this musical genre had a strong influence on elvis presley
Cultural impact of Elvis Presley In spite of the facts that Nat King Cole had the #7 song in 1959, and the #1 song in 1961, and Chuck Berry had a major hit with "Maybellene" in 1955, in the United States in the 1950s legal segregation and discrimination against African Americans was common, especially in the Deep South. Presley would nevertheless publicly cite his debt to African American music, pointing to artists such as B. B. King, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Fats Domino. The reporter who conducted Presley's first interview in New York City in 1956 noted that he named blues singers who "obviously meant a lot to him. [He] was very surprised to hear him talk about the black performers down there and about how he tried to carry on their music."[7] Later that year in Charlotte, North Carolina, Presley was quoted as saying: "The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like Iâ€™m doin' now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in their shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind 'til I goosed it up. I got it from them. Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now and I said if I ever got to a place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw."[8] Little Richard said of Presley: "He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music."[9] B. B. King said he began to respect Presley after he did Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup material and that after he met him, he thought the singer really was something else and was someone whose music was growing all the time right up to his death.[10]