When the raw, primal beat of That’s All Right by Elvis Presley rocked out of Memphis and across the airwaves of America in 1954, no one knew quite what to make of it. Was it country? It certainly wasn’t blues. The head-scratching led to Elvis being dubbed the ‘Hillbilly Cat’ or even ‘the King of Western Bop’. The country music establishment knew one thing – they didn’t like it. Elvis was practically booed off when he appeared at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry that year.
In the ’50s the name ‘hillbilly’ was pinned on just about any white folk who lived outside the cities in the Deep South, and those who had it pushed on them felt it to be more than a little derogatory. Elvis Presley was about to make the term cool, sexy and rebellious.