all shook up

Andrew Durkin links to an article in the Guardian declaiming against the status of Elvis Presley as the so-called King of Rock & Roll. I was going to leave a comment, but didn't feel that was appropriate given that the bulk of Andrew's post was a right-on-the money assessment of Max Roach's role as a jazz artist and the meaning of Money Jungle. It's a masterful post; you should read it.

It was Wadada Leo Smith who first hipped me to Elvis. No, really, it was. I'll never forget coming into Leo's Creative Orchestra class one day when I was a student at CalArts as Leo was showing off his new conducting move. It was pretty fantastic - a two-handed sideways cue complete with hip-twisting and knee-rocking action. He told us he stole it from the King. "King of what?" we asked, by that point completely disoriented. "The KING! King of music! King of Rock & Roll, don't you know who that is?!", he chided us. Of course he meant Elvis, but that was the last thing on our minds. I figured after that rehearsal that I'd better seriously check this Elvis guy out.

I tend to think of Elvis (and others like him; the article mentions white heroes Clapton, Astaire and Sinatra) in terms of being a great synthesizer. He wasn't much of a creator but he was able, mainly by studying the performances of others, to put together styles that were popular and relevant at the time in order to fashion something that was novel and extremely marketable. Laying aside the fact that Elvis wouldn't have accomplished any of this without the guidance of people like Sam Phillips, I think it's proper to look at those early white rock & roll stars like Elvis, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, etc. as having been able to borrow just enough from black music so as to make their inborn country thing sound new and fresh, if not completely original. Thematically, white rock & roll was scandalous enough to appeal to teenagers looking for a way to rebel against their parents but not so over-the-top (as Big Mama Thornton, Joe Turner and other black rock & roll prototypes could often be) as to prevent their music from hitting up the mainstream airwaves and the popular charts.

To be fair, folks like Chuck Berry did the same thing, only in reverse. Berry would probably have been known only as a mediocre blues performer had he not happened upon the novelty of singing and playing country tunes in a rhythm and blues style. His innovation begins with the fact that he was one of the few black musicians willing (or able to discover the means) to "cross over" to areas of popular culture and venues that were traditionally reserved for whites only. His superlative skills as a songwriter and his idiosyncrasies as a front man and guitarist sealed the deal. It's sad that plenty of black musicians like Little Richard, who were generally sticking to a more pure form of rhythm and blues, got cut off on the way to success by white singers (businessmen, actually) like Pat Boone and Bill Haley who were quick to appropriate and "clean up" black material to suit the tastes of popular (white) audiences.

So by the time Elvis got there, the groundwork had already been laid, and the game was ripe for somebody to come along and take the whole pot. Historically we see Paul Whiteman in a similar situation by the late 20s with the increasing popularity of jazz, Benny Goodman (or Glenn Miller or any number of white bandleaders) with swing music in the 30s, and the Beatles in the early 60s when the relatively static rock & roll scene had people just waiting for something new. But with Elvis, again, it wasn't so much about creativity as it was the fact that he was in the right place at the right time, and he pretty much did what he had to do.

As disgusting a self-caricature that Elvis eventually became, some of those early records are really smoking (Andrew seems to agree). Take a performance like "Heartbreak Hotel" - he's able, in the course of just one line, to fashion a decrescendo from all-out rhythm and blues shouting ("Oh since my baby left me...") to Bing Crosby-esque crooning, to just the faintest whisper ("...so lo-honely I could die."). This guy embodied the clean-cut, white image of celebrity sexiness, with all the unabashed musical libido of rhythm and blues bubbling underneath. What's not to love?

Of course I'm speaking in gross generalizations and musical stereotypes, but take into account that there was nothing much else operating in 1950s American popular culture. People weren't concerned with authenticity, they were obsessed with sensation. This goes back perhaps to the virtuoso performers of eighteenth-century Europe, to the overnight success of groups like the Original Dixieland Jazz Band at the beginning of the Jazz Age in America, through rock, disco, hip hop, you name it... and it is probably even more so today.

Americans want to embrace superstars that reinforce their own value systems and their images of themselves, whether real or imagined. Elvis was every white teenager's fantasy in the 1950s - the girls wanted to have him and the boys wanted to be him. As these kids grew up and faced reality, so did their hero for better or worse, and in a way, he became an image of all the false comforts of the whitewashed 1950s as our social fabric began to unravel in the succeeding decades.

So how is it that a fairly talented kid who laid down some pretty good records is now, 30 years after his ignominious death, remembered (and imitated) more for the laughable character he became than the innovative, irresistible performer he started out being? In other words, why in God's name is this even thinkable, let alone acceptable:

No, I don't consider Elvis the King of Rock & Roll (that's Bo Diddley's title if you ask me). I'm not even that much of a fan, really. But come on, it's been 30 years, let's give the man some respect...