Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest

by Thomas Hauser

  “You have to put on a show for the people,” he said of his performing style. “People can buy your records and hear you sing. They don’t have to come out and hear you. If I just stood out there and sang and never moved a muscle, the people would say, ‘My goodness; I can stay home and listen to his records.’”

  But it was more than that.

  “I don’t know where I picked up my style,” Elvis acknowledged. “I just started out doing what I’m doing now. I do whatever I feel onstage. It’s like a surge of electricity going through me. It’s almost like making love, but it’s even stronger than that. Sometimes I think my heart is going to explode.”

  The message in Elvis’s music was simple. Express your emotions; do what you want; feel good about yourself; the world is yours.

  “Presley, more than anyone else,” it was later written, “gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and unified generation.”

  Adolescence is a time when boys and girls are developing their own artistic tastes and finding new dimensions within themselves. Before Elvis, there had been a hint of teen rebellion in the culture, personified by James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. To young men and women who came of age in the mid-1950s, Elvis was something more.

  At a certain age, liking the music is about being part of a group. Elvis was the group leader, brimming with promise and doing things that simply weren’t allowed.

  Sex is the most mysterious and exciting of unknowns for adolescent girls. Elvis was an adolescent girl’s fantasy machine. He was a bad boy with an innocence about him; handsome, exciting, and safe at the same time. When the powers that be refused to show him from the waist down on television, the imagination kicked in. There’s nothing more enticing to a girl entering puberty than forbidden fruit that her parents don’t want her to see.

  Girls dreamed about Elvis, literally. Boys thought he was cool. And identifying with Elvis was a good way for them to impress girls. They grew sideburns and let their hair grow long.

  The first article about Elvis in a national magazine ran in April 1956 in Life (the premier general-interest magazine in the country at the time). It referenced him as a “howling hillbilly” and likened his gyrations to burlesque. That was in keeping with the view that his music was vulgar and had the potential to lead young people into sexually wanton conduct.

  In May 1956, after Elvis performed in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the local Catholic diocese newspaper sent an “urgent” letter to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, warning, “Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. His actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth.”

  Three months later, when Elvis performed in Florida, Reverend Robert Gray told the congregation at Trinity Baptist Church in Jacksonville, “Elvis Presley has achieved a new low in spiritual degeneracy.”

  A local judge ordered Elvis to tone down his act. He responded by foresaking gyrations during the show but wiggling his little finger suggestively throughout.

  However, sex wasn’t the only perceived threat that Elvis posed. There was another theme, more ominous to some, lurking in the background.

  Elvis was becoming the dominant symbol of a new form of music: rock and roll. Rock and roll, especially the way he sang it, played into issues of race.

  There were no black entertainment icons in America in the mid-1950s. Elvis fused black and white music in his art; blending country music, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues. He was a white man who “sang black,” creating his own form of expression and bringing it into the mainstream of American culture.

  He was blurring the lines between the races, and also opening a door that would allow black men and women to become crossover stars.

  “Elvis was a blessing,” Richard Penniman (better known as “Little Richard”) said years later. “They wouldn’t let black music through. He opened the door for black music.”

  Then Elvis got bigger.

  Within the entertainment industry, The Ed Sullivan Show was the most influential television program in America. Sullivan was stung by the fact that, for the first time ever, rival Steve Allen had drawn a higher rating than he had. Allen’s featured attraction that night had been Elvis Presley.

  In response, Sullivan booked Presley for three appearances. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by sixty million viewers; a mind-boggling 82.6 percent of the television-viewing audience. Performances on October 28, 1956, and January 21, 1957, drew comparable numbers.

  Millions of Americans who were young at the time still remember where they were when Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. It had been decreed that camera angles would be such that the most provocative of his gyrations would not be shown. He also toned his act down for the shows. At the close of his third appearance, Sullivan assured the country that this was “a real decent fine boy.”

  Elvis’s appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show boosted his celebrity status to unprecedented proportions. He was a tidal wave washing over American culture. There had never been a phenomenon like him. Then he added Hollywood to his credits, appearing in a feature film entitled Love Me Tender.

  Ironically, in many ways, Elvis represented conservative American values. He revered his mother. He was a Southern Baptist. All he wanted to do, really, was sing, buy a car, and make money.

  Press conferences were awkward affairs. Off-stage, Elvis was polite and a bit shy. When called upon to speak publicly, he struggled with his words and never knew quite what to say apart from platitudes about loving whatever city he was in and appreciating the opportunity to perform before a live audience.

  “I don’t like to be called ‘Elvis, the Pelvis,’” he told a radio interviewer in Florida. “It’s one of the most childish expressions I’ve ever heard coming from an adult. But if they want to call me that, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Asked about rock and roll, he replied, “Rock and roll has been in for about five years. I’m not going to say that it’s gonna last, because I don’t know. All I can say is, it’s good; the people like it; it’s selling; and I enjoy doing it.”

  Then Elvis’s world was turned upside down. He was drafted and, on March 24, 1958, inducted into the United States Army. The haircut he received at the start of basic training was as symbolic as any shearing ever. The old culture had asserted itself.

  A more debilitating blow followed. In August 1958, Elvis’s mother fell gravely ill. He was granted an emergency leave to visit her. Two days after he arrived in Memphis, Gladys Presley died. She was forty-six years old.

  Elvis lost his center when his mother died. As she lay in an open coffin at Graceland, he stroked her face again and again, saying, “Wake up, mama. Wake up, baby, and talk to Elvis.” He had to be restrained from climbing on top of her coffin when she was laid in the grave. He came close to a complete emotional breakdown. There was inconsolable extended grieving.

  “He changed completely,” Lillian Mann Smith (Elvis’s aunt) said years later. “He didn’t seem like Elvis ever again.”

  For most of his time in the military, Presley was stationed with the Third Armored Division in West Germany. He was honorably discharged on March 5, 1960. Two months later, he was on a television variety show again; this time as the featured guest on The Frank Sinatra Timex Special.

  Several years earlier, Sinatra had belittled Elvis as utterly lacking in talent. Now the two men, each wearing a tuxedo, stood side by side. Sinatra (looking uncomfortable) sang Love Me Tender. Elvis (without sideburns) sang Witchcraft, one of his host’s signature songs.

  Two-thirds of Americans watching television that night watched The Frank Sinatra Timex Special. Elvis was back. But the rebellious rock-and-roll figure had died.

  II

  On January 17, 1942, six years before the Presleys moved to Memphis, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born in Louisville, Kentucky.

  Kentucky was a Jim Crow state. Segregated facilities were mandated by law. In parts of the country at that time, blacks were denied the righ
t to vote and it was a crime punishable by ten years in prison for a black and white to intermarry. Major league baseball (“America’s national pastime”) had yet to open its doors to Jackie Robinson.

  In some respects, Cassius Clay was very much like Elvis. He adored his mother. He was a Southern Baptist, who said “yes, sir” and “no, sir.” He wanted to make money and own a red Cadillac convertible. He was remarkably telegenic, photogenic, and charismatic. One can argue that he and Elvis had two of the prettiest smiles ever.

  Elvis’s art was singing. Clay’s was fighting. Each was an entertainer. Elvis’s performances were scripted and safe. Clay’s world was more brutal. He put his physical well-being on the line every time he entered the ring.

  Like Elvis, Cassius was obsessed with his art when he was young and had a rhythm all his own.

  Older generations had condemned Elvis, saying, “He wouldn’t have to jump around and shake his hips like that if he could sing.” Older generations condemned Clay’s ring style, saying, “He wouldn’t have to dance around like that if he could fight.”

  On November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. On February 9, 1964, the Beatles made their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show (drawing 73,000,000 viewers). Sixteen days after that, Cassius Clay knocked out Sonny Liston to claim the most coveted title in sports, the heavyweight championship of the world.

  “The Sixties” had begun.

  Two days after defeating Liston, Clay announced that he had accepted the teachings of a black separatist religion known as the Nation of Islam. On March 6, 1964, he took the name “Muhammad Ali,” which was given to him by his spiritual mentor, Elijah Muhammad. On February 17, 1966, he was reclassified 1-A (eligible for the military draft) by the Selective Service System and uttered the now immortal words, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.”

  Elvis’s followers had expected him to go into the military. He would have lost their love and respect if he hadn’t.

  The Nation of Islam had different expectations with regard to Ali. On April 28, 1967, citing his religious beliefs, he refused induction into the United States Army.

  Elvis had set music free in America and fit into the spirit of “What would it be like to be free of my parents’ rules?”

  Like Elvis, Ali was about personal freedom. But he was meeting issues of racism head-on and asking, “What would it be like to be free of society’s rules?”

  Ali was perceived by the establishment as being even more dangerous than Elvis had been.

  Meanwhile, popular culture was passing Elvis by. By the time he was discharged from the Army, rock and roll was in full bloom and evolving at the speed of sound. By 1964, the Beatles were dominating pop culture the way that Elvis had a mere eight years earlier. Mick Jagger did everything onstage that Elvis had done (and more). Bob Dylan freed music with lyrics that were as different and daring as Elvis’s gyrations had been. Elvis’s music, which had been socially relevant in the 1950s, wasn’t anymore.

  Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker (as he liked to be called), contributed to the decline. Parker (who had been born in Holland and whose real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk) had an overbearing manner and managed to extract an exorbitant percent of Elvis’s earnings for himself.

  As soon as Elvis was discharged from the Army, Parker locked him into a series of Hollywood movie contracts that lasted for the better part of a decade. During that time, Elvis starred in twenty-seven films in which the character he played was always a thinly veiled version of himself regardless of the role.

  James Dean had been one of Elvis’s boyhood heroes. Elvis wanted to be a serious actor. With good training and better roles, he might have become one. Instead, he was mired in a string of low-budget musicals that were profitable but critically panned. The soundtracks had a formulaic assembly-line quality. The Beatles were conquering the world, and he was in films like Tickle Me and Harum Scarum.

  Ali would lose three years of his ring career because of his refusal to accept induction into the United States Army. Elvis wasted a decade of his life making bad Hollywood movies.

  “I’d like to make better films than the films I made before,” he said ruefully when the run was over. “I didn’t have final approval of the script, which means I couldn’t say, ‘This is not good for me.’ I don’t think anyone was consciously trying to harm me. It was just, Hollywood’s image of me was wrong, and I knew it and I couldn’t do anything about it. The pictures got very similar. Something was successful and they’d try to recreate it the next time around. I’d read the first four or five pages, and I’d know it was just a different name with twelve new songs in it. It worried me sick. I didn’t know what to do. I was obligated a lot of times very heavily to things I didn’t believe in and it was very difficult. I had thought they would get a property for me and give me a chance to show some acting ability, but it did not change. I became very discouraged. I would have liked to have something more challenging instead of Hollywood’s image of what they thought I was.”

  Then Elvis’s world turned again; this time for the better.

  In 1968, America was in turmoil. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. The anti-war movement was in full bloom. Mayor Daley’s police rioted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. A new drug culture was sweeping the country.

  On December 3, 1968, NBC aired its highest-rated show of the year. It’s now known as “The Comeback Special.” At the time, it was titled Elvis.

  The show mixed a handful of elaborately produced studio numbers with songs performed in an intimate setting before a small live audience. Elvis wore black leather, looked good, and sang well. It was his first “live” performance since 1961. A whole new generation took notice and said, “Hey! This guy is pretty cool.” And for those who had been young in the 1950s, Elvis was back.

  Five months after Elvis’s comeback special, the International Hotel (soon to be acquired by Hilton) announced that it had signed him to perform fifty-seven shows over a four-week period in Las Vegas for the then-astronomical sum of $500,000.

  Thirteen years earlier, in April 1956, a young Elvis Presley had unsuccessfully played the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. The audience had been unimpressed. A reviewer for the Las Vegas Sun wrote at the time, “For the teen-agers, the long tall Memphis lad is a whiz. For the average Vegas spender or showgoer, a bore. His musical sound with a combo of three is uncouth, matching to a great extent the lyric content of his nonsensical songs.”

  Times change.

  Elvis opened at The International on July 31, 1969. The next day, the hotel extended his contract to provide for eight weeks of performances annually (in February and August) over a five-year period. His salary would be one million dollars a year.

  Elvis and Ali met twice in Las Vegas. The first time, Muhammad saw him onstage and they chatted briefly afterward. “All my life, I admired Elvis,” Ali said years later. “It was a thrill to meet him.”

  Their second meeting, in February 1973, was more consequential.

  Ali was less threatening to the establishment by then. He’d been stripped of his championship and denied a license to box after refusing induction into the United States Army. After three years in exile, he was allowed by court order to fight again, but had lost to Joe Frazier in “The Fight of the Century.” His rematches with Frazier and triumphant battle against George Foreman in Zaire to reclaim the heavyweight crown were yet to come. Ali’s adversaries had exploited his vulnerabilities and seemed to have beaten him down.

  From time to time, Elvis’s life had intersected with the sweet science. He tried out for his high school boxing team, but quit the first day after suffering a bloody nose. Later, in the 1962 movie Kid Galahad, he’d played a professional fighter.

  On February 14, 1973, Ali fought Joe Bugner at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Prior to the bout, he and Elvis met in a hotel suite and Elvis presented him with a faux-jewel-studded robe emblazoned with the words �
��The People’s Choice.” Ali wore the robe that night and beat Bugner.

  The Las Vegas years are an important part of Elvis’s legacy. The city’s dream machine revived him and gave him new life as a superstar. Soon, he was performing around the country again.

  “The most important thing is the inspiration I get from a live audience,” Elvis said in Houston before a 1970 engagement at The Astrodome. “I was missing that.”

  Time and again, he elaborated on that theme: “A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that’s generated in the crowd and onstage. It’s my favorite part of the business . . . I missed the closeness of a live audience. So as soon as I got out of the movie contract, I decided to play live concerts again . . . It’s a good feeling. There’s a new audience each time. What’s interesting about music and all the people here [his back-up musicians] is, they find new sounds and they do things differently themselves; so it’s like a new experience every day.”

  Elvis was appearing onstage more often now than ever before. In 1973, there were 168 concert performances; the most notable of them at the Honolulu International Center in Hawaii.

  Aloha Hawaii was taped in January and aired in the United States on April 4, 1973, capturing 57% of the viewing audience. More significantly, it was transmitted by satellite to thirty-six countries around the world.

  Meanwhile, Ali was experiencing a rebirth of his own. In 1974, he dethroned George Foreman to regain the heavyweight championship of the world. Then he abandoned the separatist teachings of the Nation of Islam and, while still a devout Muslim, embraced the philosopy that hearts and souls know no color.

  Ali’s kingdom was now the world. And Elvis had become a symbol larger than himself; the quintessential larger-than-life celebrity rock star. He was an Elvis; the only one of its kind.

  Only a select few people have ever experienced what Elvis and Ali came to experience in the mid-1970s. They were icons of the highest order, universal royalty, instantly recognizable around the globe.