Edited at https://subtitletools.com
Priscilla Presley: Elvis was a searcher.
It's a part of him that never left.
♪ ♪
Announcer: The following program is brought to you
in living color, on NBC.
Singer presents Elvis,
starring Elvis Presley in his first TV special,
his first personal performance on TV in nearly ten years.
(blues music playing)
♪ If you're lookin' for trouble ♪
♪ ♪
♪ You came to the right place ♪
♪ ♪
♪ If you're lookin' for trouble ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Just look right in my face ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I was born standin' up ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And talkin' back ♪
♪ My daddy was a green-eyed mountain jack ♪
♪ Because I'm evil ♪
♪ My middle name is Misery ♪
♪ Well, I'm evil ♪
♪ Ah, so don't you mess around with me ♪
♪ ♪
Priscilla: In '68, he was a nervous wreck.
Nervous because he didn't know
if his audience was going to accept him.
People had not seen him perform in so long.
It felt like his record career was over as well.
It was intense.
The '68 Special, it was either the beginning or the end of his career.
Tom Petty: You know, God bless him.
He was a light for all of us.
We all owe him for going first into battle.
(Petty laughs)
He had no road map,
and he forged a path of what to do and what not to do.
We shouldn't make the mistake
of writing off a great artist
by all the clatter that came later.
We should dwell in what he did
that was so beautiful and everlasting,
which was that great, great music.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ Yes, my baby left me ♪
♪ Never said a word ♪
♪ Was it something I done ♪
♪ Something that she heard? ♪
♪ My baby left me, my baby left me ♪
♪ My baby even left me ♪
♪ Never said a word ♪
♪ Lord, I stand at my window ♪
♪ Wring my hands and cry ♪
♪ I hate to lose that woman ♪
♪ Hate to say goodbye ♪
♪ You know, she left me ♪
♪ Yeah, she left me ♪
♪ My baby even left me ♪
♪ Never said a word ♪
♪ Play it blues, boy ♪
♪ ♪
(film projector whirring)
♪ ♪
Jerry Schilling: Elvis always remembered
what it was like to have nothing,
and to have no respect, to be looked down upon.
Priscilla: Elvis never forgot the experience
of being in poverty, ever.
It stuck with him all his life.
♪ ♪
When I look at photos of Elvis when he was young,
I see that little boy in him,
that playfulness, the curiosity in his eyes.
But I also see how he felt responsibility for his mother.
♪ ♪
Bill Ferris: Elvis was born in a shotgun house.
The poorest of the poor lived in those houses.
His twin brother did not survive birth.
And it's said that his mother would tell him
that if he sang when the moon was full at night,
his twin brother could hear him.
Priscilla: Gladys was a doting mother,
but she could be quite firm as well.
Always very protective of him.
He was her only child.
She lived for him, and...
he lived for her.
When Elvis was three years old in 1938,
his father was sentenced to three years in prison
for forging a check.
The check was to buy food to put on the table.
Gladys would take him to see his father.
Vernon was so embarrassed.
John Jackson: Thankfully, he doesn't have to spend the three years.
He only spends six months in prison.
But what it does is
it starts a pattern of Vernon being away
and Elvis and Gladys being left to their own devices.
And they move around and live in different boarding houses.
Schilling: This was the end of the Depression.
Vernon, after that experience at Parchman Prison,
he had a hard time finding jobs.
Priscilla: Elvis told me that his father really lost his spirit.
And his mother had to work really hard during that time.
Man: Yes, that's it.
(guitar playing)
Ready here for the slate. 802.
(music continues) (clapping)
♪ ♪
Steve Binder: When I first got the phone call
to get involved with Elvis...
my partner at the time, Bones Howe,
who was a very successful record producer,
was really flabbergasted when I said no.
And he came over to me right after I hung up the phone,
and he said, "Steve, I engineered an Elvis Presley album.
I know Elvis Presley, and I think you guys would hit it off great."
♪ ♪
(playing continues)
Bones Howe: Elvis was a guy who sang from his gut.
This is something you're born with.
You're born with that commitment to the music.
♪ ♪
The one thing I remember
that stuck with me all these years, was Binder said,
"People need to see him the way he really is.
"He had to dig back to find his real self,
and it was like looking back into the past."
(gospel music playing)
(wind howling)
(gospel music continuing)
Red West: Vernon and Gladys heard this loud roar,
half in their sleep.
They picked Elvis up.
Thought they were putting him out a window
to get him away from the train that was coming.
Threw him right into a wall,
and he bounced off and fell on the floor.
(laughs) His cryin' woke them up,
and they saw it was no train.
It was a tornado that went through Tupelo.
Ferris: Southern religion reminds its believers
that we're here for a short time.
If you lost your life or you were spared,
it was because of divine providence.
The loss of life, the destruction of property,
it was a reminder of the fragility of life.
(piano playing on record)
Priscilla: Going to church with his parents,
hearing gospel music,
being a part of people getting in touch,
moving with the music, getting lost in the music.
Record: ♪ I've got that old-time religion ♪
♪ Got that old-time religion ♪
♪ That is why I'm satisfied ♪
Larry Strickland: If you lived in a rural area,
there wasn't much else but the music and the church.
It wasn't like you'd be going there and sitting back
and crossin' your legs and relaxing.
You know, you get very involved and very energetic.
It's as much a feeling as it is a hearing.
Elvis Presley: I've always liked music.
My mother and dad both loved to sing.
They'd tell me that when I was about three or four years old,
I got away from them in church and walked up
in front of the choir and started beatin' time.
Man: ♪ Have you seen ♪
♪ Where the Lord's gone? ♪ ♪ Tell me now ♪
♪ Where he's gone ♪ ♪ Where he's gone ♪
(singing continues, indistinct)
Ferris: The hymns were more than religious.
They were fundamental building blocks of music.
Rhythmic, hard-hitting,
you had the foundation of rock and roll bands,
playing in churches.
♪ When I sit down ♪ ♪ Lord, sit down ♪
♪ Something will be over ♪ ♪ Lord, sit down ♪
♪ When I sit down ♪ ♪ Lord, sit down ♪
♪ Gonna say come over here ♪
(screaming)
(indistinct excited speaking)
(inaudible) Man: I'm so glad!
I'm working over here!
Ferris: People came to be excited,
and taken out of their daily experience.
♪ ♪
Elvis was like Huck Finn exploring.
At night, he would slip in to black churches.
He would listen to gospel music
and to the sermons.
♪ ♪
Priscilla: Gladys let him pursue the music
that he could surround himself with.
Petty: Elvis was very different.
Color lines were rarely crossed.
You just didn't find white people
that tuned into black music
and stayed there
and found it interesting
and studied it.
David Porter: A time where the country
was into racism and segregation,
and here was a young kid.
He was not afraid to go and be exposed to it,
so he could learn even more about it.
Schilling: He was doing what he enjoyed doing.
I don't think it was conscious,
but he absorbed everything that he saw.
Man: ♪ That's all right ♪
Jackson: He would seek out people in his neighborhood
who could play music or had records,
or had a radio.
Man: ♪ Any way you do ♪
Bruce Springsteen: You could turn a dial and hear gospel.
♪ Well, my mama, she done told me ♪
Springsteen: Turn a dial and hear country.
Turn a dial and hear blues.
Turn the dial and hear Sunday Night Creatures, you know?
I mean, it was all just there
in the Southern atmosphere he grew up in.
♪ That's all right now, mama ♪
♪ ♪
(Elvis humming)
Elvis: ♪ If today ♪
♪ Was not an endless highway ♪
♪ If tonight ♪
♪ Was not an endless trail ♪
♪ If tomorrow ♪
♪ Wasn't such a long time ♪
♪ Then lonesome would mean nothing ♪
♪ To me at all ♪
♪ Yes, and only ♪
Elvis: I always felt that someday, somehow,
something would happen to change everything for me.
And I'd daydream about how it would be.
♪ If I could hear her heart ♪
(music fades)
(traffic honking)
Priscilla: Once he moved to Memphis,
everything started opening up for him.
He was 13.
♪ ♪
Ferris: As BB King once said, when he moved to Memphis,
"It was like moving to Paris."
It was a different culture,
and a sense in which
things were connected and happening,
that someone like Elvis
could not even imagine in Tupelo.
The wealth, the affluence,
the scale of buildings,
the power of that river flowing by.
Jackson: Memphis is a very diverse city,
not an integrated city, but a very diverse city.
So you had a lot of people moving there
after the war.
Man: ♪ Well, you know I love my baby ♪
Jackson: It was really the hub for people from that Southern
cotton plantation area
to either stay or use it as a stepping stone to go somewhere else.
Ferris: Like many Southern families,
the Presleys moved to the big city
seeking a little better opportunity.
Portia Maultsby: Memphis developed a very vibrant entertainment district,
'cause, you know, people brought with them their music, their culture.
Petty: You've got that spill there of the blues,
of gospel, pop music, country music.
All those things, they cross over each other,
and radio definitely had to play
a big role in his influences,
because I don't think he was carrying the kind of dough
to have an enormous record collection.
(Petty chuckles)
Porter: WDIA, it was a 50,000 watt African-American radio station
that artists like Bobby "Blue" Bland were being played
'cause the whole emphasis was black music.
Black music was just beginning to take root in our area,
and there's no doubt in mind
that Elvis Presley listened to WDIA.
Percy Mayfield (on radio): It's a real pleasure to invite you
to keep your radio dial turned to 1070.
That means WDIA.
That's 50,000 watts of powered entertainment for your pleasure.
(children chattering)
West: We were both just above the poverty level.
I lived in one housing project,
and he lived in Lauderdale Courts
about three or four miles away.
We grew up the hard way.
(children chattering)
Alan Light: The apartment in Lauderdale Courts
that the Presleys moved into
was part of the early New Deal housing program.
It was affordable, but it was bigger than anything they were used to.
They gave him everything.
They let him sleep in the big bedroom.
They saved what little money they had
so that he could buy a guitar, he could buy a record player.
And they gave him that same sort of independence
to go out in the city and be exposed to other musics.
(jazz playing)
♪ Train I ride ♪
Priscilla: He loved the bright lights.
He loved the music in the city.
He loved hearing people in the street.
He loved listening to music coming from the bars.
And he'd study them.
Porter: Elvis was a student.
As a kid, I would go to the Flamingo Room,
myself and Elvis would hang at the Flamingo Room.
When you realize that Elvis knew where Beale Street was,
and knew what that all meant,
you could sense that he was different.
♪ ♪
You walk in the Flamingo Room on a Saturday night
or a Friday night, you're in another world.
It's like a Mardi Gras celebration,
except the music is soulful.
♪ ♪
There was so much color in clothing, in dress, in vibe,
and the music was tremendously upbeat.
♪ Comin' on 'round the bend ♪
You're not seeing that for one night.
You're seeing that everytime you go there.
Rufus Thomas: Beale Street was the black man's haven.
When he'd come here, everything lit up.
Lit up like a slot machine. Everything was fired up!
Beale Street was the place.
Porter: You'd go out on your weekend night,
and you were an African-American, at that time,
you're making small wages.
You were in a racially prejudiced time,
and you had to have an escape.
And the legitimacy of the Flamingo Room experience,
and the Beale Street experience,
was something that took your mind
totally away from those things.
But if you had the right kind of personality
and spirit about you, regardless of who you were,
you could come in and check out the music.
♪ ♪
♪ Train, train ♪
Preston Lauterbach: BB King, Rufus Thomas,
Johnny Ace, Bobby "Blue" Bland.
You know, these giants were playing
little neighborhood juke joints.
Porter: Looking at that, you would see
how powerful it would be connecting to an audience.
♪ Oh-oh, stop your train, darlin' ♪
♪ Let a ♪
♪ A poor boy ride ♪
♪ Why don't you hear me cryin'? ♪
♪ Woo-hoo ♪
Porter: If you're a young kid, a black kid or a white kid,
you were not analytical about it,
but you certainly knew the difference
between feeling and not feeling.
And you heard it, and you felt it.
Ike Turner: Elvis, he would park his truck in the alley behind the club,
and he used to come around to the back of this place,
and he would watch me play the old upright piano.
When you see him stand up and he'd be doing his legs,
when he'd be playing with the guitar,
all this came from back in those days when we used to do it.
Howlin' Wolf: ♪ Don't you hear me talkin' to you, woman? ♪
♪ Whoo-hoo ♪
♪ Whoo-oo ♪
♪ Since I've been gone ♪
Schilling: Elvis picked up everything.
He was the most eclectic human being
I have ever been around.
He would pick up something from another singer,
or he would pick up something
from a guy walking down the street,
and say, "Jerry, look at that walk.
I'm gonna use that walk."
Warren Zanes: He's looking around for pockets of expression
and putting together his version of himself
based on these highly expressive models that are often quite different.
You know, the Dean Martins of the world,
the Mario Lanzas, the black church.
♪ ♪
Jackson: At this point, Elvis and his parents
are going to a lot of gospel services,
musical events around the town in Memphis,
both black and white.
(up-tempo piano playing)
♪ Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham ♪
Tony Brown: Quartets were the alter ego
of the Christian people back in those days.
♪ In the bosom of Abraham, Oh, rock my soul... ♪
Brown: 'Cause they wore really tight, cool suits,
and they had slick-back hair and sideburns.
♪ Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham ♪
Brown: We looked at those people
like they were our pop stars in a way,
which is what Elvis really wanted to do.
You know, he wanted to be in the Blackwood Brothers.
Petty: Elvis, he longed to be a great gospel singer.
I think he wanted to be in a gospel group.
He wold have been a great tenor.
♪ I'm glad I've got ♪
♪ That old-time religion ♪
♪ It helps me on my journey... ♪
Bill Malone: Those Pentecostal preachers
were pretty dynamic individuals, you know.
Back and forth across the stage
and shouting and raising their hands
and being very theatrical.
♪ Oh, I couldn't get along ♪
♪ Without Jesus ♪ ♪ I couldn't sing my song ♪
♪ Without Jesus ♪ ♪ I wouldn't know how to pray ♪
♪ Without Jesus ♪ ♪ I wouldn't know what to say ♪
♪ Without Jesus ♪ ♪ Joy bells couldn't ring ♪
♪ Without Jesus ♪ ♪ Angels couldn't sing ♪
♪ Without Jesus ♪ ♪ My life wouldn't mean a thing ♪
♪ Without Jesus ♪ ♪ I couldn't reach my goal ♪
♪ Without Jesus ♪ ♪ With no one to keep my soul ♪
♪ Hey, tell me, what can I do without... ♪
Springsteen: Front man is something that was derived from preacher,
you know, fronting the choir in church.
So whether you're James Brown or Elvis
or anyone out there,
your position, basically,
is always proto-religious, you know?
Those are its roots.
♪ Oh, tell me what would I do without Jesus ♪
♪ In my life ♪
(applause)
♪ ♪
Jackson: Elvis always was seeking a way
to manifest his musical interest in some way.
Elvis: And I went to Humes High School in Memphis.
I was taking music. I flunked music.
Just flat, man. Whew!
"F." The only thing I ever failed.
West: They had a little talent show every year.
People would sing, dance, whatever.
(Elvis speaking)
West: I had a little four-piece band,
I was playing the trumpet.
And Elvis had a guitar,
and he got up and he sang, "Old Shep."
Red Foley's sad song about his old dog that died.
Elvis: ♪ And one day ♪
♪ The doctor looked at me ♪
♪ And said ♪
♪ "I can do no more for him, Jim" ♪
Petty: I think that's the moment where the school
sort of throws down and goes,
"That's what this weird kid's about."
The moment that applause broke through,
that's probably the first real validation that he's had.
West: Singing that tearjerker, he put emotion into it.
Sang the heck out of it, and he won first place!
And my little band didn't do shit.
Petty: That's a big step for a young man.
At that moment, he had to see the power of the material.
He had to go, "This is what I am.
This is what I'm going to do."
Elvis: It was amazing how--
how popular I became in school after that.
(chuckles)
♪ ♪
♪ Just walking in the rain... ♪
(Elvis speaking)
James Tipler: When he wasn't driving the truck,
he'd help the electricians pull wire
or whatever they needed him to do.
Gladys Tipler: He had long hair.
It was real thick,
and looked like it was pasted down really.
James: We all laughed at him about that.
(Elvis speaking)
Gladys: He just what he wanted to do
is to get in some kind of business
where he could make his mother a living,
where she would not have to struggle for it anymore.
♪ Shake their heads... ♪
Ernst Jorgensen: At that time,
The Prisonaires had recorded their big hit,
"Walking in the Rain."
Jackson: The Prisonaires were a group
that Sam Phillips was recording.
Sam Phillips, he grew to be one of the most famous
and celebrated record producers of all time,
but at first, he started his own label.
Schilling: The Prisonaires.
They were brought out with handcuffs
into Sun Records to record.
Light: To even conceive of that
as a possible source for great music
that people should hear,
there's just a democratization of...
of art, of the possibilities for art.
♪ Walkin' in the rain ♪
♪ ♪
Ferris: What happened in Memphis at that time
was a convergence of forces.
The emergence of radio,
deejays, and artists.
And then you add to that concoction,
the genius of producers
like Sam Phillips.
Lauterbach: There wasn't much in the way of rhythm and blues,
black music recording infrastructure.
It was very much a do-it-yourself, mom-and-pop business.
Maultsby: Sam Phillips loved the blues,
and he was interested in recording
as many blues performers as he could.
Schilling: Elvis was aware of what Sam had recorded
at Sun Studios.
Rufus Thomas.
Ike Turner.
The Prisonaires.
Petty: I really believe Sam Phillips, for a long time,
had the idea of finding a white singer
that could bring black music
into the white mainstream.
For a lot of noble reasons,
not just commercial.
Schilling: Everybody thinks that Sam was looking for a white boy
to do black music.
But Elvis was looking for Sam Phillips.
Sam Phillips: I had seen him go by in his Crown Electric truck
a number of different times,
'cause we had an open storefront.
He'd go by and go back,
and go by and go back.
This guy would not come in the studio
and ask me to audition him for nothin'.
Elvis had never been in a studio.
Jorgensen: There was a newspaper story
about how you could get lucky at Sun Records,
and Elvis just went for it.
(Elvis speaking)
Elvis: ♪ If you ♪
♪ Find your sweetheart ♪
♪ In the arms of a friend ♪
Schilling: Elvis went in to do
what he thought he should do
to get a record deal.
West: He had this beautiful voice,
a high voice, singing slow love longs, ballads.
Schilling: And he sang Dean Martin.
He sang Ink Spots--
black but white-accepted music.
There was nothing that was exciting Sam.
Phillips: I didn't want that.
It had to have a feel.
(feedback whines)
I did have the feeling
that this guy had something in the raw
that we could do something with
if we even knew what the hell we were doing.
Brought in Scotty Moore,
he was working at his brother's dry cleaning plant,
and Scotty played the guitar
and was not afraid to experiment.
Bill Black, I knew could play a good slap bass.
Black was working in an appliance store repairing appliances.
And I said, "Go and woodshed, boys."
Scotty Moore: Sam said, "All I need is just a little background noise.
"You don't have to worry about arrangements or anything.
"Don't need the whole band, just a little rhythm stuff."
I knew Sam was looking for something,
but he couldn't tell you what he was looking for, you know? (chuckles)
Phillips: This day we had wound up
just about ready to give up
on having any success on a session.
About ready to bag up the instruments and go home.
I knew Sun Records had to make it
on something that was a little bit out of the ordinary
or we may as well forget it.
Jackson: Things aren't going well.
Elvis is nervous.
Moore: We'd been there two, three hours,
and it was starting to get late
and we were getting tired.
And, uh, we stopped and had a Coke or something.
Jackson: Elvis was just about a year out of high school,
19 years old.
Moore: He wanted to please Sam,
and he knew he had to prove himself.
Robbie Robertson: It was in that moment
that the world changed.
(up-tempo music playing)
Moore: Elvis sets his Coke down, picks up the guitar,
starts just frailing, you know, fire out of it.
I mean, he was beating his rhythm thing.
Well, Bill picked his bass, started slapping,
playing along with him. Just-- just all rhythm.
Guitar was leaning up on the amp and I picked it up
and started just kinda vamping along with him.
Elvis: ♪ Well, Mama, she done told me ♪
♪ Papa done told me too ♪
♪ "Son, that gal you fooling with ♪
♪ She ain't no good for you" ♪
♪ Well, that's all right ♪
Phillips: Although Elvis knew a lot of blues,
country and pop, it shocked me,
because here is a classic blues number,
and here is a white cat not imitating
or mimicking or anything,
but just putting his feel into it.
Blew me away!
Springsteen: You hear performers in the thrall
of the beauty of invention,
not knowing quite where they're going to go,
not knowing exactly what they're doing.
Elvis: ♪ I'm leaving town, baby ♪
♪ I'm leaving town for sure ♪
Springsteen: Just discovering it and doing it
literally as the music is being played.
You're out on the frontier,
and it's a very pristine and exciting place to be.
Elvis: ♪ That's all right now, mama ♪
♪ Any way you do ♪
(scatting to rhythm)
♪ That's all right ♪
♪ It's all right ♪
♪ That's all right, now, mama ♪
♪ Any way you do ♪
One more time, baby.
One more!
Ha!
♪ ♪
(women screaming)
♪ Yeah, baby ♪
♪ Well, my Mama she done told me ♪
♪ Papa done told me too ♪
♪ They said, "Son, this gal you foolin' with ♪
♪ She ain't no good for you" ♪
(screams)
♪ ♪
♪ That's all right, little mama ♪
♪ Any way you do ♪
Give it all, baby!
(scatting to rhythm)
♪ That's all right ♪
♪ That's all right, little mama ♪
♪ Any way you do ♪
(scatting) (screams)
(song ends)
Whoo! (cheers, screams)
Moore: We knew it was a little different.
We didn't know what it was really.
There was no mention of, you know, get this out or anything,
'cause we didn't know.
(up-tempo piano playing)
♪ Write me a letter ♪
(Dewey Phillips speaking indistinctly)
Just flat fixin' to bring you
the hottest thing in the country.
Red, Hot, and Blue coming to you, WHBQ,
in Memphis, Tennessee and it's Friday night.
Tomorrow's payday and bath day. That's a good deal.
Schilling: Growing up in Memphis,
I'd been listening to Dewey Phillips
and his Red, Hot, and Blue show
for two years before Elvis came on.
DJ Fontana: He was the number one jock in Memphis at the time.
Schilling: When Elvis was played,
it was just different.
It wasn't really rhythm and blues,
and it wasn't country.
Moore: Dewey's program, he started playing it
and phones was ringing off the wall.
In fact, they went, took Elvis out of the movie he was at,
and told him that, uh,
that Dewey wanted to talk to him on the radio.
Schilling: He came on, did the interview.
He was nervous and he stuttered.
Phillips: "That's All Right, Mama" was a hit
in Memphis, Tennessee, overnight.
Moore: It was quite phenomenal, really,
getting that kinda response off a local radio station.
Fontana: Dewey played it on the air, just the one side,
and Sam got ahold of us, and,
"Gotta get back in here.
We got to have another side for this record."
Phillips: I said, "Do you know anything else
that's as wild as that?"
♪ ♪
Man: ♪ Blue moon of Kentucky ♪
♪ Keep on shining ♪
♪ Shine on the one that's gone ♪
♪ And proved untrue ♪
Elvis: ♪ Blue moon ♪
♪ Blue moon keep shining bright ♪
♪ Blue moon, keep on shining bright ♪
♪ You're gonna bring me back my baby tonight ♪
♪ Blue moon ♪
♪ Keep shining bright ♪
Ferris: That one record summed up his roots--
the very best of both black blues
and white bluegrass.
Elvis: ♪ Blue moon of Kentucky keep on shining ♪
Petty: He knew the blues.
He knew Arthur Crudup, Bill Munroe.
He knew that stuff by memory.
Elvis: ♪ Stars shinnin' bright ♪
Phillips: The elements there that came together
were things that I had prayed for so long:
To record a black low-down almost gut-bucket blues,
and turn around and put a classic, classic bluegrass number,
"Blue Moon of Kentucky," on the other side.
It didn't have to have a color.
It didn't need a color.
Petty: I don't know if Elvis was looking at it
all in that noble of a light.
It was just music he liked.
Elvis: ♪ Oh, well, I said, blue moon of Kentucky ♪
♪ Just keep on shining ♪
Petty: "Blue Moon of Kentucky,"
he has got this entirely original take on the bluegrass
and it transforms into
what would later be called rock and roll.
Elvis: ♪ Shine on the one who's gone and left me blue ♪
(Sam Phillips talking)
(laughter)
Emmylou Harris: There's no one that creates music in a vacuum.
We're all influenced by what we've heard
and what has come before.
But occasionally, you have those crossroads moments
when something completely new is born.
Petty: It was a beautiful, beautiful thing.
It was high art,
in the greatest degree, you know, this is Picasso.
I mean, this is really taking your influences
and going somewhere with them,
to a place that's new.
West: Now, Elvis had a hit record,
and he was touring every night somewhere,
each night a different place.
Jorgensen: The basic mistake people make about Elvis
was that he came along and got lucky.
No, he didn't get lucky.
He worked hard and he created the music
with great musicians.
He had a drive that motivated him,
and it was there from day one.
Elvis: ♪ Well, what a fool I was ♪
♪ To think that you could love me too ♪
Bill Malone: In those early days,
whether it was Slim Whitman or Jim Reeves
or Elvis Presley,
if they wanted to survive,
they had to hit the road.
Springsteen: It's an old-fashioned experience
in the sense that he was part of a touring band.
Which meant that night after night,
he was putting on his act.
And there's something that happens
through extensive touring
that you can't get anywhere else.
Jackson: You look back at the calendar of his dates,
and he's literally playing dates every single night.
The circuit that they're working
is probably one of the most thankless
and low-paying,
just grind-of-a-circuit that you could imagine.
Springsteen: There's a depth of craft that's attained
through simply constantly doing it night after night,
having to satisfy all different types of audiences.
West: You know, you have the stereotype
of the bass being tied on top of the car.
That was true. They really did that.
Man: May I ask, where did you pick up your style?
Elvis: My very first appearance after I started recording.
I was on a show and I was scared stiff.
And I came out and I was doing a fast type tune.
Everybody was hollering, and I didn't know what they were hollering at.
Everybody was screaming and then I came offstage,
and my manager told me that they was hollering
because I was wiggling my legs.
I was unaware, and so I went back out for an encore,
and I did a little more.
And the more I did, the louder they went.
♪ ♪
Jackson: Sam Phillips was able to get Elvis on the Opry in Nashville,
which was massive.
I mean, you don't just get on the Grand Ole Opry.
The Opry, you had to be a member, be in this club,
the traditional Nashville establishment.
You had to dress the way that they wanted you to dress
and sing the way they wanted you to sing.
The Opry was very, very segregated.
♪ ♪
Moore: This was an older audience.
They had their artists that they went to see.
And here's a kid dressed funny,
coming out, doing one of their idols' songs
in a blasphemous way.
They didn't get up and cheer and holler.
Phillips: Now, if you are fainthearted,
you're gonna give up in a hurry
on a situation like that.
We were not fainthearted.
But we certainly didn't know whether we would win it.
We knew in time that something this great
could not be kept under a bushel.
Ferris: You cannot understand Elvis
apart from country music,
but he was pulling it away
from the traditional Grand Ole Opry sound
and shaping it as a new, bluesier version.
While country music could recognize it,
they also knew it was a threatening sound
that would ultimately destroy the power
of the Grand Ole Opry.
Jackson: So four months after
the release of the first single,
they play their first Louisiana Hayride show.
(man speaking)
(Elvis speaking) (man speaking)
(Elvis speaking) (feedback whines)
Elvis: ♪ Tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, dee ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I'm as happy as can be ♪
Fontana: The Louisiana Hayride was strictly a country show.
Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Nat Stuckey, George Jones,
just about everybody played the Hayride.
Robertson: The Louisiana Hayride was really the place
where country music and blues
hit one another and exploded.
Ferris: It was a critical moment in his career.
The radio broadcasts
had an enormous impact in Memphis,
but the Louisiana Hayride was a whole different audience.
Malone: Hayride could be heard
all through the western part of the South,
so it had a pretty wide geographical audience.
Ferris: That was a kind of testing of his ability
to reach audiences
beyond his own home in Memphis.
♪ ♪
Malone: The Louisiana Hayride did send out
road tours to surrounding towns.
The entire show would move.
Jackson: They'd start to build these touring routes
that bring them back to Shreveport once a week.
That's a big turning point,
not only from a financial perspective
but also from a exposure perspective.
Jorgensen: Elvis played a lot of these first shows
with Jim Ed and Maxine Brown, Bud Deckelman,
uh, Betty Amos-- successful country artists,
but not on a real top level.
Zanes: Those performers are competing with one another.
Somebody wants to leave there feeling like they won.
And being on bills like that,
you are amongst people who are gonna teach you things.
And that's a big part of what made Elvis
in those early becoming years
was that he had an antenna that was up,
and he was stealing tricks, he was learning lessons.
He was bringing it all in without it seeming like
he was just doing somebody else's act.
Fontana: He could go out there, and the audience
wouldn't be on his side for maybe five minutes.
But all of a sudden, somehow or another, he'd turn 'em around.
Moore: He could read an audience very well.
He could tell if it didn't seem
like he was going or just right,
he'd do something,
something you wouldn't even expect.
Jorgensen: He often started a song by like a wail
and then left it hanging there,
so people were like, "What's going on?"
He would stop in the middle of a song
and turn around or walk away,
and then go back, or do something with a microphone stand.
Schilling: And he would grab that microphone,
and he would drag it across the stage.
He was so sophisticated already
about making contact with an audience.
If the audience reacted a lot to something he did,
he did it again.
(distant screaming)
He just had this look,
like a wild, captured animal.
Shook his head and his hair was down in his face,
and just to watch him walk from that curtain
to the microphone, you felt a part of it.
Jorgensen: He gets presence on the charts,
and his records kept doing well,
and eventually, he gets voted the Most Promising New Artist.
Fontana: And he finally got a Cadillac.
♪ ♪
Elvis: And when I was driving a truck,
every time a big, shiny car drove by,
it started me sorta daydreaming.
I'd daydream...
about how it would be.
And the first car I ever bought
was the most beautiful car I've ever seen.
It was secondhand, but I parked it
outside of my hotel the day I got it.
Elvis: I sat up all night just looking at it.
And the next day, well the thing caught fire
and burned up on the road.
Uh, I've got a lot of cars,
but none of 'em would take the place of that first one.
♪ ♪
Zanes: The story that we hear about early rock and roll
is that the major labels, in the main,
passed on rock and roll.
And so the indie labels took it up,
and it took the major labels a while
to see that rock and roll wasn't going away.
Man: ♪ Now if you've got a woman ♪
Victor Linn: The RCAs, the Capitols, the Columbias, the Deccas,
they were called the majors.
All the other people, these were independent businessmen
who sold records to stores.
Phillips: I have a small record company,
been in business five years,
worked the lower of my anatomy off,
peddling days of me on the road
to the tune of 70,000 miles a year.
Linn: When we say "independent,"
Sam was connected to no one
at the major labels in any way.
He would produce what he wanted to produce.
♪ Dog that bite your hand ♪
It means record it. It means edit it.
They went into the lab and did the mastering.
Packaging was already done,
and then they put a bunch of singles in the car,
and got on the road and went into the hills of Tennessee.
And this is really a very traditional way of doing it.
♪ I went down to the river ♪
Linn: Now what the record company would like to see happen
is they could spread that regionality,
get it from northern Georgia to Alabama,
and from Alabama across to Mississippi.
You know, then they've got national distribution.
Phillips: I knew, really, so little about the business
when it came to merchandising records and this sort of thing.
The main thing that did more for us than anything else
was it created excitement amongst the major labels.
A lot of hard work went into this thing,
both on the part of Elvis
and the part of Scotty, and Bill, and myself.
Schilling: Elvis, when he was 19 years old,
he knew what he had to do
to get where he wanted to.
He was a very driven man.
Every two months, he was releasing
another single at Sun Records.
Robertson: Sam knew what to ask for, what to push for,
and all of those pieces, the way they fit together,
it was like Sam Phillips was the other member of that group.
(train whistle blows)
Springsteen: The Sun space was pretty indicative
of most small recording studios of the era.
You know, they were intimate.
They were small.
You were up close with everybody and everything.
Harris: And those early records,
they almost knock you off your heels,
because all that big sound is coming from so little.
Springsteen: I think people make the mistake
that when they think of rock and roll, they think of drums.
Elvis: ♪ Oh, baby, baby, baby ♪
Springsteen: If you listen to a lot of the early rock and roll,
rhythm came out of the slap bass,
rhythmic hitting of the guitar,
and the swing of the singer's voice.
Elvis: ♪ Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you ♪
Jon Landau: There was only a couple of microphones.
It was-- it was pretty straightforward.
Elvis: ♪ You may have a pink Cadillac ♪
♪ But don't you be nobody's fool ♪
♪ Now, baby, come back ♪
Porter: You could feel the true artistry in that period,
because there was not a lot of recording equipment
to sonically make records sound a certain kind of way.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ I say meet me in a hurry behind the barn ♪
Lauterbach: Elvis listened to everything that came his way.
Sam was the same way, only he was...
he was into the technical aspect of it,
but very much a natural.
Elvis: ♪ I heard the news ♪
Lauterbach: He didn't want to overproduce anything.
He wanted to capture raw sound.
♪ ♪
In Elvis, he found a combination
of rawness with that vision.
The drive of the black music,
you can hear just as well,
the twang on the white side of music.
♪ ♪
Landau: Scotty Moore, he and Bill Black
and DJ Fontana
were an enormous blessing for Elvis
and the coherence of the records they made together.
Elvis: ♪ Well, if I had to do it over ♪
Moore: I tried to play what I thought would fit
the way he was singing the song.
Tried to do solos and fills that--
that made sense on that song.
Elvis: ♪ Baby, trying to get to you ♪
Petty: Scotty is brilliant,
one of the great musicians of all time.
Never plays unless it's necessary.
Elvis: ♪ Could keep me away from you ♪
♪ When your loving letter told me ♪
Petty: Bill Black, the bassist, the way he pops the strings,
it's him plucking the bass string,
rather than just striking it.
(Petty imitates bass strumming)
Pretty fierce stuff. (laughs)
Elvis: ♪ Brought me through ♪
Robertson: But the basic setup,
when it was just Elvis, Scotty, Bill
and a beautiful echo tape delay,
it was all you needed.
With that voice, you could do anything.
♪ ♪
Elvis (echoing): ♪ Blue moon ♪
♪ You saw me standing alone ♪
♪ Without a dream in my heart ♪
Springsteen: Elvis's early recordings are marked by, one of the things,
the freedom of not having heard yourself very often.
So, they're very, very un-self-conscious.
Elvis: ♪ Blue moon ♪
♪ You knew just what I was there for ♪
♪ You heard me saying... ♪
Springsteen: Elvis's voice has plenty of space
and beautiful geography to it.
Elvis: ♪ Someone I really could care for ♪
Springsteen: And the way he was recorded by Sam Phillips
is tremendously pure.
(Elvis vocalizing)
You know, there's a looseness,
as there usually is, in your early recordings.
You're excited about a sudden discovery of self...
of your powers, your abilities,
and what you can do with them.
Elvis: ♪ You saw me standing alone ♪
♪ Without a dream in my heart ♪
♪ Without a love of my own ♪
Springsteen: I hear all that on the Sun sessions.
(Elvis vocalizing)
Elvis: ♪ Without a love of my own ♪
(song fades)
(man speaking)
(Elvis speaking)
(man speaking)
(Elvis speaking)
(typewriter clacking)
(typewriter bell dings)
Vernon Presley: In 1955,
Colonel Parker was booking shows down through Florida.
People like Hank Snow, Marty Robbins.
(audience cheering)
(Colonel Tom Parker speaking)
(audience screaming)
Mike Stoller: He knew he had something very special
and he knew from the audience reaction.
He promoted him. He dropped his other artists
and devoted himself entirely to Elvis.
Elvis: ♪ Keep my eyes on you ♪
Schilling: The Colonel, he's a very hard guy to understand.
His past was complicated.
I think there was a real respect
between Elvis and the Colonel,
but he was a promoter, he wasn't a creative guy.
He was a brilliant promoter.
Jorgensen: There was a big tour in February '55.
Hank Snow was the headliner,
and Colonel Parker had managed
as a favor and a plot,
to get Elvis on as an extra added thing.
Being on a Hank Snow show was a real big step forward.
The Colonel planned it to be a big step forward.
He wanted to see how far Elvis could go.
Elvis: ♪ Gimme, gimme, gimme all the love you got ♪
Jorgensen: Just three months later,
they realized that the star, Hank Snow,
couldn't close the show anymore.
After Elvis had performed, people left.
From June of '55,
you know, basically a year into Elvis's stay at Sun,
people are making offers to buy Elvis's contract.
The Colonel was afraid
that if Elvis became much more successful
than he already was,
that he was eventually not gonna be able
to take over his management.
He would be so big
that he was no longer needed to bring it further.
So over the next month,
he actually starts manipulating everything.
And after that, it became obvious
between the management of Bob Neal
and Sam's little independent record company,
they couldn't push a record
the way the big companies could.
Elvis starts worrying about that element.
Mae Axton: A lot of my listeners have seen you
and they've heard your records,
and they think they're very wonderful.
And of course, you really skyrocketed to fame
on "That's All right, Mama," wasn't that the one?
Elvis: Well, yes, ma'am. That was the one
that got me on my way and everything.
I wasn't very well-known down here.
I mean, you know, I'm just with a small company,
and, uh, my records don't have the distribution
that they should have, but, uh...
Axton: Oh, of course that-- that's coming, you know.
It takes a little bit of time for that
and to get distribution all over the United States,
but I think you are one of the fastest rising young stars
perhaps in the field.
Do you know what I can't understand,
is how you keep that leg shaking just as-- just at...
Schilling: Elvis, he knew, "I've got to make a choice."
He and Sam spoke the same language creatively.
And they loved each other.
But he knew that Colonel Parker
was about national,
about movies, and about television.
And that if he chose Colonel Parker,
Sam would be gone.
Priscilla: Sam Phillips saw in Elvis
what Elvis dreamed of
and no one else could understand.
West: Elvis was still underage,
under 21.
The Colonel set up an appointment
with Vernon Presley and Gladys and talked to 'em.
"I'd like to buy his contract from Bob.
I think he has a lot of potential."
They were suspicious of everybody,
and they should've been suspicious of the Colonel,
but the Colonel filled 'em with all kinda hope.
They said, "Well, okay."
Jorgensen: In that whole scenario here,
we have the Colonel locked in on the idea
that he wanted RCA.
Because he knew RCA from Hank Snow,
and he even puts up money of his own
as an opening to the dealings with RCA,
which he would lose if he didn't bring in the RCA contract.
He really believed in Elvis's potential.
Linn: When I got into the music business
in, uh, November of 1956,
in those days, most of the-- most, not all,
but most of the records that were being recorded were ballads.
♪ Just walkin' in the rain ♪
(whistling)
♪ Getting soaking wet ♪
(whistling)
♪ Torture in my heart ♪
Linn: You know, they weren't stuff like Elvis was doing.
It wasn't what, unfortunately,
had the nomer of "race music" and rock and roll,
and they released as little of it as they possibly could.
They felt they had the shareholders
of the company to worry about.
They had distributors to worry about.
They had stores to worry about.
They had radio stations to worry about.
They said, "Our whole world is tied up in white music."
♪ People come to their windows ♪
♪ They always... ♪
Linn: They were very, very reluctant
to expose black music
until such times they couldn't avoid it anymore.
Elvis: ♪ You know what it takes, you got it, baby ♪
♪ ♪
♪ You are the only one I've chose ♪
♪ Don't leave me here with all these heartaches ♪
Jorgensen: After a lot of going back and forth,
eventually the Colonel pushes RCA
to buy the contract,
and all the recordings that were made,
both that were released and those that weren't.
Elvis: ♪ When it rains, it really pours ♪
Linn: I think he's the test object
for the majors to really get in the game,
and it worked.
Phillips: People have asked me repeatedly,
"Do you regret selling Elvis Presley?"
Elvis: ♪ I got a feeling for you, baby ♪
Phillips: I do not.
Elvis: ♪ And you're the only one who knows ♪
♪ About my troubles, troubles, troubles ♪
Man: It'll just be one second, Elvis. All right.
(audience chuckles)
Elvis: My boy, my boy, got my guitar.
Man: Uh, Steve?
Can we have a lot of gain on this playback?
Steve: More gain. Man: Right.
Are we on television?
Binder: Huh? Are we on television?
Just a minute.
Binder: One day in the middle of taping a production number...
(playing guitar) ...we're called into Colonel Parker's office.
Elvis: ♪ I'll have a blue ♪
♪ Christmas ♪ Binder: Colonel says,
"It's been called to my attention
that we don't have a Christmas song in the show."
♪ And when those blue ♪
Binder: "Elvis wants a Christmas song in the show.
Don't you, Elvis?"
Man: Aw, yeah! ♪ You'll be doing... ♪
Binder: His hands cross,
his head goes down,
and I hear Elvis mumble, "Yes, sir."
I watched Elvis cower to Parker.
Elvis: ♪ Blue, blue Christmas ♪ (women scream)
I said, "If that's what Elvis wants,
that's what I'll do."
The Colonel says, "Okay, then we're all in agreement."
Elvis walks out the door.
♪ ♪
Head goes up, lot of energy,
and he jams me in the ribs,
and says, "Fuck him." (chuckles)
♪ Blue, blue, blue Christmas ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Decorations of red ♪
♪ On a green Christmas tree ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Won't be the same dear ♪
♪ If you're not here with me ♪
♪ And when those blue ♪
♪ Snowflakes start fallin' ♪
♪ ♪
♪ That's when those blue ♪
♪ Memories start callin' ♪
♪ ♪
♪ You'll be doin' all right ♪
♪ With your Christmas of white ♪
(song fades)
Petty: Elvis was one of the first artists
that actually produced himself.
By the time he lands at RCA,
he's in charge.
They're a rock and roll band,
and Steve Sholes didn't know
how to make one of those records.
Elvis did.
Light: Elvis was a very different person
and a very different artist
going in to make the first RCA record
than he was walking in as an absolute rookie at Sun.
He'd been out touring and playing in front of people
for those months in-between.
He had experience in the studio.
He had had the inspiration of Sam Phillips,
watching, pick the songs and the arrangements and all of that.
Petty: You can hear "Heartbreak Hotel"
has got echo chamber,
because he's clearly asking for echo.
And they don't know how to give him the slapbacks,
so they're turning up the chamber,
and he's just like, "Okay, I'll make this work."
And he does. (laughs)
Petty (imitating Elvis): ♪ Heartbreak Hotel, where I will be ♪
♪ So lonesome, baby ♪
♪ I'll be so lonely, baby ♪
Elvis: ♪ They're so lonely, they could die ♪
♪ Now, the bellhop's tears keep flowing ♪
Howe: My function was in the booth.
But I always spent a lot of time out in the studio.
What you saw from Elvis
was that being in a recording studio
or being on stage was exactly the same thing to him.
Elvis: ♪ They're so lonely ♪
Howe: He was always a real
organic part of the music physically.
Extremely animated when he sang.
He never stood still.
Elvis: ♪ Take a walk down Lonely Street to♪
♪ Heartbreak Hotel ♪
♪ Where you will be, you will be so lonely ♪
Howe: And the guys, they just shifted right into that mode
that Elvis was in.
Elvis: ♪ So lonely, you could die ♪
♪ ♪
Howe: If something wasn't working right
or it was too slow or too fast,
they all looked to him,
and then he would move to the music.
If the music was right,
he was a show out there.
He was a captivating person,
and nobody made suggestions to Elvis.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ Although it's always crowded ♪
♪ You still can find some room ♪
♪ For brokenhearted lovers to cry when they're blue ♪
♪ Where they'll be so ♪
♪ They'll be so lonely, baby ♪
♪ Well, they're so lonely ♪
♪ They'll be so lonely they could die ♪
♪ ♪
Springsteen: Elvis's music was shot through with the blues,
which he played quite a bit of.
But he was always mixing genres.
Zanes: Elvis, by the first RCA record,
is already showing that he can pull in
a wide range of genres,
but they all come out Elvis.
Petty: He didn't invent rock and roll, per se.
I mean, you've got Little Richard and Joe Turner
and all these people on that tip,
but what Elvis did isn't that.
(laughs) You know what--
What he did is different.
It's bringing the country music in,
bringing white gospel music in,
and it becomes pop music.
Maultsby: Most of Presley's first recordings
were basically covers of black singers. (piano playing)
Little Richard, Arthur Crudup, Joe Turner, Lloyd Price.
♪ ♪
Lloyd Price: ♪ Well, now, lawdy, lawdy, lawdy, Miss Clawdy ♪
♪ Girl, you sure look good to me ♪
♪ Please don't excite me, baby ♪
♪ Know it can't be me ♪
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ Because I give you all of my money ♪
♪ Yeah, but you just won't treat me right ♪
Springsteen: Elvis and Elvis's music
pointed to black culture and said,
"This is something that's filled with the force of life."
If you want to be a complete and fulfilled person,
if you want to be an American,
this is something you need to pay attention to.
♪ ♪
Petty: The American teen just knew it rocked.
No white music had ever done that.
Plenty of black music had.
♪ Tell my mama ♪
♪ Lord, I swear to God, what you been doin' to me ♪
♪ I'm gonna tell everybody... ♪
Porter: Elvis was able to bring a value
to the presentation of black music,
African-American artists,
at a period that they were being ignored
by the great artists, in a credible way,
because he learned it from the source.
♪ Girl, I don't be comin' no more ♪
♪ Goodbye to little darlin' ♪
♪ Down the road I go ♪
Can't stop me now, man. We can't stop.
Man: All right, all right.
♪ I said, bye ♪ (cheers)
♪ Bye, bye, baby ♪
(screaming) ♪ Girl, I won't... ♪
Jorgensen: In the Colonel's view,
whatever the songs were,
whoever played on it didn't matter.
It was Elvis.
It was, in his mind, about the merchandise.
He always called it "the merchandise."
And that's what it was to him and to RCA.
♪ ♪
Announcer: We think tonight that he's going to make
television history for you.
We'd like you to meet him now. Elvis Presley!
West: Colonel knew how to do it,
and had the contacts with the--
the show in New York,
the Tommy Dorsey Show.
Jorgensen: RCA didn't seem to be able to secure TV performances,
and eventually, Colonel Parker secures Elvis for shows
to coincide with the release of the record in January.
♪ ♪
Light: The earliest shows,
he doesn't have that much material to draw from.
What he's doing really are the-- the covers.
These songs initially recorded
by black songwriters, black performers:
"Shake, Rattle, and Roll" and "Money Honey"
and "Flip, Flop and Fly."
♪ ♪
Petty: He was an incredible performer
in that his body really picked up
all the intricacies of the rhythm.
It's so lighthearted,
but it's so deep and meaningful at the same time.
♪ ♪
It's such a magical thing to see.
He looks really supernatural,
'cause of the kinescopes,
just the way it distorts the image.
There's some beautiful thing going down there,
you know, and it must have been really incredible
to see it with no warning.
♪ ♪
(scatting)
(audience cheering)
♪ I'm like a Mississippi bullfrog ♪
♪ Sittin' on a hollow stump ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I'm like a Mississippi bullfrog ♪
♪ Sittin' on a hollow stump ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I got so many women ♪
♪ I don't know which way to jump ♪
♪ Well, I said flip, flop and fly ♪
♪ I don't care if I die ♪
♪ I said flip, flop and fly ♪
♪ Don't care if I die ♪
♪ Don't ever leave me, don't ever say goodbye ♪
♪ ♪
(applause and cheers)
West: He just did all those Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey shows.
That was nationwide TV.
And it all went through the roof from then on.
Robertson: That's when we saw somebody
that could sing better than other people,
could move better than other people,
had style that was better than other people.
In the pop world,
when this came along it broke glass.
Elvis: ♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪
♪ Cryin' all the time ♪
♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪
Springsteen: When you look at those television performances,
you see the band watching Elvis.
They all got their eyes on Elvis.
♪ Well, they said you was high class ♪
Springsteen: That was essential to the way the band swung.
Elvis is simply swinging your world
with the way he's swinging his hips
and moving his legs and his shoulders.
He's pushing and pushing his musicians.
♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪ (screams)
♪ Cryin' all the time ♪
♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪
Fontana: We were doing The Milton Berle Show,
and we was doing "Hound Dog."
Right at the end, we usually go out.
♪ You ain't no friend of mine ♪
Fontana: All of a sudden, he went into this half-time bluesy
"You ain't nothin' but a hound dog," slow.
(screaming) And we had never did it that way.
We all looked at each other. "What do we do now?
We'd better follow him."
♪ You ain't nothin' but a... ♪
Fontana: I just figured, well, I better catch his blues licks
and his legs and arms and do everything I can.
It was like every man for himself, actually.
♪ Well ♪
Fontana: Everytime he'd move a finger, a leg, an arm,
or run across the stage like a machine gun.
(Fontana imitates drumming)
Just every lick I could catch, you know?
♪ ♪
Priscilla: My parents are watching it.
They don't know I'm watching it.
They're looking, and... (laughing)
My mother's saying, "That's disgusting!"
♪ Crying all the time ♪
♪ Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit ♪
♪ You ain't no... ♪
Petty: As a little kid, I can remember
the living room discussion.
His appearances on TV were of a sexual nature.
He had really stepped over the line
of what's decent on television.
Priscilla: After that, our parents wouldn't let us see him.
The ministers, reverends told our parents,
"Keep him away from your children.
He's the devil."
So, he's forbidden fruit.
(flashbulbs popping)
Man: On your personal appearances,
you create a sort of mass hysteria
amongst your audiences of teenagers.
Is your shaking and quaking in the nature
of an involuntary response to this hysteria?
Elvis: Involuntary? Man: Yeah.
Uh, well, I'm aware of everything I do at all times,
but, uh, it's just the way I feel.
Man: And do you think you've learned anything
from the criticism leveled at you?
Elvis: No, I haven't. Man: You haven't, huh?
Because, uh, I don't-- I don't feel I'm doing anything wrong.
Man: Do you read the stuff?
Nik Cohn: One of the paradoxes with Elvis is
how could a boy so in love with God,
so obsessively in love with his mother,
so decent,
and "yes, ma'am," and "yes, sir" and all of that,
how could he be so unconfined on the stage?
How could he do this?
Maultsby: That was just totally unacceptable,
because the mid '50s being
the beginning of the civil rights movement,
the biggest fear that most Southerners had
was so-called race mixing.
♪ ♪
Ferris: Elvis's first television appearances
were earth-shattering.
He sang at a moment in the history of the South
in the early '50s,
when his music was truly a revolutionary sound
that bridged the black and white musics of Southern worlds
in a way that had never been heard before.
Petty: I don't think he was, necessarily,
trying to shake the world in that sense,
but I think he... he knew what he was onto.
He knew it made him feel great,
and he knew there was a rebellious streak in it.
He had to know that,
and it made him powerful.
They're clearly afraid of him...
(Petty laughs)
...to some degree.
Zanes: If you see a large social anxiety on the horizon,
there's probably issues of bodies in control involved.
Young people,
whether they were physically mixing
black and white or not,
they were culturally mixing black and white,
the way they were expressing themselves,
the movements in space as that mixing happened
were sexual in nature.
♪ ♪
Zanes: And I think, in the case of Elvis,
the fearful response,
it had a racial component
and a sexual component.
You know, it's all about fear and the body.
Cohn: I and millions of other kids growing up,
we all had this feeling
that Elvis was, sort of, sent to us,
to lead us out of the darkness of our own confusion,
sexual confusion,
social confusion,
ineptitude.
♪ ♪
Robertson: Here's what it was for me.
Elvis came along,
and this soundwave came out
that ran right through me.
♪ ♪
Priscilla: You felt like he was looking at you.
I mean, he had these eyes,
and he was connecting with his audience.
As teenagers, it was liberating.
Now we had something to claim for ours.
Light: I don't think there was any context
for the kind of shift that Elvis represented.
I don't think there was any-- any possible way
to know that that was going to resonate
and shake young people to their core
in such a profound way.
Steve Allen: The reason I booked him, I recognized right away
that he had something, a cuteness.
It was chiefly his face,
but a beautiful sound, he really never had.
Landau: The thing is that it was well-known that Steve Allen,
who fancied himself a major songwriter,
hated rock and roll.
And his purpose in having Elvis was,
first and foremost, he needed the ratings,
but secondly, to be sarcastic
and condescending to Elvis
and to the music he openly despised.
Elvis: ♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪
♪ Cryin' all the time ♪
♪ You ain't nothin' but a hound dog ♪
♪ Cryin' all the time ♪
Dave Marsh: Steve Allen, he was out to humiliate an entire culture
of what he would've called "hillbillies."
It was all a sneer.
Priscilla: It's a control thing.
It was humiliating.
After that, he didn't like Steve Allen at all.
♪ Well, that was just a lie ♪
Marsh: As a child, I was deeply offended.
There was something wrong there.
Elvis, why are you letting him do this to you?
♪ ♪
Ferris: We can look at Elvis as a Southern trickster figure.
You deal with power by yes-ing them to death,
and that's what Elvis did.
Very polite, very deferential,
but with his eye on the sparrow.
He was basically a good-natured Southern kid,
but he was on a mission to deliver this music.
Schilling: By 1956,
Elvis was coming into his own.
The RCA singles were enormous.
"Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel."
They sold three million copies.
Light: When Elvis's first album came out,
that sold 300,000 copies.
"Heartbreak Hotel" topped all three Billboard charts:
country, pop, and R&B.
This was now a career
that was going to these unimaginable heights.
Petty: I often wonder
if there had ever been a 21-year-old
that had that power,
that could mobilize millions of youths
with the wave of his hand.
♪ ♪
Priscilla: His mother worried so much about him.
He always wanted to be a good son,
mostly to his mom,
and didn't want to give her fears.
They would talk every single day,
and he was comforting her
that he'd be okay and not to worry so much.
(screaming)
Light: By the time Elvis made the first appearance
on The Ed Sullivan Show,
it was already something everybody was waiting for, watching for.
There was all kinds of pressure
and all kinds of expectation.
The Sullivan Show was the crown jewel,
that was the biggest game in town.
Priscilla: It was almost like, okay, you know,
"I'll do these shows, I'm doing my song, I'm doing my thing."
But he's not letting go of his roots.
Elvis: ♪ Well, the morning's so bright ♪
♪ And the lamp... ♪
Gordon Stoker: He wanted to do "Peace in the Valley"
on The Ed Sullivan Show.
They said, "No, we've never had a religious song on this show,
and you're not going to sing one now."
Priscilla: That's one of the songs his mother loved
was "Peace in the Valley."
He fought for that song.
No one wanted him to do that song.
Elvis: ♪ There will be peace ♪
♪ In the valley ♪
♪ For me ♪
Priscilla: But it was important for him to sing it for his mother,
to his mother, and keep his roots intact.
Elvis: ♪ Peace in the valley ♪
♪ For me ♪
Schilling: If you really look at Elvis on the Dorsey shows,
that's the rebel.
But then you see him doing "Peace in the Valley"
on The Sullivan Show,
that's the good-natured Southern kid.
♪ Trouble I see ♪
♪ There will be peace ♪
♪ In the valley ♪
♪ For me ♪
Man: Okay, Elvis, this is sort of off-the-cuff,
but how does it feel to be right up there on top,
right with the best of 'em,
since you are one of that class, how does that feel?
Elvis: Uh, it all happened so fast, so I don't know.
I'm afraid to wake up, afraid it's liable to be a dream, you know?
Man: Mm-hmm.
♪ ♪
(man speaking)
(Elvis speaking)
Elvis: We got a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures.
It's a dream come true, you know?
I've had people ask me was I gonna sing
in the movies, I'm-- I'm not.
Man: I see you're signed by Hal Wallis and company, out of Paramount.
Elvis: Yes. Man: Can you tell us anything
about the first movie that will be made?
Elvis: We'll have a movie coming out,
uh, we start making it in June. It's, uh...
It's a movie with Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn
called The Rainmaker.
Schilling: He didn't get The Rainmaker.
They talked him into doing Love Me Tender.
And then talked him into four songs.
Jorgensen: I think that Elvis brought a lot of insecurity with him.
He wanted to be a movie star,
that was much bigger than being a recording star,
and he was fairly disheartened when he learned
that he had to sing for these movies.
Priscilla: In the first four movies,
you see him so into the part,
and you see him really taking the role seriously.
He learned everyone's lines.
He thought that's what an actor did.
Training himself to be more like a Marlon Brando
or a James Dean or a Humphrey Bogart.
He respected these actors very much,
and this is where he thought his future was going.
Landau: The movie people took him very seriously.
These were carefully made films.
They had scripts.
They had emotion.
King Creole, Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock.
They assigned him stellar people.
Michael Curtiz, who directed King Creole,
is the same Michael Curtiz who directed Casablanca.
So they treated him with respect.
Schilling: King Creole, it was being prepped for James Dean...
before the fatal crash.
Woman: ♪ Crawfish ♪
♪ Fresh and ready ♪
♪ To cook ♪
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ Crawfish ♪
♪ See, I got 'em ♪
♪ See the size ♪
♪ Stripped and cleaned ♪
♪ Before your eyes ♪
♪ Sweet meat, look ♪ ♪ Sweet meat, look ♪
♪ Fresh and ready to cook ♪ ♪ Fresh and ready to cook ♪
♪ Crawfish ♪
♪ Now take Mr. Crawfish in your hand ♪
♪ He's gonna look good in your frying pan ♪
♪ If you fry him crisp ♪
♪ Or you boil him right ♪
♪ He'll be sweeter than sugar with every bite ♪
♪ Crawfish ♪
♪ See I got 'em ♪
♪ See the size ♪
♪ Stripped and cleaned ♪ ♪ Stripped and cleaned ♪
♪ Before your eyes ♪
♪ Sweet meat, look ♪ ♪ Sweet meat, look ♪
♪ Fresh and ready to cook ♪ ♪ Fresh and ready to cook ♪
♪ Crawfish... ♪
Priscilla: Out of all those movies,
King Creole was really his favorite.
It was Leiber and Stoller songs.
It was songs that he loved.
Marsh: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller,
they were two of the greatest songwriters in Americas
during the late '50s and early '60s.
♪ If you're lookin' for trouble ♪
♪ You came to the right place ♪
♪ If you're lookin' for trouble ♪
♪ Just look right in my face ♪
Stoller: When we first met him, we hit it off.
We were talking about different records that we knew.
♪ My daddy was a green-eyed mountain jack ♪
♪ That's why I'm evil ♪
Stoller: Elvis was into blues.
We thought we were the only white guys who were into blues.
♪ Well, I'm evil ♪
♪ So don't you mess around with me ♪
Jorgensen: In order to control music,
and in order to make more money,
Colonel Parker set up music companies
that would deliver songs.
Stoller: We were given assignments,
but they also went to all the other writers
who were assigned to Hill & Range Songs.
Thus the owners of Hill & Range
controlled Elvis Presley music.
Elvis: ♪ Flesh, blood and bone ♪
Stoller: Hill & Range was one of the biggest publishers in the United States.
And if you wanted to be on an Elvis record,
you were gonna play ball.
The publisher gets half, and the writer gets half.
Light: As Elvis is becoming an A-list superstar,
he's reaching a level of success
that nobody had ever had before.
In fact, several big pop hits into his career,
he makes a feature film,
and then, very soon signs a contract
for a bunch of feature films.
Nobody had ever done that.
There's nobody, who this early in their career,
is given all of this territory
between the radio,
the television and the movie screen.
There was no blueprint
for how you navigate something like that.
(horn honking)
Priscilla: Actually, it was Vernon and Gladys
that found Graceland and showed it to him.
He fell in love with it, but more than that,
it was to give a beautiful home to his mom.
And of course, his father too, but really for his mother,
because he saw her working so hard.
He wanted to be a great son.
Schilling: He was living the most hectic time of his life, career-wise.
This was his controlled escape.
Springsteen: Graceland.
Just the name of it itself
pulled directly out of gospel tradition.
It's an idealized home.
The perfect symbol of someone who's come up from the bottom
and-- and enjoyed the best the country has to offer.
It was a huge moment for Elvis to walk through those doors
and call that place his home.
Ferris: It had all of the things
that Elvis had never known as a kid.
It's not a lavish home.
It's not Tara.
But it is everything that money and fame
could deliver according to his specifications.
Man: Yeah, I understand that you bought a home for your folks.
And even though your father is only 39,
you've insisted that he retire. Is that true?
Uh, yes.
Well, he's more help, I mean,
he's more help at home than he is anywhere else,
because, uh...
he can take care of all my business.
He can, uh, look after things when I'm gone.
Man: Well, I think that's-- I think that's very smart.
I, of course...
Priscilla: Elvis gave Vernon a huge obligation.
"Take care of me."
He had an office.
It gave him a job.
It gave him something to do,
and it was for his son.
They made sure that they kept everything in order,
because he was really in fear of not doing the right thing.
Schilling: Vernon's office, you can tell,
didn't come from a sophisticated business manager.
It came from a poor man from Tupelo, Mississippi.
Harris: Elvis had all the money in the world.
He had anything he wanted.
He built Graceland,
and yet, he had some sweetness about him
that kind of breaks your heart.
I mean, really. I don't think he-- he ever lost that.
(man speaking)
(Elvis speaking)
Priscilla: Elvis never wanted to go back
to the days where they struggled,
the days of poverty.
♪ ♪
Light: In 1958, Elvis was drafted into the Army.
And no matter how much he'd been through
on the road and making movies,
the notion of going to another continent
away from his family,
was a difficult thing for him to consider.
Jorgensen: The idea was, of course, that Elvis would do his duty,
so he could come back and be respectable
in the Colonel's new vision of the future Elvis Presley,
which was a brilliant vision.
He knew exactly where he wanted to take Elvis.
West: Colonel said, "We don't want any favors.
"He's not gonna be in entertainment.
He's gonna be a soldier."
Reporter: Elvis, you don't get out of the Army until 1960.
If rock and roll should diminish in popularity,
or even disappear, what would you do?
(chuckles)
Well, uh...
I would probably try acting.
I mean, you know, I, uh...
Priscilla: Being drafted was something
he never thought about happening to him.
Petty: The Army, which is odd,
because there was no war on.
There's not a lot of people being drafted.
But Elvis, he goes along with it.
Zanes: The biggest star in the world
going into the Army.
You know, from our historical perspective,
that's a very strange episode.
But then if you try to get in to his experience,
having gone through this profound rise to fame,
there's total uncertainty
as to what he will return home to,
if he returns.
Springsteen: Elvis in his 20s,
he was still inventing all the rules.
In those days, there was no perception
that a rock and roll musician
could have a long and lasting career.
People expected that kind of a career
to be over within moments.
Jorgensen: RCA panicked.
The pushed the Colonel to set up recording sessions
before Elvis left, so they could record a lot of material.
Light: The impulse was to flood the market,
give the fans as much as possible,
and keep riding this as hard as you can.
Jorgensen: And the Colonel works it the opposite way.
His idea was to have just enough material
to keep Elvis's name alive.
Priscilla: He wanted to keep the mystery.
He kept Elvis away from performing,
serving for his country like a good soldier.
He had fans waiting for him to come back.
Man: "I..." I, Elvis Presley...
"do solemnly swear..."
do solemnly swear...
"that I will bear true faith and allegiance,"
that I will bear true faith and allegiance,
"to the United States of America."
to the United States of America.
Priscilla: His mother was concerned about him going to Germany,
'cause all they heard at that time was Russia.
She thought he was going to war.
Her son was leaving for two years,
and he'd never been out of the United States.
When he went to basic training in Texas,
they talked every day.
And kept saying, "Mama, I'm gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay.
I'm gonna be fighting."
But she just couldn't get it into her head.
♪ ♪
(wind whistling)
(choir singing)
♪ Oh, by and by ♪
Elvis: ♪ Tempted and tried ♪
♪ We're oft made ♪
♪ To wonder ♪
♪ Why it should be thus ♪
Priscilla: Before he left to serve in Germany,
Gladys suddenly got sick and she passed.
♪ ♪
West: When those things happen like that,
you don't do a lot of talking.
Elvis and his mother,
that's the closest I've ever seen anybody
as far as that goes.
Sure was.
Priscilla: She worried about him night and day,
because he was such a sensitive boy.
And yes, she was overly protective,
but because of the loss of the twin brother,
that protectiveness really lingered
until the day she-- she passed.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ Farther along ♪
♪ We'll know ♪
♪ All about it ♪
♪ Farther along ♪
Cohn: Easy to sneer that Elvis was a mama's boy and so on,
but it wasn't that.
It was one of those relations between a mother and son
where you could hardly say where the mother ends
and where the son begins.
And when his mother died, it left a hole in him.
He was never whole again as it were.
He deeply feared not being a good man,
being a godly man.
He needed her there to say, "I love you,
"and you're doing the right thing,
and I know you're good."
He needed her. Absolutely.
♪ By and by ♪
Priscilla: The loss was the most devastating time in his life.
It was all fun before that.
It was the skating rink, it was the theater.
It was making a movie, then going back to Memphis
being with his friends and playing.
And then, of course, having Graceland as the center.
Fixing all that up for the family,
and so, he matured a lot
because of the loss of his mother.
It was unbearable for him during that time.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ Then do we... ♪
Man: Now, as we're getting closer and closer
to the time that they're gonna pull that gangplank away,
and you'll be on your way.
Since this is probably the last chance
that you'll have to say something to your fans,
do you have any particular message?
Elvis: Well...
I'm gonna be very honest about it.
Uh, in spite of the fact that I am going away
and that I'll be out of their eyes for some time,
I hope that I'm not out of their minds.
And, uh, I'll be looking forward
to the time when I can come back
and entertain again like I did, and...
Man: All we can do is wish you a wonderful trip
and all the best luck in the world and come home soon.
Elvis: Well, thank you very much. I'll do my very best.
Jorgensen: Elvis hadn't had much time to himself
between that summer day when he recorded "That's All Right"
and when he was shipped to Germany.
Suddenly, on a boat to Germany,
there was lots of time.
That's where he meets Charlie Hodge,
and they start talking about music together.
They start singing.
(guitar playing) Elvis: ♪ Mona Lisa ♪
♪ Mona Lisa, men have named you ♪
Light: Charlie Hodge had been a gospel singer,
who Elvis had heard sing.
Schilling: He liked Charlie
because Charlie was in the music business
and somebody he could relate to that way.
Elvis was so down that Charlie would tell jokes
and try to keep him up.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa ♪
Light: To have somebody who he felt understood him,
that he could lean on,
and also to be able to turn to that music
was tremendously important
for him to get through that time
and everything that was going on.
♪ Brought to your doorstep ♪
♪ They just lie there ♪
♪ And they die ♪
♪ Are you warm? ♪
♪ Are you real, Mona Lisa? ♪
♪ Or just a cold and lonely ♪
♪ Lovely work of art? ♪
(Elvis vocalizing)
Jorgensen: When he gets to Germany, yes, he's--
he's obviously, uh, committed to, uh, the hours every day,
but there's, again, a lot of spare time
in an apartment or at a house in Germany
where he doesn't know anybody.
So there's a lot of time for reflection.
Petty: He goes into the Army,
which is where he gets the, um,
the pep pills for the first time, the methadrine,
to stay up on watch.
Priscilla: That was the beginning.
He started with the uppers to get him through the Army,
to get him through the cold days,
to get him through the lonely nights.
Man: Do you have any time for, uh, music anymore?
Elvis: Well, uh, only at night.
You see, I get off work at five o'clock in the afternoon...
(beeps) ...and, uh, I have a guitar up here in the room,
and I sit around, and you know, up here.
I don't want to get out of practice, you know, if I can help it.
Man: I sure hope not. Let me tell you...
Light: The struggle while Elvis was in the Army
was a mandate from Colonel Parker
that he not record and not make new music
since he wouldn't be able to promote it.
But what Elvis didn't know
was Parker was not a legal resident in the United States.
And without legitimate papers,
any travel that he took
could present big problems for him
trying to get back in.
The Colonel, he would come up with
excuses and explanations to Elvis,
to his family.
Priscilla: There'd be telegrams from Colonel Parker
telling him not to worry,
"I've done this, I've done this."
Parker was releasing songs for him
every few months
to keep the fans interested.
Light: But it's not a lot,
and not at the pace that they were used to
and that the machine required.
This approach to Elvis's career
was preying on his vulnerability.
This was certainly an opportunity for the Colonel
to fully seize the role of parent, mentor.
The one person who could
take him through this difficult time
and lead him out the other way.
Priscilla: Colonel was like a father figure.
There's no doubt about that.
And he felt Colonel knew what he was doing.
I mean, Colonel brought him to where he was.
Sam Phillips couldn't do what Colonel Parker did.
He was bright enough to know that.
So he was gonna follow what Colonel Parker said.
He'd been right so far.
Elvis: ♪ Oh, rock ♪
♪ Of ages ♪
♪ Hide thou me ♪
♪ ♪
♪ There is no other ♪
♪ Refuge can save... ♪
Schilling: Anytime Elvis was going through a really rough time,
he always went to gospel music.
♪ This old world ♪
Springsteen: What is gospel?
Gospel is a place where you go for transcendence,
where you go for peace,
where you go for a certain type of security.
It's a home.
It's a deep home within your soul and your body.
♪ Ages ♪
♪ Hide thou me ♪
Priscilla: We just went to Germany.
My father was stationed there. Air Force.
And a man came up to me and said,
"Would you like to meet Elvis Presley?"
And I thought he was kidding. I said, "Sure."
He goes, "No, I'm really serious."
I told him if I were to-- to meet him,
he'd have to ask my parents,
and my parents were very reluctant,
and I persuaded them to at least let me, you know, meet him.
Elvis: ♪ I will spend my whole life through ♪
♪ Loving you, loving you ♪
Priscilla: What does anyone say to a famous person?
Elvis: ♪ Winter, summer, springtime too ♪
Priscilla: Elvis was sitting in a chair, his legs crossed.
Elvis walked over to me, and he said,
"Oh, what do we have here?"
He started playing the piano
looking over at me,
and I kind of smiled at him.
The more I looked over,
the more he would entertain even more.
Three days later, I get a call
that Elvis would like to see me again.
And the rest is history. Elvis: ♪ I'll always be ♪
♪ Loving you ♪
Priscilla: I learned so much from Elvis about music.
Songs that he played
when I was in Germany with him for those six months,
some of 'em I could hardly connect to.
I was listening to Frankie Avalon, Fabian.
And his selection of music, I never heard really.
Elvis: ♪ I'll be true ♪
Priscilla: The Ink Spots, The Platters, Faye Adams, "Shake a Hand."
I didn't know any of these people.
That's when I realized that music was so much bigger
than what my music was.
Songs of loss, songs of departing,
songs of hope.
I couldn't really even see him as a movie star anymore,
that he was so much deeper.
Elvis: ♪ I'll always be ♪
♪ Loving ♪
♪ You ♪
Man: Do you have any idea when you'll be traveling back home?
Elvis: Uh, no, I don't know.
Uh, I wish I did know, you know.
Uh, how 'bout it? Do you miss home?
Oh, boy, you-- you-- (laughs)
I can't hardly talk. (man laughs)
That's kind of-- kind of a silly question on my part, I guess.
Elvis: ♪ It's a lonely man ♪
♪ Who wanders all around ♪ ♪ Lonely man ♪
♪ It's a lonely man ♪
♪ Who roams from town to town ♪
♪ Searchin' ♪
♪ Always searchin' ♪
♪ For something he can't find ♪
♪ Hoping, always hoping ♪
♪ That someday fate will be kind ♪
♪ It's a lonely man ♪
♪ Who travels all alone ♪ Chorus: ♪ A lonely man ♪
Elvis: ♪ When he has no one ♪
♪ That he can call his own ♪
Man: Well, Elvis, now you're really home.
How does it feel?
Elvis: It's hard to get used to it, you know?
I mean, I've been looking forward to it for two years.
That-- that was the hardest part of all.
Just being away from show business.
It wasn't the Army, it wasn't the other men.
It was that. It stayed on my mind.
I kept thinking about the past all the time.
Contemplating the future.
♪ It's a lonely man ♪
♪ Who wanders all around ♪
♪ It's a lonely man ♪
♪ Who roams from town to town ♪
♪ Searchin', always searchin' ♪
♪ For something he can't find ♪
♪ Hopin', always hopin' ♪
♪ That someday fate will be kind ♪
♪ It's a lonely man ♪
♪ Who travels all alone ♪
♪ When he has no one ♪
♪ That he can call his own ♪
♪ Always so unhappy ♪
♪ Taking shelter ♪
♪ Where he can ♪
♪ Here I am ♪
♪ Come meet a lonely ♪
♪ Lonely man ♪
Man: All right, we have a wide shot, so no one can be in here.
Standing by.
9:12.
♪ ♪
Jerry Schilling: The ' 68 Special really showed
Elvis's career in its entirety.
They took Elvis's original songs
and they made 'em more modern.
Priscilla Presley: This was bringing him back to the beginning
but yet going into the future.
♪ Well, I quit my job down at the car wash ♪
♪ I left my mama a goodbye note ♪
Schilling: There was the jam session with his original musicians.
It had simplicity, spontaneity.
And it also had the choreographed pieces
that really was a reflection of the movies
and the post-Army years.
♪ But nobody wanted to hire a guitar man ♪
♪ ♪
Steve Binder: The real spine of the special
came from our writers.
They locked themselves in their office
and played every Elvis record you could find.
Chris Bearde: We wove a story of Elvis
from his beginnings to being a superstar.
It gave everybody a look at Elvis as a musician.
♪ I'm hopin' I can make myself a dollar ♪
♪ Makin' music on my guitar ♪
Priscilla: It's funny. It's telling Elvis's story, yes,
in a variety show.
It's got the girls. It's got him playing guitar.
I look back now...
his life was so big,
I don't know if you can get it in an hour. (laughs)
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ Yes, I'm gonna walk ♪
♪ On that milky white way ♪
♪ Oh Lord, some of these days ♪
Elvis: I started out when I was just out of high school,
I started out driving a truck,
and, uh, I was training to be an electrician.
♪ Some of these days ♪
♪ Well, well, well, well ♪
One day at my lunch break,
I went into this little record company to make a record.
The guy put the record out, and overnight, in my hometown,
people were saying, you know, "Who is he?"
♪ I'm gonna walk on that milky white way ♪
♪ Oh Lord, some of these days ♪
I started to play little nightclubs and little football fields.
Like a year and a half, I was doing this, I met Colonel Parker.
♪ My mother howdy, howdy, howdy... ♪
In 1956, they arranged to, uh, to put me on television.
So they dressed me in a tuxedo,
had me singing to a dog on a stool.
♪ My mother howdy when I get home ♪
I went to Hollywood and I did four pictures.
I was really getting used to the movie star bit.
♪ I'm gonna shake my mama's hand ♪
Just overnight it was all-- all changed.
♪ I will shake her hands that day ♪
I got drafted.
♪ That's when we walk ♪
♪ On that milky white way ♪
♪ Oh Lord, one of these days ♪
Choir: ♪ On some of these days ♪
Warren Zanes: Returning from the Army,
coming back home, getting ready to perform again,
it's obviously not the '60s.
Those '60s haven't come yet.
This is pre-civil rights.
Things are happening in that regard,
but it's not really coming to a head yet.
I'm sure he was aware of how much had gone on.
He could've gone in several directions.
Man: Well, Elvis, now you're really home.
How does it feel?
It's pretty hard to describe, I'll tell ya.
It's hard to get used to it, you know?
I mean, I've been looking forward to it for two years,
and, all of a sudden, here it is.
It's, uh...
It's not easy to adjust to it.
Man: Elvis, do you think the music has changed
since you've been out of the service?
I mean, since you've been in the service.
Possibly, yes. I-I... I can't say really.
I haven't been here long enough to even know.
♪ ♪
Elvis: The only thing I can say is if it has changed,
well, I would be foolish not to...
try to change with it, you know?
♪ ♪
John Jackson: When Elvis gets back from the Army,
he was still one of the biggest stars on the planet.
But rock and roll, that force that happened
between '54 and '59,
basically had evaporated while he was away.
And you see, immediately, the results of the Colonel plotting--
"How do I make him as widespread as possible and polish his image?"
Get him on the path towards being a Frank Sinatra
or a Dean Martin,
pop singers who have very long careers.
Alan Light: This was a curious crossroads in his career.
It was open field to see
what was he gonna do and where was he gonna go.
The work that he had done during his time in the Army
broadens the scope of the music
that he was interested in.
Priscilla: He didn't wanna do the same music.
He wanted to grow.
He wanted to evolve in a way
that he could offer something different in his music.
Ernst Jorgensen: With Elvis, it was always about the challenge, the motivation.
He's already in the recording studio in Nashville
two weeks after coming home.
He knew what was at stake,
so did the Colonel and the engineers, everybody.
There was this tension in the room: "What's it gonna be like?"
Man: You ready? (guitar plays)
Let's cut one.
LTWB0081, take one.
(train whistling) ♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ I just got your letter, baby ♪
♪ Too bad you can't come home ♪
Jorgensen: They all relaxed after just a few takes
because he's so on top of it.
He's been longing for this moment--
both to get his career started
but also to express a new range of music,
his new understanding of music.
Everything he could do.
Elvis: ♪ I ain't slept a wink since Sunday ♪
♪ I can't eat a thing all day ♪
Light: Since the last Ed Sullivan Show appearance in 1957,
the Colonel decided to take Elvis off of television.
He didn't want to give Elvis away
when you could sell tickets in a movie theater.
Jorgensen: But in the relaunch,
he wasn't gonna gamble.
He wanted exposure to make sure they got a head start.
Now it was time to deliver.
Jackson: The Colonel's plan was get Elvis on television
in front of as many people as possible
with the world's other most famous singer.
Make it fun and exciting,
so that now the career can continue. (women screaming)
♪ I know that I ♪
♪ Held nothing ♪
♪ Waa-ooh-waa-ooh ♪
♪ If you should go away ♪
♪ But to know ♪
♪ That you love me brings ♪
Bruce Springsteen: The Sinatra show,
it was a very conservative move at the time.
It was just trying to find his place
after coming out of the Army.
He simply had to believe in himself,
and that's what Elvis did.
♪ ♪
♪ Fame and fortune ♪
♪ My way ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
(women screaming)
Springsteen: Elvis put himself forth as somebody who was not a flash in the pan
but who was in a long line of a tradition of American pop singers.
They were saying there's a life for Elvis after Elvis.
Elvis... (screaming continues)
I tell ya something, it was great!
Jon Landau: I remember when he appeared on the Frank Sinatra special.
That show was very much the opposite
of The Steve Allen Show.
There was a collegial atmosphere.
Frank Sinatra and Elvis had two different styles
but were in an incredibly exclusive club.
♪ ♪
We work in the same way only in different areas.
(laughter)
♪ Love me tender ♪
♪ Love me sweet ♪
♪ Never let me go ♪
Jackson: Trading their own hits with each other
is the big moment that the Colonel engineered for him.
♪ Those fingers in my hair ♪ (women screaming)
Jackson: You can hear the women in the crowd start screaming.
Elvis sexes it up a little bit.
♪ That strips my conscience bare ♪
♪ It's witchcraft ♪
♪ Love me tender ♪ (women screaming)
♪ Love me true ♪
Jackson: Sinatra, he's fitting "Love Me Tender"
into that swing thing. He's born on the beat.
♪ Oh my darling, I love you ♪
♪ And I always will ♪
♪ It's such an ancient pitch ♪
(women screaming)
♪ One I wouldn't switch ♪
♪ 'Cause there's no nicer witch ♪
♪ Than witchcraft ♪
♪ I love you ♪
♪ And I always will ♪
♪ ♪
(harmonizing) ♪ For my darling ♪
♪ I love you ♪
Man, that's pretty. (laughter)
Both: ♪ And I always will ♪
Jackson: He's embraced by the community
that had previously put him down,
and that signaled he was now ready
to take on this role of cultural icon.
Jorgensen: You get this new Elvis,
the Elvis that Colonel Parker wanted,
the Elvis that had grown up exactly the same way
that his core audience had grown older.
They were gone from being teenagers to being young adults.
So for him, it was the perfect launch.
The public widely accepted that,
but, obviously, this was a transition.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ You gave me love to enjoy ♪
♪ Like a bright shiny toy to a baby ♪
♪ ♪
♪ No matter what you would do ♪
♪ I depended on you ♪
♪ Like a baby ♪
♪ ♪
Priscilla: He knew that next album was important.
He gave it a lot of thought.
Light: The Elvis is Back! album reveals new influences,
new interests, new arrangements.
Jackson: He had been getting ready for this mentally
while he was in Germany.
There's a little bit of R&B, there's a little bit of pop,
ballads, country.
♪ ♪
Light: New songs that represented a different vocal approach
than anything he had tried before that.
Elvis: ♪ I was blind, 'cause I just ♪
David Briggs: His voice was very much in tune always,
and that's because he didn't have to fight the band.
Those guys were soft and they didn't push him,
and they weren't too busy.
Jorgensen: The band had the ability to play all this music
that came from so many different sources.
Elvis: ♪ Like a baby ♪
Jorgensen: That was the true magic
of Elvis combining with this band.
They perfectly understood each other.
(Elvis vocalizing)
Red West: Those musicians were incredible.
Bobby Moore on bass,
Floyd Cramer on piano.
Man, those guys heard a demo once
and bam, they were ready to go.
Briggs: They were a real tight group.
Nobody played anything that didn't go
with what the other one was playing.
Elvis: ♪ I need soul ♪
Briggs: DJ and Scotty were still there,
but they began to play a lesser and lesser role
and that made it a little more sophisticated.
Elvis: ♪ Then I broke down and cried ♪
Priscilla: He liked the way the music sounded.
Technology, it evolved while he was gone.
Jackson: RCA Studios got a three-track recorder.
That immediately adds a technical professionalism
as recording technology is moving into the future.
Elvis: ♪ Like a baby ♪
Priscilla: He started feeling confidence,
because these were his song choices.
These were songs that he was singing in Germany.
That's the freedom that he wanted.
That's what he was looking for.
Elvis: ♪ Like a baby ♪
Priscilla: And that's why it was so successful.
Just blew people away.
Landau: Elvis, when he came back,
clearly in finding the songs and making the records,
was very driven.
His vision was very intact,
and I don't think he could be distracted.
Zanes: Elvis was so attuned to the emotional.
He was always on the search for emotional music.
Priscilla: I asked him one day,
"What makes you pick out your songs?"
He said, "I wanna be able to reach and feel
what we all go through as human beings."
♪ Ooh ♪
Zanes: This is the mysterious part about music.
How do we know when we're listening to a song
that someone means it?
We just know.
Elvis: ♪ Are you lonesome tonight ♪
Zanes: And the people who mean it
are generally the ones who are processing
some kind of loss through music,
and we can hear them negotiating their loss,
and we connect to it.
Elvis: ♪ Does your memory stray ♪
♪ To a bright summer day ♪
♪ When I kissed you ♪
♪ And called you sweetheart? ♪
David Porter: Those who are truly a recording artist,
you go into the artistic aspect
of what makes whatever you're doing
alive and unique for that song.
So he would lose himself in an artistic way
in order for people to feel it.
Elvis: ♪ And picture me ♪
Porter: That's called soul.
Elvis: ♪ Is your heart filled with pain? ♪
♪ Shall I come back again? ♪
♪ Tell me, dear ♪
♪ Are you lonesome tonight? ♪
Man: Usually when we chat, Elvis, we ask you to, uh,
select your favorite song of all your recordings.
What's the current favorite of yours?
Elvis: I think, uh, "Now or Never."
It's "Now or Never."
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ It's now or never ♪
Jorgensen: Everything was a level up on the '50s.
The three singles, "Stuck on You," "It's Now or Never"
and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" were number one hits.
It was a true triumph
and a whole new ballgame of what pop music was.
Elvis: ♪ Tomorrow will be too late ♪
Landau: Rhythmically, his sense of time,
his phrasing, musicality, Elvis was impeccable.
Elvis: ♪ When I first saw you ♪
Priscilla: He loved opera singers.
He loved the range of an opera singer.
"It's Now or Never" is very much like that.
Elvis: ♪ My heart was captured ♪
Tom Petty: What he did that was unusual
was he could slide up the scale into a tenor voice
and then back down, you know.
And he's just having fun.
He's sliding all over the scale.
It's so human. It's so real.
Elvis: ♪ It's now or never ♪
♪ Come hold me tight ♪
Light: "It's Now or Never" was adapted from "O Sole Mio,"
the Italian song.
Elvis had always had this interest
in the Italian crooners.
When he was in the Army with Charlie Hodge,
they were exploring that kind of drama in his singing.
That sound, that style became one of the staples
of Elvis's musical range from then on.
Elvis: ♪ Just like a willow ♪
Jorgensen: It's about challenge.
It was the challenge that made him do that extra thing.
And hitting the high notes at the end
on "It's Now or Never" was the challenge.
Elvis: ♪ And sweet devotion ♪
Jorgensen: He can't really reach it, and the engineer says,
"We can cut the ending only," and Elvis goes back and says,
"No, if I can't sing it the whole way through, I'm not gonna do it."
Elvis: ♪ For who knows when ♪
Priscilla: He challenged himself.
He got a thrill out of hitting a note so high.
Elvis: ♪ It's now or never ♪
♪ My love won't wait ♪
♪ ♪
♪ It's now or never ♪
♪ My love won't wait ♪
(folk music playing)
♪ ♪
♪ Can't you see I love you? ♪
♪ Please don't break my heart in two ♪
♪ That's not hard to do ♪
♪ 'Cause I don't have a wooden heart ♪
(laughter)
♪ And if you say goodbye ♪
♪ Then I know that I would cry ♪
Jorgensen: For Elvis to have to do G.I. Blues,
reflecting his two years in the Army
in a way that probably doesn't compare a lot to what it was like,
I don't think he really enjoyed that.
G.I. Blues was a family type of film
moving Elvis's image in a completely different direction
from the very young, aggressive characters in the '50s movies.
But he was given the promise that there would be two films
for 20th Century Fox, following this,
that were serious roles.
It may have been a reasonable bargain for Elvis at the time.
Priscilla: When he found out the songs that he had to do in G.I. Blues,
he said, "Baby, I don't know how this is gonna go.
I'm a little disappointed."
Jorgensen: The songs they had to fit into the plot,
but musically, they were not where Elvis was at.
He makes a compromise.
That was the really disheartening part for Elvis.
The soundtrack of G.I. Blues,
it was the most successful album they had made.
It sold much more than the absolutely brilliant studio album
that came out some months before.
Schilling: Elvis is now a big business.
So instead of going out,
getting the best songwriters in general,
Hill & Range, from the Colonel,
were hiring a couple of songwriters
to write Elvis songs.
Briggs: They would bring all of the material,
that was the unspoken rule.
Nobody else was allowed
to bring any music into the session.
That was very tightly controlled by the Colonel,
by the publishing company,
and by the record company.
West: The Colonel eventually started getting
a percentage of everything.
He was a businessman.
He didn't give a damn if it was worth a crap.
Schilling: Elvis could care less about the songwriting,
publishing in general.
Some of it, he got and understood,
but he cared more about good material.
Petty: It was more about the Colonel owning the publishing,
which was a huge stone in his shoes the rest of his life.
It was this business of "We must own the copyright
or we don't want you to do it."
Priscilla: Elvis said, "I'm starting to feel the pressure.
"I'm obligated here.
I don't think there's a way out for me."
And I said, "Well, can't you talk to Colonel?"
And that's when I think he started getting disillusioned.
Basically, Colonel was part of it.
Already, he's feeling that he's not in control,
and this is really early on.
Gladys Presley: ♪ Oh, home sweet home ♪
♪ There's no place like home ♪
(song continues)
Priscilla: I already had a feeling of what Graceland was like
through Elvis's description.
He told me in Germany,
"I want you to come and see Graceland."
And he would give me images.
When I came, the first time,
he told me to close my eyes, and not to open them.
We're driving, and then he said, "Open them."
The gates of Graceland open up.
It was everything that he'd described.
It was bigger than life for me.
His safe haven.
Schilling: Graceland always represented
something more than just a house to Elvis.
Light: Graceland was something initially
that he had bought with and for his parents,
and it reminded him of his mother,
her presence and her influence in his life,
which didn't end after she died.
Priscilla: I opened up a closet
and it was filled with her clothes.
And I had such a sense of her.
She liked soft fabric.
Her hats, her shoes--
he hung on to those personal things.
Even though it had been a few years,
there was still a lingering scent there, of her.
It really showed me the love that he had for her.
Elvis: She never really wanted anything,
you know, anything fancy.
She just stayed the same all the way through the whole thing.
There's a lot of things happened,
and there are times when it feels like
I don't know what I'm gonna do next, you know?
Light: Once he got back to Graceland
and wanted to reconnect with the spirit he was brought up in
and the memory of his mother,
the best way was to go back to the music
that he had grown up with.
Zanes: The theme of return,
and in Elvis's case, a return to gospel,
is part of how we all experience music.
There are these profound experiences
that happen with music at a younger age.
Through our lives, we're often chasing them.
If you were raised in the proximity of gospel,
that's what launched you into the world of emotional music.
West: He was getting into another phase in his life,
and gospel, religious music, was his favorite,
and that's why he did it.
Jorgensen: Just on the heels of G.I. Blues,
he goes in and records a complete album of gospel music
with songs from all his old heroes:
Blackwood Brothers, Golden Gate, Statesmen Quartet.
It's a tribute to everything he came from,
and he does it with a voice at his best ever.
Elvis: ♪ Why don't you swing low, sweet chariot ♪
♪ Stop and let me ride ♪
Tony Brown: It was so close to those records
that the Statesmen and Blackwoods were making.
It could've been those records.
Jorgensen: He had the Jordanaires as the key element
of developing a gospel feel
with a band feel that was true to the music
on the Elvis is Back! album.
Elvis: ♪ Let me ride ♪
♪ Rock me, Lord, rock me, Lord ♪
Jorgensen: Obviously, it's not really rock and roll,
but there's drums and there's saxophones.
There's a lot of swing to it.
♪ Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet ♪
Elvis: ♪ Well, well ♪
Petty: The way he blended them together
is an incredibly original thing to do.
Sometimes, you know, he wasn't traveling very far away from the gospel.
I mean, some of it, it was just about putting a beat to it.
Elvis: ♪ Wasn't so particular about the chariot wheel ♪
Petty: That angle of the two and the four are
slightly different than gospel good.
Elvis: ♪ Why don't you swing down, sweet chariot, stop ♪
♪ And let me ride ♪
Jorgensen: You have a feeling that he's truly enjoying this.
It's a very joyous record to listen to.
Schilling: His Hand in Mine was a passion.
The whole gospel influence was as much a part of him,
and maybe even more so as the rhythm and blues.
This was just his opportunity to get it out.
Priscilla: And it was a mission to show others,
the listeners, that in these choices of music
and how it's embellished,
really what Elvis was looking for as an artist,
to have that freedom.
It's that simple.
Elvis: ♪ Just wanted to lay down this heavy load ♪
♪ Why don't you swing down, sweet chariot ♪
♪ Stop, let me ride ♪
Man: How's Blue Hawaii going?
Elvis: It's going on very well.
We leave tomorrow for Kauai, you know. Yeah.
I think we'll be there for about 10 days.
Man: Tell us about Blue Hawaii a bit.
Elvis: There's about 11 songs in it.
Some Hawaiian tunes? Yeah.
You got some special material written for you for the picture?
Elvis: Yeah, we had about 10 songs written especially for the picture.
We do that, you know, before the picture starts.
♪ ♪
Jorgensen: The film Blue Hawaii was an overwhelming success.
That is the point where it gets real interesting.
Jackson: The two dramas,
Wild in the Country and Flaming Star,
they're not as music heavy, and they actually lose money.
Priscilla: And that's when they told him,
"This is proof. This is what the public wants.
"People just wanna hear your music.
They wanna hear you sing in movies."
(crowd cheering)
Schilling: The last concert he played, for almost a decade,
was a charity show near Pearl Harbor.
♪ ♪
(women screaming)
Elvis: ♪ Well, so long ♪
Jackson: That was like the ultimate charity show,
because it was for the building
of the Pearl Harbor memorial.
Couldn't be more patriotic.
Couldn't have been more of a cause
that people could get behind.
He's back, he's served his time.
He's a great patriot.
It was more to build that piece of the story
that the Colonel wanted to tell.
He's cleaned up and he's a good boy.
Elvis: ♪ Let you go ahead on, baby ♪
♪ Pray that you'll come back home some time ♪
Boots Randolph. (women scream)
Jackson: The band that he brings with him is very interesting.
He has Scotty and DJ,
but he brings with him his all-star
Nashville, session guy band,
including Boots Randolph, who was a great saxophone player.
♪ ♪ (women screaming)
Jackson: Boots Randolph brings in a lead instrument
that can balance out Elvis's singing
in a way that Scotty playing rockabilly licks
didn't do previously.
So it just becomes a much more full sound.
♪ ♪
Light: It's a tragedy that he didn't continue
to play live for people at that point.
But the Colonel knew that the films
got Elvis in front of millions of people simultaneously
with as little work as possible.
Landau: The post-Army films, I went to them.
They were a separate category for what happened in the '50s.
He finds himself in a situation
where he's just churning out stuff
that he couldn't possibly have believed in.
Elvis: ♪ I said, take it easy, baby, I worked all day ♪
♪ And my feet feel just like lead ♪
♪ You got my shirttails flying all over the place ♪
♪ And the sweat poppin' outta my head ♪
♪ She said, Hey, bossa nova, baby, keep on workin' ♪
♪ For this ain't no time to quit ♪
♪ She said, Go bossa nova, baby, keep on dancin' ♪
♪ I'm about to have myself a fit ♪
♪ Bossa nova, bossa nova ♪
Schilling: The Colonel negotiated contract after contract.
MGM, Paramount, United Artists, you name it.
Hal Blaine: He was inundated with work, work, work, work.
Elvis: ♪ I can dance with a drink in my hand ♪
♪ She said, Hey, bossa nova, baby, keep on workin' ♪
♪ For this ain't no time to drink ♪
Blaine: Everybody was trying to get every penny they could
out of whatever they could.
♪ Bossa nova ♪
♪ ♪
Jackson: He had to make three movies a year.
So these soundtrack albums became a big part
of the contractual obligation to release music with RCA.
Elvis: ♪ Bossa nova ♪
West: That was not his music.
It was killing his recording career,
because they were movie songs, situation songs.
Priscilla: Obviously, in some of the movies, you got some hits--
"Viva Las Vegas," "Bossa Nova Baby."
They weren't all bad,
but because it was connected to a movie,
it wasn't like a real record.
The songs had to fit the scene.
Jorgensen: And the Colonel obviously knew that the best format
was girls and beautiful locations.
Robbie Robertson: I thought it was terrible direction--
the idea to do a bunch of corny-ass movies,
Where this is all being led? It's no-man's-land.
Petty: He-- he certainly knows this music is crap.
The movies were very harmful to his image.
As an innovator, as a great musician,
they were harmful.
He's very talented. I mean, he's very present.
It's an incredible image of him.
But where he had a nice start in the movies
and did do some creative things early on,
and you could see that there was great potential for this guy,
there was really no way for him
to become the huge movie star
that he would've liked to have been
and the Colonel keep control of it.
You know, there's too many
creative aspects gonna come in,
and they're gonna challenge
the Colonel's carnival mentality.
Colonel Tom Parker: Well, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no.
Far as I was concerned,
I was not involved other than making the contract.
He had the opportunity to say, "I don't want to do it
or I'd like to do it."
No one told him he had to make a picture
that he didn't want to do.
When we had a script, we'd deliver it to Elvis.
Schilling: Elvis did refuse a bad picture.
In comes the Colonel,
in comes the studios,
in comes the record company.
They would say to him,
"You don't fulfill your contracts,
you won't do anything."
♪ Well, come on everybody ♪
♪ And turn your head to the left ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Come on everybody ♪
Jackson: In Viva Las Vegas,
it's the closest he ever gets to having a true co-star.
♪ Take a real deep breath and repeat after me ♪
Jackson: That becomes a problem for the Colonel,
because he doesn't want anybody to even
come close to outshining Elvis.
♪ Hey, hey, hey and my baby loves me ♪
Chorus: ♪ My baby loves me ♪
♪ My baby loves me ♪
♪ I said, my baby ♪
Ha! ♪ My baby ♪
♪ Loves me ♪ Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ann-Margaret (laughing): Wee-ha!
Binder: The Colonel did not want Ann-Margaret in his world
after she got a lot of press.
Anybody who had influence on Elvis was a threat.
Landau: The tragedy of the old style of management
was to try and maintain control of the artist
by limiting their exposure to opportunities.
The Colonel was not interested
in Elvis becoming too independent of a thinker.
He needed Elvis to think that everything good came from the Colonel
and anything bad came from imagined enemies.
He kept that con game going for much too long.
Zanes: The years spent chasing the movies,
you know, seven years,
they were very destabilizing for Elvis,
because music was always the buoy.
Jackson: It's clear about halfway through that period,
he becomes very restless,
and very annoyed with the whole process.
Schilling: Elvis didn't have script approval.
There weren't great budgets.
Priscilla: The humdrum movies that he was given--
boy chase girl, boy gets girl,
they get married, and it's happily ever after--
that was not Elvis Presley.
He was not that man.
He was much deeper than that.
He had no inspiration whatsoever.
He knew he had to make it work.
He knew he was under a contract,
and he walked through every one of them.
After a movie, he felt trapped.
He dreaded the next script,
because he knew it would be the same thing over and over again.
But the disconnect,
the disconnect in the two
was really wearing on his mind--
that Colonel was not taking him to the place he needed to be.
Petty: This is what we'll never understand
is why did Colonel Parker have
this kind of influence over him.
Why was he willing to knowingly humiliate himself for this man,
or for the money promised him by this man?
He puts up with it.
Porter: I have never felt Elvis was lost.
He knew with all those movies,
as is the case with every artist,
that they're taking themselves away from their strength.
Many artists can't get back to where their strengths are.
Emmylou Harris: An artist has to constantly grow,
and to continue creating,
and changing, and being inspired by things around him
in a spiritual or a personal way.
♪ ♪
Elvis: I'd like to stay in the same vein.
I-I mean, I wouldn't like to, uh,
be at a standstill, you know what I mean?
I'd like-- I'd like to progress.
I'd like to do a lot of things, but I...
I realize, uh, that it takes time,
and you can't, uh,
you can't go out of your, uh, capa-- uh, your limitations.
You have to know your capabilities, you know.
Like I have people to say to me all the time,
(stammering)
"Why don't you do an artistic picture?
"Why don't you do this picture and that picture?
Why don't you go do something blah, blah?"
Well, that's fine, but, uh...
Uh, I would like to.
I'd like to do something someday
where I feel that I really done a good job.
You know, as an actor in a certain type role,
if what you're doing is doing okay,
you're better off sticking with it until, you know,
until just time itself changes things.
♪ ♪
Zanes: The great irony is that Elvis was such a significant force
in the launch of rock and roll,
and the very revolution that he sparked
carries on without him.
There is a renaissance that is underway,
and he is, in effect, in a bubble in Hollywood,
as it passes him by.
Priscilla: '63, '64, '65, when all the bands were coming in,
he just didn't really wanna hear music.
He didn't wanna hear the songs.
Was there room for him now, being a solo artist?
Elvis really wasn't interested in writing his own music,
and all these other groups coming up,
The Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys,
they all wrote their own songs,
so they could direct their careers
in a way Elvis couldn't.
Petty: There is no road map at this point
as to what a rock and roller does
when he gets older.
The Beatles had each other.
You know, they had four people together to go through it.
And Elvis was totally alone.
There was no one vaguely his equal.
There was nobody he could bounce anything off of.
Priscilla: Elvis really didn't ask for anybody's advice.
He didn't ask the guys for their advice.
Oh my gosh, he would never.
I mean, you didn't tell Elvis what to sing
or what movie he should be in.
Elvis was truly his own man.
He needed someone to come in with a game plan and offer it to him.
"What do you think of this?"
But he hung out with the same people all the time.
We all lived in this bubble.
Very few outsiders came in.
His world was really quite small,
and only consisted of us, people that he trusted.
You didn't really talk about the movies around Elvis.
We didn't go there. Why get him upset?
And people-- the guys were around to bring him up.
Schilling: Elvis was going to us and saying,
"Damn it, I know there's good music out there.
I hear it. Why am I not getting it?"
Petty: You can tell his interest in making records
has kind of gone away.
You don't get him in the studio a lot.
Priscilla: He was just struggling with what to do next
and where to go, trying to figure out his purpose again.
It was very difficult to watch.
♪ ♪
Odetta: ♪ How many roads ♪
♪ Must a man walk down ♪
♪ Before you call him a man ♪
Light: By this point,
Elvis had grown so disconnected from the music
that he was recording.
He knew that it was inauthentic.
He knew that it was insincere.
And he was looking for some connection to music
that still made him feel the way
that music had made him feel when he was younger.
Odetta: ♪ How many times ♪
♪ Must a cannonball fly ♪
Light: He was interested in this new folk music--
Peter, Paul, & Mary, the songs of Bob Dylan.
He didn't love Bob Dylan's voice,
but he was interested in this imagery
and this language that drew from the gospel and the blues.
Priscilla: And here he has Odetta singing.
When you hear the song,
now you've got the lyrics that match his feelings,
you've got the lyrics that he can see himself singing.
Odetta: ♪ Only if my true love was waitin' ♪
♪ ♪
♪ If I... ♪
Zanes: Many of his relationships
with the culture of the day were circuitous,
because he was Elvis and he was behind a-- a high wall.
Elvis: ♪ Only she was ♪
♪ Lying by me ♪
♪ Then I'd lie ♪
♪ In my bed once again ♪
♪ ♪
Priscilla: Elvis, a lot of times when everyone had gone to bed,
or there was no one around,
he would go into the music room at Graceland.
Just sit there totally in solitude,
as if even I wasn't around, and just start playing.
Always it was gospel.
Always it was "Precious Lord."
Elvis: ♪ Precious Lord ♪
♪ Take my hand ♪
Priscilla: When he would sing,
it was like a character study watching him get lost.
Elvis: ♪ I'm tired ♪
♪ I'm weak ♪
♪ I'm worn ♪
♪ Through the storm ♪
Priscilla: And then, he'd look over to see how I was relating to it.
He'd look over and wink at me.
Elvis: ♪ Lead me on ♪
Priscilla: Those were times that I cherish the most, actually.
He wasn't really trying to impress anyone.
He was doing it for himself
and just getting in touch,
getting in touch with his maker.
It was a plea.
Elvis: ♪ Well, you may run on for a long time ♪
Chorus: ♪ Run on for a long time ♪
Elvis: ♪ Run on for a long time ♪
♪ Let me tell you, God Almighty's gonna cut you down ♪
Jorgensen: He didn't have a burning desire anymore
to record songs.
Elvis: ♪ Midnight rider ♪
Jorgensen: The real interesting element in that
is that when he regains his appetite for recording
and wants to prove a point in 1966,
he makes a gospel record again.
Elvis: ♪ Talkin' to the man from Galilee ♪
Jorgensen: During the middle of The Beatles,
and The Birds and The Stones,
and Elvis makes a gospel record when he wants to come back.
Elvis: ♪ Great God Almighty, let me tell you what he said ♪
♪ Go tell that long-tongued liar ♪
♪ Go tell that midnight rider ♪
♪ Tell the gambler, rambler ♪
Light: Elvis is connecting to new music.
He wants a more modern sound,
a more aggressive rhythm section,
a rock and roll mix.
Elvis: ♪ Run on for a long time ♪
♪ Let me tell you, God Almighty's gonna cut you down ♪
♪ You may throw your rock and hide your hand ♪
Springsteen: I think Elvis's return to gospel
was a part of simply the deep religiousness of the South
and his upbringing.
But in the late '60s, people were having a hard time
looking past the kitsch aspect
of some of the things that Elvis did.
Elvis: ♪ You gonna reap just what you sow ♪
Springsteen: To appreciate that music,
that stuff couldn't bother you.
Chorus: ♪ Long time ♪
Elvis: ♪ Run on for a long time ♪
(film projector whirring)
♪ ♪
Man: What do you think of yourself now?
Elvis: You mean, uh, as an entertainer
or an individual or what?
Man: Both.
Elvis: I can sum it up fairly easily.
I, uh, as a-- as a human being, really,
who's been very extremely fortunate in so many ways...
I've a lot that I'd like to do,
a lot that I'd like to accomplish.
I'd like to get married. I'd like to have a family.
I suppose the most important thing
in a person's life is, uh, is happiness.
I mean, not wordly things, because...
You realize, I mean, you can have cars.
You can have money. You can have a fabulous home.
You can have everything.
If you're not happy, what have you got?
♪ ♪
Priscilla: I was very young and very in love,
and I wanted to be with him a lot.
The times that we were together,
I-I cherished.
♪ ♪
Woman: ♪ I picked up my bag ♪
♪ And went looking for a place to hide ♪
♪ When I saw old Carmen and the devil ♪
♪ Walking side by side ♪
Springsteen: I mean, 1968 was a wild
and violent year in American history.
Woman: ♪ She said I gotta go ♪
♪ But my friend here can stick around ♪
Light: At the beginning of the year, Lisa Marie is born.
And then a couple of months later,
Martin Luther King is assassinated.
Woman: ♪ Take a load off, Fanny ♪
Schilling: We were making a movie at MGM
when we heard on the radio about Martin Luther King.
King was that hope to bring us all together,
and Elvis knew that.
Elvis looked down and he said,
"He always told the truth."
Woman: ♪ It's just old Luke ♪
♪ And Luke's waiting on Judgment Day ♪
Light: There's this contentious presidential election going on.
Bobby Kennedy is assassinated.
There's chaos at the Democratic convention in Chicago.
Woman: ♪ Baby now, won't you stay ♪
Priscilla: Things were just in disarray,
and it was never the same after that.
♪ ♪
Nik Cohn: By '68,
most Elvis fans had, more or less, given up the ghost.
There'd been so many poor movies,
so many throwaway singles.
Jackson: Elvis starts to think about,
"Okay, so how can I play live again?
There's no infrastructure for me to do that."
Landau: A couple of really bright guys who got Elvis
talked their way into making a TV special.
Their mission was to remind everybody
just who Elvis had been,
and who he still was--
in a sense, to erase the last seven years
of the movie soundtracks.
Light: When the opportunity for the TV special is presented,
he hasn't performed for an audience for years.
Priscilla: He was actually thinking what he would do
if everything went wrong.
This was his career. This was his life.
This was the moment of realization that this is it,
that this is gonna be either a complete failure
or it'll change everything.
Springsteen: Well, I remember I waited
for weeks for the '68 Special
'cause I knew it was coming.
I can remember exactly where our TV
was set up in the dining room,
the exact place I was sitting.
I mean, it's one of those things
that's imprinted on my memory forever.
But you weren't sure if he had the ability to focus
and gather it all together one more time
to create musical explosiveness.
Host: Uh, welcome to NBC,
and the Elvis Presley Special.
(cheers, applause)
You can do better than that. I'm gonna say it all over again.
Now, I wanna really hear something.
Schilling: When I went with him to NBC,
he was very quiet.
He didn't know how people were gonna feel about it.
Priscilla: He was extremely nervous that night.
It's all new again,
and I'd never seen Elvis perform live before.
I didn't really know what to expect.
Binder: We didn't know where it was gonna go, period.
Just before it began, on the first taping,
Elvis called me into the makeup room.
He was sitting there and he asked everybody in the room to leave,
so he could just be with me one on one.
I said, "What's-- what's the problem?"
"Problem is I changed my mind.
I don't wanna do this."
Man: May we strike the coil and cable off the platform, please?
Priscilla: We weren't seeing, sitting in the audience,
what was going on.
I'd stayed away from the dressing room.
He didn't want anyone around.
I was sitting there going, "Oh my gosh," you know.
"Is he gonna be able to pull this off?"
Binder: I said, "What are you talking about?"
And he said, "I don't remember anything I sang in the dressing room.
"I don't remember any stories that I told.
"My mind is a blank, Steve.
Let's just call it off. It's not gonna happen."
Binder: I said, "Elvis, I've never asked you to do anything
that you don't wanna do..."
Host: Mr. Elvis Presley. (crowd cheering)
Binder: "...but you've got to go out there."
♪ ♪
Thank you very much.
Schilling: I don't know how this happened,
but I saw him relax.
Elvis: They want me to sit on the floor!
(women cheer)
(playing guitar)
♪ ♪
(band joins in)
Man: ♪ It's all right ♪
♪ Yeah, man ♪ ♪ It's all right ♪
♪ It's all right ♪
(Elvis growls) ♪ It's all right ♪
Oh, yeah!
♪ ♪
Binder: I had no knowledge or understanding
about how incredibly talented he really was until that show.
♪ ♪
Zanes: He's having an experience in the moment.
During the years he was doing Hollywood movies,
you never got to see him in the moment.
(screaming)
Yeah, baby!
♪ ♪
(speaking indistinctly)
♪ We're goin' up, we're goin' down ♪
♪ We're going up, down, down, up any way you want ♪
♪ Let's roll ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
♪ You got me doin' what you want me ♪
♪ Oh baby, what do you want me to do? ♪
Schilling: The interplay with Scotty and DJ
who's playing drums on the back of a guitar case.
DJ Fontana: It felt like we were back home again.
♪ ♪
Yeah!
♪ All right ♪
Hep, hep, hep, hep, hep, hep!
Boones Howe: Those are guys who grew up together,
and they suddenly have a moment
of reflection.
The past, their early days.
♪ Down, any way you wanna let it roll ♪
Cohn: He was rediscovering the sheer animal joy
of making music, and realizing, for the first time in years,
just how good he was.
♪ Baby, what do you want me to do? ♪
♪ You got me doing what you want me ♪
♪ Oh baby, what do you want me to do? ♪
(applause) Man: All right! You got it!
Landau: That show was 1,000% Elvis.
His fingerprint was on the first frame to the last frame.
He was a man on a mission.
Priscilla: And that night when it premiered on TV,
we were all silent.
We just sat there and watched the show
and never said a word.
And then, of course, the telephone calls were coming in, and reviews.
And, oh my gosh, it was such a relief.
It was so great to see him smile again.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ We're caught in a trap ♪
Schilling: After the comeback special,
Elvis didn't have to look too far
to find his way back to the source.
Elvis: ♪ Because I love you too much, baby ♪
Springsteen: It was the old story.
You could take the boy out of Memphis.
You really couldn't take Memphis
out of the boy, you know?
The roots that you come from
are always compelling to return to
no matter how far away you get.
Schilling: By that point, he only had a couple of movies left.
And so when he went back to the studio,
he wanted to do things differently.
Preston Lauterbach: Elvis returned home to restart
his career as a recording artist,
with local musicians,
with a local producer in a little humble storefront, north Memphis,
that's where Elvis returned to essentially save his career.
♪ ♪
Porter: Chips Moman, his job was writer and producer.
Lauterbach: He had evolved from Stax Records
as a producer primarily associated with soul
and with black artists.
But Chips was one of these trans-racial kinda figures.
He thought in terms of style, in terms of sound.
And he really did embody Memphis music.
Elvis: ♪ Asking where I've been ♪
Priscilla: It was the greatest sessions, the greatest.
My gosh, I mean, he came alive again.
He was liberated.
It was, uh, a beautiful marriage. (chuckles)
Elvis: ♪ We can't go on together ♪
♪ With suspicious minds ♪
♪ And we can't build our dreams ♪
Schilling: He told Elvis, "I have a stack of records here
"I think are hits,
"and you don't have any publishing.
What do you wanna do?"
Elvis: ♪ Oh, let our love survive ♪
Schilling: Elvis said, "Chips, I need hit records."
Elvis: ♪ I'll dry the tears from your eyes ♪
♪ Let's don't let a good thing die ♪
Petty: He decides he's gonna sing contemporary material.
Publishing be damned. He's gonna do what he wants.
Elvis: ♪ Lied to you ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ Yes, yes ♪
♪ We're caught in a trap ♪
West: The songs, every one of 'em, was a hit.
That's the biggest sales Elvis had had ever.
Elvis: ♪ Love you too much baby ♪
Schilling: You would think that would've been
the next recording session.
Never recorded with Chips again.
Elvis: ♪ I can't walk out ♪
(match strikes, flares)
♪ ♪
Ronnie Tutt: August '69, he got a chance to play live
at the International Hotel.
Schilling: Vegas was a huge event for him.
Back in the '50s, he wasn't accepted too much then in Vegas.
Howe: Vegas, it's not about teenyboppers.
It's aimed at a particular audience--
people interested in a show that's there,
so that they'll stop in the casino,
on the way in or out, and drop some money.
Petty: Their burning thing to go to Las Vegas
and play long stands, you know,
that doesn't happen till they've virtually run aground in the film business.
There isn't a single studio
that will throw down any significant money
for Elvis in a movie.
So, they look around go, "Well, what we gonna do now?"
Elvis is going on stage, you know. Thank God.
And "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, and, uh... (indistinct)
Schilling: I was able to witness him put a band together.
When he goes out to Vegas,
he's really making decisions
that are a little more for Elvis
than what came before.
Zanes: He's wanting to play with the band.
He's wanting to go through a deep catalog,
you know, big parts of which remind him or his own youth.
♪ Well, you may go to college ♪
♪ May go to school ♪
♪ You may get religion, baby ♪
♪ Don't you be nobody's fool ♪
♪ Now baby, come back, baby ♪
Tutt: I personally went to him and said, "Elvis,
"I wanted to know if you wanted me
"to try to duplicate classic songs.
What was done previously."
He said, "Absolutely not.
Just do what you do, that's why you're here."
I thought it was good that he would try different songs
that he liked the sound of.
Glen D. was the arranger,
and he would write these great arrangements for him,
and they would-- they would be exciting.
Elvis: ♪ Come back, baby, come ♪
♪ Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you ♪
Elvis: Then it goes into this one.
I wanna try something.
And since, this is last verse...
Schilling: I think the vocals were just as important to Elvis.
Okay. The horns are answering it then.
Schilling: He had to have The Sweet Inspirations.
They had been working with Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin.
♪ Talk in everlasting words ♪ ♪ Talk, words ♪
♪ And dedicate them all to me ♪
♪ Dedicate them all to me ♪
Cissy Houston: Elvis did whatever he wanted to do.
If he was feeling it, we had to feel it too.
And we could connect,
because we were from gospel.
We were raised gospel.
♪ You think that I don't even mean ♪
♪ A single word I say ♪
♪ It's only words ♪
♪ And words are all I have ♪
♪ To steal your heart away ♪
Schilling: Colonel Parker, he had billboards all over.
There was a vibe.
Everybody knew that Elvis was there.
He was a nervous wreck.
It's one thing to have a small invited audience.
Now he's going on the biggest stage in the world.
It's Las Vegas.
This is the nitty-gritty time
as far as being nervous, you know.
Opening night, man.
West: He was excited, and also nervous.
He didn't know exactly how he was gonna be received,
and he wanted the best of everything.
Tutt: There were all these big goals as far as attendance,
and he had a very competitive nature.
So he wanted to be able to be as powerful
and popular as Sinatra, Tom Jones.
He wanted to take his music to a whole different level.
(drums roll, play rock beat)
(band joins in)
Priscilla: The first time I ever saw him on stage,
was the first time he played in Vegas in '69.
The '68 special, it was more of a controlled environment.
It was for television.
But in Vegas, to actually see him walk out there
and own that stage,
it was like, "Oh my gosh, I get it.
I get it!"
♪ Well, that's all right, mama ♪
♪ That's all right with you ♪
♪ That's all right, mama ♪
♪ Do it any way you do ♪
♪ That's all right ♪ ♪ That's all right ♪
♪ Yeah, that's all right ♪ ♪ That's all right ♪
♪ That's all right, mama ♪ ♪ That's all right ♪
♪ Any way you do ♪
♪ Well, Mama, she done told me ♪
♪ Papa done told me too ♪
♪ Son, that gal you foolin' with ♪
♪ She ain't no good for you ♪
♪ Well, that's all right ♪ ♪ That's all right ♪
♪ Yeah, that's all right now ♪ ♪ That's all right ♪
♪ That's all right now, mama ♪
♪ Any way you do ♪
Play it.
♪ ♪
Priscilla: I remember looking around.
They're all applauding.
So drawn into him.
I'd never seen anyone control an audience that way.
It was like he rehearsed that show all his life.
(Elvis scatting)
♪ That's all right ♪ ♪ That's all right ♪
♪ Yeah, that's all right ♪ ♪ That's all right ♪
♪ That's all right now, mama ♪
♪ Any way you do ♪
♪ Well, that's all right now, mama ♪
♪ Any way you do ♪
(song ending) (cheers and applause)
♪ ♪
Woman: ♪ There's a place on Lonely Street ♪
♪ They call it Heartbreak Hotel ♪
♪ Where brokenhearted lovers go ♪
Schilling: It was great, staying up all night, being in Vegas.
We never left the hotel.
But psychologically,
at a point, it weighs on you,
and you may not even know it.
Woman: ♪ Heartbreak Hotel, where I'll be ♪
♪ I'll be so lonely ♪
♪ I'll be so lonely, I could die ♪
♪ Although it's always crowded ♪
♪ You still can find a room ♪
♪ For brokenhearted lovers ♪
Schilling: Thirty days, 61 shows, first engagement.
Six months later, the second engagement.
The third engagement.
Woman: ♪ Die ♪
Schilling: Playing that much for weeks on time,
not seeing daylight.
Dave Marsh: Locked up in a hotel room, what is there to do?
Talking to the same 15 guys every day?
Bored out of your mind,
and it all kind of conspires to make Elvis vulnerable
in ways that if he had a more rational life,
he would not be vulnerable.
Woman: ♪ You got a tale to tell ♪
Bearde: And that's when the Colonel took over
and went back into modus operandi.
Let's see as much money as we can make out of Elvis for as long as we can.
Tutt: It worked great in the beginning.
It just got to be same old stuff.
Woman: ♪ Die ♪
Tutt: He realized that fans want to hear the hits--
kind of painted himself into a corner, so to speak.
(cheers and applause)
Brown: Back in those days,
there was a dinner show and then a late show.
So all the tables up front,
they were serving dinner and drinks and stuff.
And the only people that could afford the up-front seats
were the high-rollers, the older cats.
Elvis needed connection with the audience.
And Vegas, it was a very reserved, rich crowd
dressed up for the Elvis show.
It frustrated Elvis that he couldn't quite seem
to get the mayhem going.
Priscilla: He felt like really what he needed
was to get outside of Vegas and go out
and get connected with people
though he hadn't been on tour for over 13 years.
Man: What, uh, what made you decide to come to Texas?
Well, I think the most important thing is the, uh,
the inspiration that I get from a live audience. I was missing that.
♪ Well, I never been to Heaven ♪
♪ But I've been to Oklahoma ♪
♪ Well, they tell me I was born there ♪
♪ But I really don't remember ♪
♪ In Oklahoma ♪
♪ Or Arizona ♪
♪ Yeah, what does it matter? ♪
♪ What does it matter? ♪
Landau: Back in the 1970s,
I was working for Rolling Stone.
They sent me to Boston to review an Elvis concert.
"He stands there in a black jumpsuit,
"gold spangles and an orange cape.
"When he stretches out his hands,
"the cape forms a half-sun
"under his outstretched arms,
and he looks like the true king of rock and roll.
"He parades in front of 15,000 people,
"and waits for the applause to wash over,
"and it comes as it always does
"and as he knows it will.
"Elvis Presley has lived through
"the greatest superstar trip of any performer,
"and he survived it in his own kind of way.
"Elvis participates in a pure one-to-one relationship with his audience.
"When he steps on the stage,
"it is he and he alone who is the subject
of the manic, ecstatic, irrational adoration."
Elvis: ♪ I've never been to Heaven ♪
Landau: "His brilliance is reflected in his control."
♪ But I've been to Oklahoma ♪
Landau: "He never moves too far in any one direction,
and never loses his grip."
♪ They tell me I was born there ♪
♪ ♪
♪ But I really don't remember ♪
♪ In Oklahoma ♪
♪ Or Arizona ♪
Landau: "To me, no matter how frustrating
"the lapses in his career have been,
he remains an artist..."
Elvis: ♪ In Oklahoma ♪
♪ Or Arizona ♪
Landau: "...an American artist, whom we should be proud to claim as our own."
Elvis: ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪
(song ending)
Thank you. (applause)
Brown: Elvis, in concert, covered all kinda genres, you know.
And he came out and he would do all those songs
from the '50s and '60s that he broke with.
But during the show, there was a lot of country standards.
He just did things that he liked.
Man: You have any thoughts about
the rising interest in country music?
I think it's fantastic.
You see, country music was always a part of the influence
on my-- on my type of music anyway.
It's a combination of, uh...
country music, and gospel,
and rhythm and blues all combined.
That's what it really was.
As a child, I was influenced by all of that.
But I like the blues, and I like, uh, the gospel music,
gospel quartets and all that.
Thank you. Good rehearsal, see you soon.
Springsteen: If you look at the band he put together
for the '70s shows, there was a huge gospel contingent.
Those sections of the show were so powerful.
Straight out of white and black gospel tradition.
Elvis: ♪ Hallelujah ♪
Springsteen: In the '70s, Elvis had moved on to "American Trilogy."
His show was consisting of a huge cross-cultural picture
of America and Americana.
(Elvis vocalizing)
Springsteen: He was trying to encompass
an image of the country as a whole
that he could be a vessel that could contain
the entirety of American experience.
♪ Oh hush, little baby ♪
♪ Don't you cry ♪
Petty: You know, that version of "Dixie"
and uh, the "Battle Hymn of the Republic,"
it's so beautiful!
You know, the band he's put together is so over-the-top,
and only Elvis would have that kinda spending power,
and just audacious craziness.
Choirs, and orchestras, and a great rhythm section,
maybe another gospel group on the side.
None of it makes sense until you suddenly
hear something like that,
and they're all playing a role in that,
and it's very moving music.
(flute playing)
When you see him do that music
in those little pieces of film that I've seen of him,
that's the pure joy of music in the man.
You know, that's when I see everything stop.
(music crescendoes)
♪ ♪
♪ Glory, glory ♪
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪ His truth is ♪
♪ Marching ♪
♪ On ♪
♪ His truth is ♪
♪ Marching ♪
♪ On ♪
(wild cheering) Elvis: Whoo!
Thank you, thank you.
Whew! Boy.
How was the sound in that building?
Very good, very good. Here. Hold on.
Strickland: That was his life. He lived to sing and perform.
It's a hot time in Florida.
Man: Boy, it is.
Springsteen: An artist like Elvis is,
rather than pretending when he goes on the stage,
he's actually pretending, when he's home, to be normal.
And when he goes out on stage at night,
it's who he actually is.
It's a very difficult dichotomy.
Priscilla: To see him become even bigger than life,
he had so much so soon.
Harris: He was snatched from the ordinary life
of a-- of a young man
into a place that no one else had ever been
in society or in our culture.
Zanes: To have that success, and to experience it,
he had to hand over significant portions of youth.
That was the trade.
He is unmoored from the Earth experience.
Priscilla: We were living two different lives.
He was performing, and, uh,
and he was home very, very little.
It was very difficult to communicate at that time.
Uh, Elvis had a horrible fear of not sleeping.
He would spend many, many nights alone,
and he would think and that would keep him up.
So he started on sleeping pills,
and he thought that he had it under control.
Everything that he ever had was prescribed.
(indistinct chatter)
Man: Are you satisfied with the image you've established?
Uh... well, the image is one thing,
and a human being is another, you know, so.
Man: How close does the image come to the man?
It's very hard to live up to an image, I'll put it that way.
Parker: Come on, bring your cameras over here.
Come on through here.
Elvis: Soon as the Colonel gets through talking, I'll tell you--
I'm-- I'm sorry.
Oh, yeah, I'd like to do something.
Uh, there's so many places that I haven't been yet.
I'd like to go to Europe.
I'd like to go to Japan and all those places.
I-I've never been out of this country
except in the service, you know.
Light: Elvis, from early on,
had expressed interest in touring overseas
having no idea
that Colonel Parker was never going to let him.
Because if the Colonel went with him,
he was afraid he was not gonna be let back into America.
Schilling: Colonel knowing that Elvis wanted to tour overseas,
colonel not wanting anybody to know
that he wasn't a US citizen,
how could he answer Elvis
but come up with something that nobody had ever done.
Jackson: Instead of shutting down the idea
of Elvis playing in different countries
and just sort of curtailing it for now,
he actually uses it to his advantage,
and creates the first-ever live concert simulcast
on satellite television,
so that people in every country all over the world
can see Elvis play a concert.
Light: By the time of the Aloha special,
Elvis had been touring non-stop.
His health wasn't great, his weight wasn't great,
and now he was confronted with this performance
that was gonna be seen by a billion people around the world.
Whew!
It's so very hard to comprehend it,
because I...
In 15 years, it's hard to comprehend that happening.
To all the countries all over the world via satellite,
it's very difficult to comprehend.
Jackson: It becomes the biggest media moment
of his career up to that point.
And he knows this. He's trimmed down for it.
He looks amazing.
The band is super tight.
Light: Aloha does represent Elvis music,
the moment that Elvis brought together all of his influences
to solidify an image of Elvis,
a look and a style and a presentation
that seals in amber, this is what Elvis is.
Zanes: Elvis was the first major
televisual musical star.
We can see him, but we can't touch him.
Elvis, without intending to,
created an image of himself
he would never live past.
♪ Yeah, now this time ♪
♪ Lord, you gave me ♪
♪ A mountain ♪
♪ I may never climb ♪
♪ It isn't ♪
Landau: That show was another way
in which he was truly disserved by the Colonel.
It's a bit of a metaphor for keeping the blinders on,
which is what I think the Colonel is all about.
Petty: My picture of the Colonel really is
someone that loves selling merchandise,
you know, that wants it to the end,
walk the aisle selling posters and ballpoint pens.
It doesn't make any sense really
to keep him from touring other countries,
to keep him from really going to, you know,
the whole way with the music,
like, letting him be an artist.
(crowd cheering)
Elvis: Thank you!
Schilling: I think the troubles between Elvis and the Colonel
started getting worse at that point.
There was the bond,
but they were two very different people.
Priscilla: Elvis outgrew Colonel Parker as an artist,
but he, um, didn't know how to cut the strings.
Light: By this time, he had started to turn to prescription drugs
to keep himself going.
He was on a relentless wheel
of performance to travel to performance to travel,
and you start to see the stress of that.
Binder: All the things he told me that he wanted to do--
travel the world, meet new audiences--
none of that happened.
All the light went out of his eyes.
Zanes: With an addiction to prescription pills,
if you are a performer,
what you're after is the anesthetizing part of it.
But that's gonna take you away
from your powers as a performer,
and he's gonna go on stage nonetheless.
Landau: He had many afflictions,
and he hurt himself in many ways.
But there was a core in there,
that, if you let it, would shine through,
and sometimes in the most unlikely places.
♪ ♪
♪ Lord Almighty ♪
♪ I feel my temperature rising ♪
♪ Hmm ♪
Tutt: We has basically tried to influence him
to do more rock and roll.
"Burning Love," that one had some potential.
He never felt comfortable with it,
because he had a hard time with the lyrics.
Priscilla: He was going through a lot at that time,
so he didn't want to do the song,
and the guys kept expressing that he should do it,
and he was really fighting it.
Landau: "Burning Love,"
well, it's one of the greatest records he ever made.
♪ Like the sweet song of the choir ♪
♪ And you light my morning sky ♪
♪ With burning love ♪
Chorus: ♪ Hunk of burning love ♪
Elvis: ♪ Just a hunk of hunk of burning love ♪
Chorus: Ahhh! ♪ A hunk of hunk of burning love ♪
Chorus: Ahhh! ♪ A hunk of hunk of-- ♪
(music stops)
Priscilla: It was a hard song for him to sing
and to get into.
About them lyrics... (laughter)
It was only one, and I hit my mouth.
Priscilla: He wanted to let out his feelings
in a-- in a song that related to how he felt.
It was difficult to be given music
for something that's really uplifting, upbeat,
and that's not matching his tone,
that's not matching his feelings.
♪ ♪
♪ I see a change ♪
♪ Is coming to our lives ♪
♪ It's not the same as it used to be ♪
♪ And it's not too late ♪
♪ To realize our mistake ♪
♪ We're just not right ♪
♪ For each other ♪
♪ Love has slipped away ♪
♪ Left us only friends ♪
♪ We almost seem like strangers ♪
♪ All that's left between us ♪
♪ Are the memories we share ♪
♪ Of times we thought we cared ♪
♪ For each other ♪
Priscilla: Elvis was very family oriented.
He did cherish family,
but Elvis wanted it all. (laughs)
♪ Pieces left behind us ♪
Priscilla: It takes two in a relationship.
Having a child, not being able to do the traveling.
I was a mother.
He always used to say, "You can't serve two masters."
♪ ♪
(chorus vocalizing)
♪ Someday when she's older ♪
♪ Maybe she will understand ♪
♪ Why her mom and dad are not together ♪
♪ The tears that she will cry ♪
♪ When I have to say goodbye ♪
♪ They tear at my heart ♪
♪ Forever ♪
♪ There's nothing left to do ♪
♪ But go our separate ways ♪
Schilling: After he recorded "Separate Ways,"
he wanted to go into the control room
and listen to that song for hours.
And he would just look up and shake his head,
'cause I know he still always loved Priscilla.
Priscilla: Elvis and I,
you know, we held hands in court.
There was still a lot of love there.
He was a doting father.
We kept that relationship very close.
I know he was always there for me,
and for Lisa as well,
but the breakup of the marriage
was painful for both of us.
(vocalizing)
Gordon Stoker: He was never the same after that.
He just changed. He was very moody.
He just wasn't well doing two shows a night.
And he had to take uppers to get him going
and downers to put him to sleep.
Parker: Well, I don't know, but I know one thing.
When I told Elvis to slow down,
he said, "I wanna play more dates."
So I booked more dates.
I said, "Well, I don't think you should,"
and he said, "Well, it's what I wanna do."
He was very unhappy, so we started all over again.
Announcer: With some 25 colored portraits available...
Man: Souvenirs!
Hey! Take home a little bit of Elvis!
Elvis super souvenirs!
Cohn: I think night by night, it became harder for him to--
to carry on being Elvis.
Drugs and the self-destructiveness
were all punishments.
He was in great pain, and yet, he gave so much pleasure.
He would go offstage and collapse,
and the audience would go out buoyed up and joyous,
spiritually blessed.
Priscilla: Elvis was always searching for answers.
Why him?
"Well, maybe God had something else planned for me.
Am I supposed to be giving a message?"
Not realizing he was doing
what he was supposed to be doing.
Petty: The last days of his life was not his best work.
He had a lot of problems.
He had gained weight
which is a cardinal sin in show business.
Isolation, you know,
that-- that brings on the drug abuse.
He's lost touch with his father.
His mom's gone.
His wife is gone.
It had to be very lonely, we know that.
There's a point when-- when you have success,
and you get really wealthy
and there is that day where the letter comes
that none of this is gonna make me happy.
And he knew he had to try to find some-- something, you know,
but I think he gave up.
I think he felt out-gunned and gave up.
Priscilla: Those last shows,
those shows those last couple of years
were not the most memorable as far as performance.
Sometimes he didn't get through a-- a song.
I think the last year, he was pretty much over it.
I don't even know why, you know, he went on stage.
They're just hard to watch.
Sometimes, I think it was better, maybe,
if they just canceled the show.
Brown: We got the call that Elvis wanted to record in Memphis.
Strickland: Whenever we got the call,
we would be there at his beck and call
whenever they were ready.
Brown: In my mind, we're going to, like,
Sun Records or someplace over there, Chips Moman's studio.
But we pull into Graceland,
and I say, "Well, what are we doing here?"
They said, "We're cutting here."
Strickland: He wouldn't go to the studio.
The studio had to come to him, right in the Jungle Room there.
Man: It's hard to get him to go into a studio environment,
because he was uncomfortable there.
Man 2: Didn't wanna go to Nashville,
didn't want to go to Stax,
didn't want to go to Chips Moman's.
He wanted to stay at home.
Strickland: We would come over from Nashville,
check into a hotel that was just right down the street.
Man: And then, we'd all be ready there to go,
and they'd say, "Elvis is still not up."
Strickland: He could come down at midnight
or it could be two o'clock in the morning.
You never knew what the night was gonna hold.
Springsteen: Elvis ended up back in the Jungle Room,
recording his last record.
Graceland can be something that's--
that gives you a sense of-- of place,
and of-- of center.
Uh, but it can also be a place where--
that you just disappear into.
It seemed to me that Elvis was caught in-between
doing a little bit of both there.
Petty: Seems to be, he's picking songs
that somewhat reflect his state of mind.
Like "Hurt" which is one of the-- the very last ones.
I think he's-- he's feeling very hurt.
He's very down. He's very alone.
He doesn't understand what's happened to music,
and he got left out of that.
He had become a thing.
He was no longer Elvis Presley.
He was "Elvis."
Norbert Putnam: Well, when I first came over to the Jungle Room,
they had removed all the furniture.
They covered the walls in blankets.
Strickland: There was a semi,
like a very large tractor trailer, out behind the house.
It was RCA's complete mobile recording studio.
They would run all their recording lines
into the Jungle Room.
Brown: It looks like you're in Tahiti or something.
It looked like you were in the islands.
But we're all just crammed into this tiny little space.
Tutt: It was a nightmare for the recording engineers
to keep that sound clean without too much bleed
with open microphones,
and we did our best to do the recordings as best we could.
Strickland: It wasn't like we did a lot of rehearsal
for the recordings.
It was "Turn the machine on, and he's gonna sing."
We would all watch each other doing it on the fly.
And you know, I-I remember one of the first songs
that I recorded with him, uh, was "Hurt."
We didn't have a clue of how it was gonna go down
or how he would perform it.
All of a sudden, he takes his stance.
♪ ♪
Elvis: ♪ I'm ♪
♪ So hurt ♪
♪ To think that you lied to me ♪
♪ I'm hurt ♪
♪ Way down deep inside of me ♪
♪ You said ♪
♪ Our love was true ♪
♪ And we'd never ♪
♪ Never part ♪
♪ Now you want someone new ♪
♪ And it breaks my heart ♪
♪ Oh, I'm hurt ♪
♪ Much more ♪
♪ Than you'll ever know ♪
♪ Yes, darling ♪
♪ I'm so hurt ♪
♪ Because ♪
♪ I still love you so ♪
♪ But you know ♪
♪ Even though you hurt me ♪
♪ Like nobody else ♪
♪ Could ever do ♪
♪ I would never ever ♪
♪ Hurt ♪
♪ You ♪
♪ Yeah, you ♪
(song ends)
♪ ♪
Bearde: Elvis wanted to finish the '68 Special on a big note.
Quite frankly, we didn't know how to finish the show.
Binder: Every day at four o'clock,
we would all sit in the piano room, of our offices,
rehearsing with Elvis.
Bearde: While we were sitting in Steve's office with Elvis,
we had a little black and white television in the corner.
(indistinct chatter) On that TV...
Robert Kennedy was assassinated.
(indistinct shouting)
Elvis picked up a guitar,
and he started playing.
Talking at a mile a minute.
He said, "I want you to understand me,
"because this is a moment in time
where we all have to understand each other."
♪ ♪
♪ There must be lights burning brighter ♪
♪ Somewhere ♪
♪ Got to be birds flying higher ♪
♪ In a sky more blue ♪
♪ If I can dream of a better land ♪
♪ Where all my brothers walk hand in hand ♪
♪ Tell me why ♪
♪ Oh, why ♪
♪ Oh, why can't my dream come true ♪
♪ Oh, why ♪
♪ There must be peace and understanding ♪
♪ Sometime ♪
♪ Strong winds of promise ♪
♪ That will blow away all the doubt ♪
♪ And fear ♪
♪ If I can dream of a warmer sun ♪
♪ Where hope keeps shining on everyone ♪
♪ Tell me why ♪
♪ Oh, why ♪
♪ Oh, why won't that sun ♪
♪ Appear ♪
♪ We're lost in a cloud ♪
♪ With too much rain ♪
♪ We're trapped in a world ♪
♪ That's troubled with pain ♪
♪ But as long as a man has the strength to dream ♪
♪ He can redeem his soul ♪
♪ And fly ♪
Choir: ♪ He can fly ♪
♪ Deep in my heart ♪
♪ There's a trembling question ♪
♪ Still I am sure that the answer ♪
♪ Answer's gonna come somehow ♪
♪ Out there in the dark ♪
♪ There's a beckoning candle ♪
♪ Oh yeah, and while I can think ♪
♪ While I can talk ♪
♪ While I can stand ♪
♪ While I can walk ♪
♪ While I can dream ♪
♪ Please let my dream ♪
♪ Come true ♪
♪ Oh ♪
♪ Right now ♪
♪ Oh, let it come true right now ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
(song ends)
(film reel whirring)
♪ ♪
Petty: ♪ Can't you see ♪
♪ I love you ♪
♪ Please don't break my heart in two ♪
♪ That's not hard to do ♪
♪ 'Cause I don't have a wooden heart ♪
♪ And if you say goodbye ♪
♪ Then I know that I would cry ♪
♪ Maybe I would die ♪
♪ 'Cause I don't have a wooden heart ♪
♪ There's no strings ♪
♪ Upon this love of mine ♪
♪ It was always you from the start ♪
♪ Treat me nice ♪
♪ Treat me good ♪
♪ Treat me like you really should ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm not made of wood ♪
♪ And I don't have a wooden heart ♪
♪ No, I don't have a wooden heart ♪
(music ends)