Elvis and His “American Trilogy”

Today, January 8, is Elvis Presley’s birthday.

It was Jerry Lee Lewis but it was Elvis Presley—half of the Million Dollar Quartet—jamming away from a hidden movie theater. In fact, it was Elvis performing a mash-up of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” and “Long Tall Sally,” and he was on fire. Curt and I had to see for ourselves.

The theater, as it turned out, was tucked behind a movie screen-sized wall of sequined polyester jumpsuits. The array of suits was stunning, gaudy and beautiful at the same time, all sized for the slim, trim “young Elvis” although they came from Elvis’s 1970’s wardrobe. We wanted to gawk, but Elvis was playing in the other room, and we had to see.

We were touring the vast museum complex at Graceland in Memphis, with one amazing thing to see after another. Elvis’s music was everywhere—but this music sounded bigger than life, recorded live. It was Elvis’s Aloha from Hawaii concert on the big screen. We found it in time to catch the tail end of the Jerry Lee cover. What came next, though. . . . Well, you can call it a fortuitous coincidence, if you want. But to this day, I like to think it was the spirit of The King looking kindly down upon us.

Curt Fields is best known as the nation’s foremost Ulysses S. Grant living historian, but like me, he’s a “Presletarian”—an enthusiast of The King. So imagine our delight when Elvis’s “American Trilogy” started up, which came next on the show’s set list. For two Civil War guys, the song could not have been more fitting—and for me, at least, it was one more reason to love The King.

First arranged in 1971 by country music artist Mickey Newbury, the three-song medley of “American Trilogy” juxtaposes “Dixie” with “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the slave spiritual “All My Trials.” “There is a genius element to combining these songs,” said country music star Tim McGraw. “‘Dixie’ is slowed down considerably. But when the messages of these songs are combined, it becomes a moving anthem with a huge spiritual component.”[1]

Elvis fell in love with the song almost at once, first performing it in concert in January 1972. By February, he felt the song was ready for primetime and recorded a concert version in Las Vegas for release as a single. The song only peaked at number 66 on the pop chart and at 31 on the easy listening chart, which made it the latest in a string of commercial disappointments for Elvis.[2] (He’d finally break that slump with his next release, “Burning Love,” which would peak at number 2.) In the U.K., the song hit number 8.

Nonetheless, “American Trilogy” became a staple of Elvis’s live performances and, according to “Elvisthemusic.com,” the official Elvis Presley site, it was one of his most-requested songs.[3]

The performance of the song in Aloha from Hawaii—the one Curt and I were now watching in full-screen awesomeness—has drawn particular praise from fans. I saw one person online argue that “Elvis singing ‘American Trilogy’ in Honolulu was the most American thing they’d ever seen.” I don’t know if I’d go that far, but the fan had a compelling argument: “He’s proof you can love your homeland despite its past, you can love your country despite her flaws, and love your neighbors as brothers despite your differences, without one diminishing the other in the slightest.”[4]

That’s a lot to get out of a four-and-a-half-minute song. None of the three songs in the medley get full treatment, but Elvis manages to wring out incredible renditions of “Dixie” and “Battle Hymn,” in particular.

“American Trilogy” starts with “Dixie,” which Elvis sings slow, low, and mournful. When he sings “I wish I was in Dixie,” you know he’s singing about home. It’s a home as lost to him as it was to Confederate troops stuck in the trenches of Petersburg, far from family and hearth. By the time Elvis started performing “American Trilogy,” his birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, was long ago and far away. He’d long since relocated to Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, and immersed himself in a lifestyle so far removed from anything he could’ve imagined as a poor white boy in rural Mississippi. What’s a boy like that to do when he suddenly ends up with more money than God? Shag carpeting on the walls. Jungle rooms. Golf carts. Gold-plated sinks in the airplane. Porcelain monkeys. Hillbilly opulence.

“Dixie” today remains a nostalgic song of Confederate days gone by, but for Elvis, it becomes deeply personal as he sings:

“Cause Dixieland, where I was born/
Early, Lord, one frosty morning. . . .”

In fact, Tupelo on January 8, 1935, had a low of 49 degrees and a high of 63. A half-inch of rain fell. No frost.[5] And yet Elvis sells the song as if it were literally true.

The musical accompaniment is sparing during this first part of the song, mostly a snare drum to evoke the military drumroll. Elvis’s backup singers, J.D. Sumner & The Stamps, weave in excellent harmonies. But then as the medley shifts to “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” horns rise up and a surprising honky-tonk piano arrives underneath. Elvis’s vocals shift into arena-ballad mode, and the “Glory, glory, halleluiahs” become magisterial. The Sweet Inspirations and Kathy Westmoreland join the Stampes for a full-choir swell.

But before the song really launches, Elvis brings in back to the intimate and personal. A father sings to a child, both of whom, according to the song’s tradition, are enslaved:

“So hush little baby
Don’t you cry
You know your daddy’s bound to die
But all my trials, Lord, will soon be over”

Elvis had a million ways to show off his voice, but I’ve always felt that his Gospel music showed it off to its very best effect. This stretch of “American Trilogy” gets closest.

But then comes, for modern ears, what might be the most problematic part of the song. The dying father is singing about the Promised Land and the arrangement of the song brings “Dixie” back—the melody of the chorus played on a flute. While some today would say Dixie IS the Promised Land, which is what the flute arrangement suggests, enslaved people hardly thought so.

But one reason Elvis loved the song was precisely because of that intersection of viewpoints and experiences. According to “Elvisthemusic.com,” “the song spoke to Elvis not just about inescapable historical divisions but about the resolution to which he hoped those divisions might some day come.”

“The hope of the trilogy . . .” says historian Jon Meacham, “is that clash of visions between ‘Dixie’ and ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’—of, really, the clash between the blackface lyrics of Daniel Emmett and the ennobling verses of Julia Ward Howe—may one day end in the coming of the Lord, whose truth will be marching on.”[6]

That’s the line Elvis ends on, “His truth is marching on,” which he turns into a sweeping epic. He rips into it with every ounce of his formidable vocal power, belting the final line as a form of worship to the Almighty and the American promise alike.

Today, we’re ninety years removed from Elvis’s birth; we’re almost 50 years removed from his death. It’s easy to forget why he was The King. We look back at those sequined jumpsuits and thick sideburns and the on-stage karate moves and perhaps fall into the trap of seeing a caricature. But listen. Listen to that voice. It was beautiful.

It is beautiful.

Elvis loved the South. And he loved America. After all, he embodied the American dream of rags-to-riches, didn’t he?

As Curt and I stood in that theater at the Graceland museum, maybe hearing Elvis sing “American Trilogy” in Honolulu was the most American thing I’d ever heard, too.

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[1] Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw, Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music that Made a Nation (Random House, 2019), 199.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Trilogy

[3] https://www.elvisthemusic.com/music/an-american-trilogy/

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/Elvis/comments/mm4yvb/elvis_singing_an_american_trilogy_in_honolulu_is/?rdt=61629.

[5] https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/tupelo/year-1935

[6] Meacham and McGraw, 198.

And here is a link to the full musician credits.