In addition to reviving a zombie thread, you complete ignore the reaction to Elvis by the “older” generation at that time. He was accused of corrupting the youth and endangering American culture.
Since elvis is probably sitting someplace incognito reading this thread, even after 14 years
I would just like to mention slightly pudgy spandex jumpsuited elvis could roll into Vegas broke and go home rich on an at will basis.
I imagine that kind of gives him the last laugh
I get that Elvis was a great artist. I don’t get the Elvis religion, though. I’m just not a worshiping kind of fan. No matter how much I like or even love the performer.
He was apparently REEEEEALLY weird sexually. He was really hung up on his mother, to the point where he could not perform sexually with women who had given birth.
I realize that has nothing to do with how well he could sing, and unlike far too many modern performers, that WAS something he could do.
I had a friend who was a big fan of his, and actually met him and said he was as charismatic in real life, even based on that short meet & greet, as he was onstage.
That’s not that weird. I don’t know how common it is, but it’s an actual thing. It’s Freud’s Madonna-Whore Complex.
I’ve never heard of Elvis having it so I have no idea of what the specifics were and I don’t really know all the ins and outs of the complex, but it basically comes down to men (and I’m sure women) that can’t have sex with people, such as mothers, but generally mother’s of their children, either because they respect them too much to be attracted to them or they felt sex was degrading and couldn’t bring themselves to degrade someone they respect that much. [Keeping in mind this was written something like a hundred years ago], this would tend to drive men to find sex outside their marriage with someone he didn’t respect, like a whore.
I always understood why he was so popular, what confounded me was where the stupid nickname came from.
I mean, what the heck is a “Belvace”?
In honor of the zombie thread, I’m gonna plug Greil Marcus’s Dead Elvis, which posits that Elvis was more powerful dead than alive. Temporarily Unavailable | Harvard University Press
And, speaking of zombies, ain’t nobody can battle undead soul-sucking Egyptian mummies like Elvis!
I’ve never heard that and casually googling “Belvace” and “belvis”(which would make more sense) isn’t bringing up any hits that have anything to do with him.
Are you sure you weren’t hearing pelvis?
Elvis was a natural singer. A very powerful belter and interpreter of music. He felt the music and sang it.
He’s a perfect example of someone who shouldn’t take music lessons. Three years of vocal study would have stripped away all his natural talent. Everything that made him great. He would have been just another cookie cutter singer.
He admitted one time that he failed a music class in high school.
That just means he wouldn’t sing the way the teacher expected.
http://www.musicianguide.com/featured_biographies/pages/cmx6f6rpad/Elvis-s-Childhood-L-C-Humes-High-School.html
Since the thread was started, there was an interesting comment from Ian Whitcomb, a minor one-hit wonder in the UK during the British Invasion of the 60s who turned to journalism. His original impression of Elvis was the he was just imitating Dean Martin.
As soon as I heard it, I realized he was right. Elvis’s ballads sound a lot like Martin, and his uptempo songs would the was Dino would have sounded like if he had done rock.
Elvis might have denied the connection and would have said he was trying to imitate Bing Crosby.
Back in college I had a friend whose tastes in contemporary music ranged from Captain Beefheart to Frank Zappa. Rock and Roll singers were pretty much beneath contempt for him. But even he acknowledged Elvis Presley’s charisma in Jailhouse Rock.
[QUOTE=RealityChuck]
Elvis’s ballads sound a lot like Martin, and his uptempo songs would the was Dino would have sounded like if he had done rock.
Elvis might have denied the connection and would have said he was trying to imitate Bing Crosby.
[/QUOTE]
I could see that, and since Dean Martin was himself so heavily influenced by Bing Crosby, I won’t call him a liar to his face if he does.
[QUOTE=Joey P]
I’ve never heard that and casually googling “Belvace” and “belvis”(which would make more sense) isn’t bringing up any hits that have anything to do with him.
Are you sure you weren’t hearing pelvis?
[/QUOTE]
Oh, pelvis? I guess it could be; at least it rhymes. But in that case, why not Elvis the Vertebra, or Elvis the Mandible? Certainly you could think of more charismatic skeletal components than a pelvis. 
But the pelvis has the sexy bits.
It rhymes is probably the main reason, but back in the day, it was catching peoples attention. While I’ve never looked into myself, I always hear that on certain shows (or maybe a specific prime time type show) they could only show him from the waist up.
Think about the music that the kids were listening to a the time and as well as the music that the parents were listening to, then go watch a live version of Hound Dog and you can see why they may not have been happy with his gyrating hips.
It’s not that different than in the 80s/90s when Michael Jackson showed up. How often did we hear ‘grabbing his crotch’ when someone was talking about him or Madonna and all the heat she took on her Blonde Ambition tour.
No one would think anything of Elvis’ dance moves now. MJ’s ‘grabbing his crotch’ is practically standard and what Madonna did on that tour, while still racy, probably wouldn’t draw a police presence, have her threatened with arrest and cause an international fuss (this in the days before the internet, as we know it).
So yeah, it might seem like something hardly noteworthy 70 years later, but it was a big deal then. Just like in 70 years we might not think anything of Justin ripping Janet’s top off at the Superbowl.
Elvis’ “Sun records” from 1954-1956 are at the cornerstone of much later rock and roll. After that, the only Elvis music that does anything for me is from the 1969 “Memphis” sessions. There are a few gems here and there.
The fact that Elvis wrote no songs was less of an issue in the era before Bob Dylan and the Beatles made rock and pop music center more on songwriter-performers. Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and most of the other great singing stars who emerged before 1964 did not write much or any of their own material.The idea was that singers demonstrated their talent by wisely choosing songs and placing a unique vocal stamp on the material. There were some exceptions, such as Mel Tormé.
Likewise, even acts that performed with instruments on stage often did not play their own instruments on record but used studio musicians. The Beatles and other such bands largely ended that pattern after 1964.
- Another “quote” always sold me is the beginning of Heartbreak Hotel. Those who haven’t listened to the record typically imagine that he sings it in a normal English cadence, something like:
*Well SINCE my BA-by LEFT me… *
But he doesn’t do that. Instead he kills it by singing this:
WELL since MYYYY baby LEFT me…
And it amps uo the song’s intensity by an order of magnitude. The first version, had Presley recorded it that way, might have given a young John Lennon some welcome relief from the bland BBC pop of the day. But the way he actually did sing it is like a shot of soul. It mourns your first break-up with pure intensity.
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Whoops. Unintended Monty Python reference, there.
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I may be remembering this incorrectly, but when I watched the Beatles Anthology, I though the Beatles were initially impressed and starstruck with Elvis, but that quickly soured when they discovered that he didn’t want to talk music, and wasn’t as serious a musician as they were. I think the Beatles always wanted to be the best musicians that they could be, and the Elvis wanted to be the best performer.
Having said this, I love me the Elvis. I’m in the middle of the first volume of a biography on him - pretty fascinating.