"The Sound Of Fury" by Billy Fury (May, 1960)

Brad's Take:


I'd never heard of Billy Fury before this so I was curious to hear his debut album, "The Sound Of Fury." As soon as I hit play, I immediately thought, "I didn't know Elvis impersonators actually got record deals..."

After doing a little bit of research, I discovered that he kind of was Elvis, but the UK's version of Elvis. His vocal styling and energy is almost identical, and he even dressed and moved like The King.

On "Turn My Back On You," Billy Fury does his best Buddy Holly impression by doing the stuttering vocal style that Buddy was well known for.

Since our book is from the UK, it makes sense for Billy Fury to be in it. The UK needed an Elvis and a Buddy Holly so this kid probably made lots of people (especially girls) happy until the real came over from the states.

Putting the similarities to other artists aside, Buddy, I mean Billy Fury nailed it on this album. He stuck to the same blues/rock/country formula that was popular in the US and brought it to the UK, and he succeeded. His voice and energy were great, and he was a good looking guy. I'm sure the English girls swooned over him all day and night. It's not a surprise that a life size bronze statue of him (doing an Elvis impression) was eventually built in Liverpool in his honor in 2003.

Dad's Take:

This is one of a few British-only releases on our list. It's a British book, so that's to be expected. It's also interesting, because it ensures that we'll hear some albums that we've never heard, but that influenced the great British bands. Billy Fury, as an early leader in the Liverpool rock and roll scene, undoubtedly played a more important role than we Yanks are likely to recognize. Interestingly, according to one source, one group that auditioned to be Fury's band was a little band called the Silver Beetles. They were turned down when they refused to fire their bass player, Stuart Sutcliffe, thus missing out on a £20 per week job.

If you listen to very much 1950's rockabilly, you'll hear a number of Elvis imitators of varying quality. Billy Fury is actually pretty good. The songs are good, and the performances are strong. As Brad mentioned, you hear the obvious influence of people like Elvis and Buddy Holly, as well as Carl Perkins and other rockabilly greats, especially Eddie Cochran.

Fury had the chops to pull off some really good rockabilly, as well as the voice for ballads. He didn't have quite the same energy level as Elvis or Buddy. His music isn't especially original, but he was one of the early architects of British rock and roll, and as such deserves a spot on our list.

Bottom line, though, is that it's just a fun record. Songs like "Don't Say It's Over," "That's Love," and several others on this record deserve to be better known stateside. I found "Since You've Been Gone" with its bizarre tempo changes and stuttering "baby baby baby" delivery to be especially interesting. It's not the best song on the record, but it's unusual and fun in its weirdness. If you like good old rock and roll, and especially rockabilly, look for this record. It's good stuff if you like this kind of thing. And I do.

Elvis Presley, by Elvis Presley (March, 1956)

Brad's Take:

This album was an important one for its generation and generations to come. It was the first rock and roll album to ever reach #1 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums charts and it was the first album to ever make one million dollars and sell one million copies. That's definitely impressive, especially for the time it was released.

It's hard to review the debut album by an artist like this because he became such an important musical icon after this was released. He became the king of rock and roll, for crying out loud! Whether you like him or not, everyone has done an Elvis impression at one point in their lives, and everyone knows at least one Elvis song. But all those facts aside, I'll review this for what it is more than what it became...

Elvis Presley's self titled debut album sounds a lot like what was already popular in the 50's. It's not much different than Bill Haley's album that we reviewed before this one. These recordings sound cleaner though and the mixes sound a bit better. This album sounds a little different to me though. I think this is a good representation of what was to come from pop acts following Elvis' success. Before, it didn't really matter what you sounded or looked like as long as the music was fast and something the kids could dance to, but it feels like this album was more focused on the King's vocals rather than the overall general feel of the music.

Sometimes in the older rock and roll records, the vocals were pushed to the back or middle of the mixes so the piano or guitar would shine more, or equally. Elvis' vocals on this album are pushed a lot more to the front though. They're louder and cleaner sounding than the music is, like they really wanted his voice to shine and be the selling point. Elvis' voice sounds great on this album, but sometimes the instrumentation seems a little too bare and empty, but I think they meant for it to be that way. His vocals were more important than the music was, and they wanted them to really stand out and almost be on their own.

As an album though, I'd say that these are its ingredients:

1/4 cup of solid radio hits

1/4 cup of great non-hit songs

1/4 cup of semi-boring ballads

1/4 cup of filler songs

Dad's Take:

I think to fully appreciate this album, you have step back in time. You have to remember, Elvis was not yet The King. He was a little-known 21-year-old kid from Tupelo, with good looks, a good voice, and a style that was just a little bit different than similar artists. Few people knew him, and the RCA record company went on a hunch, based on the very modest performance of his Sun releases.

At RCA, Elvis moved firmly into the new rock 'n' roll, without leaving behind his country and southern blues roots. Rockabilly was hot, and it was genre that fit Elvis very well. This first RCA album isn't all that different than a lot of old rockabilly records, but Elvis obviously had something special that drew the kids to him, and his album became a much bigger hit than RCA had probably anticipated.

It's not really a great album, although it has a few great songs. Much of the album consists of covers of recent hits by others, recordings that Sun didn't think were good enough to release. Some of those, like Elvis's versions of "Tutti Frutti" and "Blue Moon," pale in comparison to the popular versions. In fact, "Blue Moon" teeters on the edge of unintentional comedy. But this album deserves the "classic" label because this is the greatest force in rock and roll history on the verge of greatness. He's often a little restrained, and the quality of many of the recordings show that nobody was ready to throw more money in his direction than was safe. The $40,000 to transfer Elvis and his recordings to RCA was a big enough risk. So they did enough to give them hope of recovering their investment, but they didn't do what they'd do for him when he became a sure thing.

Looking back on it as we are, all the elements that made Elvis The King are there. The energy (although he holds back a little more than he would very soon), the style, the passion. It's easy to see through the flaws and find The King.

My favorite thing about this album is that it's Elvis without the gloss and pressure of superstardom. This is raw Elvis, pure Elvis, without baggage. It's easy to have as much fun as he was.