Rock Stars Boxed Set: Murder, Manslaughter and Misadventure

by Joe Bensam

His choice of clothing also made him stand out. While the country acts he played alongside wore conventional and unexciting stage gear, Elvis came on stage wearing outrageous clothes that he had found in Beale Street - in the heart of the Memphis R’nB district. He often wore pleated pants with broad legs and stripes down the sides, together with oversized coats and high-collared shirts. All this was topped with an exaggerated “duck’s ass” hairstyle that required no few than three different hair styling products to produce.

  The extended travelling that the band was now doing meant that none of them could continue their day jobs. Giving up the security of a regular wage in return for the uncertainties of life on the road was a big decision, but they all knew this act was going places. Before long, they had all quit to become full-time musicians. Now there was nothing to stop them taking on America, and they gradually scaled up their performances across the South. By November, the business of managing the act was becoming too much for Scotty to handle on part-time basis, so they turned to Bob Neal, a local DJ who thought Elvis had real talent that deserved nurturing. Bob became Elvis’s full-time manager, and played a major role in taking the rising star to the next level of success. As well as getting more airplay for the band’s records, he booked them onto bigger tours and arranged publicity and advertising. The Elvis star was clearly now in the ascendant, and it wasn’t a question of if he would have a major hit record, but when...

  The recording sessions at Sun Records continued, and more singles were released, generating very impressive sales for records released on such a small, local label. Sam Phillips was very proud of his prodigy, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold onto the rising star for much longer. Only a large national label could offer Elvis the large-scale promotion that his talent clearly deserved.

  1955 proved to be a huge year in Elvis’s life, bringing transformations that he could not possibly have imagined even a year before. He and the Blue Moon Boys travelled extensively around the south, playing on country music tours with the country stars of the day. Yet in each case, Elvis stood out as being something completely different, fresh and exciting. Soon the audiences were comprised not so much of country music fans, but more of pure Elvis fans - a young audience of both men and women who were attracted by the sheer energy and vibrancy of his performances.

  Elvis’s stage act was soon to become notorious, but in 1955 it mostly produced puzzlement in older audiences, and wild enthusiasm from his fans. The act developed as Elvis began to realize what had an effect on his audience. Film footage of one of his early performances shows him as being relatively conservative in his movements. But as 1955 progressed, his ‘wiggling,’ leg-jerking and ‘gyrating’ intensified into a performance that brought cheers from the males in the audience, and loud shrieks from the females. He soon learned how to control the audience, building them up to a frenzied peak as the show progressed. Sometimes, however, the carefully co-ordinated plan backfired.

  In May, Elvis played in Jacksonville, Florida, to a crowd of over 14,000. The concert was a great success as usual, but despite the screams of hysterical females throughout the evening, Elvis was not prepared for what happened next. A backstage gate was accidentally left open, a problem compounded by Elvis’s last remark to his female fans as he left the set: ‘I’ll see you girls backstage.’ Moments later, as Elvis arrived in his dressing room, dozens of young women broke in and began tearing his clothes off his body. Before he realized what was happening, they had pulled off his jacket and ripped his shirt off his back. In a bid to escape, Elvis took refuge in the bathroom and climbed into the shower stall. But his eager fans followed him and ripped off his shoes and socks. They had got as far as his pants when security finally realized there was a problem and pulled him to safety.

  Elvis was shocked by the incident, but he could hardly have bought himself better publicity. Newspapers around the South were packed with outraged news items about Elvis and the effect he had on young women. He was accused of being immoral and vulgar, and of deliberately inciting a sexual response from his female admirers. Elvis was bemused by the response, but carried on with his natural style. However, his personal security was tightened...and the backstage doors were kept locked.

  Chapter 3 - The Colonel Takes Control

  It wasn’t just the newspapers that started taking an interest in Elvis. All the attention caught the eye of ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, a music promoter who had a keen interest in up-and-coming country performers. Despite the name, he was not really a Colonel, and he wasn’t even Tom Parker. Born in the Netherlands, he was actually an illegal immigrant who had made a living in the States for many years as a carnival ‘barker’ - attracting people to watch shows. During his colorful career, he had picked up the honorary title of Colonel, and had then exploited this to his advantage ever since, adopting the name Tom Parker as a suitably American replacement for his original Dutch name. Parker discovered that there was more money to be made in music promotion than in the carnival business, and had gained some experience in promoting various acts. But in Elvis, he saw the chance to ride a gravy train to stardom.

  ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker made Elvis into a star

  Elvis already had a manager that he was quite happy with, but Parker was not about to let that detail get in his way. He wormed his way into the management team as an assistant, and before long was badgering Elvis to let him become his ‘special adviser.’ Elvis had his doubts, and as he was still under 21, he could not sign a contract without agreement from his parents. Parker set to work, convincing them that he was the man for the job. By a series of convoluted maneuvers, Parker managed to get Elvis to sign the deal, as well as persuading Gladys and Vernon that he was the right choice for their son. Then he worked on edging Bob Neal out of the picture. Before long, Parker was Elvis’s sole representative, taking an impressive 25% of all the singer’s income for his trouble (later to rise to much higher percentages).

  Colonel Tom Parker is a controversial figure, to say the least. He was a wheeler dealer by nature, and it is true that he cut many deals for Elvis that would probably not have happened without him. He was also a fierce negotiator, and frequently won deals for Elvis that were staggering by the standards of the day. He was notorious with record companies, promoters and movie producers for adding a whole range of extra clauses to standard contracts, each sweetening the deal for his client at the other party’s expense. There is no doubt that these negotiating skills added considerably to Elvis’s wealth.

  On the other hand, there is also no doubt that Parker was a ruthless businessman rather than a manager of creative talent. Many of his deals put dollars in Elvis’s pocket (as well as his own), but at the expense of musical growth and development. Who knows how Elvis’s career may have developed without him, but it would probably have been more creative and inspired musically, at least. It is interesting to speculate what Elvis might have achieved if he had spent the 60s recording great music, instead of being dragged into the Parker-inspired cycle of nonsensical movies. Finally, there is no doubt that Parker’s main aim was to line his own pockets, and Elvis was little more than a very valuable pawn that he brokered remorselessly to the highest bidder.

  Once Bob Neal was out of the picture, Parker set to work on getting Elvis a new record deal. The records produced at Sun Records were selling like hot cakes, but it was clear that a major national label was now required to handle the promotion of Elvis and his music on a national scale. With Elvis still hot in the news, there were several contenders for the contract, and Parker was able to play one off against the other to get an outstanding deal for Elvis, and for Sam at Sun Records. RCA agreed to buy out the contract with Sun for a staggering $35,000, plus $5000 for back royalties. Although with hindsight the deal seems a poor one for Sam - given the millions that Elvis later generated with RCA - it was a very fair deal for the circumstances at the time. Sam received what was a substantial sum in those days, which enabled him to invest in other musicians. As his roster went on to includ
e Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, plus several other household names, he didn’t do too badly out of the deal.

  Elvis shakes on his new record deal with RCA

  Parker was never shy about discussing his role in Elvis’s rise to stardom. Later he was to say,’ when I met Elvis, he had a million dollars’ worth of talent. Now he has a million dollars.’

  RCA knew that the next step was to reposition Elvis in order to broaden his appeal to a wider audience. Instead of promoting him as a country and western artist, they began to portray him as a pop musician with an appeal to all of the national music charts. At the time, the pop charts were dominated by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Junior. They had no idea what was coming in the shape of Elvis Presley.

  In January, 1956, Elvis started his first recording session for RCA in their studios at Nashville, with Chet Atkins acting as producer. The studio was vast compared with the tiny one at Sun Records, and Elvis found it all intimidating at first. But he soon launched into his first song with typical Elvis enthusiasm. In fact, he didn’t just sing the song...he performed at as if he was on stage. Atkins was so struck by this that he invited his wife to come in and see this strange new artist in action. But this was no gimmick. By performing so passionately in the studio, Elvis was able to produce an intensity in song that exceeded anything recorded by his many illustrious predecessors.

  On 27 January 1956, one of the songs recorded in this first session was released as a single. Heartbreak Hotel exploded out of radios across the country like a shockwave, with Elvis’s unique voice demanding attention from the very first note. Quite unlike anything else released previously, this recording sold like hot cakes, hitting the number one spot in the US and staying there for eight weeks - as well as topping the charts in the UK. From there, the hits followed thick and fast - ‘Too Much,’ ‘All Shook Up,’ ‘Teddy Bear’ and many more...

  Chapter 4 - Shocking America

  In just 18 months, Elvis had progressed from being an unknown truck driver to becoming a national superstar. Yet, there was more to come - a great deal more. On January 28, Elvis made his first appearance on national TV on a program called Stage Show. His first live performance was a little shaky, with Elvis unsure how to work a studio audience. But when he was invited back to make further appearances, he improved his act each time, so that by the time he made his final appearance in March, he was driving the audience crazy. In June, he made the second of two appearances on The Milton Berle Show, an event that led to national controversy.

  Elvis performed without his guitar, launching into Hound Dog with unbridled enthusiasm, his hip shakes, pelvic thrusts and gyrations delighting the younger members of his audience whilst shocking the older generation. All this was emphasized when he slowed down the last part of the song to a blues tempo, exaggerating his movements and causing more hysteria in the audience.

  Elvis rocks the Milton Berle show

  The establishment was outraged, and said so very clearly in a barrage of newspaper articles. Elvis was seen as an example of the negative effect rock ‘n roll was having on the youth of the day - a degenerate influence that could only lead to unspeakable results. Of course, the more the newspapers condemned him, the more Elvis became a hero and an idol in the eyes of the younger generation. If the media had hoped to kill the young star’s career, they did no such thing - in fact they did quite the opposite. His popularity soared, and sales of his records continued to grow from strength to strength.

  Elvis’s next TV performance was controversial for other reasons. NBC-TV announced publicly that Elvis would not be allowed to ‘bump and grind’ on The Steve Allen Show. Instead, he was reduced to the absurdity of singing Hound Dog to a live basset hound. If that wasn’t bad enough, the following segment made fun of Elvis’s roots in the South. Elvis was furious to realize that he had been manipulated and used by the television industry for its own ends. His fans were equally upset, with many of them picketing the TV studios the next day, brandishing signs which read ‘We want the gyrating Elvis.’

  In 1956, the king of the TV variety shows was The Ed Sullivan Show. Parker had previously been turned down by the show’s producers, because he had asked for the seemingly outrageous sum of $5000 for an appearance. If they had taken that deal when it was offered, they could have saved themselves a fortune. But Sullivan declared that Presley ‘wasn’t his cup of tea’ and that he wouldn’t have him on the show. Yet as Elvis rocketed to fame on a massive scale, he and his producers were forced to think again. They could not afford to pass up the ratings and the prestige that an appearance by Elvis would bring to the show. By now, however, the canny Parker had upped the price to $50,000....and he got it, too.

  Elvis was booked for three appearances on the show - in September and October, and then for a final appearance in January 1957. The first of these passed relatively uneventfully, but in the second one, he again shocked the establishment with a wild rendition of Hound Dog. Young women in the audience shrieked and screamed, and once more the older generation looked on in consternation.

  Elvis shocks the Ed Sullivan show

  Concerned about the reaction from the authorities, the broadcaster CBS decided that for his final appearance, Elvis should be filmed from the waist up only. Elvis gave an electric performance, and the fact that the TV audience could only imagine what was happening below the waist actually heightened the impact of the show. It became the talking point of the nation. Once again, A TV network had inadvertently done Elvis a favor. The nationwide discussion over the censorship of his performance - and what it may or may not have hidden - helped to seal Elvis’s place as the hottest name in entertainment.

  Today, the whole argument seems ridiculous, and if you view clips of the shows on YouTube, you may be tempted to wonder what all the fuss was about. But the world of 1956 was a very different one to the world of today, and the controversy around Elvis unfolded around a much more complex backdrop.

  The older generation in 1956 had suffered through the misery of the Depression, followed by six years of war, and then years of post-war struggle. It was only in the 1950s that America began to emerge as a prosperous and powerful nation with everything to look forward to. Elvis’s generation was the first to find themselves in a world where they had money to spend, and things they wanted to spend it on - fashion, rock’n roll, cars and much more. At the same time, attitudes to religion, sex and relationships were changing in ways that the older generation could barely understand.

  Elvis’s wild style, his raucous songs and his gyrating, pelvic-thrusting act represented just about everything the new generation stood for - and almost everything the older generation objected to. In many ways, the controversy was not about Elvis himself, but about what he represented - an America that was changing quickly and furiously into a very different country to the one his parents had grown up in. This was a new world in which youth was everything. It’s hardly surprising that those who had lost their youth did not want to relinquish their authority to those who had not.

  On one memorable occasion, the authorities in a Florida town managed to get an injunction that prevented Elvis from ‘gyrating’ whilst performing a show there. The police turned up at the show armed with cine cameras to record the performance, lest Elvis should tempt a jail sentence with a wiggle. Elvis was forced to perform the entire show standing still, and moving nothing more than his little finger. Yet with his little finger alone, Elvis still manged to whip the audience into a frenzy. That must have been a very frustrating evening for the Chief of Police!

  While all this controversy and discussion certainly kept Elvis in the public eye, Parker was concerned that the negative image could damage the reputation of his ‘boy.’ He was very concerned with broadening Elvis’s audience, and certainly did not want to limit it by seeing Elvis branded as a bad-boy rock ‘n roller. He fought back aggressively, arranging events and engagements that served to soften Elvis’s image, and present him as a lovable home-town boy. He set up interview
s where Elvis was able to explain his own point of view, and arranged for the press to be present when the singer gave money to various charities.

  Parker was a wizard at managing the press, and soon stories began to appear about Elvis’s close relationship with his mother and father, and his quiet, Christian lifestyle. Throughout the late 1950s, Elvis garnered millions of column inches of press, and partly as a result of this, his records sold in staggering numbers across America, in Europe and beyond. By the end of 1957, Elvis had become the biggest star the world had ever known. The small-town boy had sure come a long way from the two-bedroom shack in Tupelo, Mississippi...but he had a long way to go yet on the path to even greater fame and fortune.

  As soon as the proceeds of his fame began to roll into his bank account, Elvis spent $40,000 buying a ranch-style home in Memphis for his parents to live in. The gesture was well meant, but not as successful as he had hoped. Soon the family home was besieged by besotted fans who hoped to get a glimpse of Elvis. They stripped the property of souvenirs, taking everything they could remove, from bits of fencing to blades of grass. They would even come up to the house and listen at the walls, hoping to hear Elvis’s voice.

  At first, the neighbors were delighted with the prestige of having such a famous resident in their neighborhood. But as time went on and the mass of fans and journalists continued to rise, they started to complain. One neighbor started to sue them for causing a breach of the peace.

  Graceland - where Elvis lived and died

  It became clear that a more secure home was required, and so Elvis asked his parents to look out for a new home for the family. He gave them a budget of $100,000, and they found Graceland, a mansion some nine miles from downtown Memphis. Set in over five acres of private land, Graceland was a stylish mansion that looked just the part for the home of the world’s favorite rock star. The house was extensively renovated to suit Elvis’s tastes, and extended considerably over the next few years. The famous Music Gates - featuring two guitar-playing musicians - were installed to keep the fans at bay. Here Elvis was finally able to find some peace with his family, in the house that remained his home until the day he died.