The Lost Chord #2: Elvis and Others
The First Great Rock & Roll Album
A beginning—and end—of an icon.
This kid I know, a friend of mine, was looking at the cover of the vinyl album he was holding. He looked perplexed and a little irritated. "This guy's ripping off The Clash," he said. I looked. The color scheme of pink and green and white and black framing the portrait in the center was eye-catching, and it was somewhat punkish. ELVIS in large, pink letters down the left side of the sleeve, PRESLEY in large green letters across the bottom. The young man depicted within this frame was a far cry from Perry Como, or anyone else RCA Victor had ever recorded. In tight close-up, hands and shoulders and face, he feels somehow out of the frame, and not there: his left hand is making the chord on the guitar he is playing, his right poised to strike the strings. His eyes are clenched shut, his mouth wide, and he seems transported, unaware of the camera, or audience, or even himself—teleported somewhere alien by the power of whatever song he's singing. The cover looks like The Clash's 1979 album London Calling. But this album was released in 1956.
With the exception of the concept album, a group of songs that were all thematically connected in some way, however tenuous, and a trend largely peculiar to the late '60s—albums did not aspire to be works of art. There was this fleeting period of time when every rock band was raising the bar for every other rock band, and the imminent release of a major album was heralded by rumor and anticipation, the way new novels by Hemingway or Fitzgerald were awaited in the 1920s. Every ambitious band seemed to be rushing to release a concept album: The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and so on. I would argue that the idea more or less began with Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, and peaked with The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. After that, there was nowhere else to go, and the idea of an album as a cohesive piece of art began its slow fade back into obscurity. I would also argue that Elvis Presley (1956) was the first great rock album. Albums in general weren't very important at the time Elvis Presley was recorded. The music business was oriented toward the single and the hit song, somewhat the way it has become now with electronic downloads. An album consisted of whatever hit songs the artist had released and the rest of the tracks were all odds and ends and filler. An album release was generally reserved as a way of rewarding the artist who earned it by having a series of hit singles. The idea of releasing a full-length album by a kid who had a hit country record, but nothing that made the pop charts, seemed revolutionary. Someone at RCA, perhaps producer Steve Sholes, must have intimated what was about to happen.
They had bought Elvis's contract from Sam Phillips at Sun Records. They had paid 35,000 dollars, and undoubtedly the best bargain RCA ever got, though no one knew that at the time. It was a gamble and who knew which way the cards would fall. Sholes had begun recording in January of 1956, but he was uncertain of what he was getting. He'd had the foresight to acquire all the unreleased masters that Presley had recorded for Sun, and he had these to fall back on.
"Heartbreak Hotel" had been recorded in early January and released on the 27th of that month. Five long weeks had passed while Sholes planned the album, and the single had not charted, and there was a general feeling at RCA that it might miss the charts all together. And neither it, nor the B-side "I Was the One," was included on the original album. But by the time Elvis Presley hit the record shops, "Heartbreak Hotel" was streaking toward No. 1.
Elvis Presley has cohesion and unity, partially because Elvis was the first allowed to record songs of his own choosing—songs he felt a kinship with, and an affection for. He chose a few hit songs like "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Tutti Frutti," doing the Little Richard song not in the polite, white-bread way Pat Boone had sung it, but like rock & roll, in an approximation of the original recording, doing the best Little Richard until Paul McCartney came along a decade later. He did bluesy reinventions of Ray Charles's "I Got a Woman," and The Drifters' 1956 No. 1 r&b hit "Money Honey." He did country standards and a version of the pop classic "Blue Moon" that sounds like no version that came before or after. He dredged up obscurities from memory, the vast jukebox of songs he'd been learning all his life. He could sing "I'll Never Let You Go" without sounding saccharine, and go from that to a rockabilly rave-up like "One-Sided Love Affair." But what makes this album a cohesive whole is the raw vitality and sheer energy of the performances, as if control was only a provisional requirement that might be cast aside. This rawness is what made preachers rant from the pulpit and parents lock up their teenage daughters and hide the key. So, yes, it would not be too good a stretch to call it the first punk album—at least in the context of the '50s. It hinted at everything rock & roll was going to be about: revolution and abandon and freedom. With the addition of the five Sun masters Sholes used, the record has a feel of haste and happenstance that works in its favor. He was still allowed to use Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana and Bill Black. There is a wild rockabilly exuberance to the performance that RCA could only hope to equal. Elvis sounds as if he knows he's at the edge of something enormous and needs only to push himself across the line, and from somewhere inside he's getting the energy to do that.
The reissue of this album contains "Heartbreak Hotel," "I Was the One," and "I Forgot to Remember to Forget," and three of the first cuts he did for RCA. "My Baby Left Me" sounds as wild and elated as some lost Sun single. And "I Was the One," a great little three-minute drama—Elvis always wanted to be James Dean, and "I Was the One" is impressive, an example of method acting as you're ever likely to hear. Elvis was not to come again. By the time of his second album, much had changed. Strings were being pulled, stagehands rearranging scenery behind the curtain. In his later career there were very sporadic moments of brilliance ("Suspicious Minds"). But the shift toward the center, where lay a mainstream acceptance and enormous piles of money—a joint effort of Colonel Tom Parker and RCA, with Elvis's own apparent complicity—had happened for good. The cat clothes and pink shirts were gone. Scotty Moore and the Memphis boys were on the way out. The desperate edge had disappeared from the music. Soon he would be singing songs like "Teddy Bear" and material in which Parker had a publishing interest. There had been an offer to co-star in a Burt Lancaster movie, The Rainmaker, which was a serious drama. But the Colonel forbade it, and Elvis began a seemingly endless string of innocuous movies that ultimately degenerated into drivel that embarrassed even their star. But he seemed to be unable to halt the slide. Or maybe he had gone too downhill to turn back. Maybe he just didn't care anymore. The King had abdicated, superstardom beckoned, and the hillbilly cat from Memphis was already shambling toward Vegas to be reborn.
Levon Helm: Ramble at the Ryman
(Vanguard Records, 2011)
It's been a long time since The Band played their "Last Waltz" at Winterland Ballroom in 1978, and who'd have thought Levon Helm would be the last man standing? My money would have been on Robbie Robertson, who's a great guitar player and a songwriter of record (though Helm maintains in his autobiography that the songs were a group effort). Robertson was hanging out with Martin Scorsese and being groomed for a career as a movie star. Though he recorded several albums that were critically adored, he never seemed to have connected as viscerally with an audience the way The Band did. Then Rick Danko and Richard Manuel both passed on. Levon Helm has had some hard times that are reflected in his voice, but through sheer will and talent he's kept rambling on.
This time, it's rambling before a live audience at the Ryman Auditorium, with some high-profile guests: the likes of Buddy Miller, John Hiatt, Sheryl Crow. Bluesman Sammy Davis plays harmonica on a couple of songs, and it's especially nice to hear "Fannie Mae" rescued from obscurity.
There's nothing really startling here, no moments of epiphany or revelation, just solid music from Helm's contemporary band, and good song choices. Frank and Jesse James turn up robbing the Grand Rail in "A Train Robbery." And there's a cautionary warning about going down to legendary "Deep Elem." And there's a quality of legend and mythic stature about Helm—both the man and his music. A sort of rock-hard integrity about him you can't help respecting. There are several songs from the years with The Band. Robertson's stinging guitar and Rick Danko's great harmony vocals are sorely missed, but it's nice to hear the songs again. Helm's voice is thinner than it used to be, and the vocals don't come as effortlessly, but he's lucky to be here, and we're lucky to have him.
And the audience at the Ryman seems to be having a good time listening to these songs. So did I.
Hear This! "Deep Elem Blues" by Levon Helm
Kenny Brown: Can't Stay Long
(Devil Down Records, 2011)
Kenny Brown's new release is a two-record set—one of which is Brown playing live with a full band, the other an acoustic concert called "Porch Songs," which is pretty much what it sounds like: Brown sitting on his front porch and showing off his finger-picking, and reinterpreting traditional folk songs like "Jesse James" (odd that Jesse turns up on this record, too), and traditional country songs like Roy Acuff's old lament, "Wreck on the Highway." Washington Phillips's "Denomination Blues" sounds terrific here, and so does Joe Calicott's "World War I." His full-electric version of Calicott's "Laughing to Keep From Crying" is the highlight of "Money Maker," the live half of this album.
Brown learned from the masters, Calicott and Burnside (he was a guitar player in Burnside's band), and seems well on his way to becoming a master himself. I admit to a certain prejudice here—I've been a fan of Brown's for several years, and I love the country blues. If you don't care for the blues, there's nothing I can say to make you buy this record. But if you're a blues fan, you'll love it.
Hear This! "Laughing to Keep from Crying" by Kenny Brown
