According to a famous quote from John Lennon, there was nothing before Elvis. But that’s different

“There was nothing before Elvis.” This famous quote from Beatle John Lennon is big on a billboard diagonally opposite Graceland, the estate of Elvis Presley in Memphis. An attractive idea. Here Lennon mentions the revolutionary power that Elvis was in youth culture in the 1950s: before Elvis everything was good and boring, after Elvis there was freedom, rebellion, excitement.

But in his book Before Elvis Preston Lauterbach shows that the rock singer did not fall from the sky. Before Elvis Presley there was a thriving black culture in Memphis from which the rock singer could draw. He took over his music, his exuberant clothing and even his famous hip rocks. Elvis brought the exciting black music to a large, white audience, laid the foundation for contemporary pop music, and thus contributed to the desegregation of the American South.

Of course Elvis also remained rooted in the white southern culture. Of the roughly 720 songs he released, there are 120 of black artists. So you could also write a book about the white country and the traditional pop who formed him. But what distinguished him from other white artists from that time, argues the book, was the black influence. In a radio interview from 1956, with which the book opens, Elvis rejects the idea that he would have invented the rock ‘n’ roll: “Black people have been singing and playing it for longer than I know. They played it in the slums and the Juke Joints And nobody paid attention to it until I performed the music. “

Form of resistance

Elvis sucked the black culture in Memphis as a sponge. He defended the segregation laws and not only visited black clubs and churches but bought his clothes from black stores and came home to black families. His black friends emphasize that he was always polite – he called every black fellow townman ‘madam’ and ‘sir’. Sounds normal, but it wasn’t in the racist US of that time – being polite to black people was even seen as a subtle form of resistance.

Lauterbach sketches a beautiful image of the black music scene in Memphis in the fifties. The city was strictly segregated, but thanks to the popular music, that slowly changed. Instrumental in this was the radio. After the Second World War, radio stations such as WDIA and WLAC discovered how exciting white listeners found the new black music. The white DJ John R played purely black music and did with one blaccent For as a black person. Not unusual at a time that Blackface Minstrel shows when Amos ‘N’ Andy were popular on American radio. Among the enthusiastic listeners was the young Elvis, who was affected himself not much later as the white boy with the black voice.

The book then concentrates in two places that Elvis likes to visit: the church East Trigg Missionary Baptist Church and the nightclub Flamingo Room. The black church resisted the southern segregation and opened its doors for white visitors such as Elvis. The flamboyant pastor William Herbert Brewster was an important force in black gospel music and the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Elvis took the gospel in his music mix. He even called Gospel his favorite genre and he recorded three albums with Christian music.

Zoom in

Guitar-battle

In Black Nightclub De Flamingo Room, Elvis sucked the Rhythm & Blues. After the Supreme Court in 1954 in the Brown v. Board of Education Department rejected the segregation laws, the club also received white guests. To please them, the house band played a mix of rhythm & blues and cowboy songs. Elvis has listened carefully. According to the book, Elvis, “in the glamorous amorous atmosphere”, also looked carefully at the uplifting hip -rocking, with his legs swabbing singer Calvin Newborn who played his guitar as if he had “sex with a woman.” After a while, Elvis also dared to play the stage during a guitar battle, to play ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight ‘.

The book gives beautiful portraits of some black artists from whom Elvis recorded music. Well -known contemporaries such as Little Richard and Chuck Berry leave the book to delve into three lesser -known contemporaries in the second part of the book, ‘After Elvis’. Did they become wiser or richer that Elvis made their compositions to millions of hits? No, just like many other black artists, they saw very little money or appreciation for their work at all. Arthur Crudup (‘That’s All Right’, ‘My Baby Left Me’) fell into oblivion. Junior Parker (‘Mystery Train’) never broke through with the general public but continued to play as a valued artist for a black audience.

Big Mama Thornton (‘Hound Dog’) was an interesting case. Initially she also hit the shore, she became shoe polis, but she got a second chance when Janis Joplin recorded her song ‘Ball and Chain’ in 1967. This time the singer did benefit from the broad white interest. Thornton was able to sail on the Bluesvival of the sixties, the white discovery for the black music form. White British bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and Fleetwood Mac went on tour to the US, looked for their black heroes there and hissing them on the shield.

That while Elvis withdrew into a white bubble after his success. When he died in 1977, the black newspaper wrote Chicago Defender Determining that Elvis had stolen everything from the real king of the rock ‘n’ roll: Chuck Berry. That accusation of cultural appropriation continued to stick to Elvis. But Soul singer James Brown called Elvis his “Soul Brother” at his death. He was awarded a private visit to Elvis’ tired body. And Little Richard said in 1970: “I thank the Lord for sending Elvis to open the door so that I could continue my way.”

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