CW: Grooming, Pedophilia, General Mistreatment, Death
In part 1 of our two part Elvis talk, we are mostly going to explore his relationship with Priscilla and what’s going on in his head that impacts his decision to go after young teenage girls, among other things.
When Elvis was in the army at 24, Priscilla was a 14 year old in ninth grade. Elvis liked that she was so young because, in his words, she was “young enough that I can train her any way I want.” This article really explores this aspect of Elvis as a person, the quotes and commentary taken from Priscilla’s book Elvis and Me.
Priscilla called herself Elvis’ “own living doll, to fashion as he pleased.” This article talks through the ways in which Priscilla was groomed. It’s a look inside their marriage.
Now that we’ve talked about Priscilla, let’s talk about why he has this attraction to teenage girls, and some other specific hang-ups you can learn about in the episode. Let’s learn about the Madonna-Whore Complex.
At the beginning of the episode, we talked about how Elvis took so much of his music from R&B. Many of his songs were just straight copies of Black music that was popular in the Black community but that white people weren’t listening to. Elvis just happened to be the right skin tone to make the songs popular, unfortunately. So what did Black artists think about that? This is a slideshow of 16 Black artists giving their thoughts on this very subject.
Finally, as promised in the episode, here’s a list, and not a full one, of Elvis songs that were originally songs from Black artists that Elvis took and made popular. I encourage you to go look up the original versions on Youtube and listen to them!
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