familiar with the material. After thirteen takes, though, they still
hadn't come up with a version to rival the authority of the original, and
Sholes could scarcely have been reassured when the boy declared that it
was no use doing any more, they couldn't do better than Carl's anyway.
Next, at Presley's urging, they launched into a song with which Sholes
was surely familiar because it came from an artist with whom he had
worked extensively in Victor's "race" series, blues singer Arthur "Big
Boy" Crudup. Crudup had written "That's All Right," Presley's first song,
and now they did a masterful version of his "My Baby Left Me," in which
for the first time the band really started to sound like a unit. DJ.'s drums
and Bill's descending bass introed the song. In contrast to the rushed
rhythms of the Perkins number or the murky echo of "Heartbreak
Hotel," this sounded deliberate, thought out, a vibrant companion piece
D E C EM B E R 1 9 5 5 - F E B R U A RY 1 9 5 6 n..> 247
to the Sun recordings. And yet it can hardly have been of much consolation
to Sholes, to whose way of thinking an Arthur Crudup blues was not
what they were looking for, no matter how good it might be. This was
not the potential new pop artist that RCA had signed, this was not the
revolutionary new sound that RCA was looking for.
The afternoon session brought more of the same, another wonderful
Crudup number, "So Glad You're Mine," plus one of the six songs that
Sholes had suggested, a honky-tonker called "One Sided Love Affair" that
was particularly suited to Shorty Long's barrelhouse style. If he could get
three or four more, Sholes figured, along with the five unissued Sun titles
that he had acquired, he would have just enough for an album.
At some point in the process he called Sam Phillips in Memphis and,
under the pretext of informing him that they had cut "Blue Suede Shoes"
(which he assured Sam he would not put out as a single), sought advice
and reassurance concerning the course he was following. He even put out
feelers, according to Phillips, for Sam to produce Elvis for RCA on a freelance
basis. "I told him he hadn't bought the wrong person. And I told
him what I told him when he bought the contract in the first place, just
don't try to make Elvis what he's not instinctively. The worst mistake you
can make is to try to shape him into some damn country artist, or anything
else, if it just doesn't naturally flow that way. I told him to keep it as
simple as possible, and I happen to be the greatest admirer of Steve
Sholes - he was a person of the utmost integrity and how he could be
that way when he was with a major label, quote unquote, I really don't
understand - but he was not a producer. Steve was just at every session,
and he kept his fucking mouth shut."
On the second day of recording a young wire reporter named Fred
Danzig showed up for an interview, the first fruits of Anne Fulchino's
publicity campaign. "I wrote a thing called 'On the Record' for the radio
wire, and I did another version for the newspapers for what was called the
United Press Red Letter. I would interview singers and composers and
record producers and just give them stuff like that. At some point in 1955
Marion Keisker started writing me from Memphis about this kid, Elvis
Presley, who was doing such marvelous things down there, and then he
placed ninth in our third annual Disc Jockey Poll. So I knew about him
when Annie called me up and told me that he was going to be in New
York to do the Dorsey show."
2 4 8 ", S T A G E S H O W
Danzig watched the show on TV and showed up at Fulchino's office at
11:00 A. M. the following Tuesday. She took him down to the recording
studio where he found, he later wrote, "a tall, lean young man standing in
the hallway waiting for us." He was wearing " a shirt the likes of which I
had never seen before. It was a ribbon shirt, light lavender in color. Elvis
said it cost $70. I also noted that his blue alligator loafers were scuffed and
worn-down at the heels. He had on a gray sports jacket and dark gray
slacks. His fingernails were chewed down to where there was no biting
room left." His presence was compelling, Danzig said, "just for that face
alone. If you saw him on the street, you'd say, 'Wow, look at that guy: "
They went into the control room to do the interview. In response to a
question about his music, the boy started naming blues singers with
whom Danzig was somewhat familiar but who " obviously meant a lot to
him. I was very surprised to hear him talk about the black performers
down there and about how he tried to carry on their music. He talked
about how he wanted to buy his parents a house and make life easier for
them. I asked him about the shaking and the wiggling, and he told me
they hadn't wanted him to jump around so much on TV but that he had
told them it was the way he had to perform, it was just the way he did it.
He showed me his leather-covered guitar and explained that there was
only one other leather guitar case like it. Hank Snow had given him the
idea, he said. 'It keeps the guitar from getting splintered when I swing it
around and it hits my belt buckle: " They talked about the movies and
how he "wanted to go out to Hollywood and become the next James
Dean. And I thought, 'Yeah, well, come on, kid..: But that was obviously
his goal.
"We talked for about twenty or twenty-five minutes - he wasn't the
most articulate kid in the world, but he answered all the questions when
Steve Sholes came in and said they were ready to begin." Elvis invited
Danzig to stick around and watch him work, and the first number
they tried was ''I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry (Over You)," a 1954
r&b number for Roy Hamilton (it was the B side of Hamilton's smash inspirational
hit, "You'll Never Walk Alone"). "Gee, those sideburns bother
me," Sholes remarked to Danzig wryly. "I wonder if I should get him to
the barbershop." But, he added with a mirthful chuckle, "I guess you
don't tamper with success. I guess we'll leave them on the kid."
* * *
I
D E C E M B E R 1 9 5 5 - F E B R UARY 1 9 5 6 n.,. 2 4 9
TH E N E XT C O U P L E O F D AY S were taken u p with sightseeing and a
scattering of promotional activities, mostly organized by Anne Fulchino
and Chick Crumpacker, with Hill and Range representative Grelun
Landon along for the ride. The Colonel by now had gone home to Tennessee,
presumably to oversee, in his meticulous fashion, the multiplicity
of details surrounding the start:.up of the upcoming tour. With his "keepers,"
Elvis drove out to Trenton to do an interview on perhaps the only
station in the New York metropolitan area to air country music. They got
lost looking for the station, and Elvis slept all the way out and back. The
William Morris people threw a party for him; so did Julian Aberbach, the
president of Hill and Range, who had a dinner in Elvis' honor at his home.
Julian's wife, Anne Marie, served lamb cooked rare, and Elvis almost
gagged on it, explaining that he was not used to "bloody" meat; his taste
ran more to hamburgers, well done. "He was extremely polite," said
Freddy Bienstock, julian's cousin, who was also present, "but he was
completely lost."
Chick, in what he later came to see as a case of enthusiasm overrunning
judgment, scheduled a reception at the Hickory House, on Fiftysecond
Street above Times Square, but made the mistake of failing to secure
a private room. "It might as well have been Grand Central Station
the way people were milling in and out, but the savior of the situation
was Elvis, who looked around, took stock of things, and then took charge
with such aplomb and such charm that he made everybody feel like they
were alone with him in the room." He was wearing a hand-painted tie
that he had gotten for a dollar in Times Square and the same lavender
ribbon shirt that Fred Danzig had remarked upon. What was his reaction
to success? he was asked. "It's all happening so fast," he said, "there's so
much happening to me... that some nights I just can't fall asleep. It
scares me, you know... it just scares me."
TH E S E C O N D D O RS E Y S H O W went fine. He sang "Tutti Frutti" and
"Baby, Let's Play House," once again failing to plug his new single,
which according to Billboard was "a strong blues item wrapped up in his
usual powerful style and a great beat.... Presley is riding high right now
with network TV appearances, and this disk should benefit from all the
special plugging." Evidently something was bothering Elvis about the
show, though, because when Sholes wrote to Parker three days later he
2 5 0 '" S T A G E S H O W
said: "I thought Elvis did even better Saturday night than he did on the
previous week's show. I understand he was not so pleased but I think he
had every right to be happy. You should be very proud of the boy,"
Sholes went on,
because as far as I can find out he conducted himself very well after
you left. At the press party he mingled with all the guests and made a
very good impression there. As a result he is very hot material here in
New York and with any luck at all I think we all should do extremely
well....
On Friday we didn't have any new material that suited Elvis so
we recorded L A W D Y M I S S C L AWDY and S HAKE RATTLE A N D
R O L L. Neither one of these would be suitable for single release but I
know they will make good selections for the second album.
On Sunday night Elvis was back in Richmond with an Opry troupe
assembled by the Colonel that included the Carter Sisters and Mother
Maybelle, Ernest Tubb's son, Justin, and Charlie and Ira Louvin, who had
already played a good number of dates with Elvis and were Mrs. Presley's
favorite country singing group. They were booked every night - in
Greensboro, High Point, and Raleigh, North Carolina, then in Spartanburg
and Charlotte the first week, with Saturday night off for Elvis to go
up to New York to play the third Dorsey brothers show. Oscar Davis
acted as the advance man, and the Colonel came in behind him to set up
the show, hauling pictures, programs, and all the concessions that he was
now personally peddling, taking away a lucrative source of outside income
from Bill. Oscar's expansive manner charmed every local newspaperman,
promoter, desk clerk, and bellhop in sight, while the Colonel's
scrupulous, almost compulsive attention to detail, at such striking odds
with the casualness of his appearance, his almost contemptuous dismissal
of the niceties of human behavior, virtually guaranteed that everything
would be just so. "The Colonel embarrasses me," Oscar frequently complained
to his cronies. "Goddam, he embarrasses the hell out of me runs
around like a goddam carny, with his damn shirttail hanging out and
no necktie." Parker could become no less infuriated by the way that
Oscar threw his money around, but they were the perfect team so long
as Oscar didn't quit or the Colonel didn't fire Oscar for giving a stagehand
a fifty-dollar tip at any given show.
D E C E M B E R 1 9 5 5- F E B RU A R Y 1 9 5 6 '" 2 5 1
"We were working near every day," said Scotty. "We'd pull into
some town, go to the hotel room and get washed up or go right to the
auditorium or movie house, and after we played our shows, we'd get
back in the cars and start driving to the next town. We never saw any
newspapers.... And we didn't hear much radio, because it was drive all
night, sleep all day.... All we knew was drive, drive, drive." It was, said
D.J., like being in a fog.
On Saturday night the whole troupe watched the third Stage Show appearance,
when Elvis for the first time sang not only "Heartbreak Hotel"
but his newly recorded version of "Blue Suede Shoes." The performance
of "Heartbreak Hotel" was something of a disaster, with Scotty and Bill
hidden away in the shadows, the Dorsey brothers' orchestra contributing
an arrhythmic arrangement that Elvis was unable to move or cue, and
Charlie Shavers taking a trumpet solo that left the singer with a sickly
smile on his lips.
With the exception of the Carter Sisters, the troupe was probably not
unhappy to see the young phenom fall on his face. There was a considerable
amount of envy already over the attention that Elvis had been getting
not just from audiences but from the Colonel himself, who was clearly
focusing almost all of his energies and interest on his new acquisition. To
Justin Tubb, who had grown up in the business and at twenty had already
had three country hits and was a member of the Opry in his own right,
everything about the tour was different right from the start. "The audiences
were a lot younger, and it was the first time I'd ever seen them start
screaming and waving their arms and hollering. You know, country singers
and pickers had always been [considered] almost second class, pop
musicians looked down on us. The kind of feeling you got was that here
was somebody who was kind of using country music to get going, and yet
he would go out and do his rockabilly stuff, his real raunchy stuff, and
that's what the girls wanted to hear.
''I'm sure there was some real - not jealousy, but envy, because he
was happening and you could feel it. Not only in the audiences but in the
importance of 'Heartbreak Hotel' just being released and RCA buying his
deal and him flying to New York to do the TV show and our all sitting
there watching him.
"He was like a diamond in the rough. When he walked offstage, he
would be just soaked, just dripping. He worked hard, and he put everything
he had into it, and everything he did worked, because the audience
252 '" S T A G E S H O W
just didn't care - we had never seen anything like it before. My feeling
was that they didn't capture him on the television show - of course we
had already seen him in action, and it could have been envy, but he
seemed a little reserved from what we had seen, he seemed a little nervous,
they didn't seem to get his magnetism or charisma."
The tour continued. Elvis and Scotty and Bill kept pretty much to
themselves, according to Justin. "Elvis always stood in the wings and
watched everybody, especially the Louvins, he
'
was a fan. " Once in a
while he would go out to eat with the others, but Red West, who was
doing most of the driving, and OJ were the ones who were more likely
to be hanging out. At the end of the second week, Elvis and his three band
members flew back to New York from Winston-Salem, North Carolina,
to play the TV show with borrowed instruments, while Red loaded up
theirs on a little trailer cart that Vernon had had made up and painted
pink ("It looked more like a rolling toilet than anything else," said Red in
his book, Elvis: What Happened?, "[but] the way Elvis' dad went on about
that thing, you would have thought it was a goddamned yacht") and took
off on the fifteen-hour drive to Tampa. By now the record was finally
starting to show some movement. It was just about to debut on the pop
charts and had been steadily gaining attention in Billboard, particularly in
its country and western "Best Buys" column, which declared that sales
had "snowballed rapidly in the past two weeks, with pop and r.&b. customers
joining Presley's hillbilly fans in demanding the disk." Perhaps as a
result of this new flurry of activity, Jackie Gleason Enterprises had picked
up the option on Presley's contract and scheduled two more appearances
on Stage Show for the end of March at the agreed-upon $1,250 each.
Meanwhile on the tour things had already reached something of a
boiling point. A few days before that fourth Dorsey appearance, in Wilson,
North Carolina, the promoter oversold the show, and the Colonel
told the troupe they would have to work a second one at no additional
pay that night. Exasperated by Colonel Parker's increasingly peremptory
manner (they were beginning to feel as if they were being treated not just
as "entertainers," a necessary nuisance in the Colonel's book, but as
second-class citizens, little more than stage props on this tour), they
banded together and refused to do it. Ira Louvin, who could charitably be
described as hot-tempered even under the best of circumstances ("My
brother didn't get along with a lot of people," said Charlie Louvin understatedly),
went on and on about who did this Presley kid think he was,
D E C E M B E R 1 9 5 5 - F E B RUARY 1 9 5 6 ", 253
that no-talent sonofabitch, trying to take over their music - and fuck the
Colonel anyway, he was going to go to the Colonel and let him know
they weren't going to take this shit anymore.
They had a meeting, with Ira moderating his demands only slightly
and Justin Tubb, who had known the Colonel since he was a child (and
whose father was as widely respected and loved as anyone in the country
music community), making a calmer and more reasoned presentation.
But if they thought that Tom Parker was going to be moved by sentiment,
or backed into a comer by a unified stand, they had made a serious
miscalculation. The Colonel was appalled - appalled, he said - that his
motives should be questioned in this way. He had heard that Ira was
mouthing off and saying, "Fuck the Colonel." "Why did you say that,
Iwa?" said Tom Parker in his unmodulated, Elmer Fudd accent. "Why
did you say, 'Fuck the Colonel'?" And as for Justin, the Colonel shook his
head, the Colonel was surprised at Justin. The Colonel had knownJustin's
mother, known his father, even given him a little Shetland pony for his
birthday when Justin was a small child CIt was old and nearly blind," said
Justin, but not to Tom Parker's face), what did Justin mean by coming to
him and making these outrageous demands? The Colonel's eyes alternately
flashed with fire and filled with tears. As Justin recognized, "he was
an old carny, and he grew up the rough, tough way, he was a self-made
man - he was brusque, but, I mean, he was the Colonel, I think most of
us expected that of him. We didn't bear him any ill will, we just had to
make a stand."
In the end the Colonel capitulated - all the performers got paid, and
the show went on. But feelings definitely lingered, tempers continued to
fester, there was no question in anyone's mind that the Colonel was mad
and that Ira Louvin, who sniffed out slights even when there were none,
was seething. A couple of days after the incident in Wilson, things came
to a head backstage between shows. Elvis was hanging around the dressing
room with the Louvins, singing hymns and playing the piano when, in
the recollection of Ira's younger brother, Charlie, "Elvis said, 'Boy, this is
my favorite music.' Well, Ira walked up and said, 'Why, you white nigger,
if that's your favorite music, why don't you do that out yonder? Why do
you do that nigger trash out there?' Presley said, 'When I'm out there, I
do what they want to hear -when I'm back here, I can do what I want to
do.' " Ira flashed and "tried to strangle him," according to Charlie, "and
they were very distant from that point on."
2 5 4 c-.... S T A G E S H O W
In Jacksonville on February 23, Elvis collapsed. He had completed the
first night's show at the Gator Bowl and they were loading up the instruments
in the parking lot when, in Bill's account, he "fell out cold." They
took him to the hospital, where he was kept under observation for a couple
of hours and told by a doctor that "I was doing as much work in
twenty minutes as the average laborer does in eight hours. He said if I
didn't slow up, I'd have to lay off a couple of years." But he checked out
of the hospital before morning, because, he told his friends with a wink,
the nurses wouldn't give him any rest. And besides, he said to Red, it was
all just a stunt to impress Anita Carter. He played the Gator Bowl again
that night with undiminished energy and effect. He had no intention of
slowing down.
They were back on the Hayride the following week for the first time
in a month. A lot had happened in that month, but for Elvis and Scotty
and Bill there had been no time to gauge it, and it didn't appear all that
different from everything else that had been building and going on for the
last year. They did "Heartbreak Hotel" for the first time, said Scotty,
"and that damn auditorium down there almost exploded. I mean, it had
been wild before that, but it was more like playing down at your local
camp, a home folks-type situation. But now they turned into - it was
different faces, just a whole other... That's the earliest I can remember
saying, What is going on?"
W I T H C O L O N E L P A R K E R, L A S V E G A S, A P R I L I 9 5 6. (J A M E S R E I D)
T H E WO RLD TURN E D
U P S I D E DOWN
TH E E L V I S P R E S L E Y who made his sixth and final appearance
on the Dorsey brothers' Stage Show, on March 24, 1956, was a
far cry from the ill-at-ease, fidgety, almost manic gum-chewing
figure who had made his television debut just two months
before. He strode out purposefully, leaned into "Money Honey," and just
poured it on without ever letting up. Even his hair was different, less obviously
greasy, more carefully sculpted, and where in earlier appearances
his vocal energies appeared to wax and wane and that moment when he
pulled back into the shelter of the little group to do his dance seemed as
much an attempt to incite a response from the crowd as to invite one,
now he regarded the adoring multitudes with a look of amused - not so
much contempt as authority. He took their adulation gratefully as his due
... and then just poured it on some more. When he announced that he
would do one side from his latest record, there were screams from the
crowd, and "Heartbreak Hotel" took on a sensuous intensity that was dispelled
only when he slipped into the small, childish voice he used to break
up Scotty and Bill at unpredictable moments. This time it was little more
than an allusion, betrayed by the slightest self-amused smile, before he
jauntily went on with the show. And then he was gone, coolly, casually
striding off the stage and skipping out again for a deep bow. Elvis, as
Jimmy Dorsey had announced at the beginning of the show, was off to
Hollywood for a screen test.
The band left that night, driving into a snowstorm but stopping off in
Dover, Delaware, to visit Carl Perkins in the hospital where he was recuperating
from a bad automobile accident in which his twq brothers (who
played bass and rhythm guitar in his band) were also seriously injured.
His song "Blue Suede Shoes" was competing furiously with "Heartbreak
Hotel" in the charts, and he had been on his way to New York to appear
on The Perry Como Show, opposite the Dorsey brothers, when the accident
25 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
occurred. Elvis meanwhile remained in New York that evening to complete
an interview with Coronet magazine reporter Robert Carlton Brown
in which he mused on his current success. He called his parents every day,
he said, because "my mother is always worried about a wreck, or me getting
sick. So I have to let her know, because she's not in real good health
anyway, and if she worries too much, it might not be good for her." He
had just bought his parents a new house, he informed Brown; as a matter
of fact "they moved in Tuesday. It's a ranch-type, seven-room house.
Three bedrooms, a den, playroom, it's a pretty nice place." As for his father,
"he doesn't do any - he takes care of all my business. In other
words, he's much more important to me at home than he is on the job.
Because I have so much stuff piling up for me when I'm gone, and if he
wasn't there to help, when I got home I wouldn't get a bit of rest. He
takes care of everything - you know, any business that pops up, any insurance,
or just oodles of things that I could mention." And the Colonel?
"I read," said the interviewer, "that Colonel Tom Parker has given you a
lot of advice and help. What kind?" "Everything," said Elvis without hesitation.
"He's the one guy that really gave me the big breaks... I don't
think I would have ever been very big with another man. Because he he's
a very smart man."
Bob Neal watched bemusedly from the sidelines, now that he was
completely, and formally, out of the picture. On March 15, his own contract
with Elvis had run out and as per his November 21 agreement with
the Colonel, he chose not to exercise the option. On March 26 the Colonel's
new status as "sole and exclusive Advisor, Personal Representative,
and Manager in any and all fields of public and private entertainment"
was formally ratified and his 25 percent commission reaffirmed at the
same time. "I suppose," Neal said to Jerry Hopkins in 1971, "really, in
many ways, I - felt that I should try to continue in the picture, but at
the same time with the things that I had going in Memphis - with my
radio show and the promotions, and we owned a record shop... had a
big family, kids in school and so forth... I decided to more or less let
things go." While he was undoubtedly gratified by Elvis' own success, it
must have galled Neal nonetheless to see the headlines in the trades
week after week and to realize that he could, and perhaps should, have
been a part of it. " A W I N N A H I Presley Hot as SI Pistol" was the headline
in Billboard on March 3.
M A R C H-MAY I 9 5 6 '" 2 5 9
The hottest artist on the RCA Victor label this week has been
none other than the amazing young country warbler, Elvis Presley,
who has been on the label for only about two months.
Presley has six hit singles in the company's list of top 25 best sellers,
five of which had been previously issued on the Sun label.... The
coupling of "Heartbreak Hotel" and "I Was the One," cut by Victor,
is the label's NO. 2 seller, right behind Perry Como's "Juke Box
Baby."
By the end of March the single had sold close to a million copies and, in
an unprecedented achievement (mirrored only by Carl Perkins' "Blue
Suede Shoes" at virtually the same time), was closing in on the top of all
three charts: pop, country, and rhythm and blues. Moreover, the new
album, released on March I3, stood at nearly three hundred thousand sales,
making it a sure bet to be RCA's first million-dollar (at $3.98 retail) album,
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