Elvis’s success was almost instantaneous once he signed with Colonel Parker and RCA Victor. Just two days after his twenty-first birthday on January 10, 1956, Elvis was in RCA Studios in Nashville, a facility they shared with the Methodist Church’s Television, Radio & Film Commission Studios, recording a batch of songs. The dark and brooding “Heartbreak Hotel,” one of three tunes recorded during this eight-hour session, was released as a single just seventeen days later. Produced by Steve Sholes, RCA’s artist and repertoire man, the song was an instant smash.
“Heartbreak Hotel” sold more than 300,000 copies in the first three weeks. It rocketed to the number one spot on Billboard magazine’s pop single chart faster than any recording in history and remained there for over two months. It would also hit number 1 on the country charts and number 5 on the rhythm-and-blues charts. It was the first of Elvis’s 110 gold, platinum, and multi-platinum albums and recordings.
Even though many radio stations refused to play “Heartbreak Hotel” (it was said the song was too suggestive; others believed the truth was that it was rooted in Black music and would tear down the cultural divide in America), the Colonel’s old carny buddies loved it and blasted it over the midway sound systems. It seemed to get people in a toe-tapping, money-spending mood.
The day after “Heartbreak Hotel” was released, Elvis appeared on Stage Show, the first of six Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey shows produced by Jackie Gleason on CBS-TV. These shows were part of the RCA Victor buyout contract negotiated by the Colonel. Elvis received $1,250 for each of the first four shows and $1,500 for the final two.
From January 28 through March 24, 1956, Elvis had six straight weekly Stage Show appearances that resulted in some minor reviews and some major press grumblings. Even Gleason himself was less than impressed with Elvis.
“Presley can’t last,” Gleason roared to the media. “I give him one year at the most. He’ll have a brief period of popularity and then it’s back to the country dances, the fairs, the carnivals, and the cooch shops. It’s hard for a legitimate star to make it today. What can a freak do for an encore?”
Six years later Gleason’s opinion of Elvis had done a 180-degree turn. On June 5, 1962, he wrote to Colonel Parker, telling him that his client has “developed into one of the real fine performers and nice guys in show business. You can certainly be proud.” Gleason ended the letter with, “I think he’s 100% thoroughbred.”
Gleason’s initial criticism of Elvis seemed to have no lasting impact on the Colonel, who appeared to welcome the controversy. He never cared what the media wrote or said about Elvis as long as they got his name right.
“The more they talked and wrote about Elvis, the better,” the Colonel once confided in me. He learned to live with bad press because he knew that whatever was written or said, it made Elvis all that much cooler to the fans who bought his records. He also knew that country and western was slowing down and rock ’n’ roll was heating up. And so was the Colonel.
Before the ink was even dry on the RCA contract, the Colonel was negotiating a deal with the Hill and Range publishing company in New York to establish a spin-off company called Elvis Presley Music, Inc., which would share the publishing rights to all the music Elvis would ever record. Hill and Range, the largest independent music publishing company in its day, was owned by a pair of Viennese refugee brothers named Jean and Julian Aberbach. The company employed many of the top songwriters of the day such as Doc Pomus, Mort Shuman, Phil Spector, and Leiber and Stoller.
They struck a deal in 1955 that set up an unprecedented arrangement in which the publishing rights to all songs recorded by Elvis were split 50/50 between Hill and Range and Elvis Presley Music. They employed writers (including Leiber and Stoller) to provide songs for Elvis’s films and albums. Elvis seemed happy with the arrangement according to Julian Aberbach.
“I gave Elvis a check for $2,500, an advance against royalties of his stock ownership, and he promptly went to the Cadillac dealer and got a pink one—his first one,” Aberbach recalled.
Elvis’s sixth and final appearance on Stage Show came on March 24, and Gleason let everyone know that he would not be welcomed back. Fortunately, Milton Berle wasn’t quite as cynical as Gleason. In fact, as soon as he heard that Elvis would not be signed for another run on the Dorsey brothers’ show, he immediately contacted the Colonel and struck a deal for two appearances on Berle’s popular Tuesday night Texaco Star Theater. His first appearance with “Uncle Miltie” was telecast on April 3, 1956, from the deck of the USS Hancock at the San Diego Naval Air Station. Elvis played before the aircraft carrier crew, their wives, and dates. Other stars appearing with Elvis were Esther Williams, comedian Arnold Stang, and Harry James and His Orchestra.
Not one to miss an opportunity, the Colonel booked Elvis into the huge San Diego Arena for the next two nights. He drew 11,250 screaming fans for the pair of performances. The navy’s shore patrol backed up the local police, and they still couldn’t control the crowd. Elvis was trapped in the building for nearly a half hour after the second concert until the Colonel convinced the police to form a “flying wedge” to get him to his car. Reporters saw the police escort and reported that Elvis had been arrested after the show. His critics around the country must have been all smiles, thinking that law enforcement finally did something about his outrageous onstage antics.
Elvis was still under contract to the Louisiana Hayride, a popular Southern-based radio show, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to travel back to Shreveport, Louisiana, every weekend. His current contract ran through November 1956, which meant he was still obligated to do twenty-five shows. He was now making $200 a performance, so the Colonel arranged a $5,000 buyout and Elvis agreed to do one final show on December 15, 1956.
On one early tour through the South, a local politician thought it would be a great idea if Elvis would perform at one of his major speaking engagements. He felt it would assure a bigger audience. The Colonel had a swift reply to that request.
“If Elvis goes on first, the fee will be $2,000,” the Colonel said. “If he goes on second, the fee will be $2,500.” When asked the difference in price, the Colonel would drawl, “Well, it all depends on how large a crowd you want at your speech. If Elvis goes on first, possibly most of his fans will leave after he entertains. But, if you speak first, they will hear your speech and they will stay ’round to hear Elvis sing.”
In addition to his expanding tour dates, another entertainment frontier awaited Elvis: the glittering desert town of Las Vegas. The Colonel booked him as the opening act for comedian Shecky Greene and Freddie Martin and His Orchestra for two weeks (April 23 through May 6, 1956) at the New Frontier on the famed Strip. It was the only open spot in his schedule and fit in perfectly.
After his Las Vegas debut in 1956, the Colonel realized they needed more technical help on the tours and consulted Tom Diskin, Parker’s longtime and loyal employee, who recommended Al Dvorin. At first, Dvorin said he was much too busy with his booking agency to leave the office for any length of time. But the Colonel was insistent. Dvorin had booked an announcer for the tour; the Colonel wasn’t happy with his selection and asked him to take over as public address announcer. Dvorin and Colonel Parker had met several times since Diskin left the Chicago agency to join the Colonel’s team, and they had become close friends, but Dvorin did not meet Elvis until May 14, 1956, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, when he became Elvis’s official announcer.
Dvorin hated speaking in front of large crowds and told the Colonel as much.
“Al, who’s the boss here?” the Colonel replied in a playful yet serious tone. Dvorin soon found himself standing in front of a large mirror, rehearsing his lines. He even wrote notes to himself so he wouldn’t forget.
Dvorin nervously walked onstage, notes firmly in hand, to open the show. His voice was shaking slightly as he took the microphone and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Elvis Presley Show.” Suddenly, the house lights went down, and a spotlight hit him in the face. He was blinded by the light and couldn’t see his notes. He had to ad-lib the entire show, which he managed to do without embarrassing himself. The next night, things were much calmer. It was while on tour in Minneapolis on November 5, 1971, that the Colonel told Dvorin to say something like “Elvis has left” to the audience as soon as he saw Presley was safely in the limo and on his way back to the hotel. Dvorin thought about it for a moment, and the famous phrase, “Elvis has left the building!” was born.
Unfortunately, teenage girls can’t shoot craps and didn’t hang around Las Vegas much, so Presley’s first Sin City engagement primarily went unnoticed. Vegas crowds in those days were more interested in seeing Liberace, who was playing at the same time for $50,000 a week. Elvis was making $7,500.
It was the Colonel’s future Palm Springs neighbor, Liberace, who helped save the day. Elvis dropped by to see the flamboyant showman perform one night and later went backstage to meet him. The late Jerry Abbott, a Las Vegas News Bureau photographer for forty-four years, was there and took what turned out to be one of the most famous photos to ever originate from Las Vegas—a laughing Liberace strumming the guitar with Elvis sitting next to him playing the piano and singing. It went worldwide on the wire services and garnered Elvis lots of great publicity.
Elvis’s second Milton Berle appearance on June 5, 1956, originated in the ABC Studios in Los Angeles and was the first time he was backed onstage by the Jordanaires, a quartet who started as a gospel group and provided Elvis with backing vocals live in concert and television appearances and on recordings for nearly fifteen years. This time he was joined by two of Hollywood’s most beautiful women: Debra Paget, his future co-star in Love Me Tender, and Irish McCalla, star of TV’s Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. His torrid bump and grind rendition of “Hound Dog” drove the audience insane and, once again, the media responded with intense outrage.
“Popular music has reached its lowest depths in the ‘grunt and groin’ antics of one Elvis Presley,” wrote Ben Gross in the New York Daily News. And The Catholic Weekly piped in, “His one specialty is an accented movement of the body that hitherto had been primarily identified with the repertoire of the blonde bombshells of the burlesque runway. If the agencies (TV and others) would stop handling such nauseating stuff, all the Presleys in our land would soon be swallowed up in the oblivion they deserve.”
But Elvis was far from oblivion. His appearance on Berle’s show was seen on approximately 25 percent of all television sets in the United States. That night, for the first time that season, Berle beat out the top-rated Phil Silvers Show. Other TV hosts took notice and responded.
Steve Allen was running second to Ed Sullivan in the ratings for the valued Sunday night TV viewing audience, but he beat out his archrival by a large margin when he booked Elvis for a July 1 appearance for $5,000.
The whole point of Allen’s show was to crush Sullivan’s ratings. Most of the skits and gags you see on late-night TV today got their start with Allen. He had music and dancing, like Sullivan, but with sight gags, a recurring cast of in-house comedians doing “man on the street” bits, and other jokes like dramatic comedy readings of real “letters to the editor” from New York City newspapers. Allen himself was a droll, deadpan comedian, seemingly unfazed by the zanies he surrounded himself with on air.
The contract with Allen’s show had a strange exclusivity clause negotiated by Colonel Parker. It prohibited Elvis from appearing on any other TV show prior to his Allen performance other than his June 5th date with Berle. However, he was also permitted to appear as a “mystery guest on quiz panel programs.” The Colonel was obviously negotiating for Elvis to appear on the very popular TV program What’s My Line? but it never took place. My assumption is they never met the Colonel’s asking price.
Elvis more than held his own in a comedy sketch with Steve Allen, Imogene Coca, and Andy Griffith, whom he hadn’t seen since the touring days in 1955. He even wore black tie and tails while he sang “Hound Dog” to a basset hound named Sherlock. The fans weren’t crazy about the skit, or Elvis’s tuxedo for that matter, but the exposure was priceless.
A few years later, the Colonel was asked if Elvis would do a walk-on for The Joey Bishop Show.
“Sure thing, for $2,500,” said the crafty Colonel with a twinkle in his eye. When asked why the price was so low, he replied, “Because it will cost you $47,500 for him to do a walk-off.”
While Elvis was leaving audiences around the country all shook up, the Colonel, with his master plan now running at full throttle, was off to Hollywood to start a new phase of Elvis’s eye-popping career. Like any entertainment manager worth his salt, the Colonel was always ten steps ahead of everyone else.