Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [43]
“When Sam came back I played it for him, and he was impressed and said he would do something, but the boy would take a lot of work. He said, ‘Did you get his name and address?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ I had the slip for many years. It said, ‘Elvis Presley, good ballad singer.’ ”
Sam would remember the events differently than Marion did, saying he was there that first day and set up the disc-cutting machine himself. The boy was so unsure of himself that Sam found it hard to believe he’d ever performed before an audience. “He tried not to show it, but he felt so inferior. . . . Elvis was probably, innately, the most introverted person that ever came into that studio.”
He liked Elvis’s recording, though, and told him he was about to go over to the penitentiary in Nashville to see about the Prisonaires. He’d visit publisher Red Wortham while he was in town, and if Sam found any material he thought was fitting for Elvis, he’d give him a call.
Whether Sam confused his second visit with the first, Elvis returned to the Memphis Recording Service in January 1954 to make a second acetate, this time of two country tunes, “I’ll Never Stand in Your Way,” and “It Wouldn’t Be the Same Without You.” Again, Elvis got his hopes up, prayed to hear back from Marion or Mr. Phillips—he always called Sam “Mr. Phillips,” though he addressed Marion by her first name—but nothing happened.
Marion couldn’t get him out of her mind, though. She almost felt as if she had discovered him. He brought out her maternal instincts, and she’d even mentioned him to her own mother. “Oh, I’ve seen him on the streetcar,” her mother said. “The kid with the long sideburns. I wondered what in the world he was.”
That month, as Elvis turned nineteen, he began attending the First Assembly of God on McLemore Avenue, in South Memphis. He’d been there before—the church chartered three city buses on Sunday mornings to ride through the housing projects and bring worshippers to services. Aside from his “schooling” at Ellis Auditorium, it was here that Elvis first learned to love white gospel music, as it was the home church for the Blackwood Brothers quartet. There was also another connection: Cecil Blackwood, a nephew of founding member James Blackwood, lived in the Courts with his new wife, and he was just getting up a sort of apprentice quartet he called the Songfellows. Elvis fantasized about joining them one day, so he figured it wouldn’t hurt to show up in the pews.
The church had another draw, too. For the last ten years, Reverend James E. Hamill had presided over the church with firm leadership, growing the congregation to nearly two thousand members. A fire-and-brimstone preacher who encouraged fervent demonstrations of faith such as speaking in tongues, Reverend Hamill was nonetheless well-educated and cautious and thoughtful in his counseling of members for problems big and small. He carried himself with a demeanor that was both serious and benevolent, and his parishioners revered him as a second father, wise, kind, and good. For a boy whose daddy lazed around most of the time and let his wife steamroll him in nearly every way, Reverend Hamill was an appealing figure.
However, it wasn’t spiritual soothing Elvis desired in early 1954, but rather romantic salvation. He and his cousin Gene were looking for a way to meet girls. On Sunday, January 24, Elvis, with a wavy new Toni perm in his hair, attended a function at the church. He caught the eye of a young church secretary, the teenage Dixie Locke. She took one look at him and for a minute, almost stopped breathing. “He was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.”
Dixie got within earshot, and speaking a little louder than usual to be sure Elvis would hear, made plans with a girlfriend to go skating at the Rainbow Rollerdrome on Saturday night. The next weekend, sure enough,