Jackie Taylor, founder and CEO of Black Ensemble Theater (BET), has spent many years creating bio-musicals around the lives and song catalogs of famous Black artists. Now she’s excavating her own family’s history in Elvis Presley Was a Black Man Named Joe, a moving tribute both to her late younger brother, Joe (separated from her by only nine months), and the rock icon from Tupelo.
We meet Janet, as she’s called here, through a memory-play device. The older version of Janet, played with panache by BET stalwart Rhonda Preston, and a quartet of male singers provide the framework and transitions. Through flashbacks to the Cabrini-Green home young Janet (Britt Edwards) and Joe (Dennis Dent) share with their parents, we see how Joe’s obsession with the King becomes Janet’s. The two spend hours watching Elvis movies at the local theater (often the only ones that would be booked there, Preston’s older Janet notes). When the local gang tries to put pressure on him, Joe claims he threw them off with an impromptu performance of “Jailhouse Rock.”
Elvis Presley Was a Black Man Named Joe
Through 4/20: Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, 4450 N. Clark, 773-769-4451, blackensembletheater.org, $56.50-$66.50
As with past Black Ensemble shows, Elvis’s own history, including the many influences of Black musicians like Chuck Berry, Roy Hamilton, and the pair of Fats (Waller and Domino) on his work, comes into sharp focus. (At one point, Little Richard, as embodied by the splendid Trequon Tate, shows up in all his glory to demand that Jackie Wilson be given his due as an Elvis influence.)
In one of the more moving interludes, young Janet, having heard a (false) rumor that Elvis said, “The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes,” writes a letter asking him if he’s prejudiced. Months later, she receives a handwritten reply from Presley, outlining his own hardscrabble childhood in Tupelo, where his family lived either close to or actually in the Black section of town, and the respect he has for Black artists and people. Elvis had a lot of problems, and the history of rock ’n’ roll is filled with white appropriation of Black artists, as this show makes clear—though perhaps oddly, Big Mama Thornton, the first artist to record “Hound Dog,” isn’t mentioned here. But Taylor clearly doesn’t find the man himself to be racist. And neither did many of his Black contemporaries in music.
The similarities between Joe and Elvis are also present beyond growing up in tough economic circumstances: both served in the Army in Germany, and both ended up facing issues with substance abuse that cost them their lives. But it’s the love that flows through Janet and Joe’s family that stands out in the narrative, as they negotiate the changing world around them with steadfast belief in themselves and each other. In one humorous interlude, Janet’s dad (Jaitee Thomas) urges her to use words and her brain to fight back against those that would denigrate her—while her mom (Melanie McCullough) reminds her that sometimes a well-timed punch to the chin can get a bully off your back. Thomas and McCullough bring delightful marital chemistry to their roles.
The songs of course are the main attraction, and the closing medley gives all nine of the cast members a chance to shine on numbers like “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Unchained Melody,” and “How Great Thou Art.” (Great work, as usual, from the BET band, led by Oscar Brown Jr.) It feels fitting that Taylor (who also directs and composed the title song) has, after so many years of celebrating the roots of others, given her own upbringing and influences the flowers they deserve.
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