On this date in 1957, Elvis Presley recorded Jailhouse Rock. Ten facts about the song:
The song was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who also wrote Hound Dog.
It featured in a film, also called Jailhouse Rock. Although the song gave its title to the movie, not the other way around. The film was supposed to be called Ghost of a Chance, but after this number had been recorded, producers realised it would be a massive hit and renamed the film after it.
In the film, Elvis plays a wrongly accused convict who becomes a star when he gets out.
The Purple Gang mentioned in the lyrics really existed. They were the prominent mobster gang in Detroit in the 1920s, also known as the Sugar House Gang. Excessive violence and infighting caused the gang to destroy itself in the 1930s.
Jailhouse Rock was intended to be a comedy song, but Elvis sang it as straight rock and roll.
The lyric “Number 47 says to Number 3, 'You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see'” is hailed by scholars as a reference to gay sex in prisons. However, it wasn’t offensive enough for the censors of the day to ban it.
The song on the B side was Treat Me Nice, another song from the movie.
Jailhouse Rock was re-released in January 2005 to commemorate what would have been Elvis’s 70th birthday. It shot to number one, making it the oldest recording ever to top the UK charts and the third single to hit #1 twice in the UK, a feat only previously achieved by Bohemian Rhapsody and My Sweet Lord, both of which were also posthumous re-releases.
Ozzy Osbourne played a heavy metal version in 1987 when he did a tour of prisons.
Rolling Stone magazine included Jailhouse Rock at number 67 on its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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