I just want to mention my personal memories of the 'King' and the effect his music had on me. I had grown up in the early fifties with what passed for pop radio in the UK playing Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, Johnny Ray and the like. All very nice melodic middle of the road pop music which couldn't offend anyone.
Then in 1955, the film 'Blackboard Jungle' opened in the UK and its background track, 'Rock around the Clock' began to make vibes on British radio...there was hardly any TV around in Britain then. The music was raucous..so we thought..and not at all like the stuff my parents had been used to listening to, but they were reassured by the sight of the fat little guy with the kiss curl and the smile who recorded it and who looked so sort of 'nice'. Then the craze for this music really began with the release of the movie 'Rock around the clock' and parents all over Britain started to panic as their little darlings began doing crazy things like bopping in the aisles of cinemas and generally behaving in a very non British manner.
But that was nothing compared to what was around the corner, when HMV records in Britain released the first single to be heard in the UK by a young truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi and called 'Heartbreak Hotel'.
I was only nine at the time and 'Heartbreak Hotel' didn't register on my wavelength then, though the record made no 2 in the UK, and I came to love it in later years..particularly that tinkly Floyd Cramer piano in the background, but the breakthrough came when my neighbour's son across the road, who was 17 said some months later, "Wow, have you heard THIS!!' and played me Elvis Presley's second UK release, 'Hound Dog'.
I had never in my life heard anything so wild, so raucous or so exciting. In the UK, we didn't have black stations and at least in America, even if 'decent' white kids were told not to listen - Buddy Holly was banned by his father from listening to black stations on threat of a butt whipping - at least they were there. So I knew nothing about black R and B and how white artists like Presley were borrowing songs from original 'race music' labels and making them their own.
Presley's music was, therefore, more than a revelation to me and I persuaded my neighbour's son to loan me the 'Hound Dog' record and I took it home to play on our brand new radiogram. My mother, though slightly startled by the sheer animal energy of it, took my new 'taste' in her stride, confident that I would soon tire of it and return to listening to 'music', but when my father, normally a quiet and tolerant man, heard it he nearly went apoplectic and raged that he wouldn't have 'this rubbish' in the house. Well my birthday was coming up and the neighbour's son, who was a good hearted lad, persuaded his parents (who were close friends of my parents) to buy me 'Hound Dog' for my birthday reasoning that my dad was too nice a guy to spurn a gift.
Fortunately he was right, but Dad made me swear I would play it only when he was out or else I would find it turned into a plant pot! So thats what I did and, out of that first, exciting find of a sound that simply blew me away, I started to research Elvis' background and the stuff he had made earlier for Sam Phillips at Sun Records. That led me on to discovering Arthur Crudup, Memphis Slim and other stars of black music until it became an obsession and I began to collect the stuff with my limited pocket money. By now Dad had given up, convinced that his son's musical soul belonged to the Devil!
I was still at primary school then and I remember amazing one of my female teachers by explaining loftily virtually the whole history of black R and B music, still virtually an unknown quantity to most British adults, let alone to a precocious ten year old.
For me Elvis was at his most supreme when at his most wild and raucous. Thus, unlike most of his fans, I could virtually forget 'Its Now or Never', 'Surrender' and 'Wooden Heart' as selling out to a wider audience, just as long as I had the stuff that never made the charts like 'Lawdy Miss Clawdy', 'My Baby left me', 'Money Honey' and the fabulous 'Mystery Train' which I still think is one of the most exciting records ever made...the Elvis Presley who was once described by the folk/ blues writer John Hammond as having 'the greatest white blues voice I ever heard'
And thats what I remember...not the pout or the sideburns that sent the girls crazy. Not the ridiculous gold lame suits for the 'mules with binoculars' at the Las Vegas concerts. Not the sad shambling drug ridden and bloated mess who ended his life prematurely on a bathroom floor...but a young voice when in his 20s, so exciting, so wild, so raucous that it excited every nerve to listen to his music.
Thank you, Elvis, for launching me on a musical journey of learning, excitement and pleasure that has never left me. You will always have a special place in my heart for that!
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