On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:28:31 -0400, Jake Beamer wrote: > 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? No - that's *not* the point of Elvis (and what does 'no prior music experience' mean in this context? Everyone has to start somewhere). When you listen to those early Elvis recordings, between 54 and about 57 (I like a lot of the later stuff, but for different reasons) the point is that he's just making *music*. Not 'white' music, not 'black' music, music. Is Blue Moon a black R&B song? Because that may be the best of the Sun recordings. How about Harbor Lights? I Love You Because? The great thing about those records, the truly inspiring thing, is that they don't fit into any box. It's just the sound of someone who has an incredibly good voice, who obviously loves music of all types, in all genres, just doing whatever feels good. It's the kind of music every true music-lover wishes they could make - music that flat-out ignores genre boundaries and stamps all over them. Part of Elvis' music was blues, definitely (but it's not as if no white person had ever done a blues song of one type or another before - that had been going on for thirty or forty years even then), but there's a *ton* of other stuff in there - he was covering Arthur Crudup, Bill Monroe, the Ink Spots, Hank Williams, Rogers & Hart, Roy Brown, Dean Martin, all pretty much interchangeably > 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. No, he didn't write his hits (I believe he only wrote one song in his life, though he's credited on more). But he was a performer, not a songwriter. And honestly, once he started having hits (and the businessmen around him started controlling the material), most of the actual songs were dreck (with the obvious honourable exceptions of the Leiber/Stoller and Pomus/Shuman stuff). They were hits not because of the song, but because of the singer - do you honestly believe that Teddy Bear, Wear My Ring Around Your Neck and so on were hits because of the song? Even when the song itself was good (Suspicious Minds or Guitar Man for example), Elvis' performance elevates the track (just compare those two to their originals, which have note-for-note identical arrangements, just different vocals - Elvis' are clearly the better record). There is nothing wrong with being a non-writing performer, any more than there is with being a non-performing writer - and frankly I think the world would be better with more of both... -- Andrew Hickey and Holly Matthies headline International Pop Overthrow, the Cavern, Liverpool Monday October 25