Not long after, he auditioned for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows: rejected by the group, he explained to his father, "They told me I couldn't sing." Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that Elvis was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver. His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, who was leader of Smith's professional band and was looking for a singer. This Presley did, and he was given a tryout session at the Hi Hat club on May 15. Bond rejected him after the first session, advising Presley to stick to truck driving "because you're never going to make it as a singer." Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused to a broader audience. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars'". When he acquired a demo recording of "Without You" and was unable to identify the vocalist, she reminded him about the teenaged singer. She called Presley on June 26. However, Presley was not able to do justice to the song. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many songs as he knew and, impressed enough by what he heard, he invited two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to audition Presley. Though they were not greatly impressed, they asked him to attend a studio session the following evening.
The session proved almost entirely unfruitful, but late in the evening, as they were about give up and go home, Presley launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' ' Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the last two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended in order to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed he was black. During the next few days the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the flip.
Moore became Presley's official manager on July 12 and, along with Black, began playing regularly with him. At the Bon Air, a rowdy music club in Memphis, the trio gave brief performances on July 17 and July 24 to promote the Sun single. On July 30 they made their first paid appearance at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming. Moore recalled, "During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild". Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as "really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something".
Soon after the trio's first show, DJ and promoter Bob Neal became their new manager and Moore and Black left their old band, the Starlite Wranglers. From August through October, the group played frequently at the Eagle's Nest club and returned to Sun Studio for more recording sessions. Presley's stage presence quickly grew more focused and confident. According to Moore, "His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He'd do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick." Presley made his lone appearance on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry on October 2. Performing "Blue Moon of Kentucky", he drew only a mild response. Tillman Franks, talent coordinator for Louisiana Hayride, called Phillips to ask if he could book "that black boy with the funny name." The show, broadcast out of Shreveport to 190 radio stations in 13 states, took place on October 16. During Presley's first set, the reaction was muted; before the second began, Franks advised Presley, "Let it all go!" He and his bandmates did, inspiring shouts and applause from the crowd. House drummer D.J. Fontana brought a new
element to the sound, complementing Presley's movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs. In November, Presley signed a contract for a year's worth of appearances on the Hayride, every Saturday night. Between their Shreveport and Memphis gigs, his trio began playing regularly in new locales such as Houston, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas.
In early January 1955, Neal signed a formal management deal with Presley. Neal at the time was establishing a connection with "Colonel" Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—Dutch-born, though he claimed to be from West Virginia—had successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold. In 1948, he had arranged to acquire an honorary colonel's commission from country singer turned Louisiana governer Jimmie Davis. He was now managing the new number-one country star, Hank Snow, with whom he was partners in a booking agency. In late January, Parker booked Presley on the Hank Snow Tour for a stretch the following month. Presley, via his regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases, was already a substantial regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. Phillips, though he clashed personally with Parker, shared Neal's assessment of him as a promoter and felt the need for someone who could bring Presley the sort of national attention that now seemed within reach. At the same time, he was aware that Sun's limited distribution capacity meant that his own ongoing involvement was threatened by Parker's relationship with the much bigger RCA Victor label.
When Snow's tour reached Odessa, Texas, in February, a nineteen-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. ... I just didn’t know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it." Presley made his television debut on March 3 on the KSLA-TV broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Later that month, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, which aired nationally on CBS. By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill"; on the most recently recorded ones, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like "That's All Right", were in what one Memphis journalist described as the "R&B idiom of negro field jazz"; others, like "Blue Moon of Kentucky", were "more in the country field", "but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both". This was the blend that came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed and labeled in the media as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".
Presley renewed Neal's management contract on August 15, 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser on a one-year renewable deal. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, "it was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we'd have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody'd always try to take a crack at him. They'd get a gang and try to waylay him or something." The band had grown: drummer D.J. Fontana, whom the band was familiar with from their many Hayride appearances, joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose "Rock Around the Clock" had been a number one hit the previous year. Presley was thrilled to share a bill with such a major star. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads if he wanted to wow the crowds.
Several record companies had shown interest in signing Presley and, by the end of October, three major labels had made offers of up to $25,000. On November 21, Parker and Phillips negotiated a deal with RCA Victor to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000, $5,000 of which was a bonus for the singer for back royalties owed to him by Sun Records. Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father had to sign the contract. Parker also cut a deal with Hill and Range Publishing Company to create two separate entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all of Presley's songs and accrued royalties. The owners of Hill and Range, brothers Julian and Jean Aberbach, agreed to split the publishing and royalties rights of each song equally with Presley. Hill and Range, Presley, or Parker's partners then had to convince unsecured songwriters that it was worthwhile for them to give up one third of their due royalties in exchange for the kudos of having their compositions recorded by Presley. One result of these dealings was that Presley was given credit as cowriter on several songs where he had no hand in the writing process. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.
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