Found on Me-Phi-Me (where some of the comments cause me to grind my teeth, and be thankful I don't have an account):
Guardian Unlimited | Arts | He wasn't my king
For black people, Elvis, more than any other performer, epitomises the theft of their music and dance
Helen Kolawole
Thursday August 15, 2002
The GuardianAs another celebration of a dead white hero winds up, in this hallowed Week of Elvis, shouldn't the entertainment industry hold its own truth and reconciliation commission?
[. . .] This won't happen of course. Media arrogance and dishonesty means we are eternally bound to live in a skewed world where Elvis is king of rock'n'roll, Clapton is the guitar god, Sinatra is the voice and Astaire is the greatest dancer. Accustomed as we are to this parade of white heroes, the case of Elvis is particularly infuriating because for many black people he represents the most successful white appropriation of a black genre to date.
From what I hear, Adele had the talent, but I think she means her bro.
Elvis also signifies the foul way so many black writers and performers, such as Little Richard, were treated by the music industry. The enduring image of Elvis is a constant reflection of society's then refusal to accept anything other than the non-threatening and subservient negro: Sammy Davies Jnr and Nat King Cole. The Elvis myth to this day clouds the true picture of rock'n'roll and leaves its many originators without due recognition. So what is left for black people to celebrate? How he admirably borrowed our songs, attitude and dance moves?Public Enemy's prolific commentator, Chuck D, was clear on why he felt compelled to attack the pretender's iconic status. In their 1989 song Fight the Power, he rapped: "Elvis was a hero to most/ But he never meant shit to me you see/ Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain/ Motherfuck him and John Wayne."
To contend that Elvis was a racist is hardly shocking. ("The only thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my music", he once opined.) And, as a dirt poor Southerner raised in close but separate proximity to black people, his racism would hardly have distinguished him from millions of others. Chuck D's attack was not aimed at Elvis the person, but Elvis the institution.
Which is good, since the quote appears to be a fabrication, but the sentiment is in the right place. Or the wrong place, if you're one of those people.
I'm going to go blast Living Colour's "Elvis is Dead" until the neighbors call the cops now.
Update: Woah. I'd been using lynx before, and didn't see the images.
Adele Astaire was hot. I mean, she's no Rita Hayworth, but. . . I should quit while I'm ahead, shouldn't I?
"Conspiracy revealed: Elvis a brother"
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/entertainment/gossip/3833037.htm
Sam Phillips on the topic:
The son of poor tenant farmers, Phillips worked in the cotton fields of Alabama with black field laborers in childhood. I ask him about those early years and the attraction he felt toward southern black folk music when it was accorded neither artistic respect nor commercial acceptance.
"I worked in the fields when I was this high," Phillips answers, measuring his height as a toddler. "A day didn't go by when I didn't hear black folks singing in the cotton fields. Did I feel sorry for them? In a way I did. But they could do things I couldn't do. They could outpick me. They could sing on pitch. That made a big impression on me.
"You see, we've forgotten how much they have sacrificed to please the white man," Phillips says. "For years white people have denied what this old black man with four strings on his guitar could do, just saying, 'OK, let's hear this nigger play.' A black man playing for white folks was 'fun,' but that was all.
"The black man gave up so many things that were important to him just to survive and to please. But think about the complexity, yet simplicity of music we have gained from hard times--from the sky, the wind, and the earth. If you don't have a foundation, you don't know what the hell I'm talking about."
"We were very poor," Phillips continues. "We had eight children and lost everything in the Depression. But I will say this: there was an indigenous part of me that looked for something different in life. I had a certain temperament. I didn't care what people thought of me. In this way I was like Elvis. We both had walked in their shoes. And there wasn't anybody poorer than Elvis or Carl Perkins."
"You may ask whether or not that was fortunate," Phillips says of those hardships. "Hell, that was fortunate. For look what has come from adversity. The blues, it got people--black and white--to think about life, how difficult, yet also how good it can be. They would sing about it; they would pray about it; they would preach about it. This is how they relieved the burden of what existed day in and day out. It is hard that it had to happen, but it did happen."
from here:
http://205.178.185.71/public/2001/May/samphil.html
This is the man who said of Howlin' Wolf, "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.'"
"...the sentiment is in the right place."
Insinuating that someone a racist is chicken shit, cheap shot easy. Elvis was a racist? Your proof please?
"Chuck D's attack was not aimed at Elvis the person, but Elvis the institution."
You can shut the fuck up now, thanks.
"To contend that Elvis was a racist is hardly shocking?"
So, is that the individual or the institution, then?
Still comes across as chicken shit, cheap shot easy. As does your response.
That's nice. I notice your failure to shut the fuck up.
Which of these words was giving you difficulties?
shit, i love that fucking PE song. i was just t'other day repeating the "elvis was a hero to most" lines over and over again while cleaning the kitchen. most liberating lyrics since "i am an antichrist" etc.
there are some serious dues that need to be paid by many a thieving rock and roll musician. i suppose i am one of them. i thought perhaps i was doing my part by getting involved in the "2-tone" movement in the early 80's but as we know most of those victories turned out to be pyrrhic ones (although i had some truly joyful thrash-pit-as-melting-pot experiences at some fishbone shows).
which leads me to ask, what was your critical take on jimmy page's collaboration with p-diddy nee puff daddy? completely against my normally quite cynical will, i found the live television performance of PD rant-rapping furiously over KASHMIR with orchestra and JP whanging out the chords...stirring, somehow.
rock and roll, man, it's a funny business, isn't it? one minute it's just a song, another minute it seems to be about everything...
Missed the collaboration. My pop culture knowledge, like the rest of it, has some rather odd gaps. . .
Live shows as melting pots make it all worth it. I've been to too many where the audience was either almost all black, or very few of us were integrating the place. Happy mediums are good.
y2karl, since you seem to have missed that link in the actual post, here it is again. You click it. Words come up. Read them.
In regards to your link--Well, duh...
It was the "To contend that Elvis was a racist is hardly shocking... And, as a dirt poor Southerner raised in close but separate proximity to black people, his racism would hardly have distinguished him from millions of others."
to which I referred. That's the cheap and easy shot. Not all of us come equipped with time travel telepathy...
Sorry. Should not be taking my bad mood out on random visitors. Welcome to the site, and sorry for starting off in megabitch mode.
Figure people believe the quote because it appeals to their beliefs. Urban legends are like that.
I mean, a guy dressed up as a bat? Get real.
you know...Eminem does really explain the whole concept of why "Elvis as an institution" gets some folks riled up.
"Though I'm not the first king of controversy/I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley...to use black music to make myself wealthy/HEY!"
This is the concept that angers...it follows that a white artist doing music rooted and intricately connected to black culture will do better than black artists doing the same music. And it continues to show the intricate difficulties and disproportions in regards to race in this country.
On the other hand, one could read
'Strange Things Happening Everyday': Race, Class and the Music of Elvis Presley: Memphis 1948-1955
a sample dissertation posted at the U of East Anglia at Norwich:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/eas/Sectors/American/exampledisses/diss2/introduction.htm
or consider from this article here:
http://www.jsonline.com/onwisconsin/music/aug02/65224.asp
from which comes this quote:
...Not surprisingly, there is a thread of ambivalence surrounding Presley in the black community.
In the '50s especially, Presley had a substantial black following. Four of his records went to No. 1 on the R&B charts (and simultaneously the country and pop charts). He is to this day easily the highest-ranking white artist on Billboard's R&B singles charts.
In December 1956, Presley made a guest appearance at the Goodwill Revue, a benefit staged in Memphis by the black radio station WDIA.
Deejay Nathaniel Dowde Williams later described how "black, brown and beige teenage girls in the audience blended their alto and soprano voices in one wild crescendo of sound that rent the rafters and took off like scalded cats in the direction of Elvis."
B.B. King was at that show and recalled it in his autobiography: "When Elvis appeared that year, he was already a big, big star. Remember this was the fifties, so for a young white boy to show up at an all-black function took guts. I believe he was showing his roots. And he seemed proud of those roots. After the show, he made a point of posing for pictures with me and treating me like royalty."
Yet resentments about Presley linger in the black community. Some charge cultural piracy, that a white boy stole a black musical innovation and reaped all the rewards that should have rightfully gone to Ray Charles, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
"I don't know if I can buy cultural pirate," says soul singer and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jerry Butler. "I guess we're all cultural pirates in some sense. All of us take the best of what we think is somebody else's and try to make it uniquely ours. That's just a natural thing. Musicians do it. Painters do it.
"The reason it becomes cultural piracy in the minds of some is that he was promoted while others who were making the same kind of music were suppressed. You see, it gave him an unequal playing field, not necessarily of his own making. It was just the nature of the time. Otis Blackwell was writing these songs, and most people, including me, never looked to see who wrote the song. It was Elvis Presley's song."
That picture, by the way, is here:
http://www.elvis1.de/embl/bb_king2.htm
I think it's a whole lot more complex an issue than simple theft--the farther one goes back in time, the less separated the musics of black and white in the rural south are. But then complex issues don't make for simple cut and dried black and white, I'm Right, You're Wrong opinions.
Elvis bears the weight of all this because he cut a few records before he got drafted and then went on to be the biggest star ever, for his time.
And here because Helen Kolawole is to music criticism as Ann Coulter is to political discourse.
BLACK PEOPLE ARE THE BIGGEST RACISTS OF THEM ALL!
Mmm. Aaron, look, a troll.
Don't feed it. It encourages fluffy-hairedness when you do.
That's hardly fair, saying someone who posts a message in all caps, with a fake email address (and IP 194.125.133.245, if anyone cares) in a long-dormant discussion is a troll. I think s/he raises a very good point.
Namely, is there a way to turn off comments in old threads?