Controversy with Elvis Presley

958 Words2 Pages

Rock and roll music existed before Elvis Presley came along, but with his arrival on the performing scene, Americans could ignore it no longer. In 1956, he strode in front of a television camera for the first time as the provocative image of a high school hood and achieved an instant rapport with millions of U.S. teenagers who were experiencing their own adolescent rebellion. Hip-wiggling gyrations that brought a storm of protest from the adult world reinforced his popularity with young people, and he became the epitome of a whole generation that saw itself as defiant, disenchanted, and less inhibited than the one that had gone before. His songs, an amalgam of white country and western music, black rhythm and blue, and gospel sounds of both races, heralded a change in popular music that would eventually make this interaction of black and white musicality an accepted idiom in American culture.

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, during the Depression era, Presley was the only child of poverty-stricken parents. He began singing at an early age and taught himself to play the guitar. Among his earliest musical influences were such country and western musicians as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Bob Wills, Jimmie Davis, and Jimmie Rodgers, performers whose radio and recording popularity were widespread throughout the South. Black blues singers Booker (Bukka) White, Big Bill Broonzy, Arthur (Big Boy) Crudup, Otis Spann, B. B. King, John Lee Hooker, Chester (Howlin' Wolf) Burnett, Jimmy Reed, Earl Hook, and McKinley (Muddy Waters) Morganfield also held fascination for the young Presley d...

... middle of paper ...

... establishment. His early LPs, Elvis and Elvis Presley, can be compared and contrasted with later albums such as GI Blues and From Elvis in Memphis.

Some say Elvis Presley was targeted for his alleged vulgarity and sexually explicit behavior due to fear of possible racial integration. Elvis found himself center of a scandal due to his love for music and his passion for touching his fans with his music. He was targeted for his singing of what was considered back then to be ‘black music’. For years there were debates on the alleged comment made by Elvis that all blacks could for him was shine his shoes. Some still believe it to this day. I don’t believe the comment was ever made by Elvis and after doing some research I think Elvis was targeted because of his love for African American music and people during a major time of racial conflict.

Open Document