Thank you for your detailed reply. It may be that his Whiteness enabled him to move freely between the worlds of gospel, country, bluegrass, and blues so that those styles could mix in his brain, and come out as his style. But the circumstances of his birth were not something he had control over. The fact that rock music as we understand it came from those times should not diminish how we enjoy it.
That is not to say that all those struggles are to be forgotten. At this point, I don’t think anyone lacks awareness of that. But we should be able to listen to this powerful rendition of “unchained melody” just for what it is.
Thinking about this last night, I found a comparison to why some folks cannot just listen to music and enjoy it for what it is, without reflecting on “the struggle”
I once attended a church school that was like that. Any time we were having fun, one of the reverends would always remind us to reflect on the sufferings of Christ, who died for us. His religion required constant atonement. So it seems to be here.
But the reverend often did this at recess or meals. It would be perfectly understandable to rebuke joking outbursts in class or chapel. He did this while we were at play. He was a religious zealot, by chosen profession. Even though it was C of E. So all topics had to be seen through the lens of the Suffering of Christ. I have a hard time believing that he did so because he thought we would actually forget our religious teaching. He did it because he felt we should be in a state of atonement at all times.
But this has been a very enlightening conversation. Once again, I read this topic at breakfast, and got to think about it while working fences out on the range.
I think you can really take the religion analogy a long ways. Certainly there is Original Sin, where some of us are born with the need for a lifetime of atonement for sins committed by strangers before we were born. This differs from Christianity in that some people are born already washed in the blood of the lamb.
The main thing I take away from this is perhaps I should try seeing these discussions from that perspective. I tend look at this like I would any debate on history ( I am an Archaeologist by training). So to me, this is either provable data, reasonable hypotheses, or just guesswork. But I need to remember that a conjecture I might make in these discussions might not be seen as a point to be proven or disproven, but a heresy.
Anyhow, I defer to Mojo Nixon on the subject of Elvis-
