The Jazz.com Blog
May 26, 2008 · 12 comments
Elvis and Jazz A Cautionary Tale
Alan Kurtz, jazz.com's resident curmudgeon (who recently in this column has lobbed a contrarian salvo at the contrabass violin, debunked the new Golden Age of Jazz and rained on Record Store Day), now takes aim at his biggest target yet: Elvis. Readers are invited to share their own opinions by adding their comments below or emailing them to editor@jazz.com. T.G.
It's been nearly five months since Herbie Hancock copped The Big One: Grammy's Album of the Year award for his Joni Mitchell tribute, River: The Joni Letters. Certainly the recognition was well deserved. Indeed, Jazz.com called River "a grand artistic statement."
Yet when considering Jazz Covers of Golden Oldies by Pop Icons, another pianist's tribute album, released just two weeks after River, may ultimately be more instructive than Hancock's Hollywood triumph. While Cyrus Chestnut's Cyrus Plays Elvis wasn't nominated for a Grammy, it was widely welcomed. Jazz.com's Ted Gioia, for example, observed that Elvis Presley had "soaked up the African-American music that was part of his hometown, Tupelo, Mississippi. But jazz players have rarely returned the favor. Cyrus Chestnut steps in to rectify matters with a whole CD devoted to Elvis."
Other reviewers were even more enthusiastic. Blogger Jim Harrington elevated Cyrus Plays Elvis to #3 on his list of 2007's top 10 jazz records. (River did not make the cut.) "A glorious batch of jazzy Elvis standards," Harrington raved. "Chestnut's lovely interpretations make these songs sound the equal of anything composed by Cole Porter or Hoagy Carmichael."
To the greybeards among us, however, connecting the dots between jazz and Elvis Presley requires enough torturously twisted geometry to have given Euclid a headache. To restate the obvious, Elvis "was not a jazz musician," as The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jazz (1999) helpfully explains. "He did not swing." The King himself once confessed, "I don't understand jazz."
Cue clip from MGM's Jailhouse Rock (1957), in which Elvis plays a sneering, surly, guitar-totin' ex-con fixin' to bust into the music biz. Lucky for him, his loutish animal magnetism attracts a young woman savvy in the ways of the record industry. She helps him tape a demo, introduces him to an unscrupulous executive (aren't they all?), and takes him home to meet her naively accepting, upper-middleclass parents, who are just then hosting a cocktail party. When Mom learns he's a musician fresh out of the penitentiary, she naturally assumes Elvis is a jazzman, and suggests that Dad spin the latest hepcat platter on their hi-fi. Cue imitation Gerry Mulligan Quartet with facsimile Chet Baker.
The music prompts a good-natured discussion by party guests, who, desiring to appear informed, bandy such terms as "altered chords" and "dissonance," dropping along the way such 1950s household names as Brubeck, Desmond and Lennie Tristano.
Mom, however, is a moldy fig. "Someday they'll make the cycle and get back to pure old Dixieland," she predicts. "I say atonality is just a passing phase in jazz music." She politely asks Elvis's opinion.
"Lady, I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about," snaps the boorish ex-con, who stalks out in a pique to pursue stardom, which of course is soon hisaltered chords and dissonance be damned.
It's probably just as well that The Hick hated jazz. His embrace would've been the kiss of death. Eisenhower-era hipsters were as appalled by Presley's unsophistication as were the bluenoses scandalized by his vulgar sexuality. Jazz critic Leonard Feather, for one, judged that both jazz and pop music had been "dragged down considerably by the success of Elvis Presley and his ilk." And Leonard Feather, may he rest in peace, did not throw around the term ilk lightly.
Perhaps it's premature to conclude that Elvis and jazz remain a mismatch made in Hades. Amazon.com's sales figures, though, are sobering. In contrast to Herbie Hancock's River, ranked #101 in music, Cyrus Plays Elvis places a distant #59,152. Nor is there much evidence that Chestnut's example has been heeded. In fact, Cyrus Plays Elvis seems to have inspired the same number of followers as Benedictine Chimes of Westminster Play the Great Ballads of Elvis (Skylark Jazz, 1994). Which is to say, none.
Still, there must be something to the Elvis/Jazz nexus. Why else would Jazz Cruises LLC conduct THE ELVIS CRUISE in full-charter luxury to the Caribbean every Labor Day weekend? In our tireless quest to follow the trail of investigative reportage wherever it leads, no matter the hardship, we intend to book passage (charged to our expense account). Perhaps onboard host Jerry Schilling, onetime member of the King's private entourage The Memphis Mafia, can tell us what Graceland's Godfather had to do with jazz. Then, donning our gold lam jumpsuit, we can explain it to our penurious editor-in-chief as he skeptically examines our travel vouchers.
This blog entry posted by Alan Kurtz.
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I downloaded this album and love it. Creative remakes of some of the King's best! *****
Mr. Kurtz is making a bigger deal out of Cyrus Chesnut's once-in-a-lifetime, yet earnest and quite welcome, if I may add, take on some of Elvis Presley's better known hits, than either Chesnut, or any one amongst the undiscriminating thought it necessary. It was "nice" that someone thought of doing it, but it is very difficult for a jazzman, any jazzman, to substitute, with any instrument in that idiom's cannon, the only instrument in the Presley sound which towers above all others, his voice. Surely Presley never understood jazz and, in all earnesty, we should forgive him for it. In fact, he did not need to, being as well versed, since age 5, in practically every other musical idiom known to man, and getting it, not merely through radio, or television, let alone the net which did not even exist, but from the actual source, at the heart of the crossroads of American music, first in Tupelo, MS, until he turned 13, and then, of all places, in Memphis, from that age onwards. So, all jazz fans need not worry. Mr. Vance's cumplimentary experiment, and I am willing to bet that that is exactly what it was, really, in Mr. Chestnut's mind, will not translate into more jazz incursions into the Presley cannon. As a Presley fan, I would certainly hope that is the case, lest a jazzman is able to reproduce that voice...
For a convinging read that what I stated is true, first that Presley's voice, not his sound, is the key to understanding the power of his music and that he did not need to understand jazz, kindly go to Ahttp://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elvis#About_his_musical_style.2C_as_a_musician_and_impact_as_a_vocalist Please note that not a single jazzman can be found amongst a list of notable quotes, which includes music editors, producers and songwriters, record company CEOs, music professors and preservationists, publishers and commentators, recording sound engineers, musicians and singers in the classical, opera, pop, blues, gospel, r&b, soul, rock, metal, c&w and latin-american music fields, voice teachers and coaches, theatre critics, rock and popular music historians, as well as writers on the humanities, the arts, and on social, racial, literary, copyright-law and other related studies...
Incidentally, Mr. Kurtz, if I may address myself directly to you, I would appreciate it if, in future, you kindly refer us to the right scene, when you do a cue, as a cross reference. It wasn't the animal magnetism in Presley's delivery of the title tune, as you suggest, that attracts a "young woman savvy in the ways of the record industry" and prompts her to help him "tape a demo, introduces him to an unscrupulous executive (aren't they all?), and takes him home to meet her naively accepting, upper-middle class parents...". By the time he sings "Jailhouse Rock" which is the clip you are referring us to, he's already becoming a big star, so in the interest of following a credible plot, the screenwriters allowed for his character to sing whatever he liked, and that was a rock and roll song. The actual song that moved her, initially, to do all those things you mentioned, is a totally different song, a ballad entitled "Young and beautiful". So, had you referred the readers to that song in particular, they would have better understood the actual, real connexion, or lack thereof, that those present at the cocktail party make, vis-a-vis Elvis, and his ilk...(LOL). After all, "Young and beautiful" is a much more jazz-oriented song, than "Jailhouse Rock" will ever be. Finally, I also want to point out that not a single one of those "Eisenhower-era hipsters appalled by Presley's unsophistication" whose names you smartly failed to mention, proved to be right. And, that, Mr. Kurtz, is a result, on the one hand, of probably none of them actually taking the time out to sit down, and calmly analyze his attributes as a singer (thereby finding some find an answer as to why that voice moved the spirits of so many) while, on the other, they could not even comprehend how ahead of his time Elvis really was. For, in the final analysis, if there is somebody who turned the music world, for good, and upside down and who still, 30 years after passing away, stands the passing of time, and keeps on acquiring newer, many of whom are younger fans, that person is Elvis Presley.
yay! Jim Burrows. how's life on the secret island?
Mr. Burrows, thanks for your comments. Your loyalty to The King is commendable. Please accept my apology for confusing you (and anyone else) by writing "Cue clip from MGM's Jailhouse Rock (1957)" next to the screenshot of Elvis performing the title song on screen. Jazz.com follows the literary convention of italicizing names of books, films, record albums, etc., while enclosing song titles in quotation marks. My reference to Jailhouse Rock was to the movie, as reinforced by its hyperlink to Amazon.com's DVD of said motion picture. If I'd meant the Leiber & Stoller song that Elvis made into a hit, I would have written "Jailhouse Rock." I failed to anticipate that a reader might misconstrue my figurative cueing as being to the song-and-dance number depicted in the screenshot, which I selected because (1) it's an iconic image and (2) with its cardboard-cutout trombone and tenor sax, it's the film's "jazziest" frame.
As for your assertion that "not a single one of those 'Eisenhower-era hipsters appalled by Presley's unsophistication,' whose names you smartly failed to mention, proved to be right," you are yourself at most half right. First, in the very next sentence I cited "jazz critic Leonard Feather, for one." Believe it or not, in the 1950s Mr. Feather was widely considered hip on the subject of jazz, authoring an Encyclopedia thereof, generating hundreds of liner notes and freelance articles, and serving as staff writer for Down Beat and, later, the Los Angeles Times. Whether any of us Eisenhower-era hipsters (and I include myself in that number) proved to be right about Presley's unsophistication, I will leave to cultural historians to sort out. Mr. Presley had many admirable qualities, but sophistication (musical or otherwise) was not prominent among thema point that I doubt even The King would have disputed. I always thought Elvis was as proud to be a hick as I was to be a hipster.
Finally, for readers who may be scratching their heads over what you call "Mr. Vance's cumplimentary [sic] experiment," let me explain that Cyrus Vance (1917-2002) served as President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State from 1977 to 1980. Honestly, Mr. Burrows, even allowing for your obvious disdain for jazz artists, if I can go to the trouble of faithfully transcribing kitschy dialog from Jailhouse Rock, you might at least use Cyrus Chestnut's correct surname.
Mr. Kurtz, Hi!!I see that you did not read the start of my first message. And I say this, because I mentioned Mr. Chesnut's correct last name, not once, but twice in that message, before my son, who is graduating from college, happened to interrupt me with a question precisely about Mr. Vance, in preparation for his final exam. And that's why I wrote the wrong last name. Concerning Mr. Presley's lack of sophistication, and I quote your parenthesis, in which you inserted two words, namely "musical or otherwise", with all due respect, do you actually BELIEVE that? Since when, may I ask, are the vocal abilities of a person, to sing that is, not considered a musical attribute? And, moreover, since when could a person like Mr. Leonard Feather identify sophistication in a set of musical idioms he obviously did not like, let alone was able to even begin to understand? And I say "set", because in Presley's first two albums, he tackles at least seven different musical idioms, if not more. Now, Mr. Kurtz, I shall not lose my time to refer to you to the contents of the two albums, but you should one day listen to them. In fact, I simply can not believe that Mr. Leonard Feather took the time out to actually listen to either of the two albums. And I do not mean listen, while doing something else, but I mean really listen... Since the songs thereby included, in the albums, show a tremendous high degree of musical sophistication, on the part of the singer, I repeat, on the part of the singer, I can only conclude that either they all were beyond Mr. Leonard's technical grasp and comprehension, or that Mr. Feather's level of sophistication reached its "Peter Principle", right there, and then, circa 1957... The unvarnisghed truth is that some, not all, of the people who were true jazz fans turned unjustly against Presley because in his advent both Jazz, as well as Country Music lost half, if not more of their share in record sales, concert attendances, etc. Now, historically, Mr. Kurtz, Presley has already made a mark. On your next time to Washington, DC, kindly go to the Library of Congress and try to sort out which biography of Mr.Presley is not on loan, of the 1,123 in print. While you are there, check out also the status accorded, by the US Congress Music Library, to Presley's SUN sessions. Or how about checking which person in the recording industry has not one, two, but three of his own exhibits in as many Presidential Libraries? And, incidentally, who do you think did the current President of France make a mention of, and called him a "universal icon", when he addressed the Joint session of the US Congress, less than three months ago? And whose home did the former Prime Minister of Japan request to tour, while on official visit to the US, less than 14 months ago? Finally, Mr. Kurtz, do you actually believe that the human ears of millions upon millions of people who love Elvis music are not sophisticated enough to appreciate, as they have, and continue to do so, a musical instrument as ecclectic and as attractive to the human ear as that coming out of the vocal chords of one Elvis Presley? Trying to convince your readers that Presley was not extremely sophisticated as a singer will be as hard, as it will be for me to admire someone who, like Mr. Feather in his time, may have been hip, but who no longer is. Regards and thanks for answering my message Jim
I have to admit the video of Elvis and Sinatra singing together is pretty cool...I think Sinatra sings Love Me Tender and Elvis sings Witchcraft...is that it?...can somebody else remind me?...i think Elvis is right up there with Jobim and Gershwin in a lot of ways...
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Hi Tony, first of all I must admit that we are here in a message board which is mostly visited by jazz fans. Having said that, let me take you back forty four years, for a story you, and other readers may find fascinanting. It has to do with Jobim. I was 14 years old, and one of my best friends from school, the son of a brazilian jazz musician ( on his spare time, since he was one of Sao Paulo's wealthiest man), took me to his home, as he had done before, many times. It was actually about 50 yards from mine. The reason he asked me to, was that he had just acquired a set of Ludwig drums (that was what Ringo Starr played, and the Beatles were, that year, the biggest act in the world). He was a year older than me and was solely into jazz, just like his dad, I knew that, but when he sat down and played to a Jobim recording, I just stood there, mesmerized at how well he accompannied the record. I asked him whether he could to the same with an Elvis song and he said he would, but added something to the effect that "proudly, there were no Elvis records in his house" which, for all practical purposes, sounded incredible to me, no matter what age he and I were, since up to that point I knew of no home that would not have had at least one Elvis 45 rpm, the result of a sister, an aunt, a dad, or a mother who adored his music. And I am talking about homes I had visited, as a result of my having lived already in, count them, Paraguay, Venezuela, Cuba, the US, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, and Brazil, that's 8 countries before I turned 15... I excused myself, said I would get one from my house, and I remember, vividly, running and, on the way, suiulataneously trying to sort out, in my mind, which 45 rpm record I could bring back to his house, so he could play over it. Incredibly, my sister had taken them all, to one of her friends' homes, to an island facing Santos, the port near Sao Paulo, or so I thought, until I caught a glimpse of a 45 rpm jacket under her bed. I picked it up, saw with dismay that it was the "Kissin Cousins" single, which I hated, but ran back to my friends's house anyways. It took me less than a minute to do, all that. When I got there, my friend was now playing the drums to the Beatles' "Till there was you" so you, and the other readers in this here thread, may imagine the feeling of embarrassement that I had inside of me, when I knew that not only I was at the home of a jazz aficionado, but that he was playing the drums to one of the most beautiful songs in the Beatles canon and that what I had to show for, was the terrible "Kissin Cousins". But I was in for quick lesson in what I now call "wishful thinking in reverse", for what my friend did, after the song ended, was first of all to ask me for the record (no one touched his dad's record player) and simply, and with some disdain, proceeded to introduce the 45rpm, without even actually looking at it, or caring which side it would play. To this day, on my usual trips to Sao Paulo, he thanks me for having gone out of my way on that day, when he discovered Elvis Presley, at his best. The song was "It hurts me"... And yes, Tony, Frank sings a bit of "Love Me Tender" and Elvis sings a bit of "Witchcraft", then they end the first of the two, tohether.
Jim, thanks for sharing that story.
Thanks Ted, and the lesson to be learned applied mainly to myself, as I, a rock aficionado, was unaware that in the flip side of "Kissing Cousins" was that Charlie Daniels-penned gem of a song. A few weeks after that, my sister and mother went in a trip around the world, so it was in fact only about a year later, when I was able to recount the story to my sister. Incredibly, she had no recollection of even having been anywhere near the "Kissin Cousins" single, since she had purchased the 45 after listening to "It hurts me" in a record store booth. She being a fan of Elvis ballads, she could care less about "Kissin Cousins" and, with personal record players being the size they were then, I had never listened to my sister, in her next door room, play "It hurst me". Incredible, isn't?