For years, Theo Cateforis, an SU associate professor of music history and culture, had been looking for the proper opportunity to bring Vincent Stephens, a current author and director of the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity at Dickinson College, back to Syracuse University.

Stephens is no stranger to campus, as he was a postdoctoral fellow in the humanities at SU from 2006 to 2010. Cateforis’ moment to bring him back came when Stephens published his research and scholarly work that he conducted at SU in his book titled “Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music.”

As part of the humanities lecture series and supported by a variety of departments, Stephens returned to SU tonight to give audience members a glimpse into his book through a presentation called “Visibly Hidden: Exploring Queer Masculinities in 1950s Popular Music.”

Throughout the evening, Stephens kept one question in focus: What was possible for queer male artists to achieve in pop music prior to and roughly after the 1969 Stonewall riots?

In order to answer this question, he used his “queer quartet” to key the audience into 1950s artists and masculinity. The quartet consisted of Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace and Johnny Mathis.

To orient his listeners to the artists’ sounds, Stephens played snippets of their biggest singles.

As Johnnie Ray’s “Cry” played, Stephens said many early radio listeners thought Ray was an African American woman. Because of “the way he syncopates, there are things that he does that are not typical to what a crooner would do,” Stephens said.

Stephens used the four men to display the differing ways in which each navigated the 1950s. Stephens spoke on “self-neutering,” which he said was a method of “de-emphasizing any semblance of sexuality,” among other methods each artist used to deflect questions.

And while none of them were openly gay during their careers, Richard and Mathis later opened up on the topic in interviews.

During the presentation portion about Ray, Stephens was especially keen to say that his career did not derail due to a homophobic audience, as many believe, but rather because his music was simply outdated.

Meanwhile, Little Richard was defined by his personal spectacle, through his pompadour and makeup in addition to his own musical style.

“He gets so locked into this cartoonish image, I think he’s genuinely wrestling with his identity,” Stephens said.

During his presentation, Stephens discussed the music styles and personas of his “queer quartet,” which comprises Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace and Johnny Mathis. Sarah Lee | Asst. Photo Editor

For each artist, Stephens looked into their evolutions spanning the decades. Richard is commonly known for his wild performance of “Tutti Frutti,” but Stephens looked beyond this and delved into Richard’s later iterations.

Stephens emphasized that Richard was conflicted. After the artist stopped performing secular music, he returned to make gospel music without his iconic pompadour. During his career, Stephens said he “vacillates between the old version of himself and the extreme version of himself.”

SU junior Josie O’Gorman, an advertising major, said that one of her takeaways related to the mystery of coming out in the LGBTQ community. Even now, she said, Harry Styles is being questioned about his sexual orientation and has every right to say nothing.

“I guess one of the bigger things is he talked about mystery, and how you don’t necessarily owe people to come out,” O’Gorman said. “And that especially for artists, that element of mystery was actually kind of a thing that sold which is cool. No queer person owes it to anyone to come out, and that people use the case of Harry Styles all the time.”

Meanwhile, Mathis was what Stephens called a “blank space,” in that he never addressed speculations that he was gay during his career. Stephens added that Mathis had a “dandy look” to him and allowed fans to project the ideas of his sexuality onto him, a recurring theme within Stephens’ lecture.

“Mathis epitomizes the inverse of Little Richard, who was able to be relatively ambiguous and have a successful career simply by not talking about it,” Stephens said.

Much of his lecture presented critics’ takes and music interpretations from renowned sociologists. Stephens began his portion on Liberace with the way critics were describing him: “disturbing, self-amused, too much.”

Stephens made the argument that the Liberace that listeners are familiar with today was “liberated” to be as sexually ambiguous once he won a trial against a publication calling him gay.

“His act was queer, but it wasn’t sexual,” Stephens said.

Towards the end of the lecture, Stephens sought to demystify the ‘50s and show that it was more than “a beautiful Buick and a woman whose very excited to do dishes,” Stephens said.

He presented an antithesis to this view — or as he called it, “The Other ‘50s.” In this image, pictures of James Baldwin appeared alongside The Ladder, a lesbian magazine. Stephens said that the “queer quartet” fell right in the middle of both of these visions.

Following the lecture, Stephens opened the room to questions. SU junior Gillian Farrugia asked a question about whether Stephens believed coming out will always be something that occurs in the musical realm and beyond.

“My hope is that people can be their whole selves, whoever they are, and be accepted,” Stephens responded.

Published on March 2, 2020 at 10:46 pm