How did Elvis effect the music industry?
When Elvis passed away a lot of people sensed that there was already a great hole in the American cultural landscape. Elvis had always been there, hovering in the national psyche, his life punctuating our times—his appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, his first movie, the death of his mother, the Army, his marriage, the 1968 “Comeback Special.” It seemed inconceivable that Elvis, just 42 years old, was gone. Many parents found Elvis’ music dangerously evocative, his movements lewd and suggestive. Elvis, seemed to have sprung on the world without a history. His emergence in the mid-fifties was so sudden, his music so fresh, his personality so evocative that he could not be labeled. People went crazy. There has never been a mania quite like it. Teenagers went wild with excitement; their parents went wild with anxiety over Elvis’ overt sexuality. Girls ripped his car apart; they stripped his clothes off; they were ready to rock ‘n’ roll. Elvis’ celebrity was an amazing American phenomen
