ALL SHOOK UP OVER ELVIS PRESLEY’S 90TH By Peter Filichia
Elvis famously sang “Oh, well, a-bless my soul, but what’s wrong with me?” but I’ll instead say, “Oh, well, a-bless my soul, but what’s wrong with them?”
Two weeks ago at Graceland, a celebration was held for what would have been – gulp! – Presley’s 90th birthday. Concerts as well as conversations with some of his backup singers were held.
But the powers-that-be should have mounted a production of ALL SHOOK UP, the 2005 musical that exhibited many songs that Presley had sung.
Bookwriter Joe DiPietro named his show after Presley’s ninth best-selling single and semi-adapted a couple of Shakespeare’s plays (honest!) to create a true jukebox musical.
Why the adjective “true”? Because many musicals have recycled songs that had never originally seen the light of jukeboxes. “For You, For Me, For Evermore” – although a fine song, as AN AMERICAN IN PARIS proved – nevertheless never made it into a Wurlitzer or Seeburg.
ALL SHOOK UP, though, was a veritable Elvis’ Golden Hits album. Of the 26 Presley songs that DiPietro chose, 11 – nearly half – had reached first place either internationally or here on the Billboard or Cashbox charts.
Let’s look at the ones that DiPietro chose, all of which made the original cast album:
“Heartbreak Hotel” was the first song that Presley ever sang on television. His initial appearance was not, as many assume, on The Ed Sullivan Show, but with those now-forgotten easy listening stalwarts Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey on their variety program Stage Show.
On that fate-filled night of January 28, 1956, Presley sang the song that spurred “Heartbreak Hotel” to an eight-week run as the nation’s Number One record.
Not long after, producers Norman Panama, Melvin Frank and Michael Kidd said, “Elvis, how would you like to play the title role in our Broadway musical LI’L ABNER?” Indeed, Presley would have been fine as this Dogpatch resident crooning his way through “If I Had My Druthers” or “Namely You.”
(However, LI’L ABNER’s original cast and soundtrack albums show that Peter Palmer did splendidly by both.)
Presley declined. Although he may not have had bigger fish to fry, he certainly had bigger checks to cash. They poured in after his remarkable achievement of having two Number One hits on the same record: “Hound Dog,” which was on the other side of “Don’t Be Cruel.”
Or should we say, “Don’t Be Cruel,” which was on the other side of “Hound Dog?” Jukeboxes were able to determine the number of times a song was played just as today’s websites can reveal how many hits they’ve received. So, jukebox statistics and sales requests showed that virtually as many people chose one song as the other.
Later that year, Presley’s “Love Me Tender” also climbed to the top spot. It was the theme from his first film, which was to be called The Reno Brothers until the record performed so superbly.
“Love Me Tender” actually took its melody from the 1861 folk song “Aura Lee.” Ironically enough, “The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” would throughout his career often do decidedly different fare.
Not in 1957, though, when “All Shook Up” made it to the top, to be quickly followed by “Teddy Bear.” That one may have given us a clue about Presley’s unorthodox taste, which most of us only learned after his death in 1977. Was there a hint in the lyric “Put a chain around my neck and lead me anywhere?”
“Jailhouse Rock” was from the 1957 movie of the same name. Presley’s co-star was Judy Tyler, who had recently received a Tony nomination for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical PIPE DREAM.
On Tyler’s drive from Hollywood back to New York, the 24-year-old and her husband were killed in a car crash. This left Presley inconsolable; he could never bring himself to watch the film.
In 1960, Presley’s next Number One hit was another that was hardly rock. “It’s Now or Never” used the melody of the 1898 Italian song “O Sole Mio.” When he returned to the top spot in 1962 with “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” there was also an absence of rock.
(That song’s three writers – George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti, and Luigi Creatore – would provide the score to the 1968 Broadway musical MAGGIE FLYNN.)
Presley’s character earnestly sang this tender ballad to a grandmother in Blue Hawaii. In fact, many of his films had him be nice and respectful to older people. It was probably a way for Presley to mollify the previous generation of adults who had been regarding him as the “Devil in Disguise.”
That, coincidentally enough, was the title of Presley’s next Number One hit in 1963.
As for “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” the cast album of ALL SHOOK UP reveals a rendition that isn’t business as usual. Future two-time Tony-winning orchestrator Stephen Oremus imaginatively came up with a stirring and galvanizing interpretation that made the number a genuinely powerful Act One closer.
In1972, Presley’s final Number One hit, “Burning Love,” actually brought an expression into the lexicon: “A hunk of burnin’ love.” Haven’t you heard men and women describe an object of their affection by that name?
As for the other songs that DiPietro chose for ALL SHOOK UP, many were from Presley’s films: “C’mon Everybody” (Viva Las Vegas), “Let Yourself Go” (Speedway), I Don’t Want to” (Girls! Girls! Girls!) as well as the title songs from Follow That Dream and Roustabout.
What, nothing from Presley’s 1960 hit film G.I. Blues? Say it ain’t so, Joe! True, he did include “Blue Suede Shoes,” which was heard in G.I. Blues but only for a few seconds.
This movie actually has a terrific score; three of its songs were co-written by Sherman Edwards, who, by the end of the decade, had 1776 on Broadway. And here,. too Presley recorded yet another 19th-century melody. This one was by noted operetta composer Jacques Offenbach; it was now repurposed as “Tonight Is So Right for Love.”
In fact, if you listen to THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, the 1961 musical to which E.Y. Harburg (of FINIAN’S RAINBOW fame) put new lyrics to Offenbach melodies, you’ll hear this song as “Adrift on a Star.”
And what about Pesley’s 1968 film Stay Away, Joe? Although it was adapted from a 1953 novel of the same name, in 1958 it became a Broadway musical called WHOOP-UP.
It was the first original cast album that I heard that made me say, “Oh! I guess not all Broadway albums are wonderful!” (Sample lyric: “Your lipstick’s wet and waiting for my smear.”)
Few would chastise DiPietro for staying away from Stay Away, Joe. But we’ll chastise The Elvis Presley 90th Birthday Celebration Committee for not including ALL SHOOK UP on the grounds of Graceland.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon.
