Book Review: Race, Rock, and Elvis by Michael T. Bertrand

Michael T. Bertrand
Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press (2000)
ISBN 0252072707
327 pp., Hardbound, $33; Paperback, $19.95.

Michael Bertrand has produced a fascinating and deeply researched study of the South in the 1950s, viewed through the prism of rock ‘n’ roll’s critical period between 1954 and 1957. Race, Rock, and Elvis has a twofold purpose. First, Bertrand wishes to analyze youths as political and historical actors. Bertrand argues that the tendency of historians to seek common themes in the past leads to a failure to appreciate the ‘‘unique circumstances’’ (2) that each generation experiences, resulting in a condescending attitude among these historians that severely underestimates the contribution of young people to historical processes. Historians, Bertrand argues, expect youngsters to rebel against authority, embrace a new popular culture, and engage in taboo sexual conduct. Youngsters of the 1950s who listened to Elvis Presley and his peers certainly did all of that, but in Bertrand’s mind they also faced an unprecedented situation shaped by the Cold War and the erosion of Jim Crow. Their contribution to the latter amid the tension of the former was vital and their mentalité, therefore, is worthy of in-depth consideration. Bertrand’s second task is to probe the relationship between these young people and their music, to place the concept of ‘‘taste’’ at the center of the cultural experience. He set out to discover how young people grew up in the South in the years following World War Two and found rock ‘n’ roll a valuable tool through which this experience might be evaluated.

For Bertrand, the cultural experience of rock ‘n’ roll played a crucial role in opening up the South to racial integration. A generation of disaffected working-class teenagers embraced a music first played by African-American musicians and which came to national (multi- racial) prominence through Elvis Presley. This music was an expression of an African-American culture that was at once dangerous and alluring. The young whites’ access to this culture was largely facilitated through radio and vinyl, which often obscured the racial identity of the singers and musicians. This prompted young southerners to re-evaluate their parents’ notions of race and offered opportunities for them to shape a new identity both for themselves and the new South. Bertrand suggests that, while these listening choices did not make integrationists out of these young white southerners, it certainly altered their understanding of race. These people listened to rock ‘n’ roll without prejudice, and in Bertrand’s view allowed rock ‘n’ roll to shape their view of the world, causing great disquiet among southern segregationists and conservatives. This white working-class identification with African-American culture, Bertrand maintains, posed a profound threat to the segregationist order, prompting many older southerners to link rock ‘n’ roll to mongrelization and the debasement of southern civility and morality. Of course, as Bertrand reveals, these were merely synonyms for order and stability, segregation and white supremacy. Bertrand thus confirms the critical importance of popular culture to racial dialogue. He subtly suggests that the rise of rock ‘n’ roll was analogous to the rise of the civil rights movement; that without the Elvis generation the pace of change in the South would have been much slower. Thankfully, Bertrand is skilled enough to tie rock ‘n’ roll to other historical forces such as economics, class, and demographics, revealing how rock ‘n’ roll both contributed to and fed off other historical forces at work in the 1950s. The ease with which Bertrand does so makes Race, Rock, and Elvis an absorbing and thought-provoking read.

Inevitably the book raises a number of questions for future research. In suggest- ing that teenagers listened to rock ‘n’ roll music without caring much about the racial identity of the musicians, Bertrand confirms (unsurprisingly) that race is a social construct. More interestingly, he urges readers to consider when we ‘‘see’’ race and question at what point in our lives we begin to use race as a defining human characteristic. This then begs further questions about the extent to which this is defined by our emerging political sensibilities. While these questions are outside the boundaries of Bertrand’s study, Race, Rock, and Elvis offers the suggestion that our political sensibilities can be shaped by our youthful engagement with popular culture. A further question emerges from Bertrand’s intriguing argument that rock ‘n’ roll provided a foundation for the emergence of a new generation of southerners who cared little for racial segregation: What is the relationship between social interaction or cultural preferences and political action? Bertrand suggests that many southern whites were listening to rock ‘n’ roll and understood that this mere action was challenging segregation, but one is left wondering whether these young people compartmentalized their cultural experience, and separated it from their explicitly political choices. It is certainly plausible that these listeners enjoyed ‘‘Black’’ music without necessarily liking Black people.

As suggested by these questions, Bertrand’s study will prompt further exploration of the role that popular music played in the social revolution of the post- war period. While Race, Rock, and Elvis is not perfect—the chapter that focuses exclusively on Elvis Presley adds relatively little to the book’s argument and tells a tale that will be familiar to readers acquainted with Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis—it adds much to our understanding of the relationship between race and music in the twentieth century and deserves serious contemplation.

Reviewed by Joe Street
University of Kent
Canterbury, UK