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"Good Rockin' Tonight," though they're all pure gold.
"That's All Right" is not only the record that started it all, but a fantastic sound even today (for that matter, a cool song by Elvis right the way through to his last live renditions of it in 1977). It's undeniably important.
"Mystery Train" is arguably one of the most important recordings ever made - hot damn, y'all, Greil Marcus wrote an ode to the thing that was so intense that he named a whole book in honor of the song. And I do love it. Again, it's an inherently cool song that held up when he included it in his concert repertoire during his 1969 return to the stage.
But "Good Rockin' Tonight"? It's that primal "wellll" that opens the song, and it's all primal from there on in. It's perfection. It just grabs me even more than these other two and similarly great Sun classics. It's sheer adrenaline, set to uptempo blues....or is it country? Ah - with Elvis around, the concept of distinct musical genres was no longer relevant.
My second choice, if I had to pick it, would probably be "Baby, Let's Play House." It distills what rock 'n' roll should be - fun, lust, love, and a hint of edginess (violence, among other things, in this case, providing John Lennon his "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man" line). And, like "Mystery Train," it features an unscheduled laugh from Elvis as he goes into the hiccup-y ending....that sheer exuberance isn't heard much in rock 'n' roll music. Never was, that much. And in the '60s it vanished, in large part, because rock became 'serious' and dealt with weighty issues and rock 'n' roll singers became 'artists.' And hipper-than-thou rock critics came into existence, just to really foul things up.
Elvis never set out to be an artist or a rocker, though he became both, and more. "That's All Right" had its genesis in a between-takes break when Elvis and the bass player and lead guitarist who would be his sidemen were not succeeding in realizing Elvis' aspirations to be a Dean Martin soundalike. Elvis started, as he put it, "fooling around" with the Arthur Crudup song and the others joined in - Sam Philips heard the sound, knew it was what he'd been waiting for, and had them do it again for the tape. A blues song that was countrified, backed with a country song that was bluesified. It was all a fluke, and 19-year-old Elvis had the necessary atributes and musical background to bring those elements together in the presence of the right man, who could recognize a potent new sound.
And "Mystery Train's" whoops and the laugh at the end were apparently a function of Elvis' again "fooling around," thinking it was a weird little song (it is, really) and not seriously believing that he was laying down a master track. And I think he nailed it in one take. It, too, was basically a fluke. A mistake, even. And it's brilliant!
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