No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Our White Whale, Elvis; or, Democracy Sighted
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Extract
The lyrics cited above are from the 1990 Living Colour single “Elvis Is Dead” and serve as another reminder, as if we needed one, that, despite the song's emphatic refrain, the rumors we hear are true: Elvis is alive. His shade haunts us, bringing with it strange but vital messages. Greil Marcus, Elvis's best critic, may be blessed with second sight when he avers that Elvis comprises our “cultural epistemology,” that he holds the “skeleton key to a lock we've yet to find.” Marcus's elliptical prophecy promises what for many may be a stunning revelation: Elvis Presley so profoundly embodies the complexities of American culture that only Melville's Moby Dick is comparable to his richness, his ambiguity, his mysterious meaning. As with most supernatural sightings (or Melville's whale), Elvis's presence is nearly impossible to identify.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995
References
NOTES
1. Colour, Living, “Elvis Is Dead,” on Time's Up, CBS Records Ek 46202, 1990Google Scholar. Here are the complete lyrics:
Tabloids scream / Elvis seen at a shopping mall / That's the kind of talk / That makes my stomach crawl
Picture a Zombie Elvis / In a tacky white jumpsuit / Just imagine a rotting Elvis / Shopping for fresh fruit
Chorus: Elvis is dead (repeated eight times)
Alas poor Elvis / They made us know you well / Now you dwell forever / In your Heartbreak Hotel
Chorus
Elvis was a hero to most / But that's beside the point / A Black man taught him how to sing / And then they crowned him king
The pelvis of Elvis / Too dangerous for the masses
They cleaned him up and sent him to Vegas / Now the masses are his slave Slave? Slave / Yes, even from the grave
Elvis is dead
I've got a reason to believe/We all won't be received at Graceland
Chorus
2. Marcus, Greil, Dead Elvis (New York: Doubleday, 1991), xvi.Google Scholar
3. Lott, Eric, Love and Theft (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. While I am glad that Lott takes up the theme of how whites were fascinated — and shaped — by black culture, I am disappointed that this white fascination with black culture must be seen solely in terms of appropriation and political suppression. In other words, his analysis denies the possibility that the relationship between white and black cultures can move in any direction other than down a one-way street. Such a view calcifies “white culture,” whatever that is, into a usurper role and denies “black culture,” whatever that is, an active role in its own creation. That the Modern Language Association sanctioned Love and Theft for best academic book of 1993 suggests, unfortunately, how prevalent and popular this view is.
4. See Murray, Albert, The Omni-Americans (New York: Vintage, 1983)Google Scholar. I am using this word in Albert Murray's sense. Murray writes, “American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless, of all the hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise, incontestably mulatto” (22). As we shall see, Murray may as well be describing Elvis.
5. Quoted in Kallen, Horace, Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York: Boni and Liverwright, 1924).Google Scholar
6. Sollors, Werner, Beyond Ethnicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 15.Google Scholar
7. See Rorty, Richard, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), xii–xlviiGoogle Scholar; and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 44–95Google Scholar, for Rorty's elaboration upon idea. Rorty envisions a “post-philosophical” culture that has given up the quest for absolute truth. This makes our views of the world “descriptions,” and our notions about “culture” depend on our “descriptions” and “redescriptions.” Thus, Rorty encourages our conversations to include as many voices as possible, Nabokov as well as Wittgenstein, so that we, like the (not so) old-fashioned literary critic of the Edmund Wilson variety, are placing books in the context of other books, figures in the context of other figures,” and not seeking to define literary (or final) value (Contingency, 80)Google Scholar. Ideally, his trope of “conversation” would be our working model for a how a liberal democracy conceives of itself. Rorty's notion of “conversation” has been widely critiqued for overlooking, in Giles Gunn's words, “the concrete historical and empirical constraints on the conversation that constitutes culture” (see Gunn, Giles, The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture [New York: Oxford University Press, 1987], 76)Google Scholar. Without disagreeing with Gunn's view, I would also point out that Rorty's term nevertheless justifies the sort of critique I am performing here; that is, close scrutiny the voices of popular culture, our most democratic arena for exchange of ideas.
8. See James, William, Writings 1902–1910 (New York: Library of America, 1987), 509Google Scholar. I am quoting from the work Pragmatism (1907). My abbreviated summary of pragmatism is obviously little more than a sketch, an evocation of the general aims that pragmatists share. For the best contemporary accounts of pragmatism, see the Rorty books just mentioned as well as West, Cornel, The American Evasion of Philosophy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Poirier, Richard, Poetry and Pragmatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
9. Michaels, Walter Benn, “Race into Culture,” Critical Inquiry 18 (Summer 1992): 655–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. Michaels, , “Race into Culture,” 682.Google Scholar
11. Kallen, , Culture and Democracy, 122.Google Scholar
12. Michaels, , “Race into Culture,” 683.Google Scholar
13. Ellison, Ralph, Shadow and Act (New York: Vintage, 1972), 261.Google Scholar
14. Michaels, , “Race into Culture,” 683, 682.Google Scholar
15. Michaels, , “Race into Culture,” 682–83Google Scholar. See also Michaels, Walter Benn and Knapp, Steven, “Against Theory,” in Against Theory, ed. Mitchell, W. J. T. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 11–30Google Scholar; and Michaels, Walter Benn, The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).Google Scholar
16. Michaels, , “Race into Culture,” 685.Google Scholar
17. Rogers, J. A., “Jazz at Home,” in The New Negro, ed. Locke, Alain (1925; rept. New York: Atheneum, 1968), 216, 216–24.Google Scholar
18. Rodgers, Jimmie, “Blue Yodel #9,” on The Singing Brakeman, Bear Family Records BCD 15540 FI, 1992.Google Scholar
19. The liner notes to Bear Family Records' definitive collection of Jimmie Rodgers's music shows a picture of the lyric sheet to “Blue Yodel #9” with Rodger's handwriting at the bottom noting that Armstrong and Harding accompanied him. For a solid discussion of Rodger's life and music, see Nolan Porterfield's liner notes to that invaluable box set just noted. For a more detailed examination of Rodgers, see Porterfield, Nolan's Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Time of America's Blue Yodeler (Champaign Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979).Google Scholar
20. Johnson, Robert, “Crossroad Blues,” on The Complete Recordings, Columbia C2K 46222, 1990.Google Scholar
21. Marcus, Greil, Mystery Train (1975; rept. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1990), 25.Google Scholar
22. Quoted in Marsh, Dave, Elvis (New, York: Rolling Stone, 1982), 126.Google Scholar
23. Ellison, Ralph, Going to the Territory (New York: Vintage, 1987), 142.Google Scholar
24. There is another cross-fertilization of cultures involving Rodgers that needs to be mentioned. Rodgers of course was best known for his trademark yodel, a moan that somehow also conveyed a sense of freedom and possibility. Likewise, the great blues singer Howlin' Wolf, whose moan, which was more of a growl, is perhaps the apotheosis of the great Mississippi blues tradition of Charley Patton, Son House, Tommy Johnson, Robert Johnson, and a handful of others. According to Wolf, whose “real” name was Chester Burnett, his moan, or howl, was patterned after Rodgers's (see Guralnick, Peter's Lost Highway [Random House: Vintage, 1982]Google Scholar; and Feel Like Going Home [1971; rept. New York: Vintage, 1981]).Google Scholar
25. llison, , Shadow and Act, 78–79.Google Scholar
26. The then president of CBS Records, Walter Yentikoff, threatened to remove all CBS artists from distribution if MTV would not agree to play videos from Jackson's Thriller. This near boycott broke MTV's “color line.” From its inception, MTV was criticized for its reluctance to play videos by black artists. As the success of Yo! MTV Raps! shows, however, once a market is proved to exist, even the most rigid color lines become fluid, washed over in the color of money (see Marsh, Dave, The First Rock & Roll Confidential Report [New York: Pantheon, 1985], 204).Google Scholar
27. George, Nelson, The Death of Rhythm and Blues (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1988), xii.Google Scholar
28. George, , Death of Rhythm and Blues, 4.Google Scholar
29. George acknowledges that rap poses a problem to his thesis, as his next book admits (see George, Nelson, Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Bohos (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).Google Scholar
30. Wallace, Michelle, Invisibility Blues (New York: Verso, 1990), 89.Google Scholar
31. George, , Death of Rhythm and Blues, 200.Google Scholar
32. George, , Death of Rhythm and Blues, 108.Google Scholar
33. gosset, hattie, “billie lives! billie lives!” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, ed. Moraga, Cherie and Anzaladua, Gloria (New York: Kitchen Table; Women of Color, 1983), 109–12.Google Scholar
34. Of “Gloomy Sunday,” Michael Brooks remarks, “If ever there was a song manufactured by the media this is it. It was imported from Hungary, given English lyrics and dubbed ‘The Hungarian Suicide Song,’ supposedly because distraught lovers made the air black with their flying bodies after hearing it, much the same way as financiers acted after the '29 Crash. The authenticity of both stories has yet to be verified.” For Holiday's version of this song, as well as Brooks's notes, see Holiday, Billie, The Quintessential Billie Holiday Story, vol. 9 of nine volumes, Columbia 47301, 1987–1991.Google Scholar
35. gosset, , “billie lives!” 110.Google Scholar
36. gosset, , “billie lives!” 109.Google Scholar
37. gosset, , “billie lives!” 110.Google Scholar
38. Henry Louis Gates defines “signifying” as a practice crucial to African-American culture, “a trope of a trope” that takes prior forms of discourse and reshapes them in a way that both comments on the previous form of discourse, while forging a new kind of language. This practice depends on the “symbiotic relationship between … black vernacular discourse and standard English discourse” (see Gates, Henry Louis Jr., The Signifying Monkey [New York: Oxford University Press, 1988], 50).Google Scholar
39. Ellison, , Going to the Territory, 108, 317.Google Scholar
40. See Miles Davis with Troupe, Quincy, Miles: The Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 70Google Scholar. Speaking of white jazz critics, Gerald Early notes that Davis saw “the white male presence as a hegemonic challenge to his right of self-definition” (see Early, Gerald, “The Lives of Jazz,” American Literary History 5 [Spring 1993]: 129–46).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
41. Du Bois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk (1903; rept. New York: Library of America, 1990), 8.Google Scholar
42. Colour, Living, “Pride,” on Time's Up.Google Scholar
43. Alice Walker's short story, “1955,” tells the story of an Elvis figure who rises to fame and fortune singing, in this case, a black woman's song. The female singer is obviously modeled on Big Mama Thornton, the “original” singer of “Hound Dog,” one of the handful of songs most often associated with Elvis. Near the end of the story, the Elvis figure asks the Big Mama Thornton figure to explain the meaning of “her” song that he has been singing all of these years. He dies fat, alone, confused. Walker's story, I think, refers to the fact that the song's refrain, “you ain't nothing but a hound dog,” makes more sense coming out of a woman's mouth — or Big Mama Thornton's — than a man's (see Walker, Alice, You Can't Keep a God Woman Down [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981])Google Scholar. An additional irony to the history of “Hound Dog,” which Walker does not choose to explore, is that it was written by two Jewish white boys, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, in the hope that they could get a suitable black singer to perform it. For a full discussion of the many twists and turns the song “Hound Dog” took before finding fame and fortune with Elvis, including a reading of how Elvis radically reinterprets Thornton's original version (Mystery Train, 155–56).Google Scholar
Albert Goldman's biography Elvis portrays an ignorant “uncircumcised” hillbilly who crudely tries to ape the gestures of a culture he does not understand. Perhaps no other “critic” has done more to obscure the significance of Elvis's work than Goldman. Sympathetic with neither the Southern culture that spawned Presley nor the achievement of his art, Goldman's book interests itself only with scandal — orgies, drugs, violence, etc (see [if you must] Goldman, Albert, Elvis [New York: Avon, 1982])Google Scholar. For a devastating critique of Goldman's Elvis, its shoddy research, and its lack of critical perspective, see, again, Greil Marcus, who aptly labels the book an “attempt at cultural genocide” (Dead Elvis, 48, 47–59).Google Scholar
44. As Guralnick, Peter's excellent Last Train to Memphis (1994)Google Scholar reminds, Elvis was very accessible to the media before he went into the army in 1958. His scattered interviews collectively reveal his bewilderment and pride at causing the disturbance that he did. However, there is no statement then or later as to how he viewed his achievement as an artist — undoubtedly, one of the very greatest America has produced. Unfortunately, the context in which he was placed, teen singing sensation, did not allow the question to be considered, and it was the great tragedy of Elvis that the question probably never occurred to him either (see Guralnick, Peter, Last Train to Memphis [New York: Little, Brown, 1994]).Google Scholar
45. Marcus's Dead Elvis provides by turns hilarious and grim accounts of the many incarnations of Elvis that have arisen in the wake of his death. Marcus remains one of the few critics committed to an understanding of the enormous complexity — and intention — of Elvis's art.
46. See Presley, Elvis, “Don't Be Cruel,” on The Million Dollar Quartet, RCA 2023-2-r, 1990.Google Scholar
47. After playing Elvis's version of bluesman Arthur Crudup's “That's All Right, Mama,” Dewey Phillips was besieged with phone calls questioning the identity of the new, and strange, singer. Elvis was immediately rushed to the studio so Phillips could ask, “What high school do you attend?” Elvis: “Humes High.” The answer let the listeners know that Elvis was white.
48. See Presley, Elvis, Elvis: '68 Comeback Special, dir. Binder, Steve, Media Home Entertainment, 1984.Google Scholar
49. Presley, , “Don't Be Cruel.”Google Scholar
50. As we are more and more aware, and as Southerners have always known, if not always admitted, the interaction between black and white cultures has been going on for a long time. For a detailed discussion of how white and black minstrels copied each other's styles near the turn of this century, see Sundquist, Eric, To Wake the Nations (Cambridge: Belknap, 1993), 294–323.Google Scholar
51. Ellison, , Shadow and Act, 234.Google Scholar
52. Marcus, , Dead Elvis, 57.Google Scholar
53. To view this performance of “Don't Be Cruel,” see This is Elvis, dir. Andrew Solt and Malcom Leo, Warner Brothers, 1981. As for Jackie Wilson, he awaits his hattie gosset to mythologize him. One of the most gifted of rhythm and blues singers, Wilson's career never caught on. Equipped with an operatic vocal range, Wilson's talents were shuffled from producer to producer while his career yielded a dozen or so hits, a handful of R&B classics, and a pile of string-soaked Mantovanniesque dreck. Most commentators view Wilson as a great rhythm and blues singer who, for some reason or other, never got to pursue his talent, an odd fate for one who was the boyhood friend of Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown. In a sense, Presley's career was as badly mismanaged as Wilson's. Both became the mute dupes of their handlers. The difference is — of course — that Elvis made a fortune.
54. While his picture is shown, Blackwell himself is not indexed — an ironic reinscription of the standard line about Elvis's “muting” of Blackwell. The 1992 edition corrects this oversight, even listing Blackwell in the index. History is apparently catching up with him. Let me remark here that I am not trying to suggest that Elvis was a mere imitator. His interpretations, while inspired by the original, always come out differently. As a parenthetical note, we might remember the next time we see the comedian Eddie Murphy do one of his uncanny impersonations of a Yiddish dialect, or even a Caucasian dialect, that his boyhood hero was Elvis Presley.
55. I am afraid I have not been able to determine the exact date of the Letterman show Blackwell was on, though I am fairly certain it was sometime during 1986. Obviously, my reading cannot be, finally, confirmed. The sordid side to this story — as is generally the case for any good American story — is money. Even though Elvis was not a songwriter, Colonel Parker saw to it that Elvis received partial writer's credit for most of his 1950s' hits. Back royalty fees is where Blackwell has his biggest complaint. On the other hand, we still have not come to terms with the idea that a singer's interpretation of a song can, in effect, create a new song. This is certainly the logic of many classic jazz recordings. By this view, Elvis did deserve cowriter's credit.
56. Little Richard can today be seen and heard on Taco Bell commercials as well as during the theme song to television's Friday Night Videos. When he is given the chance to speak for himself, however, Richard makes it clear that he is the “originator” of rock and roll. After we offer the requisite apologies to Chuck Berry, Little Richard has a defensible claim, except for one thing. There was no originator of rock and roll any more than there was an original version of “Don't Be Cruel.” In “Elvis Is Dead,” Little Richard appears in the guise of the king who has survived, playing David to Elvis's Saul. Magnanimous in his royalty, Little Richard preaches a sermon against the “vultures” who will not let Elvis rest in peace or, should I say, “be.” That Little Richard could be speaking of Living Colour as one of those vultures is another nice irony the song allows.
57. See Palmer, Robert, “James Brown,” in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, ed. Miller, Jim (New York: Random House, 1980), 141.Google Scholar
58. Jones, Leroi, Blues People (New York: William Morrow, 1963), 25.Google Scholar
59. Brown, James with Tucker, Bruce, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul (New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1990), 158.Google Scholar
60. See Rose, Cynthia, Living in America: The Soul Saga of James Brown (London: Serpent's Tail, 1990), 148.Google Scholar
61. George, , Death of Rhythm and Blues, 104.Google Scholar
62. Essentially, Brown was arrested and jailed for fleeing the police, who were following him through a misunderstanding. Details are jumbled, but apparently Brown had good reason to run. He drove six miles on wheel rims in a vehicle that by the end of the chase sported twenty-three bullet holes. For in-depth accounts of the sordid story that landed Brown in prison, see Marsh, Dave, “Prisoner of Race,” Epilogue in Brown and Tucker, James Brown, 269–83Google Scholar; and Booth, Stanley, Rythm [sic] Oil (New York: Vintage, 1991), 228–49.Google Scholar
63. Brown, , James Brown, xxviii.Google Scholar
64. Hirshey, Gerri, Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music (New York: Penguin, 1984), 248.Google Scholar
65. Brown, , James Brown, 165–66.Google Scholar
66. Brown, , James Brown, 6.Google Scholar
67. Brown, , James Brown, 15.Google Scholar
68. Hirshey, , Nowhere to Run, 57.Google Scholar
69. Hirshey, , Nowhere to Run, 269.Google Scholar
70. Brown, , James Brown, 229.Google Scholar
71. Brown, , James Brown, 188.Google Scholar
72. White, Cliff, Liner Notes, on The CD of JBII, Polydor 831 700–2, 1987.Google Scholar
73. Brown, , James Brown, 221.Google Scholar
74. Brown, , James Brown, 143.Google Scholar
75. Baker, Houston A. Jr., Blues, Ideology and African-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 8, 11.Google Scholar
76. Ibid., 3. Given that so much of what I will roughly call American music — jazz, blues, hillbilly and, ultimately, rock and roll — came out of the cultural confusion of the agrarian South, I would even go so far as to suggest that the Southern Agrarians' I'll Take My Stand, normally associated with John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, enriches the understanding the interstices of African-American culture that Baker's Blues or Gate's The Signifying Monkey present. Unquestionably, the book is reactionary in the role it assigned to blacks, which seems to hearken back to the “benevolent” slavery arguments promulgated during the Civil War era. Still, the Southern Agrarians knew that blacks were not only ex-slaves but Southerners, and hence were part of — and contributed to — a shared culture (see Southerners, Twelve, I'll Take My Stand [1930; rept. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983]).Google Scholar
77. Bois, Du, Souls of Black Folk, 189.Google Scholar
78. Locke, Alain, “The Negro Spirituals,” in The New Negro, ed. Locke, Alain (1925; New York: Atheneum, 1968), 199.Google Scholar
79. Brown, , James Brown, 165.Google Scholar
80. Only Gerri Hirshey and Bruce Tucker, Brown's cowriter for his autobiography, discuss the relationship, perhaps because they have been concerned to talk to Brown himself rather than being content with a facile image of Brown.
81. Hirshey, , Nowhere to Run, 58.Google Scholar