"Elvis Presley: The Searcher" Reviewed

Above, Elvis signing autographs in a photo displayed at Sun Studio. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

In two more nights, Elvis Presley: The Searcher will hit the airwaves on HBO. I plan on catching it at a hotel in Gallup, since I don't have HBO at home.

One of the more interesting reviews of the documentary is from Music Critic Dan DeLuca from Phillynews.com.

He wrote, in part:

When the Pretenders played the Tower Theater last month, Chrissie Hynde took time out to praise the epochal life force and ultra-talented vocalist who set off a post-World War II youthquake in popular culture. 

“How did they know he was Elvis Presley?” she asked about the parents of the infant who came into the world in 1935 in Tupelo, Miss. “How did they know what to name him? ‘Look Vernon, it’s Elvis Presley!’ ” 

Hynde’s conjecture about a conversation Gladys Presley and her husband could have had was startling, in part because the pioneering female rocker spoke of Elvis in such awestruck terms. She was speaking of the subject of Elvis Presley: The Searcher, the two-part HBO documentary directed by Thom Zimny that premieres  at 8 p.m. Saturday. 

She was talking about the mythic Elvis, Elvis as a “human Adonis,” as Bruce Springsteen refers to him in his Broadway show, the seemingly supernatural presence destined to become the King of Rock and Roll who ignited a musical revolution and freed 1950s America from sexual repression. 

Forty-plus years after his death in 1977, Presley is not typically spoken about in such reverential terms. More frequently, he’s caricatured either as a bloated carcass in a white jump suit, showing off karate moves and muttering, “Thank you, thank you very much,” or as a hip-swiveling sensation from a bygone black-and-white TV era. 

Or worse: A blatant cultural appropriator who reaped the rewards of white privilege to become unimaginably rich and famous while worthy African American artists who preceded him never received their just rewards or credit due.  

As Chuck D. and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy unfairly but unforgettably put it, striking back against an exclusionary culture on their righteous 1990 “Fight the Power”: “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant s— to me / Straight-up racist that sucker was simple and plain, m— him and John Wayne!”

Above, Elvis with Junior Parker (left) and Bobby Blue Bland in a display at Sun Studio. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

One can hardly call someone a "racist" when that person attended black nightclubs on Beale Street in Memphis and shopped in black clothing stores.

Elvis Presley: The Searcher should be a very interesting three hours.

To read more, go here.