Elvis Presley: life, career, and cultural impact

Elvis and Black Music

The Influence of Black Music and Culture on Elvis Presley

Ongoing celebration of the music and (still ever-expanding) musical legacy of larger-than-life American rock' n roll icon Elvis Presley (January 8, 1935-August 16, 1977) even a full three decades and counting after the pop idol's death on August 16, 1977, clearly underscores the quality and timeless appeal of Presley's unique and vastly appealing artistry. However Elvis's distinctive sound, although most often regarded as original to Elvis himself, especially by causal listeners, actually sprang from American black musical traditions. That musical debt of Elvis's though remains even now among the more lightly discussed of myriad aspects of the singer's otherwise exhaustively scrutinized art. Still, the truth is that significant musical blending, throughout Elvis Presley's formative years within the American South; and based also on many of Elvis's earliest, closest musical influences in terms of rhythm; style; tone; cadence, etc., root Elvis's distinct sound unmistakably within the black American blues and gospel traditions combined.

From that point on, at least during Presley's lifetime itself, the singer's popularity, although it never actually abated in any substantial way, did occasionally wax and wane with the introduction and rising popularity of other, newer rock 'n roll artists, with the Beatles from Liverpool becoming, especially throughout the mid-to-late 1960's, Elvis's strongest rivals for top rock 'n roll star status. were challenged but even today, long after Presley's own premature death at age 42 his cutting-edge music and the man himself, has long been a favorite national pastime of millions upon millions of devoted "Presley-ites." Elvis Presley is in fact a long-enduring cultural icon: perhaps even more so in death (and thirty years afterward and still counting, moreover) than he ever was in life.

However this musical celebration and cult following Elvis had in life and continues even long after his death to maintain, was in fact heavily influenced by African-American musical traditions not at all Elvis's own, except perhaps in the strictly geographical sense of his also, like the black musical traditions of gospel and blues, from which he took so much, also springing from the American deep South.

However many black musical; cultural, and other historians claim that Elvis's theft of their musical tradition is the epitome of the racism inherent within that era. The whole Elvis phenomenon in rock'n roll music yesterday and today only serves to further underscore, they contend, the foul way so many black writers and performers, such as Little Richard, were treated by the music industry in Elvis's own heyday. The enduring image of Elvis is a constant reflection of Society's then-refusal to accept anything other than the non-threatening and subservient Negro. The legacy of Elvis as King of Rock and Roll has to be re-examined, those critics suggest, especially in the wake of better and more accurate scrutiny nowadays of the true origins of rock 'roll. These stem from deep African-American musical traditions in blues and gospel music. Elvis himself admitted that his music is heavily influenced by the gospel of his childhood.

In order to examine the genuine roots of Elvis's music and its close connection to African-American musical traditions, several areas must be explored. First will be a closer look at the black musical tradition of Elvis's own period. Second will be an examination of musical blending of these various strains and influences that occurred within Elvis's early career and lifetime. Third will be analysis of Elvis's childhood and the influence of black musical traditions upon his later music. Finally, this essay will offer analysis of his actual musical contributions and legacy: to black Southern culture; the growing civil rights movement of his day; and mainstream American culture in general, then and now.

Elvis's music has strong roots within African-American musical traditions that were prevalent in the South during Elvis's own childhood and youth in the mid-1930's through the late 1940's and beyond. In fact, significant musical blending throughout his musical career, combined with various cultural, musical, and other strong influences from his own upbringing caused Elvis's music to be rooted firmly within the traditions of traditional Southern American black gospel and blues. Black American gospel and blues strains and blends are in fact so strongly inflected within Elvis's own enormously popular musical renditions that they are practically inseparable from them.

Specifically, the long slavery-inspired African-American musical traditions of gospel and blues from which Elvis borrowed heavily, were ones that both Elvis himself growing up in the South and his musical mentors and patrons were extremely familiar. Even today, in fact, Elvis's music enjoys especially strong and widespread appeal within the African-American community, due no doubt to Elvis's music itself having sprung undeniably from within various (related) African-American musical blends, but most strongly black American gospel and blues.

In terms of an overall landscape of black musical tradition around and at the time of Elvis's own climb and rise to fame in the 1940's and 1950's, issues of equal rights for blacks, especially in deep Southern like Mississippi where the singer was born, raised, and experienced his core musical and other life influences, were still distinctly at the outer fringes of public discourse with no real solutions in sight, or even active movements, as would later be the case in the 1960's with (for example) the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's equal rights demonstrations and sit-in's in the deep South.

During Elvis's own youth and early adulthood, though, racial segregation was still alive and well in all social mediums including one of key public importance especially in the South: church attendance; thereby explaining, perhaps better than anything else, why gospel music was not popular within white culture, although it indeed flourished, at the same time, within African-American church-going communities, which were (and are) heavily represented in the American South in particular. The segregation of the period was, obviously then, one of the primary reasons for musical separation among whites and black is of the time: as African-Americans formed their own communities that were autonomous from traditional white communities, musically and otherwise.

Also at the time, due to lingering racial prejudices left over from the slave days, African-American communities were still more or less, with very few exceptions, relegated to a deeply inferior status in all aspects of everyday life, especially vis-a-vis whites and the relatively privileged, non-stigmatized status even poor Southern whites enjoyed. Such a caste system within the south was in fact deeply ingrained into the fabric of socially acceptable segregation.

The southern beginnings of increasingly widespread rock 'n roll popularity throughout the 1940s and 1950s were later paralleled by the birth of the civil rights movement; that is, both began in the American South but then spread rapidly beyond it and throughout the United States. Moreover, it might even be argued that Rock and Roll, especially in relationship to Elvis helped the movement persist strongly and influenced better relationships between white and black social integration.

On the issue of race, moreover, Elvis rode the tide of the civil rights movement. By blending black and white music, he helped legitimate black culture during a time when African-Americans were breaking into mainstream music and entertainment culture, sports, and more broadly U.S. society as a result of the civil rights movement. Rock 'n roll became in those days a legitimate white (thanks mainly to Elvis, and, although later, other white rock 'n rollers who built on/imitated his sound) means to provide grassroots support for the civil rights movement. Thus the blending of musical traditions was not only inadvertent but even encouraged by the "establishment" of the time as a way of introducing black music into mainstream (i.e., white) America at a time when musical segregation (like all other kinds) was otherwise still very much alive and well.

Even though as early as the 1920s much of the entertainment music played by white American musicians was clearly influenced by black music, black and white music venues were still mostly segregated up to and including the earliest rock 'n roll years; that is, black musicians performed for black audiences while whites played their music for white audiences

Throughout the 1930s, though, the mere musical influence of black musicians and their art themselves, strong as it was, in the absence of the civil rights movement was not enough in and of itself to induce whites to incorporate black musical compositions and/or strains overtly into their standard entertainment repertoires [the American musical legacy of those times, especially as compared to that of the next few decades combined, clearly reflects, qualitatively speaking, and in more general terms of rhythmic; tonal, and other varieties, that deficiency.]

Popular Black music itself in America, from the 1920's on (although widely and popularly played and heard by other than blacks only in the latter decades of the 20th century and beyond) was based on gospel and blues sounds, alone and/or combined. Blues music has its traditional roots within African-American musical tradition as evidenced by the long string of musically talented artists within that genre. Blues music however did not cross racial lines, with the majority of famous blues musicians still residing in New Orleans and various other well-known black music entertainment venues of the South.

Gospel music has been an African-American church tradition with influences from traditional African music and especially prevalent during the slavery era. Later (most likely because of those particular ignominious associations and all they implied, especially in the South) gospel music was strongly discouraged within mainstream society and actively suppressed.

Similarly, blues music represented a blending of black musical traditions with a centuries-long history originating from the earliest days of American slavery. Sammy Davis Jr. And Nat King Cole, were and remain today among the best-known of early black entertainers within the (then) up-and-coming rock 'n roll genre of the 1940's. Each had a heavy influence upon Elvis himself.

Obviously, though, the blending of Southern musical traditions was not started by Elvis himself, or even later kept going by Elvis alone or even rock 'n roll alone. Instead, the American South, most likely because of its distinctly ignoble past slavery practice, has since those same early days been a uniquely varied and eclectic musical region, that is, drawing its inspiration from its variety of folk sources, and blending them into ever-new combinations - blues, jazz, rock, etc. Clearly, then [Elvis's music is] "not the first time such interracial cultural cross-fertilization had occurred within popular musical traditions."

Still, during the earliest years of rock 'n roll, segregation of music into differing racial markets was still the norm throughout the industry. Primarily for (in hindsight) misguided marketing purposes, the recording industry of the time divided southern music along racial lines, into two very general categories, with black performances being issued on "race" records and white performances as "hillbilly" series, no matter how inept and inaccurate such a racial labeling and bifurcation of the music itself was.

That division between music traditions played a strong role in why black musical traditions were excluded from mainstream music. However, it still grew into a very mature industry based almost exclusively on grassroots and underground interest. The integration of black and white music has a deep historical tradition.

The integration of black music with country music has been long recognized by Nashville and now has a fixed place within the historical context of country music's own development. Elvis and any overt acknowledgement of his own musical education within black musical traditions, though, was a different matter, especially at first. But in fact Elvis's childhood was spent in one of the poorest areas of rural Mississippi; therefore, a strong root and cultural influence of traditional gospel music and blues music must have been added to his musical familiarities early in childhood. He was born and raised in Tupelo, Mississippi, a poor white community that bordered upon many segregated black communities. He attended the Assembly of God church in a neighboring African-American church and was introduced to gospel music at this early period within his life. Elvis, as well as being the most dramatic example of a celebrity transformed into a cult deity by a pill-popping mama's boy hillbilly from Tupelo, Elvis Aaron Presley was the first musical megastar of the rock and roll period (later, unfortunately, he would become just the first of many) to experience a very a premature death.

Elvis's parents were a truck driver by the name of Vernon Presley and his seamstress wife, Gladys Smith. Raised in poverty, Elvis developed his singing talents at the family's Pentecostal church, and by the age of ten managed to win second prize at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show with a version of the song Old ("Elvis Presley"). Later Elvis's move with his family to Memphis, Tennessee, when he was still a teen heavily influenced his strong attraction to blues and (as it was just becoming known) R&B. In 1948 Elvis's family had moved to Memphis, and it was here in fact that Elvis first fell heavily under the influence of black R&B performers, e.g., B.B. King by way of the thriving music scene on Beale Street.

During this time Elvis attended many R&B performances and even practiced at times with traditional blues players within noted Memphis nightclubs, winning regional level accolades through his rendition of [black] R&B. Elvis's own first recording session followed eventually, with Sam Philips of Sun Records. As Bertrand states, of Elvis and his vocal talents, even very early on in his then-fledgling singing career: "He has always been able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers. But he has not been confined to that one type of vocal production.

Further, according to Bertrand, when it came to ballads and country numbers, Elvis could offer enormously impressive versatility of vocal range and capability, including "full-voiced high Gs and as that an opera baritone might envy" the young and then-inexperienced Elvis already could demonstrate a tremendous ability to assimilate without effort styles, ranges, and intonations not his own. As Bertrand further explains, Elvis's.".. voice has always been weak at the bottom, variable and unpredictable. At the top it is often brilliant. His upward passage would seem to lie in the area of E flat, E and F.

Elvis, as it turns out musically and historically, was just in the right place and at exactly the right time. for, according to Miller (1999), Philips at the time was searching around for: "a white man with a Negro sound and the Negro feel," with whom he "could make a billion dollars," because he thought black blues and boogie-woogie music might become tremendously popular among white people if presented in the right way"

For that reason, then, Sun Records founder and owner Sam Phillips, who had already recorded blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, B.B. King, Little Milton, and Junior Parker was right then looking for a white male singer that might be able, possibly at least, to better popularize a blended blues-gospel-rock 'n roll sound in a way he already knew from experience that black musical artists themselves of the time could not do.

Otherwise Philips was now also certain in his own mind felt that the sound could not ever hope to enjoy the kind of widespread mainstream popularity and (accompanying) mainstream commercial and therefore financial success it otherwise might for cultural and other reasons, good or bad, Philips indeed correctly anticipated that Elvis with his black sound (but white skin) would be just the right vehicle to sing future crossover rock 'n roll mainstream hits. From there, the rest, as they say, is [music] history.

Guralnik's analysis of Elvis's music within his seminal study of the singer and his art and times, Last Train to Memphis includes Guralnik's observation that Elvis used gospel style lyrics throughout his first two albums as well as making the most, in his own unique way, of the now more popular expansion of mainstream music generally within these "alternative" genres. Michael Bane makes a similar claim within his book White Boy Singin [sic] the Blues that Elvis used the lyrics of blues musicians in conjunction with strains clearly derived from gospel musical traditions in all of his most popular songs.

The combination of these factors strongly influenced Elvis's music which was strongly influenced by black musical traditions in relationship to his childhood and his exposure when a teenager to blues and gospel in both Tupelo Mississippi and later Memphis where Elvis in fact got his professional start with Philips and Sun Records. Ironically, though, it has been suggested that Elvis himself was but a typical poor white Southern racist of his time, a racist who intentionally subverted black musical traditions to his own commercial success. He was quoted as saying, "The only thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my music."

Kolawole for example contends that Elvis's racism, brought about originally as a result of his impoverished upbringing in the backcountry of the American South, in which racism was a prevalent form of social caste systems and racial segregation, was simply inevitable. Further, "Whether we remember him as an obese, drug-addled misogynist or a hip-swinging rebel, let's call him what he is - the all-conquering great white hope - and demand the entertainment industry never again makes such a deceitful claim.

However, there is also no critical (or other) consensus that Elvis was racist, and there are in fact various other accounts that challenge the latter. For instance, according to the article "Elvis Presley"

Even in the 1950s era of blatant racism, Presley would publicly cite his debt to African-American music, pointing to artists such as B.B. King, Arthur "Big

Boy" Crudup [sic], Jackie Wilson, Robert Johnson, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Fats

Domino. The reporter who conducted Presley's first interview in New York

City in 1956 noted that he named blues singers who "obviously meant a lot to him. I was very surprised to hear him talk about the black performers down there and about how he tried to carry on their music." Later that year in Charlotte, North Carolina, Presley was quoted as saying: "The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' [sic] now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in their shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind 'til I goosed it up. I got it from them. Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now and I said if I ever got to a place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw.

Further, according to that same article ("Elvis Presley") Little Richard said of Presley: "He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music." Moreover: " B.B. King said he began to respect Presley after he did Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup [sic] material and that after he met him, he thought the singer really was something else and was someone whose music was growing all the time right up to his death.

Whatever his true attitudes toward blacks, Elvis's position and his

Singularly successful cross-cultural musical sound were in fact extremely helpful for the black empowerment movement of the civil rights era, helping, as Bertrand suggests, to both legitimize and popularize it, especially among whites. Careful review of seminal texts shows that the beginning of Elvis's career was within R&B communities. Tens of thousands of rural white youths then embraced R&B music as well as the later rock and roll venues. Elvis was among these individuals who overtly fell in love with R&B, many times praising