The grievance between Frank Sinatra and the “ugly, degenerate” rock and roll of Elvis Presley
Frank Sinatra burst onto the scene in the 1940s, prior to rock and roll dominating the following decades. Sinatra was about as far from the spirit and rock and roll as you could get; he was a controller singer and performer in the style of jazz, swing, big band and easy listening. Sinatra himself was sceptical of the rock and roll movement that came through in the 1950s.
In 1957, Sinatra wrote an opinion piece for a French magazine, Western World. It read, “My only deep sorrow is the unrelenting insistence of recording and motion picture companies upon purveying the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear. Naturally, I refer to the bulk of rock and roll.”
Evidently, Sinatra was not a fan of the brashness of rock and roll; it was a far cry from the uptight jazz lounges that he was used to playing in. Continuing his diatribe against the genre, Sinatra said, “It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false.”
He added, “It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd – in plain fact, dirty – lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every side-burned delinquent on the face of the earth… this rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore.”
Naturally, this roused debate within the rock and roll community, and its head honcho, none other than the great Elvis Presley, came to its defence. That same year, Elvis responded, “He has a right to his opinion, but I can’t see him knocking it for no good reason. I admire him as a performer and an actor, but I think he’s badly mistaken about this.”
Sinatra himself had been part of a popular wave of new music, and Presley noted this, adding, “If I remember correctly, he was also part of a trend. I don’t see how he can call the youth of today immoral and delinquent. It’s the greatest music ever, and it will continue to be so. I like it, and I’m sure many other people feel the same way.”
However, Sinatra was adamant about rock and roll being a lesser genre than jazz and swing. Discussing Presley’s talents, Sinatra said in 1957, “Only time will tell. They said I was a freak when I first hit, but I’m still around. Presley has no training at all. When he goes into something serious, a bigger kind of singing, we’ll find out he is a singer. He has a natural, animalistic talent.” How wrong Sinatra was. As we know, Elvis became the king of rock and roll, and rock and roll became the king of the airwaves for the next 50 years!
