Replies

[King Of Gracelan...]

In the first part, Jerry talks about his background and his career.
It's actually difficult to find anything other than the most basic facts on him, and even reference-books like 'Elvis - His Life From A To Z' are disappointing in that respect.
So we felt that some backgrounds were necessary to put the interview into perspective.
In the second part you'll find our interview about his years with Presley.

Jerry Talks:
"I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, played tuba in grammar school and started playing string bass in the seventh grade.
I played in junior symphony as well as the school orchestra and played tuba in the Vallejo municipal band at age twelve.
We moved to Sacramento, CA when I was fourteen .
My mother was very supportive and took me to see concerts such as Jazz at the Philharmonic and Lionel Hamptons band.
I played mostly Jazz and classical music at the time, and listened to black R&B as well as Jazz stations from Oakland, CA.
At about age fifteen, I started to play in clubs and "after hours" sessions.
I played with mostly Jazz musicians who were into the East Coast Jazz scene.
In 1957 and 1958, I hung out in San Francisco some and played in an after hour club called "Jimbo's Bop City".
All the jazz musicians who came to town would come to play there.
Miles Davis sat on as well as John Coltrane and his band.
I never got to play with them, I would have been scared to death!
It was the "beat" era and there were a lot of drugs floating around.
I would beg some of the musicians to shoot me up....
I was a skinny towheaded white kid and I always felt like I was being protected.
Fortunately they did not give in to my desires.
One morning at about 3:00 a.m. at Jimbo's, a women came up on stage to sing.
She had on a pendelton shirt with a skirt and work boots.
This was 1958 and I had never seen anyone dressed like that.
She turned around and said "blues in F" as she stomped the time with her work boots.
The dust flew up from the carpet into the spotlight and away we went.
I was in heaven!
The singer was Big Momma Thorton.

[King Of Gracelan...]

But that was at the October 1976 session...
Yeah.
It was a rock 'n' roll song, and we worked on it for an hour.
One night we were sitting in the Lisa Marie, and I asked him: "How come you don't do rock 'n' roll songs anymore?".
And he said something like: "I can't find any that I like".
So I went home and wrote 'Fire Down Below'.
I played it for Felton Jarvis, and he said: "Oh man, yeah!".
So he set it up.
We worked on it for an hour, and then Elvis...
It wasn't just that song, but we stopped recording altogether.
He called me up to his bedroom about an hour after that, and said: "Listen Jerry, you guys go ahead and cut a track on it, and I promise I'll put my voice on it".
But it was a throwback to what he didn't want to do again.
It was in that rock 'n' roll vein, and I'm sure that Elvis didn't want to be a rock 'n' roll singer anymore.
People were trying to force him in that direction, and he'd just go: "No way, man. Time out".

And yet he recorded a song like 'Way Down'.
Yeah, figure that out.
Maybe my luck was that my song didn't come up before 'Way Down' came up.

Towards the end of his life, Elvis was criticized badly for his appearance, his weight gain and so forth.
You know, I've always been the kind of person that...
I don't judge people on what they look like or on their faces.
Period. I think that it very well could be that Elvis thought that he was a normal American man approaching middle age, and let himself go a little bit: "It wasn't anybody's business".
The idea that it was Elvis' duty to keep himself pristine looking is ludicrous.
It makes me angry to think that people think that.
Why, what does he owe them?
He doesn't owe them anything.