Studios Rhythm Section (otherwise known as the 827 Thomas Street Band) and the Dixie Flyers -- only to have both groups stolen away.
Starting out as an engineer, staff musician and songwriter for Sam Phillips at Sun, Kessler played steel guitar or bass on many Sun sessions with artists such as Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and many more.
Kessler engineered many of the mid-'60s Sun sessions, including Sam the Sham's big hit "Wooly Bully." Kessler also engineered sessions for the Goldwax label, and it was there that he put together a fixed group of studio musicians to back Goldwax stars like James Carr.
The group, consisting of guitarist Reggie Young, drummer Gene Chrisman, keyboardist Bobby Emmons and bassist Tommy Cogbill, grew into a crack recording unit and played on several Goldwax sessions before being lured away by a former engineer at the label, Chips Moman, who had left to open his own studio, American. At American the group went on to unheralded success, playing on 120 hit records in a three year period.
Undaunted, Kessler moved on to the Sounds of Memphis studio, where he formed another recording unit. He woodshedded the group, which consisted of guitarist Charlie Freeman, bassist Tommy McClure, keyboardist Jim Dickinson and drummer Sammy Creason, until they were able to cut a quality session (they backed Albert Collins on his Grammy-nominated Trash Talkin' album), only to have his studio musicians stolen again, this time by Atlantic head Jerry Wexler. The group, naming themselves the Dixie Flyers, relocated to Miami's Criteria studios, where they went on to record successful albums for Aretha Franklin and Jerry Jeff Walker.
When Kessler's third studio group was lured away by music attorney Seymour Rosenberg, the producer finally gave up the notion of independent recording and returned to work as an engineer for Sam Phillips. In recent years he has joined former Mar-Key Smoochie Smith, among others, to form a touring band, the Sun Rhythm Section.
Snearly Ranch Boys (Stan Kessler, Bill Taylor and Barbara Pittman)
Bill Taylor remembered
I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone, written by Stan Kesler and Bill Taylor.
"I wrote that thing in the bath. It was based on the Campbell's soup advert and was written as a western swing type thing. I'd almost forgotten that in the studio Elvis, Scotty and Bill tried it as a slow blues."
The slower version, subsequently released on a number of bootleg albums, has a guitar figure lifted indirectly from the Delmore Brothers' recording of Blues Stay Away from Me. Elvis, his acoustic guitar heavily to the fore, sings in his slow blues style.
BARBARA PITTMAN
Barbara Pittman was born on Easter Sunday in Memphis, Tennessee. She came from a very large and poor family. She grew up listening to the blues and big band sound. She loved listening to black artists which included Little Richard.
Indeed, Barbara's career has been the proverbial press agent's dream. As a kid, she spent time behind the scenes at her uncle's pawn shop on Beale Street where she listened to jam sessions with legendary bluesmen like B.B. King. Barely in her teens, Barbara appeared along with their classmate, Elvis Presley, at the Eagle's Nest, a Memphis nightclub, until she was fired for being underage. " I was making $5 a night. Big money at the time." Barbara's association with Elvis grew naturally out of shared history and the central role music played in each of their lives.
"I sang with him, I knew him, I lived down the street from him when we were kids in North Memphis. His mom and mine used to get together to have what they used to call Stanley parties, they call them Tupperware parties now. I practically lived out at Graceland in the '50s before Elvis went into the service. He was going to take me on the road with him, then he got drafted." Barbara offers some fascinating recollections of Elvis in the earliest days of his Sun affiliation.
"I remember we were playing at a Catholic School on Jackson one evening. This was back in '55 before Elvis had dyed his hair black. It was still blond. He had his dad's old "pushmobile", we used to call it. You used to have to push it to get it started. It was pouring down rain when we came out of the show. Elvis had this black shoe polish in his hair. This was before he could afford to dye it properly. And it was raining and the shoe polish was running down his face and all over his clothes. And all these little screaming girls were after him and here's Elvis looking like Al Jolson in makeup. It was awful. "The King" standing there with black dye running all down his face." Barbara also recalls time spent at 706 Union Avenue.
"Elvis and I used to go down to the Sun studio in the afternoons after he got off from work. Sam had given him the key to the studio and he and I used to go down there. Sam was never there, he and Marion were off somewhere ... and Elvis used to answer the phone. There was really nothing going on there in the afternoons at that time. Everything was done at night. So Elvis and I were taking care of the studio. A lot of people were talking to Elvis on the phone at that time and never even knew it."
After being on the road for a year she returned to Memphis and joined up with Stan Kessler. Stan wanted her to do a demo for Elvis that he had written called "Playing For Keeps." They recorded it at the Cotton Club and Stan took it to Sam Phillips. "Well I did it in Elvis' key and style".
Phillips liked her voice and didn't realize she was the one he had sent away before. The demo made it to Elvis and he recorded it later as the flip side of "Too Much." Barbara claims that if it wasn't for Elvis, she would never have started her singing career. She dated him up until he went into the Army.
