Wednesday, January 13, 1960: Haley's Comet(s)

In yesterday's blog I referred to Albert Goldman's controversial biography Elvis (1981). Having mentioned the book, I was prompted to return to it and re-read the portions relevant to Elvis's army career, and found that, contrary to the general perception many have of the book, Goldman demonstrated a good deal of empathy for Elvis's predicament at the time he was drafted and that he also made some important observations. For instance:

For from Elvis's viewpoint, he had nothing to gain from the army and everything to lose. At the time he entered the service, he was at the very peak of his fame. With fads and fashions in pop music changing constantly, with a host of imitators and rivals springing up to steal his stuff, with fame itself such a freaky and chancy thing, what likelihood was there that he could come back two years hence and pick up exactly where he left off? There was none; and, in fact, Elvis never did regain the momentum he lost when he entered the army. So, from Elvis's point of view, his conscription was the worst sort of disaster that could have befallen him as an entertainer and a new star. (324 Avon paperback edition).

Thus it seems appropriate that on the very day Elvis and his service buddies traveled to Paris on leave, January 12, Bill Haley and His Comets were at Bell Sound Studios in New York City recording material that would be used on two albums for Warner Brothers released in 1960: Bill Haley and His Comets (pictured above) and Bill Haley's Jukebox. According to Chris Gardner's authoritative Bill Haley sessionography, on January 13, 1960 Bill Haley and the Comets were re-recording their signature tune, "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" for Warner Brothers, as well as "Stagger Lee" and, ironically, "Blue Suede Shoes," the earlier hit for Elvis. Of course, all these songs might be considered rock and roll "standards" as it were, but the juxtaposition of these two seemingly unrelated events, one happening in Paris and the other New York, bears out Goldman's argument that while Elvis was in the army, rock and roll (and popular music) was blithely moving on without him. Despite the fact that the two albums of material released in 1960 by Bill Haley and His Comets are comprised largely of covers, in retrospect they were significant releases, as the previous year Warner Brothers Records had begun to take the steps which, by the end of the 1960s, transformed it into a major label with a significant popular music catalog. The Bill Haley and His Comets recording sessions for Warner Brothers were produced by the formidable George Avakian, an important figure in American recording history and an especially important figure in jazz music. He had joined Warner Brothers the year before with the specific task of building its pop music catalog, and among the first acts he convinced to move to WB was Bill Haley and His Comets. (Avakian also signed The Everly Brothers and comedian Bob Newhart.) Prior to moving formally to Warner, Avakian had been asked to produce Tab Hunter's first WB single, "Jealous Heart," which became the label's first charted single. Of course, Tab Hunter was never a serious rival to Elvis, but the point is clear enough: while Elvis was in the army, any number of figures were found to replace him. Perhaps those figures weren't as talented as Elvis, but the point is that among his achievements what Elvis created was a set of performance possibilities, the "opening up" of styles of performance, so it really didn't matter whether those figures were equally talented.

Of course, none of these historical developments answer the daunting question asked by Albert Goldman in his biography of Elvis: "As to the question of why the Colonel should have urged Elvis to interrupt his career at its peak in order to join an army that was in no hurry to draft him, we find ourselves up against one of the most baffling questions posed by Colonel Parker's mysterious machinations." (328) Perhaps the Colonel believed that no one could "copy" or "imitate" Elvis, and that is true (although there were those that tried, but were unsuccessful), but the successful ones who followed him didn't try to copy him, but used the opportunities Elvis gave them to create their own styles of performance. Perhaps that is what the Colonel did not see or understand was possible when he stopped Elvis's career dead in its tracks.