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[Edited 1/27/14 17:36pm]

Jet - Apr 15, 1965

MickyDolenz said:

Jet - Apr 15, 1965

wth!

I like the photo of him smiling...next to the photo of the cops trying to tear the rabid fans offa him!

MickyDolenz said:

School of Funk

Jimmy Jam was a DJ. Morris Day was a drummer. Prince was a kid with a huge afro. Before they changed popular music, Mom told them to turn that racket down.

Peter S. Scholtes

published: July 14, 2004

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  Tear the roof off the Elks' Club: Flyte Tyme bassist Terry Lewis circa 1976

Summer, 2004. On the first of three nights at the Xcel Energy Center, Prince sits down on the floor in front of 19,000 people and reclines on some cushions. He pulls out the recent issue of Rolling Stone with his face on the cover ("Faith! Funk! Sex! He's Still Got that Red-Hot Magic") and begins thumbing through it mischievously as his band vamps on.

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Inside he sees a photo of himself from a less confident time, looking skinny with a big Afro, wearing the kind of introverted half-smile you'd expect from a future librarian. On the same page is an article about an album that finds the man of the moment looking to his past--to the summers when he and his friends Morris Day, Terry Lewis, Jimmy Jam, and others were happy to play funk in backyards and basements on the north side of Minneapolis.

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"Remember all the way back in tha' day/When we would compare whose Afro was the roundest?" Prince sings on "Reflection," the closing song on Musicology (NPG/Columbia). He rambles through the images of his youth: mirror tiles over the bed, posters and fishing nets on the walls. Then he concludes: "Sometimes I just wanna go sit out on the stoop and play my guitar/And just watch all/All the cars go by."

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You can imagine that the street he's talking about is Russell Avenue North.

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Summer, 1974. Prince is living in a basement in the home of his friend André Alexander (later André Cymone) on Russell, near Plymouth Avenue. His band practices in the damp room next door, on a red-painted floor crawling with centipedes and spiders. His second cousin Chazz plays drums, with André on bass, and André's sister Linda switching off with Prince on guitar and Farfisa organ. The boys are around 16, Linda 17. They call themselves Grand Central, having rejected "Phoenix" (from Grand Funk Railroad's 1972 album Return of the Phoenix) and "Soul Explosion." The name suggests Central High School in south Minneapolis, which Prince attends, as well as Grand Funk, and anticipates Graham Central Station, the new group led by Sly and the Family Stone bassist Larry Graham, who play O'Shaugnessy Auditorium in May of that year.

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Prince sings low, like Sly. He covers Grover Washington and Carole King. All the musicians wear Afros. So does Morris Day, a shy and freckle-faced drummer who is friends with André. Before the year is out, Day is in the band.

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In 1974, Terry Lewis is a champion sprinter at Minneapolis North High School. He plays bass in his own band, Flyte Tyme, named for a fusion song by Donald Byrd. Flyte Tyme are sort of a Parliament-Funkadelic to Grand Central's Family Stone. By the time P-Funk's mothership lands in '76, Terry and his friends are wearing space-age costumes and cramming as many as 10 musicians onstage, horns included. Cynthia Johnson, future voice of "Funkytown," sings and plays sax. Other recognizable names pass through the lineup: singers Sue Ann Carwell and Alexander O'Neal, drummer Garry "Jellybean" Johnson, and keyboardist Jimmy Harris III (later "Jimmy Jam," his DJ name at the Fox Trap disco).

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Jimmy is two years younger than Terry and goes to Washburn High School. He later says Terry and Jellybean founded the group with him in '72, calling it "Wars of Armageddon," then "Soul Vaccination." By the mid-1970s, though, Jimmy has his own band, Mind and Matter. In fact, everyone seems to have a band, and live within a few blocks of Prince. Everyone knows him, though he keeps to himself. As Jellybean puts it to author Per Nilsen years later, "he was really never one of the guys."

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You probably know what happened after that. Over the next 10 years, these young, gifted, black musicians went on to remake the sound of modern dance music. Recording his 1978 Warner Bros. debut entirely himself, Prince turned the keyboard-heavy rock of that basement on Russell Avenue into a career. He cherry-picked musicians from other bands to puppeteer the Time, a dapper new-wave funk band that pulled Morris Day out from behind his drum set. The group upstaged Prince more than once with their burlesque of Ragstock suits and mock-blueblood choreography, and even invented a new dance: "The Bird." Two members, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, became the first producer icons of pop, appearing in 1986's "Control" video with Janet Jackson, whose songs they wrote and recorded in Minneapolis.

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"The early '80s in Minnesota was the new era for urban disco and funk," says Pete Rhodes, owner of BlackMusicAmerica.com. "Even Babyface, who was in a group called the Deele out of Cincinnati, sounded just like the Time. Everybody wanted to sound like the Time."

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Today Morris Day is a benign icon of '80s self-regard. ("Don't you never say an unkind word about the Time," says Jay in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the 2001 movie. "Me and Silent Bob modeled our whole fucking lives after Morris Day and Jerome. I'm a smooth pimp who loves the pussy, and Tubby here is my black manservant.") Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have more No. 1 singles to their credit than anyone besides Sir George Martin (10 for Janet Jackson alone).

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Now, as the two producers close their Flyte Tyme studios in Edina to open a new one in Santa Monica--making the phrase "the Minneapolis sound" a permanent anachronism--it seems high time to take a closer look at the scene that started it all. Before the quiet leader of Grand Central brought home his first finished album from California, playing it for the Anderson family in their living room, live bands, not producers or DJs, defined the black music scene in the Twin Cities. While Grandmaster Flash and Kool Herc were throwing park parties in the south Bronx, Grand Central and Flyte Tyme were doing the same in north Minneapolis.

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"We just made our own gigs," says Linda Anderson, Prince's bandmate in Grand Central. "We would go around and just play in neighborhoods, set up our equipment in the park and play, and have people gather round."

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The mid-1970s found these bands getting serious--and seriously competitive. Terry and Prince started focusing more on music, less on sports. Prince quit basketball in his sophomore year; Terry suffered a football injury his senior year. Both ended up taking the same extracurricular course at Central High School, "The Business of Music," taught by a former piano player in Ray Charles's band. Terry wore a suit to class.

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Flyte Tyme and Grand Central were only two of many groups at local battles of the bands. But their main rival, besides each other, was the Family, a jazz-funk group led by bassist virtuoso Sonny Thompson. Sonny went to North High School with Terry, but he was older and always seemed a step ahead of everybody else. He rocked a Jimi Hendrix look, wearing long leather jackets, pink and black, and could play any instrument well. He knew how to record backward on his four-track. He was also beginning to forgo other interests (karate and physics) to teach himself music theory. Terry played in Sonny's band before forming Flyte Tyme, and Prince often came by Sonny's house to borrow effects pedals. Like his peers, Prince idolized Sonny.

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"It's funny, we were all playing at a community center, the Family and Grand Central," remembers Sonny Thompson. "I show up with this white suit on, and their whole band has the same suit."

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The competition was friendly, though, and soon Prince and André were hanging out in Sonny's basement. "My mom, she would fry chicken, and we would just jam and eat," Sonny says. "That's how we grew up. I would have a band come over and rehearse in the front room, blocking the TV. Mom was cool with it."

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When this scene was mythologized in the 1984 movie Purple Rain, the story left out one detail: helpful parents who weren't crazy. After Morris Day began drumming for Grand Central, his mom took over as the band's manager, pushing the group to become more professional. Grand Central became Grand Central Corporation, a company that owned each member's instrument. (When Prince left the band, he bitterly forfeited his Stratocaster.) André and Linda's mom Bernadette Anderson, who died last year, gave Prince a home. (She is known among hip-hoppers for providing an early space for parties at the Uptown YWCA.)

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Prince's dad, a jazz man who couldn't have been further from Clarence Williams III's brooding brute in the movie, was at many of the early Grand Central shows taking pictures. By all accounts, the older generation of musicians took pride in the young upstarts. (Prince's uncle and Jimmy Jam's dad played on the first rock 'n' roll hit out of Minnesota, Augie Garcia's 1955 single "Hi Yo Silver.")

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"It was more of a family-knit thing back then," says Walter "Q-Bear" Banks, a longtime programmer at KMOJ-FM (89.9). "Flyte Tyme, Grand Central, they were brothers that I grew up with. We played football on Saturday mornings over at Lincoln Field right off of Penn. Parents brung us Kool-Aid. If somebody did something wrong, there was a parent there to say, 'Hey, keep it in order.' Then that parent would call your parents and say, 'Hey, your son's out here clowning, and I had to spank him up.' And you got two spankings that day."

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By 1974, the Family was being managed by longtime local activist Harry "Spike" Moss. For years, Moss had been a director at the Way, a storefront community center founded in 1966. Before the United Way cut the agency's funding in the '80s, the Way served as a kind of boys' club and outreach center for kids who in today's parlance would be called "at risk." It was also a locus of musical activity, hosting a succession of teen concerts and cordoning off Plymouth Avenue for festivals featuring all the young bands. ("To my knowledge," says Q-Bear, "it all started back at the Way.")

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"Spike was a really active-in-the-community kind of guy," remembers Morris Day of Grand Central and the Time. "But I wasn't a Way type of person. A lot of tough kids hung out there, and I kind of shied away."

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Linda Anderson says her parents wouldn't allow her to go to the Way, at least back when the Andersons lived in the projects. The agency's black-power philosophy was long established and controversial. When four blocks of Plymouth Avenue went up in flames in the July riots of 1967, police accused the Way of inciting the fire-bombers. But seven years later, Moss was up to something truly subversive: running a school of rock.

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The Way Opportunities and Music School recruited organist Bobby Lyle and other musicians to teach kids about music--how to play it, how to read it, how to take it to the marketplace. "The one thing that we requested of all the students was that you give back to the next class," says Spike Moss. "So they'd come back and teach the next group coming through. As a matter of fact, the guy that taught Prince was Sonny Thompson. He was the baddest of all of them that came through the class."

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Thompson describes Prince as a "sponge" rather than a student, soaking up knowledge from anyone he played with, and most musicians took pride in doing their thing without adult assistance. Jimmy Jam, who had started DJing at the Roller Gardens, remembers booking his band Mind and Matter at a downtown Minneapolis hotel himself. "That event drew something like 2,000 people, and pulled from the white clubs," he says. "With black and white, there's prejudice until there's green involved." The first big downtown club to open its doors to Jimmy and his friends was Uncle Sam's, which later changed its name to First Avenue.

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Most black groups drawing black audiences were restricted to playing black-owned clubs. Thriving on the new bands, Jimmie Fuller's smoke-filled Cozy Bar and Lounge on Plymouth let them all play. (When the city bought the place out for highway expansion, the money went into launching the late Riverview Supper Club). There was also the Nacirema ("American" spelled backwards) over south, a "bring your own bottle" bar that kept booze in a cabinet to sidestep liquor laws.

"It was supposed to be a private club, all adult," says Sonny Thompson. "But once again, all the kids were playing. The police would raid it, too. We'd be playing, and next thing you know all these cops were on the stage with us."

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For most of the kids, bars were a new world. Few of the musicians drank, smoked, or did drugs. "We were kind of even naive in that sense, I would say," says Linda Anderson. "Because, growing up, we weren't around people who got drunk or people who got high. So when we'd see that, we'd say, 'Look at that!'"

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By 1976, Prince couldn't wait to escape this scene. One of his first original songs was called "Go to New York" (it contained the lyric "Sitting here on the purple lawn"). But he never really left Minnesota, and over the past three decades, he seems to have tried to recreate the feel of his formative years on Minneapolis's north side.

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Prince has hired and rehired old friends, including Sonny Thompson, who recently played at Paisley Park with the Legendary Combo. He named an unrelated '80s new wave band the Family, and titled the Time (who were recent surprise openers for Prince on the second night at the Xcel) in obvious homage to Flyte Tyme. From Myst, a leggy black female trio he caught one night at the Nacirema, he took inspiration for Vanity 6, who debuted at the same bar. The three sisters in Myst eventually formed Best Kept Secret, who were also invited out to Paisley in June.

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Prince might miss the sense of community that comes from nobody being a star and everyone wanting to be one. If that's the case, of course, there's no going back. He's still on the stoop somewhere playing his guitar. But all of the cars are in valet parking.

Thanks for this!

I hadn't seen this particular one before, but I really enjoy the articles about the early days of the Minneapolis sound/scene, and their childhood. It really seems like a bygone era, and a special time.

Wish young urban youths now were so involved in music and battle of the bands, and grown-ups in their lives keeping an eye on them and encouraging them.

Last Concert:

Elvis arrives in Indiana

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Award for his latest album Moody Blue.

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[Edited 2/4/14 9:46am]

"Tones" Magazine - Interview with Jellybean Johnson

June 2002

Jellybean Johnson has known Prince since he was 13 years old when they were attending Lincoln Junior High School in Minneapolis. He has known Morris Day since he was 12 years old. The journey that would take him from his childhood through a whirlwind of success including performing with The Time and within the movie Purple Rain, would return him home to Minneapolis and the music scene that found him. Things are a lot different for Jellybean now, but the music still matters and flows through him to his audience with power and passion. Jellybean Johnson is a soft-spoken man who plays guitar like lightning and still performs as the drummer with The Time when touring outside of Minneapolis. When Jellybean looks back at his role within the spectrum of what was the "Minneapolis Sound," he speaks of being a peacemaker. When egos flared and old school friends grew famous, Jellybean walked softly through the mayhem and offered a stable disposition to the dynamic. You can see the reason Jellybean was welcome in the circle that was turbulent at times with movies, concerts, fame and fortune always tugging at the seams. He has an old soul, a comfortable way about him, and a strong and trusting look in his eye. He doesn't seem to rattle when confusion stirs around him, and from atop his tall frame he never looks down upon those around him. A confident man, yet humble, he seems to be at peace with where he's been and where he is. Jellybean shared some thoughts with us one evening just before a gig with his band The Routine at the Minnesota Music Cafe on Payne and Seventh avenues in St. Paul.

TONE: How did you get the name Jellybean?

Jellybean: We were playing at the Flame Bar on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, and Robert Martin said, "We sound like a buncha jellybeans!" The next day they got me a T- shirt that said Jellybean on it, and it stuck. We used to play there six days a week as Flyte Time and the Standelles. Cynthia Johnson was the vocalist in the band until she left to sing "Funkytown" for Steven Greenberg around 1980.

TONE: You guys played in '77 at my Eden Prairie High School prom at the Marriott Hotel. You guys wore orange jump suits. You got the entire group of us kids in a circle and we did the Soul Train thing: everybody takes a turn dancing in the middle. We had a great time!

Jellybean: Yeah, that was our P-Funk phase, when we wore the tuna suits.

TONE: I recall running into, I think, Terry Lewis at Berns Music in Bloomington in '80, an old house full of music stuff in a back alley. I told him we really enjoyed the prom. I asked him what clubs to look for the band at, and asked if they were playing a lot. He told me that it was hard because club owners didn't like the kind to of clientele the band brought in. Was there racism that was obvious! What was it like trying to find gigs!

Jellybean: Right about that time,'77-'78, we played a lot at Acirema, which was America spelled backwards. We were young and black. We used to play hotels, black sorority houses, The Fox Trot, and the Flame Bar downtown used to have us. We were a nine- or ten-piece band with horns and keys. Originally, there was a big rivalry between Flyte Time and Prince's band, Grand Central. We'd play at festivals in Wheatley Park all day and all night. That's where it all started.

TONE: Prince was developing his talent, evolving.

Jellybean: I remember going to see him do a concert at the Capri Theater. It was a movie theater in North Minneapolis. It was packed. It was strange to see your friend Prince up there, girls screaming all over the place. I was impressed, with how far he'd come, his talent. In '78, he came out with "For You."

TONE: Was it "4U," or "For You."

Jellybean: For You.

TONE: So he actually spelled s**t back then!

Jellybean: (laughing) Yeah.

TONE: As he was making it, what were you doing?

Jellybean: In '79-'80 1 was at the U of M studying speech communication.

TONE: What did you want to be?

Jellybean: A DJ or sports announcer or radio announcer.

TONE: But you became a musician.

Jellybean: I was originally a drummer. Morris Day, who is a phenomenal drummer, and a lefty, and I used to set our drums up next to each other at his mom's. I started messin' around with guitar. Drums are very physical. Guitar is a spiritual and emotional thing for me.

TONE: Tell me about when Prince hit and what that meant for The Time.

Jellybean: I'I1 never forget it. After I saw that concert at the Capri, we were in the studio trying to cut our own deal. He would tell us that he'd like to help us but he couldn't do anything yet. We'd seen him make it, watched him establishing himself. We're spending money on this demo, a bunch of snotty-nosed Northside guys. Prince and Morris had a deal. He had been touring all around the country looking for musicians for a movie. He found Jesse Johnson in Illinois. Then there was the fateful meeting, and I wasn't invited! Finally, Prince comes to us and says, "This is what's going to happen." Jesse Johnson moved here from Illinois, Bobby Z was his drummer, and Prince and Morris wrote a song called "Party Up." His gift back to us was to put together a band. It was, at the time, Flyte Time with Alexander O'Neal. After the meeting, Alexander O'Neal pretty much said, "If there isn't going to be a bunch of money, then I'm not in."

TONE: O'Neal went on to some success, didn't he?

Jellybean: Yeah, he has three gold records. The Time has four albums, three gold and one platinum.

TONE: So how did The Time shape up after Alexander left?

Jellybean: Morris was going to be lead singer, Terry Lewis on bass, Jesse Johnson on guitar, and Monty Moir and Jimmy Jam on keyboards. I played drums.

TONE: And this all for the movie Purple Rain?

Jellybean: Yeah. We started taking acting lessons everyday.

TONE: what was that like?

Jellybean: We were taking ballet, pirouetting and s**t across the floor. In a weird way, it was quite exciting, at 5 a.m. we're on this movie set, which was killer, until 6 or 7 p.m. in the evening, for three months, non-stop!

TONE: Tell me about working with Prince.

Jellybean: He and I had a fight scene that got edited out of the movie. He accidentally hit me. He was quite apologetic. The scenes were fun. During the shooting of "The Bird," Prince was making us shoot it over and over again. There was a lot of just hangin' around at First Avenue and The Union Bar.

TONE: Wasn't there another big "real" fight that happened?

Jellybean: This has been written about in other books, but yeah. A couple, I mean. I was always in the middle. Prince used to always treat Jimmy the worst. Because they're both geniuses, they clashed. Now, in hindsight, Jimmy deserved most of that s*'t. Prince fired Jimmy and Terry when they missed a gig. It wasn't their fault. I quit, and Prince asked me to come back. I was having my first child, Bianca. Jesse said, "C,mon let's do this thing." So I came back, but Jimmy and Terry didn't. I was asked to fix it, but it was years later that Prince, Jimmy and Terry mended fences. The other fight was between Morris Day and Prince. It was during filming, a fistfight, and I had to break it up. These are two enormous egos, and eventually it came to a head. There was one big show at First Avenue that was supposed to happen. After the show, Morris was OUT the back door into his waiting Porsche with his girlfriend and GONE! The Time disbanded. The next time I saw Morris (laughs), he was talkin' about the "Oak Tree."

TONE: What happened after Purple Rain and all of that was over?

Jellybean: Prince kept me on. I just followed him around on tour. He was engaged to Suzanna, Lisa's (guitar player for Prince and the Revolution) sister. He was putting together a group called The Family with Paul Peterson, Jerome, Eric Leeds and me. I was just hangin' out. It was a bit funand sad.

TONE: Tell me about The Time now.

Jellybean: There are four original Time members still with the band; Monte Moir, Morris Day, Jerome Benton and me. Jellybean Johnson still tours with those four original members of the Time periodically, recently performing in New Orleans. His other band, The Routine, performs Tuesday nights at the Minnesota Music Cafe in St. Paul. He also plays guitar with the TC Jammers at Bunkers on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis on Thursday nights.

George Michael, Morrissey, & Tony Blackburn on Eight Days A Week {1984}

David Foster interviewed by Chris "Kid" Reid on Later {1997}

October 29, 1984

^ wow Blondie..

Saw this on Netflix Great watch. Hanks daughter auditioned for Idol but didn't make it this year. Cool TTD photo never seen it before.

MickyDolenz said:

Aloha From Hawaii - 1957

By Haruo Hirose ( Japan )

I've been an Elvis fan for a long time and I am especially interested in his early days. I have written this article to shine some light on Elvis' appearances in Hawaii during 1957. I obtained some of the information from two local newspapers, The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star -Bulletin.

Photographer unknown © Aboard The Matsonia on November 9, 1957

On November 9, 1957, Elvis arrived in Hawaii on the Matsonia at 9:00 a.m. and was welcomed by the shrieks of some 4,000 fans. Before he landed, he met the press aboard ship.

Speaking with a Southern slur and often punctuating his answers with "Sir, " Elvis freely admitted, " I'm pretty green when it comes to clothes. I don't pay over $7 for a shirt and $10 for a pair of shoes... but I do plan to stock up on a Hawaiian outfit while I'm here. " Elvis wore a white knit sweater with a large rolled collar, a wine-colored sports coat and black slacks. Asked if he might visit any neighbor islands, he said, " It depends on how we're received here. Elvis explained their sudden decision to visit the Islands this way, " It was a real rush deal. We were in Hollywood to make a picture ( King Creole, then unnamed ), but it was postponed until the first of the year. We weren't doing anything, so Mr. Parker asked if we'd like to go to Hawaii. I said, " Huh, and was packed right away ".

Photographer unknown © November 10, 1957

As for his traveling companions, mostly high school friends and disc jockeys, Elvis said, "I like to have my friends along... it gives me a little touch of home. Anyway, it's more fun to see things together. I've got a waiting list... pretty long one... of friends who want to make trips with me. In fact I've heard from lots of so-called old friends from years ago who always say, " You remember me, don't you? " As for such nicknames as " Elvis the Pelvis, " Elvis said " There's nothing I can do about it, but it sounds like little kids trying to find something to rhyme with Elvis. " He said, " I would eventually like to be a good actor. I haven't had time up to now, but I would like to study for it. " Asked why he didn't use the plane, he said, " I don't like airplanes. I'm scared stiff of them. In fact, we could've been on the one missing now. " The Jordanaires and his band arrived by plane later the same day.

On Sunday, November 10, Elvis appeared twice at the Honolulu Stadium and drew 14,963 spectators who paid $32, 000. Elvis was reported to get more than half of it. After juggling, hula, sword dancing,and jive, Elvis appeared on the open air stage dressed in a gold lame jacket, a black shirt, and black slacks. Elvis sang, " Don't Be Cruel, "That's When Your Heartaches Begin, " and many more, but the screams drowned out his voice a great portion of the time. Elvis had only to say, "Thank you very much, " and the audience would come apart. He’d scratch his nose... another scream. He’d laugh... another scream. At times, Elvis seemed to deliberately drop his arm or wiggle his shoulder just to hear his fans react. He performed for about forty minutes. Surprisingly, he spent more time at the piano than he did with his guitar. As he sang the closing number, " Hound Dog, " he sat down on the edge of the stage. .. and then jumped down, off the stage, onto the grass section in front of the stage. He rolled on the grass and moaned out the words to, " Hound Dog. " He kissed a girl across the barricade set up to keep his audience away from the stage,. grabbed a coconut hat and paraded with it on his head. After he finished the song, he stepped into a waiting car and sped out of sight.

Photographer unknown © November 10, 1957

After the matinee performance, Elvis held a press conference at the Hawaiian Village Carousel Room:

Q (press): Do you like Hawaii?

A (Elvis): I love it. If I can move, I'll move here... if they'll ever deport me. I never realized that I'd be in Hawaii. I heard of the place...

Q: What do you think of the local fans ?

A: Teriffic! I want to say my reception in Hawaii was one of the most well-behaved of my career. I've been on stage long enough to tell if an audience has manners, and today I could have safely leapt off the stage into the midst of them.

Q: What are your vital statistics?

A: Six feet tall, I reckon, and 180 pounds.

Q: Do you exercise when you're not singing?

A: No. That's enough.

Q: What are your favorite colors?

A: Depends on what it is. Cars I like in loud colors, clothes in dark colors.

Q: How often do you have a haircut?

A: Not very often. And when I do, it doesn't look like a haircut.

Q: What is your ambition?

A: My ambition is to be a good actor. But I'll never put my singing second 'cause that's what gave me the opportunity to become an actor.. .I sing a lot at home... I think that I'm learning more. . . I enj oy making movies.

Q:What do you think of your film, "Love Me Tender?

A: I was miscast. I shouldn't have been in it. It was rushed...

Q:What's your favorite song?

A: My favorite recorded tune is "Don't Be Cruel. I also like "You'll Never Walk Alone" and " Til "

Q: Do you think of your fans when you are at a recording session or performing,on stage?

A: You have to think of them to try to get songs that people will like.

Q: Did you invent Rock In' Roll?

A: I explored it. It existed long before I did. It was called Rhythm and Blues. I just tried a new interpretation.

Q: What's your ancestry?

A: Irish, I reckons and some Italian. Never gave it a thought.

Q: What's the first thing you'll look for in your wife?

A: Female.

Q: How about her Southern cooking?

A: I don't like fried chicken. I like pineapples and Coconuts.

Q: Has Success affected your life?

A: Of course. I never realized anything like this was possible... that I'd ever be in Hawaii or Las Vegas or Hollywood. It's quite a change to jump into this stuff. If you're not careful., you'll crack up.

Q: Is it true you're asking $100,000 for a TV appearance ?

A: I'll have to ask my manager. Colonel Parker brought out the fact that why be on TV and let 60 million people see me free when we charge the movie makers so they can charge the audience to see me. Understand? I don't.

Qo you feel an obligation to your public?

A: I do feel an obligation. I'm very careful not to do anything that would disappoint my fans.I behave myself all the time. People have preconceived ideas about me... it's natural. I've often said I won't like that person, and then found out he's a nice guy.

Q: What's your -reaction to those older people who don't like you?

A: I can't please everybody. Maybe they're Pat Boone fans.

Photographer unknown © November 10, 1957

On November 11, Elvis did another concert at Schofield Barracks Military Reservation and drew another 10, 000 fans. This was Elvis' last live performance before joining the army. On November 13, Elvis left for the mainland on the Lurline. Colonel Parker planned an Australian tour following their visit to Hawaii, but it was to be. Colonel Parker said, " We're always open to a last minute switch. "

Mr. Haruo Hirose article was originally published in January 1975 in the Strictly Elvis No.81. Mr. Hirose is also the webmaster of the excellent website " Elvis World - Japan " since 1995, an official Fan Club site. Make sure to visit his site !!!