Simon Napier Bell: the Dodgy Business of Popular Music: Elvis Presley
Simon Napier-Bell (who previously managed Wham, Marc Bolan, Japan and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page (during his Yardbirds phase) is back in Skrufff, delivering a short series of excerpts from his must-read new history of the music business book ‘TA-RA-RA-BOOM-DE-AY- the Dodgy Business of Popular Music’. (Click here to download/ buy)
“Elvis changed everything. Writers no longer had to care about the old 32-bar format, or middle-class sensibilities, or family values. It was music for the young and no one else.
The older generation hated it. After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message from the local Catholic newspaper was sent to FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover warning that “Presley is a definite danger to the security of the
United States.”
The New York Daily News said his act had “reached the lowest depths of ‘grunt and groin’”.
When Colonel Parker booked him into Vegas, a middle-class middle-aged audience gave him an ice-cold reception – “like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party”, said Newsweek.
A car showroom in Cincinnati advertised they would break fifty Elvis Presley records with each car sold. And sold five in a day.
Even Frank Sinatra threw himself into the controversy, saying, “This rancid smelling aphrodisiac, I deplore.”
Elvis replied, “I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say.
He is a great success and a fine actor.”
TA-RA-RA-BOOM-DE-AY- the Dodgy Business of Popular Music: “click here to download/ buy
