Little Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll Movement

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Recommended: Elvis presley impact on american culture

In today’s world, thrusting your hips on national television wouldn’t be an issue for most people. We have songs that use profanity, degrade women, men, children, and even animals. If you jump back almost 70 years, moving your hips back and forth was the equivalence of this. Someone always wanted to push the boundaries and see how far they could go until someone said stop. Elvis did just that. He showed the world what a little sex, drugs, and rock and roll could do for society. But Elvis couldn’t have done this new and controversial movement alone. He needed help. He needed music and that music was the song “You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog.” This song progressed what live entertainment meant. Parents through up their arms in a rage, and teens jumped to their feet to see every “vulgar” movement. This song left a never-ending impact on society and is still used today throughout the entertainment industry. Most people believe that the song, “You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog,” was originated by Elvis, this is incorrect. The song went through numerous revisions in order to get to its final destination.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were young songwriters that had the dream of making it big. They are wrote numerous songs that had been played in some garages, but nothing that was sticking to the mainstream. That was until they came across Willie Mae “Big Mamma” Thornton. She was an African American woman that had a passion for Jazz. She had been roughed up with scares on her face and a few extra pounds. When Leiber and Stoller met her they didn’t really know what to say, they had not seen anything truly like it. This inspired them to originally write the song. They wanted the song to portray a woman telling her man to take a walk. ...

... middle of paper ...

... try something new. Being brave can be an incredible thing.

Works Cited

Daily, Robert. Elvis Presley: the king of rock 'n' roll. New York: F. Watts, 1996.

Fraser, Benson P., and William J. Brown. "Media, Celebrities, and Social Influence: Identification With Elvis Presley." mass communication and society 5, no. 2 (2002): 183-206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327825MCS0502_5

Guralnick, Peter. Last train to Memphis : the rise of Elvis Presley / Peter Guralnick. London: Abacus, 2002.

Leiber, Jerry, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz. Hound dog: the Leiber and Stoller autobiography. Simin & Schuster hardcover ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Mahon, Maureen. "Listening for Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton’s Voice: The Sound of Race and Gender Transgressions in Rock and Roll." Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 15, no. 1 (2011): 1-17.

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