Last Train to Memphis

by Peter Guralnick

  “I see people all different ages”: 1972 interview.

  “He would study a crowd”: Interview with Tillman Franks.

  “He was always unhappy”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  the startling success of Alan Freed: My primary source for background on Alan Freed was John Jackson’s biography Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll.

  “For the past year the top U.S. deejay”: Time, February 14, 1955, © 1955. Reprinted by permission.

  (“It was a tremendous emotional problem”): Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 15, 1956.

  “He was extremely shy”: This and subsequent quotes by Randle are from Ger Rijff and Jan van Gestel, Memphis Lonesome.

  On March 15: Jerry Hopkins interview with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU); also Report of Guardian Ad Litem re the Estate of Elvis A. Presley, Deceased, in the Probate Court of Shelby County, Tennessee (this reproduces the Colonel’s agreement with Neal on November 21, 1955).

  While they were out: Interview with Stan Kesler, 1987.

  this new boy Perkins: Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins, Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n Roll, p. 130.

  Jimmie Lott was a junior: Ibid., p. 73.

  Some two weeks later: Both the date and the background have been established by correspondence between Colonel Parker and Bob Neal, and Colonel and the William Morris Agency, which ultimately set up the audition. The information on the trip itself is from Jerry Hopkins’ interviews with Bob Neal and mine with Scotty Moore, while Bill Randle’s perspective is described in Rijff and van Gestel, Memphis Lonesome.

  a 1951 Cosmopolitan Lincoln: Interview with Merle Kilgore, 1989. Information on the Cadillac comes primarily from records made available through the Elvis Presley Estate.

  “It was always exciting”: 1972 interview.

  “He’s the new rage”: Jules J. Paglin, “Louisiana Disc Jockeys,” Melody Maker, December 31, 1955 (as reprinted in Blues World 31, June 1970).

  “This cat came out”: Paul Hemphill, The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and Country Music, pp. 272–273.

  The Miller Sisters, the performing duo: Hank Davis, “The Miller Sisters,” DlSCoveries, June 1989.

  “one of the newest”: Souvenir program accompanying the “Hank Snow All Star Jamboree” tour.

  Johnny Rivers saw the show: Steve Roeser, “Johnny Rivers: The Man Who Made the Whisky,” Goldmine, September 6, 1991.

  Jimmy Snow roomed: Interview with Jimmie Rodgers Snow, 1990.

  He met Mae Boren Axton: Interview with Mae Boren Axton, 1988.

  In the interview he persisted: Mae told me about this interview before I heard it, and we spoke about it afterward. Actually putting a date on it has proved to be a persistent problem. In the course of the interview Mae refers to Elvis having previously played Florida, which would lead one to wonder about its actual date. It certainly sounds like a first meeting, and my best guess about the somewhat tentative references to earlier touring is that this was a way to indicate a wider celebrity than the singer actually possessed. The evident intention of the interview was to publicize his appearances throughout Florida over the next week; at least that is the most logical explanation I can come up with. The fact that the Jacksonville riot of May 13 is not referred to indicates to me that the interview predates the actual tour.

  “and she was just right into it”: Interview with Mae Boren Axton.

  “Skeeter Davis was there”: Ibid.

  Parker had accused publicist Anne Fulchino: This account and the subsequent quotes by Crumpacker are from interviews and letters, 1989–94.

  Chick finished up his trip: The next time Chick saw Elvis was at the third annual Jimmie Rodgers Festival in Meridian, Mississippi, on May 25. Founded to honor the “Singing Brakeman,” who was widely hailed as the Father of Country Music, the festival also served as a kind of trade convention about midway between one annual DJ convention in Nashville and the next. Elvis and Scotty and Bill made a big impression on the ’55 festival, practically causing a riot in their appearance at the football stadium and coming to the inescapable attention of Steve Sholes, Chick’s boss at RCA. Hill and Range was also represented in the person of Grelun Landon, and there were innumerable other performers and industry figures getting a look at this new phenomenon for the first time.

  The reason I mention all this is that in recent years a story has sprung up that this was not Elvis’ first trip to Meridian. In 1953, so the story goes, Elvis hitchhiked to Meridian two days short of high school graduation, performed in an amateur contest to some acclaim, and then borrowed ten dollars from a festival official to get back home. I first heard this story in 1980 when I was in Meridian for the festival and have tried to track it down ever since. I have never found any evidence to support the story, and, while it is always possible that hard evidence will turn up, it seems more likely that this is yet another case of two stories merging: the first that of an unknown young singer who appears hungry and talented (and anonymous) in 1953, the second the appearance two years later of a rapidly gathering sensation still largely unknown to an older generation. It would not be at all inconceivable that these two stories could become legitimately confused. In any case, Elvis enjoyed a real triumph at Meridian in 1955 among both his peers and his elders.

  MYSTERY TRAIN

  All quotes from Sam Phillips, Marion Keisker, Scotty Moore, and Dixie Locke are from the author’s interviews, unless otherwise noted.

  a man who had it in his power: Neal and Parker conferred in Memphis all day on June 17, just one month after the Jacksonville “riot.” According to the July 2 Cash Box: “Bob Neal… flew into Nashville last weekend for a meeting with Col. Tom Parker… [and] signed an exclusive contract with Hank Snow Enterprises, allowing the company to represent Presley in all phases of the entertainment field. Neal, however, will continue as exclusive manager of Presley.”

  On balance Bob Neal was well satisfied: Not only the quoted material but the appraisal of Elvis’ career, his listening habits, and avidity for knowledge, all stem from Jerry Hopkins’ interviews with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  “I was, I think, a year or two”: Neal was in fact about a year younger than Vernon.

  Then on July 4 he found himself: Information on the De Leon date from interviews with James Blackwood and J. D. Sumner in 1988, 1990, and 1991: also Country & Western Jamboree, October 1955, as supplied by Wayne Russell, Lee Cotten’s All Shook Up (second edition), and Bob Terrell’s The Music Men. Colin Escott’s biography, Hank Williams, points out that Hank Williams was booked in 1950 but showed up drunk and didn’t perform.

  The next-door neighbors, the Bakers: Interviews with Jackson Baker in 1989, 1990, and 1992, as well as a joint telephone interview with Jack, his sister, Sarah, and their mother, Eve, in 1990. Just when the Presleys got their phone became a matter of some debate among the Bakers, but even if the Presleys had their own line by July, as might well be expected, both Jackson’s and Sarah’s memories of him on their hall phone are so vivid that it seems clear that he must have continued to make some calls from their home even afterward.

  “He told me to drive it”: Interview with Guy Lansky, 1990.

  He kept telling them about Colonel Parker: “Elvis by His Father Vernon Presley” as told to Nancy Anderson, Good Housekeeping, January 1978, p. 157.

  Meanwhile Bob Neal was fielding offers: Jerry Hopkins interviews with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  Additional information on the other labels’ interest in Elvis comes from interviews with Jerry Wexler, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Grelun Landon, and Sam Phillips, as well as Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins’ Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll (the MGM telegram); Arnold Shaw’s The Rockin’ ’50s; Bill Randle in Memphis Lonesome by Ger Rijff and Jan van Gestel; Vince Staten’s The Real Elvis: Good Old Boy (on Randy Wood’s offer); and Albert Cunniff, “Muscle Behind the Music: The Life and Times of Jim Denny,” pt. 3, Journal of Country Music, vol. 11
, no. 3 (on the involvement of Jim Denny, Jud Phillips, and Decca Records).

  “Elvis Presley on Beale Street”: Margaret McKee and Fred Chisenhall, Beale Black & Blue, p. 95.

  “before he could be rescued”: Cash Box, August 13, 1955.

  Vernon seemed pretty much ready to sign: The account of this Little Rock meeting is based primarily on Vince Staten’s interview with Whitey Ford in The Real Elvis, Vernon Presley’s testimony in his Good Housekeeping story, and—for the specific context in which the Colonel’s wooing of the Presleys was taking place—my own interviews with Sam Phillips, Marion Keisker, Jimmie Rodgers Snow, Hank Snow, Gabe Tucker, Mae Boren Axton, Lillian Fortenberry, and Scotty Moore, as well as Jerry Hopkins’ interviews with Marion Keisker and Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  maybe her boy was being overworked: Jerry Hopkins interview with Marion Keisker (MVC/MSU).

  spending a few days with Colonel and Mrs. Parker: Jerry Hopkins, Elvis, p. 117.

  “He seemed like a smart man”: Good Housekeeping, p. 157.

  she “heard someone screaming”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Marion Keisker (MVC/MSU).

  “Of course I never actually met the Colonel”: Interview with Marion Keisker, 1988.

  a document that named “Col. Thomas A. Parker”: Report of Guardian Ad Litem re the Estate of Elvis A. Presley, Deceased, in the Probate Court of Shelby County, Tennessee.

  THE PIED PIPERS

  All quotes from Sam Phillips, Marion Keisker, Scotty Moore, and Dixie Locke are from the author’s interviews, unless otherwise noted.

  When Arnold Shaw, the newly named general professional manager: Arnold Shaw, The Rockin’ ’50s, pp. 4–7. Shaw had accompanied Chick Crumpacker to Meridian in May.

  The contract stipulated: The contract that I have seen does not stipulate the four-hundred-dollar penalty, but Horace Logan has referred to it frequently in interviews and in his interview with Rob Finnis said of Elvis, “He probably thought I pocketed it!” In any case, it clearly came into effect in the spring of 1956, when Elvis in effect left the Hayride, and it clearly stymied the Colonel. The Colonel’s role, and his frustration with Vernon, were clearly delineated by the Colonel to me, within the context of a story about Vernon signing the renewal while the Colonel was in New York trying to sell Elvis’ contract. Since the Hayride contract is dated September 8, and the Colonel was in New York a month and a half later, I can only think that this is another case of memory telescoping events—unless, of course, the renewal was backdated. But Bob Neal’s pride in negotiating that renewal (“We negotiated a deal that was quite a thing then,” he told Jerry Hopkins [MVC/MSU]) would suggest otherwise.

  share the cost of [D.J.’s] $100-a-week salary: Max Weinberg, The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock’s Great Drummers, p. 115.

  he kept saying he couldn’t afford it: Jerry Hopkins interview with Scotty Moore (MVC/MSU).

  “The eventual basic decision”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  Scotty and Bill were inclined: Scotty has always spoken of a royalty understanding that would have gone into effect at some undefined (but clearly indicated) point in the future, but I don’t think that is what came into play here.

  Scotty’s expectation was based on conversations at the very outset of Elvis’ career. “It was never on paper. Bill and I would split half of one percent, one quarter percent each. Strictly on record royalties. This came about from several conversations sitting on the steps in front of the house on Alabama just pipe-dreaming, a few weeks, I’m guessing, after the first record came out. [We were thinking]: ‘With all the commotion going on in Memphis, we better tighten up our business stuff here. We’re liable to have to go across to West Memphis!’ We had already agreed to a three-way split, with expenses equal. He said, ‘Okay, we’ll do this on everything [including record royalties].’ I told him, from what little I knew about the music business, ‘No, that won’t work. ’Cause if we do anything, you’ll be the headliner, you’ll be the main guy. There will be problems down the road if we go into anything like this on record royalties.’ I said, ‘If you want to give us a token—’ And that’s what it would have amounted to. But it never did start.”

  In later years, understandably, this became a source of considerable bitterness, but at the time I would guess it was as much a case of legitimately hurt feelings as of financial claims.

  “when Elvis went up into the control room”: Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins, Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll, p. 83.

  Hill and Range, one of the most prominent: Information on the folio deal comes specifically from interviews with Sam Phillips, Grelun Landon, and Freddy Bienstock. Information on the Aberbach family and Hill and Range from Russell Sanjek, American Popular Music and Its Business, vol. 3; Billboard Music Week, January 30, 1961, as cited in Country Music, U.S.A. by Bill Malone; and research generously provided by Tony Scherman. Bill Randle’s views are articulated in Memphis Lonesome by Ger Rijff and Jan van Gestel.

  Randle’s belief, fostered by the Aberbachs’ desire: The political intricacies of all this are somewhat unclear. Randle spoke of the specifics of the Hill and Range connection in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 6, 1984, and is quoted to this effect in Rijff and van Gestel, Memphis Lonesome, as well. There seems little question that he fully believed that, had he taken the Aberbachs’ offer, he would have become Elvis Presley’s manager—though perhaps this is another instance of memory cropping and enlarging to some degree (possibly the Aberbachs offered him the position of Elvis’ song manager, which Freddy Bienstock later became). In any case, when I tried a blunter version of this scenario on the Colonel, he professed utter ignorance of any part that Bill Randle may have played and deemed it the most ridiculous thing (my scenario) he had ever heard—at least from me. I hope I have improved on it since then.

  “the folk music world”: “Rockin’ to Stardom,” Country Song Roundup, winter 1955–56.

  The Colonel had approached Haley’s manager: John Swenson, Bill Haley, p. 66.

  “Now this was a long time”: Ken Terry interview with Bill Haley, as cited in ibid.

  “Elvis was one of those guys”: Peter Mikelbank, “Elvis ’86: Myth and Memory,” Washington Post, August 3, 1986.

  they were angry at their former landlord: Interview with Eve and Sarah Baker, 1990.

  “Called ‘Top Jock’ ”: The title was subsequently changed to, alternatively, The Pied Piper of Cleveland or A Day in the Life of a Famous Disc Jockey, with the latter also used as a subtitle to the former.

  the idea was for this one: “Randle Short Scuttled by IBEW Ruling,” Billboard, December 3, 1955.

  According to Randle: Rijff and van Gestel, Memphis Lonesome, pp. 19–20.

  Pat Boone never forgot: The information on Pat Boone’s meeting with Elvis Presley comes from “Pat Boone” by Jeffrey Ressner, Rolling Stone, April 19, 1990; Dave Booth’s interview with Boone; and an unsourced clipping included in Ger Rijff and Poul Madsen’s Elvis Presley: Echoes of the Past. In each interview Boone discusses exactly the same moment in virtually the same language, but each offers a slightly different emphasis with more, or less, detail at certain points. The two quotations that I have included here are edited versions combining elements of all three interviews.

  he hoped these Yankees like his music: John Haley and John von Hoelle, Sound and Glory, p. 109.

  if they could successfully negotiate union problems: They didn’t. Filming was shut down in New York by an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers dispute on November 29. What was shot in Cleveland had yet to be seen as of spring 1994.

  “I have told you repeatedly”: Escott and Hawkins, Good Rockin’ Tonight, pp. 80–81.

  “ladylike tardiness”: Memphis Press-Scimitar, October 28, 1955.

  “Elvis did ask me once or twice”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  The convention itself: Interviews with Chick Crumpacker, Grelun Landon, Buddy Bain,
Buddy Killen, Mae Boren Axton, Galen Christy, et al.

  On Sunday he played Ellis: The description of the concert comes primarily from Fred Davis, who was there.

  The purchase price was $35,000: This is my understanding of the deal. RCA paid Sam Phillips $35,000 as specified, beyond the initial $5,000 deposit which Tom Parker had made (and for which he was reimbursed). Presumably, the $5,000 represented the back royalties that Phillips owed Elvis, who was specifically exempted from any future royalty payments. Beyond that, RCA and Hill and Range kicked in an additional $6,000 total as a signing bonus for the artist. This was paid to Parker, who deducted a 25 percent commission, which he split, after expenses, with Bob Neal. It has been speculated for years that Hill and Range put up a substantial amount of the purchase price itself, up to $15,000, but I have found nothing either in the contract or in the negotiations that led up to it to confirm that arrangement, nor has anyone I have spoken to confirmed it from a position of knowledge. At the same time it remains a logical possibility.

  STAGE SHOW

  All quotes from Sam Phillips and Scotty Moore are from the author’s interviews, unless otherwise noted.

  The last admonishment I had: Interview with Sam Phillips, 1992.

  About a week before the session: Interview with George Klein, 1988.

  At the DJ convention: “What Has Happened to Popular Music?,” High Fidelity Magazine, June 1958; ”Sholes Has Last Laugh,” Billboard, April 21, 1956, covers much the same ground.

  The room was big, high-ceilinged: Chet Atkins, Country Gentleman.

  Tommy showed her a Miami newspaper story: The story appeared in the Miami Herald of October 1, 1955, as documented in Arena Television’s Tales of Rock ’N’ Roll: Heartbreak Hotel, broadcast in 1993.

  Mae promised the song to Buddy: This account is based primarily on interviews with Buddy Killen, 1989, and Mae Boren Axton, 1988. Buddy’s account is at odds with Mae’s mainly in terms of the availability of the song prior to Elvis’ recording of it. In Buddy’s recollection he got the song from Mae in July, at the same time that she introduced him to Elvis, but the date of the Miami Herald headline would seem to disprove that scenario.