Actors From Mississippi

"They have turned Soweto into a Disneyland for Nelson Mandela. They have tried to make him like Elvis Presley. Now with his death, so many foreigners will be going there, then they will say they have seen the real South Africa. Winnie will be there of course "showing off" how close she is to the poor of this country.....”"

"Elvis would quote Peter Sellers’ lines from "Pink Panther" movies on tour. Things would be going crazy, and he would look at somebody and go, ‘Do you have rhoom?’ " in Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau accent. Or, "Does your dog bite?". Sellers, in turn, was a fan of Elvis, even playing in an Elvis-singing role in his last movie. "The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu""

"I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years – 1954–57 – can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool ii) That was the standard in my house, he's the only rock 'n' roll guy that dabbled in Christmas"

"So when the city of Albany came to the conclusion that the house two doors down from my house was structurally terminal after years of neglect, they had to dump a ramp of dirt to allow the excavator to make the climb. It was a thing to behold: The two-track beast would tear away a portion of the front of the house — first the porch, which had been replaced almost a decade ago after it had degraded to a dangerous sag — and then plant its claw deep in the wreckage and haul itself a few feet higher, like a mountaineer with a pickax. By the time it reached the summit, the house had been reduced to a cross-section: see the bedroom, see the attic, see the bathroom where for decades its former residents shaved and showered through the Depression, World War II, the entire life of Elvis Presley and the demise of Skylab."

"Well for one thing, he never got to sleep with her in his cover, actually he danced with her. My husband Ewan used to say that it was like Elvis being Romeo down on the ground calling up to Juliet, at the top of the Post Office Tower LOL."

"He is the Elvis of Racing"

"It all started when an elderly American woman once asked me: "Do people in South Africa know Elvis?" "Of course we South Africans know Elvis!" I replied. Or do we, really? So, I went on to write a paper and, using a historiographic approach, I attempted to explore how his image was first imported into South Africa, especially during the Apartheid era when there was no television, and media censorship was a fact of daily life. Additionally, I tried to reflect on the impact of the media – then and now – in creating images, fantasies and illusions in constituting the subjectivity of the Elvis of real life and the Elvis of sound, stage and celluloid in the South African musical imaginary."

"I' the King!"

"So there were portraits of me everywhere, the finest clothes, 150 extras all watching me play this poker game. It just really informed me about who Koumba Diabaté, the diplomat I was playing in the series, really is. So I quickly was able to step into his shoes. But the opulence was ridiculous. We did not decorate those hotel rooms. That’s how the suites are. And it was so fun to shoot there, because you felt Mr. Diabaté’s fascination with Elvis Presley, because where we shot the poker scene was Elvis’s actual bedroom when he stayed there for eight years when it was called The International Hotel. So it was just like living my fantasy within my fantasy. It was so fun to to experience and to feel that energy of how old this place has been, how much history it has, and how much opulence you’re surrounded by. I didn’t have to act because it was literally all there."

"Elvis, to me, is a symbol of tremendous promise and that kind of American hopefulness, where you can come from nowhere and have nothing and build yourself up and chase that American dream."

"It just murdered...."

"Very proud that my father will receive the Medal of Freedom. That he’s getting it with Elvis is icing on the cake."

"The spirit of Elvis Presley, I feel it.”"

"There comes a point when the voice starts to wash over you. You get inside of it, start to really hear what he's doing, and you realise his singing has this extraordinary, effortless quality to it. Sometimes it's like listening to a stream of honey. It's a very smooth ride, the voice of Elvis Presley. I don't think you focus on the words when he's singing. I think he's doing what bel canto singers do – you don't listen to the words, "just" to the beauty of his voice-. When I say "just", that makes it sound as if he's denying you something else but, actually, that's quite enough."

"Oh yeah, big timeǃǃ"

"I found him sensitive and very good. He felt he could have done better things. His advisors were very much against doing this kind of straight role and they tried to get him to sing throughout the picture. Obviously, they didn't want him to get off the winning horse. But when I was able to calm him down, I thought he gave a beautiful performance..."

"What Presley accomplished was a fusion of modes, not theft"

"And to think I only wanted to imitate Elvis"

"I just wanted to be like my dad. He was absolutely charming, adorable and irresistible. I looked at him the way other people looked at him, like if he was Elvis. I was like: ‘Man I want what he’s got!’ I didn't realize I was born with it."

"I was publishing a book with the title "The case against Muhammed", dealing with the founder of Islam, from a critical point of view, and many people were asking me "why do you do that? And my answer was always "because you are asking me". Because you wouldn't if the book had been called "The Case against Elvis Presley". You would accept any criticism of any historical figure, you will consider it as freedom of art, of research, of opinion, but in the case of Muhammed, you say "The Prophet is the Muslim's world last stone of identity, so why do you attack HIM, let him in peace". And I then always answer my Muslim friends, that maybe he became the last stone of their identity because they left him in peace, alone, for fourteen hundred years."

"Bill was about 16 when he drove from Blanco, Texas, to see Elvis Presley play at the then Municipal Auditorium. And when he found out the show was sold out, he climbed a tree to try to get into a window. He saw Elvis there in the window so Elvis motioned to him and asked him, 'What are you doing up there in the tree?' And Bill Wittliff explained , and Elvis Presley tore out a paper towel and wrote to the ticket taker to let these three boys in. They're friends of mine. We have that piece of paper on display at the Wittliff Collection."

"Often overlooked, probably because of his immense popularity and mega-star status, Elvis was an extremely generous and compassionate human. I remember an appearance by Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show on a Sunday night while my grandmother was babysitting me. Sitting in a rocking chair and looking over the top of her glasses while she was knitting she uttered, “That boy is going places”. I was 7 or 8, she was 60 something and that moment is etched indelibly in my mind. Hey Nana, you were right."

"Elvis Presley was more influential as a performer than any other musician in world history. In some respects he resembled other influential performers, including the famous Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) and the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886). Like them Elvis was exciting, charismatic, and enormously successful. Unlike Liszt and Paganini,however, Elvis did not compose any of his own music, yet the ways in which he performed the songs he sang transformed twentieth-century popular music worldwide. At his best, was most influential as a Southern White singer who introduced audiences throughout the United States and around the world to Black American music, especially to rock ‘n’ roll, a form of rhythm and blues. He was also influential because he combined in his performances elements from different American singing styles, including gospel, rockabilly, country-western and standard' pop numbers; he even employed bel canto singing in a few songs borrowed from Italian music. His stage persona was extremely influential as well, simultaneously glamorising, as he did, rock music and making it seem ‘dangerous’, thus even inspiring aspects of punk rock in the 1970s. Later, his performances as a touring artist and a Las Vegas entertainer contributed to the birth of glam rock."

"Every time he'd appeared on Letterman, he'd had to change his act. Written down, worked out, pre-approved by the production staff, his sweet improvisational melody was sliced and diced into a sampled, discordant riff. He just didn't come across. And he hadn't yet figured out what to do about it. At least not until that twelfth appearance. His ghost appearance, resonating forever in the memory of the Ed Sulli­van Theatre, there, center stage, near Elvis's swiveling hips. Another really big show, never to be seen."

"I suppose you'd had to call him a lyric baritone, although with exceptional high notes and unexpectedly rich low ones. But what is more important about Elvis Presley is not his vocal range, nor how high or low it extends, but where its center of gravity is. By that measure, Elvis was all at once a tenor, a baritone and a bass, the most unusual voice I've ever heard."

"I found him to be a gentleman. Elvis won everyone over. It’s true that Elvis was glowing. He also said that he wasn’t worried about the rest of his career, that he would like to focus on movies and that he was glad that he had his folks come over to Germany to be close to him. He seemed relaxed and his behavior seemed to surprise those who were covering his stay."

"He was the greatest. In fact, he was the most charismatic individual I have ever seen both off and on the screen, he was the kind of person who could not walk into a room and not stop whatever was happening in that room. Every person, man or woman would turn to look at him, he was that magical, There are no words in the vocabulary, unless it is that he had magic."

"At the start, I listened to my older brother's collection of Paul Anka and Elvis Presley records. When the Beatles arrived, at home it became a fight between my brother, who loved Elvis and I, who loved the Beatles.. but we both stayed the course...."

"There's more chance of Elvis Presley being Chancellor of the Exchequer than John McDonnell. I've never come across such financial illiteracy.""

"While touring Memphis, I was in the dressing room and my knee went and I crawled into a ball and couldn’t get up. I was carried off by a big security guy called Michael who’d once played for the Miami Dolphins. I heard he had an important boss but he didn’t tell me who his boss was. But the next day his boss called me. It was Elvis Presley. He came on the phone singing "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing", down the line. ‘I love that song, man. I hear Michael has been looking after you and that you’re a great guy. And you need to come over to the house’. he said. I was stunned, and got ready to go to spend a few days with Elvis and his girlfriend Ginger. But the next morning I heard on the radio Elvis had been taken to hospital and died. Years later, I began to think I must have dreamt the whole thing. But I met Ginger at a dinner in London, and she said ‘Elvis had been so excited at the idea of spending a few days with you.’ I had tears in my eyes when she said that.”"

"i) I didn’t like Elvis before I went to work with him in the summer of 1969. I mean, I didn’t know him. I just didn’t like his music. I was into black music mostly and jazz so when I went to work for him on the first rehearsal I told my ex-wife, I don’t think I’m going to do this gig, but I’m going to go down and check it out, see what’s going on.’ I came home that night and said, you gotta come down and hear this guy tomorrow night.’ She said, you’re kidding.’I said, no, you got to come down and hear him.’ She came down the next night to the rehearsal and she walked away a fan. It was that immediate. When I walked in and I heard him I said, Oh, oh, I believe that I've been missing something. ii) In some ways Elvis was Conservative and in other ways he was very Liberal. He wasn't someone that was following some political line, you know he'd figure out for himself what he thought was right"

"He is the king of the Democratic liars. If there was a Hall of Fame for liars, like, let's say, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he would be Elvis."

"He once rode a freight elevator to avoid fans but just as the elevator doors opened, workers were wheeling a deceased guest out on a gurney. “I hope I don’t leave that way,” Elvis quipped."

"Our country faced a similar challenge in the 1950s, when there was widespread apprehension about the safety of the polio vaccine. But when Elvis Presley posed backstage being given the shot before an appearance on the highly rated Ed Sullivan Show, the photo ricocheted across the nation and the world and triggered a rapid increase in vaccination rates."

"Iconic celebrities never die because they are, in fact, a booming licensing business. Albert Einstein t-shirts. Elvis Presley guitar straps. Marilyn Monroe finger puppets. (These are all real.) If Samuel Jackson can wisecrack his way through Captain Marvel, then a hologram Tom Petty could perform a concert on behalf of a spirits brands at thousands of bars – at the same time. Muhammad Ali could teach your Orange theory boxing class. Julia Child would be in your kitchen with you to co-cook a Thanksgiving turkey on behalf of Butterball. Gone are the days when a celebrity can only be in one place at one time."

"Andy, you have to do me a favor. I have this crazy idea. You know, you always do the paintings of stars ( like Elvis and MM) ? Well, when Maria (Shriver Kennedy) marries me, she will be a star, so you’ll be painting a star."

"He had a photographic mind, came prepared every day. I would have to say that if you, Carole, if you had ever have to do a scene with him, you be....... somewhat taken back, that's how his sex appeal hit you. His eyes, especially, so seductive..."

"We went backstage and he told me he used to play me on the jukebox when he was in the Army in Germany. He admired the high tenor male voice – he was a baritone. I was and remain a huge fan of his. He was a phenomenon."

"Little Richard, he was the first one that really got to me. He and, of course, Elvis Presley."

"Lou Reed, Elvis Presley and Kurt Cobain."

"Halfway through the show, he asked that the house lights be turned up. After that was done he stated that he had told them not to sell the seats to his back and, since they had, he turned around and did the last half facing those of us that had only seen his back for the first. He was a great singer and showman."

"For any strategy to work, people first have to perceive vaccination as a normal part of life. That is why public health officials, nonprofit groups and major brands are collaborating on nationwide public service campaigns and partnering with celebrities to make vaccine more visible. The model for the celebrity shot dates to 1956, when few teenagers were getting the year-old polio vaccine. Two critical things happened that fall to reverse the trend. First, 21-year-old Elvis Presley got the shot in front of cameras before “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Second, the March of Dimes launched a wildly successful peer-to-peer campaign among teen social groups. In short, it leveraged the cool kids, but it may not have gotten the cool kids without the King""

"The book, by contrast to "White Rage", offers an extended view, spanning from pre-colonial plots to relocate Britain's human rubbish, to Thomas Jefferson's notion of “whiteness as an automatic badge of superiority,” to modern use of adjectives like “redneck,” “cracker” and “country boy,” such as in the specific case of Elvis Presley. Isenberg's greatest historical and sociological intervention is not just the idea that divide and stratification exist between races, or that such divisions habit within them, but that it has always been this way. American democracy has never accorded all the people a meaningful voice. The masses have been given symbols instead."

"He valued his fans and he treated them with respect. If anybody had a reason to be arrogant it would be him, but it's a great lesson for other musicians and people in general and that is the better you get, the more humble you should be. His music resonated with everyone and that's what made him so special, like Elvis Presley or Mozart""

"An economist called Elvis Presley, who's unfortunately deceased now but made a significant impact on economic thought, in one of his master treatises said: 'A little less conversation, a little more action, please. A little less fight and a little more spark..."

"So Brian, who I was producing then, and I went up to Las Vegas, and we're sitting there watching him and Elvis sings "Runaway", then says that he liked to introduce me to the audience. So, the lights go all over trying to find me, and they can't, until Brian, who is a shy guy gets up and says, "Heeeeeeeeeee's over heeeeeeeeeeeere", and points to me, next to him, in front of the thousands there. So I took a bow. Later we went backstage with him, for two hours and let me tell you, I have never seen a better looking guy in my life."

"While many people assume it must have been a difficult slog for an Arab like me to gain acceptance in the Hollywood of the 1960s, I beg to differ. They treated me like a God. I had a beautiful house in Bel-Air, under me was this singer, what was his name, tall super nice guy, he was a very popular singer. I could see his swimming pool. Now I can't remember names of anybody, it's extraordinary. Wait, it was Elvis Presley! So I used to look and see if he had girls in the pool. LOL. And then he died young. I was in the Bel Air house when he died in Memphis, and suddenly the house under me was always empty....’"

"i) I spoke to over 140 songwriters whose work Presley recorded, and most remarked about his uncanny ability to capture the essence and make it his own; like a musical geneticist, he drew from every strand of DNA in a songwriter's work, which ultimately helped shape his own distinctive personal interpretation; just listen to the wide stylistic swath of genre-hopping material he recorded during his career – from Junior Parker's amphetamine-paced rockabilly classic "Mystery Train" and the poppin-perfect panache of Otis Blackwell's "All shook up", to the down and dirty blues swagger of "Reconsider baby" and the operatic grandeur of "It's now or never"-; and then there were more controversial and socially conscious anthems ("If I can dream" and "In the ghetto"), and introspective 70's fare like "Separate ways" and "Always on my my mind"; right away, you can hear the breath of a master stylist who breathed new life into every song he cut" ii) Growing up, Elvis Presley's quasi-gospel ballad "Crying in the Chapel" was the first secular recording allowed inside the Pointer Sisters' strict Church of God in Christ home in West Oakland, California. Ruth, Anita, Bonnie, and June were only allowed to listen to the radio on Sundays. On top of that, it had to be gospel stations. Thank God their mom fancied that song. In an extensive 2006 interview one of the sisters, Anita, reflected on the fact that it was so unbelievable that someone like Elvis could relate to the story in their song 'Fairytale' and want to record it. She thought Elvis did it beautifully and very pleased with his version, capturing the emotion in the song as he did. Ruth Pointer, also spoke positively of Elvis's final album 'Moody Blue' and defended him against charges of any cultural appropriation"

"I loved him. There were two icons who changed our life in the 1950's, James Dean and Elvis. He was the first singer who was loved by both girls and guys. He brought us together, boys and girls, a revolutionary, had a profound effect on all of us, culturally, musically emotionally, spiritually, still miss him..."

"We finished a take and the phone rang and it was one of Elvis's associates, a guy I had met through Chet [Atkins] many times. And so this associate of Elvis says "Buffy? Elvis just recorded your song, "Until It's Time For You To Go." By this time I was pretty much over Elvis. When I was thirteen, Elvis was fresh. He was young. He was healthy and beautiful, and he was sexy and a natural musician. He was everything. He was just everything. But, it was just a total surprise as Elvis had by then already gone into kind of a different style. He no longer had that young rebel thing going for him. But when he recorded "Until It's Time For You To Go," it was just amazing. It was as if Santa Claus had said yes to coming to your birthday"