Viva Las Elvis: What The King of Rock and Roll Meant To Young Southern Kids in the 1960s
Timothy Sexton
August 15, 2007
Do you remember where you were on the afternoon of August 16, 1977? I do. I was lying on the couch in my parents’ house watching a rerun of Gilligan’s Island on the superstation, WTCG. (This was about a month before Ted Turner got the rights to TBS so that his planned superstation would rhyme with CBS.) Back before Ted Turner got serious about news with CNN, the SuperStation’s news was delivered on an irregular basis by local funnyman Bill Tush. (Why hasn’t the late, lamented and absolutely hilarious sketch comedy show Tush that gave Jan Hooks her start ever been released on DVD?) But on that sweltering summer day when Bill Tush interrupted Gilligan’s Island with a news flash it was serious.
Elvis Presley had died.
Amazingly, it has been thirty years since that news was announced. Thirty years in which Elvis’ reputation has been besmirched, belittled, forgotten and resurrected on a number of occasions. Thirty years later and Elvis Presley’s early music still seems groundbreaking. Nobody that came after Elvis Presley in rock, country or pop music doesn’t owe him a debt of gratitude, whether they think so or not. When rappers spout filthy four-letter words because they don’t possess the intelligence to use any other language, they are the inheritors of Elvis Presley’s frightening appearance to establishment America in the early 50s. When Britney Spears strips nearly naked onstage she is the inheritor of the man who introduced raw sexual energy into pop music. Don’t think so. Consider who Elvis’ ancestors were and compare them to today’s stars: Sinatra, Perry Como, Bing Crosby. Still think it was Mick Jagger or Prince or Eminem who made music sexy?
What fools these mortals be.
It was all too easy in the decade following Elvis’ death to turn him into a joke. Yes, he died bloated and drug-addled on the toilet. Yes, he had turned into a Las Vegas lounge lizard by his death. Yes, his later movies are almost painful to watch. But then again, Paul McCartney married a $3,000 a night hooker (allegedly), Michael Jackson no longer has a human nose, and Justin Timberlake is…well, he’s just Justin Timberlake for cryin’ out loud. As lousy as Elvis went on out on his way to Rock and Roll Heaven, no other single individual in rock history even comes close to approaching him. Take another listen to “Jailhouse Rock.” Seems like a typically tame 1950s rock song right? Have you ever caught onto the fact that some of the lyrics that Elvis was singing in the 1950s was about one male inmate finding another male inmate to be “the cutest little jailbird” he’d ever seen? Elvis’ music of the 1950s still retains the power to make you get up and shake, rattle and roll. From “Hound Dog” to “Little Sister” to “Heartbreak Hotel” it is difficult to not to appreciate the incredibly powerful presence—and voice—of the kid from Tupelo. (One of my grandmother’s most prized possessions was a twig from a tree she picked up from the yard in front of the house in Tupelo where Elvis grew up.) Such was Elvis Presley’s range of talent that he is the only man to currently lay in state (figuratively) in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
But this is personal tribute, not an argumentative essay about what a raw deal Elvis has gotten since his death. What Elvis Presley meant to me and thousands of kids like me growing up in the South had to do with far more than his accomplishments as a singer. I don’t remember the first movie I ever saw, but I do know this: It was either a Walt Disney movie or an Elvis movie and my money is on Elvis. In our house Elvis was a god. Well, okay, maybe not a god, but at least a demigod. He was one of the few role models that a kid from the southeastern United States could look up to. In fact, there were really only two: Elvis and Joe Namath, and Namath was really just a groundhog from Beaver Falls briefly taking up residence down here while he played quarterback for Bear Bryant. (Amazingly enough, Joe Namath to this day still retains the slight southern twang he picked up during his southern sojourn.)
My mom took me and my cousins and her own young brother who was closer to my age down to the Florida Theater on Palafox Street every time an Elvis movie opened. I still have vivid memories of watching Clambake. That is not one of Elvis’ greatest or most fondly remembered movies but it sticks in my mind because of that sequence where Elvis sings “Confidence” to a bunch of kids on a playground. Maybe it was because I was a very little kid, but watching that scene convinced me that Elvis Presley—the poor Mississippi kid who used to play out under the same hot sun we were playing under and who went from being poor to giving away pink Cadillacs as gifts—was still one of us. Elvis Presley, in my young impressionable mind, wasn’t really that movie star; he was that cool younger adult who played baseball with you, and bought you an ice cream, and who you desperately hoped your older sister would marry. Elvis Presley wasn’t a Hollywood movie star; he still lived in the south, he loved his mom, and if he saw you he would smile and be your friend. Those are my memories of Elvis Presley. As a result, I was temporarily devastated by his shocking and unexpected death.
Two years after Elvis Presley pass away, my favorite baseball player Thurman Munson shockingly and unexpetedly died in a plane crash. A few years after that one of my favorite entertainers, Andy Kaufman, died in such a shocking and sudden manner that for years the suspicion remained it had been a hoax. To put it bluntly; it was a traumatic seven years. Fortunately, Elvis will live on forever in his music; Andy Kaufman finally got the due he deserved with the Man on the Moon biopic and even Thurman Munson has turning up on ESPN’s The Bronx is Burning miniseries. Heroes don’t really die anymore. And the fact that twenty-something years later I know I shouldn’t idolize musicians, comedians or baseball players doesn’t diminish my appreciation for what the presence of Elvis, Andy and Thurman contributed to the man I am today.
Elvis Presley had died.
Amazingly, it has been thirty years since that news was announced. Thirty years in which Elvis’ reputation has been besmirched, belittled, forgotten and resurrected on a number of occasions. Thirty years later and Elvis Presley’s early music still seems groundbreaking. Nobody that came after Elvis Presley in rock, country or pop music doesn’t owe him a debt of gratitude, whether they think so or not. When rappers spout filthy four-letter words because they don’t possess the intelligence to use any other language, they are the inheritors of Elvis Presley’s frightening appearance to establishment America in the early 50s. When Britney Spears strips nearly naked onstage she is the inheritor of the man who introduced raw sexual energy into pop music. Don’t think so. Consider who Elvis’ ancestors were and compare them to today’s stars: Sinatra, Perry Como, Bing Crosby. Still think it was Mick Jagger or Prince or Eminem who made music sexy?
What fools these mortals be.
It was all too easy in the decade following Elvis’ death to turn him into a joke. Yes, he died bloated and drug-addled on the toilet. Yes, he had turned into a Las Vegas lounge lizard by his death. Yes, his later movies are almost painful to watch. But then again, Paul McCartney married a $3,000 a night hooker (allegedly), Michael Jackson no longer has a human nose, and Justin Timberlake is…well, he’s just Justin Timberlake for cryin’ out loud. As lousy as Elvis went on out on his way to Rock and Roll Heaven, no other single individual in rock history even comes close to approaching him. Take another listen to “Jailhouse Rock.” Seems like a typically tame 1950s rock song right? Have you ever caught onto the fact that some of the lyrics that Elvis was singing in the 1950s was about one male inmate finding another male inmate to be “the cutest little jailbird” he’d ever seen? Elvis’ music of the 1950s still retains the power to make you get up and shake, rattle and roll. From “Hound Dog” to “Little Sister” to “Heartbreak Hotel” it is difficult to not to appreciate the incredibly powerful presence—and voice—of the kid from Tupelo. (One of my grandmother’s most prized possessions was a twig from a tree she picked up from the yard in front of the house in Tupelo where Elvis grew up.) Such was Elvis Presley’s range of talent that he is the only man to currently lay in state (figuratively) in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
But this is personal tribute, not an argumentative essay about what a raw deal Elvis has gotten since his death. What Elvis Presley meant to me and thousands of kids like me growing up in the South had to do with far more than his accomplishments as a singer. I don’t remember the first movie I ever saw, but I do know this: It was either a Walt Disney movie or an Elvis movie and my money is on Elvis. In our house Elvis was a god. Well, okay, maybe not a god, but at least a demigod. He was one of the few role models that a kid from the southeastern United States could look up to. In fact, there were really only two: Elvis and Joe Namath, and Namath was really just a groundhog from Beaver Falls briefly taking up residence down here while he played quarterback for Bear Bryant. (Amazingly enough, Joe Namath to this day still retains the slight southern twang he picked up during his southern sojourn.)
My mom took me and my cousins and her own young brother who was closer to my age down to the Florida Theater on Palafox Street every time an Elvis movie opened. I still have vivid memories of watching Clambake. That is not one of Elvis’ greatest or most fondly remembered movies but it sticks in my mind because of that sequence where Elvis sings “Confidence” to a bunch of kids on a playground. Maybe it was because I was a very little kid, but watching that scene convinced me that Elvis Presley—the poor Mississippi kid who used to play out under the same hot sun we were playing under and who went from being poor to giving away pink Cadillacs as gifts—was still one of us. Elvis Presley, in my young impressionable mind, wasn’t really that movie star; he was that cool younger adult who played baseball with you, and bought you an ice cream, and who you desperately hoped your older sister would marry. Elvis Presley wasn’t a Hollywood movie star; he still lived in the south, he loved his mom, and if he saw you he would smile and be your friend. Those are my memories of Elvis Presley. As a result, I was temporarily devastated by his shocking and unexpected death.
Two years after Elvis Presley pass away, my favorite baseball player Thurman Munson shockingly and unexpetedly died in a plane crash. A few years after that one of my favorite entertainers, Andy Kaufman, died in such a shocking and sudden manner that for years the suspicion remained it had been a hoax. To put it bluntly; it was a traumatic seven years. Fortunately, Elvis will live on forever in his music; Andy Kaufman finally got the due he deserved with the Man on the Moon biopic and even Thurman Munson has turning up on ESPN’s The Bronx is Burning miniseries. Heroes don’t really die anymore. And the fact that twenty-something years later I know I shouldn’t idolize musicians, comedians or baseball players doesn’t diminish my appreciation for what the presence of Elvis, Andy and Thurman contributed to the man I am today.
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