and the EP containing "Blue Suede Shoes," which RCA had released on
the same date as the LP and which was also simply entitled Elvis Presley
without any additional credit or qualification (as per the Colonel's instructions,
neither musicians nor recording supervisors were named), had already
started up the charts itself. Steve Sholes, as another Billboard headline
trumpeted a few weeks later, was definitely having the last laugh.
ON S U N D A Y, M A R C H 2 5, after a few hours' sleep, Elvis flew out to
the West Coast. He was scheduled to appear on The Milton Berle
Show the following Tuesday, and his screen test with producer Hal Wallis
had been hurriedly set up for the week in between. Wallis, a fifty-six-yearold
veteran of the movie business who had made such well-known pictures
as The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and The Rose
Tattoo and currently had N. Richard Nash's play The Rainmaker in preproduction,
had first heard about Presley at the beginning of February from
his partner in New York, Joseph Hazen. Hazen's sister-in-law, Harriet
Ames, one of the seven wealthy Annenberg sisters, was a "television addict"
who happened to be watching the Dorsey show. She called Hazen,
who lived across the street from her at 885 Park Avenue, "and I called my
partner in California," Hazen remembered. "I said, 'Turn on the television
and look at the show. This kid is terrific.' "
260 '" T H E W O R L D T U R N E D U P S I D E D O W N
Wallis was impressed, he later wrote, with Presley's "originality," but
he was probably more impressed with the sales figures and the stir he was
creating (not to mention the clear potential to tap into the new youth
market, which was crying for a successor to the late Jimmy Dean), factors
that were pointed out to him forcefully by Abe Lastfoge1 of William Morris.
The screen test was scheduled to coincide with the Berle appearance,
and the Colonel waved off any RCA efforts to set up press or radio promotion
for the West Coast trip until all the details with Wallis were nailed
down. From Anne Fulchino's point of view, "That's when we really lost
control. I remember the Colonel came up to me [just before he went out
to Hollywood], and he put his arms around me, and I smelled a rat right
away. He said, 'You know, I want to apologize to you for what I did in
Jacksonville [this was the incident that took place with Chick Crumpacker
on the RCA Country Caravan two years before].' Boy, did I smell a rat
then, because he never apologized, even if he was dead wrong, so now I
knew something was coming. And he said to me, 'You did a tremendous
job on Elvis. But: he said, 'now you can rest.' "
Although Elvis himself had made it plain to the Colonel that he had
little interest in just "singing in the movies" - ifhe was going to do anything
in the pictures, he wanted to be a movie star, a serious actor like
Brando, Dean, Richard Widmark, Rod Steiger - the screen test that he
took consisted of two parts. In the first he was given what looked like a
toy guitar and told to mime a performance to his recording of "Blue
Suede Shoes." The idea, according to screenwriter Allan Weiss, who was
present for the test and cued up the record as a then-member of the sound
department, was to see if the "indefinable energy" that had showed up on
television would translate to film.
There was never any doubt, wrote Weiss, as Presley stepped in front
of the camera:
The transformation was incredible... electricity bounced off the
walls of the soundstage. One felt it as an awesome thing - like an
earthquake in progress, only without the implicit threat. Watching
this insecure country boy, who apologized when he asked for a rehearsal
as though he had done something wrong, tum into absolute
dynamite when he stepped into the bright lights and started lipsynching
the words of his familiar hit. He believed in it, and he
M A R C H-MAY 1 9 5 6 ", 2 6 1
made you believe it, no matter how "sophisticated" your musical
tastes were....
The number was completed in two takes, and they moved in for
close-ups. He protested mildly that he hadn't been "dead-on" in a
couple of places. It was explained that the closer shots would be intercut
to cover it. I don't think he understood, but with characteristic
trust, he did what he was told. No stand-in was provided, and he
stood uncomplainingly while the lights were being adjusted bathed
in perspiration.
Then he did two scenes from The Rainmaker, a period comedy-drama
set in Kansas in 1913 that was scheduled to start shooting in June with Burt
Lancaster starring opposite Katharine Hepburn, in which he played the
younger brother, a kind of male ingenue role. "I knew my script," Elvis
said proudly later that year. "They sent it to me before I came to Hollywood
... and I got out there and just tried to put myself in the place of the
character I was playing, just trying to act as naturally as I could." He had
never been in a play before; he had never spoken a single line onstage. He
came across, wrote Weiss, "with amateurish conviction - like the lead in
a high school play," but ifhe was wooden from lack of dramatic training,
that didn't stop him from telling Mr. Wallis that he didn't think the part
was right for him when Wallis sat down with him sometime later to discuss
his celluloid future. This character was "lovesick, real shy. I mean, he
wasn't real shy. Real jolly. Real happy, real jolly, real lovesick. It wasn't
like me.... Mr. Wallis asked me what kind of a part r d like to play, and I
told him one more like myself, so I wouldn't have to do any excess acting."
But that wasn't what he meant exactly. When the producer laughed,
the boy just grinned and let it go, because he couldn't say what he really
meant: he couldn't say that he knew he could do it, it would be like saying
that he knew he could fly. And while he might never have been in a high
school play, he had imagined himself up on the screen, he had studied the
movies, he studied the actors - the way they presented themselves, the
way they cocked their heads, the way they won the audience's sympathy.
He had imagined himself a singing star, and it had come true - so why
not this, too?
Wallis for his part was struck by the young man's polite, wellmannered
demeanor. After dealing with Jerry Lewis for seven years, it
262 T H E W O R L D T U R N E D U P S I D E D OWN
would come as a relief to work with such a tractable, essentially malleable
young man. And Wallis and the Colonel (whom Wallis found "as fascinating
as Elvis" in his own right) were both well aware of the long and profitable
tradition by which virtually every popular male singing star, from
Rudy Vallee to Bing Crosby to Frank Sinatra, ended up in Hollywood and,
if he was lucky, was transformed into a movie star. This rock 'n' roll might
not last, but the boy was a real phenomenon, and if he was able - like
Crosby and Sinatra before him - to turn that magnetism into the warmth
of the all-around entertainer, then they would be able to make a lot of
money together.
He and the Colonel quickly came to an understanding that would be
formalized over the next few weeks in what Wallis characterized - accurately
or flatteringly, it would be impossible to say - as "one of the toughest
bargaining sessions of my career." It was a one-picture deal with options
for six more, with the first picture paying just $15,000, the second $20,000,
and the sum gradually escalating to $100,000 for the last. The Colonel
reserved the right to make one picture each year with another studio,
though that picture could be preempted by Wallis for a comparable fee. It
was by no stretch of the imagination (except a studio PR man's) a blockbuster
deal, but at its heart was the Colonel's fixed determination to sign
with a legitimate filmmaker and, above all, to keep his options open, a strategy
based as much upon his belief in his boy's unlimited potential as upon
his confidence that every deal could be improved once you got in the door.
There was no time to savor the triumph. Elvis was due in San Diego for
the Berle show, which was scheduled to be broadcast on April 3 from the
deck of the U.S.S. Hancock, docked at the San Diego naval station. The Milton
Berle Show was a definite step up from the Dorseys. Milton Berle, the
original "Mr. Television," was still a major star and had booked Presley
only as a favor to his agent, Abe Lastfogel. Berle met Elvis and the Colonel
for the first time at the airport. "I sat in the middle and Colonel Parker was
on the other side and Elvis was on my right. So I said, 'Oh, here's the contract
for the show: and I was about to hand it to Elvis when Colonel Parker
grabbed it, says, 'Don't show that boy that contract! ' So Elvis didn't know
what he was getting. Colonel Parker held a hard hand!"
They went directly to rehearsal, where Scotty and Bill and OJ. met
them, having just rolled into town themselves after an arduous crosscountry
trek. OJ. was thrilled at the presence of the great drummer Buddy
Rich, a member of the Harry James Orchestra, but Rich did not return the
compliment. The musicians all sniffed when Elvis did not produce any
MARC H-MAY 1 9 5 6 '" 263
charts, and when he launched into "Blue Suede Shoes," Rich rolled his eyes
at Harry James and said, audibly, "This is the worst."
The show itself was one more unmitigated triumph. It was a windy day,
and flags were flying in the breeze, with the ocean as backdrop and an audience
that was as good-natured as it was enthusiastic. Elvis opened with
"Heartbreak Hotel," naturally, after an elaborate introduction by Berle,
who came out onstage dressed in an admiral's uniform with plenty of gold
braid. The performer that television viewers saw appeared in yet another
stage of radical metamorphosis, more self-assured by half, more in command
of his look and style than he had been just ten days before - but it is
the stark visual imagery that sets off his performance most, as he stands, all
in black save for white tie, white belt, and white bucks, legs spread wide
apart and at a point of hitherto-unremarked stillness, just inviting the
crowd to come to him.
They did. The song was greeted by an audience made up predominantly
of sailors and their dates with an appropriate mixture of screams
and laughter - because it is clear by now that the performer is playing
with them. It may not be as clear to the little girls, but there is no aggression
in this act, he is teasing them, fooling with them, his laughter is their
laughter, for the first time in his life he is one of them. He then introduced
"my latest release, 'Blue Schwede Shoes, ' " and launched into the song in
a loose, carefree manner that far surpassed any of his previous televised
efforts. The crowd was with him all the way, and when he went into the
repeated, almost mantra-like coda, Bill got on the bass and rode it for all it
was worth, hands up in the air, legs sticking out, and whooping as the
crowd whooped happily back. It was a moment, a picture, a perfectly lit
snapshot, that the Colonel vowed was never going to be repeated: Bill
Black was never going to take attention away from his boy again.
Next was a comedy sketch with Berle in which the comedian came
out dressed identically to his guest star, only with his pants rolled up and
looking like a rube in oversize blue suede shoes. He was, he declared in
the broadest Catskills cornpone accent, Elvis' twin brother, Melvin, who
had taught Elvis everything he knew. They played with that for a while,
with Elvis declaring, "l owe it all to you, Melvin," and then they went
into a reprise of "Blue Suede Shoes," which Elvis flung himself into as
good-naturedly as he had the earlier rendition, while Berle pranced about
the stage and did a limber send-up of his enthusiastic young friend. It
would have been hard to detect any sign of resentment, if resentment existed,
on the part of 'America's newest singing sensation," whether be2
6 4 n.. T H E W O R L D T U R N E D U P S I D E D O W N
cause Berle was spoofing his act o r because o f the twin-brother routine; it
was all just show business, after all - Gladys was probably laughing at
home with some of the cousins and Grandma Minnie. They had always
enj oyed Uncle Miltie, ever since they got their first television set; he was,
of course, a very important and powerful figure in the business, said Colonel
Parker, and Elvis should never forget, Mr. Berle was doing them a
favor by having him on the show.
There was an appearance the next day at a San Diego record shop and
a riot the next night at the conclusion of the first of two appearances at
the San Diego Arena. At one point Elvis had to admonish the crowd
mildly to "sit down or the show ends," and the girls went back to their
seats, but the musicians couldn't get out of the building for a full forty-five
minutes after the show was over, and Elvis sat around backstage with
some local musicians, talking about the Hayride and his rapid rise to
fame. "The crowd was too noisy for most of the numbers to be heard,"
sniffed the San Diego paper, which noted that his brief appearance followed
"a woman vocalist, an acrobatic dance team, a comedian, and a
xylophone player," a far cry from the all-star country packages on which
he had been appearing. "I changed my whole style," said Glen Glenn, a
twenty-one-year-old committed country singer from just outside Los Angeles
who had driven down for the show with his guitar player and was
introduced backstage by bass player Fred Maddox of the Maddox Brothers
and Rose. "We all wanted to be like Elvis after that."
There was no stopping the juggernaut now. Elvis had made his last
regular Hayride appearance on Saturday, March 31, flying in from Hollywood
in the midst of the Hal Wallis negotiations. The Colonel had extricated
Elvis from his contract by paying a penalty of ten thousand dollars
and promising that he would do a benefit concert in December for
free. The Sunday after the Berle show they played Denver, then flew to
Texas for the start of a two-week tour that would be interrupted by a recording
session on Saturday, April 14. It had reached the point where no
one even knew any longer what day it was; they drove through the night
because it was impossible to get to sleep until 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning
anyway, Elvis said, he was just too keyed up. There were girls everywhere;
more time was spent hiding from them than looking for them.
There was, of course, at least one call a day home. He had yet to spend a
single night in the new house on Audubon Drive.
M A R C H-MAY 1 9 5 6 ", 2 6 5
Everywhere he went, everyone wanted to know everything about
him. They wanted to know how he got started in the business. They
wanted to know about his mother and father. They wanted to know
about the movies, naturally. He deflected every question with that
unique combination of deference and candor. He answered every question
with the truth. Yes, he was very excited about his Hollywood contract,
it was a dream come true, it just showed that you could never tell
what was going to happen to you in your life - but no, he wasn't going
to sing in the movies. No, he didn't have any special girl, he had thought
he had been in love, he had been in love once, in fact it was only when he
started singing that they broke up. He still heard from her, she wrote to
him sometimes. Did he still go to church? "I haven't since I been singing,
'cause Saturday night is usually our biggest night, and almost every Sunday
we have a matinee or we're on the road..." Are you taking good
care of yourself? There are rumors that you've been carousing around
and don't really know where you're going. "Well, that's about the truth.
It really is. I can't deny it, because half the time I - I don't know from one
day to the next where I'm going. I have so much on my mind, in other
words, I'm trying to keep with everything, trying to keep a level head.
... You have to be careful out in the world. It's so easy to get turned."
And what did he like best about being so successful, aside from the
money? "I would say the money in a way, of course that, like you said, is
the biggest part, but actually the thing I like about it better is to know that
people like - that you've got so many friends."
It was hard work - and it never let up. But no matter how hard he
worked, he didn't work any harder than the Colonel. Colonel was up at
5:30 every morning when they were just getting in, and he was there until
the last ticket was counted, the last picture sold. He was 'in everybody's
face, it seemed, he didn't let a promoter get away with a single unsold
ticket, and he was always on Scotty and Bill about something they had or
hadn't done onstage. "He was working for Elvis, period," said OJ., more
of a disinterested observer than either of the other two. "He didn't care
what you did. That's all he knew, twenty-four hours a day, Elvis. That
was his boy." Sometimes, it seemed, Elvis would test the Colonel - he
would arrive late for one show after another and then, said OJ., when the
Colonel was ready to jump down all their throats, "he'd say, 'Don't you
worry about the Colonel. I'll take care of it.' And then the Colonel would
266 '" T H E W O R L D T U R N E D U P S I D E D O W N
jump us and say, 'Hey, you guys have got to get here a little bit earlier.'
And we'd say, 'You tell him, ' and that was the end of it. I think he done it
just to make the Colonel mad sometimes."
Scotty and Bill knew the Colonel would just as soon cut their throats
as look at them. They'd be gone in a minute, they both agreed, if it was up
to the Colonel; he had long ago made that plain. They never really
brought it up directly with Elvis, though - they knew Elvis would never
consider anything that would change his music, and they doubted that
Colonel would ever push him on this point. It was clear what happened if
anyone pushed Colonel. Red had had a blowup with the Colonel, and it
didn't escape anyone's attention that Red was gone, at least for this tour.
In Red's account Elvis had been with a girl, and he wouldn't get out of
bed with her.
When he finally emerged, he looked like he had been mixed up with
an eggbeater.... Well, we're really late now. It's winter time, and it's
sleeting and raining colder than hell. We jump in the car, I drive like a
madman through snow and everything to Virginia to this auditorium
.... We arrive there, I guess we're fifteen minutes late, or something
like that. Now it's still snowing like hell, but out in front of the
auditorium I see this crazy guy in a T-shirt. I get out of the car, and I
notice he is puffing on this cigar, and he has got an expression on his
face like he is going to kill me... kill me, not Elvis. Then I notice that,
despite the fact he is wearing a T-shirt in this damn snow, he is so
worked up he is sweating.... He just looks at me as if he was going
to rip a yard from my ass. Right away he starts in, "Where in the hell
you been? Do you know what time it is? I got these people waiting,
and you're damn well late. You can't keep people waiting. Who do
you think you are?"
There was little room for sentiment in the new order of things. The
business was changing, the mood was changing, and the show was necessarily
changing, too. The crowds were so frenzied by now that you could
no longer hear the music. The screams that started up from the moment
they took the stage, the tortuous faces and blinding tears - Scotty and
Bill watched it all with something like disbelief, playing as loud as they
could while all they could hear over the din was the occasional sound of
O.].'s drums. "We were the only band in history," Scotty frequently
M A R C H-MAY 1 9 5 6 "'"' 26 7
joked, "that was directed by an ass. It was like being in a sea of sound." It
was true, but as intently as they watched him, they could never really tell
what he was going to do next. ''I'll bet I could burp," said Elvis impishly,
"and make them squeal." And then he burped and did.
They chartered a plane out of Amarillo in the middle of the night so
that they could get to Nashville in time for the recording session at 9:00
the following morning. Just before dawn they got lost and landed at an
airstrip outside of El Dorado, Arkansas, to refuel. It was chilly, and the
musicians huddled together in the little coffee shop, yawning and making
desultory conversation. It was just light when they took off again. Scotty
was sitting beside the pilot, who asked him to hold the wheel for a minute
while he studied the map. Just as Scotty took the wheel, the engine
coughed and died and the plane started to lose altitude. There was a good
deal of confusion, and Bill pulled his coat over his head and cursed the day
he had ever let himself be persuaded to go up in this rickety machine,
before the pilot discovered that when they refueled they hadn't switched
over to the full tank and the airstrip attendant hadn't bothered to refill the
empty one. When they finally got to Nashville, Elvis announced halfjokingly,
"Man, I don't know if I'll ever fly again."
The session reflected the edginess of everyone's mood. They worked
from 9:00 till 12:00, did close to twenty takes of a single song, and ended
up with only that one song, a ballad called "I Want You, I Need You, I
Love You" that Steve Sholes had come up with for the date. Once again
the backup singers were the same mismatched trio that had been assembled
for the first Nashville session: Ben and Brock Speer of the Speer Family,
and Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires. Where were the other boys?
Elvis asked Stoker during a break. He had played with the Jordanaires in
Atlanta just a month before, on the same bill with country comedian Rod
Brasfield, Mississippi Slim's cousin, and his brother, Uncle Cyp, and they
had made plans to get together in the studio sometime soon. This gave
Stoker, who was fuming over the other Jordanaires' exclusion, just the
chance he needed. "It was the worst sound on any of Elvis' records. It was
a strained sound and a very bad sound. We didn't have a full quartet. Chet
didn't even honor Elvis enough to get him a full quartet. Brock was a bass
singer, a real low bass singer, and Ben is middle-of-the-road, and here I am
first tenor. Elvis was not knocked out by it. He was extremely courteous
about it and tactful in everything he said, but he knew exactly what he
wanted. So I let him know that I was the only one of the Jordanaires that
2 6 8 T H E W O R L D T U R N E D U P S I D E D O W N
was asked. Elvis never really had much time for chatting, and that could
have been one reason he never had any time to chat after that. But he
asked me, 'Can the Jordanaires work with me [from now on]?' And I said,
'We sure can. We'll be there!' "
Steve Sholes was practically beside himself when he heard how the session
had gone. He had told the Colonel, how many times had he told the
Colonel, he had told Tom over and over again that more preparation time
was needed, RCA had a schedule to maintain, he was under increasing
pressure to have the second album ready by April 15 for scheduled fall release.
"I know you have Elvis on a heavy personal appearance program
and I certainly can't blame you," he had written back in February, "but the
main purpose of this letter is to point out that we still must get a number of
additional recordings from Elvis in the near future." They had gotten not a
single one in the intervening months, and now here it was mid April and
Tom was still not listening, it was obvious that the boy was not listening (if
he was even capable of listening), and Sholes wondered more and more if
Nashville was the right place to even try to record him. Chet was his protege,
he had made Chet his Nashville a&r man, but it was obvious that
Chet and the boy were not hitting it off at all; he could tell from Chefs
noncommittal report, not to mention the fact that they had gotten only the
one song, that something was wrong. He waited a couple of weeks, then
fired off yet another letter to Tom, complaining once again that attention
should be turned to the recordings - but it was like trying to stop a runaway
train. At the Nashville session Elvis had been presented with a gold
record for "Heartbreak Hotel," and the album had already sold more than
362,000 copies: Sholes was being strangled by his own success.
The session might have continued if there had been a better feeling to
it, but Elvis and the boys were anxious to get home for a few hours after
being away so long, and Chet just had the one three-hour slot booked
anyway. They took their chartered plane back to Memphis that afternoon
and on the way ran into some turbulence. This time, Scotty said, "Bill's
going berserk. He's scared to death, really he would have jumped out of
the plane if he could have. Elvis said, 'Just hang on, Bill, when we get to
Memphis we're turning this thing loose.' Then we caught a commercial
flight to wherever we had to be the next day."
They continued their Texas tour: San Antonio, Amarillo, Corpus
Christi, and Waco, where Elvis gave a brief interview on Tuesday night,
shortly before going onstage, to Waco News-Tribune reporter Bea
M A R C H-MAY 1 9 5 6 c-.. 2 6 9
Ramirez. "What do you want to know about me, honey?" he said as he
stared out at the four thousand screaming teenagers from b ackstage, "half
scared," wrote Ramirez, "and half unbelieving.
"Elvis, have you any idea just what it was that started the girls
going crazy over you?"
"No, I don't. I guess it's just something God gave me. I believe
that, you know. Know what I mean, honey? And I'm grateful. Only
I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'll go out like a light, just like I came on. Know
what I mean, honey?"
Presley has a way with that "honey" business. When he talks, he
looks straight ahead, or sort of dreamy like in no direction at all. Then
he turns with that "know what I mean, honey?" His face is close, real
close. Right in your face - almost....
"Elvis, I hear you walk in your sleep."
"Well, I have nightmares."
"What kind?"
"I dream I'm about to fight somebody or about to be in a car
wreck or that I'm breaking things. Know what I mean, honey?" (I
don't have any idea what he means.)
"Where are you from?"
"From Memphis, Tennessee."
Дата добавления: 2015-09-29; просмотров: 26 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |