The ice and snow is melting.. the roads are clear and we hope you're ready for some rock'n'roll. I'm talking now about thebirth of rock'n'roll when they stopped calling it rhythm and blues or hillbilly music or race records and it all got mixed together and WAS rock'n'roll.

Please join The Long Players this Saturday night as we revisit the big-bang of a musical era..the very first platinum selling record for a brand-new genre of music. Elvis's debut RCA album simply called Elvis Presley. We're excited thatfounding member of The Long Players, bassist Garry Tallent, is even coming back to town to do this one with us.

It took Elvis doing what he just did naturally to capture the imagination of the world for his brief lifetime. All that charm, swagger and sweetness are in the songs on this record. It was a wonderful stroke of luck for Sam Phillips to take Elvis, put him with Scotty Moore and Bill Black (and later D.J. Fontana) and set it all in motion. This record includes some of the Sun sides and other songs recorded right here in Nashville and in New York as well.

Elvis's image is so big and diverse, people get different pictures in their head when they think of him. For this night of music..think young and dangerous Elvis. Polite as a Southern boy can be one second then leering and stalking the stage like a predator the next. We're NOT going to Vegas with this one. We'll leave his later music (which is arguably great as well) for another time. We just want to celebrate that first record that kicks off with Blue Suede Shoes and ends up with Money Honey. We'll do a set of other Elvis hits from the same era after we perform the record front to back.

The Long Players can't do what we do without the assistance of the great guest artists who all agree this is something worth doing. We have folks who were there when it happened, folks who had songs cut by Elvis and us folks who didn't and wish they had. Singers include Jim Lauderdale, Cowboy Jack Clement, Billy Swan, Jimmy Hall, Chuck Mead, Buzz Cason, Alan and Brent Stoker, Will Kimbrough,Peter Cooper,Tommy Lee James, Heath Haynes and Kels Koch from The Million Sellers.

As we always do, a portion of the proceeds from this evening will go to a charity, this time being The Red Cross in their effort to help the people of Haiti.

Come and share this evening of music with us! The Long Players perform Elvis Presley's debut album at The Mercy Lounge Saturday February 6th, 2010. $15 cover.

The Long Players are:

Steve Allen, John Deaderick, Steve Ebe, Bill Lloyd & Garry Tallent.

PS Trivia question: how many album sleeves directly ripped off the style and lettering from this iconic album jacket? I can think of two off the top of my head..

The Long Players are a group of Nashville-based musicians who have, since 2004, taken classic albums and performed them live in their original sequence. Recruiting guest artists from their exceptional musical community, the band has celebrated over 35 seminal albums over the last four years and gained national notoriety with features by NPR Radio and in The Associated Press. Their faithful renditions of LP’s like Bob Dylan’s “Blonde On Blonde” (with sidemen from the original album, Al Kooper and Charlie McCoy sitting in) or The Rolling Stones “Sticky Fingers” (when Stones sax man Bobby Keys sat in), have raised the bar of what “playing in a cover band” is all about. Their sporadic shows are treated by both fans and the band as a celebration of the music that shaped their lives. The founding members of The Long Players include Bill Lloyd (from 80’s hit country-rockers Foster & Lloyd), Steve Allen (from LA power-pop icons 20/20), Steve Ebe (from Memphis rock band Human Radio), John Deaderick (sideman to Michael McDonald/Dixie Chicks/Patty Griffin/etc.) and Garry Tallent (Bruce Springsteen’s E. St. Band). When Tallent moved from Nashville in 2007, The Long Players enlisted musician/record producer, Brad Jones (who has worked with Josh Rouse, Jill Sobule and many others) to take over bass duties. The Long Players not only tap into Nashville’s amazing talent pool for their guest singers but also for guest players, when the “platter du jour” calls for horns, strings or other additional players.

At each of the band’s public shows, The Long Players have chosen to take a portion of the proceeds and donate it to charity. On more than a few occasions, the money has gone directly to musicians to supplement health care expenses when insurance wasn’t enough. At other times the money has been donated to organizations like Music Cares, The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Alive Hospice and others.

With an average of around five public shows a year, the crowds line up early whenever the band plays. As busy as the individual members of The Long Players are, they are committed to finding the time it takes to learn, rehearse and perform these classic albums for an audiences happy to hear their favorite records brought back to life.

Elvis Presley is the first studio album by Elvis Presley. It was released on RCA Victor, in mono, catalogue number LPM 1254, in March 1956. The recording sessions took place on January 10 and January 11 at RCA recording studios in Nashville, Tennessee, and on January 30 and January 31 at RCA studios in New York. Additional material originated from sessions at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, on July 5, August 19 and September 10 of 1954, and on July 11, 1955.

The album spent ten weeks at #1 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart in 1956, the first rock 'n' roll album ever to make it to the top of the charts. It also has the distinction of being the first million-selling rock 'n' roll album. In 2003, it was ranked number 55 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.