I've written before that I wasn't a devotee of early rock music in the fifties, but I wasn't immune to its allure. Even though I was fonder of big band music and modern jazz, I have to admit I was definitely aware of the new stuff pouring out of jukeboxes. After all, it was everywhere — not just on the jukes, but at school "sock hops" (remember those?), and on the radio. And there was also the inevitable attraction teenagers have always felt for anything new and a little... dangerous.
I found myself slowly warming to the music, but I went into it gradually, starting with the clean-cut types like Pat Boone, moving on to progressive artists like Buddy Holly, and eventually beginning to listen to the bad boys like Jerry Lee Lewis and others. However, one guy who took a little longer for me to accept ended up being the biggest star of all, although it wasn't until later that I started to appreciate his talent.
Do you remember the scene that shows up in almost every Elvis Presley movie,
where he's in a restaurant or club and someone starts the jukebox or strums a guitar, and — big surprise — he begins singing, and all the girls swoon? And then the camera moves to their boyfriends and they're all giving him dirty looks, and then one of them ends up fighting him? Those guys could have been patterned after me. Not because I wanted to fight Elvis, but just because I really didn't see what all the fuss was about and why the girls found him so irresistible.
That's probably why I was secretly delighted when it was announced he'd been drafted. It was a big news story at the time and everybody was wondering if Elvis (or Colonel Parker) had enough influence to get him a deferment. Of course, he ended up serving and reportedly was a model soldier, but some say it changed him and made him a little softer-edged in his later career.
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