Elvis Blog Archives — January 2009
Entry #43: Posted January 1, 2009 I came across an article recently that got me thinking about the subject of Elvis’s girlfriends again. You might remember that last month I posted a blog entry about Marilyn Evans, the supposed “lost girlfriend,” who was with Elvis when he visited Sun Studio for the “Million Dollar Quartet” jam session in December 1956. In her relationship with Elvis, however, Marilyn certainly didn’t merit the elevated title of “girlfriend.” She dated Elvis a couple of times in Las Vegas and then spent a couple of days with him in Memphis. We know now that Elvis had that kind of brief, transient relationship with dozens (hundreds?) of women during his lifetime. And yet, we also know that while he often dated several women at the same time, Elvis demonstrated a need to have one special woman in his life. These were the ones he dated over an extended period of time and often appeared with in public. These women qualified as his “girlfriends.” Most Elvis fans are familiar with their names. There was Dixie Locke during his high school days, June Juanico in 1956, and Anita Wood in 1957. During his army hitch, there was Elisabeth Stefaniak and, of course, Priscilla. In the 1970s, after his divorce, Elvis’s two most prominent girlfriends were Linda Thompson and Ginger Alden. But let’s get back to that article I mentioned above. It appeared in the Miami Daily News on August 4, 1956, and the headline read, “Hey, Gals! Elvis Has 2 Steadies.” It seems Elvis had invited then girlfriend, 18-year-old June Juanico, to accompany him on his tour of seven Florida cities. A Daily News reporter had noticed a “shapely brunette” being passed through police lines into Presley’s Olympia arena dressing room, where she reportedly “stroked his brow between stage shows.” Smelling a story, the reporter, Damon Runyon, Jr., waylaid Miss Juanico in a tunnel beneath the Olympia stage on her way to watch Elvis’s second show. With no member of Elvis’s entourage around to coach her responses, June gave a revealing interview that would make Elvis cringe when he read it in the paper the next day. It started with the innocent basics. She had met Elvis in her hometown of Biloxi about a year before. “I went backstage to see him and saw a big crowd,” she explained, “so I went to the ladies room. When I came out—there he was. Within five minutes he asked me to show him the town. I accepted, naturally. We went to see two or three floor shows in night clubs. I knew then that this was the real thing. Well, you know how love is. Eight months went by and I never heard from him. No letters or anything. Then I went to Memphis and it started all over—again.” Runyon could understand why Elvis picked June out of the hordes of girls who hounded him. The reporter described her as a “blue-eyed girl built on the order of the Mississippi River—long and with lots of curves.” She certainly had nice things to say about Elvis. “He’s a wonderful guy when you know him. I mean if really know him, real deep down under. He’s a warm individual and treats everyone so nice.” Sounds like a special relationship, thought Runyon, but before he could draw a controversial comment from her, June sportingly provided it herself. She explained that Elvis had another “steady,” a 19-year-old Memphis gal. Runyon had his peg—“Elvis is as unsteady in love as he is on stage.” He probed and June kept talking. “It’s hard to tell whether I’m No. 1 or No. 2 in his life—but I’m happy being one or the other,” she said and kept rambling. “It would be nice if Elvis loved me as much as I love him, but right now he’s married to his career and he isn’t thinking of marriage. If Elvis doesn’t marry it’d be a sin to let something like that go to waste.” When Elvis returned to Memphis after the tour, June admitted, “I don’t know just what I’ll do.” Of course, Runyon knew that after his story appeared in the Daily News, Elvis and Colonel Parker would have some explaining to do. After all, rock stars of all eras can’t afford to have their female fans thinking they’re attached. (When the Beatles first hit it big, John Lennon downplayed the fact that he was married, and Davy Jones of the Monkees kept his marriage a secret.) It’s basic teenage girl psychology. You have to keep alive each girl’s fantasy that she could actually be the star’s girlfriend. Can’t do that if you’ve already got a girlfriend. You can have one; you just can’t admit it. Denying that June Juanico was his “steady” is exactly what Elvis did the next day. “Now, this is the way it is,” Elvis announced, “I got about 25 girls I date regular. She’s just one of the girls.” Colonel Parker explained that June’s belief she was Elvis’s “steady” existed only in her own mind. “They show up—sometimes eight at a time—in the hotel or theater lobby, all claiming they’re his ‘steadies,’” he said. “One girl even claimed she was my daughter and I don’t have a daughter.” The Daily News had a good thing going, and they weren’t about to let it go at that. A reporter rang up June’s mother, Mrs. Mae Juanico, at her Biloxi home and asked about her daughter’s relationship with Elvis. “When he’s in Biloxi, he doesn’t go out with any other girl but her,” she declared. “He said he can’t get married for at least three years and he asked her to wait for him.” Whoa!—that almost sounds like a proposal. Of course, no young woman who looks like June Juanico could be expected to wait around for three years for any man, not even Elvis Presley. Seven months later, after finishing work on his second movie, Loving You, Elvis wired June in Biloxi, asking her to meet him in New Orleans during his train’s brief layover. There, in Elvis’s private train car, she told him she was engaged to someone else. When the train pulled out, June wasn’t on it. She never saw Elvis again. You can read June Juanico’s complete story about her relationship with Elvis in her book, Elvis in the Twilight of Memory, published by Arcade Publishing in 1997. — Alan Hanson
Entry #44: Posted January 8, 2009 I am posting this blog entry on January 8th, the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth. Even for devoted Elvis fans, it is a date that is easy to miss each year. After all, Elvis is the only celebrity I know whose date of death is more celebrated than his date of birth. Of course, economics is the reason. It’s easier for Elvis Presley Enterprises to draw a big crowd to Memphis in the summer than it would be in the winter. I know that Graceland holds commemorative events around Elvis’s birthday each year, but let’s face it—Elvis Week in August is by far the bigger money-maker for EPE. For me, though, January 8th is the appropriate day each year to celebrate and give thanks for this unique man’s life and work. So in this space I’d like to share my thoughts about Elvis with you on this special day. Each January 8th I think about how old Elvis would have been had he lived and how his career might have unfolded. It’s hard to believe that he has been gone for 31 years now. He would have been 74 years old today. His days of rocking on the Las Vegas stage would have ended years ago, but if he had taken care of himself, there’s no reason why he couldn’t have still been a working entertainer even at that advanced age. Frank Sinatra received a Grammy Award at age 77 and performed in concert at age 78. And it would have been something special had Elvis lived long enough to record with his daughter, Lisa Marie, like Frank did with his daughter, Nancy. Sadly, drugs and a destructive lifestyle took Elvis away from us over three decades ago, and dwelling on what might have been is an illusion that quickly fades away. We’re left on the anniversary of his birth each year to remember and honor Elvis for what he accomplished in his all too short life. On his birthday this year, then, let’s remind ourselves of why we are Elvis fans. First, we can be proud of his musical legacy. Clearly, in the mid-fifties Elvis pioneered the merging of country, gospel, rhythm and blues, and white pop sounds into a new vocal style that dominated popular music for decades to come. And the impressive thing is that he came by it naturally. He didn’t sit down with some PR men and come up with a gimmick sound to be packaged and fed to the public. Instead, from an early age he took in the various kinds of music available to him as a poor boy growing up in Tupelo and Memphis. What emerged in Sam Phillips’s studio, and later with RCA, was a natural mixture of contemporary sounds. Then, we can be proud of Elvis’s roll in improving race relations in America. Elvis himself declared that he had not invented rock ’n’ roll, but there is no doubt that he popularized it. He was the first to dominate the charts with it, and he brought other rockers, both white and black, with him. When Elvis came along, there were separate charts and radio stations for country and western, rhythm and blues, and white pop. Elvis challenged such rigid distinctions in music. His recordings topped all three charts, and his success allowed black artists to cross over from the R&B charts to the mainstream pop charts. The racial integration of their music made it natural for young people to embrace the Civil Rights Movement, the beginning of which coincided with Elvis’s rise to fame. Elvis even played a role in the Women’s Rights Movement. He empowered women to break away from the female stereotypes of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. Just read the following paragraph, which is taken from a letter a young woman sent to the Tacoma News Tribune in 1957. “Why don’t women wake up? It’s time they watched and heard about something more than recipes, laundry soap and breakfast cereal. They’ve as much right to see all of Elvis on TV as men have Marilyn Monroe and hundreds of other one-fourth dressed women ‘wiggle’ their way onto stages.” As much as I admire Elvis for those accomplishments, every January 8th I find myself dwelling more on my personal relationship with Elvis through the years. No, I never met him, but he has been a constant companion since I became a fan at the age of 14 in 1963. Through the years I’ve purchased all of his records (and later CDs) and listened to them regularly. Forty-five years later I still enjoy his music as much as I ever did. Although some years ago I lost the urge to accumulate, for many years I was an avid Elvis collector. I can still remember the time when as a teenager I rumaged through garbage cans behind a juke box distributor business looking for discarded 45 rpm Elvis picture sleeves. And then there was when I discovered Treacher’s Records, which specialized in Elvis material in Vancouver, B.C. It was like a candy store for Elvis collectors. Then there were the hours I spent in theaters on Saturday afternoons in the sixties viewing Elvis movies, and the amazing experience of actually getting to see him perform live in concert—twice! After his death, I discovered an antique store that sold bootleg Elvis records, which opened for me the world of alternate studio takes and concert recordings that seemingly has no end. Lately, of course, I’ve had the pleasure of writing a book about Elvis and launching this web site. Yes, I have a lot to celebrate each January 8th. Happy birthday, Elvis, and many more to come. — Alan Hanson
Entry #45: Posted January 15, 2009 Those of you who have read my book, Elvis ’57: The Final Fifties Tours, know that I believe “letters-to-the-editor” are a valuable source of information about the Presley phenomenon in the fifties. Written mostly by people who had very recently seen Elvis perform on stage or TV, such letters provide significant insight into how the general public, especially teenagers, viewed Elvis and the controversy that followed him everywhere he went. This week’s topic is an interesting series of letters that appeared in a Denver newspaper in 1956. First, though, I’d like to give some background on the conditions that motivated readers to send letters about Elvis to their local newspapers back then. First of all, we all know that Elvis first burst on the national scene as a result of a series of network TV performances early in 1956 on Stage Show, hosted by the Dorsey brothers. However, his notoriety built slowly through the first five months of that year. Although he toured constantly, in the early months of 1956 local newspapers rarely deemed his appearances in their towns worthy of print coverage. In April and May, sporadic reviews of his stage show started to appear in some papers, but usually only in the inside entertainment section. It wasn’t until after his infamous pelvic performance of “Hound Dog” on the Milton Bearle Show in early June that an Elvis appearance became front page news in nearly every community he played from then through the end of 1957. It’s important to understand that letters-to-the-editor surfaced only after newspapers printed negative reviews of Elvis concerts. Such articles raised the ire of young Presley fans, causing them to do two things they normally didn’t do—read the newspaper and write letters of protest. If local papers didn’t cover Elvis’s appearances in their communities, as they usually didn’t in the early months of 1956, there was no motivation for Elvis fans to send letters to the publisher. The very first sizable group of letters-to-the-editor about Elvis began to appear in the Rocky Mountain News on April 11, 1956, three days after Elvis played the Denver Coliseum. The letters, and some phone calls, were aimed at Frances Melrose, a News writer, whose regular column usually appeared in the paper’s entertainment section. “Rage Over Elvis Presley Is a Bit Sickening” was the provocative headline above Melrose’s review on page 27 of the April 10, 1956, edition of the Denver paper. “There’s a new rage of the age—Elvis Presley,” noted Miss Melrose. “As far as I’m concerned I hope this rage passes into oblivion as quickly as it has sprung up.” Several paragraphs later came the passage that undoubtedly sparked a deluge of antagonism toward her from Denver’s Elvis fans. “It’s a toss-up which was worse, Elvis or his fans,” Melrose wrote. “I’d say the edge goes to Elvis. To criticize Elvis was one thing, but to openly put down his young fans was asking for trouble. Still, Melrose was apparently taken by surprise when her phone in the newsroom began ringing off the hook that very afternoon. Nearly all the callers disagreed with her assessment of Elvis. Most did so politely. However, in her column the next day, Melrose chose to feature an anonymous caller, who commented as follows. “Miss Melrose? This is one of your fans—only we don’t like you … You’re an old stinkin’ rat! We don’t think you ought to write that way about Elvis Presley.” It’s understandable that some of Elvis’s teenage fans reacted passionately to Melrose’s criticism of their favorite, but such name-calling only helped to strengthen the conviction of Melrose and other anti-Elvis journalists at the time that Elvis was a harmful influence on teenagers. On April 13, Melrose printed portions of 21 letters and phone calls as “samples” of those she had received in just the past two days. “The hurricane stirred up by my column on Elvis Presley continues to ricochet around my ears,” she explained. Among the printed messages she had received were many insulting comments aimed at the News writer. Some examples, bad grammar and all, follow. “You’re just jealous because you can’t wiggle and shake and sing, too, like Elvis?” “Go soak your head in a pickle barrel!” “I suppose you’ve never crooned for someone. Well believe me, if you haven’t you’re the squarest.” “The News could use a new reporter. One who is a little more broadminded.” “If you had half the talent Elvis Presley has, you might be good enough to shine our shoes. If anybody’s a bit sickening, it’s you.” “Just because you don’t dig jive and are too old to rock to his music, you have no reason to call him down like that. I think you’re jealous.” “I’ve never in all my life heard of such a dirty rotten deal for someone so great as Elvis Presley. You are the most selfish and jealous person I’ve ever heard of. Everybody could have did without those lies, but it takes an old rotten bag like you to say something like that. I hope your proud of yourself.” “We feel sorry for old harpies like you. We sure do … Presley is the greatest ever. Anything you say about him will not turn us against him.” “You are the bum, not Presley. I bet you are jealous because you can’t sing, shake and look as good as him.” A few of the letters Melrose printed were respectful in their disagreement with her opinion about Elvis. A couple were thoughtful in their defense of Presley. There were even a few letters that praised her stand. The majority, though, expressed anger at Melrose. She seemed to take her thrashing with considerably more grace than her young detractors displayed. “And so it went,” she concluded. “There’s nothing half-way about Elvis Presley. You either like him or you hate him.” Similar scenarios concerning Elvis played out in city after city where he appeared over the next 20 months. That continuing flood of letters stands today as clear evidence of Elvis Presley’s influence on popular culture in the latter half of the 1950s. No other entertainer of that era, or any other before or since, has dominated the letters columns of the country’s newspapers for as long as Elvis did. And Frances Melrose was right about one thing—people then either liked Elvis or they hated him. People either clung to the music and styles of the past or they saw rock ’n’ roll as representing long overdue freedom from conformity. And nowhere was the battle fought more passionately than in the nation’s newspapers in 1956 and 1957. — Alan Hanson
Entry #46: Posted January 22, 2009 Even after 45 years as an Elvis fan, I still listen to his music as much as I ever did. I have about a thousand songs on my iPod; over 600 of them are by Elvis. His music is what made me an Elvis fan, and it is what has kept me one for all these years. My fondness for his music eventually led to my having an interest in Elvis as an important figure in American culture, and so most of the content of this blog and the rest of Elvis-History-Blog.com has focused on the historical significance of Elvis Presley. This week, though, I’d like to go back to my roots as an Elvis fan and discuss his music. I’m not going to bore you with a list of my favorite Elvis songs. That kind of thing is so personal that one’s choices are difficult to explain to others. I’ve heard other fans dismiss some of my favorites, while I, on the other hand, can’t imagine why they rate some of their pet Elvis tunes so highly. Some of you are going to think the following topic is rather obscure, but when you become so familiar with Elvis’s music, you tend to become fixated on obscure things. One thing that I’ve always wondered about is Elvis's decision to skip a verse in a few of his songs. Take “Johnny B. Goode,” for instance. Elvis started singing this Chuck Berry composition during his first Vegas engagement in 1969. In fact, I think Elvis’s performance of “Johnny B. Goode” on his “In Person” LP is one of his best live performances ever. That rendition has so much energy, provided both by Elvis and his band, that I can’t resist singing along and pounding out the beat whenever I hear it. I’ve always wondered, though, why Elvis never sang the second verse when he did “Johnny B. Goode.” In every recording I’ve ever heard of Elvis doing the song, he sings the first verse and then the third verse twice, omitting the second verse altogether. For those unfamiliar with the lyrics of the second verse, they are: He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack, Why did he choose to leave that verse out? The only reason I can come up with is that he had trouble memorizing that particular set of lyrics. Even Elvis, who demonstrated in his concerts that he could commit to memory the words to dozens of songs, had trouble at times with some lyrics. For example, in That’s the Way It Is, the documentary about his February 1970 engagement in Las Vegas, Elvis expressed his fear that he might forget the words to “I Just Can’t Help Believin’” and then went out and flubbed the lyrics on stage. “Blue Suede Shoes” is another song in which Elvis chose to skip a verse, or stanza, on stage during the concert years of the seventies. Tracing his performances of the song backwards through his career provides some insight into why he decided to leave a verse out of the song in the latter stages of his career. The verse in question in Carl Perkins’s classic song reads as follows. You can burn my house, steal my car, Elvis sang this verse in all his recordings of “Blue Suede Shoes,” both in the studio and on stage, for many years at the start of his career. It was part of his classic RCA studio cut in 1956. The verse is also there in live 1956 recordings on the Dorsey Brothers show and on stage in Las Vegas, Tupelo, and Little Rock in 1956. Even Elvis’s soundtrack recording of the song for G.I. Blues in 1960 contains the “fruit jar” verse. So why did he leave it out after returning to the stage in later years? I believe than answer lies in his 1968 “Comeback” special. You may recall that Elvis filmed two black-leather “sit-down” and two “stand-up” shows for the special. He sang “Blue Suede Shoes” in all four of those segments. In the first sit-down show, he tried to sing the “fruit jar” verse but forgot the opening line and mumbled through it before getting back on track later. In one of the stand-up shows, he again stumbled on that same verse. It’s possible that to avoid embarrassment and frustration in the future, he simply decided to omit the “fruit jar” stanza during his Vegas opening the following summer and in all future performances of the song. While a concern about forgetting some lyrics might have led to Elvis omitting verses from a few songs on stage, it doesn’t explain why he did the same thing a few times in the studio. There he had all the lyrics on paper right in front of him. For some unknown reason, though, verses were omitted in a handful of his studio recordings. The earliest example is his 1957 recording of “Blue Christmas.” All recordings of the song by other artists that I’ve heard through the years include the following stanza that is missing from Elvis’s original version. I’ll have a Blue Christmas, that’s certain, Elvis restored these lyrics when he sang the song for his 1968 special. The one missing-verse Elvis song that baffles me the most is “One Broken Heart for Sale,” recorded in 1962. When Elvis sang the song in It Happened At the World’s Fair, it had three verses, including the following. Hey Cupid, where are you? My heart is growing sadder. That version ran 2:23 minutes, about average for a commercial single at the time. But when Elvis’s single of the song was released, it omitted the above verse, reducing it to a mere 1:45 running time, one of the shortest singles of Presley’s career. What could have been the reason for cutting a verse from the song? During the 1970s verses were skipped in at least a couple of Elvis’s studio recordings—“Spanish Eyes” and “Goodtime Charley’s Got the Blues.” I don’t know why the first title was cut back, but I’ve got a good idea why a stanza was cut from “Goodtime Charley.” The omitted lines read: I got my pills to ease the pain. Doncha you think that “pills” line might have struck a little too close to home for Elvis? — Alan Hanson
Entry #47: Posted January 29, 2009 Throughout Elvis Presley’s career, from 1954-1977, Billboard magazine’s record charts were recognized as the standard in the music industry. Even today no recording from that era can legitimately be called a #1 record unless Billboard rated it so. Other publications, such as Variety, published record charts, but none of them carried the weight of Billboard’s. In deciding which new records to play, disk jockeys across the nation trusted the magazine’s recommendations. This week I’d like to review what Billboard had to say about each of Elvis’s single records as they were released in 1955 and 1956. I’m not interested here in the chart history of Elvis’s records. That’s been well documented elsewhere. I’m referring to Billboard’s assessment of Presley’s singles when they first appeared in record shops. In the mid-fifties, Billboard reviewed selected 45 rpm single releases in two weekly columns. The first, labeled “Review Spotlight,” briefly assessed and recommended new releases that the magazine felt had potential for commercial and chart success. If a “Spotlight” single sold well in key markets, it might be featured again in Billboard’s more prestigious “This Week’s Best Buys” column. All of Elvis’s single releases in 1955 and 1956 were mentioned in one or both of these Billboard columns. Let’s see what the magazine had to say about them. January 29, 1955: Billboard reviewed “Milkcow Blues Boogie” / “You’re a Heartbreaker” (Sun #215) “‘Milkcow Blues Boogie’ … Presley continues to impress with each release as one of the slickest talents to come up in the country field in a long, long time. Item here is based on some of the best folk blues. The guy sells all the way. ‘You’re a Heartbreaker’ … Here Presley tackles the rhythmic material for a slick country-style reading. What with the good backing this one should get action, too.” June 25, 1955: Billboard reviewed “Baby, Lets Play House” (Sun 217) in its “Best Buys” column. “In the past few weeks, various Southern territories have been seeing nice action with this disk. After a strong kick-off in the Memphis area, it has begun to sell well in Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, and Nashville and is moving out now in Richmond, St. Louis and the Carolinas. Flip is ‘I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone.’” September 10, 1955: Billboard reviewed Elvis’s last Sun release, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget” / “Mystery Train” (Sun 156) in its “Best Buys” column. (A month later Elvis would switch to the RCA label.) “With each release, Presley has been coming more and more quickly to the forefront. His current record has wasted no time in establishing itself. Already it appears on the Memphis and Houston territorial charts. It is also reported selling well in Richmond, Atlanta, Durham, Nashville and Dallas. Both sides are moving with ‘I Forgot’ currently on top.” February 11, 1956: Billboard reviewed Elvis’s first RCA release, “Heartbreak Hotel” / “I Was the One” (Victor 6420) in its “Review Spotlight” column. “Presley’s first Victor disk might easily break in both markets. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is a strong blues item wrapped up in his usual powerful style and a great beat. ‘I Was the One’ is about as close to r.&b. as you can get without horns and has more pop appeal. Presley is riding high right now with network TV appearances, and this disk should benefit from all the special plugging.” February 18, 1956: Just a week later, Billboard again featured “Heartbreak Hotel,” this time in its “Best Buys” column. “Another record that has demonstrated Presley’s major league stature. Sales have snowballed rapidly in the past two weeks, with pop and r.&b. customers joining Presley’s hillbilly fans in demanding this disk. Richmond, Atlanta, Nashville, Durham, New Orleans and Memphis reports were swelled by action on the West Coast and in Middle Western States. Flip is ‘I Was the One.’” May 12, 1956: Elvis’s second RCA release, “My Baby Left Me” / “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” was covered in Billboard’s “Review Spotlight” column. (Notice that “My Baby Left Me” was listed as the “A” side.) “Another pair of exciting Presley sides have the big-money look. The top features a real blues with that wild r.&b. infusion so well calculated to hit the all-market pay-off. On the flip, it’s a different, more gentle Presley, but he still vibrates with that husky, coin-pulling charm. Either one or both could be the big ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ follow-up.” May 19, 1956: The same record was again featured in the “Best Buys” column. Billboard was still rating “My Baby Left Me” as the “preferred” side. “In The Billboard last week a story detailed the phenomenal advance sale of this new Presley disk. A spot check in all key markets this week indicated that the ground work for huge volume selling was well prepared, and that the record moved over the counters in expected quantities. Both sides have gotten generous deejay play which has helped stimulate activity, but ‘My Baby Left Me’ is currently the preferred side.” July 21, 1956: Elvis’s third RCA single, “Hound Dog” / “Don’t Be Cruel” (Victor 6604) appeared on Billboard’s “Review Spotlight” list. “Presley hyped the ‘Hound Dog’ side on a recent Steve Allen TV airing which gave a solid, early kickoff. It’s a highly charged rhythm opus in Presley’s characteristic style and should enjoy heavy commercial acceptance. ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ is in a more subdued, frankly popish vein, and demonstrates that the singer is a versatile stylist.” July 28, 1956: A week later “Hound Dog” appeared again as a Billboard “Best Buy.” “From first-week reports, it has become clear already that this will be one of this year’s big grossers. Sales in pop, c.&w. and r.&b. markets have exceeded the impressive starting figures of previous Presley hits—and that is going some. There are some indications that the flip, ‘Don’t Be Cruel,’ may also develop after the initial excitement on ‘Hound Dog’ dies down a bit.” September 22, 1956: The previous week, Billboard had listed the seven Elvis singles that RCA had released simultaneously. On this date, though, the magazine featured “Blue Moon” / “Just Because” (Victor 6640) as the one of the seven with the most sales potential. “Of the seven singles released by Victor two weeks ago, all from artist’s album, this disk, with emphasis on ‘Blue Moon,’ is stepping out and starting to move. All seven have been reported as good sellers and the strength is well distributed throughout the country. ‘Money Honey’ and ‘I’ll Never Let You Go’ are two other sides reported as strong sellers.” October 6, 1956: Billboard put its “Spotlight” briefly on the soon-to-be-released “Love Me Tender” / “Anyway You Want Me” (Victor 6643). “Titled tune from Presley’s first flick has set a record for advance orders, which now exceed a million. Further comment unnecessary.” October 13, 1956: A week later in its “Best Buys” column, Billboard covered “Love Me Tender” in more detail. It was Elvis’s last single release of 1956. “A hit before it was ever released, this disk since issued has chalked up an all-time record for first week volume. Acceptance in the pop, country and rhythm & blues fields is complete, and, as on his last record, should soon be dominating the charts of all three categories. ‘Love Me Tender’ has gotten the lion’s share of attention so far, but there are some indications that the flip may also come in for a share of the spotlight a little later.” As we’ve seen, Billboard gave positive reviews to all of Elvis’s single releases in the 1955-1956 period. The magazine’s support by itself didn’t make Elvis a star, but it certainly gave some credibility to his sudden rise to fame. — Alan Hanson Go to Current Blog
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