Music Of Elvis And Marylin

As an American Dream re-inventor, Elvis wasn't lacking qualifications, not the least of which was volcanic ambition. And although he was the son of a dirt-poor sharecropper, he had roamed Memphis' black Beale Street section studying his trade and spending his money on the kind of clothes that earned him the nickname "Memphis Flash." He had also spent plenty of growing-up time listening to the gritty, vengeful last-shall-be-first message of white Pentecostal preachers holy-rollering around sawdust floors - scratching, clawing and pleading for redemption.

His music bled menace and lust, but also tenderness and vulnerability and an overpowering romantic lyricism. He was all contradiction - the raunchy, roadhouse rocker who loved mom and Jesus, the yes-sir/no-sir Southern boy with the swaggering carelessness, the sneering sex symbol with the self-mocking smile. And, like F. Scott Fitzgerald's Gatsby, he was all magnetism:

"There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life - as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away."

He was and is the stuff that American Dreamers are made of.

Sixties' activist Abbie Hoffman said that Elvis killed Ike Eisenhower, and John Lennon said that before Elvis there was nothing and after Elvis there was everything. While these assertions are debatable, I do know for sure that when Elvis hit America in 1955, howling and gyrating like he had gulped down a jackhammer, the Hillbilly Cat was definitely out of the bag - and the world has never been the same.

Sadly, he spent his final few years eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches, theorizing about visitors from other planets or how the Jews were running the world, giving rambling interpretations of the Bible that make Pat Robertson seem like a secular humanist, and aimlessly performing in front of primarily leisure-suited, beehive-haired audiences who conjured in Elvis' multi-rhinestoned visage a glamorized version of themselves. Finally he pill-popped himself into oblivion and disappeared into his own mythology - where he is still, from time to time, allegedly sighted in the flesh.

Efforts at justifying and analyzing his demise continue to go on and on, but perhaps the only definite thing that can be said is that maybe no one could have survived as Elvis Presley - the backwoods boy who brilliantly mixed the music of poor whites and poor blacks and who literally scared the beejeezus out of racist, mid-'50s America, and whose charisma dwarfed any and all who succeeded him. Sociologically and musically, the birth of rock and roll can be glibly explained away simply as a matter of some white guy coming along who could "sing black" and get the bobbysoxers to screech. But there is absolutely no way to ever fully and truly explain Elvis.

Just after Presley's death in August 1977, his Svengali-like manager, Col. Tom Parker, was asked for a comment. He said...

"This doesn't change anything."

In a way the old cigar-chomping hustler was right, although I'm sure the Colonel was referring to the amount of money he himself would still be making. But what will really never change and will remain forever magical are Elvis' early, lightning-bolt musical performances which - like the words and deeds of every great political, cultural or spiritual revolutionary - simultaneously struck the deepest fears of some, like parents and preachers and teachers, and the secret dreams of others, like me.

Written By: Larry Durstin

Let's have some fun and go back to the past with Elvis and Marylin and their music...the best music ever made.