NEW YORK — Scotty Moore, a guitarist whose terse, bluesy licks on Elvis Presley’s early hits virtually created the rockabilly guitar style and established the guitar as a lead instrument in rock ’n’ roll, died on Tuesday at his home outside Nashville. He was 84.

His death was confirmed by James L. Dickerson, his biographer and friend.

In 1954, Mr. Moore was performing with a country group, Doug Poindexter and the Starlite Wranglers, and recording at Sun Records in Memphis when Sam Phillips, the label’s owner, asked him to audition a young singer that his secretary kept mentioning.

On July 4, Presley showed up at Mr. Moore’s house. Bill Black, the bass player for the Starlite Wranglers, arrived and the three began running through a random selection of songs. Mr. Moore was not overly impressed but told Phillips that the young fellow had a nice voice and might be worth a try.

The next evening, at Sun Studio, the trio recorded an up-tempo version of “That’s All Right,’’ a blues song by Arthur Crudup, known as Big Boy, that Sun released with a rockabilly version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky’’ on the flip side.

The record caught fire locally, and Presley was on his way, electrifying audiences with a new sound defined in large part by Mr. Moore, whose slashing chords, inserted like musical punctuation, and hard-driving solos inspired future rock guitarists around the world, including Keith Richards, George Harrison, Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler, and Chris Isaak.

“All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like that,’’ Richards told Dickerson, who helped Mr. Moore write the 1997 memoir “That’s Alright, Elvis.’’ He added: “Everyone else wanted to be Elvis. I wanted to be Scotty.’’

Mr. Moore and Black, joined by the drummer D.J. Fontana in 1955, recorded more than 300 songs with Presley for Sun and RCA, including “Heartbreak Hotel,’’ “Don’t Be Cruel,’’ and “Hound Dog.’’ Billed as the Blue Moon Boys, they backed him on tour, and they appeared in several of his films.

“Moore’s concise, aggressive runs mixed country picking and blues phrasing into a new instrumental language,’’ Rolling Stone wrote in 2011, ranking Mr. Moore as No. 29 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

Winfield Scott Moore III was born on a farm near Gadsden, Tenn. He started playing the guitar at 8, and over the years developed a style that incorporated country, blues, and jazz. Mr. Moore was particularly fond of the guitarists Tal Farlow and George Barnes.

“All I can tell you is I just stole from every guitar player I heard over the years,’’ Mr. Moore told the makers of the television documentary “Elvis Presley “ in 2001. “Put it in my databank. And when I played, that’s just what come out.’’

At 16, he enlisted in the Navy, lying about his age, and served in the Pacific. After leaving the service, he worked as a hatter at his brother’s dry-cleaning business and organized the Starlite Wranglers.

Presley developed a strong musical rapport with his sidemen and was personally close to Mr. Moore, who played the role of a protective older brother. “I tried to play around the singer,’’ Mr. Moore said. “If Elvis was singing a song a certain way, there was no point in me trying to top him on what he just did. The idea was to play something that went the other way — a counterpoint.’’

When Presley went into the Army in 1958, Mr. Moore became a partner in Fernwood Records. For a time, he supervised operations at Sam Phillips’s studios in Memphis and Nashville. He later made a career as a freelance studio engineer, working with Dolly Parton and Ringo Starr.

Like his fellow sidemen, Mr. Moore, who served as Presley’s manager until 1955, never enjoyed the financial rewards of the Presley phenomenon. The Blue Moon Boys were paid a weekly salary of $200 when they toured, and $100 week when they were idle.

All told, Mr. Moore earned a little over $30,000 from his partnership with Presley, which came to an end after the 1968 special on NBC that reintroduced Presley to a new generation of listeners and revived his career. In addition to the paltry compensation, the backup group became increasingly isolated from Presley.

“It’s not that I feel bitterness, just disappointment,’’ Mr. Moore told The Tennessean newspaper in 1997.

Mr. Moore, left out of the equation when Presley embarked on the Las Vegas phase of his career, put away his guitar and barely touched it for nearly 25 years. In the early 1990s, after a tape-recording business he established in 1976 went bankrupt, he began recording and touring again, initially with Carl Perkins.

Mr. Moore, who lived in Nashville, was married and divorced three times. He leaves a son, Donald; four daughters, Linda, Andrea, Vikki Hein, and Tasha; and several grandchildren.

Throughout his life, Mr Moore gave a modest account of the momentous Sun sessions with Presley. In that summer of 1954, Presley was a self-effacing, but determined teen.

That initial recording session was not going well. It was getting late, and the three musicians had to get up the next morning to work at day jobs.

‘‘All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool,’’ Mr. Moore told Peter Guralnick for his 1994 biography, ‘‘Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley,’’ ‘‘and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them.’’

The song was ‘‘That’s All Right.’’ Phillips poked his head of the control booth and asked what they were doing.

‘‘And we said, ‘We don’t know,’ ’’ Mr. Moore recalled. ‘‘ ‘Well, back up,’ he said, ‘try to find a place to start, and do it again.’ ’’

They worked out an arrangement on the fly, Mr. Moore improvised a guitar solo, and the result was an exuberant performance unlike anything that had come before.

When Phillips played back the recording, Mr. Moore said, ‘‘We couldn’t believe it was us. It just sounded sort of raw and ragged. We thought it was exciting, but what was it? It was just so completely different.’’

Material from the Washington Post was used in this obituary.