Some people who should know better are reluctant to put Buddy Holly in the first rank of the founding fathers (and mothers) of rock and roll, among the others whose importance is undisputed. Elvis Presley is justly labeled The King; courtesy of the visionary recording industry mogul Sam Phillips (founder of the seminal Sun Records, among his many achievements), Elvis was ideally suited in many ways to be the one to bring rhythm and blues to white audiences.
A native of Tupelo, MS, Elvis Presley has strong connections to the Mississippi Gulf Coast region; the house where Elvis spent several summers still stands practically next door to the Gulf Hills Hotel near Ocean Springs – that’s where my wife Peggy Eglin Winfree and I lived for several weeks after losing our home to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. Peggy knew Elvis personally long before he became a star and loves to regale friends and acquaintances with tales about the near mythic figure.
After Elvis Presley signed with RCA Victor Records, his first single on the new label, “Heartbreak Hotel” was released on January 27, 1956. The song was Elvis’s first #1 pop single and first million-selling record; it went on to become the biggest selling record of the entire year.
The impact of this one Elvis recording can hardly be overstated. “Heartbreak Hotel” was one of the biggest influences on John Lennon that inexorably led to the formation of the Beatles. In a quote given in Wikipedia, John Lennon speaks of his feelings about the song: “When I first heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, I could hardly make out what was being said. It was just the experience of hearing it and having my hair stand on end. We’d never heard American voices singing like that. They always sung like [Frank] Sinatra or enunciate very well. Suddenly, there’s this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy stuff going on. And we didn’t know what Elvis was singing about. . . . It took us a long time to work out what was going on. To us, it just sounded like a noise that was great.”
John Lennon is not the only British rock legend who was similarly affected by “Heartbreak Hotel”. George Harrison was only 13 and riding his bike past a friend’s house when he overheard the song being played in 1956; he said the song gave him a “rock and roll epiphany”. The following year, Harrison auditioned to be the guitarist for John Lennon’s early band the Quarrymen.
Lead singer Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin heard “Heartbreak Hotel” when he was just 8 years old; he has said that the song “changed my life”: “It was so animal, so sexual, the first musical arousal I ever had. You could see a twitch in everybody my age. All we knew about the guy was that he was cool, handsome and looked wild.”
Guitarist and songwriter Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones wrote of the Elvis Presley classic in his 2010 memoir, Life: “Good records just get better with age. But the one that really turned me on, like an explosion one night, listening to Radio Luxembourg on my little radio when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. That was the stunner. I’d never heard it before, or anything like it. I’d never heard of Elvis before. It was almost as if I’d been waiting for it to happen. When I woke up the next day I was a different guy.”
Finally, the legendary 1992 appearance by future President Bill Clinton playing saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show included a performance of “Heartbreak Hotel”.
(June 2013/1)
