Today's blog is the introduction from my new book, Channeling Elvis: How Television Saved the King of Rock 'n' Roll. I hope you enjoy it, and the rest of the book. You will find it on Amazon.com in the U.S. here:
http://tinyurl.com/oelojh3
And in the U.K. here: http://tinyurl.com/kyolbnm
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Channeling
Elvis
How
Television Saved the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll
by
Allen
J. Wiener
Beats
& Measures Press LLC
Potomac, Maryland
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Copyright © 2014 Allen J. Wiener All
Rights Reserved
ISBN-13: 9781500320072
ISBN-10: 1500320072
First Edition
- Beats & Measures Press LLC
Cover design by Richard Buskin
Author photograph
by Amanda Zantal-Wiener
Interior design by CreateSpace
Edited by Tom Kailbourne
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, distributed or trans- mitted in any form or by any means,
including photocopying, recording, or other elec- tronic or mechanical methods,
without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law.
For review copies or permission requests, write
to the publisher by email at:
BeatsandMeasures@Yahoo.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014911669
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, North Charleston, South Carolina
Cover photo: Elvis Presley rehearsing for the Ed
Sullivan Show, September 9, 1956
(CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images)
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Warm Up
Rock and roll exploded onto the national scene
more than a half century ago, and a single individual led its musical
revolution: Elvis Presley. He ignited its creative and commercial sparks at Sun
Records in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1954 and gained a national audience when he
moved to RCA Victor in November 1955. Presley was influenced by a broad variety
of American musical forms, particularly gospel, rhythm and blues, and country
sounds. At Sun, he experimented with innovative producer Sam Phillips, who was
excited by the soulful sounds of the blues singers he had been recording.
Eventually, the two stumbled onto a new, uptempo sound that blended Elvis’ musical
influences into something new and exciting, first called rockabilly, which soon
captured an emerging teenage market. But the components of that explosion were
equal parts new sound and a new kind of singer.
Elvis was the first white commercial recording artist to express the
kind of feeling and emotion that black artists had injected into their music for
years and, through him, a new musical hybrid was created. To a complacent,
unprepared 1950s America, which had never heard or seen anyone like him before,
Elvis was an alarming bombshell, especially when teenagers became powerfully
drawn to him and took his new music as their own.
RCA promotion man Chick Crumpacker quickly noticed that Presley “was
a hybrid who was very hard to define and he showed all of his influences -
gospel, pop, country, and blues.” His music sounded so different from anything
else on the market that writers and disc jockeys were hard pressed to label it
or him. Press and radio descriptions of Elvis in 1954 and 1955 illustrate how
difficult he was to pigeon hole. He was referred to as “something new in the
folk music field,” “sort of a bebop artist,” “Boppin’ Hillbilly,” and a “singer
in the rural rhythm field” who “sings hillbilly in R&B time.” His music was
dubbed “Rockabilly, ” “Be-Bop Western,” and “a rockin’ and rollin’ dance for
teenagers.” To some, he sounded like “a white man’s voice singing Negro rhythms with a rural flavor,”
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and he was nicknamed “the Hillbilly Cat,” “the Folk Music Fireball,” and “Country Music’s Mr. Rhythm.” He was
described as “Elvis and his Bop Band,” a “youngster with the hillbilly blues
beat” who was “equally popular on popular, folk, and race record programs,” and
“the most talked-about new personality in the last 10 years of recorded music.”1
Racial barriers were very real and extremely powerful throughout the
United States in the 1950s, particularly in the South. The well-worn newsreel
clips of the era show self-serving politicians, Klansmen, and other assorted
racists openly proclaiming their revulsion at the “corrupting” influence black
music was having on white society and their pompous, self-righteous
determination to stamp it out. These forces regarded the separation of the
races as essential, including the music that was associated with white and
black societies respectively. Through Elvis, music that was previously confined to black artists and audiences was exposed to white listeners,
particularly young ones, who might otherwise have remained completely oblivious
to it but were powerfully drawn to it.
The R&B artists themselves profited from Elvis’ popularization of
their songs because he helped to broaden their base. By the end of 1956, black
artists like Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Frankie Lymon would join him at
the upper reaches of Billboard’s pop chart. They were not the first, of
course—Chuck Berry had gotten there ahead of them all as early as 1955 with
“Maybellene,” but that hit was an aberration at a time when Billboard’s top
10 featured no fewer than three different versions of “The Ballad of
Davy Crockett.” Elvis Presley didn’t create or invent rock and roll music, which
had cropped up on mainstream pop charts before he picked up a guitar. Bill
Haley and His Comets scored a major rock hit with “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” in
1954, itself a sanitized cover of Big Joe Turner’s R&B hit, and most
notably “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” in 1955. Cleveland, Ohio, radio
disc jockey Alan Freed had popularized the phrase “rock and roll” as early as
1951. However, Elvis put his own unique brand on it and came to personify what
became popularly known as rock and roll the moment he bolted onto the national
scene. He became a one-man vanguard who redefined popular music, and those who
followed him onto the charts were part of an irreversible march that he
started.
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He took that first step on television shortly after Phillips sold his
Sun recording contract to the larger, more powerful RCA Victor Records for the
then-record sum of $35,000, plus $5,000 to cover royalties Sun owed to Elvis.
Neither Phillips nor Elvis’ manager, Memphis disc jockey Bob Neal, had the connections
or resources to promote Elvis on a national level, but Colonel Tom Parker
did. The already legendary ex-carnival huckster had managed the successful
careers of country giants Eddy Arnold and Hank Snow, who eventually became
Parker’s partner. The Colonel saw the sexuality in Presley’s performing style
and the power he wielded over teenagers, who represented a huge market. In
Presley, he found an artist who could tap that market, and he resolved to take
control of the young singer and share in the wealth that he was certain Elvis
would generate. He started by negotiating the sale of his contract to RCA, no
small feat considering Elvis was still something of a gamble for the record
company.
Clinching the RCA deal earned Parker Presley’s confidence and loyalty
and won over his parents, which was essential to sealing any deal with Elvis.
Within a few months the Colonel squeezed Neal and Snow out of the picture,
leaving no one with whom he had to share decision-making or commissions.
Booking Elvis onto a national television show was a top priority for Parker,
who knew that this was a way to reach millions of people in a single
appearance, compared to the countless one-night stands it would take for
Presley to be seen by a fraction of that number.
Covering all possible bets, Parker also closed a deal with the Hill
and Range music publishing company that would funnel their songs to Elvis and
give the singer increased revenues, some of which would derive from bogus
songwriting credits being attributed to Presley. Elvis himself eventually put a
stop to the practice, which was common at the time. Finally, Parker could rely
on the promotional resources of the William Morris talent agency and his
relationship with its head, Abe Lastfogel, which went back to the 1940s.
While the Colonel wove his web, Elvis knocked pop culture on its ear
merely with the sound of his voice and, when he appeared on television, he
drove much of America screaming from its collective living room. All that was
new, exciting, and threatening about the man and his music was multiplied
tenfold once his uninhibited performing style
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could actually be seen. Teenagers
watching at home, particularly girls, felt the same attraction to him that his
live audiences had experienced for more than a year as the crowds screamed,
cried, and literally went wild at the sight of his physical gyrations
and the sound of his emotional delivery. This, indeed, was a threat to middle
America and, before long, Elvis would incur its wrath.
As with his recordings, Elvis’ full impact on television can only be
appreciated by recapturing the look of 1950s TV and the nature of the comedy
and variety shows that Elvis appeared on at the time, which were hosted by
long-established stars, many of them in the sunset of their careers. Most acts
on these shows were left over from vaudeville and included magicians, jugglers,
animal acts, acrobats, dancers, ventriloquists, and mainstream singers. The
musical segments reflected long-standing mainstream tastes that had not changed
much since the big band era. Whenever Elvis appeared on these shows he looked,
sounded, and performed so differently from anyone else that he might well have
dropped in from another planet. Several people who later worked with Presley
recalled seeing at least one of his first television appearances on Stage
Show and being completely captivated by the young singer, whose physical
presence and blatant sexuality were immediately evident to them. Some viewed
his act as vulgar and his performances as tasteless, while others did not, but
all agreed that he was fascinating, different, and had the charismatic look of
a big star.
Elvis was made for TV, or maybe it was made just in time for him. He
was compelling on the tube, which lit up the moment he entered and burst into heated
intensity during his frenetic, energetic performances. It’s still there to be
seen and felt in those primitive black and white clips, but what isn’t captured
is the danger he presented to a bland mid-1950s America. Not only had postwar
America never seen anyone like him, it could never have imagined such a
performer. Even his name sounded odd, and it was a while before many people
realized that Elvis Presley was a person rather than an exotic snack food. With
his long, slicked-back hair, extended sideburns, flashy clothes, and
uninhibited presentation, Elvis became an instant threat to adults and an irresistible lure
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to their kids. He was a remarkable showman who
could manipulate his audience at will, and he aroused both idolatry and
animosity, which swirled around him throughout his first years in the national
spotlight.
Many adults alternately laughed Elvis off as a passing fad or hoped
he’d soon go away. Nervous parents took comfort in the bad press he received
and in the many pans that greeted his live shows, particularly his 1956 Las
Vegas debut. Perhaps they believed the critics of a dying generation who
decried Presley as a no-talent freak who would be gone in the proverbial wink
of an eye. Savvy professionals knew better, including guitar legend Chet
Atkins, who made a frantic phone call to his wife the first time he saw Elvis
in a recording studio and urged her to come at once to see him for herself, as
if he’d just spotted a wayward comet.
That was just the beginning. In a single year, Elvis used television
to push his career onto one of the fastest tracks in show business history, and
he emerged a major international star at the end of it. After that, he would
use television far more sparingly, but to equal effect. At several key junctures
when Elvis needed to rejuvenate his image or jump-start his lagging career, he
turned to television as the vehicle to carry him back to the top, and it rarely
failed him.
Perhaps more significantly, television alone has preserved a moving
visual record of Presley’s career. Although he was one of the most popular and
familiar stars of the twentieth century, surprisingly little live performance
footage of Presley was ever shot, probably due to Parker’s desire to keep his
star a scarce commodity, thus enabling him to demand the highest price for his
boy’s services. With the exception of some early silent film and two theatrical
documentaries of his 1970s stage act, there is practically no
professionally-shot live footage of the King of Rock and Roll, especially from
his most exciting, formative years, except for those television appearances.
In the end, television alone recorded the full path of Presley’s
career, from its explosive beginning to its tragic end, and it provided the
most extensive look at Elvis the performer. His progress on television was like
that of a train, beginning slowly and deliberately and then gathering speed and
momentum as it surged powerfully forward. His TV years began inauspiciously on
the low-rated Stage Show, hosted by the fading Dorsey
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brothers, which
was consistently clobbered in the ratings by Perry Como’s popular show. Como’s
victory, however, was something of a symbolic last hurrah. Within a few months,
largely through the power of television, Elvis would grease the skids for the
eventual decline of such crooners and their music, which soon sounded very much
like something from a vanishing, distant past.
In the months following his inauspicious debut on Stage Show in
January 1956, Elvis would wend his way through the television world of that
time and, in the process, turn pop culture on its head. Teaming with TV giants
like Milton Berle and Steve Allen in the fifties variety-show format only
emphasized how different and new he was and how dated many of those with whom
he shared the stage had become. Next to Elvis, almost all of them looked old,
tired, and even boring, at least to a new generation of teenagers. Often, the
future King of Rock and Roll received mixed reviews at best, many of which were
downright hostile, spewing genuine rage at the raw nature of his act.
Nonetheless, Elvis and the rest of America knew he had truly arrived
when he capped off his year by appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, television’s
single most popular variety show. Sullivan prided himself on booking only the
elite of show business from all over the world, from Broadway headliners to
circus greats. He had resisted booking Elvis all year, but even Sullivan
capitulated once he realized how big a ratings draw the young singer had
become. Sullivan learned this lesson well and would continue to keep his finger
on the pulse of popular tastes as the rock and roll generation flexed its
economic muscle. The once reluctant Sullivan would later routinely book nearly
every top rock act in the world. It was Elvis’ debut on Sullivan’s show that
changed everything and, once his booking was announced, anticipation of that
appearance took hold of the nation. Rarely, if ever, had a single performer
generated such a high degree of interest, or at least curiosity, across
demographic lines.2
It is not easy to recreate the anxiety and insomnia that this moment
generated among teens across America, most of whom had never seen Elvis perform
or even viewed film of
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him. They heard his records and viewed his image
in promotional magazines and in the increasing media coverage of him, but few,
apart from his growing legion of dedicated followers, had ever seen the
performer himself in action, not even on his earlier TV appearances. Now, they
would.
The moment was far more novel and special than would ever be possible
again, especially in the current era of easily recorded TV, reruns, home video sales,
and Internet streaming. At the dawn of the television era, viewers were, quite
literally, thrilled to see top stars, including Hollywood’s biggest names,
appearing live or on film in their own homes. The buzz went around for a week
or more once the press put out the word that a major star would appear on a
particular show. TV had the capacity to create national crazes virtually overnight.
William Boyd had proven that simply by releasing his old Hopalong Cassidy films
to television stations around the country, revitalizing his career and earning
him millions in the process. Walt Disney created an even bigger national
sensation by airing three one-hour episodes about frontiersman Davy Crockett on
ABC- TV’s Disneyland. A similar Elvis craze had already begun before he
appeared on television, but quickly grew, stirring up even greater financial
potential—and a good deal more controversy. Within a single year, in eleven
live television appearances, Elvis left his mark on television as a
revolutionary performer and music star without peer, boosted himself from a
little-known regional attraction to an international phenomenon, and blazed a
trail to television that most music stars would trod in his wake, hoping it
would work the same kind of magic for them. Backstage, from first to last,
Presley left equally powerful impressions on those who worked with him on
television. Their recollections tell us much about who Elvis really was, while
the performances themselves show the full trajectory of the King’s career, from
its remarkable beginning to its whimpering end. Television captured it all.
1 Interview with Chick Crumpacker; recordings of various
radio programs.
2 Elvis may have appeared on local television programs before his
national debut on the medium, but little evidence of that exists. Kinescopes or
film footage are said to show Elvis performing on Louisiana Hayride, a
Shreveport-based radio show that had booked him for weekly appearances
beginning in October 1954, but no such footage has surfaced. He is rumored to
have appeared on televised broadcasts of the radio shows Grand Prize
Jamboree (aka Grand Prize Saturday Night Jamboree) from Houston,
Texas, and The Big “D” Jamboree from Dallas in 1955. Although he did
appear on both radio shows several times, there is no evidence of any televised
editions featuring Elvis. He auditioned for the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent
Scouts show in New York on March 23, 1955, but was turned down cold,
without even meeting Godfrey. It is more likely that Elvis did appear on a
local West Texas television show hosted by then little-known singer Roy
Orbison, most likely in October 1955, but, if he did, no footage of the
appearance has survived. Although his radio appearances helped to advance his
career in the South, television did not play a significant role for Elvis until
he made his first national network appearances in 1956.
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If you enjoyed this preview, you can order the book directly from Amazon.com in the U.S. here: http://tinyurl.com/oelojh3
and from Amazon.co.uk in the U.K. here: http://tinyurl.com/kyolbnm
