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The remarkable ease with which he accepted black culture wasn't just a quasi-revolutionary act for a white Southerner at the time, it was a striking personal victory over his upbringing's racism -- and a forceful promise of things to come.
Elvis was denounced nationwide for his "vulgarity" (which usually meant his Southernness) and his sexuality, but down South it was his confusion of racial identity that elicited mockery and abuse. When his first record, "That's All Right Mama," was released in Memphis, the first question asked by callers to radio stations was invariably, "Is that a white boy or a colored?" Presley had already started to undermine the taboos on black and white interaction.
It took a brave, maybe even a desperate, leap of faith to meld divergent Southern musical forms into a popular national art. Through his personal triumph over the racist inhibitions of his environment, Presley early on set the tone for what rock & roll at its best would be, not just for the South but for the nation: a challenge to the status quo, a celebration of freedom, and a bold embrace of America's wide, deep cultural diversity.
It's a part of his legacy that's usually buried today under the ever-breaking wave of commercial exploitation of his career and image, and worn down by his own history of long decline. But at his most important, his most daring and his most dangerous -- in those three or four years before commercial pressures, the Army, and the long tentacles of Col. Parker squeezed the spark from him -- Presley was the raw flame, America's own funhouse mirror that, depending on your outlook, either reflected a scary, vulgar delinquency or a completely unexpected excitement and sense of liberation.
That upsetting of the status quo, the acknowledgment of black and white interdependency, were what lay at the heart of his initial appeal, and were what ignited rock & roll's Big Bang. And that's why, despite the sparkly jumpsuits, the pills, the years of creative indolence, the thousands of fat jokes, and the hothouse-flower quality of his personal weirdness, Presley is still impossible to forget.
As rock critic/historian Greil Marcus wrote, "[Elvis] remains the specter of possibility -- in rock, pop culture, "America,' modern life -- and he remains the fact of ruin. Solve that question if you can, or else drop the question of who you are, where you came from, where you might end up."
So go out there and enjoy the new Elvis "product" (I know I'm loving the DVD box set), tune in to the big gatherings in Memphis, and maybe even tell a few Elvis jokes. But spend at least a few minutes remembering that this guy wasn't just a fat druggie who loved fried chicken, karate, and young women in white cotton panties. At one time, he set the world on fire, he felt like an earthquake rumbling through the land, he opened white eyes to black music, he brought Americans the gut feeling that everything had changed. And he did it all himself.
John Grooms is Editor of Creative Loafing - Charlotte and is a former instructor of Rock & Roll History. He was six years old when he saw Elvis Presley perform on the Ed Sullivan show, and it ruined him for life.
