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Elvis Aaron
Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977; middle name sometimes
written Aron)a was an American singer, musician and actor. A cultural
icon, he is commonly referred to by his first name, and as the "The
King of Rock 'n' Roll" or "The King".
In 1954, Presley began his career as one of the first performers of
rockabilly, an uptempo fusion of country and rhythm and blues with a
strong back beat. His novel versions of existing songs, mixing "black"
and "white" sounds, made him popular—and controversial—as did his
uninhibited stage and television performances. He recorded songs in the
rock and roll genre, with tracks like "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock"
later embodying the style. Presley had a versatile voice and had
unusually wide success encompassing other genres, including gospel,
blues, ballads and pop. To date, he has been inducted into four music
halls of fame.
In the 1960s, Presley made the majority of his thirty-one movies—mainly
poorly reviewed, but financially successful, musicals. In 1968, he
returned with acclaim to live music in a television special, and
thereafter performed across the U.S., notably in Las Vegas. Throughout
his career, he set records for concert attendance, television ratings
and recordings sales. He is one of the best-selling and most
influential artists in the history of popular music. Health problems,
drug dependency and other factors led to his premature death at age 42.
Biography
Early life
Elvis Presley was of mixed ancestry. His father, Vernon (April 10,
1916–June 26, 1979), had several low-paying jobs, including
sharecropper and truck driver. His mother, Gladys Love Smith (April 25,
1912 – August 14, 1958) worked as a sewing machinist. They met in
Tupelo, Mississippi, and eloped to Pontotoc County where they married
on June 17, 1933.
Presley was born in a two-room shotgun house, built by his father, in
East Tupelo. He was an identical twin—his brother was stillborn and
given the name Jesse Garon. Growing up as an only child he "was,
everyone agreed, unusually close to his mother." The family lived just
above the poverty line and attended an Assembly of God church. Vernon
has been described as "a malingerer, always averse to work and
responsibility." His wife was "voluble, lively, full of spunk" and had
a fondness for drink. In 1938, Vernon was jailed for an eight dollar
check forgery. His incarceration caused Gladys and her son to lose the
family home, and they had to move in with relatives.
In September 1942, Presley entered first grade at Lawhorn School in
Tupelo. Presley was sometimes bullied; classmates threw "things at
him—rotten fruit and stuff—because he was different... he stuttered and
he was a mama's boy." Despite this, he was considered a "well-mannered
and quiet child".
On October 3, 1945, at age ten, he made his first public performance in
a singing contest at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show at the
suggestion of his teacher Mrs. J.C. Grimes. Dressed as a cowboy, the
young Presley had to stand on a chair to reach the microphone and sang
Red Foley's "Old Shep." He came second, winning $5 and a free ticket to
all the Fair rides.
In 1946, for his eleventh birthday, Presley received his first guitar.
He had wanted a bicycle or rifle for his birthday, but his parents
could only afford a guitar. Over the following year, Vernon's brother,
Vester, gave Elvis basic guitar lessons. In September 1948, the family
moved to Memphis, Tennessee, allegedly because Vernon—in addition to
needing work—had to escape the law for transporting bootleg liquor. In
1949, they lived at Lauderdale Courts, a public housing development in
one of Memphis' poorer sections. Presley practiced playing guitar in
the laundry room and also played in a five-piece band with other
tenants. Another resident, Johnny Burnette, recalled, "Wherever Elvis
went he'd have his guitar slung across his back... [H]e'd go in to one
of the cafes or bars... Then some folks would say: 'Let's hear you
sing, boy.'" Presley enrolled at L. C. Humes High School where some
fellow students viewed his performing unfavorably; one recalled that he
was "a sad, shy, not especially attractive boy" whose guitar playing
was not likely to win any prizes. Presley was made fun of as a 'trashy'
kind of boy, playing 'trashy' hillbilly music." Other children however,
"would beg him" to sing, but he was apparently too shy to perform.
In September 1950, Presley occasionally worked evenings as an usher at
Loew's State Theater—his first job—to boost the family income, but his
mother made him quit as she feared it was affecting his school work. He
worked again at Loew's in June the following year, but was fired after
a fistfight over a female employee. He began to grow his sideburns and,
when he could afford to, dress in the wild, flashy clothes of Lansky
Brothers on Beale Street. He stood out, especially in the conservative
Deep South of the 1950s, and was mocked and bullied for it. Childhood
friend Red West said: "In the sea of 1600 pink-scalped kids at school,
Elvis stood out like a camel in the arctic. ... [but] ... his
appearance expressed a defiance which his demeanor did not match..."
Despite any unpopularity or shyness, he was a contestant in his
school's 1952 "Annual Minstrel Show" and won by receiving the most
applause. His prize was to sing encores, including "Cold Cold Icy
Fingers" and "Till I Waltz Again With You".
After graduation, Presley was still rather shy, a "kid who had spent
scarcely a night away from home". His third job was driving a truck for
the Crown Electric Company. He began wearing his hair longer with a
"ducktail"—the style of truck drivers at that time.
Early musical influences
Initial influences came through his family's attendance at the Assembly
of God, a Pentecostal Holiness church. Rolling Stone wrote: "Gospel
pervaded Elvis' character and was a defining and enduring influence all
of his days." Throughout his life—in the recording studio, in private,
or after concerts—Presley joined with others singing and playing gospel
music at informal sessions.
The young Presley frequently listened to local radio; his first musical
hero was family friend Mississippi Slim, a hillbilly singer with a
radio show on Tupelo’s WELO. Presley performed occasionally on Slim’s
Saturday morning show, Singin’ and Pickin’ Hillbilly. "He was crazy
about music... That’s all he talked about," recalls his sixth grade
friend, James Ausborn, Slim’s younger brother. Before he was a
teenager, music was already Presley’s "consuming passion". J. R. Snow,
son of 1940s country superstar Hank Snow, recalls that even as a young
man Presley knew all of Hank Snow’s songs, "even the most obscure".
Presley himself said: "I loved records by Sister Rosetta Thorpe, ...
Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubbs, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmy Davis and
Bob Wills."
In Memphis, Presley went to record stores that had jukeboxes and
listening booths, playing old records and new releases for hours. He
was an audience member at the all-night white—and black—"gospel sings"
downtown. Memphis Symphony Orchestra concerts at Overton Park were
another Presley favorite, along with the Metropolitan Opera. His small
record collection included Mario Lanza and Dean Martin. Presley later
said, "I just loved music. Music period."
Memphis had a strong tradition of blues music and Presley went to blues
as well as hillbilly venues. Many of his future recordings were
inspired by local African American composers and recording artists,
including Arthur Crudup, Rufus Thomas and B.B. King. King says that he
"knew Elvis before he was popular. He used to come around and be around
us a lot ... on Beale Street."
Presley "was an untrained musician who played entirely by ear. 'I don't
read music,' he confessed, 'but I know what I like.' ... Because he was
not a songwriter, Presley [would] rarely [have] material prepared for
recording sessions..." When later, as a young singer, he "ventured into
the recording studio he was heavily influenced by the songs he had
heard on the jukebox and radio."
First recordings and performances
On July 18, 1953, Presley went to Sun Records' Memphis Recording
Service to record "My Happiness" with "That's When Your Heartaches
Begin", supposedly a present for his mother. During his initial
introduction at Sun Records, assistant Marion Keisker asked him who he
sounded like. Presley replied: "I don't sound like nobody." On January
4, 1954, he cut a second acetate. At the time, Sun Records boss Sam
Phillips was on the lookout for someone who could deliver a blend of
black blues and boogie-woogie music; he thought it would be very
popular among white people. When Phillips acquired a demo recording of
"Without Love (There Is Nothing)" and was unable to identify the
vocalist, Keisker reminded him about the young truck driver. She called
him on June 26, 1954. Presley was not able to do justice to the song
(though he would record it years later). Phillips would later recall
that "Elvis was probably as nervous as anybody, black or white, that I
had seen in front of a microphone." Despite this, Phillips invited
local musicians Winfield "Scotty" Moore and Bill Black to audition
Presley. Though they were not overly impressed, a studio session was
planned.
During a recording break, Presley began "acting the fool" first with
Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right (Mama)". Phillips quickly got them
all to restart, and began taping. This was the sound he had been
looking for. The group recorded other songs, including Bill Monroe's
"Blue Moon of Kentucky". After the session, according to Scotty Moore,
Bill Black remarked: "Damn. Get that on the radio and they'll run us
out of town".
"That's All Right" was aired on July 8, 1954, by DJ Dewey Phillips.b
Listeners to the show began phoning in, eager to find out who the
singer was. (The DJ mispronounced Presley's apparently unusual name as
"Elton Preston.") The interest was such that Phillips played the demo
fourteen times.During an interview on the show, Phillips asked Presley
what high school he attended—to clarify Presley's color for listeners
who assumed he must be black. The first release of Presley's music
featured "That's All Right" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky". With Presley's
version of Monroe's song consistently rated higher, both sides began to
chart across the South.
Moore and Black began playing regularly with Presley. They gave
performances on the July 17 and July 24, 1954 to promote the Sun single
at the Bon Air, a rowdy music club in Memphis, where the band was not
well-received. On July 30 the trio, billed as The Blue Moon Boys, made
their first paid appearance at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim
Whitman headlining. A nervous Presley's legs were said to have shaken
uncontrollably during this show: his wide-legged pants emphasized his
leg movements, apparently causing females in the audience to go
"crazy". Scotty Moore claims it was just the natural way he moved and
had nothing to do with "nerves." Presley consciously incorporated
similar movements into future shows.
DJ and promoter Bob Neal became the trio's manager (replacing Scotty
Moore). Moore and Black left their band, the Starlight Wranglers and,
from August through October 1954, appeared with Presley at The Eagle's
Nest. Presley debuted at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on October 2;
Hank Snow introduced Presley on stage. He performed "Blue Moon of
Kentucky" but received only a polite response. Afterwards, the singer
was allegedly told by the Opry's Jim Denny: "Boy, you’d better keep
driving that truck.", though others deny it was Denny who made that
statement.Country music promoter and manager Tillman Franks booked
Presley for the Louisiana Hayride on October 16. Before Franks saw
Presley, he referred to him as "that new black singer with the funny
name".During Presley's first set, the reaction was muted; Franks then
advised Presley to "Let it all go!" for the second set. House drummer
D.J. Fontana (who had worked in strip clubs) complemented Presley's
movements with accented beats. Bill Black also took an active part in
encouraging the audience, and the crowd became more responsive.
According to one source, regarding Presley's engagements from that
time, "Audiences had never before heard [such] music... [or] seen
anyone who performed like Presley either. The shy, polite, mumbling boy
gained self-confidence with every appearance... People watching the
show were astounded and shocked, both by the ferocity of his
performance, and the crowd’s reaction to it... Roy Orbison saw Presley
for the first time in Odessa, Texas: 'His energy was incredible, his
instinct was just amazing... I just didn’t know what to make of it.
There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it.'" Sam
Phillips said Presley "put every ounce of emotion ... into every song,
almost as if he was incapable of holding back."
By August 1955, Sun Studios had released ten sides credited to "Elvis
Presley, Scotty and Bill", all typical of the developing Presley style.
That style proved hard to categorize; he was billed or labeled in the
media as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat" and "The
Memphis Flash".
On August 15, 1955, "Colonel" Tom Parker became Presley's manager,
signing him to a one year contract, plus renewals. Several record
labels had shown interest in signing Presley and, by the end of October
1955, three major labels had made offers up to $25,000. On November 21,
1955, Parker and Phillips negotiated a deal with RCA Victor Records to
acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000, $5,000 of
which was a bonus for the singer for back royalties owed to him by Sun
Records (Presley, at 20, was officially still a minor, so his father
had to sign the contract). By December 1955, RCA had begun to heavily
promote its newest star, and by the month's end had re-released all of
his Sun recordings.
Breakthrough, 1956
The iconic cover of Elvis Presley's debut RCA Victor album. Photo taken
on January 31, 1955On January 10, Presley made his first recordings for
RCA in Nashville, Tennessee. The session produced "Heartbreak Hotel/I
Was The One" which was released on January 27. The public reaction to
"Heartbreak Hotel" prompted RCA to release it as a single in its own
right (February 11). By April it had hit number one in the U.S. charts,
selling in excess of one million copies.
To increase the singer's exposure, Parker finally brought Presley to
national television (In March 1955, Presley had failed an audition for
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts). He booked six Dorsey Brothers' Stage
Show appearances in New York for CBS, beginning January 28, 1956.
Presley was introduced on the first by Cleveland DJ Bill Randle. He
stayed in town and on January 30, he and the band headed for the RCA's
New York Studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including "My Baby
Left Me" and "Blue Suede Shoes". The latter was the only hit single
from the collection, but the recordings marked the point at which
Presley started moving away from the raw, pure Sun sound to the more
commercial and mainstream sound RCA had envisioned for him.
On March 23, RCA Victor released Elvis Presley, his first album. Like
the Sun recordings, the majority of the tracks were country songs. The
album went on to top the pop album chart for 10 weeks.
On April 1, Presley launched his acting career with a screen-test for
Paramount Pictures. His first motion-picture, Love Me Tender, was
released on November 21 (See 'Acting career').
Colonel Parker had also obtained a deal for two lucrative shows with
Milton Berle at NBC. Presley first appeared on The Milton Berle Show
from the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego on April 3. His
performance was cheered by a live audience of appreciative sailors and
their dates. A few days after, a flight taking Presley's band to
Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken (the
plane lost an engine and almost went down over Texas). After more
hectic touring, Presley returned to The Milton Berle Show on June 5 and
performed "Hound Dog" (without his guitar). Singing the song uptempo,
he then began a slower version. His exaggerated, straight-legged
shuffle around the microphone stand stirred the audience—as did his
vigorous leg shaking and hip thrusts in time to the beat. Presley's
"gyrations" created a storm of controversy—even eclipsing the
'communist threat' headlines prevalent at the time. The press described
his performance as "vulgar" and "obscene". The furore was such that
Presley was pressured to explain himself on the local New York City TV
show Hy Gardner Calling: "Rock and roll music, if you like it, and you
feel it, you can't help but move to it. That's what happens to me. I
have to move around. I can't stand still. I've tried it, and I can't do
it." After this performance he was dubbed "Elvis the Pelvis". Presley
disliked the name, calling it "one of the most childish expressions I
ever heard."
From April 23, Presley was scheduled to perform four weeks at the New
Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip—billed this time as
"the Atomic Powered Singer" (Since Nevada was the home of the U.S.'s
atomic weapons testing, Parker thought the name would be catchy). His
shows were so badly received by critics and the conservative,
middle-aged guests, that Colonel Parker cut short the engagement from
four weeks to two. . D.J. Fontana said, "I don't think the people there
were ready for Elvis..... We tried everything we knew. Usually Elvis
could get them on his side. It didn't work that time". While in Vegas,
Presley saw Freddie Bell and the Bellboys live, and liked their version
of Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog". By May 16, he had added the song
to his own act.
The Berle shows drew such huge ratings that Steve Allen (NBC), not a
fan of rock and roll, booked him for one appearance in New York on July
1. Allen wanted "to do a show the whole family can watch" and
introduced a "new Elvis" in white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang
"Hound Dog" for less than a minute to a Basset Hound in a top hat.
According to one author, "Allen thought Presley was talentless and
absurd... [he] set things up so that Presley would show his
contrition..." In his book "Hi-Ho Steverino!" Allen wrote the
following: "When I booked Elvis, I naturally had no interest in just
presenting him vaudeville-style and letting him do his spot as he might
in concert. Instead we worked him into the comedy fabric of our
program.” “We certainly didn't inhibit Elvis' then-notorious pelvic
gyrations, but I think the fact that he had on formal evening attire
made him, purely on his own, slightly alter his presentation.” The day
after (July 2), the single "Hound Dog" was recorded and Scotty Moore
said they were "all angry about their treatment the previous night".
(Presley often referred to the Allen show as the most ridiculous
performance of his career.) A few days later, Presley made a
"triumphant" outdoor appearance in Memphis at which he announced: "You
know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I'm gonna
show you what the real Elvis is like tonight."
Country vocalists The Jordanaires accompanied Presley on The Steve
Allen Show and their first recording session together produced "Any Way
You Want Me", "Don't Be Cruel" and "Hound Dog". The Jordanaires would
work with the singer through the 1960s.
Though Presley had been unhappy, Allen's show had, for the first time,
beaten The Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings, causing a critical Sullivan
(CBS) to book Presley for three appearances for an unprecedented
$50,000.
Presley's first Ed Sullivan appearance (September 9, 1956) was seen by
some 55–60 million viewers. Biographer Greil Marcus has written:
"Compared to moments on the Dorsey shows and on the Berle show, it was
ice cream." On the third Sullivan show, in spite of Presley's
established reputation as a "gyrating" performer, he sang only slow
paced ballads and a gospel song. Presley was nevertheless only shown to
the television audience 'from the waist up', as if to censor the
singer. Marcus claims he "stepped out in the outlandish costume of a
pasha, if not a harem girl", and was shot in close up during this last
broadcast, as if Sullivan had tried to 'bury' the singer. It was also
claimed that Colonel Parker had himself orchestrated the 'censorship'
merely to generate publicity. In spite of any misgivings about the
controversial nature of his performing style (see 'Sex symbol'),
Sullivan declared at the end of the third appearance that Presley was
"a real decent, fine boy" and that they had never had "a pleasanter
experience" on the show.
On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and
Jerry Lee Lewis were recording. Sam Phillips made sure the session of
the three performing was recorded; the results would later appear on a
bootlegged recording titled The Million Dollar Quartet in 1977 (Johnny
Cash is often thought to have performed with the trio, but he was only
present briefly at Phillips' instigation for a photo opportunity). RCA
would eventually iron out legal difficulties and release an authorized
version a few years later.
On December 29, Billboard revealed that Presley had placed more songs
in the Top 100 than any other artist since chart records began. This
news was followed by a front page report in the Wall Street Journal on
December 31, that suggested Presley merchandise had grossed more than
$22 million in sales.
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