ABSTRACT
Elvis Presley performed with his group six times on the Dorsey Brothers’ CBS Stage Show between January and March, helping to send his first RCA single, “Heartbreak Hotel,” to the top of the charts. When Presley rocketed into the national spotlight in 1956 on the wings of the rock ’n’ roll phenomenon, his popularity and notoriety were aided in no small part by his numerous television appearances. The best description of Presley’s performance on the Milton Berle show came from the chairman of the music department of Bryant High School, Harry A. Feldman, who wrote Berle: The guest performer, Elvis Presley, presented a demonstration which was in execrable taste, bordering on obscenity. From the ragtime and close-contact “animal dances” of the 1910s to the “freak dancing” and “twerking” of recent decades, youth dance crazes have long served as the very center of indecency debates.
