Welcome to a deep dive into the history of one of Elvis Presley’s most iconic early recordings, “Mystery Train.” This track, released on Sun Records, wasn’t just a significant musical statement; it marked a pivotal moment in Elvis’s career, leading to his groundbreaking move to a major label and forever changing the landscape of popular music. We’ll explore the song’s origins, the key figures who shaped Elvis’s early path, and the dramatic business decisions that propelled him from a regional sensation to a global superstar.
The journey of “Mystery Train” begins not with Elvis, but with Junior Parker, a blues musician who had been a part of the influential Beale Streeters alongside artists like Johnny Ace, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and B.B. King. After working with Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Parker formed his own band, the Blue Flames. Discovered by Ike Turner, they initially recorded for Modern Records but soon moved to Sun Records, helmed by the legendary Sam Phillips.
Junior Parker and the Blue Flames’ second single for Sun featured two remarkable sides. The A-side, “Love My Baby,” was a blues track that Sam Phillips himself considered among the finest records he ever produced. However, it was the B-side, a song titled “Mystery Train,” that would have a more enduring legacy.
This version of “Mystery Train” has roots in the old folk standard “Worried Man Blues,” famously recorded by the Carter Family in 1930. The lyric “the train arrived, sixteen coaches long” from that traditional song became a fluid element in blues and folk music, eventually forming the basis for Junior Parker’s composition.
Phillips was credited as a co-writer on Junior Parker’s “Mystery Train.” He claimed this credit was due to three key changes he suggested: titling the song “Mystery Train,” insisting on “sixteen coaches long” instead of Parker’s “fifty coaches long,” and suggesting the band build tempo like a train gathering steam.
Junior Parker’s time at Sun was relatively short-lived. Following a dispute over another artist, Don Robey, head of Duke/Peacock Records, aggressively pursued and signed Parker to an exclusive contract. Despite Sam Phillips’s unsuccessful legal challenge, Parker moved on to have a successful career in R&B until his death in 1971.
Fortunately for Phillips, he had other burgeoning talents at Sun, most notably Elvis Presley. But before delving further into Elvis’s recording career at Sun, we must introduce the other key “Parker” in this story: Colonel Tom Parker.
Colonel Tom Parker would become arguably the most famous – and infamous – manager in music history. His methods and persona became the template for many subsequent managers, both good and bad. Separating fact from the many myths surrounding Parker is challenging, but key biographical details paint a complex picture. We know he was an undocumented immigrant from the Netherlands who took the name Parker upon arriving in the US. Intriguingly, a woman was murdered in his Dutch hometown the same day he left for the US permanently. He was also dishonorably discharged from the US Army with a diagnosis of psychopathy. Parker went to great lengths to hide his origins and cut off contact with his family.
Regardless of the truth behind the darker rumors, Parker was undoubtedly a manipulative and, by many accounts, cruel individual, though capable of theatrical sentimentality. His background in the carnival business heavily influenced his view of the entertainment world. He saw audiences as marks to be exploited and believed success hinged on selling merchandise and hinting at sexuality, not necessarily the quality of the act itself. His promotional stunts, including staged public weddings on Ferris wheels, honed his skills in generating buzz.
Parker entered the music promotion scene during World War II, starting with artists like 1920s star Gene Austin. From Austin, Parker learned a crucial lesson: while stars rise and fall, managers can consistently make money. He decided to focus on country music, the genre popular with the same working-class audience he’d encountered in carnivals.
His promotional expertise was immediately evident. He promoted a show for rising star Roy Acuff in 1941, notably pioneering a cross-promotion with a local grocery chain, selling discounted tickets to customers who brought in newspaper clippings, effectively creating multiple box offices and increasing footfall for the store. Though Acuff declined Parker’s offer to become his manager due to Parker’s perceived avarice (Parker wanted a percentage of the gross, not just a fixed fee), Acuff recommended Eddy Arnold, a young singer with Pee Wee King’s Golden West Cowboys, who was expected to go solo.
Arnold, an admirer of Gene Austin, eagerly partnered with Parker. Parker quickly secured Arnold a solo deal with RCA Records. Arnold’s career soared, becoming one of country music’s biggest stars, largely thanks to the team Parker assembled: Steve Sholes at RCA for production, Hill and Range Music Publishers for songwriting kickbacks (from which Parker also profited), and the William Morris Agency for bookings. This network, built on mutual financial backscratching, would serve Parker well with future artists.
Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker
Parker leveraged his connections, including former country musician and Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis, to obtain an honorary Colonel’s commission, insisting on the title for the rest of his life despite having avoided military service by gaining weight during WWII. His partnership with Eddy Arnold ended acrimoniously in 1953, with Parker extracting a significant severance package. He then became Hank Snow’s manager, a relationship that also dissolved bitterly in 1955 when Snow discovered Parker had secretly cut him out of a partnership on a promising new artist: Elvis Presley.
Since his debut single, Elvis Presley’s releases on Sun Records followed a consistent formula: a blues track on one side and a country track on the other, backed by the sparse trio of Elvis, guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black. While the country sides were sometimes less compelling, featuring songs specifically written for him with obvious lyrical conceits, the blues tracks, often chosen from his favorites, consistently shone. This pattern hinted at a truth that would define his career: Elvis thrived when he followed his own musical instincts.
By the time of Elvis’s final single on Sun, his core band had expanded slightly to include drummer DJ Fontana, although a session drummer played on the single itself. The trio, now effectively “Elvis Presley and the Blue Moon Boys,” had become a more complete unit.
elvis presley rockabilly songs
The A-side of this fifth Sun single was the country song “I Forgot to Remember to Forget,” which performed well on the country charts. However, the B-side was a stunning reinterpretation of Junior Parker’s “Mystery Train.”
Elvis, Scotty, and Bill brilliantly merged elements from both sides of Junior Parker’s original single. Scotty Moore adapted the guitar riff from Parker’s “Love My Baby” for Elvis’s rendition of “Mystery Train.” The resulting track was a dynamic, urgent take on the song that became an absolute landmark of the burgeoning rockabilly genre.
A jukebox, with the words
The choice of “Mystery Train” was likely influenced by Sam Phillips’s co-writing credit, given his ongoing legal battles with Don Robey over Junior Parker. Phillips stood to gain financially from Elvis’s version. Crucially, Elvis genuinely liked the song and continued performing it throughout his career, even in the 1970s, often pairing it in a medley with Rufus Thomas’s “Tiger Man,” another Sun track the Blue Flames had backed. There’s speculation that Elvis may have seen Junior Parker perform live in his youth, as B.B. King recalled a young Elvis being one of the few white attendees at Beale Streeters shows. Thus, with “Mystery Train,” financial incentives and artistic inclination perfectly aligned.
While recording for Sun, Elvis was also touring extensively, and his live performances were drawing increasingly large and enthusiastic crowds. When Colonel Tom Parker witnessed this phenomenon, he knew he had found his next, and likely biggest, star. Although he never truly understood the artistic appeal of Elvis’s music, Parker immediately grasped the commercial potential of the screaming crowds.
Parker began working on securing management of Elvis, focusing his efforts not just on the young, somewhat naive Elvis himself, but more strategically on his parents. Elvis’s mother and father were avid Hank Snow fans, and Snow, at Parker’s urging, spoke highly of the Colonel’s abilities, practically convincing them that Parker was the key to their son’s financial success.
Elvis, motivated primarily by a desire to provide for his parents – his father’s bad back limiting his work, his mother often ill – was amenable to their suggestions. He reportedly told Carl Perkins that he just wanted to make enough money to buy them a nice house where his mother could raise chickens. The papers were signed, and only later did Hank Snow realize he had been excluded from the partnership.
Meanwhile, Sam Phillips faced a dilemma familiar to many independent labels achieving unexpected success: cash flow problems. While a hit single like “I Forgot to Remember to Forget” was fantastic news, distributors often delayed payment for months while demanding immediate delivery of hundreds of thousands of records. Phillips had to pay the pressing plants upfront. This cash crunch, exacerbated by the lawsuit with Robey, strained Sun Records’ finances.
Adding to the pressure, Phillips didn’t immediately have another artist poised to step into Elvis’s shoes and generate similar buzz. He saw Elvis as the artist who could potentially bridge racial divides through music, a long-held dream of his. Reluctant to let Elvis go easily, Phillips devised a plan. He would offer Elvis’s contract for sale, as Parker wanted, but at an exorbitant price for the time: $35,000. This was the highest sum ever demanded for a recording artist’s contract in 1955, especially for an artist who hadn’t yet charted on the national pop lists. Phillips calculated that this price was so high, Parker would have to refuse, allowing Phillips to keep Elvis while having made his point.
“I thought, hey, I’ll make ’em an offer that I know they will refuse,” Phillips later recounted. “But he raised the money, and damn, I couldn’t back out then.” Parker, calling Phillips’s bluff, met the challenge. He quickly secured a $5,000 non-refundable deposit out of his own funds, presenting Phillips with an unreasonably tight deadline. He then worked furiously to arrange the remaining $30,000 through RCA. Steve Sholes at RCA agreed, reimbursing Parker’s deposit, paying Phillips the outstanding balance, and even giving Elvis a $5,000 signing bonus – a significant portion of which, of course, went directly into Tom Parker’s pocket as his management fee.
With the deal finalized, RCA quickly reissued Elvis’s latest Sun singles, including the powerful “Mystery Train,” while anticipating his first recording sessions for the major label. Sam Phillips, having lost his biggest star, turned his attention to finding the next rockabilly sensation. A promising young country artist named Carl Perkins had recently auditioned for him, offering a new possibility for Sun Records’ future.
The sale of Elvis Presley’s contract to RCA marked the end of a revolutionary era at Sun Records and the beginning of a new, globally dominant one for Elvis. “Mystery Train,” born from blues and folk roots and transformed into a rockabilly classic under Phillips’s guidance and Elvis’s performance, stands as a powerful testament to the raw talent and unique musical fusion that emerged from Sun Studio in the mid-1950s, a sound that Colonel Tom Parker was uniquely positioned to market to the world.
References:
- Guralnick, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Little, Brown and Company, 1994.
- Guralnick, Peter. Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll. Back Bay Books, 2015.
- Nash, Alanna. The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley. Simon & Schuster, 2003.
