Elvis: the White Man's Black Man.
No wonder they didn't like his hip gyrations. It wasn't so much the 'sexual suggestiveness', the 'improper motion', the 'lewdness'.
More than that, the importation of Black relaxation about such things. By 'Black', of course, we don't refer to the ministers and Christian church goers whose propriety was as buttoned-down as any Danbury, Connecticut, White Episcopalian -- even though the Gospel enthusiasms did sweat and did sway and did yearn for promised release.
The 'Black' providing worry in the 50s meant those cut loose from any White regard -- born into that disregard, that use-value-only, that exploitation, that mean spot. Their movement seemed a psychic danger, for sure.
How far a racist imagination from musical body motion, dance, wild dance, to other body motions? What would slave holders have bequeathed and their embittered scions carry in terms of past power? The seigneurial fruits of 'first coition', the jiggle and wiggle of lynchings?
One thing to muse over such heritage, glass of Jack in the hand, another to see it brought to light, dance-released, vinyl-repeated, toyed with joyously by your children.
Elvis: the Black Man's White Man.
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