elvis paved the way for artists like ed sheeran (who?)

“DID YOU LOVE ELVIS PRESLEY?” That was the ques­tion that popped up on Quora on Friday and that I ig­nored over the weekend. It seems kinda dumb but this morning it caught my at­ten­tion again and I thought I’d check out what­ever an­swers had been posted in the past few days. One an­swer from a young man signed in as Zeek Street stood out from the others:

“I wasn’t born in that time pe­riod and I’m not much of a rock and roll sort of guy. How­ever, he was an in­no­vator in his own right and paved the way for artists like Ed Sheeran and the likes.” ¹

This is ac­tu­ally a fa­vorite topic of mine, al­though not a topic I have ad­dressed at any length in any of my es­says. Nonethe­less, I im­me­di­ately re­sponded to his comment:

“Zeek, most people—or maybe I should say ‘most record buyers’—do not now or ever did gen­uinely like gen­uine rock & roll. What most (white) record buyers like/liked was pop music with a beat and a little rhythm.”

To the orig­inal Quora ques­tion, “Did you love Elvis Presley?” I an­swered, What’s with the past tense “did”?

Fi­nally, to read the en­tire thread, click HERE.

FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page is of Elvis the Pelvis, Steve Allen, and Sher­lock This photo was taken during re­hearsal, prior to the broad­cast where Elvis was leg­en­darily an­gered or em­bar­rassed or hu­mil­i­ated by having to sing to a dog. He doesn’t look re­motely put off by the dog in this photo. As for Al­len’s get-up and props (10-gallon hat, 6-shooter, and fake guitar), Elvis also took part in his first and only comedy skit ti­tled “Range Roundup” with Allen, Imo­gene Coca, and Andy Grif­fith. ²

FOOTNOTES: 

1   Hah! I didn’t have to look up who Ed Sheeran is be­cause I saw the movie Yes­terday!

2   I sup­pose you could count Pres­ley’s per­for­mance with Frank Sinatra on the lat­ter’s 1960 tele­vi­sion spe­cial as a comedy skit of sorts.