Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music

250 Pages·2019·9.987 MB·English

by  Vincent L. Stephens

Rocking
the Closet

HOW
LITTLE RICHARD,
JOHNNIE RAY,
LIBERACE, AND
JOHNNY MATHIS
QUEERED
POP MUSIC
Vincent L. Stephens
Rocking the Closet
NEW PERSPECTIVES
ON GENDER IN MUSIC
Editorial Advisors
Susan C. Cook
Beverley Diamond
A list of books in the series appears
at the end of this book.
Rocking
the Closet

HOW LITTLE RICHARD, JOHNNIE RAY,
LIBERACE, AND JOHNNY MATHIS
QUEERED POP MUSIC
Vincent L. Stephens
Publication of this book was supported by a
grant from the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the
American Musicological Society, funded in part by
the National Endowment for the Humanities and
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
© 2019 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stephens, Vincent L. author.
Title: Rocking the closet: how Little Richard, Johnnie
Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis queered pop music
/ Vincent L. Stephens.
Description: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2019]
| Series: New perspectives on gender in music |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019013782 (print) | LCCN
2019014569 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252051661 (ebook)
| ISBN 9780252042805 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780252084638 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Homosexuality and popular music—
United States. | Gay musicians—United States. | Gay
singers—United States. | Music and race—United
States. | Little Richard, 1932- | Ray, Johnnie, 1927–1990.
| Liberace, 1919–1987. | Mathis, Johnny.
Classification: LCC ML3477 (ebook) | LCC ML3477 .S75
2019 (print) | DDC 781.64086/640973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019013782
For Harry Bakst, Thaddeus Davis,
Paula Harwood, Alex Tizon, and Clyde Woods,
whose creative imprints endure

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
INTRODUCTION: Queering Post–World War II
Masculinity through Music 1
CHAPTER ONE. Visibly Hidden: Postwar Disorientation,
Queer Community, and Queer Ambivalence 29
CHAPTER TWO. A Freak Deferred: Johnnie Ray
Navigates Innovation and Convention 51
CHAPTER THREE. Spectacular Vacillations: Little Richard
Charms and Disarms America 79
CHAPTER FOUR. Fine and Dandy: Mapping Johnny Mathis’s
Negotiations of Race, Sexuality, and Affect 115
CHAPTER FIVE. Building an Empire of Illusion: Liberace
and the Art of Queering 147
CONCLUSION: Disquieting and Exciting:
Queering Tools in Popular Music and Queer Becoming 179
Notes 191
References 201
Discography 217
Index 219

Preface
I OFTEN FEEL LIKE A TRAITOR to my generation, at least musically.
Based on my vintage (circa, ahem, the mid-1970s), I was born into the era of
disco and soft rock, but I quickly converted to the gospel of MTV, including
dalliances with mainstream pop, college rock, rap, and new jack swing, and
then graduated to hip-hop and modern rock. According to the doctrine of
what Kelefa Sanneh calls “rockism,” at my age I am supposed to be nostalgic
for masculine “alternative music,” such as Nirvana and R.E.M., and the “clas-
sic hip-hop” of Run DMC, 2Pac, and the Notorious B.I.G., and I should also
be yearning for “real music” to return (Sanneh 2007, 351–52).
Alas, much of the music I actually listened to as a child and the music
that has sustained me for most of my adult life is not necessarily the most
masculine or critically respected music. Much of my favorite music actually
harks back to a gentler era of pop music before rock ‘n’ roll. It is true that
in college I purchased an array of cassette tapes (which eventually gave way
to CDs) spanning from the soothing soft rock of Christopher Cross to the
unhip 1980s and 1990s pop music that was my adolescent bread and butter:
epic adult contemporary ballads and neo-disco dance pop as sung by Mariah
Carey, Taylor Dayne, and Whitney Houston. Definitely not rock.
I was simultaneously becoming something of a pop-music collector and
scholar, probing music history genre by genre and listening to disco artists
like Donna Summer, lush Philly Soul groups like The Spinners, the idio-
syncratic melodies and offbeat harmonies of singer-songwriter Laura Nyro,
1960s rock (Creedence Clearwater Revival), 1960s soul (for example, Otis
Redding, Sam & Dave), classic singing groups and Motown (the Drifters,
the Shirelles, the Supremes, the Temptations), and prerock pop/jazz artists