Word: presley
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...shook up, and don't be cruel, but can we please have a little less conversation about the deep cultural significance of Elvis Presley? Well, no, we can't, because, for one thing, A Little Less Conversation, a minor Elvis song from 1968, which was on the soundtrack for the even more minor film Live a Little, Love a Little, has been grinding and swiveling at the top of the charts in a remixed version for the past several weeks. You thought only a small cult of Presley fanatics believed that Elvis, who died in 1977 of a heart attack...
...baby. In the uniquely free-form Sun atmosphere, Sam helped performers express their tangled visions; they would come in with no songs or arrangements prepared but just noodle and canoodle until inspiration struck. Of course, he also should earn a week's detention for dropping the black acts when Presley showed him he could make money with white ones. But, hey, that's show business...
...artists often covered one another's songs, at Phillips' encouragement: He owned the catalogue. He also took droit de seigneur on certain compositions. Somehow, between Little Junior's initial recording of "Mystery Train" and Elvis' remake, Phillips had become the song's co-author. (Presley took instruction from the master: when he moved to RCA, he demanded and got co-authorship on Otis Blackwell's "Don't Be Cruel" and "All Shook...
...what-my" to give it extra force and fun), then two softer, near-spoken verses - one with the ad-lib "You can shake it one time for me" and a brief impression of the Elvis baritone ("Did you hear me, I said come on over, baby" but, in the Presley style, omitting all consonants), the second a little sermon on shakin' ("All ya gotta do, honey, is kinda stand in one spot,/ Wiggle around just a little bit,/ And that's when ya got something, yeah") - and finally, after the caressing, the orgasm, the imperious "Shake it, make it shake...
...When asked to compare himself and Elvis, Jerry Lee used to say, "We are entirely different performers. 'Bout the only thing we got in common is that we're from Tennessee." Except that Presley was from Tupelo, Miss., Jerry Lee in Ferriday, La. He was born September 29, 1935, 274 days after Elvis, in Ferriday, La. Among his cousins were Swaggart and Mickey Gilley, who much later would mimic Jerry Lee's style and sell far more singles than the Moloch...