Elvis Presley's Influence On African American Culture

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Elvis Presley,” the king of rock ’n’ roll”, always is the legendary icon in global music circles. “Elvis is the man with the raw, bluesy voice, in fact, white”, his ducktail, sexual dancing movement made him be different in 50s. Whenever he sang, always attract a brunch of girls, just like a male cat. So people also call him “The Hillbilly Cat”. “Elvis’s singing was not sexy, it was pornographic” (Hombach Jean-Pierre. P.18). “His closing line for the evening eviscerated the bad boy Elvis image (Williamson, p.55). Elvis is definitely a rebellious, sexy, wild and bad man. Marcie Wallace claimed that “Elvis’s talent broke the traditional racial barriers, he brought African American music to the white society and always challenged the moral values. Elvis shook his hips, thrust his pelvis, and danced passionately on stage, turned parents against his music. He also posed a threat to the values that white American society…show more content…
In verse 1, “Well, it's one for the money, Two for the show, Three to get ready, Now go, cat, go”, it used a rhyme to start it out and “man” replaced by “cat” . In verse 3 and 6, “you can knock me down, step in my face, slander my name, all over the place”, “you can burn my house, steal my car, drink my liquor” emphasizing you can do anything, even hurt me, but one thing you cannot is “step on my blue suede shoe” and “stay off of my blue suede shoes”. They try to illustrate that a boy would rank a shoes over his girlfriend. Generally, men should be gentle to female however this action is totally a rebellion for men to be bad and subverted the value of gender. Obviously, it is about attitude, those tease and shoes as the metaphor which is about he did not care what people did to him, except stepping on his blue music, only blue music is irreplaceable and more worth than cars, face, name,
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