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Why Southerners Love Elvis

By Pamela Mays Decker, March 09, 2009 | Other

In 1936, a novel was published that captured the imaginations of millions. Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Gone With The Wind” – adapted into a blockbuster film in 1939 – portrayed the American South as a place of wealth and noble gentility where beautiful belles in hoop skirts dwelled in white-columned antebellum plantations and were pursued by handsome, gallant gentlemen suitors. In the mind’s eye of so many beyond the South, it was a land where we all sat on our breezeways shaded from the sultry sun, sipped mint juleps and danced gentle waltzes at the cotillion.

Bearing a stark contrast to those romanticized images were absurd rustic characters such as the farcical “Ma and Pa Kettle,” first appearing in a 1947 movie and then featured in about a dozen films from 1949 to 1957. Firmly cemented was the stereotype in complete diametric opposition to grandiloquent country gentry: the “hillbilly.” The archetypal hillbilly was a slow-witted, bumbling, lazy rural oaf to whom audiences could feel a smug sense of superiority. With their blatant exploitation of the classism that has existed in America for ages (a fact many would likely self-righteously deny), the movies did nothing to cultivate positive impressions of country folk – but they raked in beaucoup bucks (revenue for the entire series was estimated at a rather impressive $35 million).

Studies have long shown that people have widely formed their perceptions of Southerners from literature and the media – but especially from movies. Due to that apparent general inability to distinguish the concocted fantasy and escapist entertainment of movies from reality, the people of Appalachia and the Southeastern United States unfortunately became subjected to scathing bias spurred by the unflattering generalizations created and perpetuated by the mass media. Lost and forgotten in the chasm between exaggerated stereotypes of aristocratic, magnolia-blossom debutantes and the antithetical barefoot hayseed bumpkins were the many diverse, dynamic, real life individuals comprising the region’s populace. Among them were – and still are – a cross-section of decent, good-natured, industrious, intelligent, sturdy people with solid values who have felt largely dispossessed by these satirical and heavily-embellished depictions. Plainly stated, the media has traditionally not been kind to Southerners.

But by the mid-20th Century, a “flash” from Tupelo, Mississippi would detonate a cultural explosion that rocked the world, changing broadly held negative misconceptions of Southerners and eliciting an avalanche of seemingly universal adoration. Elvis’ significance to his fellow indigenes of the American South has always far transcended his music and his movies. It is more than simply an intense admiration; it is a deep connection and very real sense of kinship that so many throughout this region feel.

Elvis was not the progeny of nobility. Rather, he was the sole child of young, struggling parents living in the country’s most impoverished state. Compounding that plight was the fact he was born in an era of runaway economic stratification: the Great Depression. Author Elaine Dundy noted in her 2004 book, “Elvis and Gladys” that as a toddler, Elvis sat on his mother’s six-foot long tow sack as she dragged him up and down cotton rows while laboring during the autumn picking season. Among the harsh realities Elvis and his family shared with so many others of that collective circumstance were that survival was a matter of day-to-day struggle, material possessions were meager – and things of an incorporeal quality were embraced as an escape and salvation. Music and spirituality were so closely intertwined, at times one could not tell where one ended and the other began.

The music that emanated from front pews, front porches and back fields was a staple of the region’s majority descendants of sturdy Scots-Irish stock, of the African Americans brought here not of their own accord who had long been acquainted with grievous inequity and despair, and of those with Native American ancestry who for centuries have possessed an acutely supernatural connection with the land, but whose forebears had been so cruelly ripped away from it. Elvis was a product of the then oft-overlooked stratum of Southern society where different cultures met, co-existed and so frequently intermingled harmoniously. Shared hardships – including racial and classist discrimination – were a uniting force between many Southerners, black, white and “red.” It was in music that the embattled, the weary and the brokenhearted had a voice.

While shamefully, many elitist Southern political powerbrokers grandstanded in protest of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case declaring separate schools for black and white students unconstitutional, it would be through music that some of the first substantial cultural strides were made to bust down the walls of segregation.

While many retrospectively idealize the 1950’s in America as a time when white bread, suburbanite innocence prevailed and everyone was nice to one another, they have either been grossly misinformed or are practicing revisionist history. This, after all, was the heyday of the rabidity of McCarthyism. Bigotry, intolerance and exploitation of the weak and “underclass” had long been rampant practices nationwide. The introduction of child labor laws and the fight for fair wages, safe working conditions and for various civil liberties were not-so-distant memories – and there were many battles yet to fight as the Civil Rights Era was dawning. As unpalatable as the observation may be, the stark truth is that the country had long been controlled by wealthy, powerful white men of aristocratic lineage who, despite the nation’s ideals on paper, often did not put those ideals into practice.

Elvis’ emergence was a jolt to the straight-laced façade of innocence and tranquility of the day as he helped inject the daring musical fusion of Rockabilly into the national consciousness. However, his charisma and sincerity were more powerful than the futile, vicious attempts to demonize him. Those who resolved to resent and to disparage him as an insolent and unrefined hick wound up eating a heaping dish of Memphis-style deep fried crow. Even crooner Frank Sinatra, who harshly and very publicly lambasted his music as “rancid” and “deplorable” – mostly because he felt threatened by his soaring popularity – became a close friend, finding him to be “a warm, considerate and generous man.” As the world would quickly discover, there was nothing about Elvis that could be disliked or resisted as he insinuated himself into the lives and psyches of virtually everyone on the planet.

Elvis embodied the best of everything about the South: The gentle spirituality, the fervent passion, the gracious humility, the hospitable warmth, the engaging manner… and arguably, every element of what is commonly referred to as “Southern charm.” Elvis was the quintessential personification of Southern charm. Without intentionally setting forth to do so, he made Southerners proud to be from the South – while everyone else on earth wished they were too. For more than half a century – and despite his passing from this walk of life almost 32 years ago, he has prominently served as the world’s ambassador to the South.

Even underneath a layer of gold lamé and sequined jumpsuits, Elvis retained the heart, soul and essence of a country boy. And wherever he went, he took Southern culture right

Almo wrote on March 09, 2009
Excellent, well written article. These are the images of Elvis and all that he was and to many of us "still is", truly a beautiful person.
hound216 wrote on March 09, 2009
Really well written. This makes me proud to be a Son of the South; and yes, we Southerners DO feel a certain kinship with Elvis. But, then again, who doesn't?
Natha wrote on March 10, 2009
What a lovely read this is. Hope the rest of the USA will take the message to their heart and start appreciate him more. Sometimes I feel ashamed to see how they treat him with so much mockery. I for one am happy to read that the sentiment is not (so common) in the southern states.
PRESYER wrote on March 10, 2009
Hats off to You, Pamela Mays Decker ! Real nice and good reading.
samcra wrote on March 10, 2009
Wow!, very nice.
2kisses&3scarfs wrote on March 10, 2009
Just beautiful! So well written. What a great tribute to Elvis.
Pachakuti! wrote on March 11, 2009
This was written with joyful enthusiasm and ardent fervor, no doubt. There's a tendency to disadvantage rural areas. Concentration of wealth and globalization of poverty lead to the concept of one "global village" - the south, however, bears much less metropolitan arrogance, as is to be found on the West Coast or up North and would rather suit a king. The south had much more in common with Europe and it's culture (not to be confused with modern-day Europe, which has been age-of-reasoned through and through) - that is, before the Yankees took control. Fancy dresses for the ladies and the waltz, where did these things originate? Generalization is better off left avoided, but the South is still winner concerning sympathy. I hope Southerners will appreciate these kind words from Germany.
Ruthie wrote on March 14, 2009
What a lovely article. I really admire Pamela Mays Decker, the lady has hit the nail on the head. This article instantly brought back so many reasons why I love the south & why I enjoy taveling to Memphis. Elvis is alive there & so is the south. People are so charming & friendly. And I am not talking about people who wait on me & serve the tourist industry. I am talking about the average person riding the trolley who cares enough to ask about me & if I like the city. Where I am from, no one really cares if you like the city or anything for that matter! Yes, there is a definite charm about the south. And the more you know about Elvis, the more charming you realize he is.
mature_elvis_fan75 wrote on March 30, 2009
Nice article,thanks ruthie for the kind words,(im from south carolina)we try our best!