Integrator and Innovator
‘The Frank Lloyd Wright fans!! Undoubtedly. Why? Because they're on the side of Nature and the others are on the side of an artificiality that is doomed.’
This was architect Frank Lloyd Wright's reply to Mike Wallace's question as to which group of youth, the Lloyds Wright fans, counted at the most in the thousands, or Presley fans, counted in the tens of millions, to "inherit" the country in 1972, in an interview which took place on January 9, 1957. Pop music is merely transitory and ephemeral, only those things that are ‘real,’ as in being natural, endure. I know the ‘argument,’ and as such it is riddled with illogicalities and fallacies. Nothing natural endures. All things corrupt, decay, and die; all things pass. Any art or architecture modelled on nature is ‘doomed’ to fade and die. Further, any modelling or mimicry is itself as ‘artificial’ as any other cultural creation. The music of Elvis Presley is a creation, an artifice, but one rooted in a natural endowment. That music has endured, precisely on account of the ability that voice has retained to strike a human chord. For that we have the artifice of technology to thank, preserving a permanent record of that voice. Or as permanent a record as anything can be this side of Heaven. Only those things grounded in God can expect to be rewarded with eternal life. Your buildings will decay and die, crumble into earth, just like the statue of Ozymandias.
“You have no idea how great he is, really you don’t. You have no comprehension - it’s absolutely impossible. I can’t tell you why he’s so great, but he is. He’s sensational.”
- Phil Spector
People have had a go at telling you why Elvis is so great, but words are a blunt instrument. That’s why we have the singing voice. The only adequate explanation possible is through the singing voice. But I shall carry on having a go with the written word.
Intellectual snobs notwithstanding, Elvis’ musical and cultural achievement has proven to be great and enduring:
‘There would be no current popular music without Elvis. He not only synthesized everything that had come before him in a really unique way, but he influenced everybody who came after — so you can have Blake Shelton and Adam Lambert influenced by the same cat.’
Don Was, Grammy-winning producer, in an interview with Rollingstone and published in their February 13, 2019 edition.
The Elvis world combines the influences that came before and all who were influenced after. Establishing and investigating the connections forms an entire musical universe.
Elvis became culturally significant, the icon of the age, on account of the mobility and multiplicity of his voice. With that voice he could do anything and reach everybody. Celebrating the ‘Day of the Voice,’ the Spanish online publication Terra gave this view on the qualities of Elvis’ voice on its being ranked as one of the ten most imposing in the history of recorded sound:
‘Elvis Presley transcended his being called the King of Rock and Roll, even the music he made famous, in favour of his later becoming one of the XX Century's greatest cultural icons. But it is his versatile voice and his unusual delivery of numerous musical idioms, as well as the attraction he held, physically, and sexually, that led him to his being the greatest solo artist in the history of popular music.’
Terra, published in their online page, on April 15, 2015.
Elvis’ cultural achievement was firmly based in the capacity of his voice to act as synthesizer and in his music to perform as a means of integration. In the US of the twentieth century, Elvis was inevitably involved in a challenge to the divisions of black and white:
‘I think Elvis took a huge chance in doing "In the Ghetto". It was a big risk.’
Mac Davis, in an interview to EIN, published on July 31, 2013.
Elvis took the risk.
‘The first time I saw Elvis in person I knew he was special. Number one he was the prettiest man you ever saw in your life, he was really beyond handsome. There was something electric about him. Coming along when he did, moving the way he did, jumping around the way he did, plus the fact that every woman was totally mesmerized by him. Everything came to standstill when you saw Elvis. This was when he was 19 and again when he was 30. I saw him at both instances and there was the same reaction both times. You couldn't have wiped the smiles off their faces with a hand grenade. He knew what he could do and what he had and he played on it. He came along at a time in the Fifties, him and James Dean, it was the two of them. They were everything.’
Mac Davis, idem, in 2006
Elvis didn’t overcome social and racial divisions. Music, it seems, can only do so much and go so far, even in changing the culture. There is no workaround which enables us to avoid restructuring power and resources – in other words, politics. Elvis’ music and its cultural impact was politics with a small ‘p.’ It changed a lot, but not everything. The continued existence of division has, in time, come to be turned and held against Elvis. His musical and cultural achievement in fusing black and white has, in the context of continued and even exacerbated division, been taken not as achievement but as white appropriation. From being a symbol of liberation and integration, Elvis has come to be considered a symbol of white oppression. This is wrong, and profoundly, painfully so. That view says everything about the times we live in and precisely nothing about Elvis Presley. It is a travesty of the truth, and unless you have truth on your side, you’re not going to get anywhere you need to be. Truth liberates. Elvis was truth, a truth all too easily corrupted by a corrupt world:
‘Elvis Presley was rock and roll’s first real star, not to mention one of the most important cultural forces in history, a hip-shaking symbol of liberation for the staid America of the 1950s. A white Southerner singing blues laced with country, and country laced with gospel, he brought together American music from both sides of the color line and performed it with a natural sexuality that made him a role model for generations of cool rebels. He was repeatedly dismissed as vulgar, incompetent, and a bad influence, but the force of his music and his image was no mere merchandising feat. Presley signalled to mainstream culture that it was time to let go. Four decades after his death, Presley’s image and influence remain undiminished.’
Mark Kemp, US music journalist, in his introduction to Elvis' biography section in Rolling Stone's Magazine's Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll
Insofar as anything cultural endures, Elvis endures. Frank Lloyd Wright opined that the whole Elvis phenomenon would be over by 1972. Over four decades after Elvis’ death, he remains as important and as popular as he ever was. As to the nature of that achievement, the simplest way to understand it is to say that Elvis fused black and white to create a new form of popular music that was without racial and cultural implication. It was a genuinely ‘popular’ form in that all people could do it. Those who say that Elvis sold roots music out for commercial gain miss precisely his true achievement. Elvis didn’t enter an untransformed mainstream, he rearranged the mainstream and made it something more expansive, more inclusive, and more musically rich, vital, and diverse. That’s an immense achievement, for which Elvis has yet to receive proper tribute.
Voice coach Greg Drew identifies Elvis’ ability to sing so many different styles of music, drawing them together to create a new musical form:
“What he actually did was take 'black' and 'white' music and transform them into this third thing; (in the final analysis), no one sang so many different kinds of music - rock, gospel, country, standards, as well as Presley sang them, at such a high level, and for such a long time.”
Greg Drew, as quoted in Mike Brewster`s "The Great Innovators: Birth of a Rock star", published by Business Week in its September 24, 2004 issue.
In drawing attention to Elvis’ remarkable stylistic range, Greg Drew emphasizes the extent to which Elvis’ music, like all great art, endures. No singer sang so many different forms of music, and so many different kinds within those forms, as well as Elvis sang, at such a high level and for such a long time. He didn’t just sing country, blues, gospel, folk etc, he sang different types of these songs. He sang different types of ballads, from the big voiced orchestrated ballads (‘What Now My Love’) to the simple acoustic ballads (‘Beginners Luck’). He sang gut-bucket blues (‘When it Rains it Really Pours’, he sang sophisticated piano blues (‘I Need Somebody to Lean On’). He sang traditional gospel, formal, black, contemporary. And he sang it all equally well, at the highest standard. Those who can’t hear that can’t hear not for their physical limitations but their intellectual and cultural – they are deaf to Elvis’ liberatory significance and are merely seeking to preserve the old boundaries. That is their preference, but it is a pretension and a prejudice that has nought to do with culture. They perceive Elvis to be a threat and they fear him. That’s how it was from the first.
Elvis’ achievement involved more than his vocal range and ability. It was about emotion, heart and soul, allied to an incredible technical power:
‘People talk of his range and power, his ability and ease in hitting the high notes. But the real difference between Elvis and other singers was that he could sing majestically in any style, be it rock, country, or R&B – because he had soul. He sang from the heart. And that is what made him the greatest singer in the history of popular music.’
John Owen Williams, English A&R executive, record producer, photographer, manager, recording artist, and songwriter, speaking about the soul in Elvis'voice.
In his article "Elvis at 75” Mark Feeney asks “Can we ever again see the performer, not the punch line?" It’s a question that invites us to see Elvis the artist and not Elvis the image, the icon, the symbol of low culture, the joke:
‘It's been more than five decades, but there’s still such freshness to the recording, such unexpectedness bursting through the familiarity. Scotty Moore and Bill Black, on guitar and upright bass, hang on for all they’re worth, trying to keep up with this crazy kid as Elvis’s voice - urgent, insinuating - floats out over the beat, a croon that joins joy and nerves and arrogance (already you can hear his sneer), and that voice turns almost spectral as it slides into its upper register whenever it comes to allll ri-iiiiii-ght. (Forget “E pluribus unum’’ or “In God we trust.’’ The words that should appear on our currency are “That’s all right. What I was hearing transcended beauty...)
Mark Feeney, in his article, "Elvis at 75: Can we ever again see the performer, not the punch line?" as published on January 3, 2010 at BOSTONCOM
Transcending beauty is quite a claim. Beauty is one of the three great transcendentals, with truth and goodness. It was the wisdom of Socrates to hold beauty as the supreme political category in the way that it lights the path to truth and goodness and invites the heart to follow. Elvis’ music certainly fits the category of beauty. In transcending beauty, that music transcends the transcendent. Rather than attempt the tricky metaphysics of such a claim, I shall return to the music. Through the mobility and multiplicity of his voice, Elvis forged different kinds of music and made them one to create a form that was accessible to all:
"When you come from Memphis, music is in your blood. From the blues artists to Elvis Presley, they have all had a major influence on my music. I admire Elvis, always have. He combined all of these different types of music and made it one."
- Justin Timberlake
Elvis is an important, even pivotal, figure in the history of record production:
‘Elvis Presley did more to change the course of popular music and youth culture than any other entertainer in the twentieth century, beginning with his meeting Sam Phillips in 1954, at the Sun Records label, in Memphis. In 1956, for Presley's first single at RCA, producer Steve Sholes was adamant that Phillips' sonic treatments be adhered to, as closely as possible. So, in attempting to recreate the Sun echo sound, Sholes relied on the ambiance of RCA's then-cavernous recording studio in Nashville, rather than the tape-delay method; the major problem facing Sholes was Presley's tendency to get carried away with the music and wander away from the microphone; so, rather than spoil the singer's fun, Sholes decided to position three microphones around Presley to capture his quivering voice, no matter where he strayed; the results were breath-taking.’
Columbia University's "History of Record Production" (Part II of syllabus)
A number of commentators describe Elvis’ cultural creation as ‘the Big Bang.’ There is a Before Elvis and an After Elvis:
‘Elvis Presley was the big bang. He was the most influential single figure in the history of American pop culture. He changed the way we looked, thought, dressed, held a guitar. He didn't invent rock & roll, but he defined it in a way that everyone who followed him owes him a debt.’
Jimmy Lovine
We live in Elvis’ world. Elvis was the visionary genius who blended multiple musical sources to create a popular music form that changed the entire culture. Here is Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin telling reporter David Frickle on how it felt to meet Elvis:
‘We got to meet Elvis on May 11, 1974. He'd been the one who'd done so much for so many, setting everyone alight and flighting right under the radar with all of this black music, doing numbers by country blues artists like Arthur Crudup and Sleepy John Estes. It was unbelievable. He was one of us. And think about it! He started in 1954 - that was more than ten years before we arrived. It's miraculous that he made it through! He had the hand of God over him, he really did. He was the one that brought it all together. He brought blues and race music to the white culture. Rewinding to 1974, we were invited to see him play and then invited back to a party afterward. We went up to his suite. There was just a few other people. I can tell you we were really nervous when he came in the door. He really moved as naturally cool in real life as he did on film. That wasn't an act, that's just how he really was! It was real cool to us. It was a little awkward at first because his music meant so much to us but then somebody said 'You know that hot rod you drove in the movie 'Loving You'? And that was that everybody just drove into the conversation relaxed and had fun. He was wonderful a fantastic man!!! On this day in 1998, I played at Tupelo, where Elvis was born and raised, when there were no local attractions apart from the cotton fields or getting to Memphis. When Elvis grew up it must have been pretty bleak but the white and black picked the cotton side by side and the local indigenous music provided the soundtrack to this tough environment and it took the visionary genius of Elvis to blend those musical sources and change the world.’
Jimmy Page, as published in RollingStone magazine's October 28, 2014 edition, as well as from the book "Light and Shade" published in 2012.
Elvis himself was self-deprecating through it all, calling himself ‘just a singer’ and entertainer, never exalting his claims and putting anyone else down in public. He never made any great artistic claims for himself. There is a wisdom in this. Music is a sensuous experience and not a cerebral one. Elvis possessed an innate grasp of this truth that was genius. He sang and performed the truth rather than spelled it out. Neurotics, archivists, and archaeologists waste time and words naming, defining, and spelling, embroiling us in irresolvable controversies and contradictions. Nature’s way is quick and dirty, and the people, hearing a decent tune and a good voice, go direct to the truth. Only the really stupid need that truth to be spelled out and proven:
‘He never understood the artistic claims that were made for him, probably thought very little of the nature of his appeal, or his music; yet, as author Greil Marcus points out in "Mystery Train", it is possible to see (all that) as a positive factor; Presley viewed "rock and roll" as for the body, not the mind, so he recorded and performed accordingly; and, if much of his rock music sounds superficial, it was thanks to his undoubted vocal talent and extraordinary charisma that, at least, it was all gloriously superficial and celebratory; he knew better than to take it seriously and, in doing so, he became the consummate rock figure, one that defined its spirit by delighting in its very limitations.’
Richard Middleton, in his book "Popular Music, Volume I: Folk or Popular?
That’s a hugely important passage, in that it responds directly to the cheap and facile charge that rock and pop music is artificial and ephemeral. Elvis knew the limitations of the material and made no great artistic claim for it. He exulted in its limitations, and did so with a voice that of a far finer order and quality than most of the songs. It is that voice that endures. Elvis’ voice transcended the material it delivered beautifully. Elvis’ songbook not merely endures, time is exposing more and more of its qualities. Songs that were once dismissed are now appearing in new light:
‘A lot has been written and said about why he was so great, but I think the best way to appreciate his greatness is just to go back and play some of the old records. Time has a way of being very unkind to old records, but Elvis' keep getting better and better.’
Huey Lewis, as published in www.graceland.com
Elvis’ authentic multiplicity in music has a broad and universal appeal. As the title of the Elvis album of 1961 puts it, there is ‘something for everybody.’ Or, something for everybody who is prepared to listen without prejudice. That’s not everybody, as Elvis found. He sang for everyone but not everyone was prepared to listen:
‘It has something for everyone, except perhaps Irving Berlin, who attempted to get Elvis's recording of "White Christmas" banned from radio play, deeming it "vulgar and disrespectful". And it was, which is part of the reason why the drastically rearranged tune is so memorable, as the then-young singer masticated the contemporary classic, adding his idiosyncratic dynamics and trills (the so-called educated yodels of one's vocal chords); equally irreverent and just as riveting is the King's gritty take on Leiber and Stoller's "Santa Claus Is Back in Town", one of the most sexually suggestive holiday tunes ever, and his rollicking "Here Comes Santa Claus". And who can forget the song that changed the hue of Yuletide, "Blue Christmas", or his wistful, definitive version of "I'll Be Home for Christmas", which cemented his reputation as pop's top dreamboat. Along with Phil Spector's "Christmas Gift for You", this is arguably the finest Rock & Roll Christmas album of all-time, a seasonal yet essential recording belonging under any Christmas tree.
Jaan Uhelszki and Bill Holdship, reviewing "Elvis Christmas Album (1957 version).
Elvis, rock’n’roll, and Christmas – what’s not to like? Here is Jonny Whiteside celebrating the incredible ‘Santa Claus is Back in Town,’ a salacious Christmas blues that really ought to have had Elvis run out of town:
‘Go ahead, moan all you like about Elvis. (But) this is still the single greatest rock & roll Christmas record ever made. Elvis’ slurred, dirty, wailing delivery and Scotty Moore, Bill Black and DJ Fontana’s walloping primitivo accompaniment put this over with a licentious zeal that never wears out its welcome. Although he favored gospel above all else, Elvis genuinely excelled as a blues singer (there simply ain’t another white cat who can pull ‘em off as convincingly) and this wildly unlikely collision of atmosphere and theme rates as a minor, and altogether irresistible, masterpiece.’
Jonny Whiteside, as published in an article at LA Weekly, on December 2, 2016.
Director David Lynch voted for the 1968 NBC/TV Special as the number one musical performance of all time:
‘Elvis did the Comeback Special in '68. He was falling in the ratings and it brought him right back onto the throne and, when you watch him sing - and "Baby, what do you want me to do" in particular, which is a cover of an R&B song by Jimmy Reed, Elvis makes it his own - you see this music is HIM, he's got every inflection, every feeling 100 per cent out there for all to see, it's so thrilling to watch, it's infectious. With singers and musicians, there's the surface of something and then real deep levels of being IT, and nobody gets close to Elvis because he gets that thing at the deepest level and it comes alive with him and everybody feels it, and it's like magic. He looked so great in his black leather, but even if he looked weird he'd still be King. Elvis is the total package, he was born for it.’
David Lynch, as published in EIN WWW page.
Elvis is one of the Holy Trinity for the way he fused different forms of music together to form the one popular form:
‘After Maria Callas, Elvis Presley is the #2 of the Holy Trinity for taking blues, gospel and spirituals, and sexing them together while also desexualizing the more rough-edged and raunchy root ingredients (ie: removing the black stigma) to make it into rock n' roll and music for the masses. Elvis had an undeniably great voice and incredible moves...’
Drew Rowsome, writer, musician, editor and pop culture critic, in an article entitled Elvis Presley: the second of the Holy Trinity
I’m not sure about that definition, mind. It is true that Elvis polished the roots material and made it pop. For ‘folk’ critics that is a cause for criticism, blending musical forms and blanding them out in the process. Elvis was pop, in the same way that Sam Cooke was pop. People who call Sam Cooke the first great soul star have a point – Sam Cooke was an undeniably great singer - but miss what Sam himself was about and was consciously aiming for. Both Sam Cooke and Elvis were deliberately seeking to crack the pop market and recreate it in the process. That they did precisely this, to create a music form that was without social, racial, and cultural implication and restriction is their achievement. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this desexualized the more rough-edged and raunchy root ingredients, because the music retained the sensuous and the vital. But it did remove the rougher edges, hence its accessibility, hence its commercial appeal. The real contrast is not between the new pop rock form and its root ingredients but between the new form that the likes of Elvis and Sam Cooke created and the previous pop form. The new form, evidently, cannot be described as ‘desexualized.’ Compared to the older pop form, the new sounds very rough-edged and raunchy. Even ‘Teddy Bear.’
It all came from gospel. Rock’n’roll music has a sacred core and root. Critics talk about the blues, but it is the gospel that is the cornerstone. It was with Elvis and it was with Sam Cooke.
‘In examining how rock, soul and R&B grew from the roots of gospel, our program on the Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul shall highlight such highly influential artists as Sam Cooke who transitioned from gospel to secular music Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her early rock stylings and Elvis Presley, who helped expose white audiences to gospel music. Examples of some of the most beloved contemporary pop music of the last 60 years from artists such as Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, and Ray Charles illustrate gospel music’s influence.’
WXPN, in an article published in wwwprwebcom̪s on January 15, 2019 edition.
‘He was white, but he sang black. It wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time. Elvis filled a void.’
Chet Atkins
That claim has been a source of criticism as well as praise. The implication is that Elvis earned sales that properly belonged to black artists. His whiteness was a licence for white kids to buy records that sounded black. I think this view has been overstated. There were very many established black artists before Elvis, whose records it was certainly socially acceptable to buy – Nat Cole and Ella Fitzgerald are obvious names. The point obviously relates to what was called ‘race’ music. Even here, though, there are other issues. Fats Domino was actually the biggest selling artist of the 1950s. He had the whole of the decade, of course, whereas Elvis had the RCA years of 1956-58, but even so, Fats Domino sold. The white kids were buying his records. He wasn’t on the pop charts because of the imposition of a ‘race’ market. The effect of this restriction can be seen in the fact that white jazz singer Peggy Lee could score a top ten with ‘Fever,’ despite selling much less than Little Willie John’s original, which was confined to the ‘race’ charts and the lower reaches of the pop charts.
The upshot of all of this is that people bought Elvis’ records not because he was white but because they liked them. The fact that Elvis is still played, still popular, and still sells would suggest some such simple explanation, I would think. But, yes, he ‘sounded’ somewhat black, as any music that was a fusion was bound to at a time of strict divisions.
But big claims have been made for Elvis as ‘sounding black.’ People I know to be good judges make these claims. Take George Melly, a Liverpool jazz blues artiste whose favourite singer is Bessie Smith:
‘What had he got going for him? Voice apart and that, in itself, was remarkable, was the fact he sounded black. I can remember the first time I heard him on record, at a Hampstead party in the middle Fifties. I took it for granted he was a black blues singer, and was amazed when I discovered he wasn't.’ (George Melly, You ain't nothin' but an icon, The Guardian).
This ‘black’ quality was noted at the time.
‘It is probable that he will eventually settle into the mainstream of popular singers. When he does he may well build a reputation as one of the most remarkable of white blues singers, possibly the first to invade successfully the field of country blues.’
John S. Wilson, Jazz critic for the NYT, reviewing Elvis first two albums, as published on that paper's January 13, 1957 edition
It didn’t quite happen that way. For all of the talk of Elvis aggrandizing himself through the commercializing of the blues, it was found that the blues sides – ‘Hound Dog’ notwithstanding - didn’t sell half as much as other material. It has often been regretted that Elvis didn’t sing more blues, given his obvious facility for it. The response is always the same, there was little money and interest in it. Elvis did indeed settle into the pop mainstream. The odd thing is that he didn’t quite settle into that pop mainstream that he had in large part fashioned. The rock and soul of the sixties and after took Elvis’ original synthesis in new directions, whereas Elvis went in his own direction. He was as big as he ever was, grew bigger even. But he was in a world of his own. Elvis world.
He could have lived up to the claims made for him as a great blues singer, though. In fact, some think he did:
‘In any case, there's something beautifully uncomfortable at the root of the vocal style that defines the pop era, the simplest example coming at the moment of the style's inception, i.e. Elvis Presley: at first, listeners thought that the white guy was a black guy and it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that when Ed Sullivan's television show tossed this disjunction into everyone's living rooms, American culture was thrilled by it, but also a little deranged, in ways that we haven't gotten over yet; ultimately, the nature of the vocals in post-Elvis popular music is the same as the role of the instrumental soloist in jazz; that's to say, if it isn't pushing against the boundaries of its form, at least slightly, it isn't doing anything at all; so, we judge popular vocals since 1956 by what the singer unearths that the song itself could never quite, and (this) explains why Elvis is always rock, even when singing "Blue Moon."’
Excerpted from the lead article by Jonathan Lethem, as published on Rolling Stone's magazine's December 2008 issue, honoring the 100 greatest singers in the Rock era, in an article entitled "What Makes a Great Singer"
There’s something beautifully uncomfortable, deranged, disconcerting, and thrilling about a voice that is both black and white and neither in being beyond. It is the transgressive beyondness of the voice that pushes against expectations born of boundaries that disturbs and excites in equal measure. Lethem perceptively draws attention to the special quality of a singer like Elvis in the capacity to unearth something through his voice that the song in itself could never. Elvis’ voice transcends the material and makes it something more, other, different, and better than it is.
It’s more than technical ability. Elvis’ vocal range is impressive, but it’s not just that, nor even mainly that, that distinguishes his voice. Jerry Wexler, co-founder of Atlantic Records, responsible for countless pioneering and epoch-making records with black artists, is in a position to identify Elvis’ distinctive qualities:
‘The voice is so melodious, and - of course, by accident, this glorious voice and musical sensibility was combined with this beautiful, sexual man and this very unconscious - or unselfconscious stage movements. Presley's registration, the breadth of his tone, listening to some of his records, you'd think you were listening to an opera singer. But…it's an opera singer with a deep connection to the blues, which leads me to the role of the great enunciator, because he delivered us the greatest cultural boon. Nobody ever did more for the American people. He gave them the great present of black music transmitted through his own sensibility, his own sensitivity. Of course Elvis was a different kind of white purveyor of black music because it was naturally black and it was real and he was a conduit. And America was really changed. I'm talking about American music and our culture in general. We owe far more to Elvis Presley than all the British groups put together.’
Jerry Wexler, co-founder of Atlantic Records,
This is an incredibly perceptive comment. First of all it notes Elvis’ immense technical ability, before quickly qualifying it with a reference to the blues. Elvis hit some tough top notes perfectly and could have been an opera singer had he trained. The speculation is idle, because in becoming an opera singer he would have ceased to have been the Elvis Presley we know, and we would have lost the music we love. The point about the blues is this, Elvis bent his notes in a way that opera singers do not and cannot. It comes from gospel and blues and there is nothing like this in classical and opera. Hence the vision of Elvis as an opera singer with a deep connection to blues and soul is incongruous. But that encapsulates the beautiful contradiction that is Elvis.
I like Wexler’s definition of Elvis as ‘the great enunciator’ who was the creative agent of cultural change. Wexler makes some big claims here, but I think they are true. I recoiled from Elvis in the 1980s as more and more stories about his less than god-like character came out in public. The wave of attacks continued into the 1990s, with Elvis dismissed as merely a pretty face, a plastic pop artist, a derivative artist who aggrandized himself on the creativity of others, a grand larcenist of culture, an appropriator, and a racist. The assault was huge, relentless, and overwhelming. In time I returned to the records. The surprising thing was how good they sounded. They sounded very good. In fact, Elvis sounded even better than I had remembered him. In a most obvious sense, Elvis was not as the critics were saying he was. I started to ponder the question a little more, and the more I pondered, the more the anomalies unravelled. There has been a monstrous injustice performed against Elvis. He was a supremely gifted vocalist who left us with an immense body of work. He was the principal cultural agent of the contemporary age. Wexler is right, there is no one who has done more for the American people. In fact, Elvis’ liberatory qualities reached beyond America. But I see exactly the force of Wexler’s bold statement that ‘We owe far more to Elvis Presley than all the British groups put together.’ Coming from Merseyside, the home of The Beatles, I take the greatness of The Beatles as read. I am mystified as to why the greatness of Elvis Presley is contested, and always has been, from the very first. Elvis’ greatness is as obvious as anything can be. There must be powerful reasons as to why that greatness is questioned and clouded the way it is. There are issues of class and race here, division. Elvis subverted those divisions with his music, and it is that that makes him contentious and mires his musical and cultural significance in contention. In this controversy, Elvis can end up on precisely the side his music is aimed to undermine. From liberator, Elvis has come to be perceived as an appropriator. This is nonsense, for the reason Jerry Wexler gives. If Elvis is the white singer who sounds black, then he is so much more than that. Elvis is not a white outsider to black music. The black sound is not outside of his purview; it’s in him, it’s part of his innate musical sensibility. Wexler, perceptively, understands this. All the problems and controversies over Elvis stem from an inability to grasp this point. Elvis presented a fusion of black and white music through his own unique musical sensibility. He was, as Wexler states, ‘a different kind of white purveyor of black music because it was naturally black and it was real and he was a conduit.’ Elvis’ voice and style was naturally black. You cannot appropriate what is innately yours. Only very rarely can you hear Elvis trying to ‘sound black.’ There are a few instances, as when he sings ‘play the blues’ on ‘Reconsider Baby,’ but not many. There is no false rasping of the voice or strangulation of the vocal chords or any of the other tricks white singers perform in an attempt to ‘sound black.’ He sings always with his authentic voice, which is as good a definition of the blues as there is.
And American music and culture in general was changed and, through them, America itself, and for the better. The world owes Elvis a lot. He has yet to receive the recognition that is his due, let alone the thanks and praise.
It’s just a pity that Wexler’s bid to sign Elvis to Atlantic Records fell a few thousand dollars short of the price offered by RCA. I try not to play the mug’s game of trading what Elvis did for visions of what he could have done. I am thankful for the great music Elvis made at RCA. I just don’t think RCA did him any favours, more often the reverse. I think Elvis was an enormous talent who would have made great music wherever he was. I listen to those early sixties albums with their refined Nashville sound, then listen to Elvis in the process of recording that material. He was looser, swung more, edgier. He could have been more than polished. I think that Atlantic was a much better option for Elvis than RCA in carrying on the musical revolution he had started at Sun. But that wasn’t his manager Tom Parker’s vision, either.
I’ve read figures which indicate that Wexler offered $30,000 for Elvis’ contract at Sun, which was some $5,000 short of the $35,000 that RCA offered. So close yet so far away. Ahmet Ertegun gives other figures:
‘I came close to signing Elvis Presley. I offered $25,000 for his contract and they asked for $45,000 and I just didn't have the other $20,000.’
There should have been a public subscription.
Bob Dylan has an unusual take on this:
‘Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun didn't think much of my songs. He produced some great records, no question about it, like Ray Charles, Ray Brown, just to name a few. But Sam Phillips, he recorded Elvis and Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Radical eyes that shook the very essence of humanity. Revolution in style and scope. Heavy shape and color. Radical to the bone. Songs that cut you to the bone. Renegades in all degrees, doing songs that would never decay, and still resound to this day. Oh, yeah, I'd rather have Sam Phillips' blessing any day.’
Bob Dylan, as part of his acceptance speech after being named the 2015 MusiCares's Person of the Year and as delivered at the Gala organized by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences at the Los Angeles Convention Center on 6 February, 2015.
RCA or Atlantic? Dylan’s answer is Sun. But just how many times can a man reinvent the world? I think Elvis’ Sun moment was over. Not only that, I would argue strongly that the Sun musical vision was narrow and fell far short of Elvis’ own vision.
‘The most important entertainer in the 20th Century, certainly, and the only people that could even challenge him were the Beatles, but they weren’t single performers, so it’s Elvis Presley.’
Mike Stoller, agreeing with Jerry Lieber, that Elvis was indeed the most important individual artist of the 20th Century, as noted in a filmed interview for the 1987 BBC television special "Cut me and I bleed.”
Frank Sinatra agrees:
‘I’m just a singer, Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture. Life just wouldn’t have been the same without him.’
Let’s pursue Elvis’ cultural achievement a little further. Let’s start with the White House's Press release on November 10, 2018, which announced Elvis as one of seven honoured, in his case posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian award:
‘He defined American culture to billions of adoring fans around the world. Elvis fused gospel, country, and rhythm and blues to create a sound all his own, selling more than a billion records. Elvis also served nearly 2 years in the United States Army, humbly accepting the call to serve despite his fame. He later starred in 31 films, drew record-breaking audiences to his shows, sent television ratings soaring, and earned 14 GRAMMY Award nominations. He ultimately won 3 GRAMMY Awards for his gospel music. Elvis Presley remains an enduring American icon 4 decades after his death.’
Not before time, I would say. That there has been such a lapse in time indicates strongly political and cultural tensions and undercurrents around Elvis and what he is considered to symbolize. That Donald Trump is the President at the time of this award has people wondering what message is being conveyed. Elvis as the white king of a black musical form … harking back to an age when blacks and minorities knew their place and whites ruled the roost? That’s how it has been read. Whatever that says about America, it says nothing about Elvis. Elvis was the one who, more than anyone, uprooted such restrictions and boundaries.
The curious lack of respect and recognition accorded Elvis, his talent and his achievement has long been noted, at least by some.
‘Looking at the last century of US history, no other individual can fairly be said to have changed US culture so much while receiving so little recognition for having done so: the gap between what Elvis actually accomplished and the degree to which we understood those accomplishments is far wider for him than it is for any other figure.’
Author Gilbert Rodmam in his biography, Elvis after Elvis: the posthumous career of a living legend, published by Routledge, London in 1996, p 172.
That gap between achievement and recognition demands an explanation. It points to something profoundly amiss in culture and society.
Chris Herrington writes well on this decision by President Donald Trump to honour Elvis with the 2018 Presidential Medal of Freedom:
‘Elvis was both a now under-recognized figure of individual artistic genius and an acknowledged but increasingly under-considered figure of cultural revolution. The democratic impulse behind rock 'n' roll – the union of black and white, urban and rural, sophisticated and rough – had had been a kind of subterranean reality, especially in the South, for years, but became a marketplace reality across the country at the moment of Elvis’ mid-'50s emergence. It was driven by a post-war youth culture whose surfeit of discretionary income had the buying power to turn a pre-existing subculture into mass and Elvis into a star. Before, it may have seemed unlikely in a nation so divided that the many tributaries of American music, and the cultures they represented, could come together in one music and one man, though Elvis was only the brightest star in a broad constellation. Elvis was a figure of great disruption who became a figure of great unity, if only for a little while. Maybe this moment needs that reminder, if we can look far enough to Young Elvis to see it.’
Chris Herrington, writing for the Commercial Appeal, as published in an article dated November 12, 2018 and entitled '̊What do Nixon, Clinton and Trump have in common? For now, it's Elvis̊̊".
That’s a fair assessment. Elvis was a liberator and unifier who brought divided peoples and cultures together in one musical form, but that liberation and unity worked its magic only for a short while. The social and racial divisions remain. Those disgruntled by such division, and seeking to disrupt them as Elvis once did, now turn on Elvis as a symbol of white domination. It’s a travesty. That view turns Elvis into precisely what he wasn’t, missing entirely what he actually was:
‘If any individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis Presley is the one. In his wake more than music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness, but of our own potential. As to his comeback in 1968, it was the finest music of his life. If ever there was music that bleeds, this was it. The second edition of my book came out after Elvis died, and I was asked to put the whole Elvis chapter in the past tense, and I said no. The reason was that Elvis' presence was so powerful, I felt he's always in the present tense. When you listen to anything that says Elvis Presley to you, whoever you are, whether it's "Long Black Limousine" or "Jailhouse Rock" or "Milkcow Blues Boogie" or "Any Day Now" — I could go on forever — but the physical presence is so strong that death walks away. There's an obscene Elvis outtake of "Stranger in My Hometown". Elvis is singing and suddenly it becomes completely autobiographical, and he explodes — he says "I'm gonna start driving my motherfucking truck again. All them cocksuckers stopped being friendly, but you can't keep a hard prick down." He just goes off, yet it's completely musical, not just breaking down and screaming. He's right there. Every one of his greatest performances is in a way unfinished, because the emotion in them is so rich and so strained, in the best way, trying so hard to say what you mean emotionally, though you can never say everything, so as you listen, you add to that, you're engaged, you're taking part in the dialogue. So that will always be the present tense.
Greil Marcus, discussing the 40th anniversary of his book "Mystery Train" in a retrospective interview with Rob Sheffield of RollingStone published in the magazine's online edition on October 19, 2015.
- Greil Marcus, From his book "Mystery Train," remembering the 1968 TV Special
The eternal Elvis is in us all. The voice just draws us out. Elvis is a liberator and an educator, bringing us to ourselves:
‘I think when I came out of the womb – I've been saying this but I mean it, you're born knowing who Elvis is. The name Elvis is just part of the fabric of humanity. He just is this thing that exists in the air, and contributed obviously so much to music. But I think he is the definition of what's cool.’
Blake Shelton, as noted by G. Thompson in Popculture.coubtry's February 6, 2019 edition
As I will continue to insist, Elvis is less a king and more a democrat, since his example reminds us not merely his greatness, but inspires us to explore our own potential and pursue our own dreams. That Elvis will always be with us. Elvis and the eternal insurgency of life, ever-present, unfinished, always in dialogue, engaged, pushing the emotions against and beyond the boundaries, a will forever up against fate.
‘Since 1962, and the first appearance of Elvis, as silkscreened by Warhol, the face of America changed. The most insistent question posed by the ElvisWarhol series concerns the nature of their specifically charged content, and the viewing of Warhol's imagery not as signs, but as icons dealing with a larger content of culture in America. To a large group of Americans, Presley has long been a folk hero, yet his musical impact has overshadowed his sociological significance. Presley's importance is not simply as a popular entertainer but as a bearer of new verities.’
UK art curator John Coplans's laud of Elvis Presley, as noted in his "Warhol and Elvis", Studio International, 1971.
I’m not sure that that is true. If anything, Elvis’ sociological and cultural significance, itself reduced to its most ephemeral, commercial form, has overshadowed his musical significance. These are profound and difficult questions, exposing something that makes us feel uneasy, both in terms of asking something of us in and against the gilded cages within which we live – how many really have the nerve and the nous to affirm their uniqueness against ‘the system’? – and in terms of exposing some real entrenched divisions in our supposedly free society. Elvis is disquieting. It is easier to reduce him to joke and caricature, take what the superficial commercial world has made of him as truth and play with it:
‘As with Marilyn, Liz and Marlon, Warhol instinctively understood the Elvis brand as an industrialized construct and radically revealed it as a precisely composed non-reality. Of course Elvis offered Warhol the biggest brand of all, and he accentuates this by choosing a manifestly contrived version of Elvis-the-film-star, rather than the raw genius of Elvis as performing Rock n' Roll pioneer.’
Auction house Sotheby's laud of Elvis, as detailed in their catalogue prior to the sale of Andy Warhol's "Double Elvis" which went under the hammer for US37.5 million on May 9, 2012
Too many cannot deal with the real Elvis, the raw genius that continues to throw down the gauntlet and issue the challenge: be yourself!
"I liked watching Elvis sing and act in his movies. He showed the world you don't have to be like everyone else. Step out! Be different. I loved that."
- Reba McEntire
I wonder if that is an injunction to be as gods:
‘…especially in the South, they talk about Elvis and Jesus in the same breath.’
Michael Ventura (LA Weekly)
I don’t know if this is a good thing or a derangement. The Elvis world can take some odd turns:
‘If Rock and Roll were a religion, Elvis was its most prolific disciple, responsible for more converts than anyone before or after him; if it had been country, Elvis was a Founding Father and his lyrics were the documents of freedom that helped to birth the nation; if it were a sickness, Elvis-itis would be the most potent and contagious virus known to man, infecting victims who just looked at his image, heard his voice or saw him perform in person or through a recording. But since Rock and Roll is music, we’ve all decided the world over to just call Elvis…the King.’
A. C. Wharton African American Mayor of Shelby County, Tennessee, in commemoration of what would have been Elvis' 74th birthday, at the Graceland mansion, and as published by www.elvis.com, on 8th January 2009.
I think the Elvis religion is a deviation and perversion of the healthy core at the heart of Elvis. The drift into false mythologizing is fatal for mortal men and women. I wouldn’t take things too seriously. A sense of humour helps:
‘On stage, any chance I get to put the teeth in and bite people, I will take. “Dance of the vampires" is great if only because it lets itself to be really, really silly. Any character I play has at least one if not three animal images that I use. And for the role of Count von Krolock, I said he’s part panther, part eagle, and part Elvis Presley. And Elvis Presley — he’s sexy as hell.’
Drew Sarich US Stage actor and singer, telling the Moscow Times, on February 4, 2018, how he is preparing for his upcoming lead role in the stage play version of "Dance of the Vampires" which opened in Moscow in early 2018.
The voice is enough for me.
‘In some ways, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) can already be called a success due to its democratic accountability and the active involvement of civil society, but I would like to quote the famous philosopher Elvis Presley, in one of whose timeless hits he asked for “A little less conversation, a little more action-please.” So let’s listen to Elvis – and act now!’
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, from her speech at the UN on how best to make the SDGs work, as published by Norway's mission to the UN on September 25 2015.
Let’s just put an Elvis record on. I have ‘I’m Comin’ Home’ from ‘Fame and Fortune: Lost in the Sixties’ on now. Very lively. ‘Call her back and say I’m coming home to stay.’ I still say it sounds like ‘Twistin’ by the Pool’ by Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler is a big Elvis fan, don’t you know. When asked for his favourite Elvis song, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits struggled to pick just one:
‘So many favourite Elvis songs – and I hate to say one – but these are special ones. I really like ‘Young and Beautiful,’ just him strumming on a guitar, very early, similar to ‘Loving You.’ There’s loads of them. Elvis is just the greatest, he’s fantastic.’