Marion Keisker MacInnes (September 23, 1917 – December 29, 1989) was an American record producer. She was the first person to record the singing voice of cultural icon

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...

Life

Keisker was born in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Situated along the Mississippi River, it had a population of 633,104 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Tenne ...

, and graduated from Southwestern College with a degree in English and Medieval French. She was married to Angus Randall MacInnes and had a son, Angus David MacInnes, before divorcing. She was a radio show host for WREC, where

Sam Phillips Samuel Cornelius Phillips (January 5, 1923 – July 30, 2003) was an American disc jockey, songwriter and record producer. He was the founder of Sun Records and Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where he produced recordings by Elvis Presley, R ...

worked as an announcer. She became a station manager and later Phillips's assistant at the Memphis Recording Service and

Sun Records Sun Records is an American independent record label founded by producer Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee on February 1, 1952. Sun was the first label to record Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Jo ...

. She was later a U.S. Air Force officer. Keisker is best remembered as the first person to record

, on July 18, 1953. She was alone in the office of

, which also served as office for the Memphis Recording Service, when Presley came there to record two songs, " My Happiness" and "

That's When Your Heartaches Begin "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" is a 1937 song by Fred Fisher, William Raskin and Billy Hill. It was recorded and released the same year by Shep Fields Rippling Rhythm. The song first became popular following a 1941 recording by The Ink Spots ...

", for a fee of $3.25. Her exchange with Presley on that occasion has since become part of Elvis lore: "I said, 'What kind of singer are you?' He said, 'I sing all kinds.' I said, 'Who do you sound like?' He said, 'I don't sound like nobody.'" Keisker left Sun Records in February 1957 and joined the U.S. Air Force, in which she was commissioned as a captain and served as information officer in charge of the Armed Forces television station at the Ramstein Base in Germany. After leaving the Air Force in 1969, Keisker became active in the Memphis chapter of the

National Organization for Women The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...

. She was chapter president. Her correspondence is archived at the Memphis Public Library. She has been portrayed by Ellen Travolta in the 1979 film '' Elvis'', by Jill Jane Clements in the 2005

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

miniseries '' Elvis'', by Margaret Anne Florence in the 2017 CMT series ''

'' and by Kate Mulvany in the 2022 film Elvis.

Bibliography

* Guralnick, Peter (1994). ''Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley''. New York: Little, Brown. ()

References

External links

* Charles Hughes
The Anything but Ordinary Life of Marion Keisker MacInnes '42
Rhodes College alumni magazine, December 18, 2017. {{DEFAULTSORT:Keisker, Marion 1917 births 1989 deaths Sun Records United States Air Force officers Women in the United States Air Force National Organization for Women American women record producers Record producers from Tennessee People from Memphis, Tennessee Women audio engineers Rhodes College alumni American audio engineers