Lest we forget, Elvis Presley was once a movie star. In fact, as malicious movie writer Joe Queenan put it, Elvis -- in his spare time from being the biggest rock and roll star in the history of the world -- also made dozens of the world movies of all time. Elvis' movie work was noteworthy not only for its poor quality as film (honestly, folks, he turned out one stinkeroo after another; he made thirty-one movies as an actor, and maybe three of them are even remotely worth watching), but for their poor quality as soundtracks. Considering that almost all of his movies were musicals -- because, believe me, nobody was hiring the guy for his acting chops -- they produced very few good songs. Elvis had tons of great singles, but hardly any of them came from his movies. Jailhouse Rock was a notable exception.
Made in 1957 with workmanlike pro Richard Thorpe at the helm, Jailhouse Rock was Elvis' third movie as a leading man, and one of his only tolerable ones. He plays Vince Everett, a sneering yet charming hillbilly who serves a stint in the joint for involuntary manslaughter. While there, he writes the title song, invents a hot dance craze to go along with it, and gets out of jail just in time to romance snooty society dame Judy Tyler. It's pretty standard fare, and plenty hokey at that, but it's at least snappy and enjoyable instead of a joyless slog like most of his movies. (It also had a tragic dimension -- Elvis' co-star Tyler died in a car wreck only three days after the film wrapped, and he refused to see it out of respect for her, thus ensuring he never got to see one of his only decent big-screen appearances.) As Queenan has astutely noted, it's not as if we were particularly robbed of a bunch of great performances by the rotten scripts Colonel Tom Parker foisted on Elvis, but in the early days at least, he was occasionally cast in roles that played to his strengths as a rockabilly performer and allowed him to have fun with his roles. Elvis also choreographed the dance number, basing it not on the formal dance routine called for in the script but his own hip-swinging moves of the day. Citizen Kane it ain't, but if you insist on seeing an Elvis movie, you could do worse. Boy, could you do worse.
But the soundtrack is the real strength here. There are lots of reasons why; first of all, it was written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, the two premier hitmakers of the day, who holed up in a hotel room for a week to crank out the tunes on time. Second, rather than releasing the soundtrack as a full-length album -- thus making it susceptible to the kind of bloat that characterized the albums made from his later films -- RCA put it out as a lean, mean five-song EP that left no room for duds. And perhaps most importantly, Jailhouse Rock is one of the only films in which Elvis is backed by the razor-sharp musicians (guitarist Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and drummer D.J. Fontana, with Stoller providing the piano licks) that played for him live, instead of a group of passionless studio hacks. That element alone makes it sound like a real record instead of a collection of cash-ins.
BEST TRACKS: As noted, with only five songs on the EP, there isn't a bad song to be found on the Jailhouse Rock soundtrack. (Beware later versions, which add as many as 20 more songs and are typically bloated and tired.) Of course, the title track is a monster, one of Elvis' greatest hits ever, with a killer vocal performance that played to his ripping rockabilly snarl and featured some great performances by Fontana and Moore; and "I Want to Be Free" was a minor hit with a memorable riff from Stoller's piano. But the two tracks not written by the Lieber/Stoller team -- "Young and Beautiful" and "Don't Leave Me Now", both by Aaron Schroeder -- are fine songs, with the latter becoming a regular in Elvis' live repertoire, and the last song on the album is the hugely enjoyable "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care", which was a hit not only for Elvis, but for Buddy Holly, Cliff Richard, and -- decades later -- Brian Setzer as well. The EP doesn't contain another song from the movie that proved to be a big hit ("Treat Me Nice"), but it's still an essential piece of the Elvis experience.
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