Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley Classic Albums

# Well, you can burn my house Steal my car

# Drink my liquor From an old fruit jar

# Do anything that you want to do

# But, uh-huh, honey, lay off of my shoes

# And don't you step on my blue suede shoes

# Well, you can do anything But lay off of my blue suede shoes

# Rock it!

# Well, it's one for the money Two for the show

# Three to get ready Now go, go, go

# But don't you step on my blue suede shoes

# Well, you can do anything But lay off of my blue suede shoes

# Well, it's blue, blue, blue suede shoes

# Blue, blue, blue suede shoes... #

At 20, Elvis was still an unknown to most of America

when his first album came out on RCA Victor.

Take 7.

Hang up that tambourine and go.

The recording process in those days

was what we would normally today call a live recording.

Everybody in one room at one time

with very limited possibilities of changing anything,

but everybody was there, there was no chance of doing it over

by substituting things. If you had to do it over, you recorded the song again.

So it would be take after take after take until things were right.

Once again.

Take 11.

It was a simple machine, it was mono, so again there was no mixing process.

The balance of it was the balance that was, you know, when you recorded it.

I always forget our cue.

Take 12.

And basically the studios were very good at setting up the microphones.

They were experts in those days in having many microphones to capture a sound and create it,

but the musicians had to perform on the spot and you were only as good as that performance you did.

There was no way you could do anything other than...

Maybe you could add two pieces together

but that was as far as technology allowed you to tamper with the recordings.

It was all his arrangements, nothing was written out.

Just whatever we thought about trying to do,

and if he didn't like it, he'd say, "I don't know, guys, what do you think?"

And he'd ask and we'd say, "Ah, didn't really do anything. Let's try something else."

And we'd all start again from scratch.

INSTRUMENTAL

Cut, cut! I was learning the verse.

If you look at the first album there's all different styles in there.

Pure country, not so pure,

there's blues material, there's rock material,

and he's doing it all

with virtually no effort.

Elvis would fine-tune as he went along, but what came across in any take

was the seamless stylistic delivery.

And that was astonishing.

And I don't think anybody was really ready for it.

# Well, it's one for the money Two for the show

# Three to get ready Now go, cat, go

# But don't you step on my blue suede shoes... #

The first album was made up mostly of other people's songs that appealed to him,

like Carl Perkins' Blue Suede Shoes.

# ..Well, it's blue, blue, blue suede shoes

# Blue, blue, blue suede shoes, baby

# Blue, blue, blue suede shoes

# Blue, blue... #

There's no reason to think that Elvis wouldn't want to do any great song that was up there,

because we know that from his live repertoire at the time,

and you can say, "Well, is this a successful cover version?" It's, of course, very subjective,

but it's a far cry from Carl Perkins' version.

They don't sound alike at all.

# Well, it's one for the money Two for the show

# Three to get ready Now go, cat, go

# But don't you step on my blue suede shoes

# You can do anything But lay off of my blue suede shoes...

# Well, you can knock me down Step in my face

# Slander my name All over the place

# Well, do anything that you want to do

# But, uh-huh, honey, lay off of them shoes

# And don't you step on my blue suede shoes

# Well, you can do anything But lay off of my blue suede shoes. #

Let's go!

So people of my age, it was like, "Did you hear that?"

You know...

"Who's this guy, Elvis Presley?"

You've got to say, yeah, he hit like a bombshell, yeah.

It was like the world went from black-and-white to Technicolor.

# ..Even through the valleys too

# I've been travelling night and day...

The album was really a collection of songs that Elvis knew from his childhood

or from just past weeks on the R&B charts where he picked up a lot of his material.

# ..Your letter

# Where you said you loved me... #

After leaving Tupelo, Mississippi as a child, Elvis went to Memphis.

It was a lucky move for him, since the city was full of musical possibilities

and music was Elvis's first passion.

# ..When I read your loving letter

# Then my heart began to sing... #

I think Elvis is the kind of person who has a dream that directs him,

a dream that directs him from within.

I think the shyness that he exhibited was a genuine shyness,

but it was also a shyness that he always used to a purpose,

whether it was a social purpose or sometimes a musical purpose.

With girls, for example,

I think he used his shyness to achieve social success.

He conveyed a sense of mystery, he conveyed a sense of attraction,

he drew people to him.

And I think that was true all through his life.

I think it was true in terms of his music as well.

So that, in a sense, by being the still centre,

he drew everyone in to him.

And I think he did it in a calculating way.

He was somebody with a very keen intelligence, a ferocious intelligence,

and an omnivorous love of music of all kinds.

He had the most innate sense of rhythm and motion

of anybody I've ever seen. It was totally natural for him.

You could watch him

if he walked into a room and sat down,

his feet would not be on the floor one minute

till he had something bouncing. He could not be still.

He just had a rhythm going all the time,

so it was not surprising at all for me to see him move the way he did when he started playing.

Of course we were just teenagers when we started dating,

and had a great relationship for a very long time.

Sometimes on Sunday night, we would slip out from our church

and go down to the Black church, a group of us teenagers would,

just to be there long enough for the music at the Black church,

because they were, you know, hands clapping and bodies swaying and all this,

and we would go down there and listen to the music.

# I'm gonna walk Through the streets

# Of the sweetest Lord... #

At that time, the Black music had much more emotion

and expression to it than some of the pop music did,

and I believe that was him, that was his feelings towards the music,

and I feel like that's why he was drawn to it.

BLUES HARMONICA

Beale Street was the place where Elvis really encountered an incredible variety of Black music,

Gospel music, soul music,

everything that was happening in Memphis at the time

and music that would greatly influence the first album.

# Oh, yeah... Everybody

# I know... Everybody... #

There was something that was contagious in the air on Beale Street

when it came to just about everything that everybody did on Beale Street,

especially Black people.

Their music...?

They could make music out of anything.

Those are the things that interested me and got me into trying to find

a little place that I could rent and build my own little studio.

95% of the people that I had been working with had been Black.

Most of them, of course, no-name people,

so Elvis fit right in.

He was born and raised in poverty.

He was around Black folks an awful lot,

he was around people that had very little in the way of worldly goods.

Then, to my surprise, he knew...

at 18 years old...

he knew many so many of all kinds of music.

I found out later as we got further into our association

that he had an ability to just hear a song on the radio,

because he was so poor he couldn't buy too many records...

he would commit it to memory. It was just amazing.

So Elvis was the perfect one for the "transition" that I wanted to make

to help the Black person get a broader reception

and to help the White person to feel that, "Hey! We've got a kinship, especially in the South."

# Well, my mama she done told me

# Papa told me too

# The life you're living, son

# Now, women be the death of you

# But that's all right... #

That's All Right, Mama. Well, hell, I knew that...

I think it was about five, six, seven years before that,

Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup had done it as a real blues master.

Well, here is this cat...

..18 years old,

and I said, "Elvis, what in the hell have you been holding out on me all this time?" you know.

But the next thing you knew I had Scotty and Bill pick up their instruments...

I went back into the control room

and it was just a matter of two or three takes.

# Well, mama she done told me... #

That was just...it was delivered on a silver platter to me.

# ..She ain't no good for you... #

We had an upright slap bass and Scotty playing the amplified guitar

and Elvis playing an acoustic guitar

and that was our instrumentation on so many things.

All I can tell you is I just stole from every guitar player

that I could over the years...

..and put it in my databank

and when I played that's just what come out.

But I did try to play something

that I thought would fit the particular song we were working on.

I guess that they were the first White band that anybody had heard of with a good lead singer

that was saleable that could actually...

..play Black, sound like they had the rhythm.

They had, you know, that fluidity which White music, especially then, didn't have, you know,

and it was very one, two... metre, metre, metre...

one, two, three, four...

whereas...

..the beautiful thing, I think, about Elvis

was that he's sort of turned everybody into everybody.

He doesn't go around going, "Is the guy Black or White?" any more, you know?

And maybe even, "You can do it!"

It at least sparked a dream.

# I'm leaving town tomorrow

# I'm leaving town for sure

# Well, then you won't be bothered

# With me hanging round your door

# But that's all right... #

He was doing some of Crudup's songs, sounding a little Blackish...

And I say, "You know what? This guy's all right."

And he'd get better and better, better and better,

better and better, better and better...

But he was always a good-looking guy, very handsome, very handsome then...

I knew that even if he couldn't sing the girls would be crazy about him.

# ..Dee-dee-dee, I need your loving

# That's all right

# That's all right now, Mama

# Anyway you do. #

Elvis brings a melodic sense, a kind of swinging country sense

to a song whose blues roots he never betrays

which, I think, stands

as a kind of homage in a way to a singer he enormously admired, Arthur Crudup,

but it's an entirely different song. Same with Mystery Train

where Little Junior Parker's Mystery Train is a masterpiece,

but Elvis takes quite a different approach to it.

And you can say you like this one or that one, you know, but they're different is the point.

And Elvis has used each as a vehicle to express something that he feels within him.

# ..Sixteen coaches long

# Well, that long black train

# Got my baby and gone

# Train, train

# Coming round, round the bend... #

The classic sound of the Sun sides that Elvis made

really relies upon the feeling that you get, no matter how many times you listen to them,

that they're unrehearsed, they're spontaneous,

they're just springing right out of...right from the soul.

Hell, that's different! That's a pop song in the bag.

I don't really want to do Carl Perkins!

At the same time I think that if you pay any attention to the way in which the sessions go,

the sessions are these kind of concentric circles

where Elvis and the musicians wander around and wander around

and basically the whole idea is for Elvis to get to that point where he's free.

He'll be homing in on something that he can't really define...

and yet when he gets it the feeling is what defines it.

It has nothing to do with the technical perfection.

I mean, you'll hear clinkers in songs right up through every...

you know, through all of his classic sides,

but he knew when he had that feeling,

and the feeling was that feeling of loose spontaneity.

# ..Train, train

# Coming down, down the line

# Train, train

# Coming down, down the line... #

Don't let anybody misconstrue this. I ran the show

but it was run in such a way that they became a part of it.

I knew what I had to have, I knew what I had to do,

and don't think I wouldn't take the time out to go and move a mike a little bit to make it sound better,

innovate any way I could,

and if it never came off, that's OK.

He treated Elvis's voice like an instrument.

If you think back in the late '40s and early '50s,

everything you heard, country, pop, whatever,

the voice was ten miles out in front of the music

and he pulled Elvis's voice back, where still you could understand the words and everything,

but just above Bill and myself.

# ..Well, it took my baby

# But it never will again

# No, not again... #

The studio had to be a place where we knew that nothing is perfection,

and the worst thing we could hunt for is perfection.

In other words, just the structure of the notes and this sort of thing.

We had to have enough belief in each other

to say, "Hey, we're going to make mistakes and that just might be the thing that's different about it."

What happened?

Try it one more time now, and, Scotty, don't make it too damn complicated in the middle.

Elvis, don't get to close to that mike.

Mystery Train and Baby, Let's Play House in many ways I think are two sides of the same coin.

# Ooh, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby... #

What each of them has to offer is a sense of almost irrepressible joyousness

and the feeling that they must have been created on the spot.

# ..Well, now you may go to college

# You may go to school

# You may have a pink Cadillac

# But don't you be nobody's fool

# Now, baby, come back, baby gone

# Come back, baby gone

# Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you... #

Baby, Let's Play House with that kind of burbling hiccup that runs through it

is probably one of the most influential songs

in terms of that early rockabilly sound of any song that was ever recorded.

# Ooh, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby

# Ooh, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby

# Baby, baby, baby

# Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you

# Well, you may go to college

# You may go to school

# You may have a pink Cadillac

# But don't you be nobody's fool

# Now, baby, come back... #

Elvis, when he played his guitar, standing up,

he'd just come up on the balls of his feet,

and with the big britches back then, the big pants legs,

when you do that and play, well, things start shaking.

And that's what the little girls started...

they thought he was doing it on purpose.

In fact, when he came off stage, he said, "What did I do? What's going on?"

And we all started laughing.

We said, "Well, when you started shaking your legs, they started screaming."

He said, "Well, I wasn't doing it on purpose," which was true.

But...he was a fast learner.

# ..Baby, come back, baby gone

# Baby, come back, baby gone... #

It was almost like, not mass hypnosis,

but it was what those people were waiting on,

they were looking for something they could associate with musically.

And that was Elvis.

When they put Elvis on, they couldn't get him off.

Any act that followed Elvis, they couldn't get the attention of the audience,

whereas before they'd had a good response.

And it was that way just about everywhere he went,

package shows or wherever, they always put him on last to close the show.

For the crowd, the people in the crowd, the younger people and the older people too,

seemed to get wrapped up in this emotion of his performance,

not so much, I don't think, of his shaking and wiggling,

as the way he put the emphasis on the songs,

as I say, the emphasis on the right syllable,

but we don't know what it was. He was the phenomenon.

Because these kids they really didn't have anything to associate their music with.

We in World War II, with that music of the big bands and all, we had.

But the generation that was coming up in the '50s after the war,

they had nothing really to attach themselves to.

So they went for this rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues

on radio, records, personal appearances

and particularly on television.

# ..Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you... #

Go on!

Yeah, let's go! Go!

And Sam Phillips used to say himself that if he could find a White boy

that could sing like the Blacks, with that music and all, he'd have something.

And he did.

Though only five of the original Sun recordings actually made it on to the album,

Sam Phillips' guidance had a lasting influence on the way Elvis made records for years and years.

# ..Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Wop-bob-a-loom-a-blop-bam-boom

# I got a gal named Daisy

# She almost drives me crazy

# I got a gal named Daisy

# She almost drives me crazy

# She knows how to love me, yes, indeed

# Boy, you don't know what she do to me

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy

# Wop-bob-a-loom-a-blop-bam-boom. #

CHEERING AND SCREAMING

Watching those crowds and the women going crazy over Elvis

was an ex-carnie who called himself Colonel Parker.

Parker had experience in music management, and what he saw here he had never seen before,

and he decided that he wanted to be part of that future.

I introduced Elvis to Tom Parker.

Elvis asked me later that evening about Tom Parker, and I told him, I said,

"Elvis, that fellow over there will make you a million dollars in a year,

"but he will get at least half of it."

Which he did.

What the Colonel saw as necessary was to gain a greater degree of exposure

than Sun Records was able to offer.

Promotion money, advertising money, things that simply weren't available when Elvis was at Sun.

And I think the Colonel really bamboozled RCA in many ways.

He gave the impression that there were many suitors for Elvis's hand,

but the Colonel's intention all along, I think, was simply to drive RCA's price up

and to end up at RCA.

The percentage of people employed by RCA Records at the time

who had any kind of a broad perspective on music were in the minority.

Many of them detested rock music.

Joe Carlton who was head of pop A&R at Victor

disliked it so that he went on record predicting

that the trend would last a year or maybe two.

"Well, let's say between one and two years and it'll all be out of here,

"and we'll get back to adult music, right? We'll get back to Perry Como singing Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, right?"

So he was signed by RCA Records

and I do know that the selection of material has a sort of stroke of genius about it.

RCA's well-respected producer Steve Sholes paid the 40,000 for Elvis's contract

and decided to take him down to Nashville to record his first single for the label

and, hopefully, a handful of songs also for the first album.

# Well, since my baby left me... #

If you compare what was on the charts

with this record, this is a very unusual new record.

The lyrics are very gloomy, suicidal...

The instrumentation is very bare, it's almost grim, the whole projection here...

and nobody outside Elvis himself, I believe,

would ever have thought that this would be the right record to make.

Steve Sholes may have had to have the faith

since Elvis came prepared to do this particular song, he'd picked it himself,

and Sholes would have to trust that Elvis knew what he was doing.

Sam Phillips wouldn't have picked it. Sam said that,

and I think what we see here is an instinct for creating music

that Elvis had...

that was far advanced from anybody else's at the time.

This has nothing to do with what we otherwise call rock'n'roll music,

this is not Hound Dog, this is not Tutti Frutti,

this is a completely different image that Elvis found in this.

And now a little song that I have on record, on RCA Victor,

entitled Heartbreak Hotel.

# Well, since my baby left me

# Well, I've found a new place to dwell

# Well, it's down at the end of Lonely Street

# At Heartbreak Hotel

# Where I'll be so lonely, baby

# Well, I'm so lonely

# I'll be so lonely I could die... #

They basically tried to create a sound that was similar to Sam Phillips'

and they got as far away as you could possibly get.

They tried to create their own echo by working with the effect of a hallway

and recording the echo sound from there,

not knowing that Sam actually used tape echo, delay, by running the signal through another machine

and into the recorder head. You know, they hadn't figured out what it was that he did.

They tried their best to get a weird sound,

and I think most people would actually agree that it was quite an arresting sound, Heartbreak Hotel,

it didn't sound like anything that anybody had heard before.

# ..I've found a new place to dwell... #

Sholes came back from Nashville with his new recording, much-anticipated recording,

to play to these people in New York who were his rivals, in principle, his superiors,

everybody watching him for the kind of money he'd spent,

and he was basically met with the comment,

"Well, this doesn't sound anywhere like how the Sun records sound.

"You better go back and re-record him. You better fix this, that and the other."

And it was almost like there was an element of triumph in these observations,

that, basically, this was the proof that everything had gone wrong.

The knives were out for Steve Sholes when he came back from Nashville

with Heartbreak Hotel, and many people within the RCA building,

many people would have been happy to have seen Steve Sholes fall flat on his face.

So when the opportunity came to be a little threatening to him,

"Look at all of our money that you've spent!"

they didn't hesitate.

They were kind of laying back to see where this whole structure of signing Elvis would collapse...

..the first bad song, the first single...

So Steve's reaction to all of this was to become a little defensive,

but you could walk into Steve's office, and it happened a couple of times,

especially during the Elvis work-up,

where he would be sitting like this

with his chin down on his desk and his hands over the back of his head,

and you would look in and say, "Steve? Is everything OK?"

Not a word...and so forth.

He was working through some kind of real depressions,

some terrible awareness of what the downside of this could be.

Had Heartbreak Hotel just died, Steve Sholes would have been in a lot of trouble,

but that isn't what happened. It was a sensation.

The other thing that you can see,

and this is probably of far greater significance

than merely the commercial impact,

is the impact it has on Elvis himself.

You watch him on the first show, it's a very crude performance,

it's an unbelievably galvanising performance but it's not all that sophisticated.

# ..Well, the bellhop's tears keep flowing

# The desk clerk's dressed in black

# They've been so long on Lonely Street

# They ain't ever gonna look back

# You make me so, you make me so lonely, baby... #

By the time of the second TV show, you can actually see the confidence growing in Elvis.

# Well, since my baby left me

# Well, I've found a new place to dwell

# Well, it's down at the end of Lonely Street

# At Heartbreak Hotel

# Where I'll be so lonely, baby

# Well, I'm so lonely

# I'll be so lonely I could die... #

By the fifth show, you see an almost total transformation.

All of the movements, everything, have been altered in some way, not necessarily refined,

but improved.

# ..Well, now, if your baby leaves you

# And you've got a tale to tell

# Just take a walk down Lonely Street

# To Heartbreak Hotel

# Where you will be, you'll be so lonely

# Where'll you'll be lonely

# You'll be so lonely you could die

# Well! #

Different from today, the hit single was not on the album.

So you went out and sold an album that didn't have the most popular track on it,

because the singles outsold the albums.

The story of Elvis Presley's first album

was that it was a phenomenal success, it was the label's biggest pop success ever,

by selling 300,000 albums.

Yeah, but Heartbreak Hotel sold two million singles.

I told Elvis one thing, I said, "Elvis, don't let them change you,"

and I told Steve, I said, "Steve, I really would let Elvis do what he wants to do,"

but I don't know how it was influenced, but...

they added...

a piano player before you knew it and then they added the Jordanaires,

who, you know, good group, but we needed to keep away from sounding like anybody else.

# I've been travelling over mountains... #

The other thing was repertoire.

Steve Sholes really had no idea of where Elvis was coming from,

and he sent Elvis a list of songs right around Christmas time in '55

in preparation for their first session in Nashville a couple of weeks later,

and it's clear if you look at the list of songs he sent and the later list that he sent,

that he really had no idea of what Elvis' potential was,

of the range of his interests or of the kind of material that would be suitable.

Elvis had an idea and he only did one song, I think, from each list.

When he walked in the studio and he chose a song,

he knew exactly what he wanted to hear, and he had all the input in the world.

Steve would sit back

and doze off about midnight, you know, and watch the clock.

That's why I used to call them all clock watchers,

cos Elvis produced them all.

You didn't have fancy equalisers and things back then.

If you wanted more highs, you backed the microphone off a little bit.

If you wanted a little more bass, you moved it in closer.

A lot of times we'd make mistakes in those records

and somebody would say, "We'll do that again,"

and he'd say, "No, no, no, it feels good, and I did a good job, I'm singing pretty good.

"Leave it alone," he said. "Why go over it again? You're going to kill it."

# Wop-bob-a-loom-a-blop-bam-boom... #

While Elvis was in charge in the studio,

Colonel Parker took charge of promoting and marketing his new signing

in ways that nobody had even thought about for popular music.

# Wop-bob-a-loom-a-blop-bam-boom... #

The Colonel was ready to sell anything at the shows.

I mean, you could buy Elvis this, that and the other at shows.

There would be Elvis pictures, there would be Elvis buttons,

there would a lot of Elvis stuff in there,

that he soon again developed into a merchandise operation.

# ..Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy Tutti frutti... #

I think the extent to which the Elvis product could be exploited

is indicative of the kind of consumerism and the prosperity that had taken hold.

So, you know, to that extent, I think that Elvis was a beneficiary, if you want to look at it that way,

of this sense of mass production and consumerism.

INTRO TO "Money Honey"

# You know, the landlord rang my front door bell

# I let it ring for a long, long spell

# I went to the window I peeped through the blind

# And asked him to tell me what was on his mind

# Money, honey

# Money, honey

# Money, honey

# If you want to get along with me

# Well, I said, tell me, baby, what's wrong with you

# From this day on our romance is through... #

The imaging of Elvis, I think, was handled very well

in that the Colonel had photos taken of Elvis at a show in Tampa, Florida the summer before,

where the photographer actually captured some of the lively performance,

the different, the unusual element,

and that image of Elvis with a guitar and looking completely different from anything you'd ever seen,

a black-and-white photo and then purple-and-green lettering, Elvis Presley.

No title for that album, it was just Elvis Presley.

It was again a good image, it was about image-making,

and the Colonel fully understood how to do that.

Elvis, for some reason, I don't know what the reason was, but he never questioned the Colonel.

"You take care of the business and I'll take care of the singing and the performing."

And that's the way they kept it.

The Colonel would come into the studio sometimes and never open his mouth.

He didn't say, "Elvis, now, we're not going to do this..."

Whatever Elvis wanted to do, that's what he did.

I think what happened with Elvis, what he must have loved about that first RCA session

was that he finally had a chance to make ballads

that might have a chance of being released.

When Elvis started recording,

his aim was to be a ballad singer.

That was how he saw himself and it was really just the accident of desperation

that led him away from singing predominantly ballads.

# ..And my love

# As perfect as could be... #

It's a little cliched

in the way it's built with the doo-wop backing vocals,

but it gives him the opportunity to do tricks like...

# ..That it was all for me... # ..What he's doing here.

ELVIS' VOICE RISES SHARPLY He must have loved doing that little bit.

And, you know, he stole all those vocal tricks from all the heroes,

and since the heroes came from so many different areas,

it was a funny mixture of all these little mannerisms or vocal tricks, whatever you want to call them.

# ..Could be

# She lived, she loved

# She laughed, she cried

# And it was all for me

# I-I-I'll never know

# Who taught her to lie

# Now that it's over and done... #

I Was The One is terrific.

I think it's a sort of typical country ballad

that Elvis invests with all of the stylistic traits,

because there's this almost over the top emotionalism,

and the peculiarities of pronunciation.

And sometimes you listen to some of these Elvis sessions,

and I think it's a mistake to say, "Oh, that's his Memphis-Mississippi accent."

I think in many cases he simply likes the sound,

and you might listen to it 100 times and not know what he's said,

but, you know, he gets across a feeling,

and I think you hear that very strongly in a song like I Was The One.

The only thing I like about the record

is right in the middle of it

it changes to what we call a country shuffle.

HE PLAYS ALONG WITH THE SONG

Instead of...

So it would change tempos there a little bit.

And I thought that was pretty... That was his idea.

"We need a little shuffle, we need something to boost it up a bit."

Steve Sholes was not used to Elvis's way of recording and the freedom Elvis had had with Sam Phillips,

so he was somewhat surprised that it took him two days to get the five songs recorded

that any other artist would normally record in three hours.

This in spite of the fact that several of the songs had been rehearsed live

on many, many gigs across the country.

# ..Who learned the lesson... #

We had to be friendly, we had four guys and one car, you know.

No, basically, everybody got along, you know.

You'd have your squabbles from time to time.

In one of them, Bill said, "I'm going to knock your head off!"

Scotty said, "I'll knock your head off!" "I'll whip both of you!"

You know, this is back and forth, and then it's "Stop the car! Stop the car!"

And then they'd jump out and, "Well, I'm going to hit you!" you know, as kids would play.

Nobody ever hit anybody.

And I'd look out the window and say, "Guys, hurry up and hit somebody so we can go!

"We've got 500 miles to go. If you're going to fight, fight and let's get on with it."

And they'd laugh and get back in the car and there'd be another 500 miles, you know.

We had designated drivers.

Scotty would start, maybe, or Bill, and we finally decided...

we used to try to drive as long as we could till we couldn't see the road any more,

but that got a little bit dangerous, so we said, "Well, we'll all drive three hours or four hours,"

wake up the next guy. So we took turns.

Elvis was a good driver if you led him in the right direction.

Elvis was a...

You had to beat him over the head with a club to get him up

in the morning, to get started, if we had to go to a radio station or something like that...

always late...

I mean, we were doing anywhere from 200 to 300 or 400 miles jumps every day.

A lot of times we'd just barely get there in time,

and whatever we had on that's what we went on stage with.

# Wop-bob-a-loom-a-blop-bam-boom... #

They rubbed shoulders with a lot of other stars on the road,

they met up with Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash was even playing with them,

they met Buddy Holly in Lubbock...

obviously, they played with Carl Perkins and ran into people like the Everly Brothers, Pat Boone

and Bill Haley.

# ..Tutti frutti, oh, Rudy Tutti frutti... #

But it was Elvis who provoked the most excitement and hostility.

Fans adored him, but journalists and broadcasters had begun criticising what they called

"the caterwauling voice and nonsense lyrics".

His performances, they suggested, should be confined to dives and brothels.

They just didn't want him played.

I guess because of his impact

and because of his dominance

and his trend in changing the format of music

and the style of music.

Elvis came to our station. I have a picture of us that night.

And I told Elvis, I said, "Elvis, buddy, I hate it,

"but my show, five hours a night, on a 50,000-watt clear channel,

"they won't let me play your records."

And I'll never forget what he said,

he said, "Tom, is it that they won't let you play them or is it you don't want to play them?"

And I said, "Elvis, what are you talking about, boy, as much as we've worked together?"

And he kind of laughed and walked off, but that's a fact.

And I can understand that back then

because he was absolutely revolutionising and dominating

personal appearances, formats and everything.

Hi, I have Elvis Presley on the phone. Hello?

-Hello, Elvis? Just one moment.

-Hello, Elvis?

-Hello.

Do you think you've learned anything from the criticism levelled at you?

-No, I haven't.

-You haven't?

Because I don't feel that I'm doing anything wrong.

By your personal appearances you create a sort of mass hysteria

amongst your audiences of teenagers.

Is your shaking and quaking in the nature of an involuntary response to this hysteria?

Uh...yeah... Well, I'm aware of everything I do at all times,

but it's just the way I feel.

Do you think your rocking and rolling had had an evil influence on teenagers or it just an outlet?

I don't see that any type of music would have any bad influence on people.

-I mean, it's only music.

-Mm-hm.

I can't figure that out.

I mean, a lot of the papers are saying rock'n'roll is a big influence on juvenile delinquency.

-I don't think it is.

-What about the rumour that you once shot your mother?

Well, I think that one takes the cake!

There was just, you know, a whole world opening up for him,

and the thing that is most remarkable about Elvis' early career

is that there was never a moment of faltering.

It just kept opening up. It just kept growing.

Elvis and band arrived in New York in January 1956

to record the second session their album at RCA Victor.

LAUGHTER

Same lyrics?

Here's Elvis questioning the lyrics.

There's a debate on the lyrics. We cannot of course know exactly who's debating what in here,

but there's like two verses that are interesting in this.

This is a cover version of an R'n'B song that Elvis has been doing live,

mixing it with other songs and stuff.

Now he's trying to make a real recording of it.

I think there was a provocation in there that Elvis was not unaware of.

I don't that he... He didn't overplay it,

but he was well aware that it was daring on the first TV show.

Here's a new young guy on a regular TV show that the whole family is watching,

singing Flip, Flop And Fly,

with a line in there saying "I've got so many women, I don't know which way to jump".

A few people must have been doing this with the coffee cup!

# I'm like a Mississippi bullfrog sitting on a hollow stump

# I'm like a Mississippi bullfrog sitting on a hollow stump

# I've got so many women, I don't know which way to jump

# Well, I said flip, flop and fly

# I don't care if I die... #

So as the session progresses, they get the arrangements together,

there's the piano solo, there's the guitar solo,

after the guitar solo there are two verses that are worth paying attention to.

Here's the first one.

# ..I'm like a one-eyed cat peepin' in the seafood store

# I'm like a one-eyed cat peepin' in the seafood store

# Well, I can look at you till you ain't no child no more... #

This verse is in the finished recording.

# You wear those dresses Sun comes shinin' through... #

This was taken out.

# ..You wear those dresses Sun comes shinin' through

# I can't believe my eyes All that mess belongs to you... #

So the point here is they take the one out about the sun comes shining through the dress...

and its kind of rough line about "All this mess belongs to you," about this woman,

but the whole idea of "the one-eyed cat peepin' through the seafood store" as a sexual image,

apparently, you know, got all the way through.

RCA were still uncertain about what was acceptable for a White boy singing Black lyrics

on a major label and on national television.

# ..Get out of that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans

# Well, I want my breakfast because I'm a hungry man... #

I think the impact of the television show can't be overstated.

It carried out exactly what the Colonel had articulated and had envisioned.

It put Elvis on a national stage where up to then he had been a regional star

and a tremendous regional sensation, but it put him in front of more people in one night

than he had seen in his entire career.

And it created a sense not just of Elvis's identity,

but of the newness, the strangeness, the uniqueness, the jumping-off point that this music represented.

SCREAMING

# ..I'm like a one-eyed cat peepin' in the seafood store

# I'm like a one-eyed cat peepin' in the seafood store

# Well, I can look at you till you ain't no child no more... #

Me and Scotty and Bill are standing in the background,

and Elvis said, "Can you guys say shake, rattle and roll?" "Yeah, we can do that!"

So that's what we did.

If you hear the shake, rattle... it's me and Scotty and Bill.

That was the first and last time he ever let us sing!

Can't blame him for that!

# ..Well, I said shake, rattle and roll

# I said shake, rattle and roll

# I said shake, rattle and roll

# I said shake, rattle and roll

# Well, you won't do right to save your doggone soul... #

Those eight rock'n'roll cuts they cut in New York, they fit together.

They're a style.

It's a tough style, it's a fast style, it's an aggressive style,

but it's also an exciting style.

It's almost like he came to the big city, it's a city sound,

it's a little bit brutal actually.

It's like 12 different Elvises on one album

showing each step of the development into suddenly the biggest star in America.

# Well, it's one for the money Two for the show

# Three to get ready Now go, go, go

# But don't you step on my blue suede shoes

# Well, you can do anything But lay off of my blue suede shoes

# Well, it's blue, blue, blue suede shoes

# Blue, blue, blue suede shoes

# Blue, blue, blue suede shoes, baby

# Blue, blue, blue suede shoes

# Well, you can do anything But lay off of my blue suede shoes. #

Hi, this is Elvis Presley.

I guess the first thing people want to know is why I can't stand still when I'm singing.

Some people tap their feet, some people snap their fingers and some people just sway back and forth.

I just started doing them all together, I guess.

Singing rhythm and blues really knocks it out.

I watch my audience and listen to them

and I know that we're all getting something out of our system and none of us knows what it is.

The important thing is that we're getting rid of it and nobody's getting hurt.

I suppose you know I've got a lot of cars.

People have written about it in the papers and a lot of them write and ask me why.

When I was driving a truck, every time a big shiny car drove by it started me sort of daydreaming.

I always felt that someday, somehow, something would happen to change everything for me,

and I'd daydream about how it would be.

Maybe some day I'm going to have a home and family of my own and I'm not going to budge from it.

I was an only child, but maybe my kids won't be.

Well, thanks for letting me talk to you and sort of get things off of my chest.

I sure appreciate you listening to my RCA Victor records

and I'd like to thank all the disc jockeys for playing them. Bye-bye.