I was thinking about Elvis the other day as I listened again to some of his early songs. He recorded his first song “That’s All Right” on July 5, 1954. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll credits him as the first rock and roll star, which is a fair statement. Elvis, himself, said that he was just part of a movement. First song was a cover and initially recorded in 1946 by Arthur Crudup who did a very rocking version eight years earlier than Elvis. Roy Brown, the New Orleans blues man, followed in 1947 with “Good Rockin’ Tonight” also covered by Elvis and many others. Elvis was not even the first white guy to do rock and roll, as Bill Haley released “Rocket 88,” a cover of a Ike Turner song, in 1951 and “Rock This Joint” in 1952. DJ Alan Freed used the term, rock and roll, in Cleveland in 1951. Of course, he may have picked it up from others.
I first remember hearing Elvis on the radio doing Heartbreak Hotel in August of 1956, riding in the back of my parents’ 51 Plymouth. We were driving from New Orleans to Florida for a summer vacation to escape the heat. This was before children’s car seats or even seat belts. I was still small enough that I had to look up at the back of my parents’ heads. Instead, I preferred to sit on my knees and lean out the window, like a dog, making up imaginary events occurring in the passing scenery. The wind on the side of my face felt good as we drove through southern Mississippi in the August heat.
The music penetrated my daydreaming and it directed my thoughts to some of the run down hotels we saw on the road to Florida. I could picture a beer sign hanging in the window, half of the white paint gone from the wooden siding, and old guys sitting on the front porch looking back at the passing cars.
My father turned toward my mother and said, “this music will never last.” Then, he began to lecture on what makes good music. My father preferred classical and Peggy Lee but he also liked to take out-of-towners to the French Quarter and nurse a beer through sets of jazz at the Paddock. He let me play local R&B artists at home and saw Elvis’ music as a parody of R&B.
Elvis finished and his music remains forever linked to driving along the Mississippi coast in the August heat looking at the crushed, chalky white shells that used to line the two lane highways and thinking of some broken down hotel.
Of course, my father’s prediction proved wrong. While I like some of Elvis, including Heartbreak Hotel, I still have more music by Fats Domino, an even bigger zydeco collection, perhaps it is my hometown New Orleans loyalty.
Personally, I also think that Elvis' contribution was more in PR, making rock mainstream, than in the music, itself. I find more rock bands are derivative of the unknown Arthur Crudup, Roy Brown, and the many blues and R&B groups that preceded Elvis.
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