Me and Elvis
I was raised
on a farm in rural Manitoba, Canada. My window to the world in the '50s
was radio and I spent many hours surfing the radio dial. Our local stations
were fine through the day, but each evening I marveled at the wonderful
reception of radio signals from the American South . . . all the way to
Mexico with a multitude of points in between.
I looked forward to hearing the Grand Ole Opry from WSM Nashville
and enjoyed the many other stations specializing in Southern music. In
1954/55 I picked up a Memphis station that played music like none I had
heard before. The singer was Elvis Presley with his band Scotty and Bill
- The Blue Moon Boys. Before long his record label - Sun
Records - was releasing similar music by other Southern artists. I
was hooked . . . and have been ever since.
My first record purchases were all the 78 singles I could find by
Elvis . . . and later by the other Sun artists: Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins,
Jerry Lee Lewis, et al. Christmas '56 brought a record player that
would play LP albums and my first long playing record was ELVIS - the second
album.
My dad showed me a few things on his guitar
so that I could join in on the family jam sessions and try to strum along
with Scotty and Elvis. When I was forced to take piano lessons they were
made more bearable after I found the sheet music to Love Me Tender.
Since that time music has been a consuming
passion which was shared by my amazingly talented wife, Sue-On, after
we married in 1966.
We first visited Graceland in the early '70s and of course we couldn't
get past the gates at that time, although we did travel on to Las Vegas
where we saw Elvis at the International. We learned of his death in 1977
while we were in London, just after finishing our seventh
record album and a 6-week music
tour of English clubs. I managed to stock up on all the Elvis UK releases
before we flew home. I'm also a great fan of British rock artists, and
interestingly, many of them including The
Beatles also cite Elvis as a major influence.
We returned to Memphis in the late '70s to take the Graceland tour
-- and again in 2009 when these photos were taken.
From the
Hillman / Blues Connection
My greatest early musical influences were Elvis and his fellow Sun Records
artists out of Memphis. A few of the obvious blues titles in Elvis's repertoire
include: That's All Right Mama, Good Rockin' Tonight, Milkcow Blues
Boogie, Baby Let's Play House, Mystery Train, I Got a Woman, Heartbreak
Hotel, Money Honey, My Baby Left Me, Tutti Frutti. Shake Rattle and Roll,
Lawdy Miss Clawdy, Hound Dog, Long Tall Sally, Mean Woman Blues, One Night
of Sin, Blue Christmas, Trouble, Reconsider Baby, What'd I Say, Hi-Heeled
Sneakers . . . these and many more of their songs were
. . . the Blues.
Elvis's success launched the birth of a music form that would change
the world: rock & roll. This "new" music form was really just a fusion
of blues, country and gospel. Indeed the main criticisms of this new R&R
music were actually of the elements that make a good blues song or performance:
simple chord structure and words, repetitive lyrics and hooks, heavy backbeat,
"muh babee dun me wrong" themes, racy lyrics full of double entendres,
slurred southern accents, slang and bad grammar, over-reliance on distorted
guitars and pounding pianos, singer-penned lyrics, gospel/blues screams,
suggestive body movements, gospel choruses. . . all characteristics
that every blues aficionado looks for in
. . . the Blues.
.
