Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Elvis’s life before fame featured repeated experiences with humiliation, but he also experienced something else characteristic of the South and the United States in general: the wages of Whiteness. An effort to place Elvis more accurately in history doesn’t just require a recognition that he saw his indebtedness to Black musicians. It also means th
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Elvis Presley, the category king of rock and roll.
Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, • Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets
Elvis Presley wanted to record “Hound Dog,”
John Seabrook • The Song Machine: How to Make a Hit
When Elvis Presley, in the song “Jailhouse Rock,” sang the lyrics “If you can’t find a partner, grab a wooden chair,” he freed a generation of young people to love furniture and, by extension, to love any inanimate object in a way that heretofore would have been strictly verboten.
Mark Leyner • My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist: A novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
(Another view of Elvis, from Billboard magazine in 1958, stated, “In one aspect of America’s cultural life, integration has already taken place.”)
Rebecca Solnit • The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness
If Elvis (minus Dylan) is the definition of rock, then rock is remembered as showbiz.
Chuck Klosterman • But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
Aretha and Elvis are both one-name icons. They call him the King of Rock and Roll because Beale Street infused his White body. They called Aretha the Queen of Soul because her voice refused a choice between the secular and the sacred. She was exacting, precise, disciplined in her song, and also knew how to shout heartache, grief, and exultation, so
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
