Martin Hodder On Elvis

I've been following your utterings on the web thingy and at last I've spotted some comments with which I wholeheartedly agree. "Listen to Elvis as though you're hearing him for the first time," you suggest. Well done!

As someone who DID hear Elvis from the absolute beginning, on Radio Luxembourg, I can assure you that the impact was profound, and very much more so than was the case with any of his contemporaries. I can't remember precisely how it affected me, but it was obvious from the very start that the songs of Elvis Presley (as he was referred to then, of course) were in a class entirely of their own.

I remember when the film Jailhouse Rock finally made it to Ipswich. I hadn't long known Mum then, and of course we both wanted to see it. I couldn't go, because the week it was on I was working a shift (I was a police cadet then) that didn't finish until 10pm, and there was nothing I could do about it. So she went on her own, and I dashed from the police station just after 10 to meet up with her and walk her home. She was genuinely in a trance-like state, and had lines down her face where she'd been crying in the cinema.

That's the effect Elvis had on teenagers in the fifties. And, do you know, I've never met any of our contemporaries who have ever lost their love of his music. Even now, as an old git, I still play it regularly when I'm supposed to be working in my little office here. And, especially his early songs still move me in much the same way.


Martin Hodder is the father of the author of this blog. An extremely good writer, as the above shows, with a list of publishing credits longer than mine will ever be, including notable stints with MOTOR CYCLE NEWS, PRACTICAL PHOTOGRAPHY, AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER, and VIDEO REVIEW, among many many others. The musings above are from an email to the author and are reproduced with Martin's kind permission. Normally he gets paid for this sort of thing, you know!