Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business. He was white, but he sang black. It wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time. Did I have any sense of how big he was going to be when he first came to RCA? Oh yeah, we knew. Back in those days, if a guy got hot in one area you could spread it around the country, maybe the world. He was already so big in East Texas and Louisiana you couldn't get him off stage with a firehose. We knew. When he came in to do “Heartbreak Hotel” I called up my wife and told her to come over. I said, You might not get a chance to see him again, he's gonna get so damn big.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business. He was white, but he sang black. It wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time. Did I have any sense of how big he was going to be when he first came to RCA? Oh yeah, we knew. Back in those days, if a guy got hot in one area you could spread it around the country, maybe the world. He was already so big in East Texas and Louisiana you couldn't get him off stage with a firehose. We knew. When he came in to do “Heartbreak Hotel” I called up my wife and told her to come over. I said, You might not get a chance to see him again, he's gonna get so damn big." in the context of "Chet Atkins, Pop Chronicles, Show 8 – The All American Boy: Enter Elvis and the rock-a-billies. Part 2, interview recorded January 1968." to mean that wisdom is timeless.