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The Musical Characteristics of
Elvis Presley
The Government of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region
Education Bureau
2009
The Musical Characteristics of Elvis Presley
Michael Saffle
© Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. All rights reserved. No part of
this publication can be reproduced in any form or by any means, or otherwise, without the prior
written consent of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Content
1 Elvis: An Introduction 1
2 Elvis as a Performer: A Summary 4
3 Five Representative Songs as Sung by Elvis Presley 5
3.1 “Hound Dog” (1956) 5
3.2 “Baby, Let’s Play House” (1955) 9
3.3 “It’s Now or Never” (1960) 12
3.4 “Crying in the Chapel” (1960) 14
3.5 “Suspicious Minds” (1969) 16
4 Elvis: Concluding Observations 18
5 Listening Materials 20
6 Reading List 20
7 References for Further Study 21
8 Appendix 23
(Blank Page)
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1 Elvis: An Introduction
Elvis Presley was more influential as a performer, and only as a performer, than
any other musician in world history. In some respects Elvis resembled other influential
performers, including the famous Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) and
the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt (1811-1886). Like them Elvis was ‘wild’: an
exciting, charismatic, and enormously successful performer. Liszt was the first
European performer to attract groupies: young women who followed him wherever he
went. Elvis also had his groupies, thousands of them. Unlike Liszt and Paganini,
however, Elvis did not compose any of his own music. Yet the ways in which he
performed the songs he sang, all of them written by other people, transformed
twentieth-century popular music worldwide. As John Lennon, a member of the Beatles,
once said: “Before Elvis there was nothing.” Insofar as the history of rock music goes,
Lennon was more or less correct.
Elvis was born Elvis Aron (or ‘Aaron’) Presley on 8 January 1935 in Tupelo,
Mississippi, a small town in the Deep South of the United States. Elvis’s family was
poor; his father was often unemployed and once went to jail for fraud. Except for a
little instruction on the guitar, Elvis was entirely self-taught as a performer. As a child
he listened mostly to gospel music and later sang in several gospel choirs as a member
of the First Assembly of God Church. He also listened to the hillbilly music associated
with poor white Southerners and their social problems. In 1948 the Presley family
moved to Memphis, Tennessee, a good-sized city famous for Beale Street, a four-
block-long collection of hotels, bars, restaurants, and other venues for Black (African
American) music-making. After graduating from high school in 1952, Elvis took a job
driving a truck. Two years later, in 1954, he came to the attention of Sam Phillips,
owner of Sun Records. In June of that year Elvis—together with local musicians
Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass)—recorded “That’s All Right, Mama” and
several other numbers. Until then, Elvis had sung in public only occasionally and
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mostly for friends. Suddenly his recordings caught on; their blend of Black and White
(Caucasian American) musical elements, combined with his unusually flexible and
playful vocal style, rapidly transformed American popular music and led to the global
success of rock. Almost before he knew it, Elvis was travelling throughout the
American South giving concerts. By the end of 1956, unquestionably the most
important year of his professional life, he had appeared a dozen times on national
television and sold millions of records. The same year Elvis became a movie star when
he appeared in Love Me Tender, the first in a long series of motion pictures; the film’s
title was taken from a song he had recorded the previous year. Meanwhile his powerful
stage presence challenged the values of many conservative Americans, who perceived
his glamorous bad-boy appeal as ‘dangerous’.
Although Loving You (1957), Jailhouse Rock (1957), and Kid Creole (1958)
earned money for their producers, the songs Elvis recorded for their soundtracks failed
to achieve critical acclaim. After serving in the army for two years (1958-1960), Elvis
made movies and records with gradually diminishing success. Furthermore, even such
hits as “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and “It’s Now or Never”, which he recorded
after returning to civilian life, marked Elvis’s willingness to retreat from more
‘dangerous’ and culturally challenging music, and to adopt a more familiar and
conventional performing style.
The so-called British Invasion of American pop in 1963-1964 and the
subsequent success of younger stars, including the Beatles, temporarily ended Elvis’s
fame as an innovative musician. In 1968, however, he staged a comeback, performing
many of his older songs live before a small, informal audience. This performance,
televised throughout the United States and known today as the Singer Special (because
the programme was sponsored by the Singer Sewing Machine Company), revitalised
Elvis’s reputation. So did “In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds”, hit songs he
recorded in 1969 and his first hits since the early 1960s. Unfortunately, these songs
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and a few gospel albums—especially How Great Thou Art (1967), which won a
Grammy Award, the highest honour the American music industry bestows on
performers—marked the end of Elvis as a musical innovator.
The rest of Elvis’s professional life was spent touring the United States and
performing in Las Vegas. After 1972 his performances became increasingly erratic,
perhaps because he was divorced by his wife, Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, after five
years of marriage. Elvis’s health deteriorated, in part because he gained a great deal of
weight. It was his abuse of prescription drugs, however, that led to his death in
Memphis on 16 August 1977. Oddly enough, Elvis’s death revived his fame. Today he
remains a hero to millions of people around the world.
As a performer Elvis was most innovative at the beginning (between 1954-1958)
and toward the end (1967-1972) of his career. He made his reputation mostly as a
recording artist, but he was even more exciting in live performance; on stage, his
famous smile, snarl, and gyrations, together with the unusual clothes he wore and his
teasing personality, transformed demure young women as well as their middle-aged
mothers into screaming hysterics. Elvis’s career as a movie star mostly damaged his
reputation as a musician. Although a few of his earliest films, including Jailhouse
Rock, featured him as a successful actor or actor-singer, his later films were less
successful and some were musical and financial disasters. Ironically, Elvis actually
improved as a singer throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. “Burning Love”, one of
his few post-1960s hits, demonstrates his ever-increasing vocal skill as well as his life-
long dramatic ability to ‘put a song across’. After establishing himself in Las Vegas,
Elvis employed larger and larger groups of instrumentalists and vocalists as
accompanists. His successes during the early 1970s—based in part on his live
performances with these ensembles, in part on his increasingly outrageous costumes—
contributed to the rise of glam rock as a musical movement. In a similar way, the
black-leather jumpsuit he wore for the “Singer Special” continues to influence the way
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rock musicians dress today. Some people even credit Elvis with ‘launching’ the Goth
style or movement, in which men and women dress primarily or even entirely in black.
2 Elvis as a Performer: A Summary
Elvis was most influential as a Southern White singer who introduced audiences
throughout the United States and around the world to Black American music,
especially to rock ‘n’ roll, a form of rhythm and blues. He was also influential because
he combined in his performances elements from different American singing styles,
including gospel, rockabilly, hillbilly (sometimes called country-western) and
‘standard’ pop numbers; he even employed bel canto singing in a few songs borrowed
from Italian music. His stage persona was extremely influential; he simultaneously
glamorised rock music and made it seem ‘dangerous’, inspiring aspects of punk rock
in the 1970s. Later, his performances as a touring artist and a Las Vegas entertainer
contributed to the birth of glam rock.
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3. Five Representative Songs as Sung by
Elvis Presley
3.1 “Hound Dog” (1956)
The most important influence on Elvis’s career, and his most important
influence on popular culture, was rhythm and blues. Known as rock ‘n’ roll, especially
when sung and played by Asian, European, or European-American musicians, the term
‘rhythm and blues’ is reserved today for music sung and played by Black artists.
Many of Elvis’s most successful recordings, especially at the beginning of his career,
were rock ‘n’ roll numbers based on the so-called twelve-bar blues. Musically the
blues is based on a sequence of chords. These chords accompany stories of many kinds:
mostly sad and even tragic, but occasionally light-hearted and even humorous.
Verbally the blues consists of a series of three- or four-line verses; together these
verses comprise the lyrics or complete text of the song. In each three-line verse, each
line is set to four bars of music, the first two lines are more or less identical, while the
third line differs from the other two but rhymes with them. In four-line verses, each
line may contain different words but often at least two lines rhyme with each other. A
good example of the twelve-bar blues in terms both of music and three-line verse is the
opening chorus from “Hound Dog”, one of Elvis’s early influential hits:
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.
You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.
In “Hound Dog”, the words “You ain’t nothing but a” function rhythmically as a
clustered upbeat before bars 1 and 5 of the music begin; the words “You ain’t”
function the same way before the beginning of bar 9. The downbeat in bars 1 and 5
falls on “Hound”, while in bar 9 it falls on “never”:
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Clustered upbeat You ain’t nothing but a
bars 1-4 hound dog, cryin’ all the time … You ain’t nothing but a
bars 5-8 hound dog, cryin’ all the time … You ain’t
bars 9-12 never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.
The music that supports the first line of “Hound Dog”, or of any traditional
blues chorus, begins with a tonic chord and ends by adding a seventh to that chord,
giving the altered chord a dominant-seventh ‘feel’ (I-I7). The music that supports the
second line moves from a subdominant chord (with or without an added seventh) back
to the tonic (IV(7)-I). The music that supports the third line moves from a dominant
chord with added seventh back to the tonic; sometimes, in the middle of such lines, a
subdominant chord, often with an added seventh, appears between the two chords (V7-
(IV7)-I).
In discussing numbers like “Hound Dog”, people sometimes speak of three-
chord songs and even of three-chord players, implying that rock-‘n’-roll artists can’t
play anything more harmonically complicated. Although rhythm and blues also gave
birth during the mid-1960s to rock, much of which is more harmonically complex than
anything Elvis recorded, the popularity, simplicity, and energy of “Hound Dog” and
other blues-based numbers helped launch punk rock in early 1970s England and the
United States. Punk rockers like Johnny Rotten, of the Sex Pistols, prided themselves
on playing “nothing more than what Elvis had played”.
Elvis recorded other blues-based songs, but not all of them are put together in
precisely the same way as “Hound Dog”. “That’s All Right, Mama”, for example, is
blues-based but ‘altered’: a 10-bar blues. In this song, the words that would normally
have occupied bars 1-4 are more plentiful and take up more ‘time’ before the harmonic
shift from I-I7. The music that would have occupied bars 5-12 and especially 5-8, on
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the other hand, is ‘shorter’, compressed in time, in part because there are far fewer
words in lines 2-3:
bars 1-4 Well, that’s all right, mama; that’s all right for you; that’s all right,
mama, just any way you do.
bars 5-6 That’s all right, that’s all right,
bars 7-10 That’s all right now, mama; any way you do.
Throughout the song, however, the twelve-bar blues harmonic pattern holds true.
“Heartbreak Hotel”, another blues-based song, is built from a four-line verse.
The first two lines of words are about the same length; they rhyme with each other,
and each line takes up the same amount of musical ‘space’ (bars 1-4 and 5-8). What
would have been the third line (bars 9-12) in a twelve-bar blues song, however, is
‘stretched’ in “Heartbreak Hotel” to occupy four additional bars (9-16), with some air
in the last double of measures:
bars 1-4 (I- ) Well, since my baby left me, well I’ve found a new place
to dwell.
bars 5-8 (I-I7) Well, it’s down at the end of Lonely Street at Heartbreak
Hotel.
bars 9-12 (IV- ) Because I’m so lonely, baby, well, I’m so lonely,
bars 13-16 (V7-I) I’m so lonely I could die.
Again, however, the basic blues harmonic pattern holds true.
The other important aspect of rock ‘n’ roll songs like “Hound Dog” is their
vigour. Known today as rock grooves, the percussive accompaniments typical of such
songs put the ‘rhythm’ in rhythm-and-blues numbers. Furthermore, rock-groove
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rhythms are almost always syncopated. Normally, beats 1 and 3 are emphasised in
four-beat bars of music. In almost every rock ‘n’ roll song, however, beats 2 and 4 are
emphasised. Some experts consider a syncopated groove the single most characteristic
element in every kind of rock. In “Hound Dog”, snare drums provide a regular beat
and fill up ‘empty’ musical space or air between choruses, but the song’s syncopated
rhythm is accomplished largely through hand-clapping.
In addition to rhythmic syncopation in “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel”,
Elvis’s intense and slightly ‘wild’ style of singing is important. Coon shouters were
European-American musicians of the late 1800s and early 1900s who specialised in
especially vigorous ‘black’ vocal performances; the word ‘coon’ is a derogatory term
for ‘black’. In “Hound Dog” and other rock-‘n’-roll numbers, Elvis presents himself as
a coon shouter, although a comparatively sweet-voiced and gentle one. A baritone in
terms of vocal range and chest voice, he pushes the upper limit of his range in “Hound
Dog”. This makes the music sound more exciting. Elvis also ‘mispronounces’ some
words to suggest a southern and possibly black dialect: ‘nothin’ instead of ‘nothing’,
for example, and ‘cryin’ instead of ‘crying’. Finally, the lyrics of “Hound Dog”
incorporate poor or dialect grammar: ‘ain’t’ for ‘aren’t’. All these stylistic gestures
give the song a distinctively uneducated rural and possibly African-American sound
that suggests the poorer but perhaps more vital American South.
In other words, the most important aspects of “Hound Dog” and other of Elvis’s
most influential early numbers are the African-American elements incorporated in
them. Rhythm and blues had existed for several decades before Elvis began to perform,
but until the 1950s it had remained the cultural property of Black artists. Legally
discriminated against by most white Americans until the 1960s, Blacks kept largely to
themselves, and race music (as rhythm and blues came to be known especially in the
South, where anti-Black feelings were especially intense) was forbidden listening for
most white teenagers. In fact, “Hound Dog” was originally recorded in 1952 by Willie
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Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, a talented African-American coon shouter. Embraced by
Black listeners, Thornton’s performance had little impact among southern Whites or
anywhere outside the South. Elvis successfully covered (or re-recorded) “Hound Dog”
four years later. In doing this, Elvis did something no one had done before him: he
managed to sound Black even though he was ethnically White. His performance of
“Hound Dog” quickly achieved almost legendary success with Black as well as White
listeners everywhere.
Many of Elvis’s most successful songs resemble “Hound Dog” in most or even
all of the ways described above. One of these songs is “Jailhouse Rock”: a twelve-bar
blues-based number that tells a characteristically ‘black’ story about prison life.
Another is “That’s All Right, Mama”, Elvis’s very first commercial recording. “That’s
All Right, Mama” is based on a modified twelve-bar blues; Elvis sings this song in a
gentler style and without a rock-groove accompaniment. Even “Blue Moon of
Kentucky”, a country song, is blues-based. Furthermore, Elvis sings this number—and
especially the choruses—in an aggressive, ‘black’ style.
3.2 “Baby, Let’s Play House” (1955)
In addition to growing up with gospel music and rhythm and blues, Elvis
listened to and learned how to sing rockabilly: a musical style that combines aspects of
the twelve-bar blues and a few other features of African-American music with the
hillbilly vocal sounds of such Caucasian-American country artists as Hank Williams.
A derogatory term for poor, uneducated men and women living in the Appalachian
Mountains, Ozarks, and southern lowlands of the United States, ‘hillbilly’ referred
musically during Elvis’s childhood and youth to the kinds of songs sung at the Grand
Ole Opry and other country-western entertainment centres and shows in America’s
Deep South. ‘Opry’ songs were always about one of four subjects: God, prison, lost
love, and death. Some of the most successful rockabilly and Opry stars became famous
because they could yodel as well as sing. Yodelling involves shifting quickly back and
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forth between ‘normal’ singing and falsetto singing (or head voice), producing a
bubbling, shaking sound especially popular among the singing cowboys of 1940s
Hollywood ‘Western’ movies. Other country and rockabilly artists played the violin or
banjo, wore cowboy hats, or told jokes.
In “Baby, Let’s Play House”, Elvis doesn’t yodel, but he comes close. In
addition to tipping and popping repeatedly on the word ‘baby’ at the very beginning of
the recording, he also ‘throws’ his voice upward in pitch, producing a vocal break that
suggests yodelling and sounds extremely playful. When Elvis sings about ‘school’, his
high-pitched voice sounds youthful, even baby-like. In other parts of the song,
however, he employs a firmer, lower-pitched, and less playful vocal style. In fact,
when he sings that he’d ‘rather see you dead than in the arms of another man’, he
sounds much more serious, even threatening. Performed without an emphatic
percussive accompaniment—only the bass guitar suggests a regular or ‘drum-like’
beat—“Baby, Let’s Play House” embodies the ‘natural’ freedom and sounds of the
hillbilly and rockabilly styles. Yet the bass-guitar line is subtly syncopated, and the use
of an electrically amplified bass-guitar part is typical of the ‘new’ sound of rock ‘n’
roll. Other aspects of Black music can also be found in “Baby, Let’s Play House”.
Occasionally, for example, Elvis shouts ‘Yeah!’ as an accompaniment to his
companions’ instrumental break.
Finally, Elvis’s playful shift between more sweetly sung verses and more
relentlessly rhythmic (but ‘yodel’-like) repetitions of single syllables provides an
ironic commentary on, or a subtext for, the song’s message. To ‘play house’ in
American slang is to play a children’s game. In this context, young boys and girls who
‘play house’ pretend to be fathers and mothers, using dolls as ‘children’. The phrase
suggests innocence and fun. When adults ‘play house’, on the other hand, they either
marry or to live together out of wedlock. Parts of “Baby, Let’s Play House”, as sung
by Elvis, threaten the women to whom it is sung with punishment if she looks at
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another man. Obviously Elvis and the imaginary woman to whom he sings are not
married. At the same time, other parts of the song feature Elvis as a playful, even
childlike performer. It was his ability to move effortlessly between popping and
tipping passages, smooth melodic passages, and darker, more threatening passages that
made Elvis’s early performances so remarkable. All these factors made this “Baby,
Let’s Play House” of his musically most successful recordings.
Elvis uses tipping and popping in other songs, including “Heartbreak Hotel”. In
that song, however, the ‘bubbling’ sounds he produces sound more like weeping. At
the beginning of “Heartbreak Hotel”, he shouts, then allows his voice to sink almost
into silence as well as toward the bottom of his vocal range as he ‘cries’ over and over
again about how lonely he is. Elvis’s dramatic ability was apparent only occasionally
in the movies he made. In songs like “That’s All Right, Mama” and “Heartbreak
Hotel”, however, he demonstrates enormous skill as a musical dramatist.
After he left Sun and moved to RCA Victor, Elvis quit singing rockabilly; it
was too much associated with poor Southerners to be popular in the more affluent
North. Aspects of rockabilly, however, appear in many of his recordings, including “A
Big Hunk o’ Love”, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”, and “Let’s Have a Party”. “A
Big Hunk o’ Love” features Elvis’s playful, vocally bouncing sound and includes a
tinkly honky-tonk piano as one of its backup (or supporting) instruments. “I Forgot to
Remember to Forget” is a typical hillbilly or rockabilly song in its subject matter (an
abandoned lover), its all-acoustic string accompaniment, and its semi-yodelling vocal
moments. This song, like “Baby, Let’s Play House”, was recorded at Sun Studios.
“Let’s Have a Party”, a later number, is sung by Elvis in a smoother and sweeter style.
At the same time, it features bouncing vocal moment as well as a characteristic
hillbilly instrumental sound: that of a steel guitar, which is featured in the instrumental
break more than halfway through the number. Finally, Elvis once recorded an actual
‘yodel’ song: “Wooden Heart”, an imitation Central European folk song.
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Unfortunately, “Wooden Heart” is one of his least successful (and least playful)
performances, partially sung for some reason in over-pronounced English and partially
in poorly pronounced German.
3.3 “It’s Now or Never”(1960)
Some of Elvis’s predecessors and contemporaries—including Mario Lanza,
Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra—made their reputations throughout the 1940s, 1950s,
and early 1960s singing passionate Italian love songs. They sang these songs in the
full-throated vocal style known as bel canto (beautiful singing). Much nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century opera, including the works of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi,
employs this style; a famous example of bel canto melody is “Nessun dorma” (None
shall sleep) from Puccini’s Turandot. Today most people think of Elvis as a rock-‘n’-
roller, or possibly as a movie star, but “It’s Now or Never”, recorded shortly after he
left the army, demonstrates his ability to sing beautifully and even ‘classically’ in an
arrangement of the Neapolitan melody “O sole mio” (O Lonely Me’).
“It’s Now or Never” exemplifies a most important fact: that, after his early rock
‘n’ roll years, Elvis’s fame rested as much or more on how he sang a song than on
what kind of song it was. Unlike “Hound Dog”, “Now or Never” was a conventional
song by early 1960s American standards. It consists almost entirely of a 16-bar chorus
and verse, both based on a familiar tune. After a brief instrumental introduction, Elvis
begins with the chorus:
A bars 1-4: It’s now or never, come hold me tight!
A1 bars 4-8: Kiss me, my darling; be mine tonight.
B bars 9-12: Tomorrow will be too late.
A2 bars 13-16: It’s now or never: my love won’t wait.
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The first verse, which begins with the words “When I first saw you”, is followed by a
repetition of the chorus; this is followed by the second verse, which begins with the
words “Just like a willow”. The song concludes with a second repetition of the chorus
and a coda based on the chorus’s last line. Nothing about the melodic or harmonic
structure of this song is at all unusual, although in this case the music for each ‘A’
phrase of the chorus is somewhat different. Hence the symbols ‘A1’ and ‘A2’ in the
brief outline above. What is unusual is the way Elvis sings this song: in a strikingly
handsome and heart-felt manner.
In “Now or Never”, Elvis is accompanied—as he was throughout most of his
career—by an orchestra and chorus of supporting musicians, not simply by a couple of
guitar players or a small rockabilly band. The use in “Now or Never” of a mandolin, a
small guitar-like instrument associated with Italian folk music, to provide local colour,
is a nice touch. On the other hand, the drums used in “Now or Never” provide a
syncopated groove unnecessary in a gentle love song. After he became established as
an RCA Victor ‘star’, Elvis’s songs were mostly chosen for him by Colonel Tom
Parker, his manager, and the accompaniments that supported Elvis on RCA Victor LPs
were arranged by studio musicians he often didn’t know. Occasionally, as in “Now or
Never”, the overall musical result is not entirely fortunate.
Other songs in which Elvis sang smoothly and even beautifully include “Are
you Lonesome Tonight?” and “Love Me Tender”. In the second of these songs, Elvis
accompanies himself on acoustic guitar. His performance suggests the intimacy of folk
music—a fact important insofar as his career was concerned, because the Folk Revival
of the 1950s and early 1960s created a large audience in England and the United States
for gentler music that carried a ‘message’ (here, the beauty of true love). Furthermore,
“Love Me Tender” was arranged from a well-known American college song, “Aura
Lee”, itself based on a nineteenth-century melody. On the other hand, “Are you
Lonesome Tonight?” is less folk-like than country-western, and Elvis sings it slightly
14
less smoothly, using vocal inflections that hint at the tipping and popping of “Baby,
Let’s Play House”. “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” was originally recorded in 1960. In
the live-performance version, however—recorded in 1977, shortly before his death,
and preserved on Elvis: The King (disk 2, track 9)—Elvis breaks into laughter midway
through the song. Unable to stop laughing, he transforms a sad country-western
number into a stand-up comedy routine. His inability to stop laughing is typical of the
last few, less-successful years of his performing career.
3.4 “Crying in the Chapel” (1960)
Elvis was raised on gospel music and made a name for himself as a gospel
performer. In spite of this, his two albums of gospel music, although artistically
successful, were recorded late in his career and never achieved the popularity of his
rock-‘n’-roll hits. The deep feeling and stylistic freedom of gospel singing, however,
are what make songs such as “Heartbreak Hotel” so powerful.
After his career was well underway, Elvis covered a few ‘classic’ gospel
numbers. Perhaps the best known and most successful of these songs is “Crying in the
Chapel”. Originally recorded in the early 1950s by Sonny Till and the Orioles, a Black
gospel ensemble, “Crying in the Chapel” combines religious faith with the sadness of
everyday life. In the Orioles’ performance the song can be listened to either as gospel
or as doo-wop, a term associated with much of the music recorded by Black vocal
ensembles during the 1940s and 1950s. Doo-wop refers most often to vigorous and
cheerful popular music sung in close harmony and often without accompaniment of
any kind. Most doo-wop lyrics describe love-making and partying, although some are
less playful.
“Crying in the Chapel”, with its suggestion of disappointed love as well as
Christian ‘message’, is perhaps the most famous example of this last kind of doo-wop,
at least as sung by the Orioles. Elvis, on the other hand, sings this song as a solo and
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with quiet sincerity. Instead of striving for a pure bel canto sound, however, he allows
his voice to flutter and waver in order to project both sadness and strong religious
feeling. For centuries, America gospel singing has inspired musically inventive
expressions of faith. Gospel singers are expected to do more than merely ‘read the
notes’, and much Black gospel singing is so improvisational, so heavily ornamented
that even the most familiar melodies often disappear inside clouds of added notes,
vocal ‘swoops’ and ‘bends’, and pauses for dramatic effect.
Although ‘inspirational’ (and written to be performed in a variety of ways),
most gospel melodies resemble pop-song tunes and are equally limited in vocal range.
“Crying in the Chapel”, for example, is built from a single 32-bar chorus (or full
musical period). Like almost all 32-bar tunes, it consists of two eight-measure phrases,
the second more or less a repetition of the first. These are followed by a contrasting
bridge phrase, also eight measures long. Finally, the tune ends with a third repetition
or near-repetition of the initial eight-measure phrase. Thus: AABA, where ‘A’
represents repeated melodic material and ‘B’ the melodic bridge:
A bars 1-4 You saw me crying in the chapel; the tears I shed were
tears of joy.
bars 5-8 I know the meaning of contentment; now I’m happy with
the Lord.
A bars 9-12 Just a plain and simple chapel, where humble people go to
pray;
bars 12-16 I pray the Lord that we grow stronger, as I live from day to
day.
B bars 17-20 I searched and I searched but I couldn’t find;
bars 21-24 No way on earth to gain peace of mind.
A bars 25-28 Now I’m happy in the chapel, where people are of one
accord;
bars 29-32 Yes, we gather in the chapel just to sing and praise the
Lord.
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In a few places the three principal chords—subdominant, dominant, and tonic—used
throughout “Crying in the Chapel” are supplemented with additional chords, including
a secondary dominant (V/V) chord that accompanies the words “No way on earth” in
bars 21-22. Finally, in Elvis’s performance of “Crying in the Chapel”, a vocal
quartet—the Jordanaires—and a quiet instrumental ensemble that includes piano are
employed as accompaniment. The piano itself suggests gospel music, because pianos
(or pianos paired with organs) have been employed in both Black and White gospel
churches since the 1930s.
Although Elvis mostly recorded blues and rockabilly numbers early in his
career, he made his reputation as a movie musician singing 32-bar ‘pop’ songs. Even
“Suspicious Minds”, perhaps his finest and most influential later performance, is ‘pop’
rather than blues, rockabilly, gospel, or rock ‘n’ roll. Elvis’s early 1960s reputation as
a ‘pop’ singer may have been responsible for the delayed release of “Crying in the
Chapel”. Although recorded by Elvis in 1960, the RCA version wasn’t distributed
until 1965. (An earlier recording of this song by Elvis, released on Sun Records, is
more or less unknown today.) Other gospel numbers recorded by Elvis in 1960—
including “Swing Down, Sweet Chariot”, “Milky White Way”, and “In My Father’s
House”—were released in 1961 on His Hand in Mine, Elvis’s first all-gospel album.
3.5 “Suspicious Minds” (1969)
In spite of the emotional conviction of his performance, one of the finest of his
career, Elvis’s recording of “Suspicious Minds” is more about entertainment than
musical innovation. While the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, the Grateful
Dead, and the Mothers of Invention were exploring new ways of making music and
addressing issues (including psychedelic drugs) important to America’s counter-
culture, mainstream 1960s performers such as Elvis were producing hit records that
mostly looked to the past in terms of melodies and messages.
17
The first thing one notices today about “Suspicious Minds” is how rich and full
it sounds. To some extent, this song can be considered fusion music, a term more often
applied to a more innovative rock style: “Suspicious Minds” combines the brass
instruments often employed in jazz bands with the vocal sounds of gospel quartets and
the syncopated ‘groove’ of rock. In addition to Elvis’s vocal solo “Suspicious Minds”
features several backup vocal ensembles as well as a small orchestra. So does “The
Boxer”, a hit song by Simon and Garfunkel recorded around the same time. Like “The
Boxer”, “Suspicious Minds” depends for much of its success on a powerful
accompanying sound. It also depends on studio sound effects employed with
increasing frequency by rock musicians of the late 1960s. Both “Suspicious Minds”
and “The Boxer”, for example, employ reverb and fadeout. In 1970 Elvis
demonstrated his sympathy for Simon and Garfunkel when he recorded “Bridge over
Troubled Waters”, another of their hits and one featured on the same album as “The
Boxer”.
Trust between lovers, the subject of the lyrics for “Suspicious Minds”, is
representative of much—but not all—late 1960s pop. Simon and Garfunkel, for
example, wrote mostly about teenagers as well as for them. The subject of “The
Boxer” is alienated youth; its lyrics contain references to loneliness and poverty in
New York City (a favourite destination for young Americans looking for adventure).
Songs like “The Boxer” do not ‘speak’ as successfully to men and women in their
thirties and forties. In contrast, Elvis usually performed songs that ‘spoke’ to anyone
old enough to understand them. One reason Elvis has retained much of his reputation
while other performers of the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s have faded from view is
precisely this: he sang songs that people of all ages (except children) can understand
and empathise with. “Suspicious Minds” is a good example of such songs: about love,
it is nevertheless ‘timeless’ in its appeal. As an ‘aging’ Las Vegas casino entertainer,
Elvis continued throughout the 1970s to infatuate teenage girls, but he also thrilled
their mothers—and, sometimes, their grandmothers!
18
Only a few of Elvis’s later recordings were as successful as “Suspicious Minds”,
and only two became hits. The more important of these recordings was “In the Ghetto”.
Unlike “Suspicious Minds”, “In the Ghetto” is a topical song, one of the very few
Elvis ever recorded. Released in 1969, it addressed a timely issue: the oppressive
urban lives of Black American youth. In this quieter, beautifully sung number, Elvis
tells the story of an African American child who is born into poverty in Chicago,
grows up hungry, cold, and ill, turns to crime, and finally dies—apparently at the
hands of the police (although the lyrics avoid placing responsibility on any one person
or group of people for the boy’s death). Unlike “Suspicious Minds”, however, the
performers who back Elvis in the “Ghetto” play and sing quietly. Contemporary when
it was released forty years ago, “In the Ghetto” today sounds somewhat dated. It
remains, however, an outstanding gospel-style performance of a non-gospel song.
4 Elvis: Concluding Observations
Although an enormously talented performer, Elvis Presley probably could not
have achieved the success he did were it not for the decade he grew up in. 1950s
America was a wealthy and powerful nation, but a troubled one; racial prejudice and
political paranoia made cultural innovation difficult. Until 1956, when Elvis’s personal
appearances, TV performances, and recordings transformed popular music throughout
the United States, anything ‘Black’ was generally forbidden to anyone ‘White’.
Respectable, middle-class White teenagers didn’t listen to race music. At the same
time, Black teenagers attended segregated schools, ate at their own lunch counters, and
rode at the backs of buses so White teenagers could claim the best seats for themselves.
Suddenly Elvis appeared, merging Black and White in his music. At first he was
denounced as a musical outlaw, a young man who dressed differently, moved
suggestively on stage, and drove young women crazy. He was everything forbidden:
he came from a poor southern family, spoke ‘hillbilly’ English, and disrupted every
19
audience he played and sang for. Nevertheless, people of all ages—not only young
women—flocked to see him and bask in his light.
Gradually, American music-lovers acknowledged that Elvis was also a ‘good
boy’: he loved his mother, spoke softly and politely to reporters, and obeyed orders
during his years in the army. A Southerner, he embodied not only the less pleasant
aspects of that part of the nation (poverty, insufficient education, racial divisions), but
also the more pleasant parts. Elvis believed in God, gave generously to many causes,
and married his childhood sweetheart. (He didn’t stay married to her, but his sometime
wife Priscilla made a name for herself as a television actress. Their daughter Lisa
Marie later married, and divorced, pop icon Michael Jackson.) Initially received as a
White sexual icon, Elvis ended his career as an entertainer for people of all ages and
colours.
By the time he died in 1977, Elvis had launched rock ‘n’ roll as an international
musical style. In a few of his later recordings he even brought that kind of music closer
to rock, a word difficult to define and one that encompassed the various styles and
devices employed by the Beatles and other, more experimental popular musicians.
Furthermore, throughout his life Elvis inspired a host of imitators; Ricky Nelson, the
first Elvis impersonator, also became an important recording star. As late as the 1970s,
hopeful ‘bad boys’ like Elvis Costello (born Declan Patrick MacManus) borrowed his
name as well as some of his youthful mannerisms. The Beatles traced their musical
roots to Elvis and sang some of his songs. Without Elvis as a role model, it is difficult
to imagine what eccentric and flashy singer-songwriters like Elton John might have
become. Even Elvis’s failures became iconic, and even his worst movies continue to
be televised around the world. Elvis was, truly, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Graceland, the estate Elvis purchased for his parents in 1956, remains a
pilgrimage site, and Elvis souvenirs are a multi-million-dollar industry. After his death
in 1977, in fact, a strange cult grew up around sightings of a resurrected Elvis. A few
20
people still believe, or profess to believe, that Elvis was carried off by creatures from
another world: that he never died at all—and, perhaps, never will. Even many twenty-
first-century Americans who have never heard a recording of Elvis’s singing have
heard the name and a few of the legends about him.
5 Listening materials
All of the recordings by Elvis Presley mentioned in this essay, with the
exception of the first recording of “It’s Now or Never”, can be found on the following
CDs:
Elvis Presley: The Sun Recordings, 2 CDs (Chrome Dreams, Post Office Box 230,
New Malden, Surrey KT3 6YY, United Kingdom).
Elvis: The King, 2 CDs (RCA/Sony 886971I8042).
6 Reading List
Useful and easy to read books about Elvis and especially about his recordings
and performance style include the following:
Jorgensen, Ernst. Elvis Presley: A Life in Music (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998).
Useful, clearly written, and comparatively short.
Matthew-Walker, Robert. Elvis Presley: A Study in Music (New York: Midas, 1979).
Identifies and explains the significance of every Elvis record and recording
session; concludes with an essay about Elvis as performer, and with lists of his
films and albums.
21
Robertson, John. Elvis Presley: The Complete Guide to His Music (London and New
York: Omnibus, 2004). A compact, detailed account of every Elvis recording,
including post-1977 recorded collections of Elvis’s performances.
7 References for Further Study
Thousands of books and articles about Elvis Presley have appeared in print.
Many of them are entirely biographical; some are quite technical. The best general
discussions of Elvis as man and musician can be found in the ‘Reading List’ (above)
and in the following volumes:
Braun, Eric. The Elvis Film Encyclopedia (Woodstock, NY 1997). Discusses Elvis’s
performances as a Hollywood star intelligently and in great detail.
Goldman, Albert. Elvis (New York 1981). A controversial ‘early’ biography and
musical study; often critical of Elvis, but filled with insights into American
popular culture of the 1950s and 1960s.
Guralnik, Peter. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (Boston 1994) and
Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (Boston 1999). Probably the
most detailed biography of Elvis in print. The first volume covers the years
1935-1958, the second 1958-1977.
Halberstam, David. The Fifties (New York 1993). An outstanding study of the decade
in American history that influenced Elvis throughout his life, and that was itself
influenced by his early recordings and performances.
Hardy, Phil, and Dave Laing. Encyclopedia of Rock, 1955-1975 (London 1977). A
history of rock ‘n’ roll, with frequent comments about Elvis’s influence on a
variety of composers, performers, and film celebrities.
22
Markus, Greil. Mystery Train: Imagines of America in Rock ‘n’ roll Music (New York
1975). A celebrated survey of the cultural significance of the music Elvis
helped create.
Rodman, G. Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend (London
1996). Describes Elvis’s changing reputation following his death in 1977.
West, Red, with Sonny West and Dave Hebler. Elvis: What Happened? (New York
1977). A ‘debunking’ account of Elvis’s last years that documents his personal
problems and dependency on drugs.
Whitmer, Peter. The Inner Elvis: A Psychological Biography of Elvis Aaron Presley
(New York 1996). Examines Elvis’s psychological problems, especially from
the perspective of Elvis as a ‘twinless twin’; his brother Jesse was stillborn.
23
Appendix
Glossary
Each of the terms defined below appears in either or both of the chapters on Elvis and
the Beatles.
VII: in any major or minor key, a major triad built upon the lowered seventh degree
(i.e., leading tone) in that key. Virtually unknown in pop music prior to the
Beatles.
12-bar blues: the standard blues chorus. Harmonically it consists of: I-I7 / IV7-I / V7-
(IV7)-I. Verbally, it usually consists of three lines of text, the first two similar or
identical to each other. “Hound Dog” is a good example of a 12-bar blues.
16-bar chorus: a musical period consisting of four 4-bar phrases in an AABA (in the
case of “It’s Now or Never”, AA1BA2). A common layout for pop songs,
especially when preceded or followed by a verse.
32-bar chorus: a musical period consisting of four 8-bar phrases in an AABA
configuration. The most common layout for pop songs prior to rock ‘n’ roll.
45rpm (also 45s): 45 revolutions per minute. The speed of most pop singles (7-inch
phonorecords) manufactured during the 1950s and 1960s.
78rpm (also 78s): 78 revolutions per minute. The speed of most albums (12-inch
phonorecords) manufactured between the late 1910s and the late 1940s. See
also ‘LP’.
accento: a Baroque vocal ornament in which a melodic line begins on a higher tone
before dropping to the adjacent lower tone. “Yesterday” by the Beatles begins
with an accento on the first syllable of the title word.
acid trip: the experience a man or woman undergoes after taking LSD.
acid rock (also acid rocker): a style of late 1960s music that artistically simulates or at
least refers to LSD and acid trips. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is an
example of acid rock; as its composers and performers, the Beatles could be
said to have been acid rockers—but only in relation to songs of precisely that
kind.
24
acoustic: without electrical amplification. Originally, all guitars were acoustic
instruments.
added ninth: a note nine steps above the root of a given triad and added to that triad. A
C-Major chord with an added ninth would consist of the notes C, E, G, and D a
fifth above the preceding G.
added second: a note one step above the root of a given triad and added to that triad. A
C-Major chord with an added second would consist of the notes C, D, E, and G.
added seventh: a note seven steps above the root of a given triad and added to that
triad. A C-Major chord with an added major seventh would consist of the notes
C, E, G, and B. A similar chord with an added minor seventh would consist of
C, E, G, and B .
added thirteenth: a note thirteen steps above the root of a given triad and added to that
triad. A C-Major chord with an added thirteenth would consist of the notes C, E,
G, and F a seventh above the preceding A.
air: vocal silences in pop songs. Elvis left little air in most of his recordings, while the
Beatles left more in many of their skiffle numbers.
album: a synonym for LP. See also ‘CD’.
amplification: electronic enhancement or magnification of sound. See also ‘acoustic’.
arrangement: a version of a musical composition to be performed for a certain
collection of instrumental and vocal forces. A song with guitar accompaniment,
for example, might be arranged for brass band.
art song: a song composed by a classical or romantic European or European-American
‘master’. Also, a song that aspires to similar refinement of musical style. Some
Beatles songs have been called art songs.
asymmetric melodic structure: any melodic structure composed of phrases of
dissimilar lengths. Instead, of a ‘32-bar chorus’, for example, a melodic period
consisting of two 7-bar and two 9-bar phrases.
backup: in popular music, a collective term for instrumental and/or vocal
accompaniment. One vocalist, for example, sings the ‘lead’ and the others
‘back her up’ with non-melodic material.
25
ballad: in popular music, a slower, more sentimental, and more tuneful song. “Love
Me Tender” and “Yesterday” are ballads, whereas “Hound Dog” and “Taxman”
are not.
baritone: in vocal music, the male voice with a range lying somewhat below that of a
tenor and somewhat above that of a bass. Also, the range of such a voice. Elvis
Presley sang baritone.
bars: measures of music. Every melodic phrase or compositional passage is composed
of one or more bars.
bass: in some pop ensembles as in classical European orchestral music, a low-pitched,
four-string member of the viol family. Bill Black played the bass in some of
Elvis Presley’s early recordings. See also ‘bass guitar’ below.
bass guitar: an electric instrument employed by rock musicians especially to support
individual notes in harmonic progressions and to add counterpoint to otherwise
chordal musical structures. In both respects, the bass guitar functions in ways
similar to the solo continuo instrument (cello or viola da gamba) employed in
Baroque music.
battery: another name for percussion instruments as a group. In popular music, a
battery consisting of one or more snare drums, one or more cymbals, and a bass
drum is more often referred to as a set or kit.
Beatlemania: the enthusiasm expressed by admirers of the Beatles especially during
the early and mid-1960s. Often reserved for describing the behaviour of
groupies at concerts and other ‘personal’ encounters.
bel canto: Italian for ‘beautiful voice’ or ‘beautiful singing’. Mostly used in
conjunction with Italian opera, although some pop singers (Elvis Presley, Mario
Lanza, etc.) also sang bel canto effectively.
Black: African American. Used to describe certain musical styles as well as the people
who invented them.
blue notes: flatted or lowered notes employed in blues, jazz, and other pop forms.
Usually refers to the third, fifth, and seventh degrees of the musical scale.
blues: a Black musical form of expression with limited vocal and harmonic range but
considerable expressive power. See ‘12-bar blues’, ‘rhythm and blues’, and
‘rock ‘n’ roll’.
26
break: see ‘instrumental break’.
bridge: in a standard 32-bar or ‘AABA’ tune, the third or ‘B’ 8-bar phrase. Also the
instrumental solo that separates one verse, stanza, or chorus from another.
British Invasion: during the early 1960s, the introduction of pop music and musicians
from England, either in person or by way of recordings, into the United States.
The success of the Beatles during their 1964 American tour contributed
enormously to the overall impact of the British Invasion.
Broadway show tune: any song written for one or more musical comedies performed
in theatres located on or close to Broadway in midtown Manhattan. Also: songs
similar in style to such tunes.
call and response: musical or other situations in which one voice or voices are
answered by a different voice or voices. Associated originally with gospel.
calliope: a kind of organ, formerly steam-powered but now usually electric. Associated
with circuses, carnivals, and other outdoor European and American
entertainments. Calliopes produce harsh, metallic musical sounds.
campy (also camp): playful in a sarcastic, exaggerated manner.
CD: a common abbreviation for ‘compact disk’, a form of commercial digitalised
musical recording. See also ‘album’ and ‘LP’.
celeste (also celesta): a small keyboard instrument outfitted with metal bars that
produce bell-like sounds when struck. Unknown in Western music until the
1890s, when Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky employed it in his Nutcracker ballet.
chaconne: a variation form in which a single chord progression defines each in a series
of subsequent statements or variations.
chest voice: singing with the support of the diaphragm. Chest voice employed in bel
canto and other forms of classical vocal music as well as in Broadway musical
comedy.
chorus: in popular music, the material that follows one or more verses. See also ‘32-
bar chorus’ and ‘refrain’.
chromatic (also chromatic inflection): moving melodically by half instead of whole
steps. Also, chords containing one or more notes bearing sharps or flats.
Sometimes considered the ‘opposite’ of diatonic.
27
close harmony: ensemble singing based on triads, parallel thirds and sixths, and other
‘closer’ intervals and chords. Originally a doo-wop and gospel term.
club: in popular music, a place of entertainment where pop music can be heard, often
‘live’. The Beatles performed in Hamburg and Liverpool clubs during the very
early 1960s.
clustered upbeat: one or more notes or syllables that function together in anticipation
of a downbeat that begins a subsequent measure or section of music.
coda: Italian for ‘tail’. Any passage of music appended to the end of a longer
composition.
concept album: an LP or CD devoted to a single idea, story, or theme. Unlike most
albums, concept albums are created as compositional wholes. Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band remains the most famous concept album in history.
coon shouter: a singer, Black or White, who vigorously sings or even shouts out the
lyrics to certain kinds of African American music.
count-off (also count down): The numbers spoken to establish the tempo of a pop song
immediately before that song begins.
counter-culture: collectively, people with eccentric attitudes or habits. Also, the values
of such people. In 1960s America, this term was applied mostly to anti-Vietnam
War protestors and other individuals who disagreed with certain commonly
held American political, social, and cultural values.
country (also country-western): hillbilly music. Country musical ensembles often
include banjos and mandolins as well as guitars.
cover: to perform or record a song composed by someone else.
Deep South (sometimes South): in the United States, the geo-political and cultural area
south of the so-called Mason-Dixon Line and east of Texas. This area includes
the states of Florida, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and
Virginia, but the term ‘Deep South’ is sometimes reserved especially for
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
distortion: any form of alteration to a pre-existing or ‘pure’ musical sound. Reverb,
wobble, and amplification are all forms of electronic distortion. Forms of
28
acoustic distortion are produced by mutes (for brass instruments) and pieces of
metal (for prepared pianos).
dominant: the fifth degree of a scale, or a chord built on such a note. In C Major, G is
the dominant note, a G-Major triad the dominant chord.
doo-wop: a kind of Black vocal music, often sung without musical accompaniment
and in close harmony.
double: to perform on more than one instrument or sing more than one part. A guitarist,
for example, may also be able to double as a percussionist.
double-track: to record the same piece of music twice, then play back both recordings
at more or less the same time. After being double-tracked, singers such as Elvis
Presley or Paul McCartney can ‘sing with themselves’.
downbeat: the first beat of a given melodic phrase, musical passage, or composition.
Elvis impersonator: a singer or actor who dresses up and pretends to be Elvis Presley.
fadeout: to gradually reduce the volume of a musical passage, either by playing or
singing it more and more softly, or by decreasing its volume electronically.
Also: the conclusions of many pop songs in which the music gradually fades
out, becomes too soft to be heard.
falsetto: a synonym for head voice. To sing without the support of the diaphragm and
especially to sign very high notes without such support.
folk music (also folk song): any musical statement that sounds as if it were
‘traditional’ or ‘ethnic’ in origin. Sometimes used in opposition to ‘classical’ or
‘popular’ as a form of musical expression or culture.
Folk Revival: a movement throughout Europe and North America, began as early as
the 1890s but especially widespread during the 1940s and 1950s, when both
authentic and simulated folk songs were performed as entertainments. Bob
Dylan began his career in the early 1960s as one of the last but most influential
Folk-Revival singer-songwriters.
fusion (also fusion music): in popular music, rock combined with jazz, or sometimes
with folk. Many fusion bands include trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and
other jazz instruments as well as electric guitars and other rock instruments.
29
glam rock: from ‘glamour’. In popular music, a form of rock largely defined by the
elaborate costumes and makeup worn by its performers. Elvis came close near
the end of his career to appearing in public as a glam rocker.
gospel: in music, certain performing traditions and tunes associated with American
religious music and especially with African American Protestantism. Gospel
singers often improvise on familiar melodies, ornamenting them elaborately.
They also sometimes sing in close harmony; in this respect, gospel resembles
doo-wop.
goth (or Goth style): in popular music, rockers who dress in black costumes made of
leather and wear heavy chains as ornaments or belts, outrageous makeup, facial
piercings, etc.
Grand Ole Opry: an American radio programme broadcast every week from Nashville,
Tennessee, since 1925. As an institution, the Opry has more or less defined
hillbilly, rockabilly, and country-western musical styles for post-World War II
audiences.
groove: see ‘rock groove’.
groupies: musical camp followers. Often used to refer to young women who follow
rock musicians, attend their concerts, and otherwise consort with them.
Occasionally used to refer to young men who do similar things.
harmonica: a small, hand-held mouth organ. In popular music, harmonicas are
associated especially with folk, hillbilly, and skiffle.
head voice: see ‘falsetto’.
hillbilly: residents, Black or White, of America’s eastern mountains. Also the music
made by those residents, either in reality or as simulated in performances and
recordings. Hillbilly music is generally considered ‘low-class’ entertainment,
often home-made. In fact, much of it derives from Scots-Irish immigrants to
Appalachia as well as from Black musical sources. Characteristic hillbilly
instruments include the jug, the banjo, and the washboard bass.
hippies: young people in 1960s America who used LSD, wore psychedelic clothing,
lived together in experimental communities, etc. Often used as an insult.
30
honky-tonk (also honky-tonk piano): a tinny piano sound associated with bars and
other ‘low’ institutions of American cities and towns, as opposed to rural
hillbilly music. Honky-tonk piano refers not merely to poorly tuned upright
pianos played in such places, but to the kind of music often played on them.
hook: a musical phrase or sound placed near the beginning of a song to attract
attention.
instrumental break: see ‘break’.
ironic commentary (also ironic or irony): to comment on or present anything in a self-
conscious and often critical manner.
jam session: an informal and private rehearsal or performance, as opposed to a public
concert.
jobber: see ‘club’.
label: the name a recording company uses to market music: Sun, Parlophone, Motown,
etc.
leading tone: the tone lying immediately below the tonic of any scale. In C Major, B is
the leading tone.
Lieder: German for ‘songs’ (the singular is ‘Lied’). The art songs composed in
Germany especially during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Schubert and Mahler were among the most famous Lieder composers.
LP: an abbreviation for ‘long-playing’. 12-inch, 33rpm phonorecords are LPs. Today
sometimes also used for CDs.
LSD: an abbreviation for lysergic acid diethylamide, also known as ‘acid’, a powerful
and dangerous hallucinogenic
lyrics: the words of a song, as opposed to its music.
Mandolin: a small, guitar-like instrument featured in many country-western ensembles.
31
mediant progression: an harmonic progression ‘by thirds’. In C Major, a mediant
progression might be from I-III (C Major to E Major), or from I-iii (C Major to
E minor).
melody (also melodic structure): a tune, usually consisting of several phrases
organised into one or more periods. The melody of “Michelle” is the part sung
by McCartney on Rubber Soul.
Mersey sound: refers not only to songs written or performed in Liverpool (located on
the Mersey River), but to songs by Liverpool artists that combined elements of
folk, jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll. Early Beatles numbers, including “Love Me Do”,
are examples of the Mersey sound.
Mixolydian: in music, one of the eight Medieval church modes or scale patterns. The
ascending Mixolydian scale ends with a whole step instead of a half step (G –
A – B – C – D – E – F – G), whereas the standard major scale ends with a half
step (G – A – B – C – D – E – F – G).
modal harmony: harmony based on scales other than those identical in structure to
standard major and minor scales. In a Mixolydian harmonic passage, for
example, the minor triad D/F/A would precede the major G/B/D to form a
modal dominant-tonic cadence (v-I).
Motown (also Motown sound): the label distributed by the Motown Recording
Corporation, as well as the music produced and marketed as ‘Motown’. Many
Motown artists performed together in small groups, singing and playing rock or
doo-wop numbers characterised by lively rhythmic figures and distinctive
structural patterns.
music-hall songs: in popular music, topical and occasionally risqué songs associated
with lower-class theatrical entertainment in England between the later
nineteenth century and the 1950s.
musical device: any definable way of momentarily manipulating musical material.
Counterpoint is a musical device; so is reverb; so is chromatic harmony.
Sometimes referred to disparagingly as ‘gimmicks’.
musique concrète: French for ‘hard’ (i.e., non-musical) music. Any ‘natural’ sound
recorded and introduced into an ‘artificial’ musical composition. The airplane
noises at the beginning of the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR” are examples of
musique concrète.
32
ninth: see ‘added ninth’.
North: in the United States, the geo-political and cultural area north of the so-called
Mason-Dixon Line. Also, any place outside the South, especially the Deep
South. Often used in reference to such urban areas as Manhattan, Boston,
Chicago, etc.
oblique counterpoint: a kind of contrapuntal motion in which one voice or part
remains fixed on a given note while another moves away from that note.
Oblique counterpoint was originally employed in Medieval music, especially in
organum; for this reason it often sounds ‘antique’ or ‘exotic’, especially when
used in popular music.
ondioline: a monophonic vacuum tube instrument composed of a single oscillator and
a small eight-octave touch sensitive keyboard. Uncommon.
open fourths, fifths (also parallel fourths, fifths): notes sung or played a fourth or fifth
apart, without the addition of thirds or other musical intervals. In C Major, the
notes D/A moving directly to the notes E/B would be considered parallel fifths.
ornament, ornamented: in music, additional or extraneous notes added to a familiar
tune or pre-existing composition. An accento is an ornament; so are passing
notes used to link portions of existing melodies.
parallel harmony: chords moving in parallel motion. In C Major, the triad C/E/G
moving directly to the triad D/F/A would be considered parallel harmonies.
parallel thirds: voices or parts moving together at the interval of a third. In C Major,
the pair C/E moving directly to the pair D/F would be considered parallel thirds.
parody: a word with several somewhat different meanings. To ‘parody’ something
often means simply to ridicule it. At the same time, many musical parodies
consist of pre-existing material reworked into new forms. First used as a
musical term to define the parody masses and motets of Renaissance Europe, in
which pre-existing compositions were recomposed to serve new musical and
cultural purposes. “Back in the USSR” utilises both kinds of parody: it pokes
33
fun at “California Girls”, a Beach Boys song, even as it incorporates part of the
song within its own melodic structure.
pastiche: any cultural artifact composed of fragments or sections in different, often
extremely different styles.
period (also musical period): a group of phrases forming a complete melodic statement.
One form of musical period is the 32-bar chorus. Another is the 12-bar blues.
persona: from the Latin for ‘mask’. A persona is the individual one shows the outside
world, as opposed to one’s inner self. Elvis Presley’s stage persona was that of
a vibrant, playful, occasionally cruel singer. In his private life, by contrast,
Elvis was often sorrowful, angry, or generous as a son, friend, or business
associate.
phonorecord: a disk on which music or other sounds are recorded acoustically rather
than digitally. LPs, 45s, and 78s are all phonorecords, whereas CDs are digital
recordings.
piccolo trumpet: a small trumpet used today mostly in performing Baroque music.
plagal cadence: a IV-I rather than V-I chord progression. Often associated with
religious music, especially hymns.
popping: repeating one note over and over, often quickly. A term used in conjunction
with Irish and Irish-American folk music as well as pop songs of certain kinds.
pre-recorded sound: see ‘musique concrète’.
psychedelic: see ‘LSD’, ‘acid’, ‘acid trip’, etc.
psychedelic art: paintings or other visual forms of expression associated with LSD.
Yellow Submarine (1969), an animated movie based on Beatles songs, features
illustrations made by Peter Max, a 1960s painter and illustrator.
punk rock (also punk rocker): a form of music characterised by extreme harmonic and
melodic simplicity, high electrically amplified volume, and social protest or
anger. Punk began in the early 1970s; the term is often used to refer to such
British bands as the Sex Pistols.
radio DJ: an abbreviation for ‘disk jockey’. A man or woman who plays recordings (or
disks) during radio broadcasts. A term associated mostly with popular music in
1950s and 1960s America.
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raga: in North Indian music, any exotic scale as well as the music constructed using
such a scale. Ragas are modes, each with its own tuning system and cultural
associations.
race music: in America and especially in the Deep South, anything composed or
performed by African Americans or suggestive of them. Rhythm and blues was
‘race music’ until Elvis and other White (and Black) performers transformed it
into rock ‘n’ roll.
receive (also reception): in aesthetics, the opinions expressed about a given individual,
art work, or artistic style. Elvis was initially received as a sexual icon; later, the
reception granted him by music-lovers also embraced his religious faith and
family values.
refrain: a melodic statement that reappears anywhere in a song, often between or after
the chorus. Also used by some people as a synonym for ‘chorus’.
retro: not merely old-fashioned, but backward-looking. Retro art and music are
deliberately and often playfully antique. “Honey Pie” is a retro song rather than
an actual example of 1920s popular music.
reverb: an abbreviation of ‘reverberation’. In popular music, the result of electronic
manipulation that makes music sound ‘larger’ or more distant, and to create
echo-like effects.
rhythm and blues: a Black term for rock ‘n’ roll. Also rock ‘n’ roll as performed by
Black artists.
rock (also rock music): a difficult term to define. Today, virtually a synonym for
popular music. In the 1960s, the term ‘rock’ was often used to distinguish the
more complex blend of musical styles and sound effects created by artists such
as the Beatles from that of the less complex blend of styles and effects
employed by artists such as Elvis Presley.
rock groove: any continuous syncopated rhythmic accompaniment in rock ‘n’ roll or
related musical idioms. Without a groove or backbeat, at least until the Beatles
transformed popular music, any given song cannot possibly be ‘rock’.
rockabilly: a blend of rock ‘n’ roll and hillbilly musical styles and devices. Many
rockabilly bands, for example, employ banjos or pianos as well as guitars and
drums.
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rock ‘n’ roll: a White term for rhythm and blues. Also, rhythm and blues as performed
mostly by White artists. This term is sometimes also used to distinguish the
more ‘authentic’ and vital recordings of Elvis and Chuck Berry from the “rock
and roll” of later, more commercialised and less exciting artists and ensembles,
including Elvis impersonator Ricky Nelson.
second: see ‘added second’.
secondary dominant: harmonically, the dominant of a dominant (or other chord) in any
key. In C Major, a D-Major triad would be considered the dominant of G Major,
itself the dominant of the home key.
set: see ‘battery’.
seventh: see ‘added seventh’.
single: a 45rmp recording. Sales information for many of the songs recorded by Elvis
Presley and by the Beatles before 1965 appeared on singles charts; to have a
‘hit’, Elvis or the Beatles would need to rank near the top of such charts.
sitar: a large Indian lute-like instrument outfitted with sympathetic strings and
movable frets.
skiffle: a musical style that originated in both Black and White circles and employed
folk sounds as well as instruments such as the harmonica. The Beatles began as
skiffle artists.
song cycle: a carefully arranged and integrated collection of songs, often one that tells
a story or makes a particularly consistent musical statement. A term used
mostly in connection with certain collections of Lieder by classical composers
such as Schubert. Sgt. Pepper’s has often been considered a song cycle rather
than a mere collection of songs.
soundtrack album: any LP or CD that contains the music from a particular musical
comedy or motion picture.
South: see ‘Deep South’.
spliced-in: an antique term for cutting and pasting one piece of recorded magnetic tape
into another piece. Anything added electronically or digitally to a pre-existing
musical recording. Some of the ship and water sounds used in “Yellow
Submarine” were spliced into the music the Beatles themselves sang and played.
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steel guitar: an amplified guitar often played lying on a table instead of held in the
hands. Its sound is often associated with hillbilly or rockabilly music.
stepwise chord progression: a progression, say, from I-II or from II-III in a given key.
stylistic gestures: any device employed in part (as opposed to all) of a musical
composition.
subdominant: the fourth degree of a major or minor scale. Also, any triad built on that
scale degree. With regard to some Beatles songs, see also ‘substitute chord’
below.
substitute chord: a chord used to function as another. Often the minor submediant triad
is used as a substitute for the dominant triad in pop music.
subtext: something suggested but not explicitly explained. One possible subtext for the
lyrics to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is an acid trip.
Summer of Love: a term invented by Time magazine to define the summer of 1967 in
terms of LSD, and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury residential district, where
many hippies lived that year in counter-cultural communities. The most famous
musical ‘product’ of or associated with the Summer of Love was Sgt. Pepper’s.
surreal: fantastic, dreamlike.
swarmandel: a kind of Indian harp. Uncommon in Western music.
tambura (or tamboura): a small lute-like instrument from India. Similar instruments,
including the tamburitza from the Balkans, can be found in countries around the
world.
tape loop: originally a piece of magnetic recording tape spliced to itself so that it could
play endlessly without having to be rewound. Anything musical fragment or
sound played over and over in a mechanical manner.
three-chord songs (also: three-chord players): songs employing only tonic,
subdominant, and dominant (I / IV / V) chords. Often used to refer to rock ’n’
roll music and the individuals who perform it.
thirteenth: see ‘added thirteenth’.
tipping: moving between two adjacent notes, often rapidly. See also ‘popping’.
tonic: the first degree of a major or minor scale.
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topical song: a song with lyrics that discuss or refer to a current event or situation.
“Taxman” is a topical song insofar as it refers to the British system of taxation,
actual politicians involved with that system (including former Prime Minister
Wilson), etc.
transposition: to move a musical statement from one key to another.
vamp: in popular music, a short, repeatable musical figure usually placed at the end of
a song’s introduction.
vaudeville: a form of entertainment, usually a variety show, popular throughout late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. Vaudeville songs were pop
songs associated with such shows.
verse: in popular music, either: a) the lyrics of a song; or b) the melodic period that
precedes or follows the chorus or refrain.
vocal break: the point in any singer’s range above which he or she cannot sing using
chest voice. Shifting quickly between chest and head voice (or falsetto)
produces an effect known as yodelling.
vocal range: the range, from lowest to highest, that a given singer can sing.
Sometimes restricted to chest voice.
washboard bass: a primitive instrument that lends rhythmic support in skiffle and
hillbilly ensembles. Occasionally actually fashioned from a washboard, a
device used for scrubbing clothes to get them clean.
White: Caucasian American. See also ‘Black’.
yodel: see ‘vocal break’.
