A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

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Little Darlin
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A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

#452208

Post by Little Darlin »

An article from 1987 from the New York TImes.

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: July 19, 1987



ON A COLD SATURDAY night in late January 1956, a seismic shock flickered across American television screens as Elvis Presley gyrated into national consciousness for the first time. To a sheltered 14-year-old boy growing up in a New Jersey town not unlike Springfield, the sanitized suburban paradise of ''Father Knows Best,'' this loose-limbed hillbilly greaser, with his pudgy-lipped sneer, shiny hair, flapping legs and hiccupy grunt, had the impact of an extraterrestrial visitation.

Although word of Elvis Presley had preceded his appearance that night on ''The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show,'' none of us suburban adolescents had yet seen him in action. And when he turned out to be better - and stranger - than we had even imagined, his place in pop history was clinched. Along with his galvanizing physicality, what I remember most clearly was the incredible, brazen self-consciousness of his performance. Far from being carried away by his music, Presley, at 21, was already an intuitive master of provocation who conveyed an amused knowingness. Overnight, thousands of adolescents began imagining themselves as Presley.

By the time RCA Records released his first national hit, ''Heartbreak Hotel,'' a month later, I was a devoted Elvis impersonator who practiced imitating his funny-sexy caricature of sensual abandon in the mirror and for anyone who cared to watch, dreaming that someday the Presley mystique might transform me into someone far more glamorous than a naive ninth-grader from suburbia. When the record came out, I learned every nuance of the slurred, sullen, Southern Presley enunciation that was quickly imitated by rock-and-roll singers across the country. To this day, I don't think anyone has packed more explosive insinuation into the word ''baby'' than he did in ''Heartbreak Hotel.''

These early memories of Presley are triggered by RCA Records' release of four albums commemorating the 10th anniversary of the singer's death on Aug. 16, 1977. ''The Complete Sun Sessions'' (RCA 6414-1-R; LP, cassette, compact disk) collects all the music, including the outtakes, that he cut for Sun Records in Memphis in 1954-55, before being signed by RCA. ''The Number One Hits'' (6382-1-R; LP, cassette, compact disk), a single disk, collects his 18 No. 1 hits, from ''Heartbreak Hotel'' (1956) through ''Suspicious Minds'' (1969). ''The Top Ten Hits'' (RCA 6383-1-R), a two-disk set, brings together his 38 Top 10 hits, from ''Heartbreak Hotel,'' through ''Burning Love'' (1972).

''The Memphis Record'' (6221-2-R; LP, cassette, compact disk) includes 23 songs recorded in 1969 at the American Studios in Memphis with the producer Chips Moman and a large studio band. These Memphis sessions represented a remarkable, though short-lived, resurgence of energy and commitment by a singer whose career had stagnated throughout most of the 1960's and resumed its downhill slide in the 70's.

Like everything to do with Presley's life and times, the four albums leave deeply contradictory impressions. Presley pioneered the most basic rock-and-roll iconography. He was the original guitar-sporting stud-rebel hero who brought overt male sexual aggression to the American pop mainstream. In ''The Sun Sessions,'' which produced such masterpieces as ''Mystery Train,'' ''That's All Right,'' ''Good Rockin' Tonight'' and an eerie falsetto version of ''Blue Moon,'' he virtually invented rockabilly with the resourceful help of the producer Sam Phillips, the bassist Bill Black and the lead guitarist Scotty Moore.

These performances are suffused with an aura of mystical exhilaration - the music is almost unearthly. Years later, the singer, whose original idol was the oleaginous crooner, Dean Martin, brought rock-and-roll to Las Vegas and vice versa, fusing the progressive and conservative worlds of musical entertainment. On the one hand, without Elvis, there would probably have been no John Lennon or Bruce Springsteen. On the other, there would also probably be no Tom Jones, Wayne Newton or Julio Iglesias.

For Presley wove the whole unwieldy spectrum of pop singing -country-blues, Italianate crooning, Gospel, soul shouting and honky-tonk yodeling - into an integral personal style. His crowning touch was to accentuate the spontaneously exuberant humor that had always been an ingredient of country and blues singing in a way that seemed to poke fun at his own accomplishment.

Riding a streamlined rock-and-roll beat, the singer's vocal swoops, slurs, hiccups, moans and growls added up to a new pop singing vocabulary that was instantly memorized by scores of imitators. The antithesis of Perry Como's relaxed conversational crooning, Presley's style was fraught with tension and animated by an attitude of self-conscious melodrama. Its essence was a rapid, spontaneous juxtaposition of a whole range of blatantly exaggerated affectations. ''Heartbreak Hotel'' is the most extreme example of the way Presley substituted an intense gasping punctuation for the smooth bel canto phrasing that Frank Sinatra had refined.

If these commemorative albums bring home once again the revolutionary impact of Presley's singing, they also remind me of why I very quickly stopped wanting to be Presley. While the singer brought plenty of gusto, humor and charisma to his hits after ''Heartbreak Hotel,'' his material was mostly dime-store kitsch that turned his melodramatic mannerisms back on themselves.

Even in the most legendary Presley rockers - ''Hound Dog,'' ''Don't Be Cruel'' and ''Jailhouse Rock,'' the slick studio rock arrangements and deadening background vocals made him sound like a tamed lion jumping through hoops. In ''The Memphis Record,'' Presley groped toward artistic maturity by emoting with a burly, stern aggression that largely precluded the old joking self-caricature. One hears years of encrusted mannerisms begin to be peeled away as the singer tried to become one with his material. But it was only a beginning. The record is exciting because of the singer's obvious struggle to express authentic emotions that remained stubbornly out of reach.

At their peaks, the greatest popular singers - people like Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Hank Williams, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder - uncover the bare truths of life. The main truth that Elvis Presley communicated was the tragicomic irony of being Elvis Presley, an icon at 21, idolized and thereafter artistically stunted.


I saw Elvis live in concert the year before he died. Even then, he was bigger than life, and had amazing charisma. Haven't seen anything like it since, ....until Adam.........Nocturnal 2010
No matter how old you are, no matter who you sleep with, no matter what color your skin is, we can all party together.” - Adam Lambert 2010

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Re: A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

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Post by KiwiAlan »

So speakith an RCA enginerered Press Release to annouce the multi release.


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Re: A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

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Post by EagleUSA »

Thanks for the article LD. Just another reason to dislike The NY Times.


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Re: A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

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Post by drjohncarpenter »

EagleUSA wrote:Thanks for the article LD. Just another reason to dislike The NY Times.
Shucks, who needs that highfalutin New York Times when we have USA Today?


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Re: A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

#452581

Post by likethebike »

It's funny how folks with different agendas can see different things in the same piece. It's tough to please everyone. We have one poster who sees this as a propaganda press release and another that sees it too disparaging.

Holden is a good enough critic. His comments about Elvis' cultural mix and impact are right on. However, his critique at the end kind of shows the way you can listen right past music when you have a preconception in your mind.

It's very hard for me to see "Jailhouse Rock" or "Hound Dog" as slick. If he went back and listened to "Jailhouse Rock" he would find out that there are no background vocals deadening or otherwise. It and "Hound Dog" are certainly not tamed in any way. And although "Don't Be Cruel" does move smoothly, it is hardly slick. The arrangement is the height of simplicity with only the slightest hint of guitar. There are only four or five audible instruments in the entire mix. If these tracks are slick what was Spector, the Beach Boys, Sgt Pepper almost anything in the Top 40 today. Reading this review reminded me of my cousin looking at Elvis in That's the Way it is and saying "This is where he was fat."

The Elvis at Sun, genius country boy sanitized for the masses at RCA is a good myth making but miles from the truth. While Elvis' Sun recordings were enough to grant him a place in history on their own, without the RCA recordings he is not the world changing phenomenon he is today and his artistic legacy would not be nearly so rich as it is.



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Re: A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

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Post by Little Darlin »

Thank you likethebike, I enjoyed your interpretation of the Article.


I saw Elvis live in concert the year before he died. Even then, he was bigger than life, and had amazing charisma. Haven't seen anything like it since, ....until Adam.........Nocturnal 2010
No matter how old you are, no matter who you sleep with, no matter what color your skin is, we can all party together.” - Adam Lambert 2010

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Re: A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

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Post by KiwiAlan »

It was a Press Release because it was published one month before the records release date.

How much advertising appeared in the NY Times one has to wonder :D


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Re: A Hillbilly who wove a Rock & Roll Spell.

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Post by likethebike »

Holden was the Times critic at that time and may still be to this day. It is not unusual for media outlets to be given releases before hand in an effort to build buzz.


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