Hey, I didn't grow up loving Elvis. No way. My parents were too old for rock`n'roll (my dad had painfully square tastes - he fancied himself a classical music aficionado, but had no particular grasp on it. My mom, much cooler, loved Sinatra and especially Nat "King" Cole and Harry Belafonte, and swing music - woo hoo!). When I was a kid, Elvis was this pudgy guy in ridiculous outfits who sang in Vegas and Hawaii (I did watch a few minutes of his `74 TV special). He had nuthin' on Alice Cooper or Mick Jagger, lemme tell ya.
I must digress, slightly, but long story short - in my late teens I made a conscious decision to explore the roots of the rock music I loved - all those blues cats the Stones and Clapton were always referring to, and the rockers of the 50's. I was wary, because in addition to not loving Elvis I emphatically did not love 50's rock - I thought of it all as silly and square. But the rock books I was then devouring swore by this stuff, and, more importantly, so did the artists. I well remember reading one of John Lennon's last interviews, and the reporter stated that Lennon had a jukebox loaded with Elvis singles - Elvis, according to Lennon, was The One.
So I made a big step for me, and I opened my tiny little mind to the possibility that there was something there I hadn't picked up on. And what I found was - eureka, man! I get it now!
You see, I didn't like 50's rock and roll because I didn't know 50's rock and roll. I knew "Happy Days," with its sanitized view of a 50's sans generational conflict, racial issues, violence and badass music. And it's constant plays of "Splish Splash" and "Rock Around the Clock." And if those were all you knew of 50's music, well shit - you'd hate it too. And, not knowing 50's rock and roll, I sure as hell didn't know Elvis worth a damn. P.S. - I didn't really like The Stray Cats much either. But I did love The Blasters almost on sight.
So I learned. And son of a bitch - I was soon an Elvis fan.
Of course, there's some truth to all of those charges. But look a little closer, o best beloved ... how many Elvis records have you actually heard? How many of his stupid movies have you ever seen? How much do you know about a record industry that rewarded white artists over black, or the racial barriers in American society - barriers that have been powerfully chipped away at by the existence of artists, such as ... Elvis Presley, and all those he influenced? How many iconic rockers have made assholes of themselves as a result of their drug problems (you can start counting at Amy Winehouse and work your way back. Bring something to snack on ... it's gonna take you a while)? How many people die in a dignified manner (answer: none)?
See, once I listened, once I heard ... the story was very different. The early Elvis sides are definitive rockabilly - among the cream of the crop. These are the Sun sides and most of his early RCA stuff. But hey, guess what? The icky ballads were their even as far back as the Sun sides. They're more than redeemed by "Tryin' To Get To You" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and "Mystery Train" and "Baby Let's Play House." At RCA he laid down "My Baby Left Me" (probably my fave Presley rave) and "Jailhouse Rock" (kicks ass!!) and many others. And yes, as someone once mentioned, it's there that he "sold out to girls," increasingly laying down romantic gloop and leaning away from the r&b and country songwriters he'd favored towards pop songwriters who just couldn't deliver the goods.
After the army and Hollywood, he definitely got soft. BUT! And this is a BIG BUT! He also cut a ton of rock and roll outside the soundtracks. And, while these are slicker than the early stuff, the best of them still kick holy ass - "Little Sister," "Marie's The Name," "Follow That Dream" - woo!
And yeah, after that, it was into decline. The seventies weren't good to him. They were't good to Lou Reed or Dylan, either. Sure, I'd like to imagine the guy dumped the twinkies and the pain-killers and the nudie suits, sold off Graceland, moved off to L.A. and found himself hooked up with X and The Blasters and rocked the 80's like a motherfucker. I'd like to imagine Al Gore won in 2000, too. But it didn't happen.
Hey, I ain't done yet. El was supposed to have been dumb, an ignorant hillbilly. As biographer Peter Guralnick noted - if he was so dumb, you try to make your way through Madame Blavatsky. Yeah, the Pres had a profound mystical/religious bent. He and old non-admirer Pete Townshend (who, by the way, revised his opinion when he came to know the Sun sides) would have had a lot to talk about. Shit, since he got old Elvis flame Ann-Margaret to appear in "Tommy," maybe he could've roped in the El hisself if he'd played his cards right. The possibilities are staggering.
Presley wasn't dumb and he wasn't ignorant. But he was, I think, afraid. He never really embraced the world outside of Memphis c. 1957, exactly. He never really fit in Hollywood (not for lack of trying) and, after the British Invasion, not in rock and roll either. Yeah, it's easy to laugh at the guy pounding peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, or ordering a pizza for him and his good ol' boy buddies to chow down on during their first/only LSD trip. But then, Cobain was supposedly homesick for rainy Seattle in L.A., and his grocery list was heavy on Kraft macaroni and cheese. You can take the boy out of....
Oh, Hollywood? Y'know, I've seen a bunch of those Elvis movies, and yeah, mostly they're junkola. But all I've seen are at least amusing, entertaining fluff - something to kill 90 minutes when you've got insomnia (the circumstances under which I've encountered most). Heck, I even like "A Change of Habit," with El as a concerned inner-city doctor and social activist, and Mary Tyler Moore as a nun toward between being a bride of JC and that hunka hunka burning love doctor/social activist. But, what I wanted to say is - "Jailhouse Rock" is a non-embarassing, actually pretty good movie with a pretty good soundtrack - and "King Creole," (based on Harold Robbins' A Stone For Danny Fisher) not only has a good soundtrack but is very good movie and features a very good performance by EP - he coulda been a contender. Let's put it this way: he was never any worse as an actor than Frank Sinatra - and Sinatra gave perfectly credible performances in all his films.
Look, I'll make it simple. If all you know of Presley is the "ignorant hillbilly" or "bloated corpse" or "The Wonder Of You" then you don't know jack, jack. Me, the story I like best is this one. See, I had a job working with this older dude from Texas 15+ years or so ago, and we'd talk about 50's rock and such (which he'd grown up with and was a fan of), and he remembered the night Presley was on Ed Sullivan. After watching the El do his thing, Bob's dad was, he said, positively shaking with anger, and declared: "that PUNK will NEVER make it!!" But Bob's mom turned to her husband with an ear-to-ear grin on her face, and told him, calmly: "Oh yes he will."
Official Website
Elvis Presely Wiki
Elvis Presley Allmusic
Essential Listening
This is tricky. Almost all Presley albums have their share of chaff as well as wheat. The most reliable of the early ones are Elvis Presley (first album on RCA), The Sun Sessions, and Elvis Golden Records - the best of his 50's hits.
The sixties are a lot tougher. Elvis is Back!, his first post-army album, is one of his best and well worth hearing. Memories: The `68 Comeback Special is the soundtrack to same, and unequivocally great - it's got all the outtakes, too. You need to see the DVD, too. The Memphis Record is the stuff that immediately followed that and is damn fine. Also well worth checking out is Reconsider Baby, a nifty collection of straight blues/r&b performances from throughout his career.
Of course, best move is to do what I did, and download your choices from The King of Rock and Roll: The Complete 50's Masters, From Nashville to Memphis: The Essential 60's Masters and Command Performances: The Essential 60's Masters Vol. II - make your own, baby!
Essential Viewing
I already mentioned the comeback special. Don't miss it. Also worth seeing: Elvis `56 - nice documentary narrated by Levon Helm, for a look at the cool, pre-Hollywood Elvis. It's out of print, but you have a VCR, don't you? I'm also partial to Elvis: The TV Series - fictional, but a blast for any rockabilly/country/blues/50's fan.
Essential Reading
Peter Guralnick's two-volume bio Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love is likely to remain the definitive bio.
Greil Marcus' Mystery Train is a great book, and the long final section, "Presliad" is a fascinating rumination on the P as an artist and American icon. Also the extensive notes at the end of the book dissect his catalog nicely, including bootlegs and the score of books that have been written about him. Dead Elvis suffers from the coherence issues that afflict much of Marcus' post "Train" work, but the fantasy Elvis film (Elvis teams up with Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent to nab a drug-pushing ring at the local high school, being run by Dick Clark. Natalie Wood is the Only Girl in School. Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley rumble. Elvis, Gene and Eddie team up as a rock and roll band in the school talent show, calling themselves The Rolling Stones. As my buddy said - this should've been made.)
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