Post by CMF Newsman on Jan 22, 2009 8:32:37 GMT -5
Written by Chuck Crowder
The other day I was spending some quality time on the sofa when I ran across two interesting documentaries running simultaneously on television. One was a profile of Elvis’ life as remembered by former wife Priscilla, her parents and members of the Memphis Mafia. The other was a technical exploration into the music of The Who.
The Elvis piece mentioned very little about his music, but focused mainly on his lifestyle, personality and how he coped with fame and his career. The piece on The Who, on the other hand, mentioned nothing about the band members’ lifestyles but instead focused on how the innovative technical stylings of their music broke major new ground and highly influenced the music of their contemporaries. When one program went to commercial break, I switched to the other and vice versa.
Now, I’ve always been a big fan of The Who. Along with the Stones, Kinks and possibly the Beatles, they’ve been integral in helping develop my appreciation for music as a whole, and were likely the key instigators of my love for rock as we know it. Elvis, although “how great thou art,” to me, has always been more of an icon of rock.
Call him the “King Of Rock n’ Roll” or not, Elvis definitely took blues and country and married it with R&B and gospel music to help “create” rock n’ roll as we knew it—in 1954. Anything he did after 1970 might be considered a bastardization of the very bastard child he helped invent. His famous “comeback” television special of 1968 (after his time in the army and an extremely poor career as an actor) was a pretty admirable attempt at regaining his throne (so to speak) as the king of rock n’ roll. But by then he was old hat.
chattanoogapulse.com/columns/life-in-the-noog
The other day I was spending some quality time on the sofa when I ran across two interesting documentaries running simultaneously on television. One was a profile of Elvis’ life as remembered by former wife Priscilla, her parents and members of the Memphis Mafia. The other was a technical exploration into the music of The Who.
The Elvis piece mentioned very little about his music, but focused mainly on his lifestyle, personality and how he coped with fame and his career. The piece on The Who, on the other hand, mentioned nothing about the band members’ lifestyles but instead focused on how the innovative technical stylings of their music broke major new ground and highly influenced the music of their contemporaries. When one program went to commercial break, I switched to the other and vice versa.
Now, I’ve always been a big fan of The Who. Along with the Stones, Kinks and possibly the Beatles, they’ve been integral in helping develop my appreciation for music as a whole, and were likely the key instigators of my love for rock as we know it. Elvis, although “how great thou art,” to me, has always been more of an icon of rock.
Call him the “King Of Rock n’ Roll” or not, Elvis definitely took blues and country and married it with R&B and gospel music to help “create” rock n’ roll as we knew it—in 1954. Anything he did after 1970 might be considered a bastardization of the very bastard child he helped invent. His famous “comeback” television special of 1968 (after his time in the army and an extremely poor career as an actor) was a pretty admirable attempt at regaining his throne (so to speak) as the king of rock n’ roll. But by then he was old hat.
chattanoogapulse.com/columns/life-in-the-noog
