"Sanctified People Got More Fire"

"A single thread ties most of rock 'n' roll’s pioneers together: From Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to Little Richard and James Brown, many of the founding giants of rock grew up in Pentecostal churches. Pentecostal services were dramatic affairs. Worshipers shouted and danced until they fell to the floor, then sprang back up, healed of what had ailed them or speaking in tongues. Behind the hellfire preaching and general pandemonium was hot music: pianos and drums, tambourines and triangles, saxophones and trumpets, all whipping the congregation into ecstasy. Skeptical journalists and respectable Christians alike scoffed at the miracle cures and snickered at the 'thinly veiled eroticism of the devotees,' but as one black Pentecostal told a curious anthropologist, 'A lot of folks talk about getting too emotional. I wouldn't give two cents for a religion that wouldn't make me move.'"

Paul W. Gleason at The Hedgehog Review reviews Randall J. Stephens's The Devil's Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock 'n' Roll.

A Hero to Most

"'My music is a combination of country music, gospel, and rhythm and blues,' Elvis explained in 1971. He attuned the sounds of white gospel quartets, black gospel spirituals, rural country, and urban blues to the same frequency as his spirit, providing a tour of the musical milestones and memories of his young life. It wasn't black. It wasn't white. It wasn't blues. It wasn't country. It was the transcendence of classification made possible only in the multicultural, multiethnic American experience."

David Masciotra at The American Conservative defends Elvis Presley.

"Gospel's First Superstar"

"Tharpe's first hit, in fact, was the transformed spiritual 'Rock Me,' recorded with her soaring held notes and sexy growls back in 1938–when the latter-day King of Rock & Roll, Elvis Presley, was still a toddler. Tharpe would later hire Grand Old Opry stars the Jordanaires to back her, years before they began working for Presley, who was her unabashed fan. 'Elvis loved Sister Rosetta," recalled the Jordanaires' Gordon Stoker, especially her 'incredible' guitar style. 'That's what really attracted Elvis: her pickin'. He liked her singing, but he liked that pickin' first–because it was so different.'"

Will Hermes sings the praises of Sister Rosetta Tharpe at Rolling Stone.

That's All Right, O Death, Let Me Ride

The Washington Post runs obituaries for musicians Scotty Moore, Ralph Stanley, and Bernie Worrell.

Velvet Elvises

"But the tacky, flashy, and downright ugly paintings have stayed with the popular imagination—because, according to folklore scholar Eric A. Eliason, we need them to. In his 2011 book “Black Velvet Art,” Eliason suggests that velvet paintings play an important role in Western culture as the anti-art, a fixed concept that people distance themselves from to prove they have good taste. Even though velvet painting references the same sort of pop-culture icons—such as Marilyn Monroe, the Pink Panther, comic panels—as work by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Roy Lichtenstein, it lacks the detached self-awareness that allows Pop Art to be deemed gallery worthy.
"'Why is black velvet different than any other medium?' Eliason says. "'Canvas art has some crappy and tacky stuff, too. But the assumption is the minute you put an artwork on velvet, you’ve ghettoized it into this denigrated category that, I think, exists for a purpose. If black velvet didn’t play the role that it has in the late 20th century, something else would’ve emerged to take its place. This snobbery shows the ugly side of the fine-art world and upper middle-class aspirational sensibilities.'"


In light of a new museum just opened in Los Angeles, Lisa Hix at CollectorsWeekly.com depicts the history of painting on black velvet.

Crusader Cat Honor

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for voice actor Lucille Bliss, clothier Bernard Lansky, and historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown.

Elvis Studies

"All the books on this far-from-exhaustive list share one thing, and it’s not literary merit: they’re all predicated on the reasonable assumption that there is a market for any morsel of first-hand information about Elvis Presley—what he said, did, sang, ate, wore, read, thought, loved, feared, and loathed. In ElvisLit, no morsel is unworthy. To write this off to our culture’s voyeurism and obsession with celebrity is, I think, to miss the point. In death Elvis became whatever anyone wanted to see in him. Which is another way of saying he is now free to become whatever we want to see in ourselves. No wonder the river will never run dry."

Bill Morris at The Millions surveys a historiography of Elvis Presley.

Le Roi Est Mort; Vive Le Roi

"When Presley began making movies in 1956 with 'Love Me Tender,' it was with hopes to eventually achieve something of the dramatic emotionalism of James Dean and Marlon Brando. His last two films before entering the Army in 1958, 'Jailhouse Rock' and 'King Creole,' go a long way toward making that goal a reality, ranking as his most complete and fulfilling efforts even among those who otherwise dismiss his work."

In light of Elvis Presley's seventy-fifth birthday, Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times ponders the King's cinematic oeuvre.

Get Back

"Buddy Rich, a foul-mouthed thunder-demon of a drummer, might even have been justified in feeling he could out-rock Elvis. But history didn't care how Rich felt. And it doesn't care how you feel, either, even if (like Wald, or me) you're the sort of bookish, white male connoisseur who typically takes it on himself to arbitrate pop history while disdaining the audience that almost always drives it: young women on dance floors."

Carl Wilson in The Globe and Mail reviews Elijah Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music.

A Hero to Most?

"The interview’s underlying point was the same as the underlying point of his music: far from asserting any superiority, he was merely doing his best to find a place in a musical continuum that included breathtaking talents like Ray Charles, Roy Hamilton, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and Howlin’ Wolf on the one hand, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and the Statesmen Quartet on the other. 'Let’s face it,' he said of his rhythm and blues influences, 'nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that.'"

Upon the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, Peter Guralnick in The New York Times asks why Elvis developed a reputation for being a racist.