Masaaki Hirao -- Kangoku Rock （監獄ロック）

On this day in 1977, Elvis Presley "left the building" for the last time, so to speak. Although I was born during an era when The Beatles had become the biggest pop act in the land (meaning Earth), Elvis was quickly made known to me since my parents had his Christmas album. And of course, there were all those movies he made along with the old footage of the guy swiveling his hips. Not surprisingly, Turner Classic Movies had a full-on marathon of Elvis movies today.

Of course, one of his biggest hits was "Jailhouse Rock" (1957) as you can see above.

Along with The Beatles, Elvis also had a lasting effect on Japanese pop culture. Basically, fans didn't just want to sing Elvis but they wanted to be Elvis. So as in America, there have been various Elvis impersonators from various points of his life, including his paunchy Las Vegas persona.

I tried looking for any Elvis covers that were done in Japan, and it didn't take too much effort to realize that the late Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）did indeed do a Japanese cover of "Jailhouse Rock" under the title "Kangoku Rock" (1958) with Shoichi Kusano（草野昌一）, the then-president of Shinko Music Entertainment, writing the lyrics under the pen name of Kenji Sazanami（漣健児）. I just mentioned that it didn't take too much effort to find out that it was Hirao simply because he was a rockabilly singer. I figured it was going to be him or Mickey Curtis（ミッキー・カーチス）.

Well, how about that? I managed to find a video with Hirao, Curtis and fellow rockabilly singer Keijiro Yamashita（山下敬二郎）doing the old "Kangoku Rock" in 1996. Back in the 1950s, the three of them were dubbed "Rockabilly Sannin Otoko"（ロカビリー三人男...The Three Rockabilly Guys）and took the country by storm.