Old Habits Die Hard

Abstract When talking about Elvis Presley, no one asks, “Whose Elvis?,” but the question might be worth exploring. As a tale of rags to riches, Elvis Presley should have epitomized the perfect American success story. And to countless numbers around the world, that exactly is what he represented. But this “Horatio Alger story in drawl” remains, to many in his own country, a pariah. A widely-read 1977 disapproving obituary written by syndicated columnist Mike Royko captured the ambivalence historically attached to Presley and the Southern white working-class culture that he personified. The popular journalist surmised, “Elvis pulled off a marvelous con. There he was, a Depression-born, unread hillbilly, a marginally-talented pop singer” who “promoted a limited talent into a vast fortune. . . .” To many, Royko’s inference that Elvis reigned as the “King of White Trash culture” merely stated the obvious. Once likened to a “jug of corn liquor at a champagne party,” the hip-swiveling “Hillbilly Cat”-turned-B-movie star-turned-Las Vegas spectacle clearly never obtained the credentials necessary to rise above the caricatures and attain legitimacy. According to Simon Frith, Presley “was not just working class but, worse, Southern working class, [the object of] a class contempt which, among other things, assumed that someone like Elvis was incapable of artistry.” The chapter will examine this quandary. In particular, it engages with the work of Linda Ray Pratt, whose 1979 discussion of Elvis and Southern identity is used to consider the nuances of more contemporary political maneuvers.