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Early Elvis in Cleveland
© PineTree Multimedia Productions
Elvis Presley and The Pied Piper of Cleveland
Bill Randle: Unsung Elvis Promoter
"Dream World" and Electric Elvis
Recommended Early Elvis Presley Recordings
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A Chrome Dreams Media Production from the UK about early years of Elvis in Tupelo and Memphis and including interviews with authors Bill Burk, Elaine Dundy and Alanna Nash, DJs George Klein and Wink Martindale, Historian Roy Turner, several Elvis classmate friends from his youth. Also excerpts from early Elvis songs.
This fascinating DVD is recommended for your collection.
Elvis - The Memphis Flash: Elvis Presley, Sun Records and How It All Began
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Elvis Presley
and
The Pied Piper of Cleveland
Most fans know about the first SUN recordings and his travels through the South to promote his records.
At that time he was known as "The Hillybilly Cat" or "The Memphis Flash," and was traveling with his combo of guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. Later came D.J. Fontana on drums.
But what may not be known was that the first city outside of the South that Elvis conquered was in Cleveland, Ohio.
Elvis made several important appearances in that Ohio city in 1955, culminating in the October 20 filming of the famous documentary footage for The Pied Piper of Cleveland .
This seems the right city in the North for Elvis to make it first.
Disc jockey Alan Freed made his first success on radio in Cleveland.
But it wasn't Freed who championed Elvis. In fact, Freed didn't seem to have much interest in the young rockabilly singer from Memphis.
Instead it was two other Cleveland disc jockeys.
What follows are dates in 1955...
January 2: Bill Randle plays his first Elvis record ("Blue Moon of Kentucky") on WERE radio in Cleveland. Randle told me he always liked the Bill Monroe song.
February 26: Thanks to the efforts of Tommy Edwards and his WERE radio show, Elvis performed for the first time in Cleveland at the "Circle Theatre Hillbilly Jamboree." There were two shows at 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. These were the first shows that Elvis and his combo had performed outside of the South.
August 16: According to Pierce's book, Colonel Tom Parker contacted well-known publishing house manager, Arnold Shaw, and asked him to give Elvis tapes to Bill Randle to play on his weekend WCBS radio show in New York. Randle said it was not appropriate to play the Elvis music on his New York show but had played his records in Cleveland and received an "incredible response." The Colonel then could contact RCA executives and tell them "his boy" was really "hot" outside of the South.
October 19: This time Elvis performed with country legends Roy Acuff and Kitty Wells at the Circle Theater. Acuff and Elvis didn't get along because Acuff had criticized Elvis's first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
October 20: One of the landmarks in the early career of Elvis. It was the first time he was filmed for a commercial movie (still unreleased).
Here is the description as told in Pierce's book:
Elvis, Pat Boone (whose "Ain't That a Shame" just hit the charts), Bill Haley (who had seven Top 20 hits), and The Four Lads (who had released "Moments to Remember") sang at the Brooklyn High School and St. Michael's Hall in Cleveland. Elvis performed by request in front of a camera for the well-known Cleveland disc jockey Bill Randle, who produced a forty-eight minute documentary with a $4,000 budget titled, The Pied Piper of Cleveland: A Day in the Life of a Famous Disc Jockey .
Tom Edwards photographed Elvis and Bill Haley shaking hands at Cleveland's Brooklyn High School Auditorium. At the evening performance at St. Michael's Hall, Elvis sang "That's All Right, Mama," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Good Rockin' Tonight," "Mystery Train," and "I Forgot to Remember to Forget." Randle's documentary was shown at Euclid Shore Junior High School and on WEWS-TV, Channel 5, in Cleveland.
This picture taken the day of Cleveland concert, 20 October 1955
[Not to be reproduced without permission]This picture taken the day of Cleveland concert, 20 October 1955.
It shows two Cleveland disc jockeys standing at the microphone: Bill Randle and Tommy Edwards. Standing behind them (left to right) are guitarist Scotty Moore (white shirt and tie), unidentified men in the background, Elvis Presley in sports jacket, and bassist Bill Black, also in white shirt and tie.
There has been much speculation and disbelief that the October 20, 1955 footage with Elvis still exists.
According to reliable sources it was sold by Bill Randle to a British company in 1992. It has yet to be released, probably due to publishing and copyright difficulties. Will it ever be released? Hopefully it will some day.Tommy Edwards
He was known as "The City Slicker Turned Hillbilly" and was the one who first told Bill Randle about Elvis. Edwards played his records on his "Hillbilly Jamboree" show on WERE radio, which was aired on Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Edwards began his radio career at WICD in Spencer, Iowa in 1945. In 1948 he moved to WOKY in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. About a year and a half later he moved on to WERE in Cleveland, where he had his "Hillbilly Jamboree" show and another show where he played mainstream pop music.
The "Hillbilly Cat"
Just one month before Elvis appeared in Cleveland for his film debut in The Pied Piper of Cleveland, he was featured in COUNTRY SONG ROUNDUP (Vol. 1/ No. 40, September 1955) under the column: "Folk Music Fireball."
When writing about his SUN first record --"That's All Right" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky"-- the magazine claims that "the disc represented something new in records: the unusual pairing of an R&B number with a Country standard."
They also describe Elvis as "the big blonde (?) guy" whose hobbies include movies, listening to records, practicing football, and eating. His girlfriend Dixie was quoted saying that Elvis "ate 8 Deluxe Cheeseburgers, 2 Bacon-Lettuce--Tomato sandwiches--and topped it off with three chocolate milk shakes." Guess he was still a growing boy!
Bill Randle
It's unfortunate that no airchecks are known of the Elvis Presley interview on Randle's radio show from 1955.
But there exists an air check from 1955 when Bill Randle talked about Elvis on his WERE radio show and read mail from listeners.
In early 1955, Elvis had traveled outside of the South for the first time and by doing so he spread his popularity even wider.
Elvis first came to Cleveland as just another country singer.
Two disc jockeys, Tommy Edwards and Bill Randle, played his records on their WERE radio shows and helped promote Elvis in live appearances at the "Circle Theatre Hillbilly Jamboree" and on film.
Within less than a year Elvis had conquered Cleveland's young music fans.
All of this happened months before the famous national TV debut.
And who was the disc jockey who introduced Elvis on The Dorsey Brothers "Stage Show" on CBS TV that historic night of January 28, 1956?
It was Cleveland's own famous disc jockey, Bill Randle.
By then he knew Elvis would make it big...
and he was so right!
-- Roger Lee Hall, 8 January 2009
Sources
Information for the above dates are from these two books:
The Ultimate Elvis: Elivis Presley Day By Day by Patricia Jobe Pierce
(Simon & Schuster, 1994).Elvis - Day By Day by Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen
(Ballantine Books, 1999).
Read more about the still unreleased first film with Elvis performing at
Bill Randle: Unsung Elvis Promoter
Bill Randle (1923-2004) was a key person in the emerging popularity of Elvis Presley in the 1950s.
He was an influential Cleveland disc jockey and the first one outside of the South to write about Elvis in a newspaper in 1955.
I worked as his assistant in the 1970s at a Cleveland university and he told me some interesting stories about his days with Elvis.
For example, Randle together with his fellow disc jockey Tommy Edwards, helped promote Elvis in 1955 in a series of live appearances in Cleveland at the "Hillbilly Jamboree" show and on WERE radio.
Randle was also the producer of the first commercial film made of Elvis performing in a concert.
It was to be a Universal documentary short titled,
The Pied Piper of Cleveland:
A Day in the Life of a Famous Disc JockeyThe filming took place at Brooklyn High School in Cleveland, Ohio. The other performers included: Pat Boone ("Ain't That A Shame"), Bill Haley & His Comets ("Rock Around the Clock"), The Four Lads ("Moments to Remember") and Patricia Wright ("Man in a Rancoat").
Unfortunately, due to budget problems, this documentary was never completed and released.
According to an article in People Magazine dated 11 January 1993, the existing footage was sold to a European company for nearly $2 million.
It remains a mystery why this very rare first commercial footage of Elvis has not been released.
How much of this footage still survives? It is difficult to know for sure, but the complicated copyright rights issues are probably the reason it has not been released on DVD.
I was told by Bill Randle that he was asked by Elvis to be his manager before Col. Tom Parker took over. He even said he had a contract ready to be signed, but I never got to see it.
Bill Randle was also the disc jockey who introduced Elvis on national television on The Dorsey Brothers "Stage Show."
Randle had a wide variety of interests he worked on. He was someone with a curious mind and was not always involved as a disc jockey or a record producer.
For more background, see
Bill Randle: Record Producer
Not only was he a popular disc jockey, who had radio programs on WERE in Cleveland and WCBS in New York during the 1950s, but he also was involved in a number of recording projects.
One of the most successful of these projects was for Columbia Records in 1959.
He suggested that a popular American patriotic song be edited down from its longer time so it would fit on a 45 RPM record. This record became a million seller and received a Grammy Award. It was performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the song was:
A much larger project involved his production of an LP set in 1961 devoted to a religious group. Originally from around the Manchester, England area, this religious sect was known as The United Society of Believers, now called The Shakers.Bill Randle produced a massive 10 LP box set about Shaker culture in 1961 about their religion, poetry, cooking recipes, music and much more. This LP set, titled The Shaker Heritage, has been out-of-print for many years. All the music from this LP set has been re-issued on a 2-CD box set on Rounder Records. It includes a 72 page illustrated booklet with all the lyrics and extensive notes by Roger Hall. This CD set is titled...
Let Zion Move: Music of the Shakers
For more background on this disc jockey and record producer, see
Bill Randle Tribute
Autograph from a private collection
[Not to be reproduced without permission]
Having worked for him as his assistant in the 1970s, Roger Hall prepared a special tribute CD and essay in 2004 with the passing of William (Bill) Randle. His tribute included several rare interviews with Randle from the 1970s and 1980s.
A portion of this tribute was used in the program ceremony on " Bill Randle Day" at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame on September 26, 2004.
A copy of this Bill Randle Tribute CD was donated to the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
This audio tribute is included as a bonus feature on the commemorative multimedia disc:
"Shake, Rattle and Roll": Electric Elvis and Bill Randle
"Dream World" and Electric Elvis
"Dream World"
Songs, Poems and Stories by Roger Hall
In his collection, songwriterRoger Lee Hall has gathered together his early song lyrics, poems and stories about his life from the 1940s to the 1970s. These writings are frank and honest expressions.
The first section is devoted to sixteen of his early song lyrics, including his first song "Dream World," which is the title of the collection. This song was written in homage to Elvis Presley, especially in homage to the multi-million hit record:
"It's Now or Never."Also in the collection are poems from the 1960s and '70s which are Roger's personal observations of the world around him.
In addition there are six stories covering his years from childhood to adulthood.
One of his stories is about his work with the Celeveland disc jockey who introduced Elvis Presley on national television in 1956. It is titled:
"Remembering Bill and Electric Elvis"
To read more about this collection available on CD-ROM with audio files, go to
"Dream World": Songs, Poems and Stories
There was a radio special from 1993 with a memorial tribute to Elvis Presley on the anniversary of his death and included several early songs: "Poor Boy" and "Blue Moon."
This radio special is included on this memoir collection on CD-ROM:
"Peace-Lovin' Blues" - Songs of Survival
Recommended EarlyElvis Recordings
(1954-1956)
Two other CDs are recommended for the SUN Records years:
Sunrise (2 CDs) - this is the best collection available, even the alternate tracks on CD 2 are worth a listen.
The Sun Sessions - may be hard to find but worth it for the outtakes & alternate takes.
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