Presley and his impact

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• Presley and his impact

Title
Focus

• Who was Elvis Presley?
• What was his impact on US society?

Key Words
Gospel music Country and western blues
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• Who was Elvis Presley?
• Born in 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi
• His parents were Gladys and Vernon
• His mother worked at a sewing machinist and his
  father drove a truck
• His father spent time in prison and was often
  unemployed.
• The family lived in poverty

• Vernon moved the family to Memphis, Tennessee
  when Elvis was 13,
• They attended a church where gospel music was
  sung
• Both Mississippi and Tennessee were segregated
  states
• This was an area that was also home to country
  music.

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• How Elvis became a Star.
• He recorded his first record at Sun Studios, a
  small Mississippi studio, renowned for country
  and blues music.
• He paid 4 to be allowed to do it as a present
  for his mothers birthday in 1953.
• The owner heard him and thought, a white man
  with the Negro sound and the Negro feel".
• Elvis was successful at first just within
  Mississippi and was known as a country and
  western act.

• He was being managed by associates of Sun Records
  and fellow musicians when a man named Colonel Tom
  Parker appeared on the scene.
• Parker soon took over managing Elvis and in 1955
  negotiated to sign Elvis to RCA a big record
  company. Parker took 25-50 of all Elvis
  earnings.
• Just before this Elvis had had two hits in the
  country charts and a live performance at
  Jacksonville had nearly ended in a riot when
  Elvis shouted as he finished up, Girls Ill see
  you backstage! The sex symbol was born!

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• Why was Elvis so popular with teenagers?
• His looks didnt hurt!
• He dyed his hair black and was known to wear
  makeup to enhance his dark, sultry looks.
• He was tall and well built
• He dressed like a rebel. He had a pompadour DA
  hair do.
• He wore jeans and t-shirts for casual and for
  performances he wore long loose jackets, baggy
  trousers with a pink strip in them. His shirts
  were often left unbuttoned or just tied at the
  waist.
• His style was very black
• Then there was his stage presence. Given the
  nickname Elvis the Pelvis he danced in a way
  people had never seen in public before.
• The result Boys wanted to be him and girls
  wanted to be with him!

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• The D.A. (short for Ducks Ass) was the haircut of
  the 1950s for cool white males. Formed by combing
  the hair back on the side of the head and holding
  it in place with hair grease (hence the term
  greasers), the hairstyle was created by
  Philadelphia barber Joe Cirella in 1940 and took
  off when it was worn by television, movie and
  musical stars.

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• He recorded Heartbreak Hotel in February 1956
  and it was his first single to get in the charts.
  It ended up at Number 1.
• He appeared on the most popular TV show in
  America in September 1956, The Ed Sullivan
  Show.
• He got the biggest audience ever for that show.
• He appeared on the show again in October and
  again in January 1957.
• In the January performance he was only shown from
  the waist up because there had been so many
  complaints to the show about his sexual dancing.
• Also In 1956 Elvis stared in the film Love me
  tender Elvis stared in 31 films. They all tended
  to be teen flicks where a bad boy whos good at
  heart falls for a girl and sorts himself out for
  love!

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• Was Elvis starting a dangerous revolution?
• National TV shows Rock and Roll Dance Party and
  National Bandstand begin to be broadcast in
  1956.Both show rock and roll stars.
• Significance Rock and Roll got good TV ratings
  with all audiences inc the mums and dads of white
  America.
• Nat King Cole a black singer gets his own
  national TV show.
• Significance black artists and were becoming
  more accepted as equal US citizens.
• Five singles form the RB charts also appear in
  the pop charts and the artists featured include
  Elvis, little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.
• Significance - Black music and artists were
  already making the cross over into mainstream.

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Presley has already appeared six times on
national television, but it is his appearance on
The Milton Berle Show on June 5, 1956, that
triggers the first controversy of his career.
Presley sings his latest single, "Hound Dog,"
with all the pelvis-shaking intensity his fans
scream for. Television critics across the country
slam the performance for its "appalling lack of
musicality," for its "vulgarity" and "animalism."
The Catholic Church takes up the criticism in its
weekly magazine in a piece headlined "Beware
Elvis Presley." Concerns about juvenile
delinquency and the changing moral values of the
young find a new target in the popular singer.
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Evidence of Elviss impact
When Elvis appeared on the Milton Berle Show in
April 1956, he was watched by more than 40
million viewers, one out of every four Americans.

"Elvis Presley didnt just represent a new type
of music he represented sexual liberation" (Down
at the End of Lonely Street, p. 55). Elvis
Presley stood for everything rock roll stands
for sexual license, rebellion against authority,
self-fulfilment, if it feels good, do it and
dont worry about tomorrow
Soon, Life magazine published photos of teenage
boys lined up at barbershops for ducktail
haircuts so they could look like their rock King.

Many of his performances were characterized by
hysteria and near rioting. Females attempted to
rip off Elviss clothes. There were riots at his
early concerts. "Hed start out, You aint
nothin but a Hound Dog, and theyd just go to
pieces. Theyd always react the same way. Thered
be a riot every time" Girls literally threw
themselves at him. In DeLeon, Texas, in July
1955, fans "shredded Presleys pink shirt and
tore the shoes from his feet." At a 1956 concert
in Jacksonville, Florida, Juvenile Court Judge
Marion Gooding warned Elvis that if he did his
"hip-gyrating movements" and created a riot, he
would be arrested and sent to jail.
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Elvis connections with the Rhythm and Blues
music of black culture. There is a saying, "The
blues had a baby and named it rock roll." Elvis
Presley was an important figure in the birth of
that baby. Elvis "spent much of his spare time
hanging around the black section of town,
especially on Beale Street, where blues men like
Furry Lewis and B.B. King performed" (Rolling
Stone Encyclopaedia of Rock, p. 783). Elviss
cousin Earl, who paled around with Elvis for many
years before and after his success, said that he
"adopted Beale Street as his own, even though he
was one of the few white people to hang out there
regularly" (The Boy Who Would Be King, p. 121).
B.B. King said "I knew Elvis before he was
popular. He used to come around and be around us
a lot. Elvis listened to radio WDIA, "a flagship
blues station of the South that featured such
flamboyant black disk jockeys as Rufus Thomas and
B.B. King" (Rock Lives, p. 38). Elvis also
listened to radio station WHBQs nine-to-midnight
Red Hot Blue program hosted by Dewey Mills
Phillips. Elviss first guitarist, Scotty Moore,
learned many of his guitar licks from an old
black blues player who worked with him before he
teamed up with Elvis (Scotty Moore, Thats
Alright, Elvis, p. 57). Sam Phillips, owner of
Sun Records, was looking for "a white man with a
Negro sound and the Negro feel," because he
believed the black blues and boogie-woogie music
could become tremendously popular among white
people if presented in the right way. Phillips
had said, "If I could find a white man who had
the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make
a billion dollars.". Six of the 15 songs Elvis
recorded for Sun Records (before going over to
RCA-Victor a year later) were from black blues
men.
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Teenagers and Parents Attitudes Many teenagers
wanted to fight against the suffocating false
images of life in the suburbs that their parents
loved. Elvis was a symbol,  the idol of youth who
were struggling to be known in a world of adults,
to have their very own and very private world. 
Let the adults laugh all they want.  It just
proves that this is one thing  they can't have,
and one world to which they can't belong.  For
once the teenagers are the insiders, and Elvis is
the key to that world When the first
rock'n'roll records came along the teenagers took
them to their hearts. For the first time in years
they discovered they could do more than just sit
and listen to records. Now they could dance to
them. is a symbol,  the idol of youth who are
struggling to be known in a world of What is
significant about this movement is the fact that
radio and records, rather than TV, sent Presley
and other rock and roll singers to the top. While
adult members of families stayed glued to their
TV sets, the young ones were listening to their
radios. One baffled parent said when he first
saw Presley on the Dorsey Brother's TV Stage
Show "I thought it was all a horrible mistake".
Like most adults, he instantly disliked Presley's
agonized style of singing, his strutting and
almost sexual contortions. It's not surprising
that parents recoiled with dismay when they first
saw Presley on TV. He was completely beyond their
understanding, and they reacted accordingly. As a
result, teenagers now look upon Presley as
something more than just an entertainer. Adults
obviously don't want any part of him, so Presley
becomes something special in the young people's
eyes. They belong, as it were, to an
extraordinarily exclusive club. They will defend
him to the end.
Elvis,  too,  is a symbol,  the idol of youth who
are struggling to be known in a world of adults,
to have their very own and very private world. 
Let the adults laugh all they want.  It just
proves that this is one thing  they can't have,
and one world to which they can't belong.  For
once the teenagers are the insiders,  and 
 Elvis  is the key to that world
Elvis,  too,  is a symbol,  the idol of youth who
are struggling to be known in a world of adults,
to have their very own and very private world. 
Let the adults laugh all they want.  It just
proves that this is one thing  they can't have,
and one world to which they can't belong.  For
once the teenagers are the insiders,  and 
 Elvis  is the key to that world
Elvis,  too,  is a symbol,  the idol of youth who
are struggling to be known in a world of adults,
to have their very own and very private world. 
Let the adults laugh all they want.  It just
proves that this is one thing  they can't have,
and one world to which they can't belong.  For
once the teenagers are the insiders,  and 
 Elvis  is the key to that world
Elvis,  too,  is a symbol,  the idol of youth who
are struggling to be known in a world of adults,
to have their very own and very private world. 
Let the adults laugh all they want.  It just
proves that this is one thing  they can't have,
and one world to which they can't belong.  For
once the teenagers are the insiders,  and 
 Elvis  is the key to that world
Elvis,  too,  is a symbol,  the idol of youth who
are struggling to be known in a world of adults,
to have their very own and very private world. 
Let the adults laugh all they want.  It just
proves that this is one thing  they can't have,
and one world to which they can't belong.  For
once the teenagers are the insiders,  and 
 Elvis  is the key to that world
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Elvis certainly had an impact on the charts! 10
of these chart singles went to No.1. Lots of
people (teenagers) had bought Elvis singles.
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Did Elvis have a huge impact on the USA in
1956/7? Evidence. "When I first heard Elvis'
voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for
anybody and nobody was going to be my
boss...Hearing him for the first time was like
busting out of jail." Bob Dylan "His kind of
music is deplorable, a rancid smelling
aphrodisiac...It fosters almost totally negative
and destructive reactions in young people."
Frank Sinatra, 1950's
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Rock and Roll was somewhat more acceptable if
performed by white musicians. Evidence that
Elvis was more acceptable because he was white.
Chuck Berry Berry never achieved any great
financial success. He served a two year prison
sentence in 1962 for transporting a minor across
state lines. The racial aspect of this can not be
ignored, an "influential" black man, one of the
early pioneers of Rock and Roll, and a threat to
white society is jailed at a time when he was
still popular and producing music. His arrest was
a form of de facto suppression that his career
and psyche never quite recovered from.
Little Richard Two of Richard's early hits were
covered by Pat Boone. Boone's music, as well as
his politics were watered down. The difference
between the two versions of "Tutti Frutti" is
comical. This would not be the first time a white
musician would appropriate the talent and
artistic accomplishment of a black artist. But,
there is a definite racist characteristic present
in this instance. Most black artists at the time
could not gain radio air-play.
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Daily News, 1954 "Popular music has reached its
lowest depths in the grunts of one Elvis Presley".
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Teen Culture
Facts and Figures
Baby Boomers There were a lot of them! 30
million born between 1944 and 1951 in the
USA. They were affluent (wealthy) like their
parents they got more pocket money and had
Saturday jobs etc. Significant because they had
money to spend! They were the first generation to
grow up with TV. Significant because they were
influenced by programmes and adverts. They grew
up in suburbia. Significant because they were
bored with it and restricted by it. They grew up
in the Cold War. Significant because they feared
the sudden death of civilisation from nuclear
attack.
They were rebels looking for a cause!
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Why did Elvis have so much of an impact in
1956/57?

• You will need to talk about the situation in
  America in 1956/57 and explain why it was that
  Elvis gained so much popularity at that time.
• Things to consider
• The fact that teenagers had a lot of spending
  money
• The fact that there was a TV in most homes
• How advertisers targeted teenagers with goods to
  buy
• The growing popularity of black music
• Teenage culture

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Why did Elvis have such an impact on the USA
during 1956-1957?

• Teenagers Attitudes About
• Parents lifestyle
• Suburbia
• Behaviour of adults
• Nuclear War

• Effects of 1950s
• TVs
• Adverts
• More wealth (power)
• Radios (freedom)
• Cars Freedom)

• Elvis himself
• Fashion
• Music
• Dancing
• Performance
• Management of Col.Parker.

In your own judgement, what was the overall cause
of Elvis impact?
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Your answer should explain the relationship
between these factors
Advertising Advertisers wanted to get young
people with more pocket money than ever before to
buy their goods
TV Elvis got a lot of exposure on TV
Teenagers were a powerful group because of
their numbers (baby boom) and their disposable
income.
Elvis decent image Elvis was less
controversial than many other rock n roll stars