There's more to stripping than taking clothes off! - Presley doesn't look much like a truck driver now,
Elvis studies techniques like this and uses them! - but twisting a wheel inspired those twisting hipsl
.. AND WHEN that high beat kept rolling and rolling, boring like some live thing that wouldn't stop, the slim figure with the flailing arms began making with the hips. Wilder and wilder, the hips bucked and swirled; more and more those hips rocked and rolled; faster and faster until with one convulsive motion, the hips relaxed and the song was over.
Was this in an African jungle? No. Was this on the grimy boards of some cheap burlesque house? No. Was this a woman and were those hips womanly hips? No.
They were the vaunted hips of a kid known far and wide as Elvis (The Pelvis) Presley, who makes up for lack of singing talent with hips that speak a language all their own. He has put Johnny Ray in the shadow and his followers are legion. As a matter of fact, in certain areas a bad word about Elvis will meet with the crack of a beer bottle on the noggin.
The young rock 'n roll set is just wild about Elvis because, with his hips, he sends them a message. It is a message of sex that reflects all their adolescent dreams; it is a feverish sending that tells its own tale.
This wriggling, squirming, yowling, former Memphis truck driver reportedly got his ideas on how to put over a song while driving in the cab of his truck. As he went up and down the highways and made left and right turns, his body swayed and twisted with the song that was in his head. That's how he later developed his famous "I'm Left, You're Right," number that rocks and rolls them in the aisles.
It is not for nothing that rock and roll has been banned in the public dance halls of Asbury Park, New Jersey, Santa Cruz, California, Boston, Massachusetts and other centers of the frantic hip-hop set.
Just before Elvis got into the big-time, and this is a carefully guarded secret, he wondered out loud why a male could not captivate an audience in exactly the same way that a female could: In other words, to buck and grind, to spraddle the legs wide, to moan and then go into a free-wheeling hip movement.
It is known, for example, that Elvis studied stills of famous strippers who reached dizzy heights of popularity with their very own brands of bucks and grinds and that free-wheeling hip swinging that is so suggestive.
So Elvis began to practice before a mirror and soon learned that a man could do with his hips, if he wishes, exactly the same thing that a well-upholstered female can. After all, it takes two of the sexes to add up to that sultry game of sex play and sexual suggestion.
Offhand, according to a former press agent for Margie Hart, Elvis has succeeded in nearly capturing the very same hip-play that sent Margie to the top of the flesh heaps. There is also, according to another Broadway authority, more than a hint of Gypsy Rose Lee in her heyday.
Elvis also smiles in the very same way as many another famed stripper. It is the inscrutable Mona Lisa smile that hints at a lot without saying much.
But Elvis has the whole thing down to a neat science and it is said that he does calisthenics to keep up those rippling muscles. Of a morning he gyrates his hips before a mirror while he is practicing his high notes. He may keep this up for hours until it appears as though those hips are lubricated by the finest oils. In this case it's the glands that do it, for Elvis really feels his songs and his sways and cavorting.
In Des Moines, Iowa, more than 900 hepcats mewed and drooled over each other following an 'R and R' revelry. It just steamed through their young blood and they fell into the bushes and along a lakeside like people demented.
One psychiatrist who was called in by a concerned Middle, West city council explained it this way:
"It's jungle chant, the tom-tom all over again put to music. We see the same spectacle with religious fanatics of many cults. They combine chanting and twisting their bodies to a sexual excitation. When it's all over, they can't stop - -so they go on to the climax of it all."
Exactly where Elvis will go nobody knows. But there is a persistent report that he has insured his hips for a half-million dollars and his voice for a mere $100,000. He then depends more upon his hips than his voice. So do the strippers by the way.
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EIN Note: Despite the above article being printed in January 1957, Elvis' performance in Des Moines, Iowa was back on May 22 1956. The following day The Des Moines Register reported..
.. A young man from Mississippi who is billed as America’s “only atomic-powered singer” spread a vast amount of rock-n-roll radiation over the spacious Veterans Memorial Auditorium crowd.
A lot of the “fallout” from Elvis Aaron Presley’s “atomic” singing hit empty seats during his concert May 22, 1956, but the estimated 4,000 who were present – most of them teenagers – absorbed enough to keep them staring into space for the rest of the school term.
What happened when the 21-year-old Presley walked on the stage had to be seen to be believed.
A mob of young people left their seats and swooped down to the edge of the stage. They stayed there throughout Presley’s 20-minute performance, though some had to sit on the cement floor because they were blocking the view of others.
Presley, who is 6 feet tall and weighs 180 pounds, loped across the stage like a starved panther.
Merely striding across the stage set off a loud chorus of screams. He grabbed the microphone and started to sing and squirm.
Things got worse in a hurry.
As Presley staggered and jerked his way through “Heartbreak Hotel,” the shrieks and whistles of the crowd were so loud his voice could hardly be heard.
He strummed his guitar a few times and flicked his long sideburns when he bolted his way through “Long Tall Sally.” He shook his shoulders and wiggled his hips.
Every move brought more screams.
Then Presley stepped to the microphone and said: “I dread to sing this next number because when I’m through I’ve just about had it. I’m just too popped to pop after singing it.”
He swaggered his way through “Blue Suede Shoes” and the screams increased.
For his last number Presley sang “Hound Dog” while he wrestled the microphone to the floor of the stage.
As he knelt near the edge of the stage, many teenagers stretched out their hands to touch him. |
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