Jack White purchased an Elvis Presley vinyl for $300,000
In 1953, Elvis Presley walked into Sun Studios in Memphis for the first time and began life as a recording artist. At the time, Presley had no recording contract and paid out of his own pocket for the session. Only one copy was made, and half a century later, Jack White bought it for $300,000.
The motivation behind the recording session was to capture the attention of Sam Phillips, who owned Sun Studios. However, Elvis wasn’t confident enough to ask Phillips for an audition and instead pretended the recording was a birthday present for his mother. Considerable thought had gone into planning his visit to the studio, and Presley knew Phillips potentially held the keys to a highly-lucrative career.
Armed solely with an acoustic guitar without a backing band, Presley elected to record the pop standard ‘My Happiness’ and chose ‘That’s When Your Heartache Begins’ as the B-side. The session cost him $4, the smartest business decision he ever made.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in 1985, Phillips said of the session: “He was working for Crown Electric. I’d seen the truck go back and forth outside, and I thought, ‘They sure are doing a hell of a lot of business around here’. But I never saw it stop anywhere. So Elvis had… he had cased the joint a long time before he stopped the truck and got out. And there’s no telling how many days and nights behind that wheel he was figuring out some way to come in and make a record without saying, ‘Mr. Phillips, would you audition me?’ So his mother’s birthday gave him the opportunity to come in and make a little personal record.”
Elvis didn’t immediately stand out to Phillips. However, he later claimed Presley’s sideburns showed he oozed originality, which was enough to convince him to stay in contact with the singer. He said: “There wasn’t anything that striking about Elvis, except his sideburns were down to here [gestures], which I kind of thought, well, you know, ‘That’s pretty cool, man. Ain’t nobody else got them that damn long’. We talked in the studio. And I played the record back for him in the control room on the little crystal turntable and walked up front and told Marion to write down Elvis’ name and number and how we can get ahold of him.”
While ‘My Happiness’ was never released as a single, it convinced Phillips to sign him to Sun’s roster. It stayed within the possession of Presley’s friend Ed Leek and his family until 2015, a time when the prized vinyl went up for auction. An unnamed bidder purchased the recording for $300,000, later revealed to be The White Stripes co-founder Jack White.
Thankfully, White didn’t buy the sole copy of ‘My Happiness’ for his record collection, and he released copies of the recording through his Third Man Records for Record Store Day. Unsurprisingly, it quickly sold out.
Listen to Elvis’ version of ‘My Happiness’ below.
