Sayin’ Somethin’ Dumb about Elvis
Announcing John Ross’s smart new series “Stupid about Elvis”
UNIVERSAL RECOGNITION of the genius and the wonder of the Beatles from 1962 through 1969 is pretty much a given in most circles where rock and pop music is considered seriously. Saying something stupid about John, Paul, George, or Ringo or their place at the toppermost of the poppermost in the rock & roll pantheon rarely occurs. When someone is dumb enough to say something dumb about them, it usually guarantees that few will ever take that someone seriously again.
Such appreciation does not exist for Elvis Presley, the only other artist at the same level of success as the Fab Four, artistically and commercially. Part of this may be that there are shelves-worth of intelligent, insightful, and even humorous books on the recordings of the Beatles — enough to keep an interested reader engaged for a long time.
Unfortunately, there are only a handful of such books about Elvis but you’d need a small store to hold all the just plain dumb stuff that has been written about the man. Much of this stuff also goes beyond merely being dumb — it is insulting to Presley as a creator, as a singer, as a musician, and often as a human being.
“There is no more neutrality in the world: you either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem.” (Eldridge Cleaver)
Much of it is a kind of cultural bigotry of the Northern intellectual toward the “low-information” Southerner. This has to do with journalists, critics, and (alleged) historians who pass as educated observers most of the time but just can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to talking about Elvis.
This article is not about dumb people saying dumb things about Elvis. It’s about supposedly smart people saying things that make them sound like dumb people.
Stupid stuff about Elvis
John Ross was so amazed by some of the dumb things said about Elvis Presley that he started posting them regularly on his blog, The Round Place In The Middle.
John titled his series of articles “Stupid Stuff People Say about Elvis” and his first quote came from Lee Siegel writing for Time magazine in 2001: “But the King will outlive his immortality also.”
It’s bad writing and John took it apart in short order. But that’s not what John was really after and not what I want to address here. John and I are more interested in statements that are denigrating to Elvis. Things got better when John quoted writer Martin Amis claiming that Elvis was “a talented hick who was destroyed by success.”
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, essayist, and biographer known for a string of successful novels starting with Money in 1984. He has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience (2000) and served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester (2007–2011).
In 2008, The Times named Martin Amis one of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
This is not a dumb man.
Yet the quote about Elvis being a hick only scratches the surface of his pettiness and nastiness toward Presley and apparent ignorance about much of what he says about the man.
Tasteless reveries and supercharged banalities
In 1980, Amis reviewed the book Elvis, We Love You Tender for The Observer. The book tells the story of Dee Stanley (Vernon Presley’s second wife and Elvis’s stepmother) and her three sons and how their life changed when they met Elvis. Amis doesn’t seem to have a kind word for Presley or most anyone related to him in any manner. Here are three of his statements from that review:
1)
“Elvis was a half-employed slum spiv when he did his first audition.”
First, Google defines spiv as British slang for “a man, typically characterized by flashy dress, who makes a living by disreputable dealings.”
Second, Elvis Presley’s first audition of any kind was for the gospel group the Songfellows in April 1954, which he did not pass. His first audition for Sam Phillips as a potential recording artist for Sun Records was in June 1954.
At the time of both auditions, the 19-year-old Presley worked full-time for the Crown Electric Company in Memphis. He was paid $1 an hour at a time when the minimum wage was 75¢ an hour.
If the definition of spiv is accurate, then Amis thinks driving a truck at more than minimum wage is a disreputable occupation. Given the economic plight of England in the 1950s — where men of any age might have literally killed for such a position — it’s hard to understand how Martin arrived at this conclusion.
2)
“Elvis pondered on the afterlife, entertaining tasteless reveries of his coming reunion with his dead twin and much-lamented mother.”
Amis seems to be saying that a devout Christian who believes in an afterlife and looks forward to seeing his deceased loved ones in Heaven is indulging in tawdry daydreams.
I don’t believe that I have been in a church of any kind more six times in the past forty some years, so few people would accuse me of being religious. But that statement is so tasteless that I’m baffled that Amis’s editor allowed it onto the printed page!
3.
“It is hard to imagine a character of more supercharged banality. Elvis was a talented hick who was destroyed by success: what else is new? All that distinguished him was the full-blooded alacrity of his submission to drugs, women, money and megalomania, and the ease with which these excesses co-existed with his natural taste for spiritual conceit and grandiose Confederate machismo.”
According to Merriam-Webster, a hick is an “unsophisticated provincial person.” I suppose we could give Amis that: Presley was born into poverty and received an education from one of the poorest states in the US with a public education system that has been historically underfunded since the Civil War.
Needless to say, his parents could not afford to send their son to college. The young Elvis had to get a job to help support his family, and for this action, he was called a “slum spiv” by Amis.
What is astounding is the sheer brute force of the dumbness — yeah, I really mean “stupidity” — of this statement: Amis has reduced the man whose creative genius gave us “That’s All Right” and “Mystery Train” and “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Are You Lonesome To-night?” and Suspicious Minds” and so, so much more to being a “talented hick.”
The mind reels!
The rest of Amis’s review serves up the lack of understanding and the staggering condescension we normally associate with the kind of bottom-of-the-barrel ugliness and cultural prejudice we normally associate with Albert Goldman.
Coming to a screen near you!
An article resembling the one you just read was originally published as “Saying Something Stupid like ‘Elvis Was a Dumb Hick’ ” on my Elvis — A Touch Of Gold website on September 7, 2017.
That piece was substantially edited and rewritten to become this piece.
And I did all of this rewriting so that I could get you right here, right now, to tell you this: John Ross will be digging up his old articles, refurbishing them—a little editing and rewriting along with a few new words—and publishing them here on Medium as a series of articles titled “Stupid About Elvis.”
With these, you too will be able to immerse yourself in the world where the most unbelievably dumb and stupid things are said (yeah, they’re pretty much the same thing but I’m trying to stress a point here) usually with a completely straight face and a complete lack of irony.
His first piece is due here on Tell It Like It Was this Wednesday (January 15, 2019). Catch it if you can!
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Here is John’s soon-to-be-infamous “Stupid about Elvis Hexalogy” (which are best read chronologically):
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Thanks for reading! Below are links to three articles that are essential to knowing what Tell It Like It Was is all about. “Blogging with Tell It Like It Was” is my attempt to keep readers abreast of any changes happening here while “Introduction to Tell It Like It Was” is our mission statement for this publication.
And “Introduction to The Toppermost of the Poppermost” explains the project that John, Lew, and I embarked upon months before launching this publication: a series of articles that review every record to make it all the way to #1 on the Cash Box Top 100 charts from 1960 through 1969.
