elvis presley

119. ‘Surrender’, by Elvis Presley

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This December 24th, I’d like to wish everyone who reads ‘The UK Number Ones Blog’ a very merry Christmas. And to celebrate the festive season, let’s welcome back one of the most famous figures in Western popular culture – a man famous both for his large belly and his garish, all-in-one outfits… No, not Santa… Elvis! Yes, it’s him again. His third chart-topper of the year – and it’s only June! Like that urban myth about rats in a city; in 1961 you were never more than seven feet from an Elvis Presley #1 single.

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Surrender, by Elvis Presley (his 8th of twenty-one #1s)

4 weeks, from 1st – 29th June 1961

Or, more accurately, you’re never more than a month away from an Elvis #1 single. There were just four weeks between ‘It’s Now or Never’ and ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’, then another four weeks before ‘Wooden Heart’ came along, and exactly four weeks later here we are with ‘Surrender’. Surrender? The UK Singles Charts surrendered to Elvis a long time ago. And these aren’t just flash-in-the-pan chart toppers either – they’ve all settled in at the top for a long haul. Eight weeks, four weeks, six weeks, and now another four. Very few acts can claim to have had this kind of hold over the top spot.

To the song, then. I’ve long been familiar with this. One of the first tracks on CD2 of the Greatest Hits I bought aged sixteen or so. It’s never been my favourite Elvis song. Nor have I ever hated it. I’ve never had any strong feelings about it, I guess, but I should really muster up some kind of opinion about it or this’ll be my shortest post yet.

The intro is cool – I’ll give it that. It always makes me think of the James Bond theme. Dun-dada-dun-dada-dun-dada-dun… And then The King comes in. When we kiss my heart’s on fire… Burning with a strange desire… I’m still slightly disappointed by his voice, all smooth and honeyed as it is. I have to keep reminding myself that rock ‘n’ roll Elvis is dead, or at least in a decade-long hibernation. He sings it well, though. Obviously he sings it well. It is Elvis, after all.

So my darling please surrender… All your love so warm and tender… Let me hold you in my arms dear… While the moon shines bright above… The lyrics look pretty ridiculous, written out like that. I mentioned in my post on ‘It’s Now or Never’ that Elvis never really did subtle, and this song is ‘It’s Now or Never’ distilled and concentrated. This is Elvis on heat. The best bit is when he comes back round for a final chorus, and murmurs: Won’t you please… Surrender to me… It’s playful, it’s flirty… It’s high camp. I’m being won round as I type this, on the fourth or fifth listen. I’d put it in my Top 10 ‘Elvis Songs to Belt Out in the Shower’ (‘The Wonder of You’ is number one, in case you were wondering.)

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And in terms of his post-army, sixties number ones thus far – I’d rank ‘Surrender’ as No. 2 of 4. Behind ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ but ahead of this track’s big brother ‘It’s Now or Never’. Incidentally, ‘Surrender’ is also based on an old Neapolitan ballad, ‘Torna a Surriento’ – yet another chart topper harking back to decades earlier. And then ‘Wooden Heart’ ranks fourth. Of course. I hope I’ve left you in no doubt as to how awful that particular song is.

I think one of the reasons why I’ve neither loved, hated nor felt very strongly at all about this record is the fact that it’s so short. One minute fifty-two seconds and out. It’s over before you can really think about it; and it was never worth the effort of skipping on that old Greatest Hits CD.

There’s not much more to say here. Like I said, we’re never far from the next Elvis Presley-based #1. We’ll see him again in fo… No! Shock horror… We will have to wait a full TWENTY weeks until his next chart-topper! Is this the beginning of the end for the King, and his dominance over the UK charts? Is he preparing to leave the building? (*Spoiler Alert* No, it’s not and no, he isn’t.)

115. ‘Wooden Heart’, by Elvis Presley

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Oooh, what’s that? An accordion? Yay!… Said no-one ever. Nothing good ever starts with an accordion.

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Wooden Heart, by Elvis Presley (his 7th of twenty-one #1s)

6 weeks, from 23rd March – 4th May 1961

And what could you possibly add to said accordion to make an even more annoying sound? Ah, yes – an oompah band. Or at least the flaccid remnants of an oompah-band. So with this pair of musical buzzkills we enter Elvis’s short-lived ‘Lederhosen phase’: Can’t you see, I love you, Please don’t break my heart in two, That’s not hard to do, Cos I don’t have a wooden heart…

This is – for want of a better, more descriptive word – bad. At least Elvis has the decency to sing it like he’s embarrassed. He’s on auto-pilot – none of the emotion we were hearing on ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’, none of the bombast from ‘It’s Now or Never’ and certainly none of the energy we were hearing from him a couple of years ago on ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘I Got Stung’. The song, like the oompah-rhythm, plods along until it fizzles out.

There’s no strings upon, This love of mine, It was always you from the start… And then, if you thought it sounded lame in English, just wait until you hear it in German! Or, more accurately, in Swabian – a southern German dialect. Interestingly, this adds to the list of unusual-languages-other-than-English to feature on #1 hits. We’ve had cod-Italian (‘Mambo Italiano’), cod-Scots (‘Hoots Mon!’) and now Swabian-German, but still no French, Spanish or Italian…

Anyway, at least Elvis keeps this bilge short. Two minutes; done. ‘Wooden Heart’ featured on the soundtrack to ‘G.I. Blues – the movie shot by Elvis during his time stationed in Germany with the army, in which he plays an American soldier stationed, with the army, in Germany. And if you watch the song in the context of the movie – here – with the puppets and the children and everything it kind of works. It’s kind of cute. Separated from the movie soundtrack, though, and restricted to a black vinyl disc… I struggle to understand why anyone needed to buy this. It’s genuinely one of the worst #1s so far.

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And. AND! This single didn’t just sneak a week at the top… It spent six weeks there. A month. And a half! This is how famous Elvis was in 1961. Whenever anyone makes the old joke about an artist being so popular that they could release a fart and it would go to #1, this is what they’re talking about – the six weeks across March, April and May 1961 in which ‘Wooden Heart’ was Britain’s top-selling record. Which makes sense, since the oompah parts do, to an infantile mind such as mine, sound a bit like someone farting…

If nothing else, this disc confirms what we have long suspected: that rock ‘n’ roll Elvis is long dead. Long, long dead. ‘Wooden Heart’ isn’t so much the final nail in the coffin of Elvis the rock ‘n’ roller as the litre of gasoline chucked on the coffin while it burns. When I was a teenager just getting into Elvis I always skipped this track on his Greatest Hits. Even then. But – grasping for a silver lining here – at least this means that Ricky Valance has some competition for Worst #1 in my next recap!

112. ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’, by Elvis Presley

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What is Elvis’s most famous ballad? If you were an Elvis impersonator looking to slow things down on stage, to which song would you turn? I’d say either ‘Love Me Tender’, ‘Always on My Mind’, ‘The Wonder of You’, or, perhaps most likely, this.

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Are You Lonesome Tonight?, by Elvis Presley (his 6th of twenty-one #1s)

4 weeks, from 26th January – 23rd February 1961

Are you lonesome tonight, Do you miss me tonight, Are you sorry, We drifted, Apart? This is a country-tinged record – I mean, ‘lonesome’, come on! – during which you can imagine Elvis sat on a hay-bale, gently strumming, as the embers of the evening’s fire grow weak. It’s also perhaps the most minimalist #1 yet: no drums, no bass – just a guitar, some mellow backing vocals from The Jordanaires, and Mr. Presley.

I feel that Elvis, throughout much of his career, struggled to keep things subtle. Just look at those jumpsuits for a start… He had some really beautiful, low-key moments early on (his version of ‘Blue Moon’, for a start) but come his post-army days he was becoming ever more a fan of the semi-operatic, belt-em-out at full volume type hits (see ‘It’s Now or Never’). But he really does hold back here, purring the lines like a lovesick cat. Every so often he adds a bit of oomph – shall I come back… again? – but he quickly reigns it in. And this gentle approach really teases out the emotion in each line. I’ve always loved the Do the chairs in your parlour, Seem empty, And bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep, And picture me there? line. It’s kinda deep – a step above your usual rock ‘n’ roll love song.

And then… Oh my. Elvis talks. I wonder if… You’re lonesome tonight… Elvis couldn’t half talk. I make this only the second #1 to have featured a spoken-word section, after Pat Boone’s ‘I’ll Be Home’. And this isn’t just a couple of lines we’re talking about here. In a three minute record, Elvis talks for well over a minute of it. That’s more than a third of the song, people! Only The King could have gotten away with it. He ‘quotes’ Shakespeare, and describes a love in three acts… It’s amazing, and it peaks when his voice goes all serious, like a disappointed teacher: Honey, You lied when you said you loved me… But no matter how upset he is, he just can’t get over this woman. If you won’t come back to me, Then they can bring the curtain down…

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I struggle to believe that someone like Elvis had to spend many lonesome nights over the course of his life, without specifically choosing to; but he sells it here. He sounds heartbroken and vulnerable. Legend has it that he recorded this track at 4am, alone in the studio with all the lights out. And you can believe it, you really can. Contrast ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ with Cliff’s most recent chart-topper ‘I Love You’ – another simple-as little love song. But where that came off as cheesy and trite, this one comes off as timeless, and will actually make your spine tingle if you let it. This record is all about Elvis: The Voice. And that’s true star quality. Sorry Cliff.

‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’ has a history that goes way beyond the 1960s, and beyond Elvis. Add this to ‘Who’s Sorry Now’, ‘It’s All in the Game’, ‘Mack the Knife’ and countless other songs from earlier in this countdown, as being originally written and recorded decades before. In this case it dates from 1926. Though – and I’m being kind here – Elvis’s version makes those from the twenties sound pretty darn lightweight. BUT. If you think I’m finally, six number ones into his UK chart career, giving The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll the credit that he deserves then to you I say this: ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ may be his best chart-topper so far (yes, I’m going there) but his next #1, not too long from now, will not be ‘lonesome’. Oh no. It will be genuinely loathsome.

109. ‘It’s Now or Never’, by Elvis Presley

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More musical one-upmanship at the top of the charts! The Big ‘O’ has just finished teaching Ricky Valance how to do heartbreak properly; now Elvis has heard Roy’s operatic vocals and clearly thought to himself ‘So, this Orbison thinks he can sing an aria, does he? We’ll show him how it’s done! Uh-huh-huh.”

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It’s Now or Never, by Elvis Presley (his 5th of twenty-one #1s)

8 weeks, from 3rd November – 29th December 1960

If only that’s how the pop charts worked – a never ending attempt to outdo the chart-topper that went before you… At least that’s how the autumn of 1960 is turning out. Hot on the heels of ‘Only the Lonely’, this is more opera-lite. Except, while Orbison kept the operatics to a minimum in what was still a rock ‘n’ roll disc; Elvis really lets fly. The King was never one for understatement.

We open with backing singers – the Jordanaires – and a slice of cheesy Italian guitar… And then boom: some very famous lines indeed. It’s now or never, Come hold me tight, Kiss me my darling, Be mine tonight… Elvis croons the verses and belts out the choruses. It’s a rhumba, or perhaps a bossanova – the kind of rhythm that gets your hips swaying gently. It’s a very sexy record.

Or, at least, it’s trying to be a sexy record. Something, though, is lacking. You can’t fault the voice – Elvis sings it very well, and very properly – but to my modern ears it just sounds a bit… silly. A bit camp? Maybe it’s the flourishes of said Italian guitars. Maybe it’s the lyrics straight from an 8th grader’s poetry collection – When I first saw you, With your smile so tender, My heart was captured, My soul surrendered – plus some of the rhymes: excite me with invite me, a lifetime with the right time…

I don’t suppose the song’s cause has been helped by the intervening fifty-eight years since it was released. It’s now a standard of the white jump-suited, microphone twirling Elvis impersonator. Plus anyone who has been to Venice will have heard it mangled by hundreds of gondoliers all high on the fact that they’re getting a hundred euros for twenty minutes work. Plus, anyone who grew up in the UK in the ‘80s and ‘90s will instinctively start singing ‘Just one Cornetto, Give it to me, Delicious ice-cream, From Italy…’ when the intro kicks in. This is a song laden with pop-culture baggage.

Perhaps it’s impossible to view this song as it sounded in 1960. Though it was far from being a ‘new’ song even then. ‘O Sole Mio’, the Neapolitan folk song upon which it is based was written way back in 1898, and people would have known the melody. Whatever this record was – or is – perhaps depends on your age, or on whether you’ve holidayed in Italy, or on whether you’re a fan of cheap, mass produced ice-cream cones…

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One thing that isn’t up for debate is the success of this disc. Eight weeks at the top. Presley’s best-selling single in the UK – with 1.3 million copies sold it is his only British million-seller and was, at the time, the 2nd biggest selling single of all time behind ‘Rock Around the Clock’. A brand new entry at number one, only the 2nd single to ever do so. A monster hit. Some sources claim that its success was down to it being Elvis’s big comeback after a year away in the army. That’s not quite right, however. His first new recording, ‘Stuck on You’ had already hit #3 earlier in the year.

Whatever the reason for this record’s success, it’s what I’d call the beginning of Elvis MKIII – the neutered, granny friendly, chart-humping behemoth. MKI was the rough an’ ready country boy making his Sun Recordings – a version we never saw at the top of the UK charts. MKII was Elvis the Pelvis, singing ‘All Shook Up’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’, scandalising TV audiences across the globe with his thrusting. The big shock here is that this Elvis sounds so different to that Elvis. He’s dropped all the mumbling, and the growling and the uh-huh-huh-ing, and is singing perfectly, like an angelic choirboy in front of an archbishop. We caught a whiff of it in his last #1 – the cabaret-ish ‘A Fool Such As I’ – but the difference is quite shocking. I’ve mentioned it before, but hearing these famous records in context, surrounded by their contemporaries, really lets you hear them afresh.

One thing I do like about this song, I have to admit, is the ending. And not in an ironic, thank-God-it’s-over kind of way, no, no, no. I like the way Elvis slows it down, the guitars twiddle their way to silence, and we await the big finish. It’s now or never… But… with a great bit of showmanship, and in a way that drags this song well past the three minute mark, Elvis goes round one more time… my love won’t wait. And then he belts the ending out: It’s now or never… MY LOVE WON’T WAIT (chun-chun-chun)!

Before I go, I must mention that – way ahead of schedule – I get to celebrate one of my birthday #1s. ‘It’s Now or Never’ spent another week at the top of the UK charts at the end of January 2005, just in time for my nineteenth birthday. Which kind of annoys me, actually, as it spoils the flow of my ‘Birthday #1s’ playlist by sitting there amongst Limp Bizkit, Enrique Iglesias and Lady Gaga like a big old sore thumb. Anyway. First world problems. You better get used to hearing Elvis over the next few months, as he has the British Singles charts in something of a choke-hold from this point on – hitting the top at least three times per year – until a certain bunch of lads from Liverpool come along and kick him off his perch.

85. ‘A Fool Such As I’ / ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’, by Elvis Presley

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The King is back in the building. Buddy Holly replaced at the top by Elvis himself. What halcyon days!

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A Fool Such as I / I Need Your Love Tonight, by Elvis Presley (his 4th of twenty-one #1s)

5 weeks, from 15th May – 19th June 1959

One of these songs I’ve known for a very long time – since I got my first Elvis ‘Best Of’ way back when –so let’s start there. Now and then, There’s a fool, Such as I… I used to think that the scarily deep baritone that opens and closes this record was Elvis himself. It wasn’t, unfortunately. A chap called Ray Walker provided the voice, and it makes this whole track.

I really like this song. At least… I thought I did. I had it marked as one of my favourite ‘fifties-Elvis’ numbers, better than the silliness of ‘Teddy Bear’ or the mumbling verses of ‘King Creole’. Listening back to it now, though, I’m not so sure. The way Elvis sings it – he’s slightly restrained, slightly clipped… The vocals are weirdly ‘posh’, if you can imagine what I mean. There’s none of the growl he was giving us on ‘Jailhouse Rock’, and none of the saucy wink from ‘One Night’. It seems to me, listening to the song fresh after such a long absence, that Elvis might have been phoning it in here.

‘A Fool Such as I’ had been recorded before – back in the depths of the pre-rock era (AKA 1952), so perhaps Elvis had the original in the back of his mind as he enunciated, giving birth to the previously undiscovered Plummy Elvis. And while obviously everyone knows that Elvis phoned in pretty much everything he did between 1961 and ’68, it’s distressing to think that Elvis’s ‘phoning it in’ period might have started as early as 1959!

Still, the solo swings like I remember. And, to be fair, Elvis does let loose a little in the final verse. I’m a fool, But I love you dear, Until the day I die… And he just about redeems the whole thing by belting these lines out towards the end. He should, though, have been very grateful to Mr. Walker for his deep voice and to whoever was playing the guitar. They definitely helped paper over the cracks.

This record, and in fact all of Elvis’s early chart-toppers, are sometimes co-credited to The Jordanaires, AKA his backing singers. They also pick up some of the slack here (though I can’t remember even noticing them on songs like ‘All Shook Up’.) The Official Charts company don’t recognise them, however, so I won’t. But they’re there on the vinyl above, if you squint hard enough. I suppose it’s a case similar to the days when every record was ‘accompanied’ by an orchestra. I mentioned in a post a while back how the conductors of these orchestras had been airbrushed out of history, and it seems to be happening with backing groups now too.

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On then to the song I don’t know so well. Tell the truth I’d never heard this before and, when I saw that it was called ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’, I feared the worst. Maudlin ballad ahoy! But no…

The piano comes blasting in, rolling like a runaway train. And Elvis? Well, he needs your love tonight. And not in a mopey, crooning-in-the-window-at-the-moon kind of way (as we recently heard in Connie Francis’s flip-side ‘Carolina Moon’). No siree. I’ve been waiting just for tonight, To do some lovin’ and hold you tight, Don’t tell me baby you needa go, I got the Hi-Fi high and the lights down low…

This is fun stuff. This is rock ‘n’ roll. This possibly should have been the lead track. And Elvis does sound like he’s having a little more fun here. I count an ‘Oh-oh’, an ‘Uh-uh’, an ‘Ooh-ooh’, an ‘Oh Gee’, a ‘Wowee’, a ‘Wow’, and a ‘Pow-Pow’ among the lyrics. There’s even a bit of a rhumba during the bridge. But it really is the flip-side of ‘A Fool Such as I’ – they were well-placed together – as in the former he is lamenting the woman he loved while in this he’s pulled himself together and is promising her a night she won’t forget. G’wan yourself Elvis!

I still, though, get the faintest tang of him phoning it in here, even on this little rocker. I may be wrong – I may be listening for something that just isn’t there – but I can’t help but feel like I’m getting a whiff. He still isn’t quite going for it in the same way he did just a few months ago on ‘I Got Stung.’

As a little aside, ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’ is listed several times on Spotify as being ‘Live’, though there is nothing in the recording to suggest that it was performed in front of an audience. The link below is, to the very best of my knowledge, the version that topped the UK charts in the spring of ’59.

This #1 pulls Mr. Presley level with Guy Mitchell and Frankie Laine as the acts with the most UK chart-toppers. They all have four, though Frankie Laine is still well out in front in terms of weeks-at-number-one (Elvis has eighteen weeks from four #1s; Frankie Laine got that many just from ‘I Believe’). And if you think that this means Elvis will be boosting ahead any time soon you’d be wrong – we won’t be seeing him again for well over a year.

Thus, we bid farewell to rock ‘n’ roll Elvis. It’s been nice meeting him, or rather rediscovering him. He’s off into the army now; and when we hear from him next it will be with something rather different.

80. ‘One Night’ / ‘I Got Stung’, by Elvis Presley

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Elvis would like a night with you. One night, with you, Is what I’m now prayin’ for, The things that we two can plan, Would make my dreams come true… How could you resist?

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One Night / I Got Stung, by Elvis Presley (his 3rd of twenty-one #1s)

3 weeks, from 30th January – 20th February 1959

I bemoaned the fact that our last #1 promised raunch but failed to deliver. Here, though… Well, Elvis doesn’t let us down. We’re calling out names, demanding helping hands, and worrying about a love that’s ‘too strong to hide’ (Oo-er. Does he mean he can’t hide his feelings; or a more physical manifestation of his amour…?) Lyrically, this is a cousin of Johnnie Ray’s barnstorming ‘Such a Night’, with the listener left in no doubt about what the singer intends to do all night. Except Johnnie had had his night and was wallowing in the memory; Elvis is still waiting and praying.

The highlight of this song is the bridge, where Elvis really lets loose: Always lived, A very quiet life, I ain’t never, Did no wrong… Now I know, That a life without you, Has been too lonely too long… It’s such an accepted fact – that Elvis Presley had a great voice – that you take it for granted. And if you picture him in his later years, when his throat was all clogged up with junk food and prescription drugs, you might wonder if he really did have that wonderful a voice. But listening to those lines, the way he snarls and howls, you realise that he was indeed a very fine singer. Listening to him like this, amongst his 1950s contemporaries, he really does stand out. He sounds like a modern rock star, while his peers often still sound clipped and plummy. His only true rival in the voice stakes, from the eighty numbers ones we’re covered so far, is the aforementioned Mr. Johnnie Ray.

Beyond the voice, however, this is a pretty simple record. A guitar, a bass and some drums. I haven’t really listened to it in years, and had misremembered it as being rockier, somewhat heavier. It’s something I’ve mentioned already, how these ancient records sound much more lightweight than you expect – probably thanks to bass heavy, headphone filling modern pop.

And ‘One Night’ brings to an end our mini-run of ‘one’-hit wonders topping the charts. Because, frankly, Elvis Presley is the polar opposite of a one-hit wonder. He’s the most-hits wonder, this being his 3rd of twenty-odd number ones. Actually, ‘One Night’ was also his 20th number one single, what with it hitting the top on re-release in 2005. It’s nice to think – lazy sod that I am – that I can just copy/paste this whole post when we arrive at January 2005. Which should be sometime in 2027, if I keep up my current pace… I’ll be in my forties… That’s not a daunting thought at all…

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To the other song, then, on this double ‘A’ disc: ‘I Got Stung’. I complained when covering Connie Francis’s recent double ‘A’-side that the insipid flip side (‘Carolina Moon’) failed to in any way live up to the corking ‘Stupid Cupid’. No such worries here, though. Elvis ain’t takin’ it easy…It begins with an exclamation: Holy smokes and snakes alive I never thought this could happen to me! Hello! Yes! We’re awake!

I know my Elvis, but I wasn’t so familiar with this little rocker. It’s simple enough: girl as honey bee; guy gets stung. There’s a rollicking piano, a chugging rhythm (the bass here being really deep and pretty scuzzy), lots of uh-huh-huhs and oh yeahs. This is what you might imagine an Elvis record sounding like if you had never really listened to him before.

Well now don’t think I’m complainin’, I’m mighty pleased we met, But you gimme, One little peck on the back o’ my neck, And I break out in a cold, cold sweat… There’s a great balance in these words – they’re down-home American enough without ever sounding corny. I’d transcribe more of them if I could, but El is mumbling away here. They’re possibly the most difficult-to-make-out lyrics we’ve met so far on this countdown. And it’s also the shortest record we’ve encountered: he races through several verses, bridges and choruses in a little under one minute fifty.

And so – Holy smokes and snakes alive! – our third meeting with The King careers to an abrupt end. Uh-huh-huh! Yeah! Done. Our night with Elvis is over. He might call you again; but he probably won’t…

67. ‘Jailhouse Rock’, by Elvis Presley

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Jailhouse Rock, by Elvis Presley (his 2nd of twenty-one #1s)

3 weeks, from 24th January – 14th February 1958

Ready? This is another song that grabs you from the get-go – just as ‘Great Balls of Fire’ before it – and for two and a half minutes gives you a good shaking. 1958 really did get off to a storming start in terms of chart-toppers.

But whereas Jerry-Lee Lewis grabbed us with his opening lyrics; Elvis here – or rather his band – grab us with their intro. With that guitar and those drums. Durrrr-durr (dun-dun)…, Durrrr-durr (dun-dun)… The most instantaneous intro yet? I mentioned, recently, the start of ‘That’ll Be the Day’, and that the jangly guitar there was iconic. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ kicks off in a much less subtle way; but since when has rock ‘n’ roll been about subtlety?

This is the Elvis that people think of in the early days; before GI Elvis, or Movie Star Elvis, or Comeback Elvis or Bloated Vegas Elvis. Jailhouse Rock Elvis, and that iconic picture of him in his black and white striped T, frozen, mid-yelp, on his tiptoes. Type his name into Wikipedia – go on… – and what is the picture that introduces one of ‘the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century’? In a way, I’m sad that this wasn’t his first ever UK #1 – rather than the nice but very understated ‘All Shook Up’. Imagine this snarling guitar announcing Elvis’s arrival at the top of the charts.

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But… But, but, but. Those famous pictures of Elvis in a convict’s uniform (a very sexy, rock ‘n’ roll convict’s uniform, but still) gyrating outside the prison gates? They were promotional shots for the movie: ‘Jailhouse Rock.’ We are already in Movie Star Elvis phase here. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ was his 3rd feature film. The argument I put forward during his first stint at the top – that Elvis was ‘over’ before he got started, that if it ain’t his ‘Sun’ recordings then it ain’t worth shit – gains further ground here. Because this record is an early step into Cheesy Elvis. The music may be rocking; but the lyrics are nothing but a bunch of silly vignettes about prisoners dancing in a jail yard.

Let’s rock… Everybody let’s rock… Everybody in the whole cell block… Was dancin’ to the Jailhouse Rock… The warden throws a party, encourages everyone to get dancing, even if they have to dance with chairs, and madness ensues.

Two verses stand out for having more than a whiff of music-hall comedy to them – thereby somehow tying this classic record to the likes of The Stargazers’ ‘I See the Moon’, from the depths of the pre-rock era (that’s a connection I never thought I’d make). There’s the ‘gay’ verse, in which two prisoners – presumably male – proposition one another: Number 47 said to Number 3, Now you the cutest jailbird I ever did see, I sure would be delighted with your company, Come on and do the Jailhouse Rock with me… I’ve read some interpretations of these lines as a revolutionary moment in the history of popular music. Personally, I think the songwriters were just taking the piss.

And there’s the final verse: …The wardens lookin’ out, A chance to make or break… Bugsy turned to Shifty and he said ‘Nix Nix, I wanna stick around a while an’ get my kicks… They could have escaped, you see, but they were having such a good time. It’s fun, and silly, but I think it also gives this record slightly less authenticity when compared to immediate contemporaries such as ‘Great Balls…’ and ‘That’ll Be the Day.’

Still, though… this is an absolute cornerstone of music history. On Spotify, even today, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ is second only to ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ as Elvis’s most listened to track. And it was the first ever record to enter at #1 in the UK. That’s right. The sixty-five previous chart-toppers had all spent at least a week – often much longer – climbing to the top. Elvis barged right in there; he wasn’t waiting for no-one. And – give me a second as I put on my chart-geek hat – up until the 1990s entering at #1 on the UK Singles Chart was an honour reserved for the very biggest stars: Cliff, The Beatles, Elvis, Slade, Frankie Goes to Hollywood… um, Gary Glitter… or the BIGGEST records, like ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’. In the ’90s it became de rigeur, and in the early ’00s it was the only way to arrive on the charts. Nowadays, in the streaming era, it’s become slightly less common once again. But in 1958 it was unheard of. Only Elvis was that big.

To finish, something that I’ve come to realise since starting this blog: that ‘pre-rock’ didn’t just mean ‘pre-Elvis’. I used to think that ‘Rock Around the Clock’ kicked off the rock ‘n’ roll revolution before Elvis took over. But I’ve now seen that The King was actually kind of late to the party. And it’s been good to give Johnnie Ray, Guy Mitchell, Lonnie Donegan and Tommy Steele a bit of recognition, even if it’s been to the detriment of a singer that I was pretty well obsessed with in my teenage years. He may have been The King of it, but rock ‘n’ roll didn’t begin, or end, with Elvis Aaron Presley.

62. ‘All Shook Up’, by Elvis Presley

/ UK #1s blog / 15 Comments

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All Shook Up, by Elvis Presley (his 1st of twenty-one #1s)

7 weeks, from 12th July – 30th August 1957

And so it begins…

Between the 12th July 1957 and the 6th February 2005, Elvis Presley will score 21 UK #1 singles… (The most any artist we’ve met so far has managed is four). He will spend 80 weeks at #1, 386 weeks in the Top 10, 1062 weeks in the Top 40, 1304 weeks in the Top 75… And that’s before we get started on the albums chart… Elvis won’t just dominate the UK charts; he’ll hump their brains out.

I feel like whatever way I introduce the ultimate pop star (rock star, performer, King of Whatever) it won’t be enough. I’ve already struggled to set the scene for Sinatra, and I’m sure I’ll struggle similarly when it comes to The Beatles, Michael Jackson and co. Best thing is, I think, to just jump straight into the song.

‘All Shook Up’ is actually a fairly low key start for Elvis. There’s a roly-poly riff, a little Hawaiian guitar and someone slapping on a cardboard box (?). There’s no solo, no change of pace, and it’s over inside two minutes. Although I knew what to expect from this song, it does sound a little underwhelming as the record that announced ELVIS PRESLEY’S!! ARRIVAL at the top of the charts. (Of course, this was far from being his debut single – it was Presley’s 7th Top Ten appearance – and I can’t help feeling that some of the singles that went before, such as ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘Hound Dog’ or ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, would have made much more of a statement as his first #1).

What the minimalist production does do, however, is show off Elvis’s voice to perfection. We’ve got the now iconic I’m all shook up – uh huh huh… which impersonators will be doing dodgy copies of until the end of time. We’ve also got the beautiful moment at the end of either verse (not that this song really has ‘verses’, but still) when the instruments pause and we are left with nothin’ but Elvis: My heart beats so an’ it scares a-me to death…

My favourite bit of the whole song, though, comes towards the end. And it’s not a lyric or a guitar lick or anything like that. For a song that’s about the feeling of being in love, and of being all shaken up from falling in love, the lyrics are quite tame. Lots of knees shakin’ and tongues gettin’ tied and so on. But just before the second last I’m all shook up, in a moment of silence, Elvis lets out a little grunt – a tiny little orgasmic sigh – and in that moment we catch the merest whiff of the scandalous Elvis: the Elvis that was causing a moral panic, ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ who couldn’t be shown from below the waist on TV.

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I suppose I should state from the beginning that I know every one of Elvis’s chart-toppers very well. There will be no surprises as far as he’s concerned. I bought my first Greatest Hits when I was around sixteen and never looked back and, while I don’t listen to him as often as I used to, he’s been a pretty constant part of my life’s soundtrack for near twenty years. But it will be interesting to listen to these records in a more critical way, to dissect them as the little pieces of history that they are.

Of course, there’s the well-trodden argument that even by 1957 Elvis had sold-out. Purists will tell you that he recorded all his best, his rawest and most compelling singles, during the Sun years, before he signed to RCA. And there’s some truth to that. There’s also some (a lot?) of truth to the notion that he recorded some utter drivel in the 1960s. But it would be criminal to discount the late-50s singles – utter cornerstones of pop music the lot of them – many of which we will be encountering on this countdown erelong. And ‘All Shook Up’ – while it has never been one of my favourites – deserves its place amongst them…

Uh-huh-huh!