Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music (New Perspectives on Gender in Music)

"The all-embracing, 'whaddya got?' nature of rebellion in Fifties America included pop music's unlikely challenge to entrenched notions of masculinity. Within that upheaval, four prominent artists dared to behave in ways that let the public assume - but not see - their queerness. That these artists cultivated ambiguous sexual personas often reflected an understandable fear, but also a struggle to fulfill personal and professional expectations. Vincent L. Stephens confronts notions of the closet - both coming out and staying in - by analyzing the careers of Liberace, Johnny Mathis, Johnnie Ray, and Little Richard. Appealing to audiences hungry for novelty and exoticism, the four pop icons used performance and queering techniques that ran the gamut. Liberace's flamboyance shared a spectrum with Mathis's intimate sensitivity while Ray's overwrought displays as 'Mr. Emotion' seemed worlds apart from Little Richard's raise-the-roof joyousness. As Stephens shows, the quartet not only thrived in an era of gray flannel manhood, they pioneered the ways generations of later musicians would consciously adopt sexual mystery as an appealing and proven route to success."--Provided by publisher Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Preface Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION: Queering Post–World War II Masculinity through Music CHAPTER ONE. Visibly Hidden: Postwar Disorientation, Queer Community, and Queer Ambivalence CHAPTER TWO. A Freak Deferred: Johnnie Ray Navigates Innovation and Convention CHAPTER THREE. Spectacular Vacillations: Little Richard Charms and Disarms America CHAPTER FOUR. Fine and Dandy: Mapping Johnny Mathis’s Negotiations of Race, Sexuality, and Affect CHAPTER FIVE. Building an Empire of Illusion: Liberace and the Art of Queering CONCLUSION: Disquieting and Exciting: Queering Tools in Popular Music and Queer Becoming Notes References Discography Index Back cover