Guralnick Op-Ed in New York Times (August 11)
Marc Dashevsky
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How Did Elvis Get Turned Into a Racist?
By Peter Guralnick
One of the songs Elvis Presley liked to perform in the '70s was Joe
South's "Walk a Mile in My Shoes," its message clearly spelled out in
the title.
Sometimes he would preface it with the 1951 Hank Williams recitation
"Men With Broken Hearts," which may well have been South's original
inspiration. "You've never walked in that man's shoes/Or saw things
through his eyes/Or stood and watched with helpless hands/While the
heart inside you dies." For Elvis these two songs were as much about
social justice as empathy and understanding: "Help your brother along
the road," the Hank Williams number concluded,
No matter where you start
For the God that made you made them, too
These men with broken hearts
In Elvis's case, this simple lesson was not just a matter of paying lip
service to an abstract principle.
It was what he believed, it was what his music had stood for from the
start: the breakdown of barriers, both musical and racial. This is not,
unfortunately, how it is always perceived 30 years after his death,
the anniversary of which is on Thursday. When the singer Mary J. Blige
expressed her reservations about performing one of his signature songs,
she only gave voice to a view common in the African-American community.
"I prayed about it," she said, "because I know Elvis was a racist."
And yet, as the legendary Billboard editor Paul Ackerman, a devotee of
English Romantic poetry as well as rock 'n' roll, never tired of
pointing out, the music represented not just an amalgam of America's
folk traditions (blues, gospel, country) but a bold restatement of an
egalitarian ideal. "In one aspect of America's cultural life," Ackerman
wrote in 1958, "integration has already taken place."
It was due to rock 'n' roll, he emphasized, that groundbreaking artists
like Big Joe Turner, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, who
would only recently have been confined to the "race" market, had
acquired a broad-based pop following, while the music itself blossomed
neither as a regional nor a racial phenomenon but as a joyful new
synthesis "rich with Negro and hillbilly lore."
No one could have embraced Paul Ackerman's formulation more forcefully
(or more fully) than Elvis Presley.
Asked to characterize his singing style when he first presented himself
for an audition at the Sun recording studio in Memphis, Elvis said that
he sang all kinds of music--"I don't sound like nobody." This, as it
turned out, was far more than the bravado of an 18-year-old who had
never sung in public before. It was in fact as succinct a definition as
one might get of the democratic vision that fueled his music, a vision
that denied distinctions of race, of class, of category, that embraced
every kind of music equally, from the highest up to the lowest down.
It was, of course, in his embrace of black music that Elvis came in for
his fiercest criticism. On one day alone, Ackerman wrote, he received
calls from two Nashville music executives demanding in the strongest
possible terms that Billboard stop listing Elvis's records on the best-
selling country chart because he played black music. He was simply seen
as too low class, or perhaps just too no-class, in his refusal to deny
recognition to a segment of society that had been rendered invisible by
the cultural mainstream.
"Down in Tupelo, Mississippi," Elvis told a white reporter for The
Charlotte Observer in 1956, he used to listen to Arthur Crudup, the
blues singer who originated "That's All Right," Elvis's first record.
Crudup, he said, used to "bang his box the way I do now, and I said if
I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be
a music man like nobody ever saw."
It was statements like these that caused Elvis to be seen as something
of a hero in the black community in those early years. In Memphis the
two African-American newspapers, The Memphis World and The Tri-State
Defender, hailed him as a "race man" -- not just for his music but also
for his indifference to the usual social distinctions. In the summer of
1956, The World reported, "the rock 'n' roll phenomenon cracked
Memphis's segregation laws" by attending the Memphis Fairgrounds
amusement park "during what is designated as =3Fcolored night.'"
That same year, Elvis also attended the otherwise segregated WDIA
Goodwill Revue, an annual charity show put on by the radio station that
called itself the "Mother Station of the Negroes." In the aftermath of
the event, a number of Negro newspapers printed photographs of Elvi
s with both Rufus Thomas and B.B. King ("Thanks, man, for all the early
lessons you gave me," were the words The Tri-State Defender reported he
said to Mr. King).
When he returned to the revue the following December, a stylish shot of
him "talking shop" with Little Junior Parker and Bobby "Blue" Bland
appeared in Memphis's mainstream afternoon paper, The Press-Scimitar,
accompanied by a short feature that made Elvis's feelings abundantly
clear. "It was the real thing," he said, summing up both performance
and audience response. "Right from the heart."
Just how committed he was to a view that insisted not just on musical
accomplishment but fundamental humanity can be deduced from his
reaction to the earliest appearance of an ugly rumor that has persisted
in one form or another to this day. Elvis Presley, it was said
increasingly within the African-American community, had declared,
either at a personal appearance in Boston or on Edward R. Murrow's
"Person to Person" television program, "The only thing Negroes can do
for me is buy my records and shine my shoes."
That he had never appeared in Boston or on Murrow's program did nothing
to abate the rumor, and so in June 1957, long after he had stopped
talking to the mainstream press, he addressed the issue--and an
audience that scarcely figured in his sales demographic--in an inter-
view for the black weekly Jet.
Anyone who knew him, he told reporter Louie Robinson, would immediately
recognize that he could never have uttered those words. Amid testi-
monials from black people who did know him, he described his attendance
as a teenager at the church of celebrated black gospel composer, the
Rev. W. Herbert Brewster, whose songs had been recorded by Mahalia
Jackson and Clara Ward and whose stand on civil rights was well known
in the community. (Elvis's version of "Peace in the Valley," said Dr.
Brewster later, was "one of the best gospel recordings I've ever heard.")
The interview's underlying point was the same as the underlying point
of his music: far from asserting any superiority, he was merely doing
his best to find a place in a musical continuum that included breath-
taking talents like Ray Charles, Roy Hamilton, the Five Blind Boys of
Mississippi and Howlin' Wolf on the one hand, Hank Williams, Bill
Monroe and the Statesmen Quartet on the other. "Let's face it," he
said of his rhythm and blues influences, "nobody can sing that kind of
music like colored people. I can't sing it like Fats Domino can. I know
that."
And as for prejudice, the article concluded, quoting an unnamed source,
"To Elvis people are people, regardless of race, color or creed."
So why didn't the rumor die? Why did it continue to find common accep-
tance up to, and past, the point that Chuck D of Public Enemy could
declare in 1990, "Elvis was a hero to most... straight-up racist that
sucker was, simple and plain"?
Chuck D has long since repudiated that view for a more nuanced one of
cultural history, but the reason for the rumor's durability, the
unassailable logic behind its common acceptance within the black
community rests quite simply on the social inequities that have
persisted to this day, the fact that we live in a society that is no
more perfectly democratic today than it was 50 years ago. As Chuck D
perceptively observes, what does it mean, within this context, for
Elvis to be hailed as "king," if Elvis's enthronement obscures the
striving, the aspirations and achievements of so many others who
provided him with inspiration?
Elvis would have been the first to agree. When a reporter referred to
him as the "king of rock 'n' roll" at the press conference following
his 1969 Las Vegas opening, he rejected the title, as he always did,
calling attention to the presence in the room of his friend Fats
Domino, "one of my influences from way back." The larger point, of
course, was that no one should be called king; surely the music, the
American musical tradition that Elvis so strongly embraced, could stand
on its own by now, after crossing all borders of race, class and even
nationality.
"The lack of prejudice on the part of Elvis Presley," said Sam
Phillips, the Sun Records founder who discovered him, "had to be one of
the biggest things that ever happened. It was almost subversive,
sneaking around through the music, but we hit things a little bit,
don't you think?"
Or, as Jake Hess, the incomparable lead singer for the Statesmen
Quartet and one of Elvis's lifelong influences, pointed out: "Elvis was
one of those artists, when he sang a song, he just seemed to live every
word of it. There's other people that have a voice that's maybe as
great or greater than Presley's, but he had that certain something that
everybody searches for all during their lifetime."
To do justice to that gift, to do justice to the spirit of the music,
we have to extend ourselves sometimes beyond the narrow confines of our
own experience, we have to challenge ourselves to embrace the
democratic principle of the music itself, which may in the end be its
most precious gift.
--
Go to http://MarcDashevsky.com to send me e-mail.
Marc Dashevsky
says...
> On Aug 11, 2:02?pm, Marc Dashevsky <use...@MarcDashevsky.com> wrote:
> > It was statements like these that caused Elvis to be seen as something
> > of a hero in the black community in those early years. In Memphis the
> > two African-American newspapers, The Memphis World and The Tri-State
> > Defender, hailed him as a "race man" -- not just for his music but also
> > for his indifference to the usual social distinctions. In the summer of
> > 1956, The World reported, "the rock 'n' roll phenomenon cracked
> > Memphis's segregation laws" by attending the Memphis Fairgrounds
> > amusement park "during what is designated as =3Fcolored night.'"
> >
> > That same year, Elvis also attended the otherwise segregated WDIA
> > Goodwill Revue, an annual charity show put on by the radio station that
> > called itself the "Mother Station of the Negroes." In the aftermath of
> > the event, a number of Negro newspapers printed photographs of Elvi
> > s with both Rufus Thomas and B.B. King ("Thanks, man, for all the early
> > lessons you gave me," were the words The Tri-State Defender reported he
> > said to Mr. King).
>
May we see the untruncated version of your comments?
Uni
> On Aug 11, 2:02?pm, Marc Dashevsky <use...@MarcDashevsky.com> wrote:
>
>>of a hero in the black community in those early years. In Memphis the
>>two African-American newspapers, The Memphis World and The Tri-State
>>Defender, hailed him as a "race man" -- not just for his music but also
>>for his indifference to the usual social distinctions. In the summer of
>>1956, The World reported, "the rock 'n' roll phenomenon cracked
>>Memphis's segregation laws" by attending the Memphis Fairgrounds
>>amusement park "during what is designated as =3Fcolored night.'"
>>
>>That same year, Elvis also attended the otherwise segregated WDIA
>>Goodwill Revue, an annual charity show put on by the radio station that
>>called itself the "Mother Station of the Negroes." In the aftermath of
>>the event, a number of Negro newspapers printed photographs of Elvi
>>s with both Rufus Thomas and B.B. King ("Thanks, man, for all the early
>>lessons you gave me," were the words The Tri-State Defender reported he
>>said to Mr. King).
>
>
>
It's spelled "people", Fred!!!!!!! :-)
Continue on....
Uni
>
Fred
> In article <1186863745.038043.252...@l70g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, inthew...@gmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
It went out in an email, like it should have in the first place. I
went to delete the comment when I realized I was writing a post, but
hit send instead of delete. I then deleted the partial post that was
sent in error.
Bob Roman
> It went out in an email, like it should have in the first place. I
> went to delete the comment when I realized I was writing a post, but
> hit send instead of delete. I then deleted the partial post that was
> sent in error.
OK, then without disclosing the content of your email, what are your
thoughts on Guralnick's NYTimes Op-Ed piece?
--
Bob Roman
Jan Dean
He wrote, "Gee, Guralnick should have talked to those pea pickers."
MyNameIsBarbra
The LUCKIEST people!
In the WORLD!
Fred
> "Fred" <inthew...@gmail.com> wrote...
What got me into this was a misdirected comment about this article
meant for a discussion going on elsewhere regarding the "Elvis was a
racist" meme which has resurfaced recently on some corners of the
web. So let me answer your question and get back out.
The Guralnick piece does a fair job of cataloging the contemporary
evidence against the meme. However, the article then veers off as
Guralnick often does. He starts with a premise, doesn't let the facts
he quotes stand in his way, and he doesn't bother to look for facts
that might actually support his argument.
Case in point:
"Asked to characterize his singing style when he first presented
himself
for an audition at the Sun recording studio in Memphis, Elvis said
that
he sang all kinds of music--"I don't sound like nobody." This, as it
turned out, was far more than the bravado of an 18-year-old who had
never sung in public before. It was in fact as succinct a definition
as
one might get of the democratic vision that fueled his music, a
vision
that denied distinctions of race, of class, of category, that
embraced
every kind of music equally, from the highest up to the lowest down."
No matter how you parse it - "I don't sound like nobody" is NOT a
democratic vision. "I sound like EVERYBODY" is a democratic statement
(and it sounds like Woodie Guthrie,and Woodie Guthrie sounded like it,
too.) "I don't sound like nobody" is either an affirmation of the
individual ego, or an abnegation of the ego.
>From the rest of the historical record, Elvis' statement is clearly
mean as an affirmation of his own uniqueness. That's not democratic,
but to make Guralnick's point, this story must be tortured to fit the
brief.
There's a lot of evidence that Elvis disregarded distinctions of race,
but Guralnick turns Elvis's clear statement of singularity into
something that isn't.
Otherwise, the only revelations here are for people like Peanut who
maintain that Elvis wasn't well regarded in the black community.
Robert J. Boyne
<use...@MarcDashevsky.com> wrote:
>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/opinion/11guralnick.html
>(Registration required.)
>
>How Did Elvis Get Turned Into a Racist?
>By Peter Guralnick
*****************************************************
Nice one Cyril!
Robert The Pelvis (is aching as usual).
--
Robert J. Boyne.Tradewinds Real Estate.North Vancouver/British Columbia.Cell.604-644-6973.
***************************************************************************************
" I have the good sense to know that unheard songs are often sweeter".
Email - rjb...@shaw.ca
Home page - www.2realtyguys.com
Steve Mc
Didn't Elvis pay for an old Blues guy's recording session, or something to
that effect ?
"Down in Tupelo, Mississippi," Elvis told a white reporter for The
> Charlotte Observer in 1956, he used to listen to Arthur Crudup, the
> blues singer who originated "That's All Right," Elvis's first record.
> Crudup, he said, used to "bang his box the way I do now, and I said if
> I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be
> a music man like nobody ever saw."
This is a great quote, and shoud be in the Great Quotes Wing in our HOF.
> Or, as Jake Hess, the incomparable lead singer for the Statesmen
> Quartet and one of Elvis's lifelong influences, pointed out: "Elvis was
> one of those artists, when he sang a song, he just seemed to live every
> word of it. There's other people that have a voice that's maybe as
> great or greater than Presley's, but he had that certain something that
> everybody searches for all during their lifetime."
Very similiar to what Sam Phillips said, something to the effect that the
boy seemed to put every once of emotion that he had into every song, as if
he was incapable of holding back.
> (Elvis's version of "Peace in the Valley," said Dr.
> Brewster later, was "one of the best gospel recordings I've ever heard.")
Gotta agree with the knowledgable Dr. here.
> It was almost subversive,
> sneaking around through the music, ...
Love that comment.
--
Steve Mc
DNA to SBC to respond