Was Elvis the Beginning of Rock 'n Roll?

In my opinion, Elvis Presley just carried forward the music he learned in church as a child, and put a "worldly" spin on it, and it went viral... at least as viral as something could go on black and white TV in the mid-fifties.

I'm not even sure my younger grandchildren, of which I have many, have heard much about Elvis. He's not nearly as famous as he used to be, but he was so famous during my young adult years, and even when my oldest children were growing up, that I could not have imagined an adult not being aware of him. He was a household name.

My children heard his "gospel" songs on records. You know. Those round black things with a hole in the middle, like a CD, only quite a bit larger, and played on a machine that was also quite a bit larger than a CD player. Then we got modern and procured a reel-to-reel tape player. No one has reel-to-reel tapes any more, unless you might find them in an antique store. They were what we used before cassettes were invented. There were both cassettes (the little ones) and 8-tracks.

Young people these days would say, "What's that?" Even in the '50's I would have said, "What's that?" We had television and records in the '50's. But when Elvis Presley was shaking his hips on black and white TV before he went into the U.S. Army, we (the Ballentine family) didn't even have a TV. The first I ever heard of Elvis was from my seventh grade classmates, who would nearly swoon at the mention of his name. I thought they were crazy.

Where we lived on Cecil Avenue in Delano, there was a drive-by hamburger shop on the corner about a block down the street. At our house we could easily hear the music blaring from their jukebox, and a lot of them were Elvis' famous songs. "Can't Help Falling In Love", "Love Me Tender", "Heartbreak Hotel" and many others were imprinted on my brain. Elvis was so famous that he could not be ignored.

However, I never became a fan of Elvis. His lifestyle, unfortunately, was too far astray from the "straight and narrow path" for me to feel good about liking his music.

When I was grown and married (to a man who was born in the same month and year as Elvis), I first listened to Elvis' recording of gospel music. I then learned that his style of music had its roots in the southern country gospel music of his childhood. There was also a certain amount of Black Gospel influence on his music. After I learned that, I gave myself permission to "like" Elvis Presley music, although I still didn't exactly swoon (or swing) when I heard him sing.

Some have called Elvis Presley the beginning of Rock 'n Roll. I don't think so. There is a root before there is a plant. Elvis' roots were in my kind of music. I'm smiling.