CKWX DECEMBER 22, 1957

Somebody loves that man Elvis

from the Vancouver Province Dec. 27, 1957

   Elvis Presley has a new champion. He is Pete Seeger, regarded by many as America's greatest folk singer.
   Harvard-educated Seeger doesn't see Elvis as a leering, musically untalented egomaniac, as the side-burned Southerner is to a host of other folks--including Frank Sinatra.
   "PRESLEY IS an extremely talented guy," Seeger told a standing-room-only concert at Santa Monica High School Auditorium. "He has a words of ability."
   Seeger sees a definite link between folk music and Presley as a counter-trend to the fetish of mechanization. Both are "healthy reactions" to push-button living, he believes.
   "THERE IS a great revival of folk music throughout the nation," said Seeger. "A million guitars were sold last year. The revival has grown in an almost exact parallel with the do-it-yourself surge. People want something more creative than switching the TV on and off."
   As "do-it-yourselvers" Seeger included Sunday painters., basement machinists, hot rodders and people who are making folk music instead of being passive listeners."
   "I wish the poets and the musicians would get near to the heart of America," he says. "Once the artist and the audience spoke the same language--and I'm hoping that through folk music we can bring the same thing back."

Attack Launched
On Trash Music
By JACK CULLEN
Vancouver Sun Dec. 27, 1957

   What's on the musical horizon for 1958? Don't look for any immediate changes in the music you're hearing.
   It's for sure that rock 'n roll will stay with us for a while.
   But already the trend is towards smoothing out the rocks and easing the roll.
U.S. SENATE PROBE
   Underneath it all is the fact that the people who are responsible for most of the musical trash you've been hearing for the past several years are under fire from the U.S. Senate commerce committee.
   Congressman Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House of Representatives committee on the judiciary, who has conducted an investigation into the broadcasting and music fields, says:
   "I am personally convinced that BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) is guilty of violating the antitrust laws and should be prosecuted, perhaps criminally.
   "If America's young people are of good taste -- and I'm sure they are -- then they are definitely among the victims of this injustice."
'BMI PRESSURE'
   Bing Crosby claims that the presence of "so much trash on the airlanes and TV screens is "a result of pressure exerted by BMI." Oscar Hammerstein says,"The American people are being fed the music somebody else chooses for them."
   Frank Sinatra declares he left Columbia records, a CBS subsidiary, because of their insistence that he sing "inferior" BMI songs.
   So with all this pressure exerted upon the company that licenses most of this type of music, you're bound to find the listening in 1958 much easier on the ears.