Whole Lotta Shakin' Rock 'n' Roll America

For me, it makes me happy. I don't know. It puts me in a good mood.

Oh, it's crazy music, man.

Rock 'n' roll is cool, daddy, and you know it!

Rock 'n' roll had taken America by surprise in the mid '50s

and almost by accident.

Elvis and Little Richard stumbling on their styles.

Can I say something? Let it all hang out!

Bill Haley's Rock Around The Clock...

Anybody want to hear this record, huh?

..a discarded B side.

But now, rock 'n' roll would stride forward with money and management.

It would spread into main street America.

Our teenagers will never be the same after this.

It's really marvellous.

Well, he just feels the rhythm.

Birthing even wilder artists...

He said, "You have ruined a whole generation of kids."

..and ringing major alarm bells.

It sent shock waves through parenthood.

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

..as America feared its kids were running wild.

They thought rock 'n' roll was for hoodlums.

Our young people are getting out of hand everywhere.

Breathless.

And they're off!

Up to the halfway mark. They're neck and neck.

170.45mph.

1950s America,

where teenagers enjoyed a share of a turbo charged good life.

There's the Allison against the Chevy.

You can't see it through the smoke, because Chevy won.

And kids now found themselves with money to burn.

Elvis explained this to my dad and I.

He said, "We've always aimed our songs and record sales to adults."

But he says, "But you see the kids that are coming out to the show,

"they have their own money, they're buying the records

"and they're the ones that will make it happen for you.

"So, you've got to do their type of songs."

# It's one for the money

# Two for the show

# Three to get ready

# Now, go, cat, go... #

As rock 'n' roll grew, there was an explosion of record sales.

Tripling in the second half of the '50s

as teens bought millions of discs.

But as the money started to roll in, so did the money men.

And in a South that did things its own way,

there was one man in Memphis who loomed large.

On a manager/artist relationship,

very few deals are more than 20%.

That's it.

That's the artist/manager split.

The Colonel, he had a 50/50 relationship with Elvis

till the day he died.

He was a mysterious sort of guy.

There were things about the Colonel that

I don't think anybody will ever know.

He was a self-made Southern Colonel. He had jumped ship.

He was an illegal alien.

He was a Dutchman.

He did something bad, cos he didn't go back.

Some people say he may have killed somebody there.

Before he signed Elvis, he was like a travelling salesman almost.

Dr May's Feels Wonderful Vita-Zone remedy.

Brings a new spring to your walk.

He promoted all different medications and all kinds of stuff.

A sample of the marvellous freaks you'll see.

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!

He was doing these country fairs.

He sent someone out to buy some little chickens.

And they had music, playing Turkey In The Straw,

and the electric hot plate.

And they were pulling their feet up

because they were burning their feet.

And that was the Colonel's famous dancing chickens.

# Well, I woke up this morning

# And I looked out the door

# I can tell that old milk cow

# By the way she lowed... #

In early '55, the Colonel was just an adviser to Elvis,

not even his manager,

with no exclusive rights over Sun Records' local star.

Tom started running around the country saying that

Elvis Presley's contract was for sale,

which was not true.

And my dad got wind of it.

He called him and said, "Man," you know, "what the hell are you doing?

"Elvis' contract is not for sale."

Tom says, "Would you sell him? Would you ever sell him?"

And my dad says, "Well, if the price was right."

And when he said, that he was thinking in his mind what the price

I would ask, nobody would pay for Elvis Presley.

Nobody would.

And he said, "What's the price?"

And my dad said, "35,000."

Which at that time was the highest contract ever

that anybody had ever been bought for.

Colonel wanted it his way, period.

You couldn't beat him at his own game.

He could out-talk you. He could out-think you.

A pretty smart guy, really.

By November, '55, the man who didn't manage Elvis sold him

to RCA for a record fee.

And installed himself as sole representative with a huge cut

and songwriting credits.

But signed to a major label, a Southern boy,

largely unknown to the rest of America, now had a real chance

of reaching a national audience.

Elvis is in Memphis. Sidewalks roll up at ten o'clock.

Let's go down to the Variety Club.

And it was just me and Elvis, and Dewy, and the bartender.

And there's a little piano in the club.

It's about two o'clock in the morning.

And Elvis says, "Hey, GK, you and Dewy come over.

"I want you to hear my new song I want to record.

"See what you all think."

It's called Heartbreak Hotel.

# Since my baby left me

# I found a place to dwell... #

I look at Dewy, and Dewy look at me, and we just say,

"Elvis, that's a damn smash hit."

# Well, since my baby left me

# Well, I found a new place to dwell

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

# At Heartbreak Hotel... #

The first impact that I got of Elvis Presley was Heartbreak Hotel.

Which was a brand-new sound.

I realised that because of the breaks, the voice was on its own.

I tried to analyse it afterwards.

The vocal was like...

# Since my baby left

# You found a new place to dwell

# It's down at the end of Lonely Street

# This Heartbreak Hotel... #

And then...

You know what I mean? Then the music comes in.

But the vocal was up there in front first.

They concentrated on that.

# Well, if your baby leaves you

# And you got a tale to tell

# Just take a walk down Lonely Street

# To Heartbreak Hotel

# I get so lonely, baby

# I get so lonely

# I get so lonely... #

With the song climbing the charts...

..America finally got to see Elvis on national TV.

Electricity beyond comprehension.

It's the raw excitement of life that we hadn't seen yet.

It changes you inwardly. It hit you passionately.

It hits you emotionally.

Heartbreak Hotel was Elvis' first national number one.

He followed it with an even bigger hit.

Not written for him, but for a 6'4" force of nature.

# You ain't nothin' but a hound dog

# Quit snoopin' around the door

# You ain't nothin' but a hound dog... #

The song was written for a black woman - Mama Mae Thornton.

The lyrics, they were somewhat inspired by her physical presence.

Thornton was rough. Rough, like, man rough.

She'd knock you out.

She put the hound dog fist on you.

It was sort of about a gigolo

who came to this woman's house and just wanted what she had.

# You ain't nothing but a hound dog... #

The original lyric is...

# You ain't nothing but a hound dog

# Quit snooping around my door

# You can wag your tail

# But I ain't going to feed you no more... #

# You can wag your tail

# But I ain't going to feed you no more... #

It was about a freeloader.

Elvis' version had converted this

and the lyrics are a guy singing to a dog.

# Do the twist... #

Elvis Presley speeded it up.

He speeded it up to the taste where it could be rock 'n' roll-ish.

Oh, he did it fast.

He didn't want to do it like her.

So, we didn't do it like her.

Here's what I played on Hound Dog.

# You ain't nothing but a hound dog

# Crying all the time

# You ain't nothing but a hound dog

# Crying all the time

# Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit

# And you ain't no friend of mine

# Well, they said you was high classed

# Well, that was just a lie... #

He had more fun on stage than I'd ever seen anybody have.

He just was out there having a ball.

# You ain't no friend of mine

# You ain't nothin' but a hound dog... #

Just at the very end of the song, he cuts the time in half.

It slows it down in a very dramatic way and he starts moving

his hips in this really sensual way

and all the girls start screaming.

And it was kind of sensational.

# Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit

# You ain't no friend of mine... #

Why would that have been so shocking?

Nobody would have ever seen anything like this.

That was a public display

of sexuality that was unheard of.

That would have been considered pornographic.

It was like putting your finger in an electric socket,

if you were a teenager. Holy cow!

# Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit

# You ain't no friend of mine. #

TV reviewers from the day, they were incensed at this vulgarism.

This whole notion of, they'd lost control.

There is no room in this city for the vulgar

performances of Elvis Presley.

I watched him gyrate his legs and swivel his hips.

And our parent teachers group feels he should not be on television.

We have set up a 20-man committee to do away with this vulgar,

animalistic, nigger, rock 'n' roll bop.

What Elvis was doing was what he did in church.

That sanctified church he was raised in.

People danced wildly. They flop about.

He wasn't doing a vulgar striptease kind of thing.

He was doing what he would do in front of God and his mom.

They just didn't understand it. It wasn't sexual.

So, that really hurt his feelings

when somebody would say something derogatory.

Your form of gyrating while you sing has been bitterly criticised,

even by usually mild and gentle TV critics.

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

-No, I haven't.

-You haven't.

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

I remember backstage one time, Elvis had a newspaper clipping.

And they were just raking him over the coals.

He just really felt bad. He said, "They don't understand.

"We're having fun. This is young people's music.

"Don't try to understand it."

But it really hurt his feelings that the adults didn't like him.

For his next appearance on The Steve Allen Show, Elvis emerged

dressed in a tuxedo - in a sense, sexually neutered by his outfit.

When Steve Allen had him sing to a dog, he didn't like it.

And he didn't like Steve till the day he died.

And the new TV industry began to place restrictions on the way

Elvis' body was filmed.

Ed Sullivan wouldn't shoot him from the waist down.

That says a lot.

It just all depends on how you look at it.

I guess if you want to think it's nasty or sexy, you could,

but to me it's just...

Well, the two things are not necessarily the same.

Well, you know, it's just so limber and loose.

It's really marvellous.

Well, he just feels the rhythm. Digs it the most.

-You don't see anything wrong with it?

-No.

He wasn't going away. And they tried to get him to go away.

They tried big time to get him to go away.

They think he was the sexual revolution.

Yeah, he did a lot of things. But for many of us,

he was the first opportunity in America for self-exploration.

We didn't have to be what they wanted us to be,

when they wanted us to be that.

He gave us a chance to back up, explore ourselves.

And this new self-exploration raised fears that kids would question

America's way of life.

..One nation under God...

Rock 'n' roll was seen as a highway to rebellion

and delinquency.

In a lot of the papers, they say rock 'n' roll is a big influence

on delinquency. I don't think it is.

What about the rumour that you once shot your mother?

I think that one takes the cake!

I'm sure you had a lot of people that thought,

"Man, here we go, we're going to ruin America.

"Our teenagers will never be the same after this, you know?"

Particularly the white audience, you know?

They really had never seen anything like this.

The parents called it the Devil's music.

It's the sound.

Once the music hits, it's like smoking weed.

It changes things.

The obscenity and vulgarity of the rock 'n' roll music

is obviously a means by which the white man

and his children can be driven to the level with the niggers.

The children were now suddenly not behaving in lockstep,

predictable fashion, the way their parents expected them to behave.

The way they, the parents, had behaved.

This rock 'n' roll rhythm is filled with dynamite

and we don't want the dynamite to go off

in the Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City.

What do you think?

I think that man must have been nowhere,

because rock 'n' roll is cool, daddy, and you know it!

Rock 'n' roll is the most, and if they stop that,

they'll have no more music.

This rock 'n' roll rhythm has been the seed of trouble

and we want to keep trouble out of Jersey City.

They thought rock 'n' roll was for hoodlums

and you were robbing their cars while you were singing rock 'n' roll

on stage. They associated it with that, or something.

Rock 'n' roll has got to go, and go it does.

That's the best way I know to get rid of it.

Folks would be on TV, smashing records,

saying, "This is sinful and it's going to spoil our kids..."

The rock 'n' roll records must go.

No more rock 'n' roll on KWK after this week, which is,

as you know, record-breaking week.

If rock 'n' roll spoiled the kids, it spoiled them good, I think.

Frankie Wyman, a 13-year-old youngster

with great way with a song,

and The Teenagers!

# I'm not a juvenile delinquent

# No, no, no, no... #

If America needed confirmation that there was a problem,

in November '56, doo-wop's biggest stars provided it.

# ..No, no, no I'm not a juvenile delinquent... #

By the end of the year, the issue was becoming a national obsession.

# ..It's easy to be good

# It's hard to be bad

# Stay out of trouble

# And you'll be glad

# Take this tip from me

# And you will see

# How happy you will be... #

It's so interesting, we think teenagers

and we're thinking of the delinquents.

We're not thinking of the vast majority of American teenagers,

who were just as conservative as their parents.

Nora, Jim started that hat-making contest you like so much. Come on!

In the end, we're going to give the prize to the best hat.

Here are your materials.

But for the teenagers of '50s Middle America,

who married and settled down at the average age of 21,

there was a wholesome alternative.

Pat Boone.

He's a sincere, solid citizen whose interest in community

as well as business affairs would make him welcome in any town.

# You ain't nothing but a hound dog

# Crying all the time... #

Elvis did an interview. They ask him, "When are you going to get married

"and settle down and have kids, like Pat Boone?"

Elvis, with that little kind of natural leer,

said, "Why should I buy a cow when I can get milk through the fence?"

And that sent shock waves through parenthood

all over America. "See? You can't have anything to do with that guy!"

# ..Crying all the time

# Well, you ain't... #

Rock 'n' roll was too edgy for Middle America,

but Pat Boone was the answer.

He was one of them.

And the young trainee teacher hit on a way

of repackaging the music for suburban folk

and the pop charts.

Rock 'n' roll was becoming known as this new music that teenagers

were adopting, and that's where the money was.

Of course, because of that,

producers at the white record companies

were saying, "Let's find these rhythm and blues songs

"that sound like they could be pop hits, and do 'em."

I'd heard Tutti Frutti on the radio

and my first reaction was,

that's just such a simplistic, nonsense song -

a-bop-bop, a-loo-mop - what was that?

# A-bop-bop, a-loo-mop, a-lop-bop-bop

# I got a girl named Sue

# She knows just what to do... #

But we thought this could be another rhythm and blues,

pop, rock 'n' roll hit like these others, so we recorded it.

-Who, me?

-Yes, big daddy.

I remember every time me and Little Richard hear Pat Boone,

we're look at each other and burst out laughing and stuff like that.

# A-bop-bop, a-loo-mop, a-lop-bop-bop

# I got a girl, her name's Sue

# She knows just what to do

# I got a girl, her name's Sue

# She knows just what to do

# I've been to the east... #

The little cat thinks he can sing like Little Richard.

He didn't have the soul.

# All rootie, whoo! Tutti frutti... #

I did change a couple of the words

because, coming from my background and already married,

there were a couple of lines that sounded a little erotic to me -

"The way you don't know what she do to me".

Well, that's anybody's guess just what that means.

I just thought I'll change it to something innocuous -

so pretty little Susie is the girl for me...

# ..Pretty little Susie is the girl for me, tutti frutti... #

..just to make it more palatable, I felt, to a white audience.

And Pat Boone's rewriting of black rock 'n' roll

didn't stop there.

When it came to covering Fats Domino,

basic slang offended him.

Since Pat Boone was majoring in English at Columbia University,

he basically refused to sing "ain't".

# Ain't that a shame? #

I said, "Ain't that..." - that's not good English. Can't we sing...

# Isn't that a shame? #

Randy Wood at Dot Records said,

"We'll try it." So I'm recording with this rock 'n' roll band -

# Isn't that a shame? # -

and Randy said, "No, it's just not the same. It's got to be 'ain't'."

# Ain't that a shame?

# My tears fell like rain

# Ain't that... #

I tried to capture that rhythm and blues flavour,

but not being black, not being steeped in rhythm and blues music,

mine did sound different.

What you've got to remember,

if Pat Boone didn't record, some of the black artists' music

would never have been heard.

But Pat Boone went over there and brought it to them,

and he brought it to them

in a language that they could understand.

# ..My tears fell like rain... #

Just as a novelty, some of the stations started playing

the original version by Fats Domino.

The kids loved it and they would call in and say,

"I want to hear the new version of Ain't That A Shame,"

not knowing it that it had been the original

and that's how Fats Domino made the pop charts for the very first time.

Later, Fats showed me a big, piano-shaped, diamond ring

on one of his chubby fingers. He said,

"That song bought me this ring... with your record."

# Ain't that a shame? #

Pat's sanitised version of rock 'n' roll

was due, in large part, to his religious upbringing in Nashville...

..and, ironically, a church deep in the Louisiana Delta

would produce the next firebrand of rock 'n' roll.

# Amazing grace

# How sweet the sound

# That saved a wretch like me

# I once was lost

# Was lost

# But now I'm found

# I was blind

# But right now, old Jerry can see... #

Religious songs, I was raised up on religious songs,

and I played church

and I went to a Bible college

in Waxahachie, Texas.

MAN PREACHES

Jerry grew up around passionate born-again preachers,

and it was his mother who enrolled the teenage Jerry

in the strict Texan Bible school,

expecting him to play exclusively evangelical songs.

I played My God Is Real

for this boy, this preacher boy kid,

who wanted to sing it and he was singing it...

HE SINGS

..like that. I said, "You want to make a real hit with these kids?"

He said, "Yeah. What do you think?"

I said, "The thing about it..."

I gave it a kind of boogie-woogie lick, you know?

I said, "Sing it like this!"

He said, "Yeah, that's good."

And it brought the house down.

# And my God is real

# I can feel him in my soul... #

From an early age, Jerry had been pounding out a style on this piano

heard in the local honky-tonks.

Not that it impressed the dean of the Bible school.

He said, "You have ruined a whole generation of kids."

HE CHUCKLES

I said, "I never looked at it that way."

He said, "We're going to have to ask you to leave this school."

I said, "I figured on leaving anyway."

Jerry began playing local clubs in Louisiana

and building a reputation as a hot boogie-woogie talent.

He worked his daddy's farm and saved money

to travel to the Grand Ole Opry and Louisiana Hayride...

but was turned down at both.

In late '56, down on his luck,

he headed to Memphis,

selling the last of the family's eggs

to buy a tank of gas to get to Sun

to audition for Sam Phillips.

This is the legendary Jerry Lewis piano

that I'm not going to be able to play.

I mean, just think, Jerry Lee played this piano,

his hands were on it

and if you get close here, you see there's cigar burn on the piano keys,

Jerry Lee put his cigar down there, from what I understand,

and knowing Jerry Lee like I know him, that doesn't surprise me at all.

Jerry Lee Lewis, I think, was one of the only ones

that came here full of confidence, he knew he was great.

When I met Sam at his office at the studio in 1956,

he said, "What are you going to do

"when you start making all this money

"and all these young girls are going to start screaming,

"trying to get to you - how are you going to handle that?"

I said, "Not very hard at all."

# Now blue ain't the word

# For the way that I feel

# That old storm brewing in this heart of mine... #

It was more or less an audition to see what Jerry had,

and I think it was the first time I'd ever played with a piano player,

so it was kind of weird, meeting all this, coming together,

and these guys wanting to play music, you know?

But when he started playing that piano, man,

it was a whole different story.

JM and Jerry had only just met

but this first take of Jerry's audition,

a cover of Ray Price's country hit, Crazy Arms,

became his debut single.

# Crazy arms

# That reach to hold somebody new... #

I was the first disc jockey in the world to play Crazy Arms,

and even though I was a rock 'n' roll disc jockey,

I was playing rhythm and blues, for some reason, he kind of fitted in.

It was different. So then Sam knew that he had to get a follow-up song.

Somebody suggested, "Let's do that shakin' song we did the other day,"

so we do Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On.

We'd never rehearsed it in the studio.

One cut.

We set it down in one cut.

# Come over, baby

# Whole lotta shakin' goin' on

# Yes, I said come on over, baby

# Baby, you can't go wrong... #

Radio stations, they just didn't want to play it

because any suggestive lyrics was taboo.

You know, it was a sexy thing.

That's why they banned the record.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On.

I auditioned for Steve Allen in his office,

and I played Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On,

and he said, "I want him on my show,

"Sunday night, doing that song,

"word for word, just like he did it now."

Here he is, jumping and joking, Jerry Lee Lewis!

APPLAUSE

# Come on over, baby

# Whole lotta shakin' goin' on

# Well, come on, baby

# Baby, you can't go wrong

# We ain't fakin'

# Whole lotta shakin' goin' on

# Yeah, come on over, baby

# We got chicken in the barn

# Whoo, honey

# Come on over

# We got the bull by the horn

# Oh, we ain't fakin'

# Whole lotta shakin' goin' on

# Well, shake, baby, shake

# Shake, baby, shake... #

It was a big thing in America.

All you gotta do, honey, is stand in one spot,

wiggle it around just a little bit, wiggle IT around just a little bit,

and they said, "Whoa, wait a minute. Wiggle IT around.

"What is IT?"

All you gotta do, honey...

kinda stand in one spot.

You know, I mean, it's like... HE WHISTLES

You know, wiggle it around.

Oh, yeah, yeah - I used to stand in one spot

and wiggle it round a little bit.

Yeah, that's when you got something.

If you're not getting what he means when he's saying it... Hah!

# Oh, shake, baby, shake

# Shake, baby, shake

# Shake, honey, shake

# Shake, baby, shake

# Come on over

# Whole lotta shakin' goin' on

# Oh! #

Steve Allen kind of gave his stamp of approval,

and that kind of broke the barriers.

From then on, people thought, "Well, hey, it's OK."

So, the song really, from that point on, took off.

When they lifted the ban on it, it was selling, like,

I don't know, 380,000 records a day.

Which is pretty good, for a country boy!

# Shake!

# Shake, honey, shake!

# Oh, shake, baby

# Shake, baby, shake

# We're makin'

# A whole lot of shakin' goin' on. #

That's when I knew we was...

rolling in money.

Money has a way of changing people,

or doing them in, you know?

Jerry was a guy who, real quick, became very fond of himself.

I mean, he just all of a sudden -

he was this humble little cat from Louisiana,

now he's Jerry Lee Lewis, you know?

And struttin' around like a peacock.

Well, he always had - his ego was intact.

He was like a little peacock, you know?

Ruled the roost.

Very, very interesting guy.

You might could ring his neck sometimes, but he's interesting!

Of all the bands and all of the clubs that I've played in,

the only time I feared for my life

was when I was playing with Jerry Lee in these nightclubs.

He could get us in more trouble,

and you didn't know if you were going to get out alive.

First off, he'd start flirting with the women,

and their husbands or boyfriends, they'd get mad at Jerry,

and then they'd start yakking back and forth,

and the next thing you know, you've got four or five of these guys

waiting for you at the door when you pack up.

But it wasn't long before Jerry graduated from the club circuit

to bigger venues,

bringing about a new set of conflicts.

# My name is Jerry Lee Lewis

# And I'm gonna do you a little boogie on this here piano... #

By mid '57, Jerry was on a national tour with Chuck Berry.

# I'll make you do it

# And make you do it until you break it... #

The promoter said, "I'll flip a coin -

"you open one night, you open the next,"

and it seemed to be the first night that Jerry lost out.

But Jerry wasn't real happy about it

and, of course, they had a few differences about that.

And Chuck, he just insisted on closing the show.

I said, "No problem. You close it."

# Lord, I do my little boogie woogie every day... #

Well, I just had a Coke bottle, about this much gasoline in it,

he just thought I was drinking a Coke, you know?

And I set it on the piano.

# Well, Lord, I do my little boogie woogie every day... #

I finished my set, and I walked off,

and I just bumped into the Coke bottle,

and the gasoline poured out into the piano.

And I just struck a match to it.

-And it BLAZED up.

-HE CHUCKLES

It was burning like crazy.

And here come the firemen,

they all had axes in their hands, and everything.

They said, "How the hell did it happen?"

I said, "You got me."

# You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain... #

"It's your turn to go on, Chuck."

# You broke my will But what a thrill

# Goodness gracious Great balls of fire... #

Have you ever heard the saying, "Where there's smoke, there's fire"?

Cos I know how it feels when you sing it.

The beat, the beat, the beat.

They called him a prince of devils.

I know the lost position you get into, in the beat.

# Kiss me, baby

# Mmm! #

Listen to this talent that God has given me!

A lot of the early rock 'n' rollers believed in

a fire and brimstone hell,

and feared that what they were doing

might take them to hell.

# I chew my nails and then I twiddle my thumbs... #

I mean, he scared me to death on the road.

Jerry comes in the room, and jumps up on the bed that I'm sleeping in,

and starts telling us we're all going to hell

for playing rock 'n' roll music - scared me to death, man.

I'm thinking, "Well, man... surely not, for that!" You know?

"Got to be something worse than that!"

First time I met Elvis, he was leaving,

he was walking out the front door.

I said, "Just a minute, Elvis,

"there's one thing I want to ask you before you leave."

I said, "If you died, do you think you'd go to heaven or hell?"

Bluntly put it like that, you know?!

And he said, "Jerry Lee, don't EVER say that to me again."

I said, "OK."

I think I shook him up pretty good.

When I'm playing music, I also feel the spirit.

And then you start wondering, where's the spirit coming from?

Is this the Satan spirit, or is this the Lord spirit?

And if we are sinners - and we are,

if we need God - and we do...

If you interview most of these folks from the South,

I think you're going to get pretty much the same answer

from all of them.

You know? And that's what these guys were wrestling with, you know?

And between takes of Great Balls of Fire, Jerry convinced himself

he'd crossed a line.

'H-E-L-L.

'Great God almighty, great balls of fire.

'It's a joy of God.

'But when it comes to worldly music, and rock 'n' roll...'

'Work it out!'

'..then I have the devil in me.'

I think my dad had to kind of wrangle that notion out of him,

in order to feel all right about recording it.

I'm not sure that he ever completely satisfied himself

that he WASN'T playing the devil's music.

'Listen, Mr Phillips, I don't care - it ain't what you believe.

'It's what's written in the Bible.'

-'Well, wait a minute...'

-'It's what's there, Mr Philips.'

'No, no.'

Weren't no convincing Sam...

..that there was a heaven and there was a hell.

There was no convincing him of that.

And I really worried myself to death about it, you know?

I just wanted to make sure that when I descend from this earth

and my soul leaves this body,

I just really want to make sure that I don't go to hell.

That I go to heaven.

I'd hate to know that I missed out on going to heaven.

20TH CENTURY FOX FANFARE

From 1956 on,

there was flourish of rock 'n' roll films,

and the best of them, The Girl Can't Help It,

had a few tricks up its sleeve.

This motion picture was photographed in the grandeur of CinemaScope,

and...

Pardon me.

This was the first rock 'n' roll movie with big production values,

and saw rock 'n' roll coming of age.

That was the biggest rock 'n' roll movie of the time -

it was in colour, for a start off.

..gorgeous lifelike colour by DeLuxe.

And the film introduced a whole new generation

of young, white rock 'n' roll talent.

# Well, she's the gal in the red blue jeans... #

You know, Gene Vincent was in it - that's the first time

and only time, I think, that I saw him on film.

# She's the woman that I know

# She's the woman that loves me so

# Say be-bop-a-lula She's my baby

# Be-bop-a-lula I don't mean maybe

# Be-bop-a-lula She's my baby love

# My baby love, my baby love

# Let's rock! #

If you'd only ever heard them on record, and all of a sudden,

there they are in vibrant Technicolor...

-Fats?

-'Yeah.'

It's me, Miller.

Watch the television!

Eddie Cochran - one of America's top rock 'n' rollers.

# Well, I've got a gal with a record machine

# When it comes to rockin' She's the queen

# We love to dance on a Saturday night... #

It was treated as a musical, you know, but it was our musical.

Teenagers' musical.

# Up on the 12th I'm ready to drag

# Well, 15th floor I'm starting to sag

# Get to the top I'm too tired to rock. #

It was a Fred Astaire movie, you know?!

# Ba-ba boo

# Boopie doo

# Sincerely

# Oh, yeah, sincerely... #

Drive-ins were developed in the 1930s

to attract a family audience to the movies,

but hit their peak in the '50s.

As films were aimed at a younger audience,

and car ownership and teen licences multiplied,

kids in cars and drive-in culture boomed.

# Oh, you know

# How I love you... #

Being able to drive a car was freedom.

And, of course, it was sex - it was all about sex.

Suddenly, teenagers had privacy.

When you talk about a car,

you're really talking about the hotel.

The guys couldn't go to the hotel, you know?

And let's face the facts - it's the back seat of the car.

That was his hotel.

To court a teenager without a car -

you're dead.

My dad owned a drive-in in Azle, Texas.

It was called the Eagle.

By the 1950s, they're kind of carnivalesque spaces.

# Wake up little Susie, wake up... #

The film wasn't the only attraction.

# Wake up little Susie, wake up... #

Everybody recognised that there was ample opportunity

for the kind of thing that you weren't supposed to do.

# The movie's over It's four o'clock

# And we're in trouble deep

# Wake up little Susie... #

Wake Up Little Susie,

'57's risque tale of staying out late at the drive-in

was a perfect example of the evolution of rock 'n' roll

and teen culture.

The music was now reaching broader America,

and spawning new young, white singers

speaking directly to the white teen market...

# Wake up little Susie We gotta go home. #

..singers who hailed from beyond the Delta,

like Virginia's Gene Vincent

and sometime Oklahoma boy Eddie Cochran.

The Everly Brothers, from Brownie, Kentucky,

were the real country deal...

MUSIC: Precious Memories by The Everly Brothers

..raised on the high, lonesome mountain music of Kentucky miners.

# Precious memories

# Unseen angels

# Sent from somewhere to my soul... #

The teenagers were signed to a Nashville label,

destined for a career in country...

until a young Don collided with the swamp guitar sound

of legendary rocker Bo Diddley.

I listened to Bo Diddley, and I went, "Oh...!"

And I said, "I am never going to be happy with country music now.

"I'll never be happy."

Archie Bleyer, their label boss at Cadence,

had a debut song in mind for them

that had been rejected by 30 artists.

Archie Bleyer, he brought it to us,

and I said, "Well, we could do it."

I said I wanted to use that Bo Diddley sound on some of my songs.

He said, "Why don't you take that arrangement

"and just put it on that song?"

And I said, "Why not?"

I did that, and that was Bye Bye Love.

# Bye bye love

# Bye bye happiness

# Hello loneliness

# I feel like I could die

# Bye bye, my love, goodbye

# There goes my baby with-a someone new... #

I think we just immediately saw them

as big brothers that we could trust.

They weren't show business people being forced on us.

-What is your name?

-Don Everly, age 20.

-How about you? What's your name?

-Phil Everly, and I'm 18 years old.

Will both of you please smile?

They looked collegian,

but they had this look saying,

"Don't mind what this looks like,

"that's not who we are."

Because the glint in the Everly Brothers' eyes was,

"We know more than we're telling."

18, 20...

We just loved that.

I think Pat Boone is old enough to be their grandfather!

LAUGHTER

# Well, Johnny is a joker

# He's a bird

# A very funny joker

# He's a bird

# But when he jokes my honey

# He's a dog

# His jokin' ain't so funny

# What a dog

# Johnny is a joker that's a-tryin' to steal my baby

# He's a bird dog. #

When I saw them on television, I was astonished,

because I assumed there were three of them.

That's where the light went on

that there's something about family vocal cords -

if you have the same structure in your vocal cords...

The overtones feed back on each other and it sounds much thicker.

If you sounded really good, it was working, you did feel that.

It was another voice, you know.

And their singing style makes me squeal right along with all their fans.

So a big welcome to the Everly Brothers!

One of the things that you noticed

was the sound of the guitars is equal to the sound of their vocals.

You're talking about layer of layer of layer of mastery with the Everly Brothers.

I think it's one of the first times I'd ever heard tremolo guitar.

Lo and behold, it's Chet Atkins,

this Nashville guitarist who is playing a Gretsch.

Tremolo was our sound. I mean, that's what Chet gave to us.

Chet called it tremolo.

And he was the first one to do that, as far as I know.

I said, "Can we use it on our record?" He says, "After use it on my record."

It was like something he had, you know. And it was different.

# Never felt like this

# Until I kissed you... #

Look, we have an autograph table over there,

and I think one of these kids would like your autograph.

-Why don't you go on over?

-We'd be glad to.

-OK, thanks.

# Never had you on my mind... #

But if Chuck Berry had perfectly described the physical features

of the teenage world, the Everlys took it one step further

and got right inside the teenage mind.

# A-ha, I kissed you Oh, yeah... #

I first heard the Everly Brothers on my way to school, on the school bus,

with friends who said, "So, have you heard this new song, Dream?"

"No," I said.

Somebody played Dream to me and I thought I would DIE!

"What a song!" I said. "Holy cow, what is THAT?"

# Dream...

SCREAMING AND APPLAUSE

# ..dream, dream, dream,

# Dream, dream, dream, dream,

# When I want you

# In my arms When I want you... #

It absolutely captured just how we felt

in terms of the yearning, yearning for the boys, for a boyfriend.

Couldn't really say sex...

We didn't know that we wanted sex.

But yearning, we understood.

# When I feel blue

# In the night... #

For a young mind, talking about dreaming,

to dream of the love that I have, is so beautiful.

Because it stops so much loneliness.

# Is dream, dream, dream, dream, dream

# I can make you mine... #

You loved the way those harmonies intertwined, and I think that harmony

represented a kind of intertwining of the sexes, too.

There was something very erotic about it.

# I'm dreaming my life away... #

It's just magical psychology of heartfelt beauty.

# I love you so, and that is why... #

It's different than Elvis giving us the advice,

"Don't ever kiss me once, kiss me twice."

This is when you are lonely,

and you can just dream about love from her,

and it's as good as being there.

It's just beautiful advice.

# Dream, dream, dream, dream... #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

ROCK 'N' ROLL PLAYS

The Everly's sweet Nashville harmonies soothed the nerves

of an increasingly paranoid America.

Until two days ago, that sound had never been heard on this earth.

Suddenly it has become as much a part of 20th-century life

as the whir of your vacuum cleaner.

With the Russian satellite Sputnik launched in late '57,

emitting a mysterious signal picked up on American radio waves.

You can feel that they have something out there

that the majority of people don't know about.

Definitely alarming.

But not everyone was afraid of what was out there.

'Today, visitors from space may be studying us from similar heights.'

And just over 100 miles from the UFO epicentre, Roswell,

in the dry flatlands of New Mexico,

lay otherworldly Clovis...

# You ain't been blue

# No, no, no... #

..where an out-of-the-way studio was gaining a reputation.

Built by easy-listening duo Norman and Vi Petty,

who created a home-from-home for musicians including

Texan boys Buddy Holly And The Crickets.

# Always wear that mood indigo

# Since my baby said goodbye... #

This is the back of the studio, where we could come back and relax

and rest a little bit from the recordings.

We loved to come back here because it was so nicely furnished.

It was more modern than what we were accustomed to where we lived.

If we were extremely tired...

the bottom would roll out and rise up

and it would make a bed all the way across

this back part of the room here.

And I've seen it full of bodies...

Live ones, that is.

Buddy And The Crickets were down-home, ordinary kids.

Teenage school friends playing covers

and starting to experiment with writing their own songs.

I think in the way that he wrote songs you could tell he was from Texas.

They weren't something that was real flashy,

like if he had been living in New York City

or Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania.

I went and saw the John Wayne movie, The Searchers.

John Wayne answered questions like, "That'll be the day."

-You want to quit, Ethan?

-That'll be the day.

Buddy was sitting there, playing something, and he said,

"You ought to write a song." I'd never tried to write

a song before and I said, "That'll be the day!"

I hope you die!

That'll be the day.

He said, "Not a bad idea, that'll be the day..."

# Well, that'll be the day

# When you say goodbye

# Yeah, that'll be the day... #

It was February 1957

I drove over to Clovis to do a demo to try to get a record deal...

# ..cos that'll be the day when I die

# Well, you give me all your loving... #

This is the control room,

where Norman controlled the sound that was coming from the production room.

And he had a remote control where he could sit right here,

start the tape and he's mixing the sound as we go.

# ..that'll be the day, when you make me cry... #

We was doing a demo to send to Roulette Records,

and we sort of set it and played it,

and we didn't think it was perfect,

or anything like that, cos all the rim noise was there, and we were all in one room.

The demo ended up coming out as the record,

which was quite amazing because we'd already done it.

He would take the master tape

and transcribe it to an acetate, like this.

This the artist could purchase for a minimal fee of about three bucks,

and it'll be a lifetime memory for him.

So 15 to record That'll Be The Day,

and I still have my three dollar demo here, from back in those days.

# All of my love, all of my kissing

# You don't know what you've been missing, oh, boy

# Oh, boy

# When you're with me, oh, boy

# Oh, boy... #

We were in Odessa, Texas, on our tour

with Elvis and Johnny and the rest of us.

# All of my life, I've been a-waiting

# Tonight there'll be no hesitating... #

They opened the show. Elvis said, "Man, he's great!"

There and again I said, "Him?" SHE LAUGHS

# Stars appear and the shadows are falling

# You can hear my heart a-calling... #

I met Buddy Holly first in junior high school,

I was in seventh grade and he was in eighth grade.

He sort of stood out. From the first time I met him,

he wore glasses and he needed to wear glasses.

He was always really neat and tidy.

He was just an intelligent, well-mannered, smart guy.

HE CHUCKLES

# Dum-dee-dee-dum-dum, oh, boy Dum-dee-dee-dum-dum, oh, boy... #

I remember my best friend in junior high school saying, "Wow!

"He's as ugly as I am. You don't have to be Elvis Presley.

"If HE can be a rock star, so can I."

I think we were the first ugly band!

And then the Stones took over.

For Buddy And The Crickets, success was almost overnight.

Their debut hit, That'll Be The Day, a number one in the US and UK,

and five top-ten hits in the first year.

# Feels so good... #

But as early as the second hit, school friends Buddy and Jerry

found their songwriting tightly knit with their personal lives.

Buddy and I were riding round in a '55 Oldsmobile and he played me

this song he had started called Cindy Lou,

and it went sort of like this...

# See, if you knew, Cindy Lou

# Then you'd know why I feel blue about Cindy... #

And I said, "Hey, man!" Because I had a high school...sweetheart.

Anyway, I said, "Let's change that to Peggy Sue."

# If you knew, Peggy Sue, then you know why I feel blue

# About Peggy, my Peggy Sue-oo-oh

# Oh, well, I love you, gal, yeah

# I love you, Peggy Sue. #

Everything's going real good, until Peggy Sue came out,

and we played in California and Peggy Sue's there.

I said I was going to get married, being 18 and really stupid.

# Oh, well, I love you, gal Yes, I love you, Peggy Sue. #

And in 1958, on a trip to New York, Buddy Holly had a chance meeting

with a young receptionist that would change his life.

It was a whirlwind romance.

He proposed to Maria Elena on the same day he met her.

But Jerry's memories of this time are not altogether happy.

# Peggy Sue got married not long ago... #

Buddy, he said, "I'm going to get married, too, if you are."

And this is the truth, and I've never said this before, but it's true.

And I said, "Why'd you want to get married just cos I'm getting married?"

# This is what I heard

# Of course, my story could be wrong... #

When I went up to New York City and Buddy Holly called me

on the phone and said, "I'm thinking of getting married, Jerry.

"What do you think about that?"

I said, well, I wouldn't go on my past experience!

He said, "I know you,

"should I do it or should I not?"

I said, I'll tell you, Buddy,

it's something you'll have to work out in your own mind.

Or work it out through God, that's all I can tell you.

He said, "Well, thank you, I appreciate it."

And that's last time I talked with him.

He married Maria Elena and I married Peggy Sue.

Things weren't the same, for sure.

I got married in July and they did it in August.

And so we went on our honeymoons together. Not real romantic.

He had a lot more success. So we said we'd all move to New York.

Then we got back, this is as true as I've ever told the story.

We go back to Clovis and Elena was heavily influenced on this anyway,

but I said, you sure you want to move to New York?

You know, who's going to be running the show up there?

We'd seen signs that Maria Elena was going to take charge and that

we might get kicked out of the band or something, was how it felt.

So we decided to stay in Clovis.

For whatever reason, Buddy and Maria Elena stayed in New York

and the Crickets stayed in Clovis.

The next tour Buddy would undertake would be solo.

And nothing would ever be the same in rock 'n' roll.

# The night we met I knew I... #

BAM!

# The best things in life are free... #

We were exploiting our sexuality

by being fully dressed!

Get down!

'Welcome to American Bandstand!'

It was like apple pie and rock 'n' roll.

I was a fantasy boyfriend.

"Oh, hi there."

He said, "I hate this thing!"

You're flushing our money down the toilet...

It brings back a lot of old memories.

It was all going to go Southern California.

# That's what I want... #

-The Beatles?

-Who?

You can't clean it up, cos it's dirty to begin with!