Pat Boone – the great rock and roll survivor - and his friendship with Elvis Presley

Charles Eugene “Pat” Boone (born June 1, 1934), has sold more than 45 million records, has 13 gold discs, two gold albums and a platinum record. Fifteen of his songs have hit the top ten and his song “Love Letters in the Sand” was on the charts for 34 consecutive weeks.

He has appeared in 15 feature films including; APRIL LOVE, STATE FAIR, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, AND BERNARDINE and he played David Wilkerson in THE CROSS and THE SWITCHBLADE. He has also written ten books including “Twixt Twelve and Twenty” which sold more than 1,000,000 copies.

So when I met up recently with Boone, who was mysteriously wearing a kilt, at the 9th Annual Pat Boone and Friends Golf Tournament at the Dove Canyon Golf Course in Orange County, California, to benefit Ryan’s Reach (www.ryansreach.com), a non-profit set up in honor of his grandson, Ryan Corbin, who is making a miraculous recovery after a terrible accident, I couldn’t wait to find out more about his friendship and rivalry with Elvis Presley.

After all, the two of them were the biggest selling rock and roll artists in the United States and around the world, during those exciting early days in the 1950s and 1960s.

So I asked Pat Boone about his relationship with Elvis and he said, “In the record business, he and I were friends and friendly competitors. We were two Tennessee boys who knew that we were very fortunate and we could hardly believe what was happening to either one of us.

“Thank God, I had an 11 month head start on Elvis, and three hit singles, before we first met and that was in Cleveland, Ohio, when he wound up at that moment as my opening act. It was a sock hop attended by 3,000 kids in a big gymnasium in Cleveland.

“The nation’s number one disc jockey, Bill Randle (a pioneering disc jockey at radio station WERE in Cleveland, who helped change the face of American music in the 1950s), was hosting and had asked me to come in from New York where I had just moved with my wife, Shirley. We’d just had our second baby, Lindy (who is now Ryan Corbin’s mother).

“I was enrolled in Columbia University, but I came down to Cleveland at his request to headline this sock hop. He met me at the airport, brought me in and said, ‘I’m gonna pick up a guy in a little while coming up from Shreveport, Louisiana, where he’s appearing on the Louisiana Hayride, a country radio show.

“He told me that his name was Elvis Presley and I said, ‘Oh Bill, I’ve seen his name and heard his record on a jukebox in Dallas and he’s a hillbilly. Do you think he’s gonna go over well at this show as this is rock and roll time. He smiled, and said, ‘Well, RCA Victor just bought his contract from Sun Records in Memphis, so they think he’s got something and we’ll soon find out.’

“He told me that the one side of his record was a bluegrass song called ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ [written and recorded by Bill Monroe and also performed by guitarist Lester Flatt and banjoist Earl Scruggs]. I don’t know why he chose to do that, or who suggested it, but he had done so and the record was sort of a regional hit. That’s why he was appearing in a country music setting and why I thought he was a hillbilly.

“So, back stage at the high school where I was already waiting to be introduced to these 3,000 kids that were dancing all over the place to current records, Elvis came in with two or three guys (he always had an entourage with him). I held out my hand and said, ‘Hello Elvis. I’m Pat Boone.’ ‘Nice to meet you,’ said Elvis, with Boone speaking in the style of Elvis. ‘Now, Bill Randle thinks you’ve got some good things ahead of you; to which Elvis replied, ‘I don’t know about that, but I hope so.’”

Boone then said that Elvis “just leaned back against the wall there and seemed shy, like he didn’t know what to say and his buddies kind of closed in around him, so I didn’t try to keep talking at that point.”

Pat Boone said that when Bill Randle brought him on stage, he told the audience, “This is a young kid with a new contract with RCA Victor who we’ll hear more of in the future so let’s welcome young Elvis Presley.”

He said that he watched him from back stage as Elvis launched into his song. Boone said they appeared to “find him interesting,” but it somehow didn’t seem to fit at a Cleveland record hop, and he got a polite reception.

But Boone said it all changed when Presley then launched into the other side of his record, “That’s Alright Mama.” This, he said, “was more rhythm and blues, and the kids really liked it and wanted more, but that was it for him that night.

“Well, then, I followed him, and I thank God that I had three hit records, which were ‘Two Hearts, Two kisses,’ ‘Ain’t That a Shame,’ the Fats Domino classic.  My version immediately went to number one and sold a million and a half records. Finally, the third came out right when I was meeting up with Elvis in Cleveland. It was called, ‘Crazy little mama come knocking, knocking at my front door door door / Crazy little mama come knocking, knocking at my front door…’”

Pat Boone treated me by singing the song for me.

“When I came off stage, Elvis was gone. So we didn’t see each other for maybe - oh - a year and a half,” Boone continued. “We were now both signed to Twentieth Century Fox movie contracts and his dressing room was only two doors from mine.  In between us was a lesser known actor named Cary Grant (laughs). So it was Elvis, Cary Grant and me in three contiguous dressing rooms.

“After that, we visited back and forth in each other’s leased homes in Bel Air when we’d be there making movies. One time I shared with him about that first night we met in Cleveland at the sock hop. I told him that he seemed very nervous, and Elvis said, ‘Well, I didn’t know how to talk to you as you were a big star.’ I laughed and said, ‘A star? I had three hit records and I’d only been recording since March.’ But he replied, ‘Yeah, but you were on the charts and I didn’t know how to even talk to you.”

“He got over that in a big hurry and we stayed buddies -- although we didn’t see each other a lot because we moved in different circles. Of course, I was married and having kids -- one a year -- and he was still playing the field. But we did sometimes get together on Sunday afternoons to play ‘flag football’ (in which you had to stop someone, grab their towel or flag out of their belt).

“It was rough and tumble football with his buddies and my buddies. We came to know that we were just like Tennesseans who were friendly competitors, but . . . we were competitors.”

Having been a huge fan of both Boone and Presley, I felt I was in on rock and roll history, as this great rock and roll survivor shared, in a quiet room at the golf course, his stories about Elvis.

“Soon Elvis was having hit after hit, and so was I. We bumped each other out of the number one spot many times and were matching each other hit for hit. However, I was fortunate to have an 11 month start on him. So I was established by the time the Elvis avalanche hit. And I cherish that it was a great exciting time.”

I, then, brought up the fact that Elvis was raised in an Assemblies of God Church, so I wondered if Boone, who was then a member of the Church of Christ, had talked with him about faith matters.

“Not in the beginning, no, but I learned all this later while reading the magazines and publications,” said Pat Boone. “Eventually, when he had become a very big star, I went to see him at his opening of The International Hotel in Las Vegas. It was a big deal with people coming to see him from all over the world. Between the shows we were visiting together in his very huge dressing room with a big walk in closet, and he says to me, ‘Can I talk to you a minute?’ So I said, ‘Yeah,’ and we go back in the closet and then Elvis asks me, ‘Do you know Oral Roberts?’ I said, ‘Yes I do,’ and he then said, ‘I’d like to talk to him some time. Would you put in a word for me?’”

Pat Boone said that he couldn’t believe the request and said, “I’ll give you a clue. Your name is Elvis Presley (laughs). All you have to do is pick up the phone, call Oral Roberts University and say that you would like to talk to President Roberts.  I guarantee he’ll be on the phone in 30 seconds.”

He then said, Elvis told him, “Oh no, I wouldn’t do that. I don’t know him.”

Boone then said, “Again that shows that he was a shy and innately respectful guy. He was a great performer, but when it came to social interaction he was pretty reserved.”

Presley then told him, “I wish I could go to church like you do.” Boone told him that he could, but he said, “Oh you know, they all want my autograph and they will look at me and not the preacher.”

Boone said to Elvis, “That happens to me too, but once people see that you’re listening and you’re worshiping and that you’re there for the same reason as they are, they’ll leave you alone. You don’t mind people looking at you; you’re used to that aren’t you?”

But Elvis told him, “I just don’t think I could do it; I’d interrupt things,” but Boone pressed on and said, “Look, for a while, I didn’t want to sign autographs at church, or after church, because I thought it was out of character and out of place. But then I realized that these kids who were asking for autographs, would go back to school and show the autograph to their friends and tell them that they got it at church and maybe they would like to go along next Sunday.”

Boone then said to Elvis, “It could be a very good thing, and it would be that and more with you.”

Pat Boone then said, “Elvis never did that, but I did call Oral Roberts and he did come out and meet with him and so did Rex Humbard, because he wanted to meet and talk with both of them. So I knew Elvis was on a spiritual quest. He knew all about his fame and success, but he wanted that sense of closeness to the Lord that he knew as a boy with his parents in church. He just never let himself come out of the cocoon that Colonel Tom Parker had built around him; that he was more comfortable in.

“So, when he wanted to be with people, he invited them to wherever he was. If they wanted to bowl, he rented the bowling alley after midnight or if he wanted to see a movie, he’d rent the theater and they’d go in after the place was normally closed -- just with his own little group.”

Pat Boone said that Elvis loved to sing Gospel music.

“He did that many times along with The Stamps Quartet, The Imperials, and others. Quite often, after his shows, they’d gather around a piano back stage, or somewhere, and sing until three or four in the morning. He loved singing the gospel music,” said Boone. “And eventually, of course, he wound up including ‘How Great Thou Art’ in his concerts.

“Toward the end, he was singing better than most of us ever realized he could because this is a demanding kind of a song to sing, but he sang it with great fervor. And you know, Dan, I heard from somebody very close to him, that he, in this quest, was thinking of turning his concerts into something of an evangelistic outreach where he would sing his Christian music like Bob Dylan had done, then, maybe he would say something about his faith and making an altar call for those who wanted to come forward.”

I then asked Pat why it was that he went in one direction with his clean-cut image while Elvis appeared to be heading off the rails in his later years.

“Well, I know the answer to that one is my faith, of course,” he said. “I was raised in a Christian home, as was Elvis, but I was never comfortable not being in worship service on Sunday. So even if I was traveling on an intercontinental flight on a Sunday, my buddy and I, a Christian, would have communion together on the plane. So I was that serious and always was.

“During the time we lived in New Jersey and we would come across to a church in New York at 48 East 80th. I’d be at church services Sunday morning, quite often Sunday night, and wherever possible on a Wednesday night with our kids' Sunday school. This was a constant anchor.

“But then, my marriage to a wonderful woman, Shirley, my kids and Christian friends, all helped. I had plenty of opportunities to go in the wrong direction, but no excuse to do it because I had the continual reminders. Plus, I’ve always been a Bible student and I learned New Testament Greek in college. I learned to read the New Testament laboriously with my Greek texts and the glossaries, so I could read the New Testament in the original Greek.

“I continued to be in the Word, and it really made me constantly aware of what my real function in life was. The screaming, all the popularity, all the fame and money and everything else, was God’s gift to me. I loved it . . . I cherished it really, but I knew there had to be a purpose more than just my own further enjoyment.

“I also realized that I was a role model, and when you are in the public eye, you are, whether you want to be or not. So I always felt that was a really extra benefit too.”

Elvis, I told Boone, however, appeared to surround himself with people who didn’t seem able to stop him from doing some of the destructive things that finally took his life. Elvis died on August 16, 1977, in the bathroom at Graceland. After being found on the bathroom floor, Elvis was rushed to the hospital where he was officially pronounced dead.

“Right, he wasn’t taking hard drugs,” said Boone. “I never heard any allegations that he did that, but he was hyper in many ways, so he would take sleeping pills to sleep. Then he would have a drowsy, drugged feeling when he got up, so he would take what they call uppers. He got to where he was very dependent on both uppers and downers.  Not many people knew it. I only heard of him going into some rehab, maybe a year and a half before he died.

“But apparently it didn’t work, as he kept getting these prescription items from a doctor or two who kept him supplied. I remember the time, during one of our meetings in the dressing room closet, when he showed me his Narc badge given to him by President Richard Nixon. He had gone to see him, expressing his concern about drug use and kids. President Nixon officially made him a narcotics agent and gave him a badge and a card.

“I had to laugh at that because I thought, ‘You’re not out there among people. How can you possibly do the drug department any good as you’re not mixing and mingling with the kids themselves; therefore you don’t meet any hard drug dealers?’

“But still that showed that he was concerned, secretly or privately, that he was hooked on these prescription drugs, which eventually took his life.”

This is part one of the interview with Pat Boone, and the second one will tell the story of his grandson, Ryan Corbin, who has made a miraculous recovery from a devastating accident after much prayer. I also share my guess on why he was wearing a kilt.

About the writer: Dan Wooding, 72, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, is an award winning journalist now living in Lake Forest with his wife Norma. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and he hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on the KWVE Radio Network in Southern California and which is also carried throughout the United States and around the world. Besides this, Wooding is a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 192 countries.