hound dog

Elvis: What Did Black Artists of the Era Really Think of Presley?

Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic shows the singer in harmony with artists such as B.B. King and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But how true is that portrayal?
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In 1994, Ray Charles sat down for an interview with NBC’s Bob Costas and gave a scathing critique of Elvis Presley. “To say that Elvis was so great and so outstanding, like he’s the king…the king of what?” Charles said. “I know too many artists that are far greater”—singers like Nat King Cole, who got assaulted by white audiences for performing rock music, while Elvis received widespread acclaim. “He was doing our kind of music,” Charles said. “So what the hell am I supposed to get so excited about?”

That lacerating sound bite, which went viral in 2020 and twice again this year, sums up a long-held stance against Presley. To some, he was not an extraordinary musical force, but rather a lucky culture vulture who made his name by copying moves from Black artists and covering their songs. Presley, by virtue of his whiteness, profited in ways that Black rock originators never could, and was called the “king” of the genre along the way. 

It’s a topic that the new biopic Elvis, directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring a hypnotic Austin Butler, tackles from the side. In the film, Luhrmann highlights artists such as Big Mama Thornton, who sang the original “Hound Dog”; Little Richard, an actual rock originator; Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the electric guitar pioneer; and B.B. King, the blues superstar who had a long, close friendship with Presley. In the film, Presley is in harmony with the Black community. He goes to shows by Black artists, strolls peacefully along Beale Street in Memphis, and goes suit shopping with King. It’s all roses, no thorns. Presley’s only critics are racist white authority figures and white journalists who find his work provocative because of its proximity to Blackness.  

But is that the truth of the era? Elvis takes great care to show the origins of the singer’s musical stylings, putting the spotlight on the Black artists who inspired him. It also shows how Presley felt about these musicians (reverent, awestruck), but stops short of showing how they felt about him. Did Big Mama Thornton have an opinion about Presley becoming a superstar by covering her hit song? Similarly, did Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Little Richard care about Presley mimicking their styles for the masses? Was B.B. King really such a big advocate for the future superstar? 

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

The truth about these questions, it turns out, runs the gamut. It’s true that Presley grew up in a poor, mostly Black neighborhood in Tupelo, Mississippi, and, in his youth, attended the Black churches that inspired his deep love of gospel music. As a teenager, when his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, he would go to the East Trigg Avenue Baptist Church and attend services by Rev. Herbert Brewster, a common pastime for rebellious white teens in the area, according to music writer and filmmaker Nelson George, who worked as a consultant on Elvis. While doing his research, George interviewed numerous Black people who knew Presley when he was young. What did they say? “That he was this weird little white kid,” George told Mojo Media with a laugh. “Elvis was an outlier.”

The movie also accurately portrays Presley’s relationship with B.B. King (played by Kelvin Harrison Jr.). In a 1996 interview with Charlie Rose, the blues icon remembered seeing the singer in the studio in the early 1950s, before he was a star. “He was okay,” King said of Presley’s early output. But as Presley developed, he “started to turn heads, including mine. He had everything. The looks, the talent.” The duo became friendly. As he became more successful, Presley would also help King land gigs. And over the years, King would defend his friend from accusations of cultural theft. “Music is owned by the whole universe,” King said in a 2010 interview. “It isn’t exclusive to the Black man or the white man or any other color.” In his 1996 autobiography, Blues All Around Me, King wrote, “Elvis didn’t steal any music from anyone. He just had his own interpretation of the music he’d grown up on, same is true for everyone. I think Elvis had integrity.”

Little Richard (played by Alton Mason), however, had a differing view from King. In a 1990 interview with Rolling Stone, the architect of rock and roll spoke frankly about how Presley’s whiteness helped his career. “If Elvis had been Black, he wouldn’t have been as big as he was,” Richard said. “If I was white, do you know how huge I’d be? If I was white, I’d be able to sit on top of the White House! A lot of things they would do for Elvis and Pat Boone, they wouldn’t do for me.” 

But Richard did credit Presley—and Boone, who covered Richard’s hit “Tutti Frutti” to great acclaim—with helping introduce rock music to white audiences, which benefited some Black artists. He was also friends with Presley, speaking fondly of the singer after his death in 1977. “I love him. That’s my buddy, my baby,” Richard once said. “Elvis is one of the greatest performers who ever lived in this world.”

Though Richard firmly credited himself as the architect of rock and roll in that Rolling Stone interview, he also paid homage to Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The gospel singer (played in Elvis by Yola), who pioneered the use of the electric guitar, was the godmother of rock and also an early influence on Presley. “Elvis loved Sister Rosetta,” said Gordon Stoker, a vocalist for the Jordanaires—a group that sang for both Tharpe and Presley—in Rolling Stone. Presley was especially impressed by the way Tharpe played the guitar. “That’s what really attracted Elvis: her pickin’. He liked her singing, but he liked that pickin’ first—because it was so different.” 

But because Presley was designated the king of rock and roll, Tharpe’s influence was overshadowed in popular culture for decades. Even worse, some critics assumed she was copying him, rather than the other way around. In 1970, Tharpe performed at the American Folk, Blues and Gospel Festival in London and was described by one critic as “so rhythmically exciting that when she accompanies herself on guitar she might be a Blacked-up Elvis in drag,” according to Gayle Wald, author of the autobiography Shout, Sister, Shout! The book doesn’t note how Sister Rosetta felt about that review, nor how she felt about Presley specifically. 

But while Tharpe’s opinion is more of a mystery, Big Mama Thornton’s is less so. In 1953 the singer (portrayed by Shonka Dukureh in Elvis) released “Hound Dog,” written specifically for her by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wanted to showcase Thornton’s booming voice and bawdy personality. Her definitive version of the song was a hit, quickly selling half a million records. A few years later, Presley recorded a cover and sold millions, overshadowing Thornton. To make matters worse, Thornton barely made any money off the song. “I got one check for $500 and never saw another,” she once said.

She soon became embittered by Presley’s success, according to biographer Michael Spörke, who wrote Big Mama Thornton: The Life and Music. During a 1969 performance at the Newport Folk Festival, she referred to “Hound Dog” as “the record I made Elvis Presley rich on.” At another concert, she called it “a song I got robbed of.” At yet another, she launched into the song, then stopped, turning around and glaring at her drummer. “This ain’t no Elvis Presley song, son,” she said, according to Spörke. She then kicked the drummer off his seat and showed him the right way to play it, giving him a lesson in front of the audience. This was apparently a regular occurrence, a theatrical way for Thornton to pull the song out from under Presley’s shadow—long before Lurhmann, or anyone else, tried to do it for her.