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| From | Jake Beamer <weirdpop@gmail.com> |
| Subject | Elvis : one more thing |
| Date | Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:28:31 -0400 |
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Okay. But am I wrong in thinking, as I thought most of the naturalized
world did, that the point of Elvis was he brought R&B (and yes,
country and his awful showtune renditions) ALL to the white populace?
BLUES for chrissakes, which was originally (oh god) a BLACK man's
music and whites didn't want to hear it from some black guy but they'd
hear it from a greaser-trucker who had no prior music experience but
loved his mama? Definitely a performer. But a stupid actor. Even
though I love those movies.
Early rock and roll? Perhaps I'm wrong here.
And I just remember reading credits to a lot of his big hits, MANY of
his big hits, and I just didn't see his name associated with many of
them at all.
But I'm probably wrong.
I don't think it's bad that now we have more artists trying to write
their own stuff. What I think is lame is when music can go downhill
because of this, it waters down, it loses its appeal because anyone
can do it (thanks, punk although I love that too) and we still have
throwaway artists with no merit, flash-in-the-pan crap that people
seem to love. It's all good. :)
Everything is out there for a reason.
-Jake
>
> Jake wrote:
>
> > And I assume you mean Elvis Presley - I thought everyone knew he
> > barely sang OR wrote ANY of his own songs - seriously, try finding
> > one. Hard pressed. All old black R&B songs. Not to say they ain't
> > good. Love Elvis.
> >
> Ah, yes, the good old condescending "but I like good old Elvis" back
> hand. He's always good for a laugh, ain't he? So Elvis wasn't a
> songwriter. Well, it's not the point. There weren't a lot of
> singer-songwriters. It was a different era, before the Beatles made
> every musician think they could be songwriters too. Elvis was something
> special because he put his stamp on the songs he covered, combined his
> influences in a new way. And no, they weren't all "old black R&B
> songs", as if they could all be lumped together. He did country, r&b,
> show tunes (compare his versions to the originals if it's not too much
> work. I know, I know, it's safer and easier to just repeat the lazy,
> dismissive clichés you've heard). And a lot of those "old black R&B"
> songs were written by jewish guys from Brooklyn, for instance. Big Mama
> Thornton's Hound Dog and Elvis' are wholly different animals. What
> makes the songs "black"? Who wrote them? Who sang them? It's more
> complex than that, and probably a moot point anyhow.
>
> Christopher wrote:
>
> > Well, this points up that we're really talking about two completely
> > different animals, the singer-songwriter and the performer. One might
> > argue
> > that the Beatles were among the first very popular singer-songwriter
> > artists, and that paved the way for a boatload of them in the '60s,
> > '70s,
> > and beyond. The "performer" tag still applies to a good many pop
> > artists
> > (good, bad, or indifferent -- I don't mean either to praise or damn
> > them,
> > just making a point), and the prevalence of major stage shows with
> > extremely
> > challenging choreography raises the bar for a "performer" to be that
> > much
> > more proficient in ways completely aside from songwriting.
> >
> Well said. And the performer tag is mostly an albatross and has been
> since the Sixties...which often leaves us with the worst of both
> worlds. Performances that don't do a song justice, and half-baked but
> well-performed songs.
>
--
Jake Beamer
offbeat writer/producer
http://www.jakebeamer.com
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