July 15, 2024: ElvisStudying: Elvis and Sinatra

[July 19thwas a doubly significantday for Elvis Presley: on July 19, 1954, his debut single wasreleased; and on July 19, 1977, what would be his final album dropped. So thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of layers to the Elvis mythos, leading up toa special post on cultural representations of Presley!]

On thedifferences between influential and interesting, and why even the former can beproblematic.

It seemsto me that you can’t tell the story of American popular music in the 20thcentury—and thus the story of American popular music period—withoutincluding Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley inprominent roles. Indeed, given each man’s forays into acting, entrepreneurship, andother cultural and social arenas, I’m notsure you could leave them out of a broader 20th century history ofAmerica either. In their own ways, and in their own particular, most successfulperiods (Sinatra’s career extended well into Presley’s, of course, but he wasat his most successful in its first couple decades, between 1935 and about1955; Presley rose to prominence in the mid-1950s and was at his peak from thenuntil about 1970), the two artists dominatedtheir respective musical genres time and again, leavinglegacies that extend well beyond record sales or awards (although both areamong the mostsuccessful artists of all time as measuredin those ways as well).

So Iwouldn’t necessarily argue with definitions of Sinatra and Elvis as among themost influential musical artists of all time (although I might, in a moment,argue that point too). But influential isn’t the same as interesting, and onthat score both artists fall short for me. Partly that’s just about taste andhow there’s, y’know, no accounting for it (degustibus, non est disputandum, as our Roman friends knew); I’m not a bigfan of either crooners or rockabilly, and thus likely outside of the idealaudience for either man’s biggest hits or signature styles. But my point hereisn’t simply about my personal tastes, which I don’t expect are hugelyinteresting either—I’m thinking as well about the nature of the men’smainstream popularity and prominence. Despite the unquestionable (if, inretrospect, very silly) controversyover Presley’s hips, that is, I would argue that both mensucceeded as consistently as they did because they were largelyunobjectionable, hitting cultural sweet spots with regularity in a way thatdoesn’t seem as interesting as artists who push the envelope or challengenorms.

Moreover,I’m not sure that describing these two artists as influential is entirelyjustified either. After all, a significant percentageof both men’s songs were written byother songwriters or were covers of other artists; clearlytheir stunning voices and signature styles played a prominent role in makingthe songs as successful as they were, but I don’t know that simply singing andperforming someone else’s songs qualifies an artist as influential. To beclear, I’m not trying to rehash the old argument about Presley exploitingAfrican American music; that issue is part of the Elvis story to be sure, butthe truth (as I argued at length in Monday’s post) is that a great deal ofearly rock and roll, if not indeed the entire genre, crossed racial andcultural boundaries. Instead, I’m simply trying to differentiate between whatwe might call performers and artists, and to argue that those whom we wouldlocate in the former category (such as two men whose most consistent successeswere as performers singing others’ words, or similarly as actors recitingothers’ lines) might be more important than they were influential orinteresting.

NextElvisStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other takes on Elvis?