Elvis and Black Music

SO THE STORY goes that Elvis stole black music, exploited the influences he absorbed while growing up on the blurred edges of the coloured line in Memphis, diluted and made them palatable to white America. The very notion that you can steal a form of music – let alone that music can be defined by hue – is preposterous. If said notion had any legal credibility, folk legends such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan would have been rendered indigent by litigation.