Elvis Presley - The Story Behind Sun Studio's Famous "Slap Back" Echo 

But in reality they had worlds more than we have now. It's called SOUL.

I’m more of a Jerry lee Lewis fan. Elvis is pretty good tho

Elvis sucked. Way too overrated

It’s believed that RCA engineers were tearing their hair out trying to replicate the Sun sound for Elvis’ first RCA record but couldn’t because their equipment and studio were too good lol

@@joe6096 What RCA didn't " get" was that Phillips had mastered his tape echo effect, was using what by 1956 was the lowest level Ampex decks, a general purpose PA mike for the vocals, instructing his pressing plant on exactly the EQ curve he wanted and using the room itself as an instrument. The combination of this imprecision created a perfect product at least as long as the song material was up to the task. The closest any major label got to the Sun "sound " was Capitol Records on the earliest Gene Vincent sessions. As it was, Capitol recorded Vincent at Bradley Studios in Nashville. Owen Bradley operated independently of record labels as a" for- hire" facility. The facility could deliver squeaky clean sounds but at the same time, was utilizing tape echo, no secret by then even at the amateur level. As for RCA, the time honored studio operations of major labels was the best equipment, rooms, staff and a strict 3songs in 4 hours time blocks. The loose and mostly non union influenced Sun( and most other indie's) approach was more organic. Phillips had to be consulted regarding why RCA and " the best of everything" couldn't get results at first. While they never did capture the Sun sound, by letting Presley produce himself during sessions, things began to jell. The last remnant of the tape echo effect on Presley records was the use of Scotty Moore's Butts Echosonic guitar amp which had a rudimentary single repeat echo function built in to it. As for vocals, what RCA tried was a perfectly good and textbook correct method, that of feeding the vocal into a stairwell and then using a microphone at the bottom or top to pickup the reverberation caused by the stairwell. In the original RCA Nashville facility which had been a church previously, the stairwell was the echo chamber. What was different in the RCA approach was the contrast between natural reverberation and that of a mechanically induced "repeat" of the source as used by Phillips. Again, part of the " trick" was exactly where to place the tape echo effect and given the studio's relatively small size, about 18'x36', the amount of " bleed" onto other instruments also was a factor. In contrast, the Presley RCA product was going to be different in construction, feel, instrumentation. Unlike Phillips who was looking for artist/writers from which he could coax a rawer, more primal performance, Presley under RCA was being steered slightly towards a more polished and broader based product which became evident as early as his first album. Additionally, RCA had a larger pool of writers to choose from and had the services of the Bieinstock brothers to vet materials through. In 1956, it was almost unheard of for a major label to use independent producers. A few had become known , the team of Lieber and Stoller being one. For a short period they were associated with Presley, providing songs and piano before Colonel Parker closed ranks on them. The no brainer really would have been for RCA to retain Sam Phillips, and the Sun studio as the production segment. Technical issues could have been resolved by providing equipment and staff if needed. But, much of the Presley story is often things that should have happened but for reasons known only to Parker and Presley, didn't. While Presley more or less produced himself for the remainder of his recording career, doing all manner of songs, his records would never again sound nor feel as cutting edge as they had been at Sun.

@@pjriverdale8461 Holy crap dude! You want people to read your posts cut to the chase man lol….. I have no idea what you just said because it’s too damn long. Cliffs notes version please!

@@joe6096what kind of loser cant a minute and a half of text?

@@pjriverdale8461Awesome comment, thank you very much!

Id rather listen to Elvis instead of listening to Justin Bieber or The back street boys I did like Boyz 11 men ,they reminded me of The Tempations

Its not that complicated. Either will work.

You went to record and they let you record for free?

@@KingRiverVlogs he never said he went to record

@@jokkergar oh, I just noticed that.

At a store. Not hard to find stores.

IMAKAMERA Lansky Brothers on Beale Street.

Sun is both a museum in the day and an active (and in demand) studio at night.

To my understand, no one had headphones or monitoring in these times.

One of the engineers said the short is 133 ms, and the long is 266 ms.

Matt’s demonstration absolutely occurred at Sun. Sam utilized two main techniques for echo pre mid 1956. The first was the “local mic” method demonstrated here by Matt. The second was the “feedback” method where the output of the RCA console is fed into the tape machine input and the tape machine output is fed back into the console. These techniques were both used during the Elvis sessions. Post mid 1956, Sam and Jack had a repeater coil sub mixer built which allowed each mic’d source to be sent to the echo producing tape machine. Variations of each technique (often combined) were used throughout the tenure at 706 Union Ave.

This is documented. A second mic was used, Sam called it the "local mic" method.

Documented where and when? Did Sam Phillips himself ever talk about using this technique? Did Elvis or Cash? I never saw any SUN-session pictures showing this amazing "local mic" method, it´s always only one vocal mic in the pictures that exist. What are your sources? @@Sunkenballs12