Something about Elvis.

 Something about Elvis.

The big white cupboard with the 1950s style plastic handles, to the left of the tiled fireplace, is where we kept our records, along with the large wooden needlework box, an assortment of simple board games, the all but forgotten pages of a great grandfather’s sketchbook, and a sea captain’s black writing chest. Almost all of these records were of the large, shellac, 78rpm variety, lying dormant in those dark recesses for 53 weeks of the year, until my father’s Hogmanay celebrations came around, for which the entire nearby village of Perlethorpe would seem to cram into our front room. Not surprisingly then, the titles would favour endless Scottish reels by Jimmy Shand and his Band, alongside bland British versions of “popular music” epitomised by the likes of Malcolm Vaughn‘s “You Are My Special Angel”, with just a smattering of Tommy Steele and Jim Dale. I think the only American record present was Harry Belafonte’s “Mary's Boy Child”. Not for our family the vulgar excesses of Johnnie Ray.

As a small child I was more fascinated by the little silver fish which would scarper across the tiled hearth of the fireplace next to that cupboard, but by the age of nine the contents of what was inside became more intriguing. Two discs in particular caught my attention, being smaller than the rest. These were the new-fangled 45rpms which heralded the change from “popular” to “pop”.

I cannot imagine for the life of me how Elvis Presley made his way into our home. Of course, I thought I knew what “rock and roll” was. I thought it was anyone who wore flashy clothes and topped the bill on TV’s “Sunday Night at the London Palladium”. Surely Alma Cogan was rock and roll, and Liberace, and certainly Tommy Steele, judging by the full colour picture of him on my Big Sister’s wall, wearing a blue shirt with red guitar. I had no idea that Elvis pre-dated both Tommy and Jim Dale by at least three years. So, imagine how I felt when I first played those pieces of black vinyl with the triangular centres? It would have been akin to opening my “Lion Comic for Boys”, and having a topless picture of the lady from “Watch with Mother” drop to the carpet. Even more, it was like discovering something which had hitherto been kept secret, and which no-one else appeared to know about, like it had been planted in that cupboard for me, by hands unknown, the final piece in the jig saw picture of dawning teenage puberty.

I soon discovered that the ideal place for playing my new found treasures was the little used Dining Room at the rear of our property. It was here that the hollow space beneath the floor boards, aided by the penny I taped to the record player’s arm for extra bass, would enhance the sound of the track, sending it resonating out into the surrounding forest. I had no concept of what songs were current, or new. To me they were all records. Danny Kaye sat easily alongside Lonnie Donegan on my play list. All that mattered was the magic of the sound. And there was no sound more magical than Elvis.

The intro to “Dixieland Rock” is long, building up the tension, anticipating the moment when Elvis will start to sing. I would try and guess that moment, trying to come in at the same time as him: “Well down in New Orleans at the Golden Goose, I grabbed a green-eyed dolly that was on the loose”. What the heck? I had no idea what he was singing about, but long before I even saw a picture of him, I knew how he moved. However, the real slice of heaven came on the B-side to “It’s Now Or Never”, where Elvis’s superior post-Army vocal chords slide in unison with the honeyed left hand of Floyd Cramer pumping the ivories, as the doo-woppin’ Jordanaires urge them both on from the sidelines: “You say that you love me, and swear it to be true, well a’ think that’s fine if a you ain’t lyin’, just make me know what t’do”. That moment was like Gabriel had arrived with his horn. No digitally enhanced CD will ever match the sound of the first few seconds of “Make Me Know It” as it reverberated atop those hollow floor boards, courtesy of a portable mono record player, not forgetting the all-important penny taped to the arm. And nothing ever will.

It would be a year or so before we got to see what Elvis looked like, aside from a few out of date pictures in Big Sister’s comic, the editor of which surely favoured the safer home-grown sounds of Cliff Richard. We were on holiday in Ingoldmells, when “G.I. Blues” was playing at the nearby cinema. From that moment on Elvis Presley was a constant “presence” in our house.

As short years passed we all had our individual heroes. Big Sister would embark on an imaginary love affair with mop-top heart throb George Harrison. I would be caught trying to listen to a hidden copy of Sgt Peppers at grammar school. My Middle Sister would subsequently scream her lungs out over David Cassidy, to be superseded in turn by Kid Sister becoming the first (and only) punk in town. But we ALL came back to playing an Elvis record from time to time. It kind of united us when apart, and at family gatherings when wild renditions of “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” were the order of the day.

On August 16th, 1977, I was at “home” in my parents’ house, watching the TV. Mother came through on her way to the downstairs toilet. Whilst she was in there the news came: “We are getting unconfirmed reports from Memphis, Tennessee, that Elvis Presley has died”. I started thinking how I could best break that news to mother. Such are the silly details which define our lives. Kid Sister was also at home, and we spent the following hours of the night and well into the morning, listening to non-stop Elvis on Radio Luxemburg. It was hard to believe that someone who had in part orchestrated our lives for so long was now gone, and yet at the same time it seemed somehow “right”. Warning photographs of a “fat Elvis” had never appeared in the British press, who hadn’t really been near a recording studio for the last three years of his life. Also, 42 years seemed so old for a pop star back then!

Elvis was “The King”. He’s still regarded as such. The people gave him that title way back in the 1950s, without being prompted or paid to do so. John Lennon once said “Don’t worship dead heroes simply because they’re dead”. And I don’t. I “worship” Elvis partly because he was one of the greatest performers that ever lived, but mostly because of something which was ignited in me by the contents of that big white cupboard to the left of the tiled fireplace, a long time ago.

All text copyright ian g craig.