wikipedian boners about elvis and “steamroller blues”

Estimated reading time is 6 minutes.

TAKING WIKIPEDIA TO TASK for the seemingly endless number of mistakes in their pop music entries is like shooting the proverbial moose in a barrel. I could even make it a daily endeavor and turn this blog into a non-stop rant about Wikipedian boners. Fortunately, that does not interest me—at least, at this time. But there are some boners that do attract my attention.

But first, there may be a few younger readers wondering about the title of this article. Aside from its slang reference to a part (or a condition) of the male anatomy, Merriam-Webster defines a boner as “a foolish or careless mistake.” This short article addresses what appears to be a couple of big boners in the entry about Elvis Presley’s 1973 recording of James Taylor’s Steamroller Blues.

 

I could turn this blog into a non-stop rant about Wikipedian boners but, fortunately, that doesn’t interest me.

 

Here is the entire text for the Wikipedia entry on the Presley recording. I made a few stylistic changes to keep it similar to the overall look of this blog. I also added numbers after the two important errors to make it easier to address them:

“During the 1970s, Elvis Presley added Steamroller Blues to his concert repertoire and included it on his live album ALOHA FROM HAWAII VIA SATELLITE. Presley also released it as a single in January 1973 (1) with Fool as its flipside track and the song reached #17 on the U.S. pop singles chart.

It was later included on Presley’s 2007 compilation THE ESSENTIAL ELVIS PRESLEY. A newly-orchestrated version was included on the 2015 album IF I CAN DREAM with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Notably, this song resulted in Elvis’ last two entries at #1 on a major charting format. The ALOHA FROM HAWAII double LP, for which the song was recorded, peaked at #1 on both the Billboard and Cash Box album charts on April 28, 1973.

The single taken from the LP peaked at #1 on Record World the week of January 13, 1973, the day before the Aloha special aired on NBC.” (2)

 

James Taylor wrote Steamroller (the original title of the song) as a parody of white blues bands. His acoustic recording of the song appeared on his massively popular and highly influential SWEET BABY JAMES album. Elvis simply discarded Taylor’s condescension and performed the song as a straight blues-based rocker.

The first Wikipedian boners

There are several errors in these sentences but I am only interested in two of them. (In their defense, the Wikipedia editors preface the two paragraphs above with this note: “This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.”)

Here are those errors: 

(1)  This is probably the biggest boner because without it the others would not exist. Steamroller Blues was not released as a single in January 1973! Steamroller Blues was released as a single with Fool as its flip-side as RCA Victor 74-0910 on March 13, 1973.

 

How could it have been #1 on January 13, 1973, when it wasn’t recorded until January 14, 1973?

 

(2)  As Steamroller Blues—“the single taken from the LP”—wasn’t released until March 1973, it obviously could not have peaked at #1 on the Record World chart in January 1973. How the heck could it have been #1 on January 13, 1973, when it wasn’t recorded until January 14, 1973?!!!?

To see the official RCA Listing Notice with the shipping date of March 13, 1973, for Steamroller Blues / Fool, click here.

 

This is the Record World Singles Chart for the week of January 20, 1973.

A hefty hunk of steaming junk

I could not find a copy of the Record World Singles Chart for January 13, 1973, so I had to use the January 20, 1973, issue. The Singles Chart is on page 25 of that issue and shows that Stevie Wonder’s Superstition was #1 and Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain was #2.

The second column on the left (under “Last Wk”) indicates each record’s position on the same chart the week before. It shows that You’re So Vain had been #1 on January 13, 1973. (The Simon record was also #1 on both the Billboard and Cash Box surveys on the same date.)

Of course, January 13, 1973, is the week that Wikipedia claims Steamroller Blues was #1. Of course, we know that record hadn’t even been released yet, so it couldn’t be #1 anywhere.

Elvis did have a record on the charts at the time: Separate Ways, which had been released in October 1972, was #22.

 

These are the Record World Singles Charts for the weeks of June 2 and June 16, 1973.

How high did Steamroller Blues get?

So, just how high did Steamroller Blues get on the Record World Singles Chart? Fortunately, I was able to find copies of almost every issue of Record World for 1973 on the internet. Unfortunately, not all of them had the chart intact.

That is, someone had ripped the page with the chart out of the magazine before it had been scanned and posted on the internet. But I have enough intact charts to make sense of it all!

Here is the progress of Steamroller Blues during its peak on the Singles Chart:

•  On May 26, it was #20 on its eighth week on the survey.
•  On June 2, it was #17 on its ninth week on the survey.
•  On June 9, it was #16 on its tenth week on the survey.
•  On June 16, it was #26 on its eleventh week on the survey.
•  On June 23, it was #48 on its twelfth week on the survey.

The June 9 issue did not have its chart intact but the issues before and after it—the June 2 and 16 issues—did have their charts. They are pictured above.

So the peak position for Steamroller Blues on the Record World Singles Chart was #16 on June 9, 1973.

 

Honest to Grommett, this is the US picture sleeve for the Steamroller Blues single. I am considering writing an article titled “Whatever Was The Colonel Thinking?” that collects the lamest, cheesiest artwork to grace the covers of Elvis picture sleeves and album jackets released in the US.

Another Wikipedian boner

The errors are duplicated on Wikipedia’s entry for Record World magazine. There is a list of every record to reach #1 on that magazine’s pop chart from October 4, 1954, through March 13, 1982. This list cites two websites as sources for their Record World chart information:

•  Barry’s Hits Of All Decades
•  Record World Chart Archive

The former is an amazing collection of charts from Barry Kowal while the latter is part of the equally amazing World Radio History website. What’s also amazing is that neither site lists Steamroller Blues among the #1 records of 1973!

So, if Wikipedia’s cited sources fail to corroborate their statements, what is the actual explanation for stating that Steamroller Blues was a #1 record?

How could a reasonably intelligent, well-meaning contributor pull such a boner as looking at two sources and citing the opposite of that those sources claimed?

Or did some jackarse—a wiki troll, if you will—intentionally enter false information on Wikipedia?

Both questions address ongoing problems with the wiki format.

 

Despite the significance of the Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite project, Colonel Parker and RCA managed to saddle the album jacket with cheesy artwork, like it was just another soundtrack album to one of his lame movies from the ’60s.

A churning urn of burning funk

The Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite special was a monumental success and catapulted the record album of the same name to the top of all three of the major album charts of the time.

As we have seen, it did not do the same for the single pulled from that album, Steamroller Blues . . .

 

FEATURED IMAGE: I found this great photo of Elvis from the Aloha From Hawaii special at the top of this page on the Wallpaper Cave website. Now, why didn’t Colonel Parker and/or RCA use this gorgeous image for the cover of the ALOHA FROM HAWAII VIA SATELLITE album? Finally, I want to thank Dave Reynolds (Elvis Rare Records) and Steve Crespo for calling my attention to these baffling boners.

Now it’s up to some intrepid reader to use this article and the links within it to make the necessary corrections to that Wikipedia entry . . .