Rocking the Closet HOW LITTLE RICHARD, JOHNNIE RAY, LIBERACE, AND JOHNNY MATHIS QUEERED POP MUSIC Vincent L. Stephens Rocking the Closet NEW PERSPECTIVES ON GENDER IN MUSIC Editorial Advisors Susan C. Cook Beverley Diamond A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book. Rocking the Closet HOW LITTLE RICHARD, JOHNNIE RAY, LIBERACE, AND JOHNNY MATHIS QUEERED POP MUSIC Vincent L. Stephens Publication of this book was supported by a grant from the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stephens, Vincent L. author. Title: Rocking the closet: how Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis queered pop music / Vincent L. Stephens. Description: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2019] | Series: New perspectives on gender in music | Identifiers: LCCN 2019013782 (print) | LCCN 2019014569 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252051661 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252042805 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780252084638 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Homosexuality and popular music— United States. | Gay musicians—United States. | Gay singers—United States. | Music and race—United States. | Little Richard, 1932- | Ray, Johnnie, 1927–1990. | Liberace, 1919–1987. | Mathis, Johnny. Classification: LCC ML3477 (ebook) | LCC ML3477 .S75 2019 (print) | DDC 781.64086/640973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019013782 For Harry Bakst, Thaddeus Davis, Paula Harwood, Alex Tizon, and Clyde Woods, whose creative imprints endure Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii INTRODUCTION: Queering Post–World War II Masculinity through Music 1 CHAPTER ONE. Visibly Hidden: Postwar Disorientation, Queer Community, and Queer Ambivalence 29 CHAPTER TWO. A Freak Deferred: Johnnie Ray Navigates Innovation and Convention 51 CHAPTER THREE. Spectacular Vacillations: Little Richard Charms and Disarms America 79 CHAPTER FOUR. Fine and Dandy: Mapping Johnny Mathis’s Negotiations of Race, Sexuality, and Affect 115 CHAPTER FIVE. Building an Empire of Illusion: Liberace and the Art of Queering 147 CONCLUSION: Disquieting and Exciting: Queering Tools in Popular Music and Queer Becoming 179 Notes 191 References 201 Discography 217 Index 219 Preface I OFTEN FEEL LIKE A TRAITOR to my generation, at least musically. Based on my vintage (circa, ahem, the mid-1970s), I was born into the era of disco and soft rock, but I quickly converted to the gospel of MTV, including dalliances with mainstream pop, college rock, rap, and new jack swing, and then graduated to hip-hop and modern rock. According to the doctrine of what Kelefa Sanneh calls “rockism,” at my age I am supposed to be nostalgic for masculine “alternative music,” such as Nirvana and R.E.M., and the “clas- sic hip-hop” of Run DMC, 2Pac, and the Notorious B.I.G., and I should also be yearning for “real music” to return (Sanneh 2007, 351–52). Alas, much of the music I actually listened to as a child and the music that has sustained me for most of my adult life is not necessarily the most masculine or critically respected music. Much of my favorite music actually harks back to a gentler era of pop music before rock ‘n’ roll. It is true that in college I purchased an array of cassette tapes (which eventually gave way to CDs) spanning from the soothing soft rock of Christopher Cross to the unhip 1980s and 1990s pop music that was my adolescent bread and butter: epic adult contemporary ballads and neo-disco dance pop as sung by Mariah Carey, Taylor Dayne, and Whitney Houston. Definitely not rock. I was simultaneously becoming something of a pop-music collector and scholar, probing music history genre by genre and listening to disco artists like Donna Summer, lush Philly Soul groups like The Spinners, the idio- syncratic melodies and offbeat harmonies of singer-songwriter Laura Nyro, 1960s rock (Creedence Clearwater Revival), 1960s soul (for example, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave), classic singing groups and Motown (the Drifters, the Shirelles, the Supremes, the Temptations), and prerock pop/jazz artists