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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1950
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50elvis
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1950s) Elvis & Rock & Roll
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1950s Highlights
</history>
<link 07808>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Elvis & Rock & Roll
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(May 14, 1956)
</p>
<p> Without preamble, the three-piece band cuts loose. In the
spotlight, the lanky singer flails furious rhythms on his
guitar, every now and then breaking a string. In a pivoting
stance, his hips swing sensuously from side to side and his
entire body takes on a frantic quiver, as if he had swallowed
a jack-hammer. Full-cut hair tousles over his forehead and
sideburns frame his petulant, full-lipped face. His style is
partly hillbilly, partly socking rock'n'roll. His loud
baritone goes raw and whining in the high notes, but down low
it is rich and round. As he throws himself into one of his
specialties--Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes or Long Tall
Sally--his throat seems full of desperate aspirates ("Hi want
you, hi need you, hi luh-huh-huh-huhv yew-hew") or hiccuping
glottis strokes, and his diction is poor. But his movements
suggest, in a word, sex.
</p>
<p> He is Elvis Aron Presley, a drape-suited, tight-trousered
young man of 21, and the sight and sound of him drive teenage
girls wild. All through the South and West, Elvis is packing
theaters, fighting off shrieking admirers, disturbing parents,
puckering the brows of psychologists, and filling letters-to-
the-editor columns with cries of alarm and from adolescents,
counter-cries of adulation.
</p>
<p> The perpetrator of all this hoopla was born in Tupelo, Miss.
(pop. 11,527). His parents gave him a guitar before he was
twelve. "I beat on it for a year or two," he drawls. "Never did
learn much about it." He learned to sing church hymns with a
heavy beat, as Negro revival singers do, but gave no thought to
a musical career. A couple of years ago, Presley, working as a
truck driver, was seized with the urge to hear his own voice,
took his guitar with him and made a recording in a public
studio. "It sounded like somebody beatin' on a bucket lid,"
Presley recalls. "But the engineer at this studio had a
recording company called Sun, and he told me I had an unusual
voice, and he might call me up sometime."
</p>
<p>(June 18, 1956)
</p>
<p> In Boston Roman Catholic leaders urged that the offensive
music be boycotted. In Hartford city officials considered
revoking the State Theater's license after several audiences got
too rowdy during a musical stage show. In Washington the police
chief recommended banning such shows from the National Guard
Armory after brawls in which several people were injured. In
Minneapolis a theater manager withdrew a film featuring the
music after a gang of youngsters left the theater, snake-danced
around town and smashed windows. In Birmingham champions of
white supremacy decried it as part of a Negro plot against the
whites. At a wild concert in Atlanta's baseball park one night,
fists and beer bottles were thrown, four youngsters were
arrested.
</p>
<p> The object of all this attention is a musical style known as
"rock'n'roll," which has captivated U.S. adolescents as swing
captivated prewar teenagers and ragtime vibrated those of the
'20s. It does for music what a motorcycle club at full throttle
does for a quiet Sunday afternoon.
</p>
<p> Rock'n'roll is based on Negro blues, but in a
self-conscious style which underlines the primitive qualities
of the blues with malice aforethought. Characteristics: an
unrelenting, socking syncopation that sounds like a bull whip;
a choleric saxophone honking mating-call sounds; an electric
guitar turned up so loud that its sound shatters and splits; a
vocal group that shudders and exercises violently to the beat
while roughly chanting either a near-nonsense phrase or a
moronic lyric in hillbilly idiom.
</p>
<p>(April 14, 1958)
</p>
<p> Television's newest rage consists of a jukebox full of
rock'n'roll records, a studio full of dancing teenagers, and Dick
Clark, a suave young (28) disk jockey full of money. For his
90-minute American Bandstand, which is carried by 90 ABC
stations each weekday (3 p.m., E.S.T.), Clark draws one of the
biggest audiences in daytime TV, some 8,000,000 (half of them
adults), 20,000 to 45,000 fan letters a week, and an income
approaching $500,000 a year. Admits Clark: "It's all a little
frightening."
</p>
<p> Many viewers find it more than a little frightening. American
Bandstand assaults the ear with rock'n'roll interrupted only
by mournful ballads. This is bad enough but the show is even
more dismaying to the eye: furrow-browed teenagers jolting to
the jangling heat of lyrics like "Skinny Minnie, she ain't
skinny, she's tall, that's all." Worse yet is the sagging,
zombie-eyed shuffle brought on by a ballad like Oh, Oh, Falling
in Love. Some adult squares get the feeling that they are
peeking at a hotbed of juvenile delinquency. But Bandstand gets
its eager volunteers from both sides of the tracks and all parts
of the nation, and a committee of youngsters enforces good
manners, e.g. jackets and ties for boys, no shorts for girls.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>