Rare Elvis Presley recording to be auctioned by Long Island firm 

A Long Island auction house is putting up for bid an iconic piece of rock and roll history: One of the original master recordings from Elvis Presley's first professional session.

Produced not on tape but on what audio engineers call an "acetate" record used to press commercial copies for sale, the master recording of "That's All Right" with the B-side "Blue Moon of Kentucky" was made July 5, 1954, at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. It features singer-guitarist Presley, rhythm guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, under producer and studio co-owner Sam Phillips and studio manager Marion Keisker MacInnes.

The recording, said Phil Weiss, of Lynbrook's Weiss Auctions, comes from MacInnes' family. When MacInnes died in 1989, this and other artifacts were passed to her son, Angus David MacInnes, who died in 1997. Marion MacInnes is famously credited as the first to spot Presley's potential a year before this session, when the future "King of Rock and Roll" had paid a few dollars to make a record ostensibly intended as a birthday present for his mother, Gladys, but which he left at a friend's instead.

During this time when Black R&B, electric blues and jump blues "race records" were defining what came to be called rock and roll, Phillips, MacInnes would remember, repeatedly told her he needed to "find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel." She suggested Presley, and on June 26, 1954, Phillips asked him to come in for what the late Moore called "an audition."

That much-chronicled two-day session initially did not go well. "We tried four songs. 'I Love You Because' was the first thing we [recorded]," Moore once said. After recording "two or three" more songs out of several they performed, they took a break and a relaxed Presley began doing "That's All Right" by the Delta-blues musician Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. Moore and Black began backing Presley, and Phillips, liking the sound, had them begin again for recording. The song became Presley's first hit.

Two other Presley-related items will also be auctioned: An acetate recording of "Blue Suede Shoes" with Presley on vocals and a large version of the famous photo showing the four members of the “Million Dollar Quartet” — Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis — signed and inscribed by all four to MacInnes.

The online auction of 500 music-heavy lots will take place Sept. 29 via LiveAuctioneers.com and Invaluable.com. Phone and absentee bids will also be accepted.