My Elvis Presley Blog

Songwriters: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

Probably the first rock music video of all time, Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock dance scene was historic in many ways in the making.  Elvis didn’t dance. Onstage he just moved rhythmically to the music. And boy! could he move.  There’s no account anywhere that I can find where Elvis ever danced with a girlfriend other then slow dancing in the dark.  When at clubs or parties, no one ever states that Elvis would ever just dance to fast music the way most of us relate to dancing.

So when Jailhouse Rock was being filmed and talk of the choreography for the title song began, it was quite humorous to read that the choreographer for the scene was aiming for some kind of old fashioned Gene Kelly type of performance from Elvis.  What? Have you seen this guy on stage?

According to George Klein, an Elvis friend from way back, “When Alex Romero, who was the choreographer of Jailhouse Rock, first presented the dance sequence for Jailhouse Rock, Elvis shook his head and he said, ‘That’s not me. I can’t do that, Alex. I appreciate, you know, what you’ve done here.’ He wanted Elvis to do more of a Gene Nelson/Fred Astaire type.  Elvis said, ‘It’s not me. I’ll try it.’ And Elvis being the cooperative guy, he got up and tried.  He said, ‘See Alex, it’s not me.’  And that’s when Alex said, ‘Elvis, I’ll tell you what.  Let me incorporate your stage act into what I wanna do, and let’s see if that’ll work.’  and he went home that night, came back the next day, and had taken Elvis’s stage act and incorporated that into a dance sequence. Elvis said, ‘Hey, I can do that. That’s me.’  And in one take, right there in the rehearsal hall at MGM, Elvis had it down.  And of course it became historic in being Elvis’s best dance sequence in a motion-picture.”

Sharon Sheeley, songwriter and friend of Elvis, remembers coming home from that movie (Pajama Game).  And it was very late at night, and there this little drizzle out.  And “Jailhouse Rock” came on the radio.  And I remember Elvis stopped the car, got out of the car.  It was on Fountain Avenue. And he danced the whole scene he did in the movie, in the middle of the street on Fountain Avenue.  And I kept thinking if people woke up right now and looked out their windows, they’d see Elvis Presley dancing in the streets like Gene Kelly.

Source for George Klein and Sharon Sheeley: Remember Elvis, Produced by Joe Esposito

The recording of Jailhouse Rock took place at MGM’s Radio Recorders on April 30th, 1957.  Morning and afternoon rehearsals were strange for Elvis who was more likely to start rehearsing at 10PM and work through until dawn but this was the movies and people kept somewhat regular hours. Elvis was never known to throw tantrums or lose his temper during rehearsals however he did lose it during this rehearsal.  Elvis always warmed up his voice by singing his favorite gospel tunes with the band and the back up singers.  During the rehearsals here at MGM, Elvis spent the morning doing just that and then broke for lunch.  During lunch, the production team spoke to Gordon Stoker, one of the backup singers in the Jordanaires group and asked that they not join Elvis in the gospel singing if he began doing that again after lunch. They needed to get to work.

When Elvis came back from lunch and got wind of this, he simply stood up and walked out.  As was the way Elvis always worked, if they had just let him be, he more then likely would have finished all the takes they required that day or possibly by the next day but as it was, they had nothing. Other singers may have taken weeks to get what they needed from him.  Elvis returned the next morning and finished all the required songs.  I’ve never read where anybody tried to interfere with his work habits after that.

The soundtrack version of Jailhouse Rock, heard here on this video, includes orchestration and back up vocals that are not on the released single version. That version included only Elvis’s original band Scotty Moore, Bill Black and DJ Fontana with the addition of Dudley Brooks on piano.  Of course the Jordanaires were ever present as back up singers but even the back up vocals were toned down from the soundtrack version. I personally prefer the single released version but I’ll never stop loving watching Elvis perform in this video.  Today it seems almost cheesy in it’s simplicity but remember, we’re talking over 52 years ago.  I was only 4 months away from making my entrance into the world.

Jailhouse Rock debuted at No.1 for the week of November 9th, 1957. This was to be Elvis’s 8th chart topper. During this year, Elvis had the No. 1 hit 17 out of 56 weeks according to Cash Box Magazine Charts.

The single with the B side of Treat Me Nice (one of my all time favorites) was a US #1 hit for 7 weeks.  The song as sung by Elvis is #67 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and was named one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

Buy at AllPosters.com	Buy at AllPosters.com	Buy at AllPosters.com

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• Buzz it up
• Mixx it up
• Share via MySpace
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tumblr it
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

By Ernst Jorgensen, Foreword by Peter Guralnick

Elvis Presley - A Life in Music

This book is essentially my Elvis bible. My copy looks slightly travel weary with pieces of paper, paperclips, and bookmarks stuck in various points and some corners bent up from being in my purse a lot of the time. While listening to the over 400 favorite songs by Elvis on my music player, I sometimes need to refer to this book to remind myself where he was, who were the musicians and back up singers playing with him, what was his state of mind and all the other hundreds of little details that go into knowing as intimately as possible what it was like to be in the studio with Elvis on any given day.

And let there no mistake about it, Elvis was a genius when it came to knowing what he wanted in the studio and getting it. Most people don’t know that Elvis produced nearly every song he recorded.  He did the arrangments and he decided who did what on every song.

This book gives us details of the frustration Elvis had with all the really crappy tunes that came his way thanks to Tom Parker’s influence. You must understand that the sham that was Parker was a formula kind of flim flam man who felt that if something worked and made a lot money, then everything after that should be pretty much the same. Just look at Elvis’s movie career and tell me I’m wrong. But Elvis was anything but formula and if you know his music, you know that he could and would sing anything that he felt like singing. Thankfully, a lot of the recordings that were never released because they didn’t meet the “Parker formula” have been released in later years and Elvis fans worldwide are being given a chance to hear what Elvis really could do with a microphone and tape machine.

On the other hand, we also get to feel what it must have been like to be in the presence of genius. Elvis could nail a song with one take and would memorize words to songs after only one reading. In contrast, he could also take all night to get a song  just the way he wanted it to sound. He was enormously patient with the studio musicians and back up singers seldom losing his temper because somebody wasn’t getting it right. Elvis was never a diva, he just wanted to sing a great song.  In this book you almost get the feeling that you’re there during the rehearsals.

Another little known fact is that although Elvis was often seen with a guitar, it was the piano that he was really proficient at playing and many of his recordings include him on the piano, not the guitar.  The guitar was used as a prop in his earlier years but notice that once he hit Vegas and was doing the big concerts, you rarely saw him with a guitar.

In this book, we also learn a lot more about the players in Elvis’s life who helped him make his way up from a no name Memphis boy who sang at the fairgrounds once a awhile to the international household name he eventually became. From Sam Phillips at Sun Studios to Steve Sholes at RCA, everybody who had a hand in Elvis recording career is introduced to us in this book.  Love them or hate them, they were instrumental in helping Elvis become the icon he is and this book shows them all without bias.

Even though it’s obvious the author loves Elvis and his music, there is no sugarcoating things trying to make Elvis look like anything but a regular human being. If Elvis was in a crappy mood, late for the session or just being difficult, the author brings that to the story. If he had a cold or was otherwise sick, you’ll know it and once you do, you will actually listen closer and hear the music differently. Because now you can hear Elvis sniffle or wheeze slightly while taking a breath. As an example, listen again closer to Tomorrow Never Comes.  He’s actually very congested and you can hear it him snort or sniffle 2 or 3 times. Miraculously, his voice never falters.  These small nuggets of information somehow bring Elvis back to life for the true Elvis music fan. We are reminded of what Elvis was really about when you banish all the bad press that overshadowed his career after his death. It was the music.

Between the covers of this book, there is more factual information about Elvis’s music and recordings then can be found anywhere else, including complete recording information and session data keys on every song Elvis recorded, both in the studios and at home.

If you love the music of Elvis, old fan or new, you absolutely must have this book.

What Others Said:
“A comprehensive, insightful, and absorbing account of Presley’s recording career…focuses the reader on the one thing that truly matters in the Presley saga – the music – and it belongs on every rock fan’s bookshelf.” BILLBOARD

“Even for important pop artists…there are only one or two books that actually matter. And for Elvis Presley, there has been only one book of real consequence, Peter Guralnick’s brilliant biography, Last Train to Memphis. Now, there are two.” THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

“Of the hundreds of books written about Elvis Presley, only a handful are worthy of a music library. Elvis Presley; A Life in Music…is one of the few…We gain insight into Elvis the artist, of course, but also get a new perspective on Elvis the man. The book, beautifully illustrated with great photos, is a must for the Elvisphile.” THE WASHINGTON POST

“Far and away the most detailed guide to Elvis’s recordings and one of the small handful of indispensable books about Presley.” BOSTON HERALD

“This is a gloriously obsessive book that revels in endlessly fascinating detail and returns the focus to where it should have been all along: the music.” COLIN ESCOTT, AUTHOR OF GOOD ROCKIN’ TONIGHT AND HANK WILLIAMS: THE BIOGRAPHY

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• Buzz it up
• Mixx it up
• Share via MySpace
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tumblr it
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend