WORDS BY BILL DAHL
Elvis Presley’s rock and roll was revolutionary. Yet that was hardly his only mammoth innovation to pop culture. Presley’s smouldering good looks worked teenaged girls into an international lather in 1956 and far beyond, just as Southern lasses had been publicly palpitating for Elvis during his Sun years. Suddenly it was all but imperative for budding male singers to not just sound hot. They had to look hot too.
So commenced the era of the teen idol – and the gradual softening of rock’n’roll, as pretty faces and gentler tempos began to supplant the vicious rhythms and snarling vocals of Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent in the rock and roll vanguard. Teenaged lasses bought a lot of records and screamed their lungs out at shows when their heroes hit the stage, so their tastes increasingly drove the output of US labels as the second half of the decade unfolded.