I was hot and sweaty, and he was cool and clean, looking almost dignified
in a slate-grey suit, pressed white shirt and white knit tie. It was
the white bucks that gave him away.
A woman was with him. She wasn't interested in a quick lettuce
and tomato. She was dressed for Saturday night.... She was trying to
appear casual, not an easy task since a photographer was on the other
side of the salt and pepper. Elvis was cool, "Oh, he's the photographer,
that's okay, he's with me," as if to say it's only natural to have a
photographer on a date.... She crossed her legs and in a soft Southern
accent asked what he was reading. He was only too happy to
oblige, telling her it was the script for the "Steve Allen Show" - "It's
gonna be on tomorrow night, are you gonna see the show?" - and
292 '" " T H O S E P E O P L E I N N E W Y O R K.
talking about learning his lines.... Elvis set the script aside and finished
his chili, and when he set that aside he turned his full attention
to her, talking about how nice her hair was and how pretty her earrings
were. He was sweet and natural.
Junior, who had been sitting glowering at the far end of the counter
the whole time, tapped his fingers impatiently and said it was time to go.
"Go where?" said Elvis. But Junior wasn't in any mood for a joke.
When they got to the theater, Elvis checked out the stage, "feeling its
size like a builder inspecting a piece of land." Girls screamed through an
open window as Elvis and the Jordanaires tried to rehearse. The Colonel's
assistant Tom Diskin was handling the box office while the Colonel was
"hunched over [in the lobby] in the middle of the crowd, breaking open
bundles of souvenir programs and glossy photos suitable for framing. He
gave a handful to a kid.
" 'Got enough change on ya, son? Make sure you count your
change.' "
The lobby, Wertheimer noted, was papered with glossies. "Nowhere
did I see pictures of any other performers. It was wall-to-wall Elvis."
Backstage there was the usual complement of opening acts milling
around: phil Maraquin, the magidan; the dancing team of Doris and Lee
Strom; a local square-dandng troupe; and the Pliam Brothers, musical
comedians. This was the show with which the Colonel had replaced the
more traditional country and western caravan of just two months before.
A lackluster brass band was rehearsing onstage, and Wertheimer dedded
it was a safe time to go to the bathroom, but when he heard what he took
to be the sound of the show starting, he raced down the staircase to the
stage area. There on the landing he discovered Elvis and the blonde from
the coffee shop engaged in a ritual dance of courtship, with Elvis "slow,
natural, insistent. He slid his arms around her waist. She pressed her arms
against his shoulders, pinning the purse between them. He inched forward,
she retreated." The photographer snapped picture after picture
until at last, in an image destined to become as memorable as Doisneau's
classic "The Kiss," "she stuck her tongue out at him and he playfully returned
the gesture. The tips of their tongues touched." At this point Wertheimer
discreetly withdrew, and not long afterward Elvis faced his loyal
fans.
At the end of the second show Elvis left while the band was still playMAY-
J U L Y 1 9 5 6 c,.,. 293
ing, and the photographer rode to the train station with the other musicians
in a police paddy wagon. There they caught the 10:50 sleeper back to
New York; Elvis was already on the train, in an upper berth, "his hand on
his forehead, his eyes on the ceiling, watching his own movie."
TH E Y A R R I V E D back in New York early Sunday morning and
promptly took a taxi to the Hudson Theater, on Forty-fourth Street,
for a full day of rehearsals for the live broadcast that night. They did a
quick run-through in which Elvis sang his latest hit, "I Want You, I Need
You, I Love You," on a Greek-columned set (it was all part of Allen's
comedic concept of presenting low culture in a high-culture setting). "He
sang without... passion," Wertheimer noted. "He didn't move, he didn't
touch the microphone, he stood square, both feet spread and stuck to the
ground. After he had finished... Steve patted him on the back and told
him it was great. Elvis smiled and in a slow, modest voice, he said, 'Thank
you, Mr. Allen.' "
Then he met the dog, a female basset hound dressed in collar, bow tie,
and top hat. In further keeping with the theme of the show he was going
to sing "Hound Dog" to - who else? During the first run-through the
dog ignored him. Allen "suggested that they get to know each other."
Elvis petted her, sang to her, and in the end prevailed, to the applause of
the assembled stagehands and professionals. They then went into the rehearsal
of the sketch. At the dress rehearsal, as Elvis stood uncomfortably
in his dress shirt and tails waiting to go on, Milton Berle, who was making
a cameo appearance on the show, walked by. "Good luck, kid," he said,
straightening Elvis' bow tie. "Thank you, Mr. Berle," said Elvis gratefully.
"Well, you know, a couple of weeks ago on The Milton Berle Show, our
next guest, Elvis Presley, received a great deal of attention, which some
people seem to interpret one way and some viewers interpret it another.
Naturally, it's our intention to do nothing but a good show." There is a
yelping sound from backstage. "Somebody is barking back there. We want
to do a show the whole family can watch and enjoy, and we always do, and
tonight we're presenting Elvis Presley in his, heh heh, what you might call
his first comeback..." -Allen laughs again self-consciously, prompting
scattered laughter from the audience - "... and at this time it gives me
extreme pleasure to introduce the new Elvis Presley. Here he is."
If Allen was experiencing extreme pleasure, it was clear that Elvis was
2 9 4 <'401 " T H O S E P E O P L E I N N E W Y O R K.
experiencing the opposite. He sidled out to the accompaniment of
dreamy music, holding the guitar by the neck out from his body, almost
as if he were dragging it. He bowed stiffly from the waist, then wiped his
nose on his top hat, hiding his face as he handed it to Steve. "Elvis, I must
say you look absolutely wonderful," said Allen with a straight face while
Elvis tugged at his white gloves, shifted nervously, and looked away.
"You really do. And I think your millions of fans are really going to get
kind of a kick seeing a different side of your personality tonight."
"Well, uh," said Elvis almost somnambulistically, "thank you, Mr.
Allen, uh..."
"Can I hold your guitar here?"
"It's not often that I get to wear the, uh, suit and tails..."
"Uh-huh," said Allen encouragingly, perhaps wondering if they were
ever going to get through this sketch.
"... and all this stuff. But, uh, I think I have something tonight that's
not quite correct for evening wear."
"Not quite formal? What's that, Elvis?"
"Blue suede shoes."
"Ooh yes," said Steve with a double take. The audience laughed and
applauded encouragingly.
With his opening number, "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You," for
the first time he appeared if not comfortable, at least involved, even in
tails. He sang the song with sincerity and feeling, hunching his shoulders,
loosening his tie, but for the moment lost in the private reverie which his
music provided. The Jordanaires dooh-wahed behind him, out of the picture,
as were the musicians, save in silhouette. Even as the last notes were
still ringing, Steve Allen bustled out onstage again, this time wheeling the
basset, and announced that Elvis was now going to sing "Hound Dog,"
his next big hit, which he would record the next day. The dog started to
look away, Elvis cupped its chin, and there was sympathetic laughter as
Elvis glanced balefully, as if sharing a joke with a friend, at the audience.
The camera was on the dog as Elvis pointed at her and declared the obvi-.
ous with a playful snarl. When the dog started to tremble, he held her affectionately
and in the course of the song even kissed her once or twice.
Apart from nervous titters, there was little response from the audience,
but Elvis was a good sport about it all ("He always did the best he could
with whatever situation he was given," said Jordanaire Gordon Stoker of
the appearance, "and he never, ever insulted anybody"), walking the
M AY-J U L Y I 9 5 6 2 9 5
mike around into the basset's line o f vision whenever its attention wandered,
sharing his discomfiture openly and amiably. There was a sense of
almost palpable relief on the part of all concerned when the song ended
and he could finally march offstage after a long, lonely moment in the
spotlight.
The embarrassment was only heightened when, after a commercial
break, the "Range Roundup" skit (with "Big Steve and the Gang")
opened to the strains of "Turkey in the Straw." "Big Steve" was carrying
a toy guitar, Andy Griffith had a fiddle and was wearing furry chaps, Imogene
Coca was dressed up in a Dale Evans cowgirl skirt, and "Tumbleweed"
Presley, looking extremely abashed, was shadowed, like everyone
else, by his cowboy hat. At first he literally lurked in the background,
throwing in his shouts of agreement in unison with the others with some
diffidence and having a good deal of difficulty getting his own lines out
(even "You tell 'em, Big Steve" came out in a garbled Memphis accent).
But gradually he warmed to the task, and by the time they sang their little
western ditty at the end, with each actor taking a verse and all joining in
the chorus, he seemed to have entered into the spirit of fun, beating out a
rhythm easily on the body of his guitar, throwing a couple of patented,
self-referential moves into his cowboy sashay, and singing out his lines
with good humor if not abandon. "Well, I got a horse, and I got a gun I
And I'm gonna go out and have some fun I I'm a-warning you, galoots I
Don't step on my blue suede boots." "Yeah!" said Steve, with the cast
ending on a chorus of "Yippy-i-oh, yippy-i-yay, yippy-i-oh-i-yay."
"On his way to the dressing room," reported Wertheimer, "Elvis was
intercepted by the William Morris agent with the wire-rimmed glasses
whom I had seen Friday morning at the first rehearsal. Shaking Elvis'
hand, he said, 'I think the show was terrific. You did a marvelous job. We
really ought to get a good reaction to this one.' Tom Diskin, the Colonel's
lieutenant, stood by with a wide smile."
Back at his room at the Warwick, Elvis was still not done with his official
duties. It had been arranged for him to do an interview on HeraldTribune
columnist Hy Gardner's program, "Hy Gardner Calling!," which
broadcast locally on WRCA-TV, channel 4. The peculiar conceit of the
program was that both parties were filmed "at home," and the show was
broadcast "live" at I1:30 P. M. as a split-screen telephone conversation.
This particular conversation must have been even more awkward than
most. Gardner came across as the ultimate square, while Elvis, perhaps as
296 ", "THOS E PEOPLE IN NEW YORK... "
a result of his experience that evening, suggested more of the James Dean
aspect than ever, looking weary and, at times, genuinely lost. Frequently
a fluttering hand would drift up to a furrowed brow, his eyes were heavily
made up, and overall he presented a perplexing mix of rebellious image
and conventional values, resentful truculence and hurt misunderstanding.
Was he getting enough sleep? Gardner wondered. No, not really, "but
I'm used to it, and I can't sleep any longer." What would go through his
mind to keep him awake? Some of the songs he was going to do, "or
some of your plans, or what?" "Well, everything has happened to me so
fast during the last year and a half- I'm all mixed up, you know? I can't
keep up with everything that's happened." Slightly nonplussed, Gardner
asks him about some of the criticism that has been directed at him. Does
he feel any animosity toward his critics? "Well, not really, those people
have a job to do, and they do it."
But has he learned anything from them?
"No, I haven't."
"You haven't, huh?"
"Because I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong."
It was not the words so much as the affect - the generational stance
not so much that he doesn't understand as that he isn't understood. Over
and over again he rejects the rebel label ("I don't see how any type of
music would have any bad influence on people when it's only music.... I
mean, how would rock 'n' roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?")
while adopting the stance. Gardner was clearly taken with him
and concluded the interview with fatherly advice, suggesting that even
the bad publicity may have helped him; it's "made it possible for you to
do the kind of things for your folks that you always wanted to. So I sort of
think I'd look at it that way, Elvis." "Well, sir, I tell you," said Elvis, repeating
words he has said many times but which part of him clearly believes,
"you got to accept the bad along with the good. I've been getting
some very good publicity, the press has been real wonderful to me, and
I've been getting some bad publicity - but you got to expect that. I know
that I'm doing the best that I can, and I have never turned a reporter
down, and I've never turned a disc jockey down, because they're the people
that help make you in this business.... As long as I know that I'm
doing the best I can." "Well, you can't be expected to do any more," says
Gardner reassuringly. "I want to tell you it's been just swell talking to
MAY-J U L Y 1 9 5 6 '" 297
you, and you make a lot of sense." With that the interview concluded,
and Elvis was able to set aside the ambivalent feelings and experiences of
the last two days and, perhaps, finally, get some sleep.
TH E N E X T D A Y he seemed hardly the worse for wear. He arrived at
the RCA building to find fans carrying picket signs that declared "We
Want the Real Elvis" and "We Want the G Y RA T I N ' Elvis"; held yet another
press conference, in which he announced that "Barbara Hearn of
Memphis and June Juanico of Biloxi, Miss.... are the two girls he dates.
Miss Hearn has the added distinction of being a good 'motorcycle date' ";
and recounted the story of his life once again in painstaking, and painstakingly
accurate, detail. Then he entered the studio, shortly before 2:00, and
settled down to work.
The studio, according to Ai Wertheimer,
looked like a set from a 1930'S science fiction movie. It was a large rectangular
space of acoustical tile walls ribbed with monolithic half cylinders.
These ran vertically on the long sides of the rectangle and
horizontally on the short sides. The high ceiling was rippled with
more parallel cylinders and two pipes of fluorescent light. The floor
was a series of short strips of wood scaled in a sawtooth pattern of
right angles. In the center of the room lay a patch of carpet on which
the musicians had placed their instruments.
This was a different kind of session. For one thing, "Hound Dog," the
one song they knew they were going into the studio to get, was a number
that Elvis and the band had been polishing in live performance for two
months now. For another, it was the first session to be attended by
Freddy Bienstock, the twenty-eight-year-old Viennese-born "double first
cousin" and protege of the Aberbach brothers, in his capacity as Hill and
Range's representative. It was also, of course, the first time that a full
complement of Jordanaires was present in the studio. More significant
than anything else, though, for the first time the twenty-one-year-old
singer was clearly in charge.
They started with "Hound Dog," but perhaps not surprisingly it
proved more difficult to capture on record than anyone had anticipated
298 "THOS E PEOPLE IN NEW YORK... "
from its easy onstage success. Engineer Ernie Ulrich, as cynical about rock
'n' roll as anyone else in the building, got a good sound mix early on, but
then there were seventeen takes without a satisfactory master. The
drums, always the driving force in the live show, weren't working right,
Scotty was groping toward his guitar solo, the Jordanaires were having
some difficulty finding their place, and Shorty Long, the boogie-woogie
piano player who had filled in on the last New York session, was just looking
for his cues. Steve Sholes was getting visibly discouraged -he was
desperate to get material for the second album, and here they were wasting
all their time on a single song - but Elvis, who exhibited few points
of stillness in any other aspect of his life, maintained absolute concentration.
"In his own reserved manner," wrote Wertheimer, "he kept control,
he made himself responsible. When somebody else made a mistake,
he sang off-key. The offender picked up the cue. He never criticized anyone,
never got mad at anybody but himself. He'd just say, 'Okay, fellas, I
goofed.' "
On the eighteenth take they finally got something. By now the beat
had changed considerably from the way they did it in live performance,
and the phrasing of the lyrics had changed even more. It had veered still
further from Big Mama Thornton's original Latin-flavored "rhumbaboogie"
feel (preserved mainly in the repetition of the final words, hound
dog, at the end of the opening lines) and become a hard-driving number
powered by D.J.'s tommy-gun attack and a solo that Scotty later labeled
"ancient psychedelia." With the twenty-sixth take Sholes thought they
had it, but Elvis wanted to keep going. After the thirty-first take Sholes
announced over the PA, "Okay, Elvis, I think we got it."
Elvis rubbed his face, swept back his hair and resigned. "I hope
so, Mr. Sholes."...
The recording had taken over two hours and without the air conditioner
turned on (the mikes would have picked up the noise), the
air in the room hung low and close. The double doors were opened,
admitting cool air, the noise of vending machines and visitors with
glowing compliments. Elvis combed his hair, drank the Coke offered
by Junior and shrugged in reply to comments about how good the
music was. Steve trod lightly. "Elvis, you ready to hear a playback?"
As ifbad news never had good timing, he said, "Now's as good a time
as any."
MAY-J U L Y 1 9 5 6 ", 2 9 9
Elvis sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the speaker. The engineer
announced the take over the P A and let the tape roll. Elvis
winced, chewed his fingernails and looked at the floor. At the end of
the first playback, he looked like he didn't know whether it was a
good take or not. Steve called for take eighteen. Elvis pulled up a folding
chair, draped his arms across its back and stared blankly at the
floor.... The engineer racked take twenty-eight.* Elvis left his chair
and crouched on the floor, as if listening in a different position was
like looking at a subject from a different angle. Again he went into
deep concentration, absorbed and motionless. At the end of the song
he slowly rose from his crouch and turned to us with a wide grin, and
said, "This is the one."
They ate a late lunch, with Junior taking orders for sandwiches and
drinks, and then they began to look for something else to record. Freddy
Bienstock had brought in a stack of acetate demos with lead sheets from
Hill and Range, and Elvis sorted through them, picking out several by title
alone, then listening to them on the studio speaker as Steve broadcast
them out from the control room. When he heard the second one, he instantly
brightened. "Let me hear that again," he said. "Something I like
about that one."
The song was "Don't Be Cruel," a number that Bienstock had acquired
through Goldy Goldfarb, a song plugger at booking agent Moe
Gale's Shalimar publishing company. It was written by rhythm and blues
singer Otis Blackwell, who had enjoyed some success as an artist but was
just beginning to enjoy far greater prominence as a writer (his "Fever"
had just reached the top of the r&b charts in Little Willie John's classic
version). Bienstock, whose principal administrative background had come
in running Hill and Range's rhythm and blues division, St. Louis Music,
for the past couple of years, was immediately taken with the song. However,
he let Goldfarb know in no uncertain terms that ifhe wanted to get
a song recorded by the hottest new act in the business, he would have to
give up half the publishing (to Hill and Range) and half the writer's share
(to Elvis). As Otis Blackwell later said, "I was told that I would have to
make a deal" - but there was little question that it was worth it.
*Wertheimer appears to be mistaken in his count, since it was actually the
final take that was selected.
3 0 0 '" " T H O S E P E O P L E IN N E W Y O R K.
Elvis had the song played back for him again and started working it
out on the guitar while the others listened for the first time. Then he
sketched out a rough arrangement on the piano, which he showed to
Shorty Long, who made notes on the lead sheet. By this time he had
memorized the lyrics. Scotty tried out a couple of openings, and Elvis suggested
that he leave a little more space and told DJ. to "come in behind
Scotty and slow it down a little"; then the Jordanaires worked out their
arrangement, and after about twenty minutes they were ready for a runthrough.
After a single rehearsal, Sholes was ready to record, but Elvis
wanted to rehearse some more, so they did. The song continued to
evolve through twenty-eight takes. It took on a lilting, almost casual, offhand
kind of feel, as Scotty virtually sat out except at the beginning and
the end, Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires came to sing a duet with Elvis
on the chorus, and DJ. laid Elvis' leather-covered guitar across his lap and
played the back of it with a mallet, to get an additional snare effect. It was
hardly a formulaic approach, and it was clearly one that left the nominal
a&r director baffled. When they finally got the sound that he was looking
for, Elvis pronounced, "That felt good," and, though it was late, called for
another playback on "Anyway You Want Me," a pleading ballad that he
had listened to at the beginning of the session. There was just one rehearsal.
"At the fourth take," Wertheimer wrote, "Steve said they had it.
Elvis said again, 'That's fine, Mr. Sholes. Let's try it one more time.' "
"I wasn't all that impressed with him, as a singer, " said Gordon Stoker.
"I mean, I kind of got a kick out of 'Don't Be Cruel: I was entertained, so
to speak, but then with 'Anyway You Want Me: all of a sudden I took an
entirely different attitude, the feeling that he had on that particular sound
made the hair on my arm come up. I said to the guys, 'Hey, men, this guy
can sing!' "
It was 9:00 by the time the session was over, and the studio was deserted.
The guys were talking about going home by train the next morning;
they were going to be playing that Milk Fund benefit at the ballpark
in town, and then they were going to have the rest of the month off, their
first extended break in six months. Everybody was looking forward to it,
and Junior was laughing his evil little laugh, his hooded eyes regarding his
famous cousin with what seemed like only thinly veiled jealousy. Steve
Sholes had some songs he wanted Elvis to hear, but Elvis said he'd have to
take them home with him ifhe was going to get a chance to listen to them
at all. Anyway, he'd want acetates of the three songs they'd recorded that
M AY-J U L Y 1 9 5 6 ", 3 0 1
day - he wanted to learn the songs exactly the way they'd recorded them
so he could do them that way in his shows. Sure, Sholes said, a little reluctantly,
he'd get a package over to the hotel in the morning.
There were still some fans waiting outside when they came out of the
studio, and Elvis patiently Signed autographs while the others waited. By
now The Steve Allen Show seemed like a million years ago, and the verdict
was long since in. Allen had trounced Ed Sullivan in the ratings, the reviews
were no more kind toward the stationary Elvis than they had been
toward the gyrating one ("A cowed kid," declared the Journal-American,
"it was plain he couldn't sing or act a lick"), and Sullivan had publicly reiterated
that he would not have the singer on his show at any price ("He is
not my cup of tea") while privately he had already been in touch with the
Colonel. "Hey, Elvis, we gotta get back to the hotel," said Junior. Elvis
got into the car. It had been a long day, and now he was hungry again.
HE R A N I N T O G E N E V I N C E N T at Penn Station the following morning
as they were leaving the city. One of the boys pointed the new
rock 'n' roll star out to him, and Elvis walked over and introduced himself,
congratulating him sincerely on the success of "Be Bop A Lula." To
his surprise Vincent immediately started to apologize. "The first thing he
said was, 'I wasn't trying to copy you. I wasn't trying to sound like you.'
Just right off the bat, without even being asked. I told , 'Oh, I know
that, it's just your natural style.' " And then the two twenty-one-year-olds
compared notes on success.
He spent most of the twenty-eight-hour train ride home relaxing and
fooling around. The photographer AI Wertheimer, convinced that this
was an historic opportunity that would not pass his way again, took the
trip at his own expense and got shots of Elvis catching some sleep, flirting
with girls, reading Archie comic books, contemplating a giant teddy bear
that the Colonel had given him, and listening to the acetates of his songs
on a portable record player, over and over again, with obsessive concentration.
"How'd it go yesterday at the recording session?" the Colonel
asked him in the restaurant car, as Wertheimer recorded the event.
Elvis replied blandly, "It went pretty well." The Colonel carried
on the conversation. "The reaction was terrific on the 'Steve Allen
Show.' Better than I thought." Elvis shrugged. He seemed unim3
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