If he were alive today, Elvis Aaron Presley would have turned 75. For music fans, this is a holy day.
Elvis didn't invent rock 'n' roll. Hell, Elvis didn't even perfect rock 'n' roll. True music heads know these accolades are for Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Bill Haley.
What Elvis did, friends, was popularize rock 'n' roll and add that final, potent ingredient that made it worldwide: sex appeal.
Berry's backwards-hop-while-playing-blazing-solo was hot, sure, but it had nothing on Elvis' hips and curled lips. With those sunken dark eyes, Elvis took rock 'n' roll from the bluesy basements of the poor and the greaser click and shoved it into popular culture. The term teeny bopper was invented because of people like Elvis. He more or less created youth-marketed media.
He got far too much credit as the "King of Rock 'n' Roll," but he was certainly the forefather of pop-rock as an industry.
Like every great thing, that's had its negative side effects — if it weren't for Elvis, we never would have had to deal with the likes of the Backstreet Boysa and N'Sync — but who knows how rock would have survived without the flush of dollars Elvis shoved into its belly.
I often wonder what kind of music Elvis would be making if he were still around today. I have a feeling he would have tried, in the 1990s and probably once more in the 2000s, to do more upbeat remixes of his old-style of music, the way Paul Oakenfold mixed his tracks for "Rubberneckin'" in 2003. He may have had an ill-advised reach for popdom in the 80s, the way Robert Plant did ...
But mostly, I have a feeling he would have stayed relatively true the unbelievable super-hits he recorded in the 70s, before his 1977 death. He'd play a few shows here and there nowadays, but always to over-crowded major arenas where tickets in the nosebleeds cost $90. There'd be more guitar, a little more drum and bass to thicken that old a-la "Suspicious Minds" sound, but his classics and a classic style would be revered, the way Sinatra was before his death, the way Van Morrison still is today.
And that wouldn't be bad.
The Randy Brock band will be out at Firekeepers Friday and Saturday night. I saw them last month when they were there and they are awesome. Randy is a great guitarist and does a lot of Clapton, Classic rock and blues rock. Also it is free!
Posted by: Harold Brookstone | January 08, 2010 at 03:50 PM
Took me time to read all the comments, but I enjoyed the article.
Posted by: essay writing | January 18, 2010 at 06:06 AM
The term teeny bopper was invented because of people like Elvis.
Posted by: vibram five fingers | April 13, 2011 at 06:21 AM
The term teeny bopper was invented because of people like Elvis.
Posted by: vibram five fingers | May 30, 2011 at 10:18 PM