Elvis getting dirty with the swamp-funk anthem “Polk Salad Annie.”
In other words: You hot-shot snobby folks from the two coasts wanna look down on us Southern boys? Well, I’ll give you Southern. I’ll give you Southern Gothic. I’ll give you thick mud and watermelons and collard greens and rusty trucks and chain gangs and sweaty sex. I’ll give it to you so hard you’ll want to move here immediately. Cause we do it better down here.
One of my favorite Elvis performances.
I wish you’d spend some time with Season 1 of True Detective. It is pretty much exactly what your last sentences describe, a gothic deep south made gorgeously evil where the only thing missing is the real steaming, breath-sucking heat. A cane field with no mosquitoes. Thanks for posting the Bangs piece too.
I haven’t watched True Detective yet, which is nuts of me, I know – Supernatural has taken over. And when something takes over me, uhmmmm … it takes. over. But I know I must watch it!! I am sure I will love it.
Bangs’ piece is controversial among hard-core Elvis fans but I adore it for its honesty – the real sense of emotion, anger, disappointment, and love that surges through it. He is actively dealing with the death – THROUGH the prose. There is no distance. An amazing piece of writing.
Two things about this performance I love:
1. When he takes the piece of paper out of his pocket, reads it, takes his time to read it, then picks up the song handing the paper off. He’s so relaxed that it’s like he’s alone in his living room.
2. When he gestures at James Burton to come in – and then Burton does – and Elvis says, over to him, “No, you’re right, you’re right … ” A telepathic moment, where Elvis clearly gestured at him a hair too soon. And Elvis acknowledges that, says “You’re right” – and then continues on. Again, it’s like Elvis doesn’t even realize he’s onstage.
Then, of course, when he sticks the microphone down his throat. Because, of course, that’s what you do.
Elvis by this period (of the video, which I agree is really great) is so utterly professional that really nothing can go wrong. If the sound had gone out he would have still made the performance. This is complete mastery–of the performance as he imagined and created it, of the stage persona that is Elvis Presley. And he’s very very good at walking a razor edge which many masters eventually fall off–there’s obviously some irony, but not quite too much, and that’s pretty amazing too. Look what happened to Burt Reynolds for example. I do think Bangs was wrong about the Stones. Shine a Light, 30+ years after Bangs wished they’d retire, is still for my “money” a really great show (as well as a great music movie), and Jagger exhibits some of that same ability to tight-rope. But the Stones do a whole lot of intrinsically ironic material in that show, which helps the balance. And the Stones are already a product of the ’60s, and occurred as a phenomenon because Elvis and Chuck Berry were there, way way first. Poke Salad Annie is not ironic. Girl with the Faraway Eyes–ummm yes. Even Satisfaction is aware of bullshit and commenting on it–the Marlboro Man, etc. Poke Salad Annie is describing. (Of course then one could also go even deeper, and think about Robert Johnson, who was poisoned by his lover’s husband according to one legend, and sang lines like “You better come on in my kitchen, it’s gonna be rainin’ outside.”) Down in there, Elvis found “Hound Dog”, back when he was a kid, and Arthur Big Boy Cruddup.
I would be so so so curious to know what Lester Bangs would have made of the Stones now. He wrote more about them than any other band, in an increasingly angst-y urgent way – he loved them so much, he was so angry at them, he was in love with them, he felt abandoned – like he couldn’t stop writing about them. I would be so curious to know his thoughts on all of them now. (One of the things I love about Bangs is that he did allow himself to change his mind – sometimes even mid-sentence!!)
And I LOVE your thoughts on irony. Very very good observation!
So true: if this song were TOO ironic, it would be jokey schtick. But Elvis emerges like a monster from the swamps, beckoning us in there with him. It’s NOT a joke. I mean, it totally is, of course – the lyrics are ridiculous – but he’s not “commenting on” the lyrics. He’s tapping into something primal.
Maybe that’s the thing that is missing from so many performers today. They are ALL somewhat ironic. Well, not all. But irony is so compelling – it helps the performer keep distance from rejection/disappointment … Elvis did not protect himself like that.
Lord, have MERCY the man could move. As you said when you wrote about the gesture and the cost, there it is in this video, gesturing with his whole body. You can see what Lester Bangs meant when he wrote about the attraction. But, it isn’t just his beauty, I simply can’t look away.
I love that Fiddlin Bill spells Poke Salad correctly. It must have been a Yankee that published it as Polk. My mental editor nags on that one.
I must resume my meandering through your Elvis archive. Great stuff.
Thank you!
Just to say Elvis is so relaxed singing Polk salad Annie- but still Belts it out with such Passion, he was in great form here Just a joy to watch him here having fun, enjoying his audience and Band, right there with him ! Poetry in Motion.
Myra Thanks xx