ELVIS PRESLEY Born Elvis Aron Presley January 8Th, 1935 Easttupdo, Mississippi Died August 16Th, 1977 Mempliis, Tennessee
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inductees and nominees BIOGRAPHIES BY MICHAEL HILL Drifters ELVIS PRESLEY Born Elvis Aron Presley January 8th, 1935 EastTupdo, Mississippi Died August 16th, 1977 Mempliis, Tennessee “If you’re looking for trouble,” Elvis Presley to truck-driving. But when RCA paid what was con warned the audience at the opening of his December sidered an outrageous sum for Elvis’ Sun contract, 3rd, 1968, television special, “you’ve come to the the company was almost instantly rewarded with a tri right place.” ple-crown hit, “Heartbreak Hotel,” which topped the What viewers heard that night was unadulterated pop, C&W and R&B charts. L ife magazine called him Elvis, the archetypal rock and roll singer, not the Hol a “howling hillbilly.” A TV critic described his unin lywood movie star. The leather-dad Presley, working hibited lap-shaking style as “the mating dance of an up a sweat, returned to his roots before the first live aborigine.” Eld Sullivan vowed never to book him, but audience he had faced since 1961. Presley wanted to not long after “Heartbreak Hotel” topped the (harts, remind the world of his sound, style and sex appeal. Presley made the first of three appearances on the But perhaps he also wished to recall for himself what show — only two of which featured full-frontal Elvis. he had stumbled onto at the Sun Records studio in During his last guest spot, Sullivan refused to allow Memphis back in 1954. On July 5th and 6th of that him to be shot from the waist down. Steve Allen actu year, Elvis Aron Presley — encouraged and cajoled by ally instructed Elvis not to dance on his late-night TV producer and studio owner Sam Phillips, and accom show and had him wear tails while performing panied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill “Hound Dog” in the company of a live basset hound. Black — called to life what would soon be known as The following day, teenagers picketed the NBC studio rock and roll with a voice that bore strains of the with signs reading W e Want the Real Etuis’. Grand Ole Opry and Beale Street, of country and The real Elvis is what viewers saw from head to toe blues, the sound from both sides of the tracks in his in 1968. It was the real Elvis, too, who went back to hometown, East Tupelo, Mississippi. It was then and Tennessee to record From Elvis in Memphis and his there that he ensured — instinctively, unknowingly — last Number One single, the haunting “Suspicious that pop music would never again be as simple as Minds.” He then returned to the concert stage in black and white. 1969 with a historic series of shows at the Interna T h a t certainly spelled trouble. In the period be tional Hotel in Las Vegas. It was the real Elvis who at tween 1954 and 1958, as Elvis Presley was trans tracted more than a billion viewers in forty countries formed into the world’s first rock and roll star — to his 1973 live satellite-TV concert; who inspired heartthrob, rebel, trendsetter, tlireat — he was simul Bruce Springsteen in 1976 to jump the fence at Gra- taneously hailed and dismissed, deified and de celand in order to meet his idol, only to be hustled nounced. BiU botird, in its country and western “Re away by security guards; and, finally, who prompted view Spotlight on Talent,” decided that Elvis’ first President Jimmy Carter, on the occasion of Elvis’ «ingle — “That’s All Right” b/w “Blue Moon of Ken death on August 16th, 1977, to join a shocked world tucky” — indicated “a strong new talent,” while the tal of mourners and declare that “Elvis Presley’s death ent coordinator of the Grand Ole Opry (after Elvis’ deprives our country of a part of itself.” first and only appearance there) suggested he go back THE S U R P H ^ OF AN AMERICAN MUSIC BY LENNY KAYE Mickey and Sylvia Scream in’ Jay Hawkins But I can’t remember wfteihl^or when . merely secondhand musicians — though sacrificial life-is-art swan song at the Alamo did rock and roll begin? that’s how they were generally regarded by offered some grander purpose than mere Was a new era dawning oil July Stb, 1954, their professional peers. Primitive or not, prosperity? James Dean’s meteoric rise to when Sam Phillips spokelthe immortal these were aware and dehhpilStWereators — fame in the six months between his March words - “That’s fine, man. Hell, that’s A f often driven visionaries — whbse goal was 1955 screen appearance in East o f Eden and ferent. T h at’s a pop song n<iw” — to Elvi?* simplicity inste^^of intrhyfcy. Reacting his own flaming demise (the self-fulfilling Presley over a studio interconiat 760 Union ^gainst the passivity of audience-performer prophecy of Rebel without a Cause) p ro Avenue in Memphis? ihteruction, rock celebrated and indulged moted similar existential questions. It was Was it March 31st, 1955lwhen T h e its subliminal urges. Itjcracked one beat in only when the newly ubiquitous medium of Blackboard Jungle formally eljuated Bill place of six and projected lyrics naked in television met rock’s first icon, Elvis Pres Haley’s “Rock around the Clock” with ju their unadorned desire, along with melodic ley, that rock became something more than venile delinquency, providing a theme song phrases so pointe^T they became mnemonic music. It went pop. for adolescent rebellion? hooks, as America s (and later the world’s) Projected into millions of unsuspecting Or was it the early Fifties^?rossover suc Top Forty chart?would soon devastatingly living rooms, as important for what hea cess of the Chords’ “Stf-Boom,” the Pen learn. couldn’t show (the famous waist bisection) guins’ “Earth An^ei,” the Crows’ “Gee,” The subculture offered was part Atomic as for what he did (gold records galore), El Big Joe Tqptflr’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” Age and part Media M odern^tepping back vis not only combined the tangled musical and a Cleveland .disc jockey’s prescience in from the siege mentality of postwar para strains of rock’s prehistory into a sultry taking the “race records** known as rhythm noia. Times were good in the micNFifties. whole, he took a mutated step forward. His and blues and changing their name lb at Smokestack Amerm&Was booming: the pay was an inspirational leadership that came to tract (or acknowledge) a multiracial audi of a lactory worker with three dependents embody the new music itself. Long live the ence? averaged seventy dollars a week. Time mag King! The truth is that despite an all-too-human azine said that along with the highest Gross His — and, by extension, rock’s — was an urge to define music in neat bloodlines! the Rational Product in history, “bomb shelters electric sound, tilting the balance from am roots of rock and roll remain frustratiligly were on sale in Los Angeles, and hardly any plification to AC current. You could hear it elusive. As much a self-conscious lifestyjte as one was buying them.” President Eisenhow in the slapback echo with which Phillips a collection of rhythms and melodiel, iy er heralded a return to confidence, while surrounded Presley’s voice in “That’s All seemed to pick at will from the discard! #F Davy Crockett was the national hero. Right” and in the bite of Scotty Moore’s other music forms, recycling scorned chords But did the public like Davy because he electric guitar. It seemed tailor-made for and pariah riffs. said things like “Be sure you’re right, then “Hi-Fi,” a car radio, a live stage show. This is not to say rock and rollers were go ahead,” or because his coonskin cap and And yet, as much as rock and roll was “specialty” music, but certainly influential styles in their own right. Vocal techniques and improvisations from the hlues; a hard, hig-band swing; the call-and-response of gospel; the dance blues of New Orleans; the frantic bop of West Coast jazz; the twang of hillbilly boogie and western swing; the close-harmony serenade of groups like the Ink Spots and the Four Freshmen - all of these found their way into rock and roll. “Rock and roll was probably the first music with regional origins to be commer^ally Moonglows Chantéis expanded its rock and roll record chart from 3(^to 100 songs on November 12th, 1955 — nht so coincidentally, the same month that^Colonel Tom Parker signed El vis to recor^ihg giant RCA-Victor. Pop musics older guard had initially tried to subvert rock’s emotional intensity with sanitized cover versions; they hoped that all this loud bravado would soon go away. But they never stood a chance. The swapfest between rhythm, hlues, country, western and plain old Tin Pan Alley contin successful on a nationwide scale,” writes ued wildly apace. In the hands of maverick Charlie Gillett in The Sound of the City, independent labels and their equally unruly and small wonder, since it managed to touch artists, a marketplace free-for-all was initi so many reference points along the way. ated that harked hack to the days of the Add to rock and roll the manic exhibi frontier West. tionism of youthful exuberance, the sense of “This is what makes rock and roll so in contrariety that kept the music moving fur triguing,” Nick Tosches notes in his chroni ther out on its own limb of the family tree, cle of the “dark and wild” years before El and the outrage (and subsequent attraction) v is, Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll.