The Rock Is Solid

Is the golden glottis gurgling to a stop? Is there a quiver to those rosebud lips, a beginning of wilt to those poodle-wool sideburns? For two years, lovers of peace, quiet and a less epileptic kind of minstrelsy have waited for Elvis Presley and the adenoidal art form, rock 'n' roll, to fade. But knowledgeable disk jockeys and trade bulletins offer such purists little hope. In spite of previously noted tremors, last week rock 'n' roll looked solid as Gibraltar, and Elvis--with a new stomp-and-holler hit, Jailhouse Rock (RCA Victor)-- was perched right on top.

The new Presley disk hit second place on Billboard's authoritative top-tunes listing in its second week on the chart, and by last week Victor claimed to have shipped 2,000,000 copies (total Presley sales of single disks so far: a staggering 28 million). The movie-bred lyrics of Jailhouse Rock (see CINEMA) suggests a powerful argument for penal reform, but no clues to the record's whopping success:

Everybody in a whole cell block Was dancing to the jailhouse rock . . . [Mumble, mumble] crash, boom, bang, The whole rhythm section was a purple gang.

No New Sound. Philosophizes Chicago Deejay Marty Faye on rock 'n' roll: "The kids have accepted this twanging guitar, this nasal, unintelligible sound, this irritating sameness of lyrics, this lamentable croak. They've picked a sound all their own, apart from anything the adults like. Rock 'n' roll is still as strong as ever, and we'll have to live with it until the kids find a new sound."

For a while last summer, it looked as if the kids might have found one. Calypso jounced and jingled into earshot, but in the end turned out to be loss lieder. Industry plotters pegged Hawaiian music for the next turntable fad, found the kids not in a hula mood. Rock 'n' roll faltered slightly when ballads (Love Letters in the Sand, Tammy) began catching on again, and a few of the U.S.'s disk jockeys report that ballads are continuing to cut into rock 'n' roll popularity. From staid Boston, WBZ's Bill Marlowe states flatly that "Rock 'n' roll has had it. The teen-agers are beginning to look to better music." But in Los Angeles the craze is just as strong as ever, and in Atlanta, jukebox operators and record shop proprietors say that rock 'n' roll is still by far the most popular music.

No Steady Starlets. Elvis, unworried, continues to live off what most parents would agree is the fat of teenagers' heads. As befits a solid citizen (possible 1957 gross: $1 million), he has lately eschewed fistfights and steady starlets, projected a 15-acre Elvis Presley Youth Foundation in Tupelo, Miss., his birthplace.

As Elvis gets older (22), he grows more conservative: his favorite vehicle, his handlers report, is not his black Harley-Davidson motorcycle, his royal purple Lincoln Continental, his red Messerschmitt, his yellow Isetta, his pink or his yellow Cadillac, but a sumptuous, black, bankerish Cadillac limousine. If austerity and decorum shroud Presley's personal life, his fans need not worry that the old megalomania is disappearing. His tour manager explains that the reason Elvis has not graced TV this season is that no network has met his $100,000-an-hour fee, allowed that "if there were a program of half-hour duration, Elvis might make a concession and take $75,000."

Meanwhile, Elvis has prepared a surprise package for the nation that is likely to be the most serious menace to Christmas since I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. Victor is planning to release an album of Yule songs by Presley, accompanied by guitar and organ, the selections including Silent Night and Santa, Bring My Baby Back to Me.

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