Elvis Presley’s seriously underrated rhythm guitar chops

Elvis Presley, a 25-year-old prince from another planet, picks a gut-bucket tune with his refurbished J-200 Gibson acoustic guitar inside his Graceland mansion on Oct. 13, 1960, a few days after cutting the title song for the “Flaming Star” western in Hollywood and a couple of weeks prior to going to Nashville’s RCA Studio B for the “His Hand in Mine” gospel sessions. Photography by Bob Williams / The Memphis Commercial Appeal / For Elvis CD Collectors Forum

Did you know that Elvis Presley possessed genuine rhythm guitar chops? According to contemporary Johnny Cash’s 1997 autobiography entitled Cash, the “I Walk the Line” balladeer concurred, considering Presley’s skills as a rhythm guitarist to be significantly underrated. Having first encountered Presley on Sept. 9, 1954 playing an acoustic Martin guitar during the special grand opening of Katz’s Drug Store in Memphis, Cash next caught him wowing the spectators at the intimate Eagle’s Nest nightclub.

“The thing I really noticed that night, though, was his guitar playing,” recalled Cash. “Elvis was a fabulous rhythm player. He’d start into ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ with his own guitar alone, and you didn’t want to hear anything else. I didn’t anyway. I was disappointed when Scotty Moore and Bill Black jumped in and covered him up. Not that Scotty and Bill weren’t perfect for him — the way he sounded with them that night was what I think of as seminal Presley, the sound I missed through all the years after he became so popular and made records full of orchestration and overproduction. I loved that clean, simple combination of Scotty, Bill, and Elvis with his acoustic guitar. You know, I’ve never heard or read anyone else praising Elvis as a rhythm guitar player, and after the Sun days I never heard his own guitar on his records.”