Rock Stars Boxed Set: Murder, Manslaughter and Misadventure

by Joe Bensam

  “The continuing overwhelming worldwide interest in Michael confirms his status as the greatest entertainer of all time,”

  Michael’s estate still earns 50% of the income from the Sony song catalog, which incorporates Michael’s own publishing company. This not only includes the Beatles songs, but also songs by Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Eminem and other songs - half a million of them in total. The catalog is estimated to be worth $1.5 billion, making Michael’s investment of $47.5 million back in the 80s look very shrewd.

  And it’s not just music. The Cirque Du Soleil show Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour looks set not only to continue his legend, but also to bring in many more millions of dollars a year. As a result, Michael could earn more from touring dead than alive -and he was one of the world’s biggest concert draws.

  Michael’s legacy goes on tour

  Of course, Michael did not want to die. He loved his children and naturally he wanted to live and watch them grow up. But curiously, his death has brought him many of the things he longed for in life. His eccentricities and failings have been forgiven, or at least forgotten, and his image has been restored. He is now at peace, safe from the reach of the paparazzi and lurid tabloid headlines. He no longer has to fret about growing old. He can rest without the need for drugs and medications. He is once again a superstar and a legend. Michael wanted to be like Peter Pan and live for ever, and it looks like he has achieved the immortality he craved.

  The King of Pop is dead. Long live the King!

  Elvis Exposed: The Amazing Life and Tragic Death of the King of Rock ‘n Roll

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - A Modest Beginning to an Extraordinary Life

  Chapter 2 - The Road To Fame

  Chapter 3 - The Colonel Takes Control

  Chapter 4 - Shocking America

  Chapter 5 - Taking on Hollywood

  Chapter 6 - Private Presley Joins the Army

  Chapter 7 - Rebuilding His Career

  Chapter 8 - Wedding Bells at Graceland

  Chapter 9 - Winning in Las Vegas

  Chapter 10 - Facing The Final Curtain

  Chapter 11 - The Legend Lives On

  Chapter 1 - A Modest Beginning to an Extraordinary Life

  When guitarist Scotty Moore met a new young singer for the first time in the summer of 1954, he was not overly impressed.

  ‘He was wearing a pink suit, white shoes and a ducktail, and I thought my wife was going to go out the back door,’ he said.

  Sam Phillips - the owner of Sun Records in Memphis - had suggested that Scotty and bass player Bill Black should get together with the newcomer to try out a few songs. But the young singer was not only outrageously dressed, he had a weird name, too...Elvis Presley. What kind of name was that for a singer?

  Despite his reservations, Scotty was pleasantly surprised when he heard Elvis sing. In fact, he told Sam that if they could find the right song, this could really go somewhere. Sam booked them a session at his studios, and on a sunny July day, they came into record. At first, there was no sense that the recording session was going to become a historically important event. They ran through a few standard country music numbers together, but nothing stood out. It all seemed just too, well, ordinary. Frustrated, Sam suggested they all take a break.

  Elvis at Sun Studios with Bill Black, Scotty Moore and Sam Phillips

  That coffee break turned out to be an event that changed the course of popular music.

  ‘We were having a break, and all of a sudden, Elvis started jumping around and acting the fool,’ Scott said of the incident later. ‘Then Bill picked up his bass and started acting the fool too, and then I started playing. Sam had the door to the control booth open and he stuck his head out and said “What are you doing?” and we said we didn’t know, so he said “Well find a place to start and do it again.” ‘

  The song that Elvis was singing was an established blues tune, That’s All Right. But Elvis transformed the song by increasing the tempo and adding a whole new dimension to the vocals. Scotty and Bill picked up on the change of pace, and soon they were rocking out the song in a whole new fusion of blues, country and R’ n B. Sam knew they were onto something, and asked them to play the song again - this time with echo added to Elvis’s voice to add more depth and suspense.

  When they played the song back, all four of them knew they had a hit. Bill said:

  ‘Damn...get that on the radio and they’ll run us out of town!’

  But although they knew they had created something special, none of them had any idea of just how important a moment this was. Standing in the cramped studio at tiny Sun Records, they could not conceive that this was the beginning of the astonishing rise and fall of the King of Rock ‘n Roll himself.

  ***

  For a future ‘King,’ Elvis Presley had a very modest start in life at the poor end of town in Tupelo, Mississippi. In the early hours of 8 January 1935, he arrived into the world thirty minutes after his stillborn twin brother, surviving to become the only child of Gladys and Vernon Presley. Elvis blamed the death of his brother on the poverty of his family’s situation.

  ‘My little brother died, and my Mama almost died, because we couldn’t afford to go to hospital.’

  Elvis’s birthplace at Tupelo, Mississippi

  The young Elvis Aaron Presley did not seem to have much going for him, except for a loving family. Gladys spoiled him as far as their meagre income allowed, while Vernon did his best to scratch a living as a sharecropper - barely managing to keep up the payments on their very modest two-bedroom home. Elvis’s early childhood was uneventful, apart from the time when he impressed a teacher with his rendition of Old Shep. This resulted in him being entered into a talent show at the age of eight, where he won second prize and the princely sum of five dollars - plus as many free show rides as he could manage for the rest of the day.

  Vernon, however, was less successful at making money, and the family struggled to get by. One time, when things become really tight, he resorted to writing a fraudulent check to try and get money for food. But it turned out that he wasn’t too good at cheating the system, either. This episode resulted in two-year prison stretch on the local prison farm, doing hard labor while his family struggled without him. Without Vernon’s income, Gladys was unable to keep up the payments on the house, and they had to move in with Vernon’s brother, Vester. Here Elvis took an interest in Uncle Vester’s guitar, and this led to Gladys buying him a second-hand guitar for his birthday. This was something of disappointment, as what he had really wanted was a bicycle. But he enjoyed playing his new instrument, and became reasonably adept at it. Elvis listened to music on the radio, singing along and working out the chords as he played.

  Life didn’t improve much when Vernon was released from jail, with Tupelo simply not offering any real prospects of finding work. Vernon and Elvis scratched around to find what work they could, but it was clear that there was no future for them in small-town life. So when Elvis was 13, the family packed all their possessions into their car and headed for Memphis to start a new life.

  ‘We were broke, man, broke and we left Tupelo overnight,” Elvis said later. “Dad packed all our belongings into boxes and put them on the top and in the trunk of a 1939 Plymouth, and we just headed for Memphis.’

  Memphis was certainly very different from life in Tupelo. The big city did offer better work opportunities, and Vernon soon found a job in a paint factory. But even so, all they could afford by way of accommodation was housing in a project for low-income families. They lived in a single room with no cooking facilities, and shared a bathroom with several other families. Elvis started at the local school, Humes High, and wasn’t too impressed at what he found there, either. A quiet, shy boy, he found it difficult to fit in. To his frustration, his mother insisted on walking him to school every day.

  One of the big pluses of living in Memphis, however, was the opportunity to enjoy the huge cultural melting pot of musical influences that aboun
ded there. Memphis had a very lively music scene - ranging from gospel choirs and blues singers, to country music and rhythm and blues. The young Elvis was steeped in this music from church on Sundays, to when he and his friends bunked off to the poorest side of town to hear blues musicians play. He soaked up a whole range of influences that would later play a huge role in shaping his music.

  The family finances improved when Gladys found work at a local hospital, while Elvis brought in a few dollars from mowing lawns in the neighborhood. Soon, they had exceeded the income level allowed for the housing project, and had to move to a property nearby. Elvis got a job as a cinema usher, but was fired for watching movies instead of doing his job.

  As he grew into his mid-teens, Elvis took a keen interest in his appearance, adopting a Tony Curtis hairstyle and spending hours grooming himself in front of the mirror. This helped him attract a good deal of interest from the girls in school, but also resulted in some incidents with boys that nearly led to fights. Elvis remained something of an outsider at school, with just a few close friends to help him stay out of trouble. But it was clear that Elvis’s future did not lie in the academic world, and he left school in 1953 to work for the Crown Electrical Company as a delivery driver. But this job was never more than a stop-gap...his real interest lay in music. He wanted to become a professional singer and musician, despite his father’s protestations that he’d ‘never seen a guitar player that was worth a damn.’

  Chapter 2 - The Road To Fame

  Elvis was well aware of existence of the Memphis Recording Service, which was another venture run by Sun Records’ owner Sam Phillips. It’s purpose was not to record serious music, but to provide the public with a means of recording messages, songs or whatever they wanted to use as gifts, or as personal mementos. In those days, before tape recorders and other recording equipment became commonplace, the idea of being able to record yourself on a record was a novelty worth paying a few dollars for.

  Legend has it that Elvis chose to go to the Memphis Recording Service to record a record for his mother’s birthday. However, the dates don’t tie up, and it seems more likely that Elvis had another agenda. He was well aware that Sam owned both companies, and may well have thought that by paying for a recording, he might attract the attention of the big man himself. By this time, Elvis had spent a good deal of time practising his singing and playing privately, and he had an idea that he had a pretty good voice. Now it was time to try and attract some professional interest.

  Whether or not that was the intention, it certainly worked out that way. Sam was not in the studio when Elvis came into record, but his assistant Marion Keisker was impressed by the sound of the youngster. She recommended him to Sam, and this led to Elvis being invited for a session at sister company, Sun Records. The first session, wasn’t a great success, with the song they recorded proving to weak to make much of an impression. But Sam believed that the young Elvis had some talent, and felt that it was worth persevering to find the right song, and the right sound. A few sessions later, the famous recording of That’s All Right was put down, and Elvis’s career took a sudden jump in the upward direction.

  Sam and Elvis with Marion Keisker, the first person to spot his talent

  Sam had once remarked to Marion that ‘if I could only find a white boy who could sing like a black man, I would make a lot of money.’ He now realized that in the raw talent of Elvis Presley, he had found what he was looking for. But his efforts to get the new record on the airwaves proved problematic. Although some local DJs personally loved the record, the idea of playing such a raucous record on radio stations aimed at whites was too risky...it could cost them their livelihoods.

  In the 1950s, racial segregation was still strong throughout the US, but particularly so in the deep South. Radio stations were largely split into black stations for black audiences, and white stations for white audiences. The idea of music that could cross over the great divide and appeal to both was still something of a shocking one.

  D.J. Dewey Phillips set Elvis on the road to stardom

  But Sam had an ally that he could call on. Dewey Phillips (no relation) was an adventurous disc jockey who hosted an edgy radio program called Red Hot and Blue. He revelled in playing new records that broke the mold, and so didn’t need much persuading to play That’s All Right. He knew that his audience was open to the idea of innovation in music, and that they didn’t care about the artist’s social background. He played both the A side of the single, and the flip side, ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky.’ Before long, the station was inundated with requests to play the tunes again...and again. Dewey decided he had to get Elvis into his studio right away, and called the Presley household to track him down. Elvis happened to be at the movies, and Gloria and Vernon had to rush to the movie theatre to find him. Once they had tracked him down in the dark, they rushed Elvis over to Dewey’s station, WHBQ.

  Elvis was very nervous about being interviewed live on air, so Dewey told him they would do a practice session. But when the ‘practice’ was over, Elvis realized he had been duped...and the interview had already gone out on air. During their discussion, Dewey slipped in a seemingly innocuous question, asking Elvis which high school he had gone to.

  ‘Hume High’ Elvis replied, innocently - unintentionally revealing that the man who ‘sang like a black man’ was from the white end of town. In the racially-segregated world of 1954, that answer made all the difference to the singer’s prospects of acceptance. The studio phone continued to ring off the hook with requests to hear the recordings again.

  Elvismania was taking hold in Memphis.

  On the back of this success, the next step was obviously to get Elvis out on the road, capitalizing on the popularity that the radio broadcasts had engendered. His first live performance was at the Overton Park Shell on July 30, 1954, with Scotty and Bill providing the backing. Although he was low down on the bill, and incorrectly advertised as ‘Ellis Presley,’ he certainly managed to make an impression. Apart from his impressive singing voice, Elvis amazed members of the audience with his performance. As he sang, he noticed that girls in the audience were screaming, but he had no idea what was behind their excitement.

  Elvis poses at the Overton Park Shell in 1955

  ‘I came off stage and was scared stiff,’ Elvis said. ‘I did a fast type tune, and everyone was hollering, but I didn’t know why. When I came offstage, my manager told me they were hollering because I was wiggling.’

  Elvis had no idea that this was the first experience of a controversy that would dog him for the next few years. So with Scotty and Bill as his backing musicians, and Scotty also doubling as bookings manager, Elvis began making live appearances around the Memphis area. Hillbilly Cat and The Blue Moon Boys, as they were known, played at a host of small venues, gradually building up a fan base as they went. Sometimes they would play in schools, sometimes they would play at the opening of shopping malls, playing from the back of a flat-bed truck. While the older members of the audience were often puzzled by this wild boy and his act, he started building up a loyal young audience - especially amongst teenage girls.

  Soon, they started to perform beyond the Memphis area, including a gig at The Grand Ole Opry. But Elvis’s wild style did not go down with the conservative country audience. Elvis was devastated, as he had listened to the show since he was a boy, and had hoped it would be the springboard to further success. Yet a performance on similar but more relaxed show, the Louisiana Hayride, was a success. Elvis performed two sets on the show on October 16, and again the reaction to the first set was disappointing. But by the time Elvis came on stage for his second set, a large number of students had joined the audience - and his act received a much warmer response.

  A Press ad promoting the new singer, Elvis Presley

  In fact, it was such a hit that the organizers contracted Elvis to make 50 appearances, with Elvis receiving $18 for each appearance. He was finally a real professional musician...and had proved to his father that a guitar pl
ayer could be worth a damn, after all. More importantly, the shows were broadcast across 190 radio stations in the South, giving Elvis huge exposure. Now they were playing to audiences who had not only heard of Elvis Presley, they had heard him sing, too. And all Elvis needed was for people to hear him sing. The connection with the show also gave them a drummer. D.J. Fontana had backed the band when they played Louisiana Hayride, and he now became a regular part of the band, finding Elvis to be a natural performer.

  ‘Elvis had this charisma about him,’ he said later. ‘I don’t think anybody could ever put their finger on what he did or how he did it...onstage he could feel the audience out in about five or ten minutes. He knew the songs they wanted to hear for some reason, and he could work that crowd to his benefit. He was really good.’

  All this publicity helped to and broadened Elvis’s appeal to neighboring states. As the band continued to play over the next 18 months, Elvis’s reputation spread quickly, and soon every concert was packing in hundreds of young people who had come to see the exciting new singer and his band. He did receive some complaints though - mainly from the dull country acts who had the difficult task of coming on stage after Elvis had driven the audience wild. The more exaggerated his performances became, the more the audience reacted...and the more difficult it was to take the stage after him. Elvis really was ‘a hard act to follow.’