The big success Bill Black made of leaving Elvis Presley’s band in 1958
It’s hard to pinpoint where rock and roll truly started because there were so many factors which contributed towards it.
The genre was predominantly made up of R&B and American blues, and it was artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bill Haley who were all contributing massively towards this toe-tapping sound. However, even though it was beginning to gain traction, it wasn’t a massive commercial success just yet, and one of the first artists to play rock ‘n’ roll and really drag the sound into the limelight was Elvis Presley.
Around 1956, Elvis started climbing to the top of the charts; before you even saw him, he had the kind of voice that made everyone within earshot swoon, but there was more to it than that. Elvis would move his hips and dance around in a way that people in the mainstream didn’t really do.
A lot of those earlier pioneers within rock were moving in a similar way, but none of them had eyes on them in the same way that Elvis did. Some people loved the new style of performing, and others thought that it was unbecoming of how a young gentleman should behave. Regardless of their opinion, there was no denying how successful Elvis had become.
Following performances on The Ed Sullivan Show and other major TV outlets, the demand for Elvis only increased. Sullivan spoke incredibly highly of the singer, saying he was a “real decent, fine boy”, adding, “We want to say that we’ve never had a pleasanter experience with a big name than we’ve had with you”.
Elvis became the hottest ticket in the US, and so playing in his backing band was a pretty big deal. One of the most pivotal components of his backing band was Bill Black, who played both the upright bass and the electric bass. He was important when it came to capturing the energetic sound of Presley, as the slapping technique he used to play with gave every single note a much-needed oomph. For a genre filled to the brim with power, having a rhythm section that didn’t just carry a song but also packed a punch was essential.
Black had a pretty sweet deal playing in the backing band for Elvis Presley, but it wasn’t enough. So often we see people grow content with their surroundings to the extent that they don’t meet their true potential, but Black wasn’t going to let that happen to him.
He wanted to be a frontman in his own right and knew that he was never going to achieve as much playing bass for somebody else. He knew that he could be successful on his own, given that there were many who credited Black with turning Presley into the star suddenly topping the charts.
As such, he went on a solo mission, leaving the band in 1958 to try and make it on his own. For a lot of lesser artists, this could have been a pretty disastrous move, but Black’s talent was undeniable, and he went on to have a string of hits in both the ‘50s and ‘60s. Perhaps the most significant came on ‘Smokie, Part 2’, which managed to climb to number one in the R&B charts and also sell over a million copies.
