Elvis' Impact on Popular Music Culture Term Paper

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Elvis Presley's Impact On Popular Music Culture

From the time Elvis recorded "That's All Right Mamma" for Sun Records in 1953, to his subsequent and astonishing rise to fame, he reinvented the concept of rock star and has made a bigger impact on popular music culture than any other act. That is saying a lot considering that the Beatles and Rolling Stones and others like Elton John have been huge superstars. But looking at Elvis's impact, as this paper does, one can clearly see that he influenced all of those acts. John Lennon said that "Before Elvis there was nothing…" and the Rolling Stones have indicated that they were hugely influenced by Elvis.

When Elvis Started Out -- Launching his Career as a Musical Rebel and Icon

An article in the Public Broadcasting Service (KCET) website ("Culture Shock / Music and Dance) traces Elvis's early beginnings in terms of how he became so influential in the popular music genre. He only sold about 20,000 records for his first recording, "That's All Right Mamma," but by 1956, his first record for RCA, "Heartbreak Hotel," went to the top of the charts. All of a sudden many television hosts wanted Elvis to appear, but because he was controversial (with those swinging hips and trusting pelvis moves) he was curtailed somewhat as to how he could perform live.

For example, when he appeared on the Milton Berle Show (June 5, 1956), he went into his full-on hips-swiveling mode, and following that appearance (during which he sang "Hound Dog"), "Television critics across the country slam[ed] the performance for its 'appalling lack of musicality' and for its 'vulgarity' and 'animalism'" (KCET). Even the Roman Catholic Church, that paragon of good values and good taste, ripped Elvis; the Catholic Church's weekly newsletter said, "Beware Elvis Presley" -- and that was only one of the institutions that ridiculed and attacked Elvis's performance.

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Still, while the criticism was widespread and harsh, for young people who really loved Elvis's style and his voice, they couldn't care less about what formal institutions were saying. In other words, Elvis was setting a new, wildly popular tone for the generation that loved this new rock and roll music, because it represented a kind of rebellion against old values and stogy parental control.

After the Milton Berle Show, Elvis was invited to Steve Allen's "The Tonight Show," and rather than stir more controversy, Allen had Elvis do a spoof; he had Elvis singing to a basset hound when he did "Hound Dog." Ed Sullivan had said he would never bring Elvis to his stage, but Sullivan changed his mind and brought the hot rock act to his show albeit Sullivan asked the camera man not to show Elvis's gyrations -- and he was shown from the waist up. Elvis was now known for his rhythm and blues (an African-American musical influence), his country influences, and of course he helped launch rock and roll.

Rolling Stone's Biography of Elvis

Rolling Stone asserts that Elvis was "…one of the most important cultural forces in history"; Elvis was important in terms of culture because he was a Caucasian southerner who sang "blues laced with country, and country laced with gospel." What that did was to bring music to the American youthful audience that came from "…both sides of the color line." Elvis was, in the beginning, sending a message to the mainstream American culture that "…it was time to let go," Rolling Stone's writer Mark Kemp explains.

How hot was Elvis in 1956? He had top-40 hits with the following songs: "Heartbreak Hotel" (number one); "I Was the One" (number 19); "Blue Suede Shoes" (number 20); "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" (number one); "Don't Be Cruel / Hound Dog" (number.....

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