![]() ![]() “In the early years, Elvis’s musical style was seen as a mixture between hillbilly singing and rhythm and blues … The real Elvis was not a hillbilly at all. “Hillbillies were seen as cruel and violent,” Isenberg notes, “but with most of their anger directed at neighbors, family members, and ‘furriners.’” The author explained how the term applied to Elvis. In addition to “country” folk, “hillbillies” was another common label for poor whites in mid-20th century America. ![]() ![]() That disparaging description circulated among higher social classes. Most of what the author has to say about Elvis is confined to a single chapter, titled, “The Cult of the Country Boy.” The chapter starts with a quote from Elvis in 1956: “I’m a self-confessed raw country boy and guitar-playing fool.” Impoverished Southern whites then didn’t call themselves “white trash,” of course. To Isenberg, Elvis Presley’s rise from sharecropper’s son to “King of Rock ’n’ roll” was a freakish occurrence in American history, not an example of what is possible for all in a “classless” society.Īs its subtitle indicates, Elvis plays only a small part in the 400-year history of “White Trash” in America. The author’s basic premise in “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America” is that the United States has always had a social class structure and that upward mobility in it is an illusive prospect resisted by the higher classes. ![]()
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