Michael Bertrand, Race, Rock, and Elvis

Michael T. Bertrand’s Race, Rock, and Elvis provides a roadmap directing readers in a study of three interrelated factors that worked in unison to change the course of the postwar fifties culture, especially in the south. More than a biographical study of Elvis Presley, Bertrand’s book explores the paradigm-shaping power of music. During the 1950’s white youth began embracing African American music and interacting with African Americans. White youths’ burgeoning tolerance precipitated unforeseen changes that have remained largely unappreciated by academics as well as changes in power structures. Their receptivity to jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock provided the impetus that inevitably helped change racial constructs, realign mainstream middle class tastes, and alter the sociopolitical climate on a number of levels. The author leads off by stating one of his book’s central purposes: to offer “an investigation of how popular culture affected the racial attitudes of white southerners who lived during a period of unprecedented possibilities (13).” Equally important, he traces how rock ‘n’ roll enhanced cross-racial respect as both black and white youth found common ground while dancing to music that appealed across the color line. Bertrand cites the unexpected outcome compelled by this popular upsurge and theorizes why Americans adopted more tolerant attitudes than intransigent Southern segregationists preferred. Socioeconomic status played a major role in the spread of rock music. Bolstered by the lower echelons of the socioeconomic ranks, the 1950’s rock ‘n’ roll cultural consternation epitomized the forced dependency endured by poorer working class southerners, particularly marginalized whites and African Americans. Politics and culture intersect due to the energizing support across the racial divide, and the cultural prominence of jazz, country, r & b, and rock ‘n’ roll. Hence, there was a whole lot of shaking going on – the shaking up of American cultural and political norms. Compelled by necessity, if not by the better angels of their nature as Lincoln would have advised, Southerners witnessed a Second Reconstruction in which they confronted once again the issues of racial discrimination and segregation. Consequently, true to Plato’s admonition, music instigated change; change that cracked the foundations on which 1950’s America’s hierarchical, racially bifurcated society rationalized its legitimacy. Black and white youth grooving to a new beat exemplified Plato’s teaching while many poor southern whites clung to the Jim Crow system and continued to denigrate African Americans who they felt were beneath them (35). Factor into the equation the racially ambiguous Elvis Presley – a man some cultural critics labeled a blackface mimic. Suddenly, issues of race, class, and culture clash and provoke even more consternation. Where Supreme Court jurisdiction aroused scorn, rock and roll deviously weakened segregation. It integrated the airwaves. Moreover, southern urbanization beleaguered a people seeking stability, a people who sought refuge in this new style of African American-inspired music (44). Bertrand also considers the views of Robert Wiebe who suggests racism changes as social underpinnings shift and Barbara Fields who posits that race is an ideological construct (45). As black and white youth began intermingling more regularly, people started realizing that stereotypes warranted reassessment. To be sure, racially ambiguous entertainers such as Elvis further underscored the need for renegotiating white cultural norms. The NAACP’s Roy Wilkins insightfully pondered the lack of freedom accorded whites by the hierarchical racial system they defended (56). Bertrand’s exploration reveals that some white southerners took exception to “separate but equal,” thus paving the way for1960’s civil rights campaigns. Noting how some in southern society began to break ranks from the long-held consensus regarding race, Bertrand examines how rock and roll prevailed by withstanding cultural assaults from those determined to maintain that consensus. Basically, people liked it. Consumers bought it. Rather than relying on the allegiance of middle class listeners who preferred crooners and safer performers such as Perry Como and Pat Boone, the racially charged music of the1950s owed its popularity to working class people. Habits die hard, though. Sustaining the status quo became a modus operandi of Tin Pan Alley songwriters (72) and industry moguls (73). Conversely, Elvis Presley’s mass appeal drew grudging respect from producer Jackie Gleason who, eyes fixed on the bottom line, expediently booked Elvis on Stage Show rather than big bands whose music he himself preferred (80). Allegedly endowed with “savage” appeal, Elvis parlayed his lucrative drawing power into a 30 percent pop charts sell rate thus underscoring that transformation was indeed underway (86). As rock ‘n’ roll emerged beyond its proletarian roots, the author speculates that it “dramatically embodied anarchy” (87). Jumping on the bandwagon, businessmen realized that consumer purchases played a major role in determining music and entertainers’ popularity. Equally significant, middle class values threatened by changes in music spotlighted the efficacy of class, race, and social status as touchstones. White youth gravitated to African American music clubs by choice, liked what they heard, and wanted to hear more of it. By the middle 1950’s, racial certainties invited reinterpretation and societal mainstays altered due to continuing migration, urbanization, and industrialization (93). Although the Brown v. Board of Education decision inspired controversial resistance and hate mongering, Elvis facilitated integration through his racially ambiguous persona and appeal (102) and caused cultural schizophrenia (103). During this transition, a new group of musicians were classified as rockabillies. According to Johnny Cash, some people labeled them as “white niggers” (105). Still, it was Elvis who forced southerners to “handle the contradiction of a poor white native violating its customs relating to race and becoming larger than life while doing so…” (115). Shattering the myth that Elvis harbored noble motives of establishing rock as a respectable form of music, the author notes how “the King” consigned himself to doing his best and living life one day at a time, while observing that Nat King Cole cut to the chase and admitted he was in it “for the money” – a sentiment Elvis would have readily echoed (121). Bertrand also weighs the controversial implications surrounding allegations that Elvis stole music from African American musicians and reaped the benefits because he was white. Change occurs for a number of reasons, sometimes inexplicably and unexpectedly asserting a new order. Youthful self-direction contributed to societal change. Racial distinctions slowly lessened. Southern to the core, Elvis intrigued fans and critics. Though his talent may have been underestimated, his cross-racial ambiguity and multicultural appeal proved valid. Sophistication and snobbery surfaced as self-appointed cultural guardians prophesied that rock spelled the decline of western civilization. An intellectual elite stipulated that their perspective governed the cultural mores and upheld an American creed; yet, their bias blinded them to gauging the redeeming value of rock ‘n’ roll and its potent future role in helping transform society. Southern youth faced an onslaught of opposition in remaining loyal to rock ‘n’ roll. Segregationists relentlessly berated R&B and rock. They castigated the music and confronted the musicians with charges of sensuality and communist plotting (163). Yet, every stride that African American singers made in getting booked in white clubs furthered racial understanding. However, segregation’s heyday was on the wane, as evidenced when Pat Boone, the conformists’ icon, condemned racism as sickening (188). As the book approaches its conclusion, the author explores made Elvis tick as a singer and assesses rumors surrounding his supposed racial slurs. Bertrand cites a number of journals as well as Elvis’s African American colleagues to clear the slate. He then analyzes Elvis’s impact on African Americans. Bertrand evaluates African American influences in comparison to Presley’s innovations. From singing by ear to shaking his leg, Elvis emerges as a genuinely creative artist, and, more broadly, a man who cannot be easily summed up by enumerating his peculiarities, personal predilections, or political affiliations. The author concludes: “Accordingly, the controversial entertainer, like the substantial number of people who bought his records, deserves an evaluation free of clichés and misleading characterizations” (224). Elvis Presley’s career plummeted in the 1960’s but rose again in 1968. Before a prime time audience, Elvis explicitly addressed the issue of race and sang “If I Can Dream” – a message of racial harmony (227). By espousing his dream, Elvis revitalized a sagging career. During Elvis’s wilderness years, our country’s racial landscape changed. Some changes forced Americans to deal more dispassionately with its inequities. Bertrand shares that he wrote Race, Rock, and Elvis “not about Elvis Presley but about a generation that came of age during a pivotal period in the South’s history” (231). Granting that Elvis himself might have been an anomaly, Bertrand nonetheless finds significance in the King’s knack for embodying the dreams and emotions of his youthful audience. More importantly, however, Elvis’s enigmatic relationship to race signals one of his greatest cultural contributions. Herein rests one of the author’s guiding premises: the suggestion “that culture is inherently separate from power and what goes on outside the workplace, legislative hall, corporate boardroom, or plantation house has little bearing on the historical process” (237). In this book we critically think through the notion that culture cannot be exclusively prescribed by any one select group or permanently thwarted by hostile traditions.