On the one hand it's incredibly heartening to view just how open and generous the record buying public appeared to be back in the late fifties as rock and roll swept across the Atlantic to blow away the cobwebs of the past. Or as the genre's poet laureate wrote, "Hail, hail, rock and roll, deliver me from the days of old". Usually such a new wind hits walls of distrust and refusal that keep it out, and yet here we are with an Elvis song topping the charts for the second time in a matter of weeks on the back of number ones by Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly. It must have been a great time to be a teenager. Needless to say when my own time came there was no trilogy of number ones from the Sex Pistols, The Clash or The Buzzcocks. Those walls kept that particular wind firmly shut out.That's one way of looking at it anyway, but get out the magnifying glass out for a closer look and a slightly different picture emerges. Because after all, what was really that different? Jerry Lee gave us a good time party song slap bang in the middle of the party season, Buddy gave us a tune safely steeped in familiar country and while Elvis's hit may have had sensuality to burn, he always sounded in control of his libido and the womenfolk were safe enough.
Just as The Clash eventually hit number one with the ramalama chug of 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' rather than 'White Riot', there's little of the rebellion or in your face sexuality that could be found elsewhere in the genre. There's none of the generational gap 'fuck off' of 'Summertime Blues, the paedophilic lust of the teenage groupie in 'Sweet Little Sixteen' or the barn dance shagathon of 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On' ('Shakin'? Right!) - the songs so far have been safe, songs the parents could enjoy along with their kids. Until now that is - 'Jailhouse Rock' rocks (HA!) this particular boat with a violent shove, with the shove coming not least from Presley himself.
A Lieber and Stoller tune from the eponymous movie, 'Jailhouse Rock' is an 'adult' song that the adults of 1958 probably didn't appreciate all that much. From the opening yell of "The warden threw a party in the county jail" this is Elvis with the lid off. One of Presley's strengths was always the fact he could sing anything and sound believable, yet the throat peeling rasp he produces for this was rarely heard again and certainly not in any of his post army output. There's an edgy friction to his vocal that stares down any attempt to label 'Jailhouse Rock' a novelty tune about jailbirds, yet Presley knows how to take the brakes off on the call to arms of "Let's rock, everybody, let's rock" to find a swaggering sexual rhythm for his hips to follow.*
Ah yes, the sex and the rhythm; if 'rock and roll' was originally taken as an euphemism for sex then 'Jailhouse Rock' carries on the tradition admirably. Probably carries it even further than it's been before in fact; Presley's vocal is macho personified, but there's more than a hint of a homosexual subtext to what was going on down at that jail. "Number 47 said to number 3, 'You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see'" - the film itself didn't have the convicts dressing up as women concert party style (which is actually the kind of context Mike Stoller had in mind when he wrote it), but it adds another layer of depth for both discussion and to make the older generation uncomfortable (see? an adult song that's not for adults).
The song's tone is set by that ominous, two chords and double dragged drum beat opening. As an intro it's as recognisable as Chuck Berry's guitar burst on 'Johnny B Goode' or Jon Perry's nervy twitch on 'Another Girl, Another Planet' but around it Scotty Moore whips up some of his most barbed and stinging guitar lines at the breakdown while Bill Black puts a walking bassline in any gaps that Elvis leaves to fill. Add The Jordanaires on backing vocals and you have a veritable who's who of early rock and roll royalty meaning that unlike 'Great Balls Of Fire','Jailhouse Rock' is no one man band performance, no matter how much Presley tries to dominate.
Jerry Lee Lewis, Michael Bolton, Merle Haggard, Motley Crue, ZZ Top, The Cramps et al - all and sundry have had a crack at 'Jailhouse Rock' over the years (clever clogs seventies band 10CC wrote 'Rubber Bullets' as a sequel of sorts where the national guard poured cold water on the dance party by spraying the convicts with the titular bullets) yet most have missed the point of the package by either stressing the groove or the vocal while never coming close to marrying the two with the same primal urgency of this 1957 recording. There's nothing 'safe' about 'Jailhouse Rock; it's wild and it's uncompromising. It's also the last time such a pure genre recording would top the UK charts. In a few short years both Holly and Cochran would be dead, Berry would be in jail, Jerry Lee silenced by scandal, Little Richard back in the church with Elvis himself only appearing again after his balls had been shorn along with his hair by the army. But while it lasted it must have been a good time to be a teenager. A hell of a good time.
* To my mind, the dance sequence in the film that accompanies this performance compliments the song brilliantly, with the grooving prisoners and baton wielding warders visually presenting the mix of campness and borderline violence that underpins the song. The first music 'video' proper? Yes, I think so.
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