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C U LT U R E & A RT S
FINDING
SONGS FOR
THE KING
By Don Reedman
Elvis Presley in concert, circa 1972
I
was born and grew up in Wagga
Wagga, a New South Wales
town of about 20,000 people
at the time, halfway between
Sydney and Melbourne. My lifelong
passion for the music of Elvis Presley
was ignited, in 1957, by the release of
Jailhouse Rock, Elvis’s third movie:
aged 11, far too young for what at the
time was considered a controversial
and de昀椀nitely adults-only 昀椀lm, I
managed to sneak into Hoyts Theatre
and watch it.
Elvis’s charisma, his raw energy, was
extraordinary. I’d never seen anything
like it, Wagga Wagga had never seen
anything like it, and there must have
been small towns all over the world
that were just as astonished.
From that moment, I knew I wanted
to be a part of the music business. I
made it to England in January 1969
full of ambition, but I never thought
back then, even as an idealistic kid,
that Elvis and his music would play
such a huge part in my life.
I landed a job as a promotion
manager for Welbeck Music, and the
昀椀rst song
I was given to plug was Sugar
Sugar by The Archies. I actually
had sugar sachets printed with a line
saying “Sugar Sugar: The Archies,
with compliments, Don Reedman,
Welbeck Music”: that way, the BBC
radio producers got to know both
me and the record I was plugging.
Luckily it worked: the record went to
number 1 and stayed there for eight
weeks.
Soon after, I was invited to join
Carlin Music, the most successful
independent music publishing
company in the UK. They also
managed Elvis’s two music
publishing companies, Gladys Music
and Elvis Presley Music. My job
was to listen to the songs we had
available, persuade a top artist to
record one of them, and with any luck
they (and we) would have a hit.
As well as great American writers
like Jimmy Webb (By The Time I get
To Phoenix, Macarthur Park, Wichita
Lineman) and Bobby Darin (Splish
Splash, Dream Lover), Carlin also
represented Jerry Leiber and Mike
Stoller, who had composed the score
for Jailhouse Rock. (Although the
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story goes that they hadn’t written
anything until, in desperation, Jean
Aberbach, the director of Hill &
Range music publishers, locked them
both in a hotel room. Four hours later,
they had written four songs: I Want
To Be Free, Treat Me Nice, (You’re
So Square) Baby I Don’t Care, and
Jailhouse Rock.)
Carlin also had some great British
songwriters on their books: Ken
Howard and Alan Blaikley, who
wrote Elvis’s 1970 hit I’ve Lost You;
Les Reed, who co-wrote Delilah and
It’s Not Unusual for Tom Jones; and
Guy Fletcher and Doug Flett, who
Elvis: The Fair’s Movin’ On, the
B-side of his 1969 single Clean Up
Your Own Backyard, which I was also
involved with.
And there was Clive Westlake. He
had ambitions of being a recording
artist: he lacked the charisma that
a star needs, and he wasn’t the best
singer, but he was a great songwriter.
He had written a song called It’s a
Matter of Time, which he played for
me. He wanted to record it himself,
but I knew it would be perfect for
Elvis.
