'If I could find a white man who had
the negro sound and the negro feel,
I could make a billion dollars' — Sam
Phillips
Elvis Presley grabbed the opportunity. A truck
driver with slightly too-long hair, flashy
clothing crooked half-smile, he looked like a rebel. The
seemed hard, but the heart was tender. He loved his parents,
his mother especially, and visited churches more often
than bars. His only fault, in the eyes of staunch southern
traditionalists, would be his interest in
black music.
Elvis Aron (later changed to Aaron) Presley, born
in 1935 in Mississippi, was familiar with B. B. King,
Howlin' Wolf, Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup and all the
other great blues performers, and he set about to sing
like them, imitating their inflections, their accents, their
guttural style. There was and there will always be two
Elvises: the nice boy — good to his mother, quiet, a
devout Christian, a lover of gospel - and the rocker with
the sensual pout, ready to surrender to every excess. He
was a perfect image of the Deep South, torn between his
religious feelings and his violent urges, his love of God
and his appetite for pleasure. The 'good' Elvis went to
record a love song for his mother. The 'wild' Elvis cut
loose between takes and bawled out a well-known rock
and roll song.
The latter is evidently what attracted the attention
of producer Sam Phillips, head of Sun Records. Phillips
had learned that increasing numbers of young whites
were buying blues and rhythm and blues records. With
Elvis he believed he had finally found that rare creature,
a white man who sang like he was black, thus creating
an infinitely larger commercial potential. In July 1954
he recorded Elvis singing 'That's All Right', a popular
tune by Arthur Crudup (who would never see much
of the money the song brought in). Elvis was supported
by studio musicians Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black
(bass). These 'good old boys' from Tennessee were more
used to playing country music but did not mind the
rougher idiom of rhythm and blues.
This approach
of putting muscles on country music was dubbed
'rockabilly'. Elvis' first and best recordings ('Good
Rockin' Tonight', 'Milkcow Blues Boogie' and
'Mystery Train') attest to this clever combination
of black music and cowboy serenades.
Jerry Lee Lewis, the killer With Elvis Presley's first record in black and white —
one side black music, the other country — Sun Records
broke a music industry rule: the racial unity of artistic
productions. With the introduction of Jerry Lee
Lewis on the same label, it broke a second: the
avoidance of explicit lyrics. Lewis appropriated
the raw language of black blues
singers who were not shy about using metaphors to
express passion ('Great Balls of Fire').
Lewis had attended fundamentalist Bible schools
before selling his soul to the devil. A remarkable pianist,
he had appeared on stage since adolescence, touring
markets and fairs with his father; their piano was installed
on the back of a Hatbed truck. Jerry Lee played a vigorous
boogie-woogie. Offstage, the young man tasted the
pleasures of the road — alcohol,
gambling, women. The Lewis family was
constantly split between religion exaltation and debauchery.
Lewis' cousin, the famous televangelist Jimmy
Swaggart,
is as celebrated for his fiery sermons as for losing his way
in the shady sections of town. In the
Lewises' congregation,
the Pentecostal Assembly of God Church (which Elvis also
attended), the parishioners sang until they fell into a
trance. They spoke in tongues and beat themselves, while
confessing to all sorts of base
acts, particularly sexual ones. And no sooner did they leave
the church than they resumed their old habits - the trips to
go-go bars, the binges and the poker parties: 'Whole Lotta
Shakin' Goin' On'.
