Search Results

From a Jack to a King

Roben Jones

in Memphis Boys: The Story of American Studios

This chapter describes Elvis’s sessions at American in 1969. The effects of the Elvis sessions affected the lives of all who were there for years to come and literally restored Elvis to his throne; ... More

This chapter describes Elvis’s sessions at American in 1969. The effects of the Elvis sessions affected the lives of all who were there for years to come and literally restored Elvis to his throne; by the end of the year he was on top of the charts once again. And just as the American group put Elvis back upon the map, so he put them on the map as well. Though the credits were not listed on the album, everybody in the industry knew who had made the recordings, and it increased demand for the musicians and Chips.Less

“A Tradition-Conscious Cotton City”: (East) Tupelo, Mississippi, Birthplace of Elvis Presley

Michael T. Bertrand

in Destination Dixie: Tourism and Southern History

The Elvis Presley Birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, is the subject of Michael Bertrand’s essay. Every year, eighty thousand to one hundred thousand visitors come to visit the fifteen-acre site that ... More

The Elvis Presley Birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, is the subject of Michael Bertrand’s essay. Every year, eighty thousand to one hundred thousand visitors come to visit the fifteen-acre site that houses the Presley birthplace, a museum, and a chapel and park that the local convention and visitors’ bureau claims as its “most significant landmark.” As Bertrand’s essay reveals, while the site is important to civic boosters and brings tourist dollars, the story of Elvis’s early life history is complicated by his family’s poverty and working-class origins from the “wrong side of the tracks.” Thus, the early Elvis story contrasts sharply with the one told at Graceland, Presley’s home in Memphis, Tennessee.Less

“And Introducing Elvis Presley”: Hollywood’s Making of a Rock ’n’ Roll Star into a Movie Star

Landon Palmer

in Rock Star/Movie Star: Power and Performance in Cinematic Rock Stardom

Chapter 1 offers a case study that illuminates how norms of studio-era film production came to be negotiated with the multimedia context of the 1950s and early 1960s. In exploring the production of ... More

Chapter 1 offers a case study that illuminates how norms of studio-era film production came to be negotiated with the multimedia context of the 1950s and early 1960s. In exploring the production of “Elvis movies” from 1956 to 1961, this chapter examines how Hollywood transformed Presley the rock ’n’ roll star into a singular screen attraction. Producer Hal Wallis, a veteran of the studio era, sought a balance between the cyclical, generic structure of the former star system with the new opportunities for cross-platform promotion portended by the media landscape of the 1950s. Presley’s rebel-oriented 1950s films put on display what modern media fame meant in the second half of the 1950s and suggest a hierarchical relationship between television and film. Subsequently, Presley’s 1960s work enacted an assembly-line integration of feature film and LP record production, demonstrating how Wallis’s star-making formula during the studio era translated to a cross-platform context. In this way, Hollywood adapted to the “electronic age” of the 1950s while maintaining strict control over the output of a star’s labor, reconfiguring the power structures of the star system by aligning media industries into the synchronous production of a multimedia star image.Less

In Conclusion: Elvis, Wiggers, and Crossing Over to Nonwhiteness

David R. Roediger

in Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past

This chapter addresses the most widely studied crossover success, Elvis Presley, and the almost entirely unexamined contemporary phenomenon of the “wigger.” In doing this, it tries to illustrate both ... More

This chapter addresses the most widely studied crossover success, Elvis Presley, and the almost entirely unexamined contemporary phenomenon of the “wigger.” In doing this, it tries to illustrate both why cultural crossover matters and why it cannot by itself generate a crossing over into nonwhiteness. It suggests how the vision of a nonwhite society can help to transcend crossover and build a better bridge. Presley's case shows the possibilities and limits of racial crossover. The varied explanations of the origin of the word wigger, and of its meanings are offered. The cases of racial crossovers among people of color have different dynamics but also define no surefire path to unity and liberation. Crossing over still requires the steady, everyday work of organizing to fight against white privilege and against the miseries that make whites settle for those privileges and encourage others to aspire to whiteness.Less

An Overture

Kay Dickinson

in Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together

This chapter criticizes the film and music combination in the motion picture Harum Scarum which starred Elvis Presley. It mentions critics' opinion that this is the worst movie in which Presley ever ... More

This chapter criticizes the film and music combination in the motion picture Harum Scarum which starred Elvis Presley. It mentions critics' opinion that this is the worst movie in which Presley ever starred. It discusses the plot of the film and attempts to locate the film's icon within the paradigms of labor history. It suggests that there is a strong but underresearched connection between the public treatment of media industry synergies that run aground and much broader anxieties about how we have earned our livings over the past fifty or so years.Less

Beyond Country Music

Tracey E. W. Laird

in Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots of Music along the Red River

As KWKH's Louisiana Hayride continued to bloom, they scheduled a guest appearance for Elvis Presley. From that moment a new sapling was planted which exposed its country roots. Ironically, Presley's ... More

As KWKH's Louisiana Hayride continued to bloom, they scheduled a guest appearance for Elvis Presley. From that moment a new sapling was planted which exposed its country roots. Ironically, Presley's ascendance to fame, for Louisiana Hayride marked the show's gradual decline. Throughout the postwar decades, the United States experienced the most radical social upheaval it had seen since the Civil War and this resulted in the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment. Shreveport's 1950s music scene emerged from the dynamic postwar era that wrought rockabilly.Less

Four Elvises: On the Dada Possibilities of Midcentury Rock and Roll and Modern Fan Culture

Edward P. Comentale

in Sweet Air: Modernism, Regionalism, and American Popular Song

This chapter shows how the very deadliness of the commodity form—its radical detachment from any traditional context—ultimately extends the affective range and reach of popular music. It argues that ... More

This chapter shows how the very deadliness of the commodity form—its radical detachment from any traditional context—ultimately extends the affective range and reach of popular music. It argues that the rock counterculture was founded not against, but through technological manipulation, commercial standardization, and consumer desire, and thus provided fans with new, more thrilling ways of inhabiting a national scene defined by market identities and taste cultures. Somewhere between Marcel Duchamp's arty toss-off and Elvis Presley's tossed-off art, a certain indifference comes to infect popular culture at large. In the end, this chapter focuses on the experiences and emergent sites of fandom, arguing that, with each cut, the King presented his body as an affectively charged and fully mediated public body and that, with records, radio, television, and film, his revolt extended—from one savvy fan to the next—across the body politic at large.Less

Rock ’n’ Roll Noir: Elvis Before the Army

David E. James

in Rock 'N' Film: Cinema's Dance With Popular Music

Elvis Presley was the greatest of rock ’n’ roll performers, combining both black and white cultural traditions and the secular and religious components in the music of his own family. His early ... More

Elvis Presley was the greatest of rock ’n’ roll performers, combining both black and white cultural traditions and the secular and religious components in the music of his own family. His early performances on Milton Berle’s and other television shows made him a national figure, and also caught the attention of producer Hal Wallis, who brought him to Hollywood. Before he was drafted, he made Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, and two other films that unapologetically mobilized the truculent delinquency innovated by Marlon Brando and James Dean. Magisterially directed by Michael Curtiz, King Creole is the best of them, a fully realized noir thriller that presents Elvis at his most exciting, dramatizing the complexity of his music and his debts to African American culture.Less

Conclusion

Tracey E. W. Laird

in Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots of Music along the Red River

Due to the fact that the Louisiana Hayride brought to the national spotlight both Hank Williams and Elvis Presley, they took a risk in claiming the annals of country music and rock-and-roll during ... More

Due to the fact that the Louisiana Hayride brought to the national spotlight both Hank Williams and Elvis Presley, they took a risk in claiming the annals of country music and rock-and-roll during the postwar era in U.S. history. But the Hayride's story does not end with its final broadcast, but with the multiple directions taken by the four influential sidemen formed during the post-World War II era in Shreveport. Commerce plays an essential role in this story of music. In the context of country music, Presley manifested fluency between black and white musicians that had deep roots in the religious singing of the South's evangelical past. The Hayride might have remained as another live radio broadcast; still Shreveport gained a central position in the history of country music and a place in the larger context of southern musical culture because of its radio station.Less

Sonorous Desires: Sweet, Spirited, and Stirring Voices in The Sound of Music (1965) and Change of Habit (1969)

Maureen Sabine

in Veiled Desires: Intimate Portrayals of Nuns in Postwar Anglo-American Film

Chapter 4 begins by proposing that the longstanding disagreement between the film critics who hated The Sound of Music and the large general audience who loved it stems from the film's volatile blend ... More

Chapter 4 begins by proposing that the longstanding disagreement between the film critics who hated The Sound of Music and the large general audience who loved it stems from the film's volatile blend of the beautiful, the sublime, the kitsch, the playful, and the sacred. While the nuns in The Sound of Music have been lambasted as silly, saccharine stereotypes, the chapter provides an alternative reading by focusing on the relationship between Julie Andrews's novice Maria and Peggy Wood's Mother Abbess, their solidarity in time of trial, and their spirit of transcendence through fortitude, exertion, and self-giving in the great women's song “Climb Every Mountain.” The chapter concludes with Change of Habit and suggests how the upbeat message that Maria expressed in the songs of The Sound of Music is no longer articulated by the film nun protagonists, but rather by Elvis Presley's male lead who conducts a chaste but melodious romance with Mary Tyler Moore's activist Sister Michelle.Less

Dégringolade

Alan K. Rode

in Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film

Curtiz returned to Warner Bros. for The Helen Morgan Story (1957).The film, starring Paul Newman and Ann Blyth,wasa flop and turned out to be the director’s final picture for Jack Warner. He fathered ... More

Curtiz returned to Warner Bros. for The Helen Morgan Story (1957).The film, starring Paul Newman and Ann Blyth,wasa flop and turned out to be the director’s final picture for Jack Warner. He fathered a daughter with Jill Gerrard, whom he maintainedat arm’s length to prevent any interference with his film career, which was entering twilight. Sam Goldwyn Jr. hired him to film The Proud Rebel. The film was delayed because of Curtiz’s appendectomy, but it became a heartwarming success starring Alan Ladd and Olivia de Havilland.Hal Wallis tapped him to direct Elvis Presley in King Creole (1958).Taking a conciliatory approach, Curtiz coaxed a superior performance from Presley that the pop music star came to regard as his best in any film. Curtiz directed a pair of desultory pictures,The Man in the Net and A Breath of Scandal, as age and illness began to impair his ability to work effectively.A handsome but antiseptic version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for Sam Goldwyn Jr. closed out Curtiz’s films during the 1950s.Less

Elvis in Las Vegas

Ellen Willis

in Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll

This chapter presents the author’s reflections about Elvis Presley’s performance at the new International Hotel in Las Vegas in 1969, his first concert in nine years. Elvis, the very definition of ... More

This chapter presents the author’s reflections about Elvis Presley’s performance at the new International Hotel in Las Vegas in 1969, his first concert in nine years. Elvis, the very definition of rock-and-roll for its vociferous defenders and detractors, became the first rock-and-roller to switch to wholesome ballads and pioneered the unalienated youth movie. He was at once old money and young money, sellout and folk hero. How would he play it? The Presley that came on shook up all her expectations and preconceived categories. There was a new man out there, whose once deadly serious frenzy had been infused with humor and a certain detachment. Though the show was more than anything else an affirmation of his sustaining love for rhythm-and-blues, it was not burdened by an oppressive reverence for the past. Presley knew better than to try to be nineteen again and had quite enough to offer at thirty-three. He sang most of his old songs, including a few of the better ballads, and a couple of new ones.Less

Imagining post-industrial Britain: , the miners’ strike plays,

David Forrest and Sue Vice

in Barry Hines: Kes, Threads and Beyond

This chapter explores Hines’s conception of Britain after the miners’ strike, and the difficulty he experienced in fictionalising those divisive events. While his 1994 novel The Heart of It is a ... More

This chapter explores Hines’s conception of Britain after the miners’ strike, and the difficulty he experienced in fictionalising those divisive events. While his 1994 novel The Heart of It is a metafictional account of a writer’s coming retrospectively to understand the strike through his father’s experience, three plays Hines wrote about it remain in draft form and never appeared in the public realm. Both Shooting Stars (1990) and Born Kicking (1992), take unexpected views on Hines’s staple subject of football and its social role, in relation respectively to the effect of unexpected wealth on a working-class man, and what happens if the footballer is a woman. Elvis Over England (1998), Hines’s last published novel, is a road journey undertaken by an unemployed steelworker who starts to confront his past by means of Elvis’s songs. Although critics and Hines himself predicted that Elvis Over England would end up on the screen, it was never filmed.Less

Christmas Songs – Sentiments and Subjectivities

Sheila Whiteley

in Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture

This chapter explains how Elvis Presley's cover of the Rev. Phillips Brooks' carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ in his 1957 Christmas Album took the centrality of the Christian message into a secular ... More

This chapter explains how Elvis Presley's cover of the Rev. Phillips Brooks' carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ in his 1957 Christmas Album took the centrality of the Christian message into a secular context by taking the carol into the popular domain. The album also included ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me’. It is evident that songs organised around a romantic discourse can teeter dangerously close to sentimentality which nevertheless comes across as ‘this is what it's all about’. Moving between sentimentality and cynicism, the cultural forms associated with Christmas, not least Christmas songs, provide a particular insight into the problems associated with meaning; they can challenge or maintain existing conventions.Less

Saints’ Cults and Celebrity: The Medieval Legacy

James Robinson

in The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-first century perspectives

This chapter is based on Robinson’s experience as a curator of medieval material culture. It relates especially to his interest in relic veneration that culminated in the 2011 Treasures of Heaven ... More

This chapter is based on Robinson’s experience as a curator of medieval material culture. It relates especially to his interest in relic veneration that culminated in the 2011 Treasures of Heaven exhibition at the British Museum. In order to make saints' cults accessible to modern audiences, he draws on the parallels between medieval devotion to saints and modern devotion to celebrities, chiefly through: crucifixion iconography (James Dean, Jim Morrison), pilgrimage to a shrine and annual commemoration (Elvis Presley/Graceland), perverse satisfaction at the death of a saint/celebrity, importance of clothes as reliquaries that enshrined a living form and are therefore imbued with the quality of the previous owner (Marilyn Monroe's gowns, Michael Jackson’s diamante glove), and fame for charitable works (Princess Diana, Audrey Hepburn). Princess Diana emerges as particularly close to a medieval saint with her healing touch, her glowing presence as a groomed but emotionally damaged figure, a virgin princess both detrimental and beneficial to the monarchy. The chapter highlights the importance of significant objects to medievalist practice, and Robinson draws on his experiences in sourcing modern as well as medieval devotional objects for exhibition, including issues of ownership, accessibility and value of such objects at auctions.Less

Good-Time Merry-Go-Round: Life after Elvis

Roben Jones

in Memphis Boys: The Story of American Studios

This chapter describes the impact of Elvis’s sessions on the studio and the group. Throughout 1969, the studio phones rang almost constantly with people booking sessions. Another Elvis connection was ... More

This chapter describes the impact of Elvis’s sessions on the studio and the group. Throughout 1969, the studio phones rang almost constantly with people booking sessions. Another Elvis connection was the addition of Bobby “Red” West to American’s staff. A song Red wrote, “If Every Day Was Like Christmas” was a favorite among Elvis fans. The chapter also describes the American group’s series of quirky, experimental records, many of them done either for their own AGP label or for Scepter.Less

Don’t Stop the Music

Nathan D. Gibson and Don Pierce

in The Starday Story: The House That Country Music Built

This chapter explores the impact of the popularity of rock ’n’ roll music to the country music industry in the 1950s. Elvis Presley’s rise to fame influenced the public into becoming rock ’n’ roll ... More

This chapter explores the impact of the popularity of rock ’n’ roll music to the country music industry in the 1950s. Elvis Presley’s rise to fame influenced the public into becoming rock ’n’ roll fans, which caused the entire country music industry to search frantically for ways to stop the advance of the genre and the loss of sales to their market. Starday Records found a solution in the form of rockabilly music — country music with borrowed elements from rock ’n’ roll. Starday Records managed to garner a significant number of sales through the release of records from their rockabilly artists, such as George Jones, Irv Green, and Art Talmadge.Less

All the President's Men

in Nixon at the Movies: A Book about Belief

“Suspicious Minds” is not a movie, but a song, Elvis Presley's seventeenth, and last, number-one record that topped the charts on November 1, 1969, two days before Richard Nixon went on national ... More

“Suspicious Minds” is not a movie, but a song, Elvis Presley's seventeenth, and last, number-one record that topped the charts on November 1, 1969, two days before Richard Nixon went on national television to deliver an address invoking “the great silent majority of Americans.” As a presence in the American psyche, Elvis had no show business rival; yet his movie career, while certainly a part of his fame, was more a tribute to his popularity than a major contributor to it. In his autobiography, Starmaker, Hal Wallis, who first signed Elvis to a movie contract and produced nine of his films, nicely illustrates Mordden's Old Cinema/New Age dichotomy. Like most of the characters he played onscreen, Elvis came from just the kind of patriotic, working-class, southern background that Nixon saw as the foundation of the new majority he successfully brought together in 1972, the new majority he hoped would replace the one Franklin Roosevelt had made the dominant factor in presidential politics forty years earlier.Less