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Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Edited Dec 18, 2007, 18:38
Re: ELVIS
Dec 18, 2007, 18:38
He wasn't really the first "pop star" (that would have been Frank Sinatra), and he wasn't really a complete break with the past either (he bought into the premise that after becoming a successful singer, the next move is doing movies in Hollywood -- like Sinatra.)

But he was the symbol of some huge cataclysmic mid-century cultural shift. He had a peculiar male/female, traditional/modern, black/white sexy glamour thing going on in the conservative cold war 50's (contemporaneous with the civil rights movement and the explosion of teen consumerism that came with postwar boom, while heralding "sex lib" to come -- it's been said the 60's couldn't have happened without him.)

He'll always be a big deal, though more for his iconic "persona" than the actual records (which get remixed with hot new beats these days.)

Though of course a lot of those records really were great -- all the Sun sides, most of the singles up until he went into the army, and occasional flickers of life in the early and late 60's (though in the mid-60's his material was the worst crap imaginable, and in the 70's he was the king of MOR.)

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