Racism wrongly crowned Elvis king

Elvis Presley the King of Rock and Roll?\nBullshit.\nSaying Elvis is the King of Rock and Roll is like saying Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th century or that Babe Ruth is the greatest baseball player ever -- a lot of people believe it, but it just ain't true.\nLike Ronnie and the Babe, Elvis was -- and is -- more style than substance, more hype than genuine importance. American society crowned Elvis with a title he doesn't deserve and never will precisely because Americans are easily duped by swiveling hips and shiny gold lamé suits -- and because American society is saturated with a latent racism that prevents the real founders of rock and roll from receiving their just due.\nThe facts are simple: Elvis didn't play any instruments (at least not like Fats Domino or Chuck Berry or Carl Perkins did), and he wrote little of the music he performed.\nElvis was a supreme musical mooch, borrowing (I'd almost use the word stealing) almost everything he sang. "Hound Dog?" That was Big Mama Thornton's. "Blue Suede Shoes?" That was written and originally performed by Perkins. "That's All Right?" Belonged to Big Boy Crudup. And many of Elvis' biggest hits were written by Otis Blackwell or the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.\nIn short, Elvis' musical success was driven not by himself, but by other, more musically talented artists. But for the last 50 years, the media have perpetuated the lie that Elvis was some sort of musical god, a guy who radically altered pop music forever.\nThat's because the media -- and the vast amounts of Americans who consume the media -- are not willing to admit that rock and roll is, at its foundation, an African-American musical form. Thanks to a persistent, if somewhat hidden, racial bias, American society refuses to acknowledge that artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Billy Ward and Dominoes and Professor Longhair made a much larger and more significant impact on the music we now listen to.\nWhen it comes right down to it, Elvis' musical legacy pales in comparison to those of any number of his contemporaries. Chuck Berry's songs and guitar playing laid the basic framework for rock and roll. Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis made the piano a rock instrument and breathed passion and fire into the music. Carl Perkins defined rockabilly. By the time they died, Buddy Holly was taking rock and roll in unheard of directions and Ritchie Valens was literally inventing garage rock.\nTrue, Elvis provided the look, the sneer and the attitude for a new form of music. His scandalous dance moves made teenage girls scream and sent parents into a panic. He caused a commotion on Ed Sullivan; he starred in "Jailhouse Rock" and "Love Me Tender;" he gave rock and roll its image.\nBut he did all those things largely because he was white and America at the time wasn't ready to accept a black man like Little Richard or Chuck Berry doing those same things.\nThat's almost beside the point. So Elvis was rock's image. But that's all he was -- image. By becoming as popular as he did, by being virtually deified by gullible white music fans, Elvis set a dangerous precedent and a phony standard of excellence. He made Michael Jackson, New Kids on the Block and Britney Spears possible by making it okay to achieve success with less talent than style and image.\nThat doesn't mean he didn't produce good music. That doesn't mean he wasn't important. That doesn't mean he made no impact at all.\nWhat it does mean is that Chuck Berry and Little Richard -- more talented and musically important artists who have gotten boned by history and American culture because they're black -- are being robbed of what is rightfully theirs: the title of Kings of Rock and Roll.