Record collectors may just fall in love with this one: an original Sun acetate with the song "That's When Your Heartaches Begin", as offered on eBay. The highest bid so far, is less than 600 $US.
Update: The disc is a fake. Apart from the personal copy Elvis recorded no other copies were made as these private recordings were cut live on acetate discs.
This is the description on eBay:
Here offered is the 78rpm acetate single of: Elvis Presley on the SUN label. The song title : That's When Your heartaches Begin. Label is nice with slight yellow aging spots and has DJ writing on it "as seen in the pictures. The vinyl-shellac is near mint "few very very very minor surface storage scuffs" and plays beautiful.
This is a mega rare 50's Elvis Presley acetate from the Sun Studios and what is very interesting is that under the Sun label you can see some of the first label that was put on this acetate and then changed it & the Sun label was applied over it. The label underneath is "Memphis Recording Studio" and does have typed information on it that appears to have Elvis' name and same song title that is on the Sun label.
The only reason I can come up with is that it is marked for Radio Play and that the Sun label was to be mentioned by the DJ instead of Memphis Recording Studio which was the pipeline to Sun Studio, which were basically the same I believe. Also to mention is that the version of the song on this acetate is shorter then the commercial release on the RCA label. I did not study this acetate to hear if there are any major vocal or music differences except noticing the shorter ending.
I have owned this acetate for several years along with a few other same acetates with different artist. I have only seen a few of these early Sun & Memphis Recording Studio acetates through the years and to my knowledge only 1 has come up for auction on eBay a few years ago and sold for almost $5000.00. The only history I know of this acetate is that it was stored away at the Select-O-Hits warehouse and surfaced sometime in the late 60's and landed in a collectors hands who owned it untill I purchased it..It has never been offered for sale untill now! So here is your chance to obtain a rare piece of Rock-N-Roll history and most likely a one of a kind.
eBay item: 160290691110
Fake Sun Acetate Up For Auction
October 12, 2008 | Other
Jumpin Jehosaphat wrote on
October 12, 2008
This is an out and out FAKE, however there are some really dumb people who buy SUN material on E-Bay who have never read anything on what the company really produced. there was only ONE original, and this is NOT IT,
Harvey Alexander wrote on
October 12, 2008
Somebody with cabbage for brains will buy this thinking it's an original from the time.
benny scott wrote on
October 12, 2008
A real shame ! Two possibilities 1: the seller is really unaware and thus innocent. 2: He knows perfectly well that this is a fake, and therefor should be withdrawn from ebay as a seller ! Can't believe some people are that stupid to bid on this ! Always El.
JimmyCool wrote on
October 12, 2008
It's virtually impossible that Elvis '53 was meant for radio play. The personal demo acetate was found in the late '80s, early 90's and the 1957 recording has nothing to do with SUN Records whatsoever! Beware buyers! (I woud give 6 dollars for it tho')
Jumpin Jehosaphat wrote on
October 13, 2008
Boy do i feel like a fool, after further invstigation of this, i find it came out of Select-o-hits in Memphis, that was sam Phillips warehouse where his brother bill stored all the sun material. if you remember the master pressing plates from Sun 209 and Sun 223 were recently sold going back about 5 years ago and they came from the same place. I purchased over 1000 singles (45 and 78) from Bill in July of 1969, that was about a week after he sold the company name to Shelby Singleton Jr. I guess i missed some stuff as i worked my way through Chelsea Ave, I currently have so much of this stuff left all below # 300 but its not the time to move it. I can truly believe that this came from select-o-hits, sam did odd things including releasing a record on the Holiday Inn label after he became a Major stockholder. there are times I love to joke on this website but my main interest has always been Sun Records, which is something i never joke about. Shame of it all back then was No Body wanted the material so they were sold for 15 to 30 cents each. and maybe the rest wouind up with shelby singleton when he created MOM and was selling the stuff in the early 80's , the real name for MOM was mail order music.
JimmyCool wrote on
October 14, 2008
Jumpin Jehosaphat, I've always thought that Elvis' Sun lost songs like "Satisfied" ended up there, in that warehouse... and now lost forever. It's a shame... if only people knew back then how important those records are today... :/
Jumpin Jehosaphat wrote on
October 14, 2008
To Jimmy Cool...your right and the opposite happened at Chess Records, they were all destroyed.
rickeverett wrote on
October 21, 2008
I wonder. I really wonder. Y'know Sam Phillips had a habit of releasing old material by artists he lost. For example, after Johnny Cash bolted to Columbia, Sun continued to release Cash material from the archives. Now, in the case of Elvis, Sam knew he couldn't legally release any Presley material he still may have had in his possession. But he could possibly make a dub for a pal in the radio business to broadcast, as an "item of interest."
Further to that, recall the story that Marion Keisker told about the recording of "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" in '53. She claimed that when Elvis was part way thru "My Happiness" she heard the potential in his voice, and recorded the remainder of "My Happiness" and all of "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" on tape, so Phillips could hear the performances upon his return.
So, it is possible that the tape survived. The only useable song from the tape would have been "That's When Your Heartaches Begin," as the beginning of "My Happiness" was missing. The label reads "FOR RADIO PLAY ONLY" as if to stress that it was NOT TO BE SOLD. I wonder. While we're on this topic, do we know the source of the 1953 version of "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" on the Sun box from the Memphis Recording Service label? It contains an extra guitar strum at the beginning, not heard on the BMG releases. Did MRS use the Ed Leek acetate and if so, why did BMG edit out the strum intro?