Understanding Elvis

Southern Roots vs. Star Image

Susan M. Doll

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780815331643
• eBook ISBN: 9781317732976
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Although the importance of Elvis Presley's Southern heritage has long been recognized, few have considered the complex connection between the performer's career and his Southern roots. This study investigates how that identity affected each stage of Presley's career. Elvis Presley's career can be divided into three phases, each of which is signified by a specific image. Each image is coded by a certain style of music, mode of dress, and arena of performance. The evolution from one career phase to another was instigated by a specific event and represented a deliberate calculation on the part of Presley's manager to attract a wider audience. The first stage spans the years 1956 through 1958, after the singer was introduced to a national audience and before he was drafted into the army. His image as a notorious rock 'n' roller created a national controversy and was spurred by negative depictions of Presley in the media-many attributing his controversial performing style and appearance to his Southern background. His music was a fusion of rhythm and blues and country-western; or, two types of music indigenous to the South and foreign to the mainstream entertainment industry based in New York City. The second phase of Elvis' career included his stint as a movie star, in which most aspects of his Southern identity were extracted from his leading man image to enhance his appeal to the mainstream. And, finally, the last stage of his career focused on his image as a Las Vegas performer. Despite the gaudy costumes, Elvis reconnected to his identity as a Southerner in the 1970s by returning to country music and songwriters as a source of inspiration.

Chapter One
The Life and Career of Elvis Presley

During his lifetime, Elvis Presley’s image derived from the actual events of his career; in death, those real-life events have been collapsed into an image, or series of images. Further blurring the line between life and image are the plots of some of his films and the lyrics of some of his songs, which on the surface seem autobiographical. A familiarity with key events in Presley’s life and career not only facilitates an understanding of his films, television appearances, and music, but it also provides an understanding of how his image was constructed and why it had to evolve.

Given the confusion between life and image, fully comprehending Elvis Presley requires more than a straightforward biography. This chapter notes discrepancies in existing accounts of Presley’s life, divides his career into four phases as a way to conveniently analyze its major changes, and comments on the contradictions that arise in his image as a result of those changes. It also includes a portrait of Elvis Presley’s South—the rural white Southern subculture that Presley identified with and that also defined him for the rest of the country. Only recently have biographers and others begun to understand how Elvis’ Southern identity affected the evolution of his image and the course of his entire career. It helped label him at first as a country-western performer; it was an integral part of the backlash against him when he was exposed to national audiences; it was extracted from his image to make him more acceptable to mainstream audiences; and, during the last part of his career, he reconnected with his Southern roots in a way that fused the image of Elvis Presley with the South.

Despite the hundreds of books about Elvis Presley, compiling a biographical sketch is risky business. Much that has been written about his life and career is open to debate—details often vary, versions of the same event are endlessly reinterpreted—making this task more difficult than might be expected. The diverse sources used to compile this brief biography included researched interpretations of Presley’s life and career by professional writers, personal reminiscences by former employees and family members, and a variety of articles from magazines and journals. Another important type of information was provided by rock ‘n’ roll historians, the first to seriously discuss Presley’s life and career. However, rock historians tend to have a particular bias toward Presley. Their interpretation of his music discusses and evaluates it in relation to rock ‘n’ roll. For example, any deviations from the rock sound and ideology in his music are evaluated negatively. Also, the influences of rhythm and blues (so important to rock ‘n’ roll) are privileged over other influences on his music. Interestingly, events of his life are often colored by rock historians to fit this rock ‘n’ roll interpretation of his career.

Another type of biographical research included was articles from fan magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals that chronicled Presley’s career in the hyperbolic, black-and-white style of the popular media. These proved invaluable in assessing how the changes in his career were presented to the public by the media and how his image was perceived and represented by the popular press. This type of material provided the basis of the Presley legend, which is a version of his life that was formed by the telling and retelling of the same set of stories and events—some true and some false—throughout his lifetime. So much controversy, hype, and half-truths were generated by publicity and promotion during Presley’s life and career that these stories have formed an Elvis Presley myth that has been endlessly repeated and circulated.

All of these sources, from the professional biographies to the sensational fanzines, can be termed the Elvis Presley lore and literature—a body of work that when taken all together provides reliable or revealing biographical information. When considered separately, each piece of Presley lore and literature seems limited in accuracy or scope.

The Presleys in Tupelo, Mississippi

Twin sons were born to Vernon and Gladys Presley on January 8, 1935. The first, Jessie Garon, arrived stillborn; a half hour later, Elvis Aron was born. (1) The loss of his twin brother ultimately had a profound effect on Presley, who, for the rest of his life, seemed both fascinated and saddened by the loss of what he believed to be his exact double. Though no evidence exists that the twins were monozygotic, both Elvis and his mother insisted that Elvis and Jessie were physically identical.

The significance of their belief (that the twins were identical and therefore spiritually connected) to the Elvis myth centers on the many stories that surfaced after Elvis’ own death about Presley’s habit of talking to his dead twin during times of stress or despair. These stories ranged from those that were ridiculous—“Elvis Was a Weird Teenager Who Talked to His Dead Brother” from the National Enquirer (2)—to those that were supposed to ridicule, as in Albert Goldman’s mean-spirited biography Elvis, in which the author uses these stories to paint an unflattering portrait of Gladys Presley as “a hillbilly Cassandra,” because of her keen intuition, and to suggest that Presley exhibited all the signs of a split personality from the time he was a teenager. (3)

Elvis was born in a “shotgun shack” in East Tupelo, Mississippi, located in the northeast corner of the state in an area referred to locally as the Tennessee Hills, which actually makes up the southwestern margin of the Appalachians. Vernon Presley had built the two-room, 15’ X 30’ shotgun shack—a dwelling so small that a bullet could come through the front door and exit through the back door without hitting anything or losing speed. It is the type of rough-hewn house built by or for sharecroppers, usually on the property of the landowners. Families who were at the bottom of the social ladder inhabited this type of dwelling, common at one time in East Tupelo, which was considered the wrong side of the tracks.

After Presley became famous and the house of his birth a tourist attraction, local residents took great care to turn the shack into a quaint bungalow by painting the outside, wallpapering the inside, and adding curtains to the windows, amenities the Presleys could never had afforded. They also furnished the inside with a sewing machine, a high chair, and electric appliances (the Presleys did not have electricity), and they added a porch swing and landscaping. With a stroke of the paintbrush, the Presleys’ abject poverty was upgraded to humble beginnings for the sake of the official Elvis Presley myth.

Vernon Presley held several odd jobs before and after the birth of Elvis. He worked as a sharecropper for Orville S. Bean (on whose land his home was built), a milk-truck driver, a handyman hauling wares for various grocery stores, and whatever else he could find. In 1937, Vernon was indicted for forgery, along with Travis Smith and Luther Gable, and sent to Parchman Prison in 1938 to serve a three-year sentence. Parchman was a cotton plantation turned prison farm, where the inmates worked the land in chain gangs. The sentence was harsh considering the crime: Vernon, Smith, and Gable altered the figures on a four-dollar check to Vernon from Orville S. Bean. Elvis’ father served about eight to nine months for the crime. After his release from prison, he continued working at a variety of jobs, moving his family from relative to relative, finding permanence in neither job nor home.

Gladys had been employed at the Tupelo Garment Factory from before her marriage until the time that her pregnancy became troublesome. Later, when Elvis was a few months old, she began to pick cotton, hauling her baby on her cotton sack as she moved up and down the rows. After Vernon was sentenced, Bean turned Gladys and Elvis out of their house. The two moved in with Vernon’s parents, then later Gladys’ cousins. Gladys took in laundry and worked as a seamstress.

Mother and son grew quite close. Stories abound about Gladys’ inability to leave Presley in the care of anyone else for any length of time and her insistence on walking him to and from school until he was a teenager. His relationship with his mother has become one part of the Elvis Presley myth that has been continually manipulated by various writers to support their viewpoint or suit their purposes. (4)

The Presleys belonged to the First Assembly of God Church, part of the fundamentalist Pentecostal. (5) Much has been made about Presley’s fundamentalist upbringing. Many biographers attribute his performing style in part to the influence of this emotionally expressive church, while others contend that this is merely Elvis Presley folklore. (6) The exact influence of this tiny church on Presley’s performing style is open to debate. No specific evidence exists to suggest that any of the Presleys experienced a dramatic religious conversion, though Vernon became a deacon of the church. But the many times Presley referred to singing in this little church and watching the emotionally charged preachers suggests an influence of some sort.

Tracing specific musical influences outside of the church during this early period in Presley’s life, or discovering any musical ambitions, is not an easy task because it is dependent on the recollections of neighbors and relatives who remember Tupelo’s famous native son. Often, memories fail or are colored by Presley’s later fame and fortune. Also, during his lifetime, there was always a reluctance to accept that Elvis had musical ambitions and influences while a child because no one wanted to destroy the legend about his discovery, which maintained it was only by chance that Presley walked out of his truck and into Sam Phillips recording studio to become a star. (7)

Most accounts of Presley’s early life invariably relate two sweet stories about Presley’s musical inclinations. In 1945, he sang in a talent competition at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, performing the ballad “Old Shep,” which had been made popular by country singer Red Foley. The standard version of the story was that he won second place, but recent research by Bill Burk for Early Elvis: The Tupelo Years suggests that Elvis did not win anything. (8) The second oft-told tale concerns Presley’s first guitar—a tenth birthday present from his mother. Some write that he actually wanted a bicycle, but the family couldn’t afford it, so his mother bought the guitar instead. Others write that it was a shotgun that he wanted, but Gladys felt the gun was too dangerous. According to most sources, Elvis learned to play the guitar from his uncle, Vestor Presley.

These two events represent more than isolated incidents that make for amusing anecdotes. When combined with research by more recent biographers, they reveal that Elvis and Gladys had an interest in fostering his talent, and they imply that traditional country music played a larger part in his musical interests than is sometimes suggested, particularly by rock ‘n’ roll historians. Rarely mentioned in any account of Presley’s childhood is the “popular singing trio” made up of Elvis, Gladys, and Vernon, who sang country gospel at area churches, camp meetings, and revivals when Elvis was about nine years old. Very early biographical sketches of Elvis, such as those on album covers, confirm this, as does Elaine Dundy in Elvis and Gladys. (9) Young Elvis also appeared on an amateur radio program called “Saturday Jamboree,” broadcast from Tupelo radio station WELO. The program, which featured a live audience, allowed local residents to perform on the radio on a first come, first serve basis. Presley, from a very young age, was a member of the audience, but he began to sing on the show when he was about eight years old. His specialty was the ballad “Old Shep,” the song he sang two years later at his fair appearance. (10)

A major inspiration for young Elvis turned out to be country singer Mississippi Slim, a Tupelo native who sang on WELO for over 20 years. Slim’s real name was Carvel Lee Ausborn, and Elvis attended school with the singer’s younger brother James. Slim was the epitome of the Southern country singer at that time; that is, he sang “hillbilly music” as evidenced in his few recordings, such as “Honky Tonk Woman,” “Tired of Your Eyes,” and “I’m Through Crying over You.” Presley watched Slim perform many times, and the singer supposedly taught Elvis some chords on the guitar. According to James Ausborn, Slim allowed Elvis to sing on his show at least twice. (11) Years later, in 1956 when Presley was becoming a nationally known singer, Mississippi Slim visited him in Memphis, and the two spent the evening playing the guitar and singing. The relationship between Slim and Presley indicates that Elvis was an aspiring performer even as a child in Tupelo, and that a major musical influence was this very traditional “hillbilly” singer, in addition to the country gospel sound of small, rural churches.

In the fall of 1948, the Presleys moved to Memphis, Tennessee, just as Elvis was beginning high school. Vernon had worked in Memphis during the factory boom of World War II, but he had returned to Tupelo to work as a delivery man. The decision to move the whole family to Memphis is generally attributed to Vernon’s failure to find permanent employment in Tupelo. When Elvis moved to Memphis, his musical horizons and influences expanded because of the variety of musical styles indigenous to that river city, but his childhood in Tupelo and the influence of country music were never lost or replaced.

Elvis Presley and the Rural, White Southern Subculture

Elvis Presley defined himself as a son of the South, and in many ways, the history and background of the Presley family mirrors the history of the South—at least a certain sector of it. To understand how Elvis Presley and his music relate to the South, it is critical to understand Presley’s South as a specific subculture. A subculture is an ethnic, regional, economic, or social group featuring characteristic behavioral patterns that distinguish it from others within an embracing (or dominant) culture or society. (12) A subculture can be understood to be in opposition, or in contradiction, to the embracing (or dominant) culture. Considering a group as a subculture provides a way to discuss how its members are politically and culturally organized.

Relevant to any discussion of subculture is the concept of ideology and hegemony. Each subgroup has its own set of ideas and representations through which its members collectively understand the world or society in which they live, though within our western society, a dominant (white, patriarchal, middle-class) ideology presents itself as the ideology of the whole of society. The work of the dominant ideology is to mask or displace its own contradictions as well as those contradictions to it that arise from alternative ideologies. (13) In doing so, the dominant ideology secures hegemony.

By analyzing Presley’s South as a particular subculture in contradiction to the dominant culture, certain events of his career, including the controversy over his music and image, become clear. The significance of the combination of various subcultural influences on Presley’s music is also made apparent. Conversely, understanding Presley as part of a subculture offers insight into that subgroup, specifically how its members appropriate meanings from the songs, films, and image of Elvis Presley that are different from those of the dominant culture.

Elvis Presley was born into the rural, white South. (14) This subculture includes those poor whites from both the mountainous regions of Appalachia and the low country areas of the Deep South. Geographically, the area entails the old Confederacy (minus Florida) in addition to West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. (15) The rural, white South has always been poverty-stricken, though the defeat of the South during the Civil War, the structure of that region’s race and class systems, and the exploitation of Southern labor by Northern businesses made this subgroup even more economically depressed. (16) The class designation of this subgroup is agricultural working class, or blue-collar, and occupations most closely associated with the rural, white Southern subculture are sharecropping and farming meager tracts of land.

So identified with the sharecropping and “dirt farming” was this subgroup that an enduring stereotype was formed depicting these poor whites as perennially behind a mule and plow. Though the mule was an integral part of this symbol, the horse and plow also served to signify the backwardness associated with this subculture. In Southern mythology and storytelling, the mule has an honored place as a hardworking and intelligent farm animal, but outside that culture, it is nothing but a beast of burden, connoting outdated farming strategies and a lack of mechanization. (17) This stereotype has a direct bearing on the early image of Elvis Presley. In the opening scenes of Love Me Tender, Presley peers from beneath an old, slouch hat as he drives a plow and tea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One The Life and Career of Elvis Presley
• Chapter Two From Hillbilly Cat to Elvis the Pelvis: 1954-1958
• Chapter Three The Early Films of Elvis Presley: 1954-1958
• Chapter Four The Films of Elvis Presley: 1960-1969
• Chapter Five Vegas Elvis
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index