Stupid about Elvis (2010 — 2018)
The New Millennium rolls on . . . but nothing stops the Elvis Stupid.
(This is the fifth installment in my “Stupid about Elvis” series, covering the period from 2010 to 2018. In our present decade, Elvis Stupidity is a job of maintenance. As might be expected in the age of “Have Stupid — Will Travel,” it’s been well-handled. I’ll have a post within a day or two ruminating about the whys and wherefores of Elvis Stupidity through the ages. Meanwhile . . . )
ONCE THE PROVINCE OF BIG LEAGUE PUNDITS, the latest in Elvis Stupidity can increasingly be found in the host of venues — small magazines, blogs, internet forums — which have proliferated as the American Century fades and we wait with bated breath to discover what will replace it. Not that the big leaguers don’t chip in once in a while. The job is endless, after all.
Let’s kick off our final installment with Allen Lowe, writing in Issue 75 of Oxford American, 2011:
“And, further, when he went to Memphis in 1969 to record with a fine musical wrecking crew of accomplished studio musicians, he sounded, once again, as though he was actually interested in what he was singing. And, even better, on some of the early songs he recorded there, he performed with a touch of laryngitis–which not only curbed some of his post-gospel excesses (that heavy and throaty vibrato and sometimes shmaltzy sustain of certain pointlessly held notes) but which made him, if only briefly, into a near-pure, hoarse-souled blues singer of deep southern resonance.”
If life hands you larygnitis . . . Let your larynx make the greatest vocal session ever!
In case you missed the key nugget in there—and I can understand how the eyes might glaze—Elvis produced the greatest vocal session of the 20th century in 1969 because he was lucky enough to get laryngitis!
Here’s something you can try at home: Sit down with any of the numerous editions of Elvis’s late-’60s Memphis sessions. Then close your eyes and try to guess which vocals were performed with and without “laryngitis.”
Should you need a little mantra to keep you sane during the process, here’s one that works for me: “For the maroons are with you always.”
Rinse and repeat as necessary.
He didn’t last. But our business journal is reviewing his Complete Masters anyway! Not to be outdone, Jim Fusilli brought the Stupid to the not-so-obscure pages of the Wall Street Journal in his review of The Complete Elvis Presley Masters (Jan. 3, 2011):
“What’s essential [about Elvis’s music] could fit on a single CD or perhaps two.”
“He can’t last, I tell you flatly, he can’t last.” — Jackie Gleason in the 50s.
Well, I love that “perhaps two,” which has the effect of a raised pinky. This is a corollary to the ’50s theory proposed by the great philosopher Jackie Gleason: “He can’t last, I tell you flatly, he can’t last.”
Like Gleason himself, you could be forgiven for thinking that bit of applied logic was long disproved.
No worries. The Journal (an institution which knows a thing or two about keeping disproved theories alive — try them on Free Trade some time) is here to tell us that, in fact, he didn’t last!
While they are reviewing his Complete Masters, more than thirty years after his death.
Some wars never end.
One way we know this is because the old mantras have moved to the new generation. Here’s Marc Lamont Hill (last seen being fired from CNN for anti-semitism, which takes some doing), a college professor born the year after Elvis died, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before (from Gary Giddins and Ishmael Reed, in this series alone):
“Elvis didn’t write his own songs (despite taking credit for them), barely played the guitar, and was a worse actor than the entire cast of Belly. Despite being a cheap facsimile of Little Richard, he is still known as the “King of Rock ‘n Roll.” Only in America.”
That’s from The Huffington Post, Oct. 8, 2012.
Who you callin’ “cheap’? “Cheap facsimile of Little Richard?” . . . I think Hill might have gotten Elvis (who made great rock & roll records before Richard did) mixed up with Larry Williams, though, even then, he’d be wrong about the cheap part.
But Hill was a piker compared to the double-team performed by Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen (in his 2014 memoir, Eminent Hipsters) and Nick Hornby (reviewing same for The Believer, March/April 2014)
“‘I Got a Woman’ appeared on Elvis Presley’s first album,’ Fagen says in a tiny but packed essay about Ray Charles. ‘Elvis wasn’t the white Ray Charles, though. Tennessee Williams, maybe, comes closer.’ Are we still producing musicians who can think and talk like that?”
And now, a word from “that guy from Steely Dan.” I could be snarky and suggest that admitting the white guy who was full of himself (Willams — justified) did indeed have more in common with the black guy who was just as full of himself (Charles — even more justified) than the white guy who was a restless seeker and artful dodger had in common with either is maybe not the precise combination of praise and put-downs Fagen intended or Hornby salutes.
But why get complicated?
The thing’s juicy enough on its own. It’s the first instance I’ve come across that could fit equally well in the “Stupid about Elvis” and the “It Isn’t Only Elvis They’re Stupid about” categories.
It’s also the first instance, in either category, where two men are struggling for the right to have their names entered as permanent additions to the “Stupid Elvis” file.
I find myself struggling to choose between them.
But Fagen is “that guy from Steely Dan,” and they always were patting themselves on the back for squaring and cubing things that would have otherwise been completely beneath them. (That’s the long way of saying they were jazzbos. I hasten to add they were the kind of jazzbos who were way too smart to play, write, arrange, produce, or sing like jazzbos until they had made a run of brilliant albums, a permanent name for themselves, and a boatload of dough. Naturally, they called this integrity.)
So I gotta give him the upper hand.
Listen, Ray Charles was a genius.
Tennessee Williams was a genius.
Elvis was a genius.
None of them remotely tried to be—or wanted to be—any of the others.
The only one who ever tried to be anybody but himself was Ray, who started his career trying to be Nat “King” Cole, most especially the Nat Cole who appealed most readily to White America (and he was, incidentally, good at it).
He gave that up soon enough, though, and went on to be something better than a first-class Nat Cole imitator or maybe even better than Nat Cole—which was Ray Charles.
After that (though before Charles began to appeal so readily to White America himself) came Elvis—who never tried to be Ray Charles or anybody but Elvis.
Before that came Tennessee Williams, who also never tried to be Ray Charles (not even all those years later, when he had actually heard of Ray Charles) or anybody but Tennessee Williams.
And now, for the remaining question—besides why Donald Fagen would make an ass of himself.
So the only remaining question—besides why Fagen would insist on making such an ass of himself—is why Tennessee Williams is “maybe closer” than Elvis to being “the white Ray Charles” rather than the other way around?
Since Williams had already written the plays for which he is most remembered well before Ray Charles even got to the point of trying to be the new Nat Cole, why doesn’t Fagen ask whether the Ray Charles he is referring to—the one who did eventually become both himself and a genius—is “maybe” the black Tennessee Williams?
What, is he afraid of being called a racist, like he was Elvis or something?
Well, he is Donald Fagen. He’s committed to squaring and cubing things so he won’t be caught looking down on anyone who’s not Elvis.
In this case, he cubed himself into a corner—the corner where the benighted liberal intellectual makes curious assumptions which, under the surface, where it counts, retain the spirit of blackface not to mention shucking and jiving.
Fagen’s statement—meant to assure us that he’s living up to the title of his book—is actually a return to primitive basics, to the notion that race comes first and foremost in all considerations that seek to codify human character and (by extension) genius.
The sort of thinking, in other words, that the revolution Elvis led, Ray Charles sort of reluctantly (though also brilliantly—reluctance was his signature) aided and abetted, and Tennessee Williams never really knew quite what to make of, sought–however naively, given the vicissitudes of human nature—to challenge and overturn.
Oh well.
The thing about jazzbos is they aren’t Jazz Men. There’s no generosity in them.
They always think rock & roll, especially as represented by Elvis, is somewhere beneath them when they really should be looking up.
Elvis remains unique in needing to be defended even from his defenders.
But Elvis remains unique in needing to be defended even from his defenders. Greil Marcus has written some of the best stuff about Elvis and some of the worst. He’s a fan!
So, God help us, from his Real Life Top Ten, in The Believer, March/April 2014:
5) The Jacksonian, written by Beth Henley, directed by Robert Falls, the New Group, Acorn Theatre, New York (November 5–December 22, 2013). A hotel drama set in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964, with Ed Harris as a disgraced dentist, Amy Madigan as his disgusted wife, and Juliet Brett as their miserable teenage daughter, and featuring Bill Pullman as what Elvis would have ended up as if “That’s All Right” had never gotten out of Memphis: an alcoholic bartender with a thing for jailbait who has no problem shooting a woman for a ring he doesn’t even want and letting a black man go to the electric chair for it. “I was a performer for a while,” he says under a huge pompadour, sideburns snaking down the sides of his face, but now his whole life is stage fright.
Try to imagine:
Bob Dylan if he never made it out of Minnesota. John Lennon if he never made it out of Liverpool. Mick Jagger if he never made it out of London. Bruce Springsteen if he never made it out of New Jersey.
Try to imagine Bob Dylan if he never made it out of Minnesota . . .
Now, permit yourself to wonder if Marcus—or any other paid-up member of the Crit-Illuminati—would ever dream up some other life where any of them just naturally become a vicious, racist murderer and then try to pass it off as a compliment?
I mean, Jerry Lee Lewis maybe. Or Johnny Burnette. Or Billy Lee Riley.
After all, we all know what those working class hillbillies from the Deep South mean streets are down at the bottom. (Recall that Robert Christgau thought Elvis, the most genteel of the lot, was a “rock” who reminded him of the guys who threatened to beat him up in high school.)
One might also wonder whether Marcus, or anyone, would be so prone to thinking along these lines if Elvis had responded to just one of the crushes the pundit class is prone to — if he had let somebody get as close to him as Marcus has to Robbie Robertson, or Jann Wenner to John Lennon and Mick Jagger, or Dave Marsh to Bruce Springsteen?
Bear in mind that, among taste-mongers, Marcus counts as one of Elvis’s principal defenders, not infrequently described, by folks who are very comfortable with the idea of Elvis-as-racist-murderer, as an Elvis “apologist.”
And, as always, it is only Elvis who is sufficiently gauche to require apology or explanation.
So it was with Time in 1956. So it is now.
There’s no sign of the tradition abating. I don’t know anything about Tom Beihan, who posted this for Stereogum on Dec. 4, 2018, but he’s clearly on the youngish side of Elvis Stupidity.
There’s no sign of the tradition abating.
In addition to having absorbed most of the Old Stupid, he deserves rare credit for injecting it with some New Stupid. Self-retarded minds are notoriously hard to read, but I doubt even James “Elvis Had Two Good Years” Taylor would suggest “Suspicious Minds” is “camp” and mean it.
In keeping with the “values” of our wretched new century, Beihan both means it and loves it for that very reason.
Elvis just bulldozes the [sic] way through the song, submitting it to his will. On a song about a relationship falling apart, Elvis sounds delighted hamming it up over that great baritone guitar riff and those swelling strings and horns. The whole nature of the song changes. Elvis is telling this unfortunate woman that he’s not cheating, but he’s lying. She knows it, and he knows that she knows, but he still trusts his otherworldly charisma to carry him through. And he’s probably right. This f***er just won’t lose. He’s not caught in a trap at all.
If any man was ever caught in a trap and unable to walk out, it was Elvis. “Suspicious Minds” was a warning shot, the first public evidence in his career — perhaps his life — that there were doubts, within and without, which even Death would not resolve.
We’re left to ponder whether steadfast refusal to grasp this on the level Tom Beihan displays is a sign of stupidity or malevolence.
Or must the two always ride together?
An existential question perhaps, but we know this much.
Elvis Stupidity is here to stay.
(I’ll be back in a day or two to wrap up the Stupid about Elvis series with some thoughts on “Why Elvis?” Stay tuned!)
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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.
