Quote:

"Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the 20th century."

(Leonard Bernstein)


Quote:

"If you're an Elvis fan, no explanation is necessary; If you're not an Elvis fan, no explanation is possible."

(George Klein)


Quote:

"For a dead man, Elvis Presley is awfully noisy."

(Professor Gilbert B. Rodman)


Quote:

"History has him as this good old country boy, Elvis is about as country as Bono!"

(Jerry Schilling)


Quote:

"Absolute id crashed into absolute superego...as the uptightset man in America shook hands with just about the loosest."

(Mark Feeney on the 'Elvis meets Nixon' meeting)


Quote:

"Elvis is everywhere"

(Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper)


Quote:

"...especially in the South, they talk about Elvis and Jesus in the same breath"

(Michael Ventura, LA Weekly)


Quote:

"The image is one thing and the human being is another...it's very hard to live up to an image"

 

(Elvis Presley, Madison Square Garden press conference, 1972)


Quote:

"Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was actually stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something"

(David Bowie)


Quote:

"No-one, but no-one, is his equal, or ever will be. He was, and is supreme"

(Mick Jagger)


Quote:

"I wasn't just a fan, I was his brother...there'll never be another like that soul brother"

(Soul legend, James Brown)


Quote:

"Before Elvis there was nothing!"

(John Lennon)


Quote:

"There were rock 'n' roll records before Heartbreak Hotel, but this was the one that didn't just open the door…it literally blasted the door off its rusted, rotten, anachronistic hinges…. producing....no propelling...an unstoppable, fundamental and primordial shift in not only musical... but social, political and cultural history"

(JNP, BBC website)


Quote:

"Elvis, the musician, is largely a relic belonging to the baby boomer generation...Elvis, the icon, is arguably one of the most potent symbols of popular culture"

( Dr. John Walker)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Elvis checked in Nationally with Heartbreak Hotel'

From the San Antonio Express-News
by Hector Saldaña

Fifty years ago, it was as haunting and wounded an opening line as rock 'n' roll had ever known — "Well, since my baby left me ..."

Drenched in reverb, though not as much as memory might suggest, "Heartbreak Hotel," signalled Elvis Presley's major label move to RCA Victor and onto the national radar when it was released on Jan. 27, 1956.
Sony BMG commemorates the 50th anniversary of "Heartbreak Hotel" by re-releasing it as a single on Tuesday.

It didn't sound anything like his pre-fame rockabilly singles for Sun Records. Gone, for the moment, was the slap-back tape echo perfected by Sam Phillips and the fast, rattling country and blues twang of a train running off the tracks.
But it was no less primal.

"It's strange, it's something you remember. It doesn't sound like anything. It still doesn't sound like anything anybody ever made," said Sony BMG historian, producer and author Ernst Jorgenson, an expert on Presley's RCA Victor catalog, recording dates and rare tapes. But even Jorgenson wonders: "Is 'Heartbreak Hotel' even rock 'n' roll?"

The future king of rock 'n' roll — who would have turned 71 today — certainly thought so.
So lonely he could die, Presley delivered the lyric with down-and-out believability. By the time Scotty Moore's guitar solo comes in and the lopping piano rises up in the bluesy mix, listeners know they never want to check in there.

But kids wanted to hear it again and again. It became Presley's first No. 1 record.

Presley had just turned 21 when he cut the mono track live. Take No. 7 was the keeper.
RCA executives are said to have hated it. The day after "Heartbreak Hotel" was released, producers of Presley's national television debut, on the Dorsey Brothers "Stage Show" on CBS, asked him to sing another song.

Just in case, RCA prepared a four-song EP of unreleased Sun Records material to rush out should it flop. But Elvis believed in the song, written primarily by Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden.

Jorgensen learned that Presley had even introduced "Heartbreak Hotel" from the stage at a small gig during Christmastime 1955, saying, "This is going to be my first hit record."
Jorgensen, author of "Elvis Presley: A Life in Music — The Complete Recording Sessions," said Presley "may have been the only believer."

KTSA's Ricci Ware said only Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry (About Me)," a mournful honky-tonkin' lament, would ever again send such shivers down his backbone. "It was very different, and it did have a ton of reverb," Ware recalled about first hearing "Heartbreak Hotel." "It was a very haunting tune." He would spin it at night on his "Night Train" show at KREL-AM in Baytown.

"It wasn't so much dangerous as it was parents didn't approve of it," retired radio personality Bruce Hathaway recalled. To some, Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" was considered vulgar."It was underground in that day," Hathaway said. "But the (rock 'n' roll) craze was going that way. It's hard to believe that Elvis has been a phenomenon for that long."

He was virtually unknown at the time outside of the hayride circuit and small roadhouses and county fairs in the South. "The world knew nothing at all," Jorgenson said.
But radio listeners of the "Louisiana Hayride" knew him well.

One such listener was 17-year-old Harlandale High School graduate Barbara Jean McGarity Denecamp, who found herself face to face with Presley and his mother at a "Louisiana Hayride" concert in Shreveport, La., in November 1955. She was participating in a stage contest called "Beat the Band."

"All the way around to the back door, there were hundreds of screaming girls. You couldn't even move," Denecamp said. "Elvis was walking around with his guitar and at the time, I didn't know it, but that was his mother sitting up against the back wall. I said, 'Hello.' But I was so nervous.'"

Denecamp loved the spooky "Heartbreak Hotel," but she initially was attracted to Elvis' country element. "Oh, I loved it. When he had Scotty Moore and Bill Black, the three-piece band was absolutely fabulous — the country sound," she said. "I liked everything he had. I'll tell you the truth, he could play anything and I liked him. He was just one of a kind."

In her mind, Presley took the place of Hank Williams. But in concert, it was a sheer pandemonium Williams had never experienced. "You couldn't hear him at all," she said. "It was just screaming and screaming, lights, flashbulbs. It was just a madhouse. And I never ever in my life thought Elvis Presley was vulgar."

The RCA hits followed in an avalanche. Ware remembered "Hound Dog" (the flip side was "Don't Be Cruel"), which came later. "We'd play one side, and 30 minutes later we'd flip it over and play the other side," he recalled.

Jorgenson, the Sony BMG historian, called the two-sided hit a double whammy.

Dallas-based artist Jeff Scott sees Presley as the embodiment of the American dream and "bringing along this gumbo of American culture" to the forefront when he hit the national stage with "Heartbreak Hotel."

Scott's book, "Elvis: The Personal Archives," found clues to Presley's mystique in the king's day-to-day belongings. "He was able to communicate, through his personal style and thought, his music to the world," he said. "You had this really humble man, on the one hand, that wanted to communicate his soul, his inner excitement about the music, and I think he used his clothes and his fashion sense as a way to bring out, as an entertainer, to connect his soul and the soul of American rural culture to a larger audience."

Tom Perryman was running KSIJ-AM in Gladewater in the late '40s and mid-'50s. His show was called the "Hillbilly Hit Parade." He booked acts that played the "Louisiana Hayride."

"The stuff he did for Sun Records was what we called catbilly," Perryman said. "It wasn't rock 'n' roll so much. We were hillbilly music. When that music came out with that beat, I was probably the only country station playing it in East Texas. Nobody knew what he was. He didn't know what he was. Being from Memphis, he liked that black music and all."

Perryman recalled booking Presley in October 1954, and the trio made all of $90.
"They didn't have enough money to get out of Shreveport after the 'Hayride.'"
Though he personified youthful rebellion, Presley was a well-mannered young man, Perryman said — despite his looking a bit like a Memphis peacock.

"He was good lookin', a nice kid," he said. "His hair wasn't coal black. It was actually a dark dirty blond. But he was a phenomenon and it will never happen again. I knew then he had something besides that rockabilly."

EIN thanks the knowledgable Doc J Carpenter for the link.
contact the writer @ hsaldana@express-news.net

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Reviews
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Book: Behind The Image Vol. 2
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CD: Black & White Elvis
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Book: Elvis by the Presleys
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Elvis - symbol of freedom or not?
The importance of being Elvis
Elvis rules on television! (updated August 2005)
Tribute to Elvis (16 August 2005)
Elvis in the 50s - Maxine Brown
Meeting Elvis & Priscilla
How & where to sell your Elvis collection
Welcome to Gulag Graceland
The King and I
Elvis was a racist? (4)
Elvis was a racist? (3)
Schism between Elvis' stage & studio work
Tupelo, Miss....Elvis 2005
Elvis was a racist? (#2)
Elvis vs. Jerry Lee Lewis
Elvis was a racist? (#1)
Elvis making a killing
Elvis & the treasure chest of blood money
Priscilla - "no angel"
Elvis in the 1970s
More on Elvis on TV
"Orion" gunned down!
Elvis Is Back
Elvis - Hero with 1000 faces
Elvis Film Guide
Elvis & other major artists miss out on Grammy Awards
How did Elvis die?
Interviews
Ronald King (Elvis On Stamps)
Bernard Lansky
Albert Wertheimer
Priscilla Presley
Marshall Terrill
Lisa Presley on Larry King Show
Tony Joe White
Stanley Oberst
Bud Glass (part 2)
Red & Sonny West
Ed Bonja (Part 2)
Ernst Jorgensen
Phil Aitcheson (Presley Commission)
 
Audio-visual
Candlelight Vigil 2005
Elvis On Tour (Hampton Roads) footage
Elvis On Tour
Elvis photo gallery #1
Elvis Week 2005 Photo Archives
EPE's multimedia Elvis gallery
Graceland cam
Listen to the Elvis "strung out" in Vegas audio
The "Real" Elvis off-stage
Unreleased Elvis audio now online
View EPE Graceland tourism ads
View video of "All Shook Up" opening night on Broadway
 
Reference
All about Elvis
All about Elvis tribute artists
All about Lisa Presley
All about Graceland
Elvis books 2005-07
Elvis film guide
Elvis Online Virtual Library
Elvis Presley Research Forum
Elvis was a racist? (archives)
Elvis Week 2005
How & where do I sell my Elvis collection?
Links to Elvis' family & friends
Online Elvis Symposium
Sale of EPE "Archives"
6th Elvis Website Survey
Spotlight on The King
"Wikipedia" Elvis bio
 
 

Quote:

"Elvis Presley is the supreme socio-cultural icon in the history of pop culture"

(Dr. Gary Enders)


Quote:

" Elvis is the 'glue' which holds our society together....which subconciously gives our world meaning"

(Anonymous)


Quote:

"Eventually everybody has to die, except Elvis"

(humorist Dave Barry)


Quote:

"He is the "Big Bang", and the universe he detonated is still expanding, the pieces are still flying"

(Greil Marcus, "Dead Elvis")


Quote:

"I think Elvis Presley will never be solved"

(Nick Tosches)


Quote:

"He was the most popular man that ever walked on this planet since Christ himself was here"

(Carl Perkins)


Quote:

"When I first heard Elvis' voice I just knew I wasn't going to work for anybody...hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail"

(Bob Dylan)


Quote:

"When we were kids growing up in Liverpool, all we ever wanted was to be Elvis Presley"

(Sir Paul McCartney)