shut up and listen

This sounds so simple and straight forward now, and in many ways it is, but at the time it was a new style, and a new sound.

Acoustic guitar, upright bass, electric guitar and a single vocal. No overdubs, no editing, just the one effect (slapback echo). There was no multitrack recording and no stereo. What could you do without the freedom to multitrack, drop in overdubs and mix (in stereo)? Could you invent a new style of music???

Being the fifties it is understandably mid sounding – no deep bass and no sparkling highs. The double bass is hard to hear, despite the percussive thumping playing style. The acoustic guitar also has a percussive, clacking style of playing. In the instrumental breaks (there’s two) there is a distinct percussive sound, like sticks… but no drummer is credited so it must be part of the guitar or bass playing?

The playing is effectively a totally live performance, with the electric guitar played in a muted style during the singing to sit under the vocal and then playing more assertively in the solos.

The most noticeable quality is the slapback echo on Presley’s voice. There is heavy compression, presumably natural compression of the recording equipment, that allows the vocal to stay up front from the low first line ‘Blue moon’ to the higher ‘Well it was on some moonlit night’ . Presley also modulates his singing so that he is pushing out the low notes and easing off on the higher notes. Remember, none of these guys were recording pros – it was new to everyone involved. they were just trying to make it sound good in the room they were in.

The now iconic slapback echo is what makes this such a powerful recording – it makes the vocal stand out above the instrumentation in a totally new and exciting way.

Notes: Sam Phillips was trying to emulate the sound of juke boxes in little restaurants and burger joints where the sound bounced off the hard walls of a small room. He was conscious of the artificial dead sound of the recording studio and that people preferred to hear something familiar. Ironically he created a totally new sound based on a familiar sound – the sound of our one’s voice bouncing back off the bathroom wall as we sing in the shower perhaps?