Elvis Aaron Presleya (
January 8, 1935 –
August 16, 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name
Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".
Born in
Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to
Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13. He began his career there in 1954 when
Sun Records owner
Sam Phillips, eager to bring the sound of
African-American music to a wider audience, saw in Presley the means to realize his ambition. Accompanied by guitarist
Scotty Moore and bassist
Bill Black, Presley was one of the originators of
rockabilly, an uptempo,
backbeat-driven fusion of
country and
rhythm and blues.
RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by
Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "
Heartbreak Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number one hit. He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of
rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from
African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in
Love Me Tender.
Conscripted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He staged few concerts, however, and, guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood movies and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, after seven years away from the stage, he returned to live performance in a celebrated
comeback television special that led to an extended
Las Vegas concert residency and a string of profitable tours. In 1973, Presley staged the first concert broadcast globally via satellite,
Aloha from Hawaii, seen by approximately 1.5 billion viewers. Prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at the age of 42.
Presley is regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century popular culture. He had a versatile voice and unusually wide success encompassing many genres, including country,
pop ballads,
gospel, and
blues. He is the best-selling solo artist in the history of popular music. Nominated for 14 competitive
Grammys, he won three, and received the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36. He has been inducted into four music
halls of fame.
Early years (1935–53)
Childhood in Tupelo
Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in
Tupelo, Mississippi, to 18-year-old Vernon Elvis and 22-year-old Gladys Love Presley. In the two-room
shotgun house built by his father in readiness for the birth, Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered 35 minutes before him,
stillborn. As an only child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an unusually tight bond with his mother. The family attended an
Assembly of God church where he found his initial musical inspiration.
Presley's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix: On his mother's side, he was
Scots-Irish, with some
French Norman; one of Gladys's great-great-grandmothers was
Cherokee.
b His father's forebears were of
Scottish or
German origin. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family. Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evidencing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by the landowner. He was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.
In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average". He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of
Red Foley's
country song "
Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, saw his first public performance: dressed as a cowboy, the ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received for his birthday his first guitar. He had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family's church. Presley recalled, "I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it."
Entering a new school, Milam, for sixth grade in September 1946, Presley was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar in on a daily basis. He would play and sing during lunchtime, and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played
hillbilly music. The family was by then living in a largely African American neighborhood. A devotee of
Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station
WELO, Presley was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, a classmate of Presley's, who often took him in to the station. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar tuition by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was 12 years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.
Teenage life in Memphis
In November 1948, the family moved to
Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in
rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the
public housing complex known as the Courts. Enrolled at
Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me", in an effort to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher "agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn't appreciate his kind of singing." He was generally too shy to perform openly, and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy". In 1950, he began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Jesse Lee Denson, a neighbor two-and-a-half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers
Dorsey and
Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, he began ushering at Loew's State Theater. Other jobs followed during his school years: Precision Tool, Loew's again, and MARL Metal Products.
During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew out his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. On his own time, he would head down to
Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's thriving
blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of
Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing them. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Courts, he competed in Humes's Annual "Minstrel" show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with "
Till I Waltz Again with You", a recent hit for
Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: "I wasn't popular in school ... I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show ... when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, 'cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became after that."
Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and played by ear. He frequented record stores with
jukeboxes and listening booths. He knew all of
Hank Snow's songs and he loved records by other country singers such as
Roy Acuff,
Ernest Tubb,
Ted Daffan,
Jimmie Rodgers,
Jimmie Davis, and
Bob Wills. The
Southern Gospel singer
Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African American
spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer
Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the
segregated South, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations that played "race records": spirituals, blues, and the modern,
backbeat-heavy sound of
rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African American musicians such as
Arthur Crudup and
Rufus Thomas.
[37] B.B. King recalled that he knew Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.
First recordings (1953–55)
Sam Phillips and Sun Records
In August 1953, Presley walked into the offices of
Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided
acetate disc: "
My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". He would later claim he intended the record as a gift for his mother, or was merely interested in what he "sounded like", though there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer
Peter Guralnick argues that he chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, "I sing all kinds." When she pressed him on whom he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, "I don't sound like nobody." After he recorded, Sun boss
Sam Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man's name, which she did along with her own commentary: "Good ballad singer. Hold." Presley cut a second acetate in January 1954—"I'll Never Stand In Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You"—but again nothing came of it.
Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows. He explained to his father, "They told me I couldn't sing." Songfellow
Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver. His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, leader of Smith's professional band, which had an opening for a vocalist. Bond rejected him after a tryout, advising Presley to stick to truck driving "because you're never going to make it as a singer."
Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused to a broader audience. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'" In June, he acquired a demo recording of a ballad, "Without You", that he thought might suit the teenaged singer. Presley came by the studio, but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist
Winfield "Scotty" Moore and
upright bass player
Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session.
The session, held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "
That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ
Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his
Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the last two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended in order to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed he was black. During the next few days the trio recorded a
bluegrass number,
Bill Monroe's "
Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged
echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.
By early 1955, Presley's regular
Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a substantial regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought the singer to the attention of
Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—Dutch-born, though he claimed to be from West Virginia—had acquired an honorary colonel's commission from country singer turned Louisiana governor
Jimmie Davis. Having successfully managed top country star
Eddy Arnold, he was now working with the new number one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow's February tour. When the tour reached
Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old
Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: "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." Presley made his television debut on March 3 on the
KSLA-TV broadcast of
Louisiana Hayride. Soon after, he failed an audition for
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on the
CBS television network. By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill"; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like "That's All Right", were in what one Memphis journalist described as the "R&B idiom of negro field jazz"; others, like "Blue Moon of Kentucky", were "more in the country field", "but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both". This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley's music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country music disc jockeys would not play it because he sounded too much like a black artist and none of the rhythm and blues stations would touch him because "he sounded too much like a hillbilly."
[66] The blend came to be known as
rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".
Presley renewed Neal's management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, "It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we'd have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody'd always try to take a crack at him. They'd get a gang and try to waylay him or something." The trio became a quartet when
Hayride drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of
Bill Haley, whose "
Rock Around the Clock" had been a number one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.
At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year's most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with
RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000.
c Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract. Parker arranged with the owners of
Hill and Range Publishing,
Jean and
Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all of the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forego one third of their customary royalties in exchange for having him perform their compositions.
d By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.
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