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Steve Allen, who was one of the most versatile entertainers on television (he also wrote books, plays, and songs), was a comic genius. But a lot of Elvis fans still think he did their man wrong when he hosted him on July 1, 1956. For “Hound Dog,” Elvis was dressed in a tuxedo, and he sang not to the audience, but to a basset hound set up in front of him. I met Allen many years later on a radio show I was hosting. He was clearly never an Elvis fan. He’d seen him on the Dorsey Brothers’ Stage Show on CBS. “I recognized right away that he had something. It certainly wasn’t a glorious voice, in the sense that Sinatra or Perry Como had beautiful noises come out of their mouths. No, it was kind of a weird noise, but he had something much more important. He had a weird, freaky, charismatic star quality, and I perceived that immediately.” And then he put it into tux and tails! But, hey, it was national TV, and, along with Milton Berle, the Dorseys and Ed Sullivan, it helped launch Elvis. |
