Overview
Objectives
- Examine Elvis Presley's music and his particular blend of many different styles and genres.
- Identify the key figures and institutions that helped turn Presley into the cultural phenomenon that he became during the 1950s
- Examine ways in which Presley was turned into a commodity through television appearances and Hollywood films
Colonel Tom Parker and Presley at RCA-Victor
The disc jockey Bob Neal had been serving as Presley’s manager until 1955, when Colonel Tom Parker stepped in and transformed Presley’s career. Parker brokered a deal and sold Presley’s contract to RCA-Victor for an astronomical $35,000, plus $5,000 in back royalties. To Parker, Presley could not achieve national success unless he left Sun Records because, in his mind, Phillips and Sun simply did not have enough money to promote Presley properly. Sam Phillips was unconcerned about the sale because he thought he had signed the next big artist, who came in the form of Carl Perkins. Although Perkins’s "Blue Suede Shoes ♫" was a major success for Sun Records in 1956, Perkins was never able to achieve success anywhere near that of Presley.
(Presley covered "Blue Suede Shoes ♫" later the same year, although it did not chart as highly as Perkins’s original version had.)
The importance of this transfer of Presley’s contract from Sun to RCA-Victor cannot be overstated. In the mid-1950s, major record labels were not interested in rock and roll music because they thought it was a passing fad. In fact, Mitch Miller of Columbia Records often bragged about how little his company had to do with this newfangled music. By buying Presley’s contract for an unheard-of sum of money, RCA showed the recording industry that the times were changing. Soon after Presley began recording for RCA, the other major record labels began adding rock and roll musicians to their rosters. Soon, rock and roll was squarely in the center of mainstream popular music.
RCA set about transforming the Hillbilly Cat into a mainstream pop music star. The first recording Presley made for RCA, "Heartbreak Hotel ♫" (1956), held the number one spot on the pop charts for eight weeks. Later in 1956, the double-sided hit "Hound Dog ♫" and "Don’t Be Cruel ♫" went to number one on the pop charts, the country and western charts, and the rhythm and blues charts simultaneously. This was the first record to achieve this level of crossover success. As we saw in earlier lessons, it was not uncommon for artists such as Chuck Berry or Bill Haley and His Comets to occupy space on both the pop and rhythm and blues charts, or on the pop and country and western charts, but until Elvis Presley, it was unheard of for an artist to not only cross over to all three charts but also to hold the number one spot on all of those charts.
The RCA recordings from the late 1950s show Presley’s gifts for rhythm and blues and country in equal proportions. His southern drawl and hiccupping singing style (adding extra syllables to words with "ah" or "uh) were typically of hillbilly-styled artists, and the frequent use of 12-bar blues structure, electric guitar, and strong backbeat come straight out of rhythm and blues and the rural blues tradition. Background vocals by the Jordanaires were modeled on the sounds of gospel music and black vocal harmony groups. All of Presley’s recordings for RCA during this period featured electronic reverb an effect where an amplified sound is meant to reverberate slightly, a technique employed by RCA’s sound engineers in an attempt to replicate the slapback sound from Phillips’s studios at Sun Records. Presley’s recordings for RCA also include a drum set, an instrument that had not appeared in any of the early Sun sides.
In 1956, Parker also secured several important television appearances for Presley. He first appeared on the Dorsey Brothers’ show, but he scandalized audiences on Milton Berle’s program when he swiveled his hips and quaked his entire body during the performance, exciting the studio audience and infuriating the national media. Steve Allen neutralized some of Presley’s sex appeal by asking him to sing "Hound Dog ♫" to an actual basset hound during the singer’s appearance on his show. Perhaps the most famous attempt to tame Presley’s sexuality came when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and was filmed only from the waist up. These limitations did nothing to staunch Presley’s popular appeal and the throngs of screaming fans. Further, these television deals were incredibly lucrative for Presley: he earned $50,000 for three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Finally, Parker cemented Presley’s status as a teen heartthrob by securing him several roles in Hollywood movies. Films such as Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole not only included soundtracks filled with Presley songs but also pleasantly surprised audiences with the fact that Presley could actually act.
There was no end to Tom Parker’s ingenuity. He licensed Special Products, Inc., of Beverly Hills to market all the commodities bearing the name Elvis—jewelry, soft drinks, guitars, bookends, dolls, greeting cards, diaries, pillows, stuffed hound dogs, cosmetics, girls’ underwear, pens, pencils, hair curlers, combs, belts, big buttons that said "I Love Elvis," big buttons that said "I Hate Elvis," and so on. Elvis’s look, sound, and massive appeal made him ideal for all types of commercial promotions and merchandising.
"Elvis played only five concerts outside the U.S., all on a 3-day tour of Canada in 1957. "
