Gospel music looms large like a spirit over the music of Elvis Presley. It is the “devil in disguise” that defines early rock’n’roll, when cultural barriers were finally broken.

White audiences embraced music traditionally performed by African-American artists and a whole new rock and roll industry exploded, dominating the industry for decades.

In Baz Luhrmann’s new movie, Elvis, Presley’s controversial manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks, who also narrates the film), allows the audience to judge his role as saint or sinner in making his protege, played by Austin Butler, the biggest star in the world.

The film uses Presley’s first single, That’s All Right, to show how gospel inspired the singer growing up in the streets of Tupelo, Mississippi.

“One of the things we wanted to explore is where his experiences of black music and black culture came from,” says Australian music producer Elliott Wheeler.

The pianist and composer, originally from Wagga Wagga and now living on the Gold Coast, began working with Luhrmann on 2013’s The Great Gatsby, which featured a heavily stylised 1920s-era swing jazz scene.

For Elvis, Wheeler wanted to link the music of “the King” with modern audiences, producing the soundtrack album and the multilayered, information-rich musical pieces within Luhrmann’s film.

“The view that I came to was that Elvis’ experience of black music came from a very, very young age.

“His family came across some quite tough times, and they were at times the only white family in a black neighbourhood in Tupelo.

“That was just the music he was surrounded by, both the spiritual or Pentecostal side of things, but also the rhythm-and-blues music that was happening at the time.

“We explore the nexus of where those two experiences came from, the sacred and the profane, and how that influenced the sound that became particularly the early Elvis.”

Presley himself would say he always returned to his gospel influences.

“There are many stories of him finishing a gig and going back to the hotel where they were staying and sitting with the Sweet Inspirations [his backing singers] and singing for hours, just singing spiritual and gospel songs,” Wheeler says.

With music recorded in London, Australia and the US, the film shows gospel inspiring a young Presley.

“He hears the strains of a Pentecostal church service on the wind, and runs over to listen,” Wheeler says.

“He’s drawn into the tent by the music, and is taken over by the spirit of the service. In his mind’s eye, the sacred music of the service and profane experience in the juke joint become one as we hear them interlaid over each other.”

In 1946, blues singer Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup wrote what arguably became the first rock and roll recording, That’s All Right.

Elvis’ faster, souped-up version, recorded by Sam Phillips in Sun Studio in Memphis in 1954, changed the world.

The voice singing That’s All Right in the film is American guitarist Gary Clark junior, who acts as Crudup in the film. Clark and his family travelled to the Gold Coast during the COVID pandemic to record the parts.

“We just sat down with Gary in the soundstage one day,” Wheeler says.

“It was just a couple of microphones, Gary and his guitar.

“And he pulled out one of the most extraordinary recording experiences. We got it virtually in the first take.”

For the film, gospel music in Nashville — sometimes a cappella, sometimes singers backed by solo guitar or organ — were recorded with the original 1950s-era RCA equipment organised by Nashville music enthusiast and sound engineer Dave Cobb.

“He found this tiny little church about an hour outside Nashville and put together this fantastic collection of singers.

“He had all the original RCA ribbon microphones, all the original preamps. He even went to the point of getting the original tape machine Phillips had in Sun Studio.

“So we were using the same delay that Elvis had been using on the first recordings. Someone has painstakingly restored that machine to its original glory.

“It was incredible, just incredible.”

Wheeler says Luhrmann saw the script and music as part of a collaborated approach to filmmaking and the modern song variations connected Elvis’ music to young audiences.

“There is wonderful scene I think in Vegas where you really see the DNA of where the Vegas performance of That’s All Right has come from.

“It is attempting to give the audience a very visceral understanding of where the bones of that music has come from.”

It was a different approach to 2002, when the Presley Estate for the first time allowed the song A Little Less Conversation to be remixed by Dutch producer Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL.

That rewired version went to No.1 in 24 different countries.

This time Luhrmann’s Elvis production had the rights to use original RCA recordings and Sony’s Legacy recordings.

“It was the key to the vault, basically,” Wheeler says.

In the movie, Austin Butler sings all the Presley songs before 1968. Any music from 1968 onwards uses the RCA recordings, which Wheeler’s team has used as backing for parts of the soundtrack.

In a softer orchestral piece, Presley reflects on the shooting of presidential aspirant Bobby Kennedy in June 1968.

“It is a story about Elvis Presley, but it is also a story about America in the 1950s and ’60s and ’70s and what was happening in society,” Wheeler says.

“You can’t look at that time in America without looking at what was happening in the civil rights movement.

“It is one man’s response.

“He may have been the most famous man on the planet at the time, but to see his response to the events that were happening at that time is riveting.”