South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

by Imani Perry

An effort to place Elvis more accurately in history doesn’t just require a recognition that he saw his indebtedness to Black musicians. It also means thinking about how he stands in the American imagination above Black musicians who were his forebearers and peers. Now and again, popular media will point out Big Mama Thornton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Chuck Berry, and the most famous among them, Little Richard, as masters of the form of which Elvis was deemed King. And music critics will continue to restore them to their rightful place in history. But there’s something to be understood just in noting the difference. Even with his poverty, even considering how he was an outsider, Jim Crow logic created a different trajectory for Elvis. And that phenomenon is now built in our popular culture, even with the progressive erosion of a color line in music. For example, Justin Timberlake, a Memphis native whose style is deeply rooted in the traditions of the Black South, does nothing quite as well as Usher (from Chattanooga) in terms of song and dance, and yet Timberlake is tens of millions of dollars wealthier.