Appropriator and Integrator
‘People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn't copy my style from anybody. Country music was always an influence on my kind of music.’
Elvis
‘By honoring Presley with the Medal of Freedom, the President paid tribute to someone who arguably did as much to bridge the cultural and racial divide as anyone who ever lived, an impressive and unifying act from someone usually considered the most divisive of presidents.’
Gary Abernathy, contributor for the Washington Post, in an article dated 20 November 2018, and entitled "Trump honoring Elvis? It's about time", in reference to Elvis' being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in a ceremony held at the East Room in the White House, on November 16, 2018
It’s reference to the award of the Medal to Elvis as an ‘impressive and unifying act’ by the President that makes it contentious, and drags Elvis back into the fights and divisions he sought to overcome. Elvis became associated with Trump, and drew a highly predictable denunciation from leftist commentators. These commentators didn’t let the truth get in the way of their politics. They met with a firm rebuttal. I’m hoping that this is the point where the familiar leftist condemnation of Elvis jumped the shark. I read their accounts. They embarrassed themselves:
‘Chris Richards should look up the accomplishments of Elvis Presley. Presley did more to further black music than any artist on the planet. He made it acceptable and paved the way. Almost all rock historians agree. Richard's article quoted an obscure obscenity from one racist musician but did not include even one of hundreds of positive quotes from his rivals of the day, who loved Presley and his uniting spirit.’
Sonya Lynn Snyder, of Palm Coast, FL, in a letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, published on November 30, 2018, in which she issues a strong critique of the writer's narrative in an article entitled, “With Medal of Freedom for Elvis, Trump sends a message” and dated November 16, 2018.
Appropriator
Before establishing Elvis’ true worth as an integrator, there is a need to address the accusations, forcefully expressed in recent decades, that he was a musical and cultural appropriator, aggrandizing himself on the back of the art and creativity of others, particularly black artists. Let me first of all say simply that the charges say more about the politically and socially divided times we live in than they do about Elvis, whose music undercut those divisions. We have found that music alone is insufficient to change the world and that there will always be a need for big politics. Elvis’ music was about small politics. He achieved much with such politics, but in the end it is not enough to effect the deep and widespread structural transformations that are required. That’s not a criticism of Elvis but of attempts to press culture alone into service as politics. Elvis himself never actually offered his music as politics, he offered it as music and no more. Here, Elvis is clear of all charges. It doesn’t matter whether you prefer Elvis’ covers to the originals or vice versa. It matters even less what the critics think, because popular taste has nothing to do with their choice. The only relevant point is that there are key differences between the covers and the originals. The same applies to Elvis’ convers of country music. Compare Elvis’ version of ‘A Fool Such as I’ with other versions, whether by Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, whoever you like. Elvis’ version is very different. I think it is better by miles, but that’s my choice and preference. It was also the choice and preference of a million others. Elvis was the people’s choice, and that’s what ultimately decides the arguments in pop music. Any arguments that remain are idle, mere score settling on the part of those whose personal tastes have been offended. It’s a tough world.
Elvis, in fine, didn’t actually copy. What Elvis did was to absorb and assimilate the material he tackled into his own musical persona so as to create something new and distinct. The only issue that remains once this simple truth is established concerns the fact that Elvis was commercially successful to an extent that far eclipsed most of those whose songs he covered. The reason is attributed to the fact that Elvis was white and the original artists were black. In other words, Elvis is criticized for being popular, successful, and making a lot of money. That’s an impossible charge to defend against, other than to point out that Elvis was far from being the only white rock’n’roller. That he was by far and away the most successful white rock’n’roller should suggest that there was something else behind Elvis’ success. Above, I commented on Elvis’ covers of country songs. These were every bit as popular and successful as his covers of blues material. Whatever the view of critics, whatever your personal taste, the fact is that people preferred Elvis to other artists and preferred listening to Elvis singing these songs to other artists. It really is that simple. If you don’t like Elvis that’s just tough. I do and so do millions of others. That’s the way it goes. I love lots of artists who have never been as commercially successful and as popular as I think they should be, many barely denting the charts. It doesn’t make me love them less. And it doesn’t make me invent reasons as to why the success of others is responsible for their neglect. I go by quality of music. If I rate Elvis it is on account of his voice and his music, not his whiteness or anything else.
There is no straight white/successful, black/unsuccessful distinction. Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino were far more successful than Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, Roy Orbison. Bo Diddley complains about the success Elvis had and the relative neglect his career suffered, but he could express precisely the same grievance against black artists who were far more successful than he was. The truth is that Bo Diddley’s material, as innovative as it was, and influential as it was, was too patchy and too uncommercial. It is that simple. To throw charges of racism and cultural appropriation in here merely poisons the environment and renders a liberatory force toxic.
So there is a need to establish Elvis’ credentials clearly and forcefully. Elvis was an educator, innovator, and integrator:
‘At Sun Studio in Memphis Elvis Presley called to life what would soon be known as rock and roll with a voice that bore strains of the Grand Ole Opry and Beale Street, of country and the blues. At that moment, he ensured — instinctively, unknowingly — that pop music would never again be as simple as black and white.’
David Fricke in Rolling Stone (1986)
Nothing should ever again have been as simple as the divisions of black and white. This measures the extent of Elvis’ achievement. He was a transgressor who broke down boundaries. Unfortunately, the continuation, indeed the re-entrenchment, of social and racial divisions has led to a complete misidentification of Elvis’ transgression as a musical and cultural appropriation on his part. Not only is that view wrong, it reinstates the very boundaries that Elvis sought to break down.
The charge that Elvis was an appropriator crops up in many forms and places. It’s a contentious issue in the USA:
‘Friday’s article about the contribution of minority groups throughout American history brought some fascinating reactions. First, quite a few folks who aren’t usually fans of me or of National Review actually reached out and said, “Thank you for writing this.” No doubt a lot of people hunger for the message, “Your ancestors helped build this country, too” and perhaps with it an alternative to a well-established and not-all-that-accurate narrative that minority groups’ role in America was almost entirely that of the helpless victims. But it was perhaps even more amazing to see the (admittedly mostly anonymous, possibly bot-like) responses on Twitter — who appeared deeply upset by a list of how minority groups shaped America from the beginning. The goal was to repeat it enough to make people think whites barely had a hand in building the nation, Really? You think people are going to forget or overlook the first 43 presidents, the Pilgrims, John Smith, Paul Revere, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Henry Knox, Thomas Edison, Lewis and Clark, Buffalo Bill, Butch Cassidy, Wild Bill Hickock, Wild Bill Donovan, Wyatt Earp, Eliot Ness, General George S. Patton, Neil Armstrong, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Elvis Presley, the Wright Brothers, Chuck Yeager, Will Rogers, Douglas MacArthur, Charles Lindbergh, J. Edgar Hoover, Ernest Hemingway, John D. Rockefeller, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, Billy Graham, Henry Ford, T. S. Eliot, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Upton Sinclair, General John J. Pershing, Robert F. Kennedy, Earl Warren, Andy Warhol, Allen Dulles, Frank Lloyd Wright, Norman Rockwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, the Minutemen, the Green Mountain Boys, the Texas Rangers, Is there anyone who’s even remotely historically literate who believes that “whites barely had a hand in building the nation”?
Jim Geraghty, in an article entitled "Why Are Some People So Insistent that Certain Chapters of History Not Be Discussed?", as published in the National Review's December 17, 2018 edition
Anita Pointer of The Pointer Sisters defends Elvis forcefully against charges of musical and cultural appropriation:
‘Growing up, Elvis Presley's quasi-gospel ballad "Crying in the Chapel" was the first secular recording allowed inside the Pointer Sisters' strict Church of God in Christ home in West Oakland, California. Ruth, Anita, Bonnie, and June were only allowed to listen to the radio on Sundays. On top of that, it had to be gospel stations. Thank God their mom fancied that song. In an extensive 2006 interview one of the sisters, Anita, reflected on the fact that it was so unbelievable that someone like Elvis could relate to the story in their song 'Fairytale' and want to record it. She thought Elvis did it beautifully and very pleased with his version, capturing the emotion in the song as he did. Ruth Pointer, also spoke positively of Elvis's final album 'Moody Blue' and defended him against charges of any cultural appropriation.’
Tom Dowd is a man who knows music. As record producer for Atlantic, Dowd helped shaped the sound of popular music through his studio work with Ray Charles, Otis Redding, The Drifters, The Coasters, Ruth Brown and such like, Bobby Darin, on "Mack the Knife," and John Coltrane Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker compositions. His views on Elvis are packed with insight enough to unravel all the myths and nail all the calumnies once and for all:
‘Elvis, what he had was this unique quality, remember I described the sensation of people in that geographic location of the United States at that particular time being a mixed culture artistically? They were playing country, gospel, jazz and the blues and you did not know whether they were black or white, or who's playing what, because you're not looking at a tube, all you're doing is listening to a radio, and they are so good at emulating each other's styles that you don't know what's happening. Elvis blotted up as close as any white man could, the black culture. And he was sensitive to the black culture. If he heard something that he fancied doing and it was white, he didn't make it sound black. If it was black, he didn't make it sound white. He kept it in its tradition. That was one of Elvis' unique facilities.’
Tom Dowd
This next passage explains why Elvis would become a contentious figure the more attention shifts from his example and actions to his existence as a symbol:
The book, by contrast to "White Rage", offers an extended view, spanning from pre-colonial plots to relocate Britain’s human rubbish, to Thomas Jefferson’s notion of “whiteness as an automatic badge of superiority,” to modern use of adjectives like “redneck,” “cracker” and “country boy,” such as in the specific case of Elvis Presley. Isenberg’s greatest historical and sociological intervention is not just the idea that divide and stratification exist between races, or that such divisions habit within them, but that it has always been this way. American democracy has never accorded all the people a meaningful voice. The masses have been given symbols instead.
John Semley, reviewing for the Globe and Mail, writer Nancy Isenberg's book "White Trash", which according to the reviewer, undermines the myth of American exceptionalism and as published on November 29, 2016
The message of Elvis’ musical example was to give everyone a voice. That entails a democratic commitment to valuing the worth of each and all. That ideal is still far from being realized, and so the masses are made to be content with symbols of freedom and democracy. It is as precisely such a symbol that ‘Elvis’ is targeted. But this ‘Elvis’ the symbol is to be distinguished from the Elvis as the real historical figure. What the historical Elvis did and achieved was underappreciated in his day, and has since been erased from view:
‘This era of biracial musical creation and consumption has been largely erased from popular memory. It lies buried beneath simplistic parables of white expropriation and exploitation of black culture in which Elvis Presley has become emblematic of centuries of uncompensated and unacknowledged white appropriation of black cultural ingenuity and labour. There is enormous moral power to this perspective and, to be sure, plenty of evidence of just such exploitation and theft. Nonetheless, it still makes for unpersuasive history and fails to help us to understand the significance of Elvis and the whole biracial rock-and-roll phenomenon that intersected with the dawn of the modern civil rights movement.’
Brian Ward, for the Independent, in an article published on August 16, 2017.
To argue that the tale of Elvis as the grand larcenist leading a movement of white appropriation is ‘unpersuasive history’ is something of an understatement. The view makes a travesty of the real facts, turning them on their head, with Elvis becoming the symbol of the very division and exploitation he challenged. Elvis broke black music into the pop world and opened the pop charts for black artists to pour into. That’s what happened after Elvis. As Chuck Berry said, black artists didn’t have the airwaves as white artists had, and did not have the same access to the pop charts. That changed after Elvis. Credit should be given where credit is due, and all undue criticism dropped. The controversy is based on an awful lot of non-issues. All music recycles what has already been done, there is a constant borrowing, weaving, blending, and cross-fertilization going on in the creative process. Every culture takes, assimilates, and adapts. Insofar as the issue concerns giving people the respect – and the rights and royalties – that is theirs, then the cultural appropriation police have a valid point. It is when they press the point further than that that they end up entangled in doomed tangles and irresolvable conflicts:
‘To the extent that the cultural-appropriation police are urging their targets to respect others who are different, they are saying something that everyone needs to hear. But beyond that, they can plunge into doomed tangles. American popular culture is a mishmash of influences: British Isles, Eastern European, West African, and who knows what else. Cole Porter committed no wrong by borrowing from Jewish music and Elvis Presley enriched the world when he fused country-and-western with rhythm-and-blues.’
David Frum, writing for the Atlantic in an article entitled "Every Culture Appropriates,’ published on May 8, 2018.
It’s a cul-de-sac of thickets. You have to turn around and make for the open ground. Making Elvis a target is understandable in this context. He is big and well known and so very easy to make a symbol of all the bad things which you need to condemn. He offers a means of simplifying an incredibly complicated, ultimately irresolvable, issue.
‘He certainly was inspired by black music, but I don’t get why people are going after Elvis. If you are going to take the stick out on him, you better take it out on the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, everybody. If you are going to vilify Elvis then why don’t you just tear down the whole United States?’
John Mellencamp, discussing cultural appropriation in an article published by Salon on 19 May, 2018.
To make the charge of appropriation stick, you will need to establish clear conscious intent on Elvis’ part. That is remarkably difficult to do, for the simple reason that Elvis was not an outsider to the music and culture he drew upon, but was on the inside. You cannot steal what is yours. In an article entitled "Was Elvis Presley a cultural appropriator of black music?” Robby Berman locates Elvis firmly in his culture and background to make it clear that Elvis was being himself and drawing upon his own roots in becoming the singer he was:
‘Appropriation, then, has something to do with intent. When another culture’s property is exploited for profit, that’s appropriation, and it’s always deserving of criticism. Elvis was just being Elvis. In "Elvis Presley: The Searcher" an HBO documentary, its signal achievement is in showing how the singer’s early years, family culture, and socioeconomic background made inevitable the musician he was to become. It makes clear that he was, first, and foremost, a committed artist, utterly dedicated to music and its ability to move people.’
Robby Berman, as published on the Big Think's April 19, 2018 edition, in an article entitled "Was Elvis Presley a cultural appropriator of black music?
It wasn’t cool to like Elvis in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, it was cool to criticize Elvis as a racist and cultural appropriator. Thankfully there are signs of this prejudice being turned around, and not before time. It gives hope to know that truth endures and may finally prevail over falsehood and plain bigotry. The truth here is on Elvis’ side. I only recently found out that Prince was a big Elvis fan. I don’t recall Prince ever making much of a statement in this respect in the 1980s and 1990s. I always detected more of a Hendrix and Beatles influence in his music. But Prince did declare the extent to which he admired and was influenced by Elvis in interviews before his death. In response to a reporter’s question as to why would he cite Elvis Presley as one of his influences, Prince said this:
‘I realize I'm part of a musical history and I revere the legacy of my predecessors, so, for instance, when playing live I'll do some of their bombs, or say, we play "Jailhouse Rock" as a tribute to Elvis. So why Elvis you ask? Well, I was brought up in a black and white world. I dig black and white; night and day, rich and poor, man and woman. I listen to all kinds of music and I want to be judged on the quality of my work, not on what I say, nor on what people claim I am, nor on the color of my skin.
Prince in interview with "Guitar World", published in October of 1998.
That’s an important statement. That statement is one that could have been made by Elvis himself. It is a statement that needs to be made for Elvis. Elvis said in 1954 that he sings ‘all kinds.’ He sang all kinds of songs for all kinds of people. Elvis’ music transcended all the categories which keep people divided from one another. He was a democrat, manifesting the universal in concrete particulars. In singing all kinds of songs for all kinds of people, Elvis touched the universal chord that unifies each and all.
The cultural appropriation police have a role to play in guarding against ‘borrowing’ that lacks respect, is exploitative, or just cheap and ephemeral. It goes too far when it condemns all instances of white singers singing black music. Elvis is indeed the test, the benchmark, but not in the way that his critics think:
‘Taking ownership in the wrong way (Michael Bolton trying to out-soul Percy Sledge in “When a Man Loves a Woman”) can lead to accusations of cultural appropriation — a nice euphemism for stealing. It’s complicated. Pat Boone did sound like he was ripping off Little Richard with “Tutti Frutti.” But Elvis, to me (and to James Brown), sounded like he was delivering the goods.’
Roy Peter Clark US editor, and teacher of writing in an article published on Poynter on August 16, 2018.
I have a large blues and R&B collection. I am steeped in that music and listen to it often. I hear very clear differences between the various white artists who sing that music: some are much better than others, and others, many, are a whole lot worse. I make no claim about Elvis being better. Sometimes he is. I have no hesitation in saying that Elvis’ version of ‘Such a Night’ is superior to Dinah Washington’s. A lot of Elvis’ covers are better than the black originals. I will say with respect to ‘My Baby Left Me.’ But this is to establish a point that is not worth making. Blues is about an authentic voice, a personal expression on the part of the artist. I look most of all for that authentic expression. If it is there, then it passes muster as blues. So where Elvis possibly doesn’t measure up to the originals, say Ray Charles’ ‘I Got a Woman’ or the Little Richard songs he recorded, it doesn’t matter. He still performs very credible versions, and that’s all that matters. Elvis delivers the goods in a way that other white artists, plainly coming in from the outside and lacking entirely the blues feel, do not. I heard Rufus Thomas say precisely that about Elvis in interview. It is not as simple as a white singer singing black music. Pat Boone sang Fats Domino and Little Richard, Thomas said. ‘Pat Boone was lousy,’ he exclaimed. Elvis was not lousy. Thomas praised Elvis most highly. Talking to the TV program American Routes, which aired on WKNO, Rufus Thomas said: 'Well a lot of people said Elvis stole our music. Stole the black man's music. The black man, white man, has got no music of their own. Music belongs to the universe.’ Thomas was the first black DJ to play Elvis on the radio. He continued to play Elvis’ until the white program manager ordered him to stop on the assumption that black people didn't want to hear them. They did. Thomas continued to play Elvis. The same thing happened a WDIA fund-raising event for black handicapped children. Elvis turned up. The white stage manager didn’t see any problem with Elvis going out front. Thomas warned it would be the end of the show. He was overruled: 'When Elvis wiggled that leg, the crowd went nuts. He walked right off the stage and people were storming that stage. The next day I started back to playing Elvis again. Going to show you that no one person can tell you what another group might like.’
Wise words: cultural appropriation police take note:
‘no one person can tell you what another group might like.’
‘I remember when I took Elvis by the hand and slowly pulled him on stage. And I said 'Ladies and gentlemen ..... Elvis Presley!! And never, never in your life have you seen such a surge of black faces all converging upon a stage at the same time I know of only two people that would have that type of magnetism that would just, they could just pull people to them, the kind of magnetism to just draw crowds in instantly effect them. [Elvis being one], the only other was Martin Luther King.’
Bluesman Rufus Thomas, recalling the night of December 7, 1956, when he introduced Elvis at an all black revue organized by WDIA, in Memphis.
I’d like to end with a quote from Madonna. I don’t particularly like Madonna. In fact, I dislike her. But I do like her attitude to critics:
‘“Oh, they can kiss my ass,” she says of critics who might accuse her of borrowing other cultures’ fixtures. It's a topic she seems interested to discuss. “I’m not appropriating anything. I’m inspired and I’m referencing other cultures. That is my right as an artist. They said Elvis Presley stole African-American culture. That’s our job as artists, to turn the world upside down and make everyone feel bewildered and have to rethink everything.”
Madonna, in an article by Michael Jacobs entitled "To hell and back, Madonna lives to tell", as published by the Huffington Post on 13 March, 2015.
That’s our job as artists … to take what we like and what we need, make it serve our purposes, break things up, reassemble them, make the world rethink.
Talent borrows, genius steals, to quote … Oscar Wilde or Muddy Waters.