主播大秀

by Bob Stanley

On August 12th 1965 was the date of the ultimate pop culture summit meeting - the Beatles visited Elvis Presley at Graceland. Elvis had just got back from filming Paradise Hawaiian Style, and there had been talk of the Beatles singing with Elvis at the end of the film, but it turned out their United Artists movie contract apparently meant it was impossible.

Elvis was understandably a little wary of the foursome who had usurped him as king of pop. John Lennon passed on a message to Elvis sidekick Jerry Schilling saying "if it hadn't been for him, I would have been nothing." but for the Beatles the meeting itself was something of an anti-climax. They played pool. They met Priscilla. When the conversation began to flag, Elvis reached for his favourite record of the moment - Charlie Rich's Mohair Sam - and played it repeatedly on the jukebox. The Beatles and Elvis were in agreement. Mohair Sam was a very fine record.

Born in Colt, Arkansas, Charlie Rich was initially a jazz pianist who had signed to Sun Records in 1958, some two years after Elvis had left the label for RCA and international fame and fortune. Initially Sun boss Sam Philips saw him as a writer, and Jerry Lee Lewis had a hit with his Break Up, but Rich eventually released records of his own, scoring his first US Top 30 hit with the hand-clapping Lonely Weekends in 1960. With a relaxed and resonant voice, Rich could hold his head high next to former Sun singers Elvis and Roy Orbison, but he wouldn't score another hit until the gum-chewing cool of Mohair Sam in '65. It was released on the Smash label, where Rich cut a pair of fabulous albums - The Many New Sides of Charlie Rich and The Best Years - mixing jazz, soul, R&B and rock'n'roll. Rich could convincingly cover all bases. Sales, though, were disappointingly slim.

After a stint on Hi (where he recorded the original version of Isaac Hayes and David Porter's beautiful When Something Is Wrong With My Baby), Rich ended the sixties on Epic, the label which finally married his voice to a commercial style - in the seventies, the Silver Fox scored country million sellers with The Most Beautiful Girl and Behind Closed Doors.

The Smash years, though, were arguably has best - fans of the Big O should check out tracks like Something Just Came Over Me and A Field Of Yellow Daisies, both written by his wife Margaret Ann. You can only think how much of a boost it would have been to Charlie Rich if Elvis and the Beatles' mutual love of Mohair Sam had made the news in 1965.