Elvis was an accident.

I'm reading "Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll." 

I'm at the part where Elvis makes an entrance.

The short version is that Elvis had done a couple of acetates for his Mom, but they weren't anything special. But Sam's assistant, a woman named Marion Keisker, really liked the look and sound of Elvis and finally convinced Sam to give him a chance.

Elvis came in to sing some songs, but Sam was unimpressed. 

Marion persisted, so Sam called a couple of his session musicians, Scotty Moore and Bill Black, to spend an evening working on stuff and come in the next day for a recording session. They came in, but after a long session of nothing working, Sam finally called a break.

During the break, Elvis started fooling around, singing a song from a few years before, "That's All Right, Mama," byArthur Crudup. 

Sam poked his head out of the booth and said, "What's that?"

And so a legend is born. 

Thing is, what a random sequence of events! Elvis was trying to sing like everyone else and he ran into the only person in the world that could recognize when he was doing something different. The one person in the world who was soothing and confident enough to show faith in the callow lad.

Once Elvis got a little confidence, he was on his way, but what pops out to me is that Elvis was a fortuitous accident. It so easily might not have happened. 

But, as a writer, the lesson I take out from this is the old William Goldman saying (about Hollywood): "Nobody knows anything."

The early days of recording remind me an awful lot like the current indie writers scene. Back in day, there were regional record producers who would record the local acts and fill the jukeboxes and radio waves. There was a constant stream of musicians coming and taking a stab at it. 

But time after time, songs on the B-side would be the one that really hit. Or a song that was ignored when done by one artist, would be a hit with another artist. 

Sometimes a musician would come in with talent that couldn't be ignored. Howling Wolf and B.B. King were a couple of artists that Sam recorded early on. But most of the time, the cogs in the recording machine were interchangeable.

In the current indie scene there are a lot of writers who are competent, some more talented than others, but trying to get a hit is completely unpredictable. There are writers who are so hungry and persistent that they finally break through--though I have to wonder if there weren't equally hungry and persistent writers who fell by the wayside.

One of the first things I heard when I first started writing was that success in writing depended on "Luck, Timing, and Who You Know."

Everything I've seen since then has only confirmed it.