Singer Hank Ballard said 'There are two artists;
I don't think any two men on this planet ever had the charisma of Elvis Presley and Jackie Wilson'. 'The two of them remind me of each other; the charisma.
- Jackie Leroy Wilson -- was born on June 9, 1934. He was an American soul singer and performer. A tenor with a four-octave vocal range, he was nicknamed "Mr. Excitement", and was important in the transition of rhythm and blues to pop music.Wilson first gained fame with the group Billy Ward and his Dominoes, which he joined in 1953. He became a solo act in 1957. His first major hit, "Lonely Teardrops," was released in 1958. Jackie "Sonny" Wilson was born in Detroit, Michigan, the only son of Jack and Eliza Mae Wilson from Columbus, Mississippi. His father was an alcoholic and constantly unemployed, and his mother, who had lost two earlier children, doted on Jackie and became a powerful influence in his life. He began to sing at an early age, and even formed a quartet called The Ever Ready Gospel Singers Group. He began drinking at age nine, and in 1950 at age 16 dropped out of high school. He married Freda Hood, his childhood sweetheart, and a daughter arrived in March, 1951. Jackie collapsed on stage in 1975 and for the majority of the next nine years, he spent in a coma, dying on January 21, 1984.
- Elvis Aron Presley -- was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Gladys Love Presley/Smith in the two-room shotgun house built by his father, Vernon Elvis Presley, in preparation for the birth. Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn. Minnie Mae Hood married Jessie D. McDowell Presley on July 20, 1913. The couple welcomed their first child, Vernon Presley, on April 10, 1916.Vernon Presley served a nine month jail sentence for forgery. Interesting how Jackie married a Hood from Mississippi .
Elvis and Jackie on Stage
- Emmett Louis Till -- was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, the only child of Louis and Mamie Till. In August 1955,his uncle, Moses Wright, came up from Mississippi to visit the family in Chicago. At the end of his stay, Wright was planning to take Emmett's cousin back to Mississippi with him to visit relatives down South, and when Emmett, who was just 14 years old at the time, learned of these plans, he begged his mother to let him go . Initially, his mother was opposed to the idea. But Emmett desperately wanted to spend time with his cousins in Mississippi, and in a fateful decision that would have an impact on the course of American history, his mother relented. Three days after arriving in Money, Mississippi on August 24, 1955, Emmett Till and a group of teenagers entered Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market to buy refreshments after a long day picking cotton in the hot afternoon sun. What exactly transpired inside the grocery store that afternoon will never be known. He purchased bubble gum, and in later accounts he was accused of either whistling at, flirting with or touching the hand of the store's white female clerk and wife of the owner, Carolyn Bryant.
- This was a key incident in the black rights movement because four days later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam, kidnapped Emmett. They then beat the teenager brutally, dragged him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan and shoved his mutilated body into the water. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them. This fueled the emerging Civil Rights Movement.
- Twelve months after the Emmett Till incident a meeting of the two giants of the music industry occurred in Vegas. While there is no visual proof of them meeting. I would say it was quite possible as there is film of Elvis meeting Liberace and other celebrities at the Sahara, around this period. During the Million Dollar Quartet sessions at Sun records on December 4th 1956 . Elvis talks about the “slender” “colored” singer that he saw a couple of weeks prior in Las Vegas fronting Billy Ward’s Dominoes. The Dominoes had been playing the lounge at the Sahara and Elvis attended several of their shows. Presley says the singer tried “Hound Dog” and didn’t do very well, but his version of “Don’t Be Cruel” was so impressive that Elvis spends a bit of time impersonating the impersonator doing his own song. Jackie “sang hell outta that song” and did it better “than that record of mine.” While he pokes fun of Wilson’s pronunciation of the word “telephone” in “Don’t Be Cruel”, getting a rousing laugh from the room, Elvis seems to have adopted Jackies spin on the word when he performed it on the Ed Sullivan Show a month later.
- Jackie Wilson on Elvis, 'A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man's music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis'.
Love Train Jackie Wilson
Going to check in to Heartbreak Hotel
- Jesse Belvin -- The night of February 6 1960 a concert performed by black entertainers to an integrated audience in Little Rock, Arkansas took place. When Jackie Wilson, Arthur Prysock, and Jesse Belvin took the stage racists interrupted the show several times to walk through the audience and demand that white teenagers leave. Jesse Belvin, his wife, and their driver died as a result of a car crash after that concert. It is widely believed that someone tampered with their car before they hit the highway. Jackie Wilson and his friends Sam Cooke and Jesse Belvin reached the peaks of their careers. Two of them Sam Cooke and Jesse Belvin met untimely deaths. The rage, racist white males felt at the thought of their white women, finding black men attractive , it was a risk, Jackie Wilson, faced on every tour.
The Way I Am
Jackie Wilson
- Jackie was bashed unconscious at one concert by police after coming to the assistance of his fellow performer who police were obstructing from singing on the front edge of the stage because of just this. Then in 1961 Jackie was shot twice in the stomach by Juanita Jones, an aspiring model, after hearing about his affair with Harlean Harris, ex-girlfriend of singer Sam Cooke. Wilson was rushed to the hospital where quick surgery saved his life, although he lost a kidney. Since one of the bullets was too close to his spine, doctors ruled out removing it. Wilson would have to carry it around for the rest of his life. Jackie Wilson was incredibly naive and easily trusting, something that his manager Tarnpool took advantage of and something i think Elvis and Jackie had in common or maybe they just wanted to sing/perform and not get into the dark money making side of the business which probably cost Sam Cooke his life. The problem is with corporate greed its a reality in the world of music as it is in all other walks of life. We have all heard about big record labels that steal money from their artists, exploit their stars to gain greater fortune and try to control young up and comers. These major record labels are like the Wall Street of music. Back in 1988 there were the big six, Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony, BMG, Universal Music Group and PolyGram only three continue today having absorbed their other competitors and established themselves as financially dominant on the music market.
- Sam Cooke -- In the early 1960s, he started his own record company, SAR Records.He saw where the money was going. He understood why his fellow stars, such as his friend Jackie Wilson, made hit after hit without seeing the money they should be collecting. He wrote and published his own songs and he began buying back his own masters from RCA, insuring he would eventually take in a healthy return on reissues. In 1964, Jackie Wilson was tortured (literally) into resigning a contract with Brunswick/Tarnopol. It’s thought Jackie wanted to sign with his buddy Sam Cooke’s company and the story about Jackie’s torture and the murder of Sam Cooke in December of that same year,I believe ,were acts to keep artists in line. Cooke was one of the most prolific R&B singers of his time. With 19 albums and 29 Top 40 singles under his belt by the age of 33, it looked like nothing was going to stop him from taking over the world. Cooke and his long-time friend and singing associate J. W. Alexander started the SAR label in 1957.The label folded after Sam Cooke's death on December 11, 1964. Sam was making a strong commitment to the civil rights movement,at the time and his song A Change Is Gonna Come was adopted as a kind of anthem for the movement.
Jackie Wilson Talking about Elvis
- Starting from 1962 Jackie and Elvis became even closer with Wilson visiting various movie sets during the mid sixties. The first was on the Girls,Girls,Girls set as mentioned in Priscilla Presleys book. While filming the sequence where Elvis performs Return To Sender she says Jackie was sitting right there in the studio and this is why you see the Jackie Wilson moves in his performance. He was doing an imitation of Jackie. They are similar to the moves he does in the filming of the song Bossanova Baby in 1963 except Jackie was'nt there, on this occassion. In May1965, Elvis started filming the movie Frankie and Johnny which was six months after the death of Jackie's friend, Sam Cooke . Sam was shot by Bertha Franklin in the Hacienda Motel. It is interesting that one of Sam's final hit records, just a year, before his death was Frankie and Johnny. Then in 1966, Elvis friend and DJ, George Klein arranges a meeting of Elvis and James Brown at a Jackie Wilson show. Elvis walks over to James at his table and introduces himself. James was impressed that Elvis shook his hand in front of the crowd. After this show Elvis would attend an after party where a strong friendship would grow between the three of them. James would at times visit Graceland spending the night singing gospel songs for hours, with Elvis. Following this show Jackie would visit Elvis on the set of Double Trouble. A movie which would be one of the lowest point of the Kings career.
- James Brown -- “I wasn’t just a fan, I was his brother. Elvis was a hard worker, dedicated, and God loved him … I love him and hope to see him in heaven. There’ll never be another like that soul brother”.When Elvis died James Brown was allowed to view Elvis, at the open casket for several minutes and was visibly saddened. James on Elvis dying, “his death hit me very hard. When he died, I said, ‘That’s my friend, I have to go”.
- During the seventies Elvis and Jackie would visit each others shows. In a 1974 concert you hear Elvis introduce Jackie and sings a one line of Higher and Higher. There is many images of the two together but the later ones from 74/75 are not flattering to either as they had both put on weight and the hard life of a musician had obviously started taking its toll on both. It was while performing at a Dick Clarke Show on September 29th 1975 that Jackie fell to his knees singing My heart is crying, people thought it was initially a part of the show. Jackie was never to recover remaining in a coma with moments of consciousness for nine years. It is believed Elvis visited Jackie in hospital and offered his family money for medical bills. This has never been varified by the family but i can envisage the King doing this. He loved Jackie who i think played a big part in many of Elvis performances. If you listen to Rags to Riches, a song he would record in 1970 . It is very close to Jackies version from Billy Ward and the Dominoes in 1953.
Two Poor Boys That Loved to Sing
From Rags to Riches
Elvis Presley 1970
19 year old Jackie Wilson 1953
No comments:
Post a Comment