Last Train to Memphis

by Peter Guralnick

  For his part, George was having a ball. The shows themselves were outrageous, there were bomb threats and riots, the atmosphere was charged, and after the show there were always girls to “promote.” George served as a kind of scout and advance man (“Elvis knew I could talk”). But after a while he was forced to carry identification with him—a picture of Elvis and him together—just to prove he was who he said he was. The Colonel didn’t much like it, George knew; what was he going to do about it, though? Colonel was always worrying about potential trouble, and George tried to be careful in his selection process. He told the girls they had nothing to worry about, it was a good bunch of guys, no drunken orgies or wild sex scenes, but in the end who was he going to please, Elvis or the Colonel? There was only so much the Colonel could expect from Elvis, and the Colonel understood that, too.

  “Hysterical Shrieks Greet Elvis in His Gold Jacket and Shoes” read the headline in the Detroit paper, which complained that “the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you’re liable to get killed.” “Convent Suspends Eight Elvis Fans,” declared the Ottawa Citizen with reference to the expulsion of eight girls from the Notre Dame Convent school for attending the Ottawa show. In Philadelphia, in his first major appearance in the Northeast, he was pelted with eggs by Villanova University students, and in a headline that could have summed up the general journalistic reaction, under the sarcastic banner of “Music (?) Review,” the Toronto Daily Star trumpeted, “All Too Plainly Visible Elvis Is Barely Audible.”

  In Canada, Oscar Davis finally made his move. Playing on the split that had clearly grown up between Elvis and his musicians, Davis, who was still doing all the advance work for his onetime protégé but dreamt of a day when he could once again operate on his own, approached first Scotty and Bill, then D.J., and then the Jordanaires, about having him represent them. They were not tied to the Colonel, he argued, but they were clearly being exploited—and he could just about guarantee them that the boy would not risk losing his entire musical troupe over a matter of a few dollars. His importunings did not fall on deaf ears. Scotty and Bill were more than ready to make the leap, and in the end D.J. was, too: Presley was making millions, and they were still on $200-a-week pay when they were working, $100-a-week retainer when they were not. In the end the Jordanaires were the lone holdouts, but without them there was simply not enough leverage. “He offered us a better deal than what the Colonel had offered us,” said Gordon Stoker, “but I think we more or less didn’t trust him. He was beautifully dressed, and he didn’t have the bull that the Colonel had, but he was a con artist, too. A beautiful con artist, immaculately dressed, always sharp as a tack—but that’s the reason we didn’t fall for it.”

  They played ten cities in ten days—big cities, far removed from their former regional base—and the tour grossed more than $300,000 with a commensurate sale of programs and souvenirs. It generated coverage, controversy, and cash, and from nearly every point of view could not fail to be accounted a success, but if anything was needed to confirm the Colonel’s growing conviction that this was a phenomenon that had orbited out of control (“All those sweet little girls out there, they’re fucking animals,” he had told Hal Kanter), this tour served to do it. It wasn’t just the riots, egg throwing, and ridicule, nor even the concerted effort by the Catholic Church to paint Presley as some kind of a moral pariah (in St. Louis, Catholic schoolgirls had burned him in effigy and recited prayers “as public reparation for excesses committed by teenagers”). It was just too damn out of control—and it was becoming increasingly impossible even to do the show. “Girls screamed and hundreds of flash bulbs were discharged,” reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of a typical scene, “making the hall look as if it were under an artillery barrage. Presley clung to the microphone standard and staggered about in a distinctive, distraught manner, waiting for the noise to subside a bit….” He couldn’t even hear himself. Perhaps thinking of this, Gordon Stoker came to feel that he sought protection in the group; “on some numbers he worked almost just up in our face because he would feel more secure this way.”

  In Philadelphia, speaking to a group of high school newspaper reporters, Elvis expressed suitable humility in the face of a flurry of not particularly respectful questions (“Is it true you can’t get married before you’re twenty-three—that it’s in your contract?”). What were his most memorable high school experiences? he was asked. When he didn’t answer, the reporter persisted: “Well? Didn’t you have any?” What did he think of his first movie? “It was pretty horrible. Acting’s not something you learn overnight. I knew that picture was bad when it was completed. I’m my own worst critic. But my next picture is different. I know I done a better job in it.” And what of the future? “I just take every day as it comes,” Elvis told the teenage reporter, who identified herself as Rochelle. “I don’t plan too far ahead. There’ll be record albums, of course, and movies, too. Don’t know anymore; maybe I’ll go back to driving a truck.”

  And then he was home. The work on Graceland was proceeding, but the house wasn’t close to ready and the Presleys were still living on Audubon when Yvonne Lime came to visit the Friday of Easter weekend. The first thing that Elvis did was to take her out to see his new home, and he proudly showed both it and her off on Saturday as a newspaper photographer snapped pictures. In one photograph, which went on the UP wire, they are standing in front of the mansion holding hands, the pillars and the portico in the background. Yvonne is wearing a striped, pajamalike outfit and looking up adoringly at an Elvis who appears studiedly sincere. In another shot they are clowning around, holding up a window frame in front of them, Yvonne more animated but still wholesomely perky. Yvonne was surprised to discover how small and cramped the house on Audubon Drive was, she reported in Modern Screen magazine, made even more cramped by all the furniture Elvis had bought and all the fan mail that was boxed up on the porch. They ate meat loaf and mashed potatoes and after dinner sat out on lawn chairs in the back. Elvis held Yvonne’s hand and Gladys’ and declared that they were his “two best girls.”

  On Saturday night they went over to Sam’s new house for a party, and Elvis checked out the decor. Sam’s wife, Becky, a DJ and big band authority on WHER, was the perfect hostess; Dot and Dewey Phillips were there; and, of course, Sam’s eleven- and nine-year-old sons, Knox and Jerry, immaculate in their Lansky’s-bought clothing and carefully sculpted DAs, hung on Elvis’ every word and gesture. Elvis introduced Yvonne to many of his old friends and acquaintances, and as the evening wore on and it started to rain, the party gravitated to the living room, where he began to sing spirituals and hymns. “It was a thrilling experience,” Yvonne wrote. He sang “on and on, until day began to break and it was Easter morning.” For Dot Phillips, who had known Elvis informally ever since her husband had played the first record, it was one of the most moving moments of a long acquaintance. They ended up out by the pool as the sun came up on Easter morning, with Elvis singing and Becky serving scrambled eggs just as hard as Elvis liked them.

  JAILHOUSE ROCK

  April–September 1957

  COLONEL PARKER, WITH FANS.

  (ALFRED WERTHEIMER)

  HE WAS STAYING at the plush Beverly Wilshire, occupying the penthouse apartment plus the Presidential Suite. Scotty and D.J. and Bill tried it, but they didn’t like it—it was too far removed from the hustle and bustle—so they moved back to the Knickerbocker, in the heart of downtown Hollywood. Elvis had plenty of friends to keep him company in any case. George and Gene and Arthur Hooton (“Arthritis”) had ridden out with him on the train, and Cliff, of course, was there to meet them when they arrived. Junior had wanted to come, too, and Elvis had told him that he could join them in a little while—if he didn’t fuck up. The Colonel’s brother-in-law, Bitsy Mott, had a single just down the hall, and Colonel and Mrs. Parker were staying on another floor. There were always girls at the soda fountain downstairs looking for dates—pretty little starlets, beautiful girls looking to break into the bus
iness, it was known for that reason as “the Mink Farm” to some. It was nice.

  It had been the usual long, boring train ride out. Gene and Arthur slept most of the time, but George was excited just to be going to Hollywood. He read lines with Elvis until he knew most of the script himself, and they talked about a lot of things. What was success, Elvis wondered aloud, if you couldn’t share it with your friends? Part of him still couldn’t believe it was real. “One time he turned to me, and he said, ‘I wonder how the people feel, George.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘When I went to audition for Arthur Godfrey, they told me to watch the mailbox. Well, man, every day for two weeks I met that mailman—I couldn’t wait. And I never got a response. I wonder how they—’ I said, ‘Well, Elvis, I guess they’re kicking themselves in the seat of the pants.’… He kind of laughed about it, and then he told me about a couple more gaffes, but the thing about it was, he had so much drive, so much determination and energy, he just knew he was going to make it and nothing was going to stop him.”

  He reported to the recording studio on Tuesday, April 30, with Freddy, Steve Sholes, a number of other RCA officials and MGM executives, plus the band (augmented once again by Dudley Brooks on piano) and Thorne Nogar all in attendance. It was a good, productive session, going from 10:00 in the morning till 6:00 at night. The only thing that made it different from previous sessions—aside from the fact that there was no battle over using the movie studio soundstage, once the Colonel had made it clear that there was not going to be any battle—was the presence, and the contributions, of the film’s two principal songwriters.

  Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had been commissioned, more or less, to write the score. Just two years older than Elvis, but with a string of r&b hits (including “Hound Dog”) going back into their teens, they had not exactly leapt at the opportunity. In fact, Jean Aberbach had practically had to lock them in their New York hotel room the month before just to get them to settle down long enough to write four songs (the other two had then been farmed out). As hipsters of long standing and deep-seated belief, their attitude, simply stated, was: who was this lame ofay moving in on their territory? They had hated the job he had done on “Hound Dog”; “Love Me,” the second song they gave him, was their idea of a joke; and they hadn’t been particularly impressed by the two songs of theirs that he had recorded for Loving You either. They were scarcely prepared, then, for the person they actually met at Radio Recorders, where Big Mama Thornton’s original version of “Hound Dog” had been cut four years earlier, with the same songwriters present and the same recordist, Thorne Nogar, engineering.

  “We thought we were the only two white kids who knew anything about the blues,” said Mike Stoller, “but he knew all kinds of stuff.” “We thought he was like an idiot savant,” echoed Jerry Leiber, “but he listened a lot. He knew all of our records. He knew Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson. He loved Ray Charles’ early records. And he was a workhorse in the studio—he didn’t pull any diva numbers.” They fenced warily for a while, trading enthusiasms, and Elvis and Mike sat down at the piano to play some four-hand blues. Afterward, Jerry and Mike ran through the title song they had written for the new picture, and Elvis smiled approvingly at Leiber’s hoarse, knowing vocal and said, “Okay, let’s make it.”

  They got three songs on the first day, but then, on the following day, their luck ran out. The movie studio was concerned, evidently, at the amount of time that had been spent recording three titles, and someone spoke to the executive in charge of production about it. As Elvis warmed up at the piano singing spirituals with the Jordanaires (“The thing that really surprised us was that there was no clock,” said Mike Stoller. “It was amazing—Jerry and I just weren’t used to that”), the studio man prodded Thorne and asked him if he couldn’t do something. Then at lunchtime, in Gordon Stoker’s recollection, he approached the Jordanaires and told them, “ ‘Get him off this stuff. In fact, if he starts singing [gospel], don’t sing with him.’

  “So Elvis came back from lunch and started at the piano and we didn’t sing. And he said, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with you guys?’ And it fell to my duty to say, ‘Elvis, they told us we couldn’t sing with you.’ He got up and said, ‘If I want to bring you guys out here and sing the entire week of spirituals, this is what we’ll do.’ And he left, just walked out and left.”

  Elvis didn’t come back into the studio at all on the following day, but when he returned on Friday it was as if nothing had happened, except that, seemingly by the tacit consent of all concerned, Leiber and Stoller were now in charge. To Freddy Bienstock it was a logical enough progression: “They came in because we pushed them in, and they were certainly more talented as record producers than Steve Sholes was.” And whatever reservations Elvis might have felt, he was now completely caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, in Leiber’s manic flood of ideas (“Elvis thought Jerry was completely crazy,” said Bienstock, “with those two different-color eyes, one brown, one blue”), in Stoller’s patient musical coaching of Scotty and the other musicians, in the inspired lunacy that for the moment seemed to have come back into the recording studio. “He was completely open,” said Mike Stoller. “I played piano to demonstrate—in fact I played piano on some of the sides—and Jerry would sing. And then we would stay on the floor while he was recording, with Jerry sort of conducting with body English. Frequently we’d have what we thought was a take, and he would say, ‘No, let me do it again,’ and he would just keep doing it. As long as he felt like doing it. Sometimes it got better, but other times we knew we had it, and he would just enjoy himself, and then he would say ‘Let’s hear it,’ and then, ‘Yeah, that one had it.’ In many ways he was a perfectionist, and in other ways he was very relaxed in the studio—a strange combination.”

  However relaxed he may have been feeling at this point, though, there was an incident toward the end of the session that betrayed some of the longtime tensions in the group. Bill Black was feeling increasingly frustrated not just at the indifference with which he saw himself and Scotty being treated but by his own difficulties in trying to learn how to play the electric bass (the electric bass had just come into common use, achieving almost instant adoption in all fields but bluegrass, because it was compact, amplified, and for the precise fretting it allowed). Bill had only recently gotten a Fender bass of his own, and he couldn’t get the ominous, rhythmic intro to Leiber and Stoller’s “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care,” one of the highlights of the film score. He tried it again and again, got more and more pissed off and embarrassed by his failure, and finally just slammed the bass down, slid it across the floor, and stormed out of the studio, while everyone watched in disbelief. “Most artists,” said Gordon Stoker, “would have said, ‘You pick that bass up and play it, buster, that’s your job,’ but not Elvis. You know what Elvis did? Elvis thought it was funny. He picked it up and played it himself. He just picked up that bass, put his foot up on my chair, and played that song all the way through.”

  They were in the studio for more than seven hours altogether, and when they were done they had virtually completed the entire soundtrack. There were still overdubs to do (like the vocal for “Baby, I Don’t Care”), but they had recorded a typically witty, specially commissioned, more than slightly cynical set of songs “mostly by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller,” as the film credits would declare, a set of self-contained “play-lets” of the tongue-in-cheek variety (listen to “Jailhouse Rock” sometime if you doubt the satiric intent) that Leiber and Stoller had pioneered in their work with the Coasters. They had done different versions for different stages of the character’s musical evolution (Vince Everett, whom Elvis played, was, needless to say, a singer), some intentionally flat in their affect, some with the undeniable Presley touch. It was, all in all, an exciting enterprise and the kind of thing that could at least make the musical interludes endurable—so long as it was necessary to make musicals at all.

  On Monday he reported to the studio for costume
fitting and met some of the cast and crew. It was a different kind of studio, and a different kind of set, than the Loving You shoot at Paramount—MGM seemed a little more imposing, and the set, without the presence of Hal Wallis constantly hovering over the proceedings, a little more impersonal—but in the end people everywhere were pretty much the same, and the similarities were bound to outweigh the differences. Elvis was assigned the Clark Gable dressing room, and when they drove in through the Thalberg Gates for the first time, secretaries and executive secretaries and office workers poured out of their offices in such numbers that security had a real problem on the lot. Richard Thorpe, the sixty-one-year-old director, a veteran of scores of low-budget pictures delivered on a tight schedule from 1923 on, showed no great personal enthusiasm (he was known as a man who refused to discuss anything to do with the film in progress over lunch) but was cordial enough, and Elvis had little doubt that he could win him over, whether by charm or by persistence. He was getting to know the game. His mother had taught him these people weren’t any different than anyone else, and Colonel had certainly reinforced the lesson.

  He met his leading lady, Judy Tyler, who had played Princess Summerfall Winterspring on the children’s show Howdy Doody and had more recently appeared as a regular on Caesar Presents, Sid Caesar’s comedy-variety hour, and in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Pipe Dream, on the Broadway stage. Judy had just gotten married to a young actor named Gregory Lafayette, so that eliminated any chance of anything going on there, but he liked Judy, and he liked Mickey Shaughnessy, his costar, who had played strong secondary roles in a number of pictures (including From Here to Eternity) and did an imitation of Elvis in his nightclub act. He met the choreographer, too, Alex Romero, who was already planning the big dance sequence that was scheduled to be shot at the beginning of the following week. Romero had a dub of the song for the sequence, “Jailhouse Rock,” and showed Elvis some of the steps that he had devised for it along the lines of a typical Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire number.