He had just been fishing, he said, the first and only time he met Elvis Presley. That was in 1967. Presley had come to Nashville to record, and one of the songs he was working on was "Guitar Man," which Reed had written and recorded. "I was out on the Cumberland River fishing," he said. "I got a call from Felton Jarvis (then Presley's producer). He said, `Elvis is down here. We've been trying to cut `Guitar Man’ all day long. He wants it to sound like it sounded on your album.'’ I finally told him, I said, `Well, if you want it to sound like that, you're going have to get Reed in there to play guitar, because these guys (you’re using in the studio) are straight pickers. [Reed] picks with his fingers and he tunes that guitar up all weird kind of ways.’" So Jarvis hired Reed to play on the session.
"I hit that intro," Reed said, "and boy, [Elvis’s] face lit up and here we went. Then after he got through that, he cut [my] `U.S. Male’ at the same session. I was toppin’ cotton, son." There’s an outtake from that session that still circulates on Music Row in which you can hear the King and the Alabama Wild Man (one of Georgia-born Reed’s nicknames) joking with each other.
