Month: April 2025

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Elvis Presley: ‘King of Music’ brought down by manager and doctorย 

Elvis Presley was born on 8 January 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi. His family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948. He learned to play the guitar from a boy next door. He was not a very popular kid at school. This changed after his appearance in the local minstrel show, after friends signed him up for the show.

The start of Elvis’ carrier

At 18the , Elvis went to work as a truck driver and in the meantime, he looked forward to an opportunity to use his talents as a musician. That this was successful was mostly due to coincidence. Elvis had had a song recorded at Sam Phillips’ studio to give as a gift to his mother. Phillips, the owner of the studio was just looking for a โ€˜whiteโ€™ boy with a ‘black’ voice. The assistant who had recorded the record remembered Elvis and he, along with two other boys, guitarist “Scotty” Moore and bassist Bill Black, were invited to come and do some singing. Afterwards, the trio would be inseparable for several years. It seemed to be nothing and when the session had already ended, Elvis started singing Arthur Cudrups’ song “That’s all right, mama” (1946). That was the sound Phillips was looking for. The song appeared on local radio and the interviewer asked him what school he had attended in order to reveal his white identity. Phillips now recorded his song with “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the B-side.

The trio was regularly invited to perform at local clubs over the following months, often as the support act for a more celebrity. At those gigs, Elvis was shaking on his legs with nerves, which led to the girls in the audience starting to scream. Elvis soon became more confident, but he developed the shaking of his lower body into an act in no time. The girls screamed, but the boys hated them out of jealousy. The police often got involved as these boys were waiting for Elvis outside. Later, even the national guard joined the police. He was much less heard on the radio.  The stations broadcasting country & western thought he was a โ€˜niggerโ€™ and the more ‘rhythm & blues’ oriented stations thought he sounded too much like a ‘hillbilly’.

Breaking through and becoming a celebrity

Heartbreak Hotel became Presley’s first number-one hit, making him a national celebrity. A few weeks later, RCA released his first album “Elvis Presley”.  His raucous vocals had a great influence on then barely known singers like John Lennon and Keith Richards. Their appreciation was countered by the disgust of established newspapers and their readers and television presenters. Yet they all invited him to perform on their shows. Ed Sullivan, for instance, paid $50,000 for three performances, most of it  went to Elvis’ manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker. Half of the audience tuned into these shows to enjoy, scream or giggle at his songs, including, for example, “Blue Suede shoes”, which you can hear now, including the screams on a 1956 recording.

Meanwhile, his second film “Loving You” was released and he was shooting his third film “Jailhouse Rock”. The title song of this film had become a huge success. You can hear this song here.

In the army

On 24 March 1958, Elvis’ tour of duty broke. He had expressed his wish to be treated as an ‘ordinary’ soldier and so it happened.  He spent part of his military service in Germany, where he also met Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he would marry eight years later. She was only 14 at the time. He also got to know something completely different, namely amphetamine. The sergeant generously dispensed it to him and other soldiers because he had noticed that it made his men a lot more energetic.  Meanwhile, Elvis had also bought a new house for his parents and himself, Graceland.

His fans had no chance to forget him.  The record company had the necessary recordings on the shelf, such as “Wear My Ring Around  Your Neck“, “Hard Headed Woman “, “One Night“, “A Fool Such as I” and “Big Hunk o’ Love”. You can hear the latter one here.

Back from service, Elvis immediately dove into the RCA studio, where his best album up to that point, ‘Elvis Back’, was recorded. The album showed Elvis at his strongest, from raw rocker, emotional blues singer to interpreter of romantic ballads.  It includes his best-selling singles, such as Stuck on you“, “Is now or never” and “Are you lonesome tonight?” You can hear the last song here:

A few more albums were released in the 1960s that exemplified the then dominating ‘cosmopolitan’ Nashville country style.  Furthermore, 27 more films were recorded in the 1960s, mostly dubbed ‘dregs’ by critics.  The songs Elvis had to sing on those were invariably put on record and sold well too, but it depressed Elvis that he had no challenging projects on his hands.

Some of his most popular songs – all from films – were “Can’t help falling in love” (1961), “Return to Sender” (1962), “Viva Las Vegas“, the title track of a 1964 film that would only become popular years later, “A little less conversation” (1968) which became a number-one hit as a remix in a Nike advertisement at the World Cup only in 2002. “Crying in the chapel” which had been recorded in 1960 and was still on the shelf, was the only song to reach the top-ten. Most of the above-mentioned songs are fragments from films.  However, the fans wanted to see Elvis sing live.  That happened again from 1968 onwards.

Live again

Everyone thought Elvis should perform again and in 1968 the ‘Come back special’ was broadcast. Presley, tight in leather, appealed to the feelings of the of years gone by.  You can see and hear a medley of three old songs “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Hound Dog “and “All shook up. 

Elvis was uplifted by this performance, but Parker was furious because he  had in mind a sweet-voiced Christmas show. Presley recorded another album not consisting of film music for the first time in eight years, called “From Elvis in Memphis“.  Critics were positive.  For the first time, ‘soul’ took center stage, alongside rock and country songs.  A choice was made to put more emphasis on what was called the Memphis sound (akin to country & western) instead of the standard pop sound. The following songs date from this time and are partly on this album.  The recordings are from Las Vegas and Honolulu: “Burning love“, “The wonder of you”, “Suspicious  minds“, “Kentucky rain“, “Patch it up” and “In the ghetto”, you are about to watch. This protest song jumped that straight to number one on charts.

From his early childhood, Elvis loved gospel songs after his parents took him to performances by the Statesmen Quartet.

Elvis sings gospel

In 1957, he made his first gospel album “How Great Thou Artโ€™. From this, you can listen to “Run on”. No older recording is available, so you can now watch a recording from 1972. 

His style increasingly becoming a mix of soul, rock and country, Elvis had been revived by his recent work. He craved challenging projects. He was invited several times to perform in films that went beyond the character of 1960s sneak peeks.  Manager ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker held it all off; the latter felt that Elvis should cash in on his renewed repertoire, now that it was once again attracting full audiences. In 1973 alone, he was booked for 168 concerts.

Continuing exploitation

From 1973, things went downhill. Elvis had repeatedly overdosed on barbiturates and had been hospitalized in a coma. Elvis abhorred drug use, but when his body doctor Nichopoulos prescribed them to him, he trusted their medicinal effects. In October, his divorce was pronounced. Priscilla had already left Graceland in 1971 with their little daughter Lisa-Marie (who, incidentally, died recently). He did not recover from the blow of the divorce. During his performances, he wore increasingly desperate costumes and screaming girls were long gone. These performances were sometimes toe-curling.  Sometimes Elvis couldn’t get out of his words, sometimes he stood stock-still and didn’t know any lyrics, without an extra dose of pep pills.

Despite all this, six more albums were released between 1973 and 1976, partly with old material. Eight songs from these still made it into the top 10. They include ‘My boy‘ (1975), “Moody Blue” (1976) and -praised and reviled – “Hurt”(1976). This is seen below in one of Elvis’ last performances in 1977.

Elvis dies

On 16 August 1977, his then-girlfriend found him dead the bathroom floor; he was due to fly to Memphis later that afternoon for a gig. Two days later, at was buried in the presence of thousands of fans. Investigations revealed that died of excessive medication. His doctor had prescribed him 10,000 doses of tranquilizers and amphetamines in 1957 alone. This doctor was acquitted of involvement in his death but after all he was removed from office. 

Apart from his doctor, manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker (1909 – 1997) also played a bad role. Friends of Elvis described it as a fraud as Parker was only after Elvis’ money. He managed all business contacts, appropriated 30-50% of all revenues and prevented Elvis from breaking new ground.  He also prevented Elvis from performing abroad, a great desire of his.  Parker, born as Dries van Dijk had moved to the US from the Netherlands without any documentation; he had lived for years on the frayed edges of society as manager of circuses, among other things. Once he became manager of several artists, no one asked for his passport any more. As an illegal with a made-up name, he could not travel abroad. In the 2022 film ‘Elvis’, his relationship with the “Colonel”, played by Tom Hanks, plays an important role. 

After Elvis’ death, the memory of his person and of his music has rightly lived on to this day. The albums are still sold, most of his fortune has been lost through mismanagement.

Elvis; the concert

I’m going to let Elvis shine one more time. “Elvis, the concert” was an extremely successful show that went around the world several times from 1997. The last time, in 2012, the show also landed in Ahoy, Rotterdam. Elvis could only have dreamt of that. How was this possible? Several high-quality ‘multi-track’ recordings of concerts in the early 1970s were available. Elvis’ voice was filtered out off these tracks. He and, the musicians are projected on large screens, cleverly edited and accompanied live by a band, some of which consisted of members of his original backing band. Sometimes you also see the original backing band (just watch the drums), but you don’t hear it. You can see here the recording of the concert in 2002, marking the 25ste anniversary of Elvis’ death[1] . 

Elvis was exploited as a ‘cash cow’ and was given incredible amounts of stimulants and narcotics to do so. He should have been coached and given more rest as well as artistic stimuli. Then he would have been together with Priscilla and Lisa-Marie, and he could have established his fame as the ‘King of Music’ worldwide. It only didnโ€™t happen.

[1] You can watch a full replay of this concert here

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The European roots of music in America: 100 years of Country & Western

In this and the following posts, I will discuss the spread of European folk music across the US and its subsequent cross-pollination with African-American music.

The emergence of the Hillbillies

Folk music is from always and everywhere. It was the main form of entertainment in past centuries, especially in rural areas and by poorer people.ย ย Most of us know the often centuries-old songs, sang along and danced to them. When mass migration of Europeans to the US started during the 18deย century, migrants took their music with them. Many settled in the eastern coastal region, the Appalachians and later they spread across the southern states. Music groups also emerged and were welcome guests at parties and pubs (honky tonks). In the early years of the 20steย century, the emerging gramophone record industry took notice of this music. Ralph Peer therefore travelled town and country to record the music. It was he who dubbed the inhabitants of the eastern and south-eastern United States ‘hillbillies’, and the name also became established for the type of music they made.

Musicians of the first hour were James Gideon ‘Gid’ Tanner (1885 – 1960), a chicken farmer who played the violin in his spare time in his band ‘the Skillet Lickers’ (‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’) and ‘Jimmie Rodgers (‘Kisses sweeter than wine’), who would be heard for many years to come. So was the Carter Family, a band in which successive generations would alternate until 1957.  Later famous guitarist Chat Atkins was also part of this band for a while. So was Johnny Cash after he married one of the members of the family.

Here, the Carter family sings ‘Wildwood Flower (1928)

The idealization of country & western life

In addition to the burgeoning record industry, the idealisation of the cowboy life captured in the growing number of westerns helped to popularise the genre. As a result, the term ‘hillbilly music’ was replaced by ‘country & western’ in the 1940s.

In the clip below, Patsy Montana sings ‘I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart’ (1939) along with the Texas Rangers.

By now, the city of Nashville had become the hub of country & western, not least because many programs were broadcasted live from the Grand Ole Opry theatre, which, as the years progressed, became an arena with more than 4,000 seats (see title photo). Performances at this theatre launched many an artist and were also intended to preserve the traditional character of country & western. As a result, the genre has long remained the music of the conservative part of the American population.ย 

Country & western could be heard in every pub in the 1930s, and because of the volume, a (old) piano was often added a to the instrumentation that consisted of fiddle, guitar, dobro (a kind of steel guitar) and banjo or mandolin. It was also often referred to as honky tonk music. Bobb Wills (‘San Antonio Rose’), Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams sr were leading artists of this era. 

Here Hank Williams senior sings ‘Hey Good looking’

Preserving the traditional image of country and western music from the 1930s to the present day was the main aim of the CMA (Country Music Association) and its temple, the Grand Ole Opry.

At the other side many artists drew inspiration from other musical genres in search of their own sound.ย ย The CMA was highly critical of this. For this reason, Billl Haley and somewhat later Elvis Presley were denied access to the theatre because of their emerging ‘rockability style’, one of these first ‘crossovers’ which laid the foundation for ‘rock ‘n roll’.

Here’s a performance by ‘rebel’ Bill Haley and his Comets: ‘Rock around the clock tonight’.

Back to โ€˜blue grass musicโ€™ of the 1940s

‘Excesses’ like this regularly led to a reappraisal of the ‘roots’ of country & western.  The ‘blue grass’ music of the 1940s, which would retain varying degrees of popularity for decades. Its founder is Bill Monroe (1911 – 1996) and his band The Blue Grass Boys, named after the nickname of the state of Kentucky, ‘Blue grass state’. This music stands out for the front singer’s high-pitched voice and perfect harmony singing with the background choir. The shrill voice initially had to compensate for the absence of a microphone. Another famous band was the Osborn Brothers (‘Rocky top’).

Here you can hear Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys in ‘Blue moon of Kentucky’, a recording from 1975, the song had obviously been played for many years by then.ย 

The Nashville sound

The second crossover came from the capital of country & western itself, namely the record industry. During the 1950s, it saw with sorrow the popularity of rock ‘n roll and rhythm & blues grew. A team including Chat Atkins was hired to make country & western smoother. The steel guitar and fiddle gave way to background choirs and strings. But the great success of this approach was mainly due to the sweet-voiced Jim Reeves, Don Gibson (‘Oh Lonesome me’) and Patsy Cline.ย 

Here, Jim Reeves sings ‘He’ll have to go’. 

Soon there was talk of the “Nashville Sound”, which, at least for the moment, found favour with the country and western establishment., the Nashville sound was a great success.ย ย However, the musician Atkins, who co-founded it, was increasingly unhappy with it because any move towards a jazzier sound was taboo. When asked to describe what was so typical of the Nashville sound, he rattled the change in his pocket and said,ย “That’s what it is. It’s the sound of money”.ย ย The success came to a sudden end when Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline both died in plane crashes and music from the United Kingdom started to take the US by storm in the 1960โ€™s.

Another step back to the โ€˜rootsโ€™

Many country & western fans felt ill-served by the slick Nashville sound on the one hand and the songs of the Beatles and their peers on the other. This again opened the way to steps back towards ‘roots’. Responsible for this were artists like Wynn Stewart, Buck Owens, Bob Wills and Merle Haggard. Their so-called ‘Bakersfield sound’ (named after Bakersfield in California), was in keeping with the rawer honky tonk of the 1940s. Bakersfield is an area where countless migrants had settled who had been expelled from the Midwest, which was ravaged by dust storms (‘Dustbowl’). The Bakersfield sound would resonate into the 1970s and helped form the basis of ‘folk rock’. But more on that later.

Here, Merle Haggttt and Bob Wills sing the classic ‘San Antonio Rose’.

The Nashville sound had by no means disappeared after the slump in the 1950s. The style was now called ‘countrypolitan’ and a host of artists, such as Lynn Anderson, Charly Pride, Donna Fargo, Ray Stevens and Chystal Gayle can be counted among them.  From the 1970s onwards, to this list can be added, among others, John Denver (‘Annie’s Song’), Kenny Rogers (‘Lucille’) and, from the 1990s onwards, Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks. 

All these artists contributed to stretching the gap between traditional country & western and other styles of music ranging from rock, soul, funk and, in the 1990s, hip-hop. The country & western watchdog at the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ watched suspiciously but could not do much against the artists who also topped the exclusive country & western lists. However, the Dixie Chicks’ popularity ended abruptly when, during a performance, they criticized President George W. Bush for his attack on Iraq. Country & western radio and television stations promptly stopped playing their songs.

Here the song ‘Cowboy take me away’ by the Dixie Chicks (2006), which still has country & western influences in terms of content and instrumentation, but whose melody can hardly be classified as such anymore.

The question therefore was at which point a song no longer belongs to the country & western genre and can be banned from dedicated radio stations and charts. Enough test cases of singers who could be described as ‘country stars’ like Shania Twain, Tayler Swift, Carrie Underwood and Maren Morse presented themselves in the early 21ste century. Their genre was called ‘country pop’.

I’ll limit myself to one of Tayler Swift’s first songs ‘Tim McGray’ (2006). Country or not?

โ€˜Americanaโ€™ and other styles

Institutional pressure made a return towards more ‘traditional’ country & western music inevitable for less fortunate singers. This resulted in musical styles designated by the terms ‘folk’, ‘Americana’, ‘country folk’ and ‘country rock’. An additional feature was that some musicians who could be counted in this category also had a decidedly left-wing political stance, which did not help their popularity in country circles. Examples include Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Donovan, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. 

George Strait is still closest to the traditional country & western style, and you can hear his best-known song ‘Amarillo by morning’ here (a 2016 recording).

More along the lines of ‘country rock’ goes music by Gram Parsons, also a member of The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, also called the father of country rock. With Emmylou Harris, Gram has sung a series of duets. The Eagles also fit into this category.

An example of unadulterated ‘country rock’ is the Charlie Daniels Band, active from 1950 to 2020, the year of Charlie Daniels’ death. From this band, I showcase here its best-known song ‘The Devil went down to Georgia’ (1979).

Country & western has had a huge influence on contemporary music in the US, despite or perhaps because of the many crossovers and the fact that even the music of contemporary performers of ‘traditional’ country & western sounds very different from that of the Carter family or the Blue Grass Boys.  

Very different?  Again, not all.  There are several groups that draw full houses with their precise renditions of traditional country & western music. One such group is again a whole family with supporters: the Petersens.  They too have made their hobby their profession and with their enthusiasm they blow all the dust that may have settled on old songs. 

Here are the Petersens with Rocky Top, an authentic blue grass number from the 1940s. Incidentally, the Petersens also sing very different genres.  I have previously featured their rendition of the complete Bohemian Rhapsody on their traditional instrumental. That one also sounded like a bell.