Elvis Presley - Blue Suede Shoes

First performance: 14/08/1983


Coverinfo

Bruce covered the song once and once as a snippet:
 
 
With John Eddie. (John Eddie (born 1959, Richmond, Virginia) is an American folk rock singer. Eddie moved to New Jersey in the 1970s and became a popular club circuit musician there, occasionally performing with Bruce Springsteen)
 
 
  • Snippet
 
 
"Blue Suede Shoes" was performed only once in 2009, featuring onstage area Elvis-impersonator Nick Ferraro, white suit and all. Nick Ferraro gets an invitation to sing “All Shook Up” in his Elvis costume. All goes well until he calls on Bruce for a guitar solo and realizes there is no guitar solo in the song. Lucky for him the E Street Band is versatile, and they switch to “Blue Suede Shoes.”
Nick Ferraro also appears in the movie "Springsteen and I"
  
    

Songinfo

"Blue Suede Shoes" is a song written and first recorded by Carl Perkins in 1955. It is considered one of the first rockabilly (rock-and-roll) records, incorporating elements of blues, country and pop music of the time. Elvis Presley performed his version of the song three different times on national television. 
  
Elvis' version
 
Recording cover versions of songs was a common practice during the 1940s and 1950s, and "Blue Suede Shoes" was one of the first songs RCA Victor wanted its newly contracted artist, Elvis Presley, to record. RCA Victor, with its superior distribution and radio contacts, knew it could probably steal a hit record from Phillips and Perkins. Presley, who knew both Perkins and Phillips from his days at Sun Records, gave in to pressure from RCA, but he requested that the company hold back his version from release as a single. 
According to Moore, when the song was recorded, "We just went in there and started playing, just winged it. Just followed however Elvis felt." According to reports confirmed by Sam Phillips, RCA Victor producer Steve Sholes agreed not to release Presley's version of the song as a single while Perkins' release was hot. Moore has said that Presley recorded the song to help out Perkins after his accident. "Elvis wasn't really thinking at that time that it was going to make money for Carl; he was doing it as more of a tribute type thing. Of course Carl was glad he did. It really helped as his record started going down. "Blue Suede Shoes" was the first song on the groundbreaking album Elvis Presley. In 1960, Presley re-recorded "Blue Suede Shoes" for the soundtrack of the film G.I. Blues
 
 
 
 
 

Other cover versions

Bruce on the artist

2018/04/14 
HBO premieres a new documentary by director Thom Zimny, Elvis Presley: The Searcher. The two-part film features interviews with several musicians who either knew or were influenced by Elvis. Bruce is one of the contributors. 
 
 
Whenever he could, Bruce would mention the enormous influence, Elvis had on him and on his music. Elvis is the most covered artist by Bruce (23 times) together with Chuck Berry, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan. The Influence of Elvis on Bruce, is described in a documentary compiled from previously existing footage by Dennis P. Laverty, a former Old Bridge resident who now lives in Staten Island (and who calls Springsteen and Elvis Presley "my two favorite rock stars". He used concert footage and previously released interview segments with Springsteen and various rock experts to show just how important Elvis Presley was to Springsteen.
 
 
 
 
"It's a cliché story, but watching Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show changed Bruce Springsteen's entire life. "It was the evening I realized a white man could make magic," he said in 2012, "that you did not have to be constrained by your upbringing, by the way you looked, or by the social context that oppressed you. You could call upon your own powers of imagination, and you could create a transformative self." He urged his mother to buy him a guitar after that, and in 1976 he went to Graceland after a Memphis show and even hopped the fence in a failed effort to meet the King himself. Elvis died during the recording of Darkness on the Edge of Town, right as Springsteen was hoping the King would cover his new song "Fire." Springsteen channeled his sorrow into "Come On (Let's Go Tonight)," which later morphed into "Factory."
 
 
"In the beginning, every musician has their genesis moment. For you, it might have been the Sex Pistols, or Madonna, or Public Enemy. It's whatever initially inspires you to action. Mine was 1956, Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was the evening I realized a white man could make magic, that you did not have to be constrained by your upbringing, by the way you looked, or by the social context that oppressed you. You could call upon your own powers of imagination, and you could create a transformative self. A certain type of transformative self, that perhaps at any other moment in American History, might have seemed difficult, if not impossible. And I always tell my kids that they were lucky to be born in the age of reproducible technology, otherwise they'd be traveling in the back of a wagon and I'd be wearing a jester's hat. It's all about timing. The advent of television and its dissemination of visual information changed the world in the fifties the way the internet has over the past twenty years. Remember, it wasn't just the way Elvis looked, it was the way he moved that made people crazy, pissed off, driven to screaming ecstasy, and profane revulsion. That was television. When they made an attempt to censor him from the waist down, it was because of what you could see happening in his pants. Elvis was the first modern Twentieth Century man, the precursor of the Sexual Revolution, of the Civil Rights Revolution, drawn from the same Memphis as Martin Luther King, creating fundamental, outsider art that would be embraced by a mainstream popular culture. Television and Elvis gave us full access to a new language, a new form of communication, a new way of being, a new way of looking, a new way of thinking; about sex, about race, about identity, about life; a new way of being an American, a human being; and a new way of hearing music. Once Elvis came across the airwaves, once he was heard and seen in action, you could not put the genie back in the bottle. After that moment, there was yesterday, and there was today, and there was a red hot, rockabilly forging of a new tomorrow, before your very eyes."
 
Bruce also wrote a song : "I’m turning into Elvis" :
 
During the Rainforest Fund concert at 1995/04/12 Bruce played the song and used this as an intro :
 
" this is the second half of the show, gonna be a tribute to Elvis and his decade. It´s been done before and a lot prettier than we’re about to do it….but that´s ok, look at it like you’re 15 years old, you don’t know a whole lot about Elvis and your uncle gets up in the livingroom trying to explain to you what it was all about. So with that in mind I’ve written a song especially for this particular occasion. You remember the coach Tom Landry, when he was trying to explain his personal relationship that he had with God ? well, this is a song that’s sort of about my personal relationship with him….´´ [Taken from the Backstreets Magazine, issue 49.] 
 

Lyrics

Well, it's one for the money
Two for the show
Three to get ready
Now go, cat, go
But don't you step on my blue suede shoes
You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes

[Verse 2]
Well, you can knock me down
Step in my face
Slander my name
All over the place
Do anything that you want to do, but uh-uh
Honey, lay off of my shoes
Don't you step on my blue suede shoes
You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes

[Bridge]
You can burn my house
Steal my car
Drink my liquor
From an old fruitjar

[Verse 3]
Do anything that you want to do, but uh-uh
Honey, lay off of my shoes
Don't you step on my blue suede shoes
You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes

[Chorus]
Well, it's one for the money
Two for the show
Three to get ready
Now go, cat, go
But don't you step on my blue suede shoes
You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes
Well it's
Blue-Blue Blue suede shoes
Blue-Blue Blue suede shoes-Yeah
Blue-Blue Blue suede shoes-Baby
Blue-Blue Blue suede shoes
You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes