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Friday, January 9. 2009
The King
Yesterday would have been Elvis Presley’s 73rd birthday. Did anyone mark the occasion? I wrote this in August, 2007. Thought I’d repost it.
It was just over 31 years ago when Elvis Presley made his final exit, sprawled nude on his bathroom floor, the victim of drug addiction, fear, and loneliness. Aided and abetted by his manager Col. Tom Parker and the doctors who prescribed the medications, in the end, the most famous entertainer in the history of western music met his end alone. That’s the way it usually ends with addicts.
Elvis won’t be remembered — much — for his drug addiction, although it will pop up of course. Most people, his fans in particular, will remember him the way they picture him best in their minds: the young kid who could only be viewed from the waist up on the Ed Sullivan Show because his swiveling hips were far too suggestive for network television. They’ll remember him as the man who had all the girls screaming at concerts, the young man who brought rock’n’roll to the white kids — Black music — to White radio, unheard of in 1954. When Elvis played The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, Sullivan wasn’t in attendance. He had been in a car accident and missed five shows. Actor Charles Laughton was the guest host and it was he who introduced “Elvis the Pelvis” to a third of the American population on September 9, 1956. I was nine months old so my recollection is a little fuzzy.
That Elvis brought Black Music to White Radio seems … ridiculous 53 years later, but that era was, for many, a desperate time. Religious fanatics were burning his records in great bonfires in an effort to stomp out the demon in Elvis’s music, certain that young White boys would turn into atheistic criminals and White girls … one shudders to think of the possibilities.
In fairness to the religious nuts, my brother Rick and I were little hoodlums growing up, but it’s hard to imagine Elvis had anything to do with that. I blame it on Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, the stars of the hit, 1968 movie Bonnie and Clyde. They made, in our pubescent minds, being bad look so good.
Elvis Presley was hated and feared by thousands, but loved and revered by millions and the millions won that turf battle. Radio stations that wanted to compete had to play rock’n’roll, in particular Elvis Presley. Same with record stores. Want to see your sales go through the roof? Stock Elvis Presley records.
It was the same with the Beatles nine years later (1963). I remember once going to Arlen’s department store on Forest Home Avenue with my older sister in search of Beatles albums. Her feeling of dejection when the new release she was hoping for wasn’t there was palpable. That’s how it was with Elvis.
In 1954, Blacks were forbidden by law in the South from using the facilities of White America and Blacks were systematically discriminated against everywhere else, but unlike the South, everywhere else in America did it under the radar, with a smile sometimes, but always with hate and fear. The visage of a Black Man going after your White Daughter is still a pretty powerful weapon, even today. A year ago during the Tennessee Senatorial race the Republican National Committee produced a television ad featuring Representative Harold Ford’s attendance at a Playboy Super Bowl party and his relationships with White women. In Elvis’s time, Ford wouldn’t have been a U.S. Congressman, and had he been known to even look at White women he would have been lynched. All across the South in Elvis’s day, it was against the law for Blacks to marry Whites and in the rest of America it just wasn’t done.
Did the racist ad depicting the White woman telling Congressman Ford to “call me” have any effect on the campaign? Hard to say, but Ford lost by a narrow margin.
So, Elvis Presley bringing Black music to the White teenagers in 1954 was a big thing. For many in White America — especially the religious fanatics — Elvis Presley was Satan knocking on the door and when that door opened, in came the downfall of Western — Christian — civilization. Yes, before long the White radio stations were playing records by Little Richard, Fats Domino and Chuck Berry and the White girls were going all gaga for them and their music.
That was the era in which Elvis Presley broke the barriers, took down a few walls of separation between White and Black America. Some might argue Elvis’s contribution to the struggle for Civil Rights was insignificant, but that’s like saying Blacks did nothing for the advancement of the Industrial Age. Elijah McCoy, a Canadian-born, Edinburgh, Scotland educated mechanical engineer, invented a lubricating device for trains that eliminated the need for trains to stop to get their parts oiled. He wisely got the patent and started a company and thus was born the term, “The Real McCoy.” When people ordered the lubricating cup, they didn’t want the versions of others, only “the Real McCoy.”
Elvis wasn’t a spokesperson for Civil Rights, he didn’t pick up the mantle and say equality for all, he just played and sang the music he liked, which just happened to be the music he heard on the radio; Black music, and the guileless way in which he ignored the conventions separating White and Black America to do what he wanted opened the doors much, much wider than the Swing age when swing bands like the Thundering Herd and the Glenn Miller Orchestra played that dancing jazz they hooked into from listening to Black dance music from Harlem.
Remember, or know of, the Harlem Renaissance? Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk were major contributors to that era of artistic brilliance.
Today it seems ridiculous to think Whites shouldn’t be listening to Black music, although it’s always been okay for Blacks to listen to White music. It’s the whole “Whites are superior beings to Blacks” notion we still carry around with us a little. Except in sports of course, but in Elvis’s day, Blacks were first getting a taste of baseball’s Major Leagues. One of my favorite players of all time, Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, broke into the Majors with the Milwaukee Braves the same year Elvis recorded his first record.Elvis Presley will be remembered in many ways today, some of it in ridicule for his lifestyle, the really bad movies he made and the untimely manner of his death. Almost as well known as his music was his penchant for peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Like me, he loved fatty foods and that certainly contributed to his death.
But mostly he’ll be remembered as the King of Rock’n’Roll, with that deep, sonorous baritone and the joyous, uninhibited nature in which he played that music for the millions of fans lucky enough to attend one of his concerts. My favorite Elvis Presley song? I don’t know. “Heartbreak Hotel” pops into mind first, but “Hound Dog” rocks!Let’s celebrate Elvis and his music today. Put a smile on your face.
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