by Kevin Burton
Yesterday was Elvis’s birthday. He was born Jan. 8, 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi. And the fact that I used only his first name and you know exactly who I am talking about is one measure of his exalted place in American culture.
But how good was he as a musician, really?
I wouldn’t be raising that question, but last summer while doing research for post about Ray Charles’ Georgia On My Mind, I found an interview Charles did with Bob Costas. They were talking about white musicians usurping black music and outselling black artists.
Charles said he didn’t resent it because most of that music wasn’t good enough to worry about. Costas asked if there were exceptions to that and said, “Elvis was a talented guy…”
To which Charles said, “Well….OK.”
Costas, the great interviewer that he is, said, “Let me ask it a different way. How good was Elvis?
Had Costas not asked the direct question, Charles likely would have shifted onto other topics. Because Elvis is admired by so many people, to the point of worship, you’re going to be shouted down if you bring up anything negative. There’s almost no point in saying anything.
But Charles spoke his mind.
“What Elvis did, he caused a lot of the populace – and when people say the populace they usually mean white people – to start listening to a lot of music that normally they wouldn’t have been listening to,” Charles sad.
“I guess I’m going to lose at least about a third of my fans right now. But to say that Elvis was so great and so outstanding like they said he’s the king…I got in trouble cause one guy asked me this question and I said ‘the king of what’ and he got mad. “
“I don’t think of Elvis like that because I know too many artists that are far greater than Elvis. I think Elvis was a person who came along at the right time. Here was a white kid that could do rock and roll or rhythm and blues or whatever name you want to call it. And the girls could swoon over him. Nat Cole got in trouble in Alabama when the women swooned over him, got put out of town,” Charles said.
“And black people be going out shaking their behind for centuries. What’s so unusual about shaking the hips and stuff? That’s all Elvis was doing was copying that. And he was doing our kind of music.”
“He was doing Willie Mae Thornton, Jailhouse Rock,…that’s black music. So what the hell am I supposed to get so excited about, man?”
“What do I think about all this stuff saying he’s the king…that’s bunk. Sorry. Next question. Don’t ask me no more about Elvis. Got me in enough trouble as it is.”
Costas then joked that Charles had covered the topic and no follow-up was necessary.
The great songwriting team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller who wrote Hound Dog for Willie Mae Thornton and would go on to write several songs for Elvis, hated the Elvis version of Hound Dog when they first heard it.
“But it grew on me…like a million-dollar bond,” Lieber said. So to did Presley grow on Lieber and Stoller when they met during production of the movie Jailhouse Rock.
“He had an ear that was touched with magic,” Lieber said. “He had a musical soul that went everywhere. He was incredible.”
“When Elvis Presley came on the scene, the only thing I can say is he did it right, he did it good,” said vocalist Ruth Brown. “And again where Elvis was concerned there was no color line because everybody liked his music.”
“Elvis Presley is what they were looking for to get that music permissible for white people to listen to, and openly,” Brown said.
“I can get rock and roll down to about six seven people,” said singer-songwriter Tom Petty. “But Elvis was above it all. He was Rock and roll.”
The day Elvis died I heard a news account on radio but I only heard the last four words, “Elvis Presley was 42.”
In this short-format blog and because I wasn’t around for the whole Elvis phenomenon, I can’t do the topic justice.
Unlike people in the Elvis’s heyday, I also have Steely Dan and Supertramp and Simon and Garfunkel and Maroon 5 and the Jackson 5 and the Beatles and Stone and on and on. With all those choices, I rarely choose Elvis.
For me, thinking of Elvis is like panning for gold. I put everything in that tray and start shaking until all the stuff I don’t want falls away, all those bad movies and the whole Las Vegas thing.
I just want to keep the gold, Kentucky Rain, Can’t Help Falling In Love, That’s All Right and a handful of others.
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