Well those songs were all from the same specific time period, and they all define his style and what he was all about, so what exactly makes Tutti Frutti and Long Tall Sally greater than the others? Granted, Elvis covered them both, but he also covered Rip It Up.
The Beatles I'll give you....

First off, "Tutti-Frutti" was his first hit, and the one that introduced a shocked listening world to the most exciting rock and roll artist that they had ever heard. The record hit like a meteor compared to what had come before. It spawned a Pat Boone cover version that is infamous in its own right as the perfect example of how bad the pop covers of R&B and rock and roll were then. It's his most famous record and the song that is most associated with him now.

Go to youtube and type in Little Richard in the search box and see what song is the top suggestion.

As for Long Tall Sally, it was his second hit, and among his records it's the one that has been redone the most by other artists and also was his biggest chart hit both on the pop chart AND on the R&B chart. It's also the record that broke through as an R&B/rock and roll record that was a bigger hit than the cover version by Boone, showing that people were no longer going to accept the shitty white cover versions of these records. Richard was quoted saying "Pat Boone don't know nothing about ducking back in no alley."

Long Tall Sally was also his first record to hit big overseas. It wasn't until early 1957, almost a year after the record was a hit in the USA, when "Long Tall Sally" reached the top 5 in the UK. A bigger hit even than it was in the USA.

John Lennon - Elvis was bigger than religion in my life. Then this boy at school said that he'd got this record by somebody called Little Richard who was better than Elvis. The new record was Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally." When I heard it, it was so great I couldn't speak. I didn't want to leave Elvis, but this was so much better. Then someone said "It's a nigger singing." I didn't know Negroes sang. So Elvis was white and Little Richard was black. This was a great relief. "Thank You God" I said. "There is a difference between them." (1970)

Those other records are awesome, but not quite at the top level of these two where they would be considered among the 20 greatest rock records of all time.

I agree. "Good Golly, Miss Molly" is pretty close, though.

Yes, that would be #3 for him.

Here's how I ranked them on the "Greatest 50s Songs" list.

4. Tutti-Frutti - Little Richard
9. Long Tall Sally - Little Richard
20. Good Golly Miss Molly - Little Richard
26. Lucille - Little Richard
46. Rip It Up - Little Richard
66. Keep A 'Knockin' - Little Richard
90. Send Me Some Lovin' - Little Richard
132. Ready Teddy - Little Richard

And on my Little Richard tribute page.

1. Tutti-Frutti
2. Long Tall Sally
3. Good Golly Miss Molly
4. Lucille
5. Rip It Up
6. Keep A'Knockin'
7. Send Me Some Lovin'
8. Ready Teddy
9. Slippin' And Slidin'
10. The Girl Can't Help It

Okay I gotchya. I definitely trust you when it comes to 50's music.

Speaking of which, do you agree that Jailhouse Rock is Elvis' greatest song?

Yes.

Here's how I ranked them on the "Greatest 50s Songs" list:

2. Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
8. Hound Dog - Elvis Presley
15. Don't Be Cruel - Elvis Presley
36. Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley
40. That's All Right - Elvis Presley with Scotty and Bill
52. All Shook Up - Elvis Presley
120. Baby Let's Play House - Elvis Presley with Scotty and Bill
121. Mystery Train - Elvis Presley with Scotty and Bill
138. Blue Suede Shoes - Elvis Presley
147. One Night - Elvis Presley
170. Good Rocking Tonight - Elvis Presley with Scotty and Bill
181. Too Much - Elvis Presley

WHAT???? What does it have on "Hound Dog"? I say nothing.

Listen, I like "HD" better myself, but......

The video from the movie, for one thing. Definitely a better dance record for another. If you play both songs at a party, for instance. "JR" will go over much better, especially on the dance floor. Despite only being from a little over a year later, "JR" sounds much less dated than "HD." It fits in better among more modern records than "HD" does.

"JR" also beats "HD" in initial and lasting popularity. I'd say "HD" had more impact, but "JR" has more influence, especially when you consider the video as part of it. Also the fact that "JR" was an original song while "HD" was Elvis's update on the Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys version from 1955, that he heard them do in Vegas.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJQ-fDb4M4s[/youtube]


I think it's pretty close, but "JR" has to get the nod.

I disagree. Elvis Presley's performance of "Hound Dog" on The Milton Berle Show is what propelled him to iconic superstar status. That television performance to this day is more iconic than Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" musical number, which is much more music theater than rock 'n' roll. That "Hound Dog" performance on Milton Berle is rock 'n' roll.

I'm skeptical that "Jailhouse Rock" wins either initial or lasting popularity, as well. "Hound Dog" was a double A-side, but it's still a single certified at twice the sales of the "Jailhouse Rock" single. Which one was on the charts longer?

Bullshit. He was already a superstar before that performance, all it did was add a slight level of 'silliness'. Even Presley himself later said that he hated the performance and thought it was ridiculous (mainly the part about singing to an actual dog).



Music theater? Just because there's a choreographed dance scene set to the music? The music ITSELF is as rock & roll as it gets. And the music is all that matters.

"JR" was #1 for 7 weeks in a 27 week run. It was #1 for 6 weeks on the TYop 100, 7 weeks on the sales chart and 2 weeks on the DJ (radio play) chart.

"HD" only got to #2 on the Top 100, and only #4 on the DJ (radio play) chart and was the lesser of a double sided #1 on the sales chart for 11 weeks in a 28 week run.

The Berle Show video had nowhere near the long standing impact of the "JR" video, mainly because nobody saw it between when it was first on and about 1990. Unless you saw the show live on the day it aired, you didn't see the Berle appearance until the DVD and internet age.

Yes, it was a very controversial appearance, but it was also a very different sounding live performance of "Hound Dog," rather than the record. In the "JR" video Elvis is lip synching the record, with some extra stuff being added in (background singers and such).

The appearance was panned by most critics and helped raised curiosity about Elvis, but what really made him an iconic superstar was the heavily promoted Sullivan Show appearances which drew some of the biggest TV audiences in history up to that point.

IMO a live performance of a song that was done in a different tempo months before the record was even released does not fully count towards the status of the record itself.

The truth was somewhere in the middle. The Berle show was a much bigger moment than Neg thinks, but not the watershed moment that Clash thinks. It caused a fury at the time but Elvis had already had number one singles and a number one album before that appearance.

http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/elvis ... berle.html

The King of Rock ’n’ roll obviously had many notable rock ’n’ roll moments during his career, but Elvis Presley’s single most significant musical performance came on June 5, 1956, when he appeared on Milton Berle’s nationally televised variety show. His sexually-charged rendition of “Hound Dog” that evening and the virulent condemnation of it that flowed from the press and the pulpit, pushed Presley to the forefront in the cultural battle for the hearts of minds of teenagers in the mid-fifties.


By early June 1956, the nation certainly knew who Elvis Presley was. He already had appeared on national TV seven times, including an earlier appearance on Milton Berle’s show on April 3. His personal appearances across the country had begun to draw huge crowds along with criticism from local and national press outlets. After the June 5 Berle show, however, Presley’s profile exploded. His role as a polarizing figure expanded. He attracted larger crowds and defenders on one hand and more increasingly inflamed critics on the other.

Several factors made Presley’s second performance on the Milton Berle Show different from his previous TV appearances. First, there was the decision to perform “Hound Dog” on the show. Elvis had been using the provocative number in his stage show for some time, but this was the first time the entire country would see it on the small screen. While playing a two-week stint in Las Vegas in late April and early May, Elvis had seen Freddie Bell and the Bellboys perform “Hound Dog” in their Vegas lounge act.

“We loved the way they did it,” remembers guitarist Scotty Moore. “They had a piano player who stood up and played—and the way he did his legs, they looked like rubber bands bending back and forth. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote the song for Big Mama Thornton, but Freddie and the Bellboys had a different set of lyrics. Elvis got his lyrics from those guys. He knew the original lyrics, but he didn’t use them.”

Elvis wanted to sing ballads like Belafonte

After finishing up in Las Vegas, Elvis began using “Hound Dog” to close his road show. He had 17 bookings between May 13 and June 3, and so he had his raucous version of the song nailed down by the time he and the boys arrived in Los Angeles on June 4 for the Berle show. Several reporters and columnists were on hand for the rehearsal that day. Other scheduled guests included actress Debra Paget, “Sheena of the Jungle” actress Irish McCalla, and seven-year-old Barry “Boy Wonder” Gordon, “but Elvis is the big one in the spotlight now,” noted Herald-Express columnist Bob Hull.

The rehearsal discussion with the press seemed to down play Elvis’s rowdy rock ’n’ roll reputation. Berle told the assembled journalists, “This kid sings to music the way kids who love him talk.” Elvis added, “All I do is sing … I want to sing ballads, stuff like the things Harry Belafonte does. I can’t help it if rock and roll happens to be popular now. I enjoy it and get a kick out of it.”

Bob Hull came away with a laid-back impression of Presley. “Elvis … is not a bit like his singing style,” he concluded in his Herald-Express column the next morning. “You would expect him to be a real hep-cat, ‘diggable’ character, which he isn’t. He’s just a normal young man who happens to have a salable style, three Cadillacs, two diamond rings, a jewel-studded watch and a ‘mission’ in life.”

Of Elvis’s style, Hull explained, “He actually rocks-and-rolls his body when he’s warbling the R&R numbers. Some folks, mostly in the elderly group, have taken exception to this, saying it’s ‘exhibitionism.’ Some, like the nowhere-aged Berle, say it’s showmanship.” Obviously, Hull didn’t anticipate the stormy reaction to Presley’s performance that evening.

Guitarless Elvis stole the show with “Hound Dog”

The Milton Berle Show aired on NBC-TV on Tuesday, June 5, 1956, at 8 p.m. Elvis sang his current hit, “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” and participated in some comic repartee with Berle and Miss Paget. All that was background noise, however. All that people were talking about the next day was the 2 minutes and 30 seconds it took Elvis to perform “Hound Dog.”

Instead of a guitar, Presley used a standup microphone as a prop. The first 90 seconds were uptempo, with Elvis moving side-to-side, grabbing the mike by the throat, and keeping hips, legs and feet moving. The final minute was more provocative. Slowing the pace, Elvis bent the mike toward him and performed a series of slow pelvic thrusts. The microphone could have represented a phallic object or a woman Elvis was making love to. Either way, the sexual symbolism was all too obvious.

Overnight ratings showed that Elvis’s controversial appearance had allowed Milton Berle’s show to beat out time slot competitor Phil Silvers for the first time in several months.

Still, over the next few days, criticism of Elvis’s act on the Berle show came hot and heavy from several quarters. Billboard did not review the show, but it did review the criticism. “Back in TV’s salad days, the critics blasted video’s plunging-neckline gals regularly,” Billboard noted, “but this year their sights are set on a fully clothed male—Elvis Presley.”

New York’s nationally syndicated columnists led the assault on Elvis. “Mr. Presley has no discernable singing ability,” asserted Jack Gould in The New York Times the morning after the Berle show. “His specialty is rhythm songs which he renders in an undistinguished whine; his phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner’s aria in a bathtub.” Rather, Gould was convinced that Elvis’s talent lay in another area. “He is a rock-and-roll variation on one of the most standard acts in show business: the virtuoso of the hootchy-kootchy. His one specialty is an accented movement of the body that heretofore has been primarily identified with the repertoire of the blonde bombshells of the burlesque runway. The gyration never had anything to do with the world of popular music and still doesn’t.”

”Now music has reached its lowest depths

Daily News TV writer Ben Gross agreed in his column of June 8. “Popular music has been sinking in this country for some years,” he noted. “Now it has reached its lowest depths in the ‘grunt and groin’ antics of one Elvis Presley. The TV audience had a noxious sampling of it on the Milton Berle show the other evening. Elvis, who rotates his pelvis was appalling musically. Also, he gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos … This new phenomenon, as he sings, indulges in bumps and grinds and other motions that would bring a blush to the cheeks of a hardened burlesque theatre usher. He wiggles and wriggles, itches and scratches, spins and gyrates as if he were doing a loathsome takeoff on a victim of the St. Vitus dance … No wonder there have been so many reports of teen-age riots and other outbursts in towns and cities where Elvis has made personal appearances.”


Over at the Journal American, columnist Jack O’Brien conjured up pretty much the same sleazy image. “Elvis Presley wiggled and wriggled with such abdominal gyrations that burlesque bombshell Georgia Sothern really deserves equal time to reply in gyrating kind … He can’t sing a lick, makes up for vocal shortcomings with the weirdest and plainly planned, suggestive animation short of an aborigine’s mating dance.”

In the Herald Tribune TV critic John Crosby leaped on the dog pile. “One thing about Elvis Presley, the convulsive shouter of rock ’n’ roll songs,” Crosby declared, “[is that] this may be the end of rock ’n’ roll after all and just conceivably a return to musical sanity. I mean, where do you go from Elvis Presley? The last appearance of this unspeakably untalented and vulgar young entertainer brought forth such a storm of complaints both from press and public that I imagine any entertainer would hesitate to try him again on television. But, as I say, where do you go from Elvis, short of open obscenity which is against the law? Popular music has been in a tailspin for years now and I have hopes that with Presley it has touched bottom and will just have to start getting better.”

The assaults on Presley came from other directions as well. In a letter to Milton Berle, high school music teacher Harry A. Feldman decried Elvis’s influence on music and teenagers’ morals. “Elvis Presley presented a demonstration which was in execrable taste, bordering on obscenity,” Feldman proclaimed. “The gyrations of this young man were such an assault to the senses as to repel even the most tolerant observer. When television entrepreneurs present such performers to millions of viewers and pronounce them great; when such deplorable taste is displayed in the presentation of primitive, shoddy and offensive material, one begins to understand the present day attitude of our youth. We in the classroom can do very little to offset the force and impact of these displays in our efforts to stem the tide toward a cultural debacle.”

Even a New York DJ lectured Elvis

The Berle appearance even brought Presley criticism from inside the music industry. On June 7, disc jockey Jerry Marshall of WNEW in New York decided to censure Elvis on his radio program. “I think that Elvis and the people handling him should be interested in his future and building his popularity into something more lasting than a present-day craze,” Marshall declared just prior to playing a Presley record. “Elvis will have to drop the ‘hootchy kootchy’ gyrations or end up as ‘Pelvis’ Presley in circus side shows and burlesque, where he will not find the biggest crowds and financial rewards.”

Entertainer Steve Allen was in a quandary when the controversy exploded over Presley’s performance on the Milton Berle show. Allen disapproved of Elvis’s display but was contractually bound to feature Presley on his Sunday night NBC variety show on July 1. Allen felt the need to address the issue, and so a few days before Elvis’s scheduled appearance on his show, Allen wrote a response letter to TV critic Charles Mercer. The letter appeared in newspapers across the country. At the outset, Allen seemed to defend Elvis on one hand while agreeing with his critics on the other.

“The anti-Presley arguments I’ve been hearing seem a bit illogical,” Allen explained. “You see, he has made many TV appearances before the Berle show, all without arousing any hue or cry, so there can be no firm basis for keeping him off TV altogether. The heart of the matter is that he thoughtlessly indulged in certain dance movements on his last TV appearance which a number of people thought objectionable.”

On the subject of Elvis’s talent, Allen again straddled the fence. “Who is to say that Elvis has no talent?” asked Allen. “You say it, and a few million other people might be found to support you, but I am sure that additional millions will rise to his defense and say that he has oodles of talent.”

Elvis knew he made a mistake, said Steve Allen

Allen then, amazingly, took it upon himself to apologize on Elvis’s behalf for the Berle “Hound Dog” routine. “He knows he made a mistake with the Milton Berle business,” Allen professed, “and I think he’s smart enough not to do it again. We all make mistakes, don’t we? And we all like to be forgiven.” Allen closed his written apology for Elvis by assuring TV viewers that they will not be “offended by Elvis on any program over which I have control. We’ll show you a new side of the boy.”

The ultimate fallout over Elvis’s controversial performance of “Hound Dog” on the Milton Berle Show of June 5, 1956, is that all of the condemnation heaped on Presley immediately afterward backfired on the critics who did the heaping. By ratcheting up the controversy, the pundits made Elvis even more popular. The critics continued to denounce Presley, but his increasing number of young supporters dug in their heels in his defense.

During the first half of 1956, when Elvis Presley brought his show to town, local press coverage varied widely. After June 5, however, Elvis was front page news everywhere he went. No single event gave Elvis Presley’s career a greater boost than that provided by those two-and-a-half rock ’n’ rollin’ minutes on Uncle Miltie’s show on June 5, 1956. — Alan Hanson (October 2010)

That's The Steve Allen Show performance of "Hound Dog". The Milton Berle Show performance of "Hound Dog" is one of the greatest performances in the history of rock 'n' roll. I can't believe you thought I was talking about the Steve Allen one. As if I would think that's rock 'n' roll?



Yes. Especially that kind of dance choreography.



If the music was all that mattered, Elvis Presley wouldn't have become a legend.

But I think it takes more than that to become an iconic superstar. I'm not just talking about getting a big hit. I'm talking about being responsible for an epic cultural upheaval.



Yes, exactly. That's why I think "Hound Dog" is the greater song.

We're ranking the "record" of "Hound Dog," not the live performance of a song that had not yet even been recorded in the studio. Or the "greatest moments" in the career of Elvis Presley.

Like I said before, unless you saw the show live, you could not see it until at least the late 1980s. The only time I ever saw the early Elvis TV appearances was on a projecter at Paul Dowling's house in about 1977. He was a huge Elvis collector who eventually did time in jail for the bootleg albums that he put out over the years. He had the Dorsey Brothers shows on film. I went crazy over the live version of "Money Honey." MUCH better than the record. But even he did not have that Berle appearance.

MOST people, including critics, rank "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Don't Be Cruel" and maybe even "All Shook Up" above "Hound Dog," but for me, "Hound Dog" is the song that best personifies what 1950s rock and roll was all about. The Jordanaires add just enough of a presence to cover the "doo wop" part of 1950s rock and roll.

Some people gave me some shit at the time for ranking "Hound Dog" as the #1 record of 1956 on the site here, ahead of "Don't Be Cruel" and "Long Tall Sally" and "Roll Over Beethoven," but I think it's the top overall record of the year.

I just can't give that record full credit for a live performance that was done in a different style almost 2 months before the record was even recorded.

But I think if you ask an average person, someone who is not a fanatic, who lived through that era, to name an Elvis record you'd get "Hound Dog" more often than any other song.