Sam Phillips and the Devil Blues (Patreon)

Here's a little piece of history for you all: This is one of my earliest short stories, and arguably my first stab at synchro-mysticism. It was written circa 2003, before there was such a thing and well before my esoteric education began. But even back then, the power of the Elvis Archetype and it's implications captivated me. Please keep in mind, this is a very early composition of mine. Still, I now view it as a significant early step in the path I'm currently following. As always, I hope you guys enjoy:

Sam Phillips was very bored.

He had a studio and a record label but no way to cash in. He’d rolled the dice on the black country sound and came up snake eyes. He’d spent enough time DJing to know whites liked the blues, they just didn’t want to buy records with black faces on the covers. He reckoned the only answer was to find a white that could sing like a street corner bluesman.

He hopped on a streetcar named Desire and went down South juking; hit Highway 49 and traveled through every honky-tonk and gin joint in the Delta. All he found was a drunk named Harmonica Frank. He plucked a guitar fine and sang with half his mouth covered by a harp. Sam took him back to Memphis and holed up in the studio.

Harmonica cut “The Great Medical Menagerist” and “Rockin’ Chair Daddy” in between sips of Jim Bean. They tanked. Phillips bet the mortgage on the 45s and was facing bankruptcy. One night, Phillips drank too much Tanqueray and wine and tracked Harmonica down to a whorehouse off Lewis Street.

He sneered, “I’ll cut your balls off with this here Randal knife ‘less you find me a singer.” Harmonica stalled and Phillips came at him with the blade.

“Now just lemme think for a minute, won’t ya, son?” Harmonica howled. Phillips held the knife while Harmonica desperately thought back to every whorehouse and saloon he’d ever played in. “Yes,” he said after a time, “there’s one place I know.”

They hopped in Phillips’ car, a dusty old Ford and hit Highway 61, Harmonica croaking, “Just one mistake I made was stayin’ in Mississippi just a day to long.” They road south under sapphire tempered skies and streets that were dead. A man was standing over a dead dog, poking it with a stick like it would get up and run.

It was at the crossroads outside of Clarksdale they stopped.

“Now just what in the hell are you expecting to find out here?” Phillips asked.

“I done spent most my life out on this here highway… They just say you take your guitar out here ‘round midnight and you strike up a few chords… A black man done come, big and mean. He give you anything you want…”

“What the hell do you mean he give you anything you want!”

“I dunno know, I ain’t never been out here… This ain’t no nice place. But I ain’t never heard no one say he didn’t give them what they wanted.”

When the Clarksdale clocks echoed twelve times out by the highway, Harmonica softly struck up “Killing Floor Blues.” Footfalls, they come on down the highway. The Devil steps from the night and hulks down by the roadside, a pork-pie hat cocked over his face. He loomed at the crossroads, staring down at Phillips and Harmonica through narrowed eyes, then hisses, “Who’s come to deal?”

Phillips stepped forward. “I want a singer,” he said. “The greatest singer there will ever be: A white man that can sing blues like he's black. A singer that’ll change everything.”

“Yes,” the Devil said, “this can be easily done. Go back to Memphis and wait. A man comes, Tupelo born. Black rain hailed down when a child was born on his brother’s heels. But Sunday stole what Saturday gave with the firstborn dead and left in a shoebox hurled to the river. He will come… The King will walk in Memphis.”

Phillips opened his mouth to speak but the Devil had already crept back into the night, softly humming “Crossroad Blues” in a musty voice as he walked on. Phillips cut Harmonica’s throat shortly thereafter when he was at a loss to explain the situation. He buried him in an unmarked grave in a meadow off the roadside and headed on back to Tennessee.

A trucker wearing his hair Jimmy Dean style came grooving into the studio next week with a guitar and six bucks. He wanted to cut a record for his mama and give it to her come birthday time. He and the house band decided on “That’s All Right.”

The tapes commenced and the trucker dug in with his guitar. He approached the mike, nervously at first then suddenly stood like a black panther about to pounce before he tore into the words, howling “That’s all right mama… That’s all right…” like the studio was burning down around him. The lead guitar and bass kicked in. The band raged like a runaway train while Phillips gawked from the control booth.

When it was over, the trucker tentatively stepped back from the mike and cleared his throat. Then: “Well, what’d y’all think.”

“It was nice son,” Phillips said through a hungry grin. “Real nice.”

“Thank you… thank you very much.”