"If you strip away the myth from the man"

I have to agree with Aubrey that the later half of Rodman's article does seem somewhat miasmic. It's still an interesting read, but I think his stronger points lie in the first half of the article. And I think it's important to recognize the strength of Rodman's strongest argument: "I would argue that Elvis the artist is largely invisible today because [. . .] his music was never exclusively musical" (460). Rodman argues for Elvis the myth, neither Elvis the man, nor Elvis the musician. This is surely a compelling argument.

But Rodman's case against the fixation on Elvis's (purported) racism is more compelling still. He reminds the reader that Elvis was not just a white man singing black music, he was a musical miscegenist (474). It was in "mixing" black music with white music that he was at his most dangerous. That danger seems to be what was so appealing about him. It might not matter whether Elvis was a racist (as Aubrey asks, what does it say about us that we want to believe he was one?), but I wonder if it might not matter whether Elvis was white.

Rodman rightly places Elvis's whiteness as key to his success over the black artists whose music he appropriated. Inherent to his reminder that Elvis mixed black and white music to create a "new" rock 'n' roll is the idea that Elvis's success over the white artists whose music he appropriated was his "blackness." I recognize the extent to which Elvis's being white made him more readily marketable to a largely white audience, but as Rodman explains, it was not only white consumers who appreciated Elvis (Ibid). And as Guralnick demonstrates with his narrated recreations of Elvis concerts, Elvis consumers were not only music consumers.

This takes us back to Rodman's most strongly worded ("I argue that") thesis mentioned above, that Elvis is not as much a musician as a symbol of rock 'n' roll and of American popular culture at large. Does it matter whether the man was a racist? Whether the icon was a racist? Whether the start (or all) of rock 'n' roll was racist? Probably not. We can't "know," so why do we care? What does it get us to believe that he was and what does it get us to believe that he wasn't? 

It seems clear that Elvis took black music and made it, at least parts of it, popular with a lot of white folks. What is perhaps more relevant to Elvis and rock 'n' roll is the place of music and rock 'n' roll in this myth. Does it matter that Elvis was a musician and a rocker? Throughout Guralnick we see instances of Elvis's musical ability being thrashed. To my mind, Elvis was not a musician but a performer. He performed music, but at those concerts with shrieking fans, who could tell? What did Elvis as a rock 'n' roll star bring that other sexy rebellious entertainers, like James Dean, did not? Was it the music? Was it the blackness? Some other Otherness? Was it just the timing? Or was it just the je ne sais quoi of the man that's become a myth?