The Jack White Connection
In January 2015, Elvisâ very first recording, an unassuming simple acetate dating back to 1953, was sold at an auction to an undisclosed buyer for $300,000. It featured two sentimental ballads sung by Elvis, then a shy 18-year-old kid with a ducktail haircut: on the A-side was âMy Happinessâ, a tune from the 1940s that would be later made famous by Connie Francis, and on the flip side âThatâs When Your Heartaches Beginâ, which Elvis would later re-record and release as a B-side to âAll Shook Upâ. Back in 1953, Elvis had paid $3.98 for this service offered by Sam Phillips at Memphis Recording Service, either to hear how he sounded on record, or as a present for his mum, as he would later claim in interviews. Some would go so far as to say that he hoped Sam would hear his voice and sign him up at Sun Studios. Whatever the reason, Elvis took the record to his high-school friend Ed Leek, who, in his recollection, had given him the money ($3.98 amount to about $45 adjusted for inflation) and owned a record player. Elvis played the songs there, and then for some reason left the record at his house. Itâs funny how in later years some articles would claim that Gladys played the record over and over, while Elvis admitted in the Million Dollar Quartet recordings that he had lost it. In 1988 Ed Leek let RCA transfer the songs to digital to be released, but he kept the original acetate until his death in 2010.
In March 2015, a couple of months after the record was sold at an auction by Leekâs niece, it was disclosed that the buyer was a fellow rock ân roll musican, Jack White. The Detroit native planned to reissue the precious artifact on vinyl in a limited edition for Record Store Day. For this, he faithfully recreated the 10-inch, 78-rpm record in every detail, including the yellowish aging paper of the plain sleeve and the typewritten labels. Alan Stoker, the son of Gordon Stoker from the Jordanaires, the background singers in many of Elvisâ hits, did the transfer at the Country Music Hall of Fame. He ensured that the sound would be as clean as possible while maintaining the old haunting feeling of what many consider to be the Holy Grail of rock ân roll.
From this, you may have gathered that Jack White, who has won 13 Grammies in his career and is credited for writing the most distinctive guitar riff of the early 2000s with âSeven Nation Armyâ, is an Elvis fan. Not only did he embark in the project of bringing Elvisâ first record to the public with a precise replica, but he also played Elvis in a cameo for the comedy âWalk Hard: the Dewey Cox Storyâ (2007), which is a parody of music biopics. In the now iconic scene, Dewey, played by John C. Reilly, is terrified because he has to go on stage after Elvis, whoâs hungry and wants to get out of there early. When Elvis approaches Dewey Cox, he speaks in an unintelligible Southern drawl, and anachronistically attempts a karate chop in the 1950s, before he even started to study it! This is a spoof of music biopics, after all, where these âartistic libertiesâ are plentiful (Baz Luhrmannâs movie has Elvis sing âTroubleâ at Russwood Park, for instance). Then Jack Whiteâs Elvis hilariously explains karate: âItâs called karate, man. Only two kinds of people know it, The Chinese and The King.â This unflattering and stereotyped portrayal of Elvis purposefully misses everything about Elvisâ personality, especially his humility and his Southern accent, focusing on some unimportant stereotypes instead: the sweating, the love of junk food, and the mumbling.
But, aside from playing him in a now famous gag, Jack White payed homage to Elvis as a musician as well. His 2014 Grammy-winning single âLazarettoâ features a cover of âPower of My Loveâ on the B side. The single holds the record of being the worldâs fastest released record. It was recorded live in Nashville in front of an audience, pressed and released in under 4 hours. The B-side is according to The Tennessean âa thunderous version of Elvis Presley's âPower of My Love,â â a faithful rendition, aside from cranking up the tempo and piling on the guitar overdrive.â In 2022, as we know, he had the honor of recording a duet of the same song alongside Elvisâ voice. The song is featured in the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmannâs movie.
And finally, Jack speaks about his love for Elvis Presley in a 2018 episode of the podcast âRevisionist Historyâ by Malcolm Gladwell. In an episode called âAnalysis, Parapraxis, Elvisâ, the author tries to understand why Elvis never seemed to get a particular part of âAre You Lonesome Tonight?â quite right. Jack, accompanied by his guitar, sings the song in full, including the slightly corny spoken bridge where the singer feels vulnerable, deceived and rejected, which is the emotional part that Elvis couldnât face to sing. He says there are a lot of minor chords in the song that can get you in that melancholy vibe. The singer is lonesome and he doesnât really care if his ex lover is lonesome: âitâs a McGuffin to pretend heâs worried about herâ, Jack explains.
Iâm sure there will be more occasions to hear Jack White paying homage to his idol in the future. After all, he has an Elvis shrine at home, as Gladwell reveals!
This is part of a series of posts about Elvisâ influence on the artists who followed him. You can read the other Elvis connections I wrote about here. So far Iâve written about people as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Quentin Tarantino and Andy Warhol.
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