Why Elvis Matters

by Roderick T. Beaman.



Contrary to myth, the 50s was not a decade of stultifying conformity under a benign but clueless President Dwight Eisenhower. It was a time of roiling creativity, pushing the envelope in all artistic fields. James Dean, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen brought the movie anti-hero to self-doubting, sensitive fruition. Jackson Pollock was in full bloom with his abstractionist and pop art work. Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg led the beatnik movement in literature, re-combining poetry, prose, fiction and non-fiction and taking them in different directions. Most of them all of them appalled the establishment.

With all those things happening in the other arts, it was inevitable that music would change. Igor Stravinsky was blurring the edges of jazz. Later, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim would collaborate with writer Arthur Laurents to produce West Side Story. The music was essentially standard show themes with jazz elements. It was great but not groundbreaking.

As the decade dawned , the big bands that hadn't broken up, were doing nostalgia touring or being reduced to irrelevancy with Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra later releasing an abomination called 'Tea For Two Cha Cha' that probably had Tommy Dorsey beating at the inside of his coffin. Ray Anthony had a hit version of the theme from the television show Peter Gunn but the recording, in the later fifties with its big beat, actually had more in common with the rock and roll that had overtaken everyone than it did with the smooth sounds of the big band forties. Former lead singers, like Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, Doris Day and Jo Stafford were pursuing solo careers. Jazz to us was the sound of the big bands and was the music of an older generation.

To be sure, there was great jazz being produced but it had gone largely underground. The long format lasting 25 and even 30 minutes per side, of the 33&1/3rpm record gave opportunities for extended improvisation that 78 and even 45 rpm singles just did not offer. Much of Duke Ellington's best work was in the past but Dave Brubeck's legendary 'Time Out', the first major experiment in different time signatures, was to come as was John Coltrane's, Miles Davis' and Herbie Hancock's work. But jazz was no longer a force in the pop market, if true jazz ever really was. Personally, I'm inclined to dismiss most of the big bands' work as not true jazz. As David Brinkley said after Elvis died, much of what was called jazz at the time wasn't. There was something called be-bop that I remember mostly as a term that we associated with music, probably jazz, but I had no idea what it really was and I think most of the kids growing up then thought the same.

Blues had been considered a variant of jazz by much of the American public as distilled through Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Sophie Tucker with her theme, 'Some Of These Days'. Their accompaniment usually consisted of drums, bass, trombone and piano with some other instruments, rarely a guitar, thrown in. The other exposure was via W. C. Handy's 'St. Louis Blues' which was usually played in a dixieland format, devoid of blues flavor. To most of us, blues was a lament for women, usually black, over lost loves and not really something that we listened to or bought.

But there was another blues, urban type, that was developing in Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and elsewhere but was ignored by the larger white audience. It could be heard only in clubs and on certain record labels. Many of the larger record companies had what was called 'race records' which were released on alternative labels, such as Okeh and Coral. In addition, there were smaller labels that were recording this urban blues - Imperial, Chess, Sun, Stax, Specialty and Atlantic among them. That blues that was guitar based and decidedly harder edged, even raunchy. There were giants like Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Son Seals. It was waiting to be discovered by the white audience.

The music that we heard on the radio and sang wasn't jazz or blues for that matter. We would sing songs such as, Eddie Fisher's hit 'Dungaree Doll' or 'Bali Hai' and 'I'm Going To Was That Man Right Out Of My Hair' from 'South Pacific' and other hits of the day. They were all lily white. But there were others of a different cut and it was those songs that would lead the way to the musical revolution that was coming, hints of the coming storm.

A number of black artists had outright hits on the pop charts. LaVerne Baker, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Coasters, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and the Drifters all scored with big hits on the pop charts. It now became rhythm and blues and 'n----r music' was corrupting good white kids.. Articles in the newspapers, letters to the editor and Sunday sermons all warned of the dangers of this new devil's music. Blues had become rhythm and blues but us white kids called it rock and roll. We only knew that we enjoyed it. Many elders called it 'rot and roll' and predicted its quick demise. That was to be a calculation akin to booking a round trip on the Titanic. All we knew was that it was catchy, bouncy, got our feet tapping and a lot of us up dancing. Final notice that the music was here to stay may have come with Bill Doggett's 'Honky Tonk', a great dance record. Bill Doggett had been a respected journeyman jazz musician when he released the recording that was firmly grounded in rock and roll and was the biggest hit of his career. Ironically, neither Doggett nor his musicians considered themselves rock and rollers.

Some white artists had hit recordings, too. Boyd Bennett had one with 'Seventeen' that told of hot rod queens, juke boxes and had a blistering sax solo. But, Boyd Bennett was too much country & western and he faded. Lonnie Donegan's Skiffle Group from England had a hit with 'Rock Island Line', an old folk blues number that was too much folk and he couldn't follow up.

Bill Haley and the Comets scored big with 'Crazy Man, Crazy', Big Joe Turner's 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' and 'Rock Around the Clock', still the biggest rock and roll hit ever. It was featured in the opening of the film 'Blackboard Jungle', the first movie to deal with adolescent crime. The combination hinted at an association between the music and crime and that played off the white fear of blacks and made the music even more threatening. To boot, when Haley's group played in Europe, sometimes riots broke out, underlining its danger.

Bill Haley played good cut loose rock and roll but he was a little rotund and had that ridiculous spit curl down his forehead. Then he cut records such as 'See You Later, Alligator', a legitimate R&B standard but followed up with 'Skinny Minnie' and 'Lean Jean, Seventeen' which threw him into the corn field of irrelevancy. Ironies abound because 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' was the first song that Elvis sang on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, his national network television debut that catapulted him to stardom in January, 1956 and the Dorsey's were quintessential big band men.

Carl Perkins made a run at it with 'Blue Suede Shoes' that he wrote himself. He was one of the very first rock and roll singer-composers. The song was a monster hit for the same label, Sun, that Elvis recorded for. Unfortunately, Perkins was married which cooled his appeal to single girls and he was almost killed in a car wreck not long after the record became a hit. The accident took him out of the picture for months. He had a lot of the tools but it's far from certain that he had all of them. He did have a very successful career later and the Beatles covered more of his songs than they did of any other composer. Carl had to content himself with being a great also ran.

It all came together with and for Elvis. He was from Memphis, the apex of the delta where blues had begun. It was a hotbed for music. To the east, is Nashville, the home of Country & Western. To the northeast is Kentucky, the home of the bluegrass music of Bill Monroe. From the south, there was also jazz from New Orleans. Gospel and spiritual music infused life everywhere in the South. It was almost pre-destined to start there and start there it did. Elvis was influenced by all of it.

Some maintain that the time from when Elvis cut a version of Bill Monroe's, 'Blue Moon of Kentucky' and 'That's All Right' until he switched to RCA was the most important period in the development of rock and roll. The period has been mythologized and many also maintain that Elvis lost his edge after that. They especially think that he lost it after he went in the army and even more so when he went Las Vegas with schlock and glitz but all of that should be examined, too.

The myth is that RCA and Col. Tom Parker combined to sanitize Elvis into a more mainstream singer, tearing him from his natural blues, gospel and country and western roots. They didn't succeed to any where near the extent that they wanted or the extent that many critics maintain. A glimpse at the songs that he covered during all those RCA years puts the lie to such thoughts.

From the pre-army years, 'Heartbreak Hotel' is a searing R&B picture of life after a broken romance. 'Hound Dog' was an R&B number that was originally covered by Big Mama Thornton and Jerry Lee Lewis has always called 'Don't Be Cruel' the best R&B record ever. 'My Baby Left Me', 'Any Way You Want Me' and 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin' are all great numbers based in blues. Those are only some random samples among many.

There can be no doubt that blues was Elvis' natural turf but right from the beginning, he had a much more universal musical interest. He cut versions of 'My Happiness', 'Harbor Lights' and 'Blue Moon'. All had been long time standards. Elvis always said that his favorite singer was Dean Martin, as mainstream as they came. Even though Dean Martin did have a number of C&W hits, most people remember him for songs like 'I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm', 'That's Amore', 'You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You' and 'Everybody Loves Somebody, Sometime'. And if he ever did a blues, I never heard it.

When Elvis came out of the army, he launched the second part of his career. Although his albums were dominated by the soundtracks from his movies, there were always singles, flip sides and his non-soundtrack albums that had songs like, 'Fever', 'Reconsider, Baby', 'Ain't That Loving You, Baby', 'Tomorrow Night' and other blues gems.

This is the time period that the critics cite as evidence that Elvis truly sold out. The score from his very first film, 'G.I. Blues', had at least two songs that were classic melodies with words added, 'Tonight Is So Right For Love' and 'No More'. They were hints of what was to come. 'It's Now Or Never' was a reworking of 'O Solo Mio' and 'Surrender' a reworking of 'Come Back To Sorrento', both Italian love songs, the latter having been a hit by Vic Damone. Still later, his version of 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' made a lot of people forget about Dusty Springfield and her dusty voice that was one of the best and most sensuous ever to come from a record groove. This was at a time that many dismiss as his schlock and glitz period of Las Vegas. He covered Tony Bennett's old hit 'Rags To Riches' and Andy Williams' 'Are You Sincere?'. Many critics dismiss this as a sellout and further evidence that Elvis lost it after he left Sun. I disagree.

Throughout all of the RCA years, Elvis always drew from C&W, R&B, blues and gospel. There is no doubt that he extended his repertoire but he never forgot those roots. James Taylor composed 'Steamroller Blues' but Elvis' snatched it from right under his nose and did a much gutsier version. Like has been said, it was as if Elvis was saying, 'Good try kid but this is the way to sing blues'. For more evidence, just listen to 'Always On My Mind', 'Walk A Mile In My Shoes' and 'Polk Salad Annie'.

'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' was a standard long before Elvis sang it. It was recorded by Jaye P. Morgan earlier in the fifties. Even with its melodramatic interjected speech, not too many artists since have seen fit to cover it which should give an idea of how formidable it must seem to any singer to try. Which brings us to another point. How many of Elvis' big songs have ever been covered later by other artists? Leon Russell did 'Heartbreak Hotel' and Cheap Trick 'Don't Be Cruel' and so did Bill Black's Combo but I don't even remember it. The actor Richard Chamberlain cut a version of 'Love Me Tender' and another singer had a version of 'Jailhouse Rock' in the early sixties but I couldn't even find mention of it on the internet. Does anyone remember them? How many other attempts at covers of his hits have there been? The movie 'Leaving Las Vegas' had a compendium of his songs by other artists and many were very good but there have been few other serious attempts and that movie was almost an Elvis tribute. It's similar to Vladimir Horowitz at the piano. Once he did it, few would even try it for fear of the comparison.

No discussion of Elvis' importance could be complete without mentioning the Singer NBC Special of December 3, 1968 which has come to be called the Comeback Special. Recently, TV Guide named it as one of the most important musical events in television history.

The timing could hardly have been less auspicious for Elvis. He had just finished his string of movies which were his only connection with his audience for most of his post-army career. They had been almost universally panned and the critics had been as cruel to them as they had always been to him. His last number one hit was 'Good Luck Charm' from 1962. Many thought that he had lost his edge because of the army and the movies. The British Invasion with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who was in full swing. Along with Bob Dylan and a host of other later American rockers, they had transformed rock and roll to rock. Worst of all, on a dare, he had stood outside a bar in Los Angeles one morning and no one noticed him - hardly fitting for a king. Many wondered, including Elvis himself, if he could still do it. Elvis prepared for that show for months. He lost weight and trained. Right from the very beginning of the show, he answered all of the questions.

Only Elvis Presley could have had the audacity to wear that black leather outfit and only Elvis Presley could have gotten away with it. It heightened the air of sexual danger that underlay all of rock and roll and especially his appeal. The setting struck me as unusual at the time, a central square stage, with him and a back up band that included D. J. Fontana and Scotty Moore from his earliest days, Bill Black, his bassist, having died. Elvis roamed the stage like a caged animal, transfixing everyone. He never looked better, oozing sex, and he never sounded better. The setting is now acknowledged as a forerunner of MTV's Unplugged. He launched into a medley of hits and threw every fibre of his being into them with a determined fierceness that wasn't present in his previous or subsequent television appearances. It was almost as if he knew that this might be his only chance to re-establish his star in the musical sky. And re-establish his star, it did. He showed his unique combination of shyness, smart-assed confidence, impish sexuality, vulnerability, earnestness and, above all, the soul of an artist yearning for acceptance. When it was over, the King had returned to claim his throne. There could be only one King and all others were just pretenders. It was one of the most highly rated shows of the year and after that Elvis decided to return to live performing which launched the third and final part of his career.

But to show you how controversial Elvis still was, I lived in Philadelphia at the time and I didn't read a positive review. One critic said that Elvis and his sidemen were as moronic as the ongoing exchanges between them during the first part of the special, adding that the humor was apparent to no one other than them. He was wrong. Elvis fans recognized everything that they were bantering about. This very same critic fawned over a Bridget Bardot special that was on right after it. Hers has been long forgotten while Elvis' is a classic. Elvis still pushed the envelope.

Which in turn gets us to the whole question of the critics. Right from the beginning, the critics dismissed rock and roll in general and Elvis in particular. I know of only one musical authority who took it seriously at the beginning. Leonard Bernstein recognized it as being descended from blues. For innovation, jazz was the intellectuals' and the critics' music of choice.

As an example, Playboy Magazine, for all its hedonism, always was simply a survival manual for those who aspired to be part of the in crowd. Throughout the fifties and early sixties, the magazine held an annual poll of favorite musical artists. They called it the Annual Jazz All Stars Poll, which gives you an idea of what they regarded as worthwhile. The poll would list categories such as trumpet, clarinet, trombone, piano, drums and vocals.

For each category, they'd list suggestions such as Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Pete Fountain, Maynard Ferguson and Buddy Rich. Among vocalists they'd list Frank Sinatra, Ella FitzGerald, Steve Lawrence, Peggy Lee and others, all greats. Only occasionally would Elvis appear in their list. The highest I ever saw him listed was 17 and I don't think that he ever won during that time period. More often than not, it seemed, it was Frank Sinatra.

As a further example, in 1958, Elvis, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Buddy Holly were tearing up the charts with one hit after another. The Grammy for Record of the Year was awarded to 'Volare' by Domenico Modugno. In short, rock and roll just was never intellectually acceptable and Elvis, especially, wasn't. Eventually, that all changed but the critics were never ahead of the curve and that should be remembered four and five decades later when the critics lambaste Elvis for having abandoned his roots. The critics back then often referred to him and other rockers as 'singers(?)', quotation marks and all.

When The Beatles came over from England, American critics fell over themselves fawning on them and it galled a number of America's original rockers. (America has always had an inferiority complex when it comes to things British.) When they asked the Beatles who their inspirations were, they mentioned Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and especially Elvis. So great was Elvis' influence on The Beatles that his version of 'I Want To Play House With You' was the inspiration for their song 'Run For Your Life' that John Lennon wrote. Lennon later said that when Elvis appeared on television, sang, 'wiggled his ass' and the girls went crazy, they knew that was what they wanted. Ringo said that without Sun records, the Beatles would never have been. It still took the critics years to realize what home grown treasures we had.

Which leads to another point. What are the critics but another group of people who have opinions about things, in this case, the performing arts? They showed themselves to be cemented in the establishment with their attitude toward the single most important post war musical trend and the single most important artist in that trend. They did not recognize innovation. While the critics were deriding Elvis and the other rock and rollers, a musical revolution was occurring right under their noses and they didn't recognize it. These were serious artists. Ultimately, the critics are the customers who plunk down their hard earned dollars to have some moments of enjoyment.

At this juncture, it's difficult to envision the uproar surrounding Elvis. Elvis was controversial, for the music he performed and his stage act. It was bad enough that the music was black and 'the devil's music'. His movements sent shrieks of horror through all layers of society. Ministers and nuns denounced him. Religious magazines had articles that seriously argued that Elvis Presley was sent by Satan for our moral destruction, an ironic contention given that he was steeped in the southern religious tradition and always voiced the desire to quit popular music and join a gospel group. Vituperation was heaped upon William F. Buckley, Jr. when he wrote in a column that, for all the hullaballoo, Presley had a nice voice. Roy Orbison saw Elvis in person and said that there was just no point of reference for his stage act. Tom Petty saw Elvis in Lakeland, Florida and decided then and there to make music his career.

(There's an interesting sidelight here. Elvis was given the nickname 'Elvis the Pelvis'. When Dick Gregory was asked about it, he said, 'Thank God his name isn't Enos').

So, not only doesn't the argument that Elvis abandoned his roots stand up to examination, but it's specious anyway. Elvis was always more than a just a bluesman or C&W wailer. Even at the beginning, he was much more catholic in his musical tastes than the myth has suggested.

And so what if he did stray from his roots? He was raised in the southern musical stew of blues, gospel and C&W and it was natural that his primary thrust would be blues but southern music, while great, is limited. In this light, Sam Phillips was right to sell Elvis' contract to allow him to go to a venue more suited to his full potential. He was above all, a singer and could he ever sing. He had a two and a third octave range, almost operatic and rarely was off pitch. Remember that next time you listen to his renditions of 'Softly, As I Leave You', 'Memories', 'Love Letters' and 'Until It's Time For You To Go'. It's not clear whether Sun Records could have given Elvis the opportunity for such gems.

Ultimately, there may have been a more serious consideration for Elvis' significance. Tony Bennett had a hit version of Hank Williams' 'Cold, Cold Heart' and Dean Martin had numerous C&W hits. Hank Williams had many crossover hits, including 'Hey, Good Lookin' and others but they were white music making it in another white world. Elvis had hits with blues, rhythm and blues, C & W and even gospel. Elvis and the other early southern rockers weren't content with any limitations. They were raised in that great southern musical stew. They were going to play all of it and that was all there was to it.

Until the day he died, Martin Luther King, Jr. said that there would be integration in the south far sooner than in the north. Time has born that out and maybe in their own way, those early rockers were saying something far more important than music. They may have actually been presaging the integration that was to come.

During the time of the twenty fifth anniversary commemorations, David Bowie revealed that at the time of his death, Elvis and he had been discussing a joint project which shows just how far he had brought his music and himself. It also shows how abreast of things Elvis kept. He did covers of Beatles songs, including 'Hey Jude' and 'Something', Paul Simon's 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters' and Bob Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice', John Fogerty's 'Proud Mary' and the list goes on.

So then we come back to the whole original idea of bringing blues and country and western music to the masses. Elvis sang them all and by unabashedly mixing them up with all other types, isn't that exactly what he did?

My kids know that I've been a Elvis fan and they say that they like 'A Little Less Conversation'. They think Elvis is cool. That says lot and that's why, twenty five years after his death, Elvis still matters.