Jack White is a collector and an original, we all know that, and he just did something which will reinforce the stereotype: He ‘secretly’ bought a 1953 acetate disc featuring Elvis Presley’s first recording ‘My Happiness’ and ‘That’s When Your Heartaches Begin’ at an auction. Of course, this is the digital age and, despite his first effort to do the deal as ‘an undisclosed buyer’, this didn’t stay secret for very long. White bought the precious recording for $300,000 whereas it was expected to go at about $100,000.
According to Billboard, the story doesn’t stop there. White told his employees at Third Man Records in Nashville that the label will issue this on vinyl on Record Store Day… This piece is totally historic and unique, it’s the King’s first ever record, which was recorded on July 18th 1953 by a 18-year-old Presley at Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service for only $4. Only one single copy was ever pressed, and it was auctioned by the daughter of Presley’s friend, Ed Leek.
According to Third Man Records, the label ‘will make a limited facsimile, 10-inch 78rpm disc available on April 18, 2015’… and this is gonna be as close to the original as possible, as White’s label explains into details: ‘From reproducing the typewritten labels (printed on the reverse of extra Prisonaires labels that happened to be laying around Sun Records in July 1953) to being packaged in a plain, nondescript, of-the-era sleeve, the utmost attention to detail has been paid in order to create an object so close to the historic original as to almost be indistinguishable from one other.’
At the top of this, the transfer will be done ‘by industry expert Alan Stoker at the Country Music Hall of Fame, the audio will be as clean as modern technology can make it without losing the feeling and soul that makes these two songs both haunting and breath-taking.’
I just wonder why Jack White has become so obsessed by the history of rock & roll? Why this fixation to details and historic preservation? Despite the new haircut (looking more like Presley, did you notice?), he looks more and more like a museum conservator smelling formaldehyde who is on a mission to save rock history. And more importantly, I guess he got the rights to reproduce a Presley recording, because it is one thing to acquire a piece of collection but it is another thing to reproduce it to make profit. So is it just the beginning of a series of reissues? No mention of the price yet, but looking at all the efforts made around it, it’s not going to be cheap and I already see all the eBay auctions coming.