Accused of appropriating the greatest cultural treasure chest of blacks without ever sharing the reward with them, Elvis is dangerously sanctified in Baz Luhrmann’s production
Did Elvis Presley steal black music after all without giving the sources due credit? Was it the first successful case of racial appropriation in pop culture? He explored what he received as a child with the bluesmen and blueswomen of Tupelo and later of Memphis without offering any counterpart by enriching himself with Hunting dogof the great and the miserable Great Mom Thornton? Would he be the ideal agent for the hygienic legitimacy that would lead to the large-scale industrialization of a product created by marginal and “non-marketable” people? The film The king of the rock, the best biographical portrait done so far by a director, Baz Luhrmann, doesn’t answer any of this because he doesn’t let anyone ask. It is intoxicating as an aesthetic, cunning as a screenplay, indispensable as entertainment, exuberant as cinema and inconvenient as a historical source.
Challenges to his reign have already been launched by the same black, socially invisible musicians since millions of dollars began flowing through the conduits that lie around Elvis Presley Enterprises – the thing of feline Colonel Tom Parker, his contradictory agent – but a problematic return to disturb the minds of an attentive world that was beginning to seek everything and everyone, especially the heroes. Elvis Presley, white, handsome, southerner, passive, somewhat ill-informed and future gun collector, would have the perfect profile to serve in the ranks of a conservative political camp that has been greatly strengthened in recent times. But he was Elvis Presley and, despite the accusations of having defamed a collection that already counted almost a hundred years of existence, the blues, what remains for the story is what he did to us. If Elvis used the blues to “find himself”, the blues also used Elvis to transform separatist white into country green with anger and envy. Thanks to Elvis, rock and roll would be blacker than any other color. But the unfortunate thing is that, aside from Elvis, his and Tom Parker’s family, no one else, black or white, has seen the color of a dime in this story.
Ray Charles, hitherto called on album covers as the king of just about everything, soul, gospel, R&B and, though not, the blues, said what he thought of Elvis only in 1994, in a NBC interview: “To say that Elvis was big and extraordinary like he was the king … But the king of what? I know a lot of better artists. He was doing our kind of music.” Quincy Jones, the man he made Michael Jackson the black Elvis with thriller only in 1982, he told al Hollywood reporter: “I was writing for Tommy Dorsey and, oh my God, it was the 1950s. Elvis walked in and Tommy said, ‘I don’t want to play with him.’ Elvis was a racist son of a bitch … Now I’m shut up. ” But he did not quit and continued to make accusations about the artist’s contestable talent. Little Richard made an interesting training in 1990, while speaking to the magazine rolling stone: “If Elvis were black, he wouldn’t be as big as me. If I were white, do you know how big I would be? If I were white, I could sit on top of the White House! A lot of things would do for Elvis, they wouldn’t do it for me.”
There is resentment in everything and, like any appraisal raised by this almost irrational state of pre-hatred, a bit of injustice. during the interview Ike Turner in 2004 for the Evening newspaper, I asked him how he felt about Elvis Presley. And Ike, from the depths of the credibility of a man who spent a few years of his life beating his wife, in this case Tina Turner, fired: “All Elvis did was steal black music.” Miles Davis doesn’t refer directly to Elvis, but he doesn’t need it when he recalls the arrival of the rock phenomenon in the 1950s in his autobiography: “Now rock and roll was at the forefront of the media. White rock and roll stolen from black rhythm ‘n’ blues, from the likes of Little Richard and Chuck Berry and the sound of Motown. ” Although their assessments were legitimate, Ike and Miles, who didn’t have much in common even though Miles was also, and I must admit, a wife beater, spoke with some bitterness in their voices. A bitterness for something they couldn’t have.
Another damage done by Elvis is based on the cultural expansionism practiced by the United States since its existence but which, despite having him as the Napoleon of history, escapes his intentions. When it worked in the hands of Colonel Parker, Elvis, to invent the show, it razed the fertile lands of people the world would never know. Everything was fine on the radio, with spaces neatly divided between fun skiffle bands, doo-wop vocal ensembles, black boogie woogie pianists, well-mannered bluegrass duets and angry rockabilly bands. Until Elvis came and ended the dream of everything that wasn’t rock and roll.
What was not torn apart and remained standing had to make often bitter alliances. Frank Sinatra, for example, he hated Elvis, younger, prettier and taller, and everyone who came before and after him doing “that song”. “Rock and roll smells fake. It’s mostly sung and written by assholes. The most brutal, ugly, desperate and cruel form of expression I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear.” But, years later, just as Elis Regina did with Roberto Carlos when she realized the battle was lost, she gave her a friend’s pinkie and found her former rival of hers on a TV show. Ed Sullivan to sing together.
Many Elvis reviews have been redone or done as an idolatrous defense. BB King, who appears in the film as a friend the singer has, in fact, never had this close to, cleared him of all charges in his autobiography. “Elvis didn’t steal any song from anyone. He just had his own interpretation of the music he knew as a child, the same goes for everyone.” BB, by the way, has always been a pacifist. Little Richard went against what he said earlier and said, “Elvis was a supplement, a blessing. They didn’t let the black music come out and he opened the door.” Rufus Thomas, who made his take the dog for a walk be more fun than Hunting dog until he was vilified by the Rolling Stones (it never ends), he said, “A lot of people say that Elvis stole our music, that he stole the black man’s music. But the black man, l ‘white man, does not own the music belongs to the universe. “
Watch the historic (and strategic) meeting with Frank Sinatra in 1959 at the “Ed Sullivan Show”
Source: Terra
Emily Jhon is a product and service reviewer at Gossipify, known for her honest evaluations and thorough analysis. With a background in marketing and consumer research, she offers valuable insights to readers. She has been writing for Gossipify for several years and has a degree in Marketing and Consumer Research from the University of Oxford.
