Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music - New Perspectives on Gender in Music - Vincent L Stephens - Books - University of Illinois Press - 9780252084638 - October 14, 2019
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Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music - New Perspectives on Gender in Music

Vincent L Stephens

Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music - New Perspectives on Gender in Music

The all-embracing, whaddya got? nature of rebellion in Fifties America included pop music's unlikely challenge to entrenched notions of masculinity. Within that upheaval, four prominent artists dared to behave in ways that let the public assumebut not seetheir queerness. That these artists cultivated ambiguous sexual personas often reflected an understandable fear, but also a struggle to fulfill personal and professional expectations. Vincent L. Stephens confronts notions of the closetboth coming out and staying inby analyzing the careers of Liberace, Johnny Mathis, Johnnie Ray, and Little Richard. Appealing to audiences hungry for novelty and exoticism, the four pop icons used performance and queering techniques that ran the gamut. Liberace's flamboyance shared a spectrum with Mathis's intimate sensitivity while Ray's overwrought displays as Mr. Emotion seemed worlds apart from Little Richard's raise-the-roof joyousness. As Stephens shows, the quartet not only thrived in an era of gray flannel manhood, they pioneered the ways generations of later musicians would consciously adopt sexual mystery as an appealing and proven route to success.


248 pages

Media Books     Paperback Book   (Book with soft cover and glued back)
Released October 14, 2019
ISBN13 9780252084638
Publishers University of Illinois Press
Pages 248
Dimensions 228 × 151 × 21 mm   ·   410 g
Language English