Al, I'm not putting down or lessening Elvis' uplifting or showcasing Black music artists. I'm saying that they couldn't have crossed over in the large numbers they did without a white man promoting them on national media.
Rich, never thought you were putting down Elvis, I just got you thought nobody was acknowledging just where all that music came from:
Without them preceding him, there wouldn't have been Elvis. And, not surprisingly, he benefited the most financially and fame wise. Let's admit, us white folks, that Black American music has given so much to our culture and nation.Those who co-opt it should acknowledge it!
I'm actually gonna retract my own earlier statement now, made too hastily:
"Truth was, "race music" was pretty much relegated to specialized stations and venues and if hadn't been for Elvis who knows how long it would have stayed "underground"."
In fact while it's true that music
performed by black artists was largely relegated to specialized outlets, luminaries like George Gershwin celebrated the cultural tradition as far back as the '30's with
Porgy and Bess; Satchmo was highly respected as America's jazz ambassador to the world (which largely gave American jazz a whole lot more respect then
we did here at home); and Pat Boone had already practiced the "white man sings black music" formula a couple of years before Elvis.
And I still say Bill Haley and Jerry Lee and Carl Perkins and Elvis were far more "rock-a-billy" than blues.
In other words, they put their own white stamp on the music...
Maybe the
real problem was that
in '57, with the integration of public schools crisis in Little Rock Arkansas, openly acknowledging the
roots of the music might have been more of a fuse on a tinderbox than promoters and top 40 radio and record companies wanted to play up.
All they wanna do is sell records and not say or do anything that might interfere with that.
I don't know, it's just something that occurred to me that may explain what you seem to be saying.
His manager Tom Parker was acutely aware of Elvis' bad boy image and saw his Army stint as a chance to remake his image in a more mass-audience appealing mold.
I also now humbly submit that when Elvis went into the Army that phase of his career effectively ended and he "got respectable" and what came out after he came back, the movies, was pure Wonder Bread.
(No wonder I didn't like Elvis or "get it" when I was a kid)
In the meantime, the Beatles got in the door, the next generation of teenagers had
their new heroes (every 4 or 5 years a new class gotta have their own, still going on to this day) in vocal
groups, and most important of all, as I mentioned earlier, black music "crossed over" without any assist or reference to "Elvis style" music at all with
the Supremes:
"Founded as The Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, the Supremes were the most commercially successful of Motown's acts and are, to date, America's most successful vocal group"
Have to admit the Civil Rights movement in the early '60's may also have played a role in fostering an atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance for "black music"; but that alone wouldn't account for the Supremes' massive popularity on
both sides of "the fence".
Peace (?)
:tranquillity: