Crosby’s fans talk about how “relaxed” he was, how “natural,” how “casual and easygoing.” By the time Presley began causing sensations, the entire country had become relaxed, casual and easygoing, and its younger people seemed to be tired of it, for Elvis’s act was anything but soothing and scarcely what a parent of that placid age would have called “natural” for a young man. Elvis was unseemly, loud, gaudy, sexual—that gyrating pelvis!—in short, disturbing. He not only disturbed parents who thought music was a soothing by Crosby, but also reminded their young that they were full of the turmoil of youth and an appetite for excitement. At a time when the country had a population coming of age with no memory of troubled times, Presley spoke to a yearning for disturbance.
ATTRIBUTION:
Russell Baker (b. 1925), U.S. journalist. “From Bing to Elvis,” There’s a Country in My Cellar: The Best of Russell Baker, Morrow (1990).
