On October 3, 1945, a ten-year-old boy stood on stage at a contest. One of his teachers had encouraged him to enter the contest after hearing him sing one morning. He placed fifth.
A few months later, he received a guitar for his 11th birthday. What he really wanted was a bicycle. Two of his uncles gave him basic guitar lessons. But he didn't like singing in public. He was too shy.
Yet something inside kept pulling him back to music. In 1948, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. The boy would spend every moment of his free time on Beale Street, the heart of the Memphis Blues Scene. He'd often bring his guitar to school. Yet his eighth grade teacher gave him a C in music. She told him that he had "no gift for singing".
In 1953, the young man walked into the offices of Sun Records. But the record went nowhere. He tried out for a local singing group, but failed in the audition. He told his father, "They told me I couldn't sing."
Then Sam Philips, the owner of Sun Records heard this young man's record. Sam invited him back to the studio and asked him to sing as many songs as he knew. Yet even then, it was not going well. The young man was about to go home when he suddenly picked up his guitar and started singing a 1946 Blues song, That's All Right. Philips immediately began taping; he knew this was the sound he'd been looking for. Sun Records released the album. No one had ever heard anything like it before.
Within three years Elvis Presley (猫王) was an international superstar.
