'' advertisement, October 5, 1957 Some of the characters named in the song are real people.
Shifty Henry was a well-known
Los Angeles musician, not a criminal.
The Purple Gang was a real mob. "
Sad Sack" was a
U.S. Army nickname in
World War II for a loser, which was also the name of a popular
comic strip and comic book character. According to
Rolling Stone,
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's "theme song for Presley's
third movie was decidedly silly, the kind of tongue-in-cheek goof they had come up with for
The Coasters. Presley, however, sang it as straight
rock & roll, overlooking the jokes in the lyrics (like the suggestion of
gay romance when inmate Number 47 tells Number 3, 'You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see') and then introducing
Scotty Moore's guitar solo with a cry so intense that the take almost collapses." Gender studies scholars cite the song for "its famous reference to homoerotics behind bars", while music critic Garry Mulholland writes, "'Jailhouse Rock' was always a queer lyric, in both senses." Douglas Brode writes of the filmed production number that it's "amazing that the sequence passed by the censors". ==Releases and chart performance==