Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music

New Perspectives on Gender in Music

by Vincent L. Stephens

The all-embracing, "whaddya got?" nature of rebellion in Fifties America included pop music's unlikely challenge to entrenched notions of masculinity. Within that upheaval, four prominent artists dared to behave in ways that let the public assume―but not see―their queerness. That these artists cultivated ambiguous sexual personas often reflected an understandable fear, but also a struggle to fulfill personal and professional expectations.Vincent L. Stephens confronts notions of the closet―both coming out and staying in―by analyzing the careers of Liberace, Johnny Mathis, Johnnie Ray, and Little Richard. Appealing to audiences hungry for novelty and exoticism, the four pop icons used performance and queering techniques that ran the gamut. Liberace's flamboyance shared a spectrum with Mathis's intimate sensitivity while Ray's overwrought displays as "Mr. Emotion" seemed worlds apart from Little Richard's raise-the-roof joyousness. As Stephens shows, the quartet not only thrived in an era of gray flannel manhood, they pioneered the ways generations of later musicians would consciously adopt sexual mystery as an appealing and proven route to success.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

Published October 14, 2019

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would have benefited from editing for a popular audience. I like the ideas presented, especially the ideas of the artists neutering or enfreaking themselves in response to society and/or their own beliefs. I would have appreciated more analysis about their place in the overall culture and the historic events happening around them but I can't really call that a criticism bc that wasn't really the purpose of that book. Overall, the analysis of these artists led me to think about modern performers and how they go through the same neutering, enfreaking, domesticating, and queering. Like Miley Cyrus during her Bangerz era, Harry Styles queer baiting, and all the Kpop artists who present themselves as neutered icons available to everyone and no one.

[Tom Claverie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book if you are familiar with American culture in the 50's, 60's and 70's.