We know he’s a money-hungry hustler—he’s narrating the movie from the perspective of many years later, after he’s gambled all of now-dead Elvis Presley’s money away.

Colonel Tom can already tell just from listening to this one song that this guy is definitely going to be the star of the show, even if he’s only on the bottom of the lineup.

(By the way, that guy that everyone was hyped up about? That was Elvis.) But the singer that Colonel Tom hears sure sounds like a Black guy to him!

So when Hank’s son Jimmie (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who’s been jamming to the song, tells Colonel Tom that this singer is white, he absolutely loses his shit.

I guffawed, because here was Tom Hanks in the least flattering role of his lifetime, yelping in a garish Eastern European accent about Elvis Presley’s skin color.

They likely grew up steeped in the myth that Elvis was the whitest Black dude on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Elvis makes clear that Elvis definitely had Black musical influences.

King, who takes him to a small Black club show where Little Richard sings “Tutti Frutti.” Elvis correctly says that Little Richard’s lively performance and song rule; B.B.

(Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) correctly says that Elvis could go cover that song and actually make some money off of it.

He laughs that off, but Elvis definitely did make money off Black artists’ songs.

Even though Elvis did grow up poor in a predominantly Black area, surrounded by Black people, his whiteness was obvious and unignorable.

There’s a large difference between listening to Black music and listening to Black musicians.