Elvis is Everywhere

Joe Bob Briggs writes about threats to sell Graceland to Dubai.

But as I say, I qualify as an amateur expert on Elvis’ place in world history since I was an actor in a critically trashed 1989 movie called Great Balls of Fire, a Jerry Lee Lewis biopic filmed entirely in Memphis and vicinity. My character was Dewey Phillips, the pioneering radio personality who had a show called Red, Hot and Blue on WHBQ in the 1950s. In my youthful zeal for background research, I sought out every newspaper article, recording, and reminiscence about this disc jockey who had been the first to broadcast an Elvis record. (The song was “That’s All Right,” although he also played the flip side, which was “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”) And what I discovered was that a phenomenon like Elvis could only have occurred in the Mississippi Delta of that era.

He has a brief but plausible argument for why Memphis had to be the place where rock n' roll was born. It touches on the current debate about 'cultural appropriation' by raising a contrasting point that is often missed. It also gives rock n' roll a kind of locality, a place and time where it belongs, which is harder to appreciate now that it has become so universalized. Even the United Arab Emirates wants a piece of Elvis.

Here's the song, by the way. I have to admit I always thought this was a Grateful Dead tune, because in my own youth their version of it was so much more prominent. I didn't realize until reading Joe Bob today that it was an Elvis tune, let alone his first radio hit.