“We don’t have Elvis without Black music and without Black culture,” says star Austin Butler.
“We don’t have Elvis without Black music and without Black culture.
He grew up in one of three white houses in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Austin Butler in ‘Elvis’.Warner Bros. Pictures
He felt like they were all part of the same family.”
“And hanging out with B.B.
King and watching Little Richard and Big Mama Thornton.
Shonka Dukureh as Big Mama Thornton in ‘Elvis’.Kane Skennar/Warner Bros.
And also going to gospel churches and being moved by the spirit of spiritual music at that time.
“So much of it was the musicality of it,” Hanks recounts.
“The roots of Black music, the gospel and the R&B that he saw.
Austin Butler and Kelvin Harrison Jr. in ‘Elvis’.Kane Skennar/Warner Bros.
Harrison says his key to finding B.B.
King was watching a guitar tutorial that King recorded.
“He was explaining how he improvises,” says Harrison.
Yola as Sister Rosetta Tharpe in ‘Elvis’.Kane Skennar/Warner Bros.
“My dad’s a musician, so I was like, ‘My dad talks like he plays.’
And so I was like: Oh, B.B.
definitely talks like he improvises.
Alton Mason as Little Richard in ‘Elvis’.Kane Skennar/Warner Bros.
I’m going to take that and put it to the scene work.
I’m going to use the music to give him his voice.'”
“I got to tap in to that energy.
Sometimes Baz would be like, ‘You’re holding court.’
There’s still a grace to it.
But her space was a space that artists felt free to be really expressive.”
Who has ownership or blame in that complicated process?
InElvis, Presley’s career choices are framed more as appreciation than appropriation.
“There were stories of conversations that he had with B.B.
King, which we have in the film,” says Butler.
“Where Elvis talks about wanting to record a Little Richard song and B.B.
“The way that he spoke to them is through song,” adds Butler.
“The music overlay reflected the past, the present and the future,” says Mason.
King and Little Richard and Rosetta Tharpe.
That made it new, but also paid homage to where it all originated from.
And that felt good to me.”
