Elvis Presley and Dale Earnhardt; From Folk Heros to Secular Saints
Perhaps the best example of secular sainthood in American pop culture is Elvis Presley. Over his twenty-year career in music and movies, he reigned as “The King” of rock and roll. His death in 1977 triggered an outpouring of emotion from fans across the country, and tens of thousands gathered outside Graceland to pay tribute to “The King”. In The Boy Who Would Be King, Elvis’s cousin and biographer Earl Greenwood described the scene. “The place was in absolute chaos. Mobs of people gathered at the front gate, some clutching photographs of a younger, thinner, smiling Elvis, many weeping uncontrollably, comforted by strangers who shared in their grief” (9). Even now, more than two decades after his death, fans still honor Elvis with visits to his home and memorial services on the anniversary of his death. Since it opened to the public in 1982, Graceland has hosted hundreds of thousands travelers each year, making it one of the most visited homes in the United States, second only to the White House (Elvis.com). The city of Memphis holds an annual week of celebrations and events leading up to the anniversary of Elvis’s death. “Elvis Week” includes charity events, a film festival, tours of Memphis and excursions to Elvis’s childhood home in Tupelo, and a candlelight vigil during which fans can visit his grave (Elvis.com).
After his death in 2001, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt became the latest addition to the collection of figures canonized by popular culture. Nicknamed the “Intimidator” for his aggressive driving style, he was the biggest star of the sport for two decades, winning a record-tying seven championships and 76 races overall. Within hours, the impact of his death was obvious, at Daytona, in his hometown of Kannapolis, North Carolina, and across the country. At every track on the NASCAR circuit, fans gathered to leave flowers and share their grief (Montville XVI). Country music stations played a tribute version of Garth Brooks’ song The Dance, edited to include the words of drivers and fans saddened by the loss, and rock stations created a similar tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. Garth Brooks himself performed The Dance in Dale’s honor at the 2001 NASCAR awards banquet. And the mourning goes on. Every year on April 29, Dale Earnhardt’s birthday, devoted fans gather at the headquarters of Dale Earnhardt Incorporated for a day of charity auctions, trivia contests and a rare opportunity to explore the interior showroom, where winning cars, trophies and photographs are displayed (Packman). Highways in Daytona and in Earnhardt’s hometown of Mooresville have been renamed in his honor. At the track, Earnhardt memorabilia is everywhere, both on fans and in the merchandise trailers, where Earnhardt merchandise continues to outsell that of most active drivers (Deitsch 2).
What is it about these two men, their lives, and their deaths more than two decades apart that provoked such intense public grief? Both Elvis Presley and Dale Earnhardt inspired intense loyalty among their fans, who identified with them on a very personal level. In life, they both embodied the American dream of success, and they both rose to success at the forefront of cultural phenomenon that changed the fabric of American popular culture. In death, they left a sense of unfulfilled potential that made the loss all the more tragic.
The ideal of the American Dream has held remarkable power throughout the centuries since our nation was founded, drawing immigrants from around the world and inspiring generation after generation of American youth. Both Elvis Presley and Dale Earnhardt lived this dream, rising out of poverty to fame, wealth and greatness but never truly leaving behind their common roots.
Elvis Presley was a child of humble beginnings. Born in Tupelo during the Great Depression, his family was among the poorest in a poor town. For much of his childhood, his family relied on the goodwill of relatives to provide for them. His parents were troubled; his father couldn’t hold a job, and his mother was an alcoholic who never got over the loss of Elvis’s stillborn twin brother, but she never failed to put her surviving son ahead of her own needs. “Gladys often did go without so that Elvis would have presentable clothes and shoes. She would go around town wearing two or three pairs of socks because she didn’t have enough money for both of them to get shoes” (Greenwood, 48). His first public performance came at the town’s fair, where he agreed to take part in the talent contest for free admission and lunch. The Presley family’s move to Memphis, where Elvis would discover the blues and gospel music that shaped his own style, was precipitated by an ultimatum from the local sheriff. Elvis’s father had been caught selling moonshine, and his choices were to either leave town or go to jail (Greenwood). In Memphis, the family was still desperately poor, but in the honkytonks and talent shows, Elvis found the beginnings of his success as a singer.
Even as his fame grew, Elvis never forgot his poor Southern roots. He held on to his job as a truck driver even as his career as a local singer began to take off, and only traded in his beat up Cadillac for a newer car at his manager’s insistence. When he got his first large check after signing with the Colonel, he moved his family into their first real home as a gift to his mother who had done without for so long. Not long after, he bought her the famous pink Cadillac. His famous preference for peanut butter and banana sandwiches reflected his unchanging taste in foods.
After trying two or three of Memphis’s highly touted restaurants, Elvis decided he preferred the taste of real food served by people who didn’t look down their noses at you if you used the wrong fork. He’d still take a girl to a nice place to impress her, but on his way home in the wee hours of the morning, he’d stop at an all night diner for a greasy cheeseburger (Greenwood 163)
These habits, along with his devotion to his mother and the rest of his family, made Elvis a figure with which everyday people could identify. Despite his wealth and fame, he came across as a real person.
Like Elvis, Dale Earnhardt grew up in a poor family in the south. He was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, a town that was planned, constructed and supported by the local cotton mill. His father left school in the 6th grade to go to work at the mill, only to quit to become a full time racecar driver in an era where the winner’s purse was seldom more than a couple hundred dollars. The family lived in a small house in one of the mill owned neighborhoods, where Ralph operated a garage to fund his racing. Dale grew up helping his father in the garage, until he left school at the age of 16, against his father’s wishes. He married young and went to work at the mill, trying to support his wife and son and fund his continuing love of racing. His first marriage ended after only a few years, and his second marriage was almost as brief as he put all his money into his racing while his family lived in one run down apartment after another (Montville). Because of his aggressive driving technique, his career was slow to take off. He suffered one setback after another as he ran up large debts to repair damaged cars, and car owners were reluctant to entrust their expensive equipment to his win-or-wreck racing style. In discussing this expense, Montville quotes Earnhardt’s first car owner, Rod Osterlund “What you had to know was that Dale Earnhardt was expensive. A lot of people couldn’t afford him, he wrescked so many cars” (68) His big break didn’t come until 1979, when he had begun to think of himself as too old to be launching a Winston Cup career. California businessman Rod Osterlund gave Dale a full time seat on his high budget foray into the rapidly expanding sport. Despite several spectacular accidents, one of which resulted in a broken collarbone, Dale Earnhardt won rookie of the year honors and set a new rookie earnings record (Montville).
The first of Dale Earnhardt’s seven Winston Cup championships came the following year, making him the only modern era driver to win rookie of the year and a championship in successive seasons. As his annual earnings skyrocketed and his reputation grew, he remained grounded in the North Carolina town where he’d lived all his life. He lived on a farm just a few miles from Kannapolis, and would later establish the headquarters of his own race team, a facility so immaculately kept that it is jokingly referred to as the Garage Mahal, in nearby Mooresville. Always an avid outdoorsman, he took advantage of his success to promote hunting and conservation causes in his home state and beyond. He also dedicated large amounts of time and money to encouraging young people not to make what he came to see as his biggest mistake, dropping out of school (Montville). His blue-collar background and continued pursuit of such down to earth hobbies and causes endeared him to NASCAR fans, making them feel like he was one of them.
The fabric of American pop culture is ever changing. Some fads come and go over a few seasons or a few years, while others endure and evolve to attain a permanent place within our cultural consciousness. Rock and roll and NASCAR are two trends that have become ingrained into American life over the span of several decades. Elvis Presley and Dale Earnhardt both saw their careers take shape in the beginnings of these new developments, and both are inexorably linked with the growth of their forums.
Elvis Presley’s rise to stardom began in the earliest days of rock and roll. As one of the first pioneers of this new and controversial musical style, his career took off on the first rock & roll radio stations. Borrowing heavily from traditionally black musical styles, like gospel and R&B, in a time when the country was still heavily segregated provoked strong reactions, particularly in the generation that would be at the forefront of the social and political upheavals of the following decades (Mandlsohn). With the increasing availability of affordable transistor radios and the growth of television, Elvis, and with him rock and roll, reached wider audiences in more ways than previous generations of musicians. The sexually and emotionally charged new genre appealed to young people, and Elvis was its’ first pioneer.
Dale Earnhardt joined NASCAR’s top circuit as a full time competitor in the year that the sport’s biggest event, the Daytona 500, was televised for the first time. He dominated the series as the launch of ESPN brought extensive motorsports coverage to cable subscribers across the country. Over the course of his 21-year career, NASCAR grew from a Southern phenomenon into America’s fastest growing spectator sport with more than 80 million fans (Johnson). His final race marked the start of a six year, $1.6 billion contract that brought the NASCAR season to broadcast television for the first time. The timing of Earnhardt’s rise from a struggling young driver to arguably the biggest star the sport has ever known coincided with the explosive expansion of the sport, and the oft-photographed image of him in his black uniform and mirrored sunglasses captured the essence of racing’s appeal. In the words of long time NASCAR fan, Jessica Nash, “He was NASCAR” (Nash).
The final commonality between these two men lies in the way they died. Though the circumstances that surrounded their deaths were very different, the nature and timing of their deaths shocked their fans and elevated the status they held in life.
Before his death, Elvis Presley became very reclusive. The distance he maintained between himself and the public hid the full extent of his health and personal problems, which made his death seem all the more sudden. It was unbelievable the Elvis Presley, The King, would die such an undignified and tragic death on the floor of his bathroom. Efforts to keep his condition and later his autopsy report out of public scrutiny made the news even more surreal. Still a young man, father to a small child, and still The King, the news that Elvis Presley had died sparked an outpouring of grief across the country (Guarlnick).
Unlike Elvis, who died in seclusion, Dale Earnhardt’s death was tragically public. Two hundred thousand spectators and millions of television viewers witnessed the fatal crash on the last lap of the Daytona 500, but few thought much of it. An earlier wreck ended with a driver walking away unharmed after his car cartwheeled across the track and landed on another car; by comparison, Earnhardt’s crash looked minor except to those most familiar with the sport. In the booth, veteran driver turned commentator Darrell Waltrip knew it was bad. “How ’bout Dale? I hope he’s okay. I just hope Dale’s okay. I guess he’s alright, isn’t he?” (Daytona) In At The Alter Of Speed, Montville describes the feeling;
“The intelligent head argued with the intelligent eyes. That was the thing. The eyes saw the severity of the crash. The eyes had seen other crashes in other places, the same speed, the same angle, the same unmerciful thud against a concrete wall. The eyes knew something terrible had happened. The intelligent head knew that Dale Earnhardt was involved. He would be alright.” (2)
The broadcast ended without mention of his condition, and although the official announcement was not made until 2 hours later, the news had already spread quickly across the internet. Dale Earnhardt was dead, and the mourning had begun.
Elvis Presley and Dale Earnhardt were men who lived the American dream in spectacular fashion, riding the crest of trends that molded recent history until their untimely deaths, and while it is clear that there are striking similarities between Elvis Presley and Dale Earnhardt, these factors alone don’t adequately explain the impact these two men had on their fans and on the course of American culture. They each had something less tangible that fostered an intense loyalty in their fans that goes beyond mere entertainment or enjoyment, and it is that intangible something that combined with the remarkable lives they led to make them saints of popular culture.
