Those Swivelling Hips: Elvis, "Sphilkes", & Gospel Ecstasy

by Daniel Klein

Those swivelling hips drove people crazy. Church-going mothers were scandalized. Ed Sullivan wanted them sanitized; (the tv variety show host only permitted The King to be shot from the waist up for his broadcasts.) And, of course, teenage girls (and boys) were hypnotized. It was just so wild and crazy and sexy. To use an expression that was not to become current for another decade or so, it was "mind-blowing".

For America in the late 1950s, the very idea of a handsome young man publicly undulating and pulsing, well, like some hoochy-coochy dancer, was singularly uncouth, immoral, vaguely effeminate, and not-so-vaguely arousing. What in the name of God did this seemingly well-mannered, Momma-loving, good Southern Christian boy think he was doing?

It is the contention of this writer that Elvis Presley did not think he was doing anything. Those swivelling hips were, quite literally, out of control -- his control. Obviously, when his attention was drawn to this pelvic phenomenon, he had a choice to at least try to control them, but he chose not to. And, yes, an element of this choice was certainly that Presley recognized that his swivelling hips were part of his appeal. But my guess is that even if he had tried to control his movements, he would have discovered that in doing so he also would have lost much of the raw energy that made his singing unique and charismatic. The hip-bone was connected to the vocal-bone, so to speak.

In fact, there is some evidence that Elvis was somewhat embarrassed when he saw on a kinescope recording what his hips and legs were actually doing while he sang. As every biographer of Elvis has noted, he had a certain shyness and properness about him that one would expect of a young man of his time and place. So where did this hoochy-coochy stuff come from?

As a youngster, Elvis Aron Presley was bursting with uncontrollable energy. Many of his school teachers recall a boy who simply could not sit still in the classroom -- his foot popping up and down under the desk, his head swinging back and forth. No doubt, if he had presented himself this way in a 21st Century classroom, he would have been remanded to the school psychologist who would have instantly labeled him as suffering from A.D.D. (Attention-Deficit Disorder Syndrome), and would have promptly put him on Ritalin to help him "control himself" and "focus." (One cannot help but wonder how many budding geniuses are being "professionally drugged" into "focussed" ordinariness today.)

Certainly, Elvis's surplus energy did not help him as a student. Evidence shows that he was in possession of impressive native intelligence and an inquiring mind (his bookshelf and marginal notes attest to this), but, man, those feet kept popping and that head kept rocking, and that made it hard to concentrate. Elvis may have seen this as a liability. And he very likely saw it as an embarrassment.

Perhaps the best colloquial term to describe Elvis's condition comes from the Yiddish language; that term is "sphilkes" and one of its definitions is "excessive energy that spills out in nervous movements." Elvis had sphilkes. And he clearly did not know what to do with it.

Much has been said and written about Elvis's fascination with Southern, African-American music, in particular the gospel music he heard in Black churches. It has been argued that Elvis "stole" Black music and capitalized on it by making it acceptable to a white public, much the way some people today argue that Emminem has stolen rap from the Blacks and made it acceptable to a white audience. (I have no interest in pursuing that particular quarrel here; I believe that music, like literature and humor, evolves by a natural dialectic, so that, of course, it borrows from the existing to create the new, regardless of its ethnic origin.)

In any event, what is most telling about Elvis's visits to Black churches is that he did it at all. Leave us not forget that this was in the pre-Civil Rights Movement deep South. A white boy slipping into a Black church or revival tent? What could have been on his mind?

I am quite certain that what was on Elvis's mind is that he surely did like what was going on in there. And being the open, inquiring, instinctive young man that he was, he saw nothing wrong with following his ears and his heart through the door. It is, to my mind, one of the most admirable qualities about his character: If it felt real and natural, he did not care what other people thought about it.

But along with the Black gospel music, with its call-and-response, syncopated rhythms, its soaring, beseeching melodies, and its overall joyfulness, came characteristic movements: the swaying of the choir; the off-beat hand-clapping; the dancing in the aisles; and, most significantly for us here, the wild and crazy, frenzied and spastic movements of congregants in the thrall of glossolalia -- the "speaking in tongues" (or "tongues of fire", as it is called in Acts 2) in which a torrent of unintelligible utterances spring from the mouths of people said to be possessed by the Holy Spirit.

A man or woman speaking in tongues is a fascinating and terrifying thing to behold. The sounds are guttural, raw, other-worldly. The speaker does, indeed, appear to be possessed. He seems like a marionette controlled by strings from Beyond. That is not the man speaking, it is some force speaking through him. And in addition to the sounds he makes, are the movements his body makes: jerky, quivering, twitchy. His eyes may roll up into his skull, he may water at the mouth, sweat profusely, and, finally, he may even passes out -- often into the pastor's awaiting arms. In short, he appears to have a neurological disorder.

Indeed, there is not only a long history of frenzied, spastic dancing during religious rituals, but there is also a long history of these movements being "diagnosed" as a psychological or neurological disease by the secular world. A prime example is St. Vitus Dance. This disease (known medically as Sydenham's chorea) is named after St. Vitus, a 4th century martyr and one of the fourteen "Holy Helpers." Symptoms include acute disturbance of the central nervous system characterized by involuntary muscular movements of the face and extremities. Historically, it is most closely associated with the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend wherein, during mid-summer 1374, people along the Rivers Rhine and Moselle began to "dance and rave." Most modern historians describe what happened in Hamelin as either a form of mass hysteria or a neurological disease, but at least one open-minded historian, Hans Scholz, described it in terms of emotionality -- motor restlessness and its release in dance and rhythm.

That, I believe, is what Elvis Presley witnessed and recognized in these Black churches: a release for his motor restlessness in dance and rhythm. He saw a musical/physical outlet for his shpilkes; a sublimation (literally, "making sublime") of his surplus energy; a direct connection between his overspilling energy and his talent. It was okay. It was human. Let go with those swivelling hips.

The rest, as they say, is history. When young people saw those swivelling hips, they knew intuitively that it was a natural phenomenon and not some self-conscious, provocative "act." And so, because of Elvis, they were able to make the connection that music, at its most inspiring, taps into the unconscious, from whence it may express itself in wild and crazy primal movements. The let-it-all-hang-out Sixties had begun.