Actors From Mississippi

"That there is a seat in the front in the concert of and Elvis Presley."

"He was so ahead of his time, and that's why he brought so many people together, with his music without it having it any racial barriers."

"I am not a part of that. To Louisville, I am f-ing Elvis Presley. So why would I pay anybody for anything?"

"I'll be back in an hour"

"I was amazed by how sexy, totally alert he was and by his playfulness. And as he sang “In the Ghetto", I saw it as representing a white Southern boy’s feeling for black music, with all that that implied. He knew better than to try to be nineteen again, because he knew he had quite enough to offer at thirty-three."

"America loves a phoenix, and we sure got one when Elvis dusted off the ashes of his mid-‘60s movie career and put on black leather for the greatest of all network TV music specials. Thom Zimny has done a video re-edit on some of the performances and it’s more fun to watch all this material after reading the collection’s written oral history of how many ways the special could have gone wrong yet somehow, for once, went so beautifully right. And what joy it is to re-experience Elvis caught even fleetingly in hip-swiveling flight."

"I was recording with at RCA Victor Records in 1975, so we were working on the song "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" when suddenly Terry said, “Hey, Elvis is in the next studio recording.” That was a big surprise to hear he was in the studio next to me. So I walked into the studio and said, “Hi, I’m Brian Wilson” and he goes, “Hello Duke.” I don't know why he called me Duke. I said, “Would you like to hear what I’m doing in the studio?” and he said yes. So we walked over to my studio and listened to what I was doing and then said he had to leave. It was a thrill to meet him. I liked Elvis Presley's songs, but never saw him live. I thought he was a very underrated singer, more of a star. He was really known more for his fame than his voice. I think he deserved more credit for his voice."

"There was a time when in some circles, people may not have thought it cool to say they were an Elvis fan, but I am, I loved him.""

"It is probable that he will eventually settle into the mainstream of popular singers. When he does he may well build a reputation as one of the most remarkable of white blues singers, possibly the first to invade successfully the field of country blues."

"Elvis Presley would jump to my mind first if I could bring home someone from the past, to have dinner with..."

"I was such a great fan of his, I saw all his movies, and always thought I would one day meet him. But I never did, so this is full circle for me."

"I objected to 's casting, because it made the project "an Elvis film.""

"Boris Yeltsin was best known for his role as the President of Russia, but he also had another unique claim to fame: Moscow's biggest Elvis Presley fan. According to sources, Yeltsin was a huge fan of Presley and would often listen to his recording of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” during times of stress, such as in August, 1991, when he prevented a coup by standing on top of a tank. But while Yeltsin loved Presley, he hated staples with an equal amount of passion, as reflected in a memo from a Yeltsin aide demanding that no one use staples on any papers given to their fearless leader, as "this practice holds up the President’s very decisions.”"

"I've done everything for Elvis that I possibly can to keep the legend going. That operation -which provided me with pouty lips, a jaunty chin and a more Presleyesque nose was just the beginning..."

"Elvis Presley transcended his being called the King of Rock and Roll, even the music he made famous, in favour of his later becoming one of the XX Century's greatest cultural icons. But it is his versatile voice and his unusual delivery of numerous musical idioms, as well as the attraction he held, physically, and sexually, that led him to his being the greatest solo artist in the history of popular music."

"They said no, and that I just couldn’t wear a disguise. So, I talked with my son and his girlfriend and got them to order me an Elvis costume to wear as I picked up my million million dolllar prize."

"That September, Presley would make his legendary inaugural appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," singing a sultry version of "Hound Dog" with his swinging hips in all their vulgar, gyrating splendor. During a later appearance in January 1957, the variety show would famously edit the King from the waist down in order to protect impressionable young television viewers from his brazen sexuality. But then, it was far too late. America had a full-on dose of Elvismania, and there was nary a cure in sight."

"In essence, because at that time the backward mental capability that many people had of judging a person because of their skin color, and it does still exist, but back then it was even worse, BUT because he actually was a Caucasian brother, Elvis was able to do away with all that thinking towards music."

"X-ray records felt like the real thing to (Soviet) rock-starved kids. When doing national service in Berlin, I came across a couple of bedraggled teenage Soviet soldiers who had just climbed over the fence. "Why did you want to take this risk?" I asked them, as they could so easily have been shot. ‘Because our officer won’t let us listen to Elvis Presley,’ one of them answered."

"You didn't make it before we came along, and if I wanted to back somebody, I would have picked somebody who can sing, like Elvis Presley."

"There are some artists that appear to be a clear step ahead when it comes to intellectual property protection, Elvis Presley and 50 Cent being leagues ahead when it comes to portfolio size amongst the top ten artists which were made part of the study"

"Elvis Presley, in the midst of his 1968 comeback special, admitted “I’ve got to do this sooner or later, I may as well do it now, baby”. He then launched into Hound Dog ( via Heartbreak Hotel), which was what everyone wanted. I can't help keep thinking that Theresa May should have taken inspiration from this.She had to confront her ERG Leaver wing at some point, why not sooner (baby)? What could May have won, if she'd confronted her strong Leavers back far ago in 2016? What if she'd challenged them to a showdown not in Christmas 2018 but the summer or autumn, say, of 2016?"

"My father wanted me to be like him, an Orthodox Jew. When I said I didn’t want to be, he said, ‘just don’t tell your children.’ I said, ‘you want me to pretend to be somebody I’m not?’ He said, ‘that’s exactly what I’m saying.’. Anyways, he was Elvis' proctologist, so on the day I was supposed to meet him, I got into trouble and he didn't allow me to. When Elvis died, my dad remembered him as a respectful Christian who helped Jews on the Sabbath...."

"The peak of peak attention can be assigned and exact date: September 9, 1956, when Elvis Presley made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, at CBS. Its 82.6 percent share of viewers, out of a population roughly half of today' s, has never been equaled or bettered"

"Elvis was the kind of guy never looked past you, he looked right at you, was the warmest, most twinkling. He made you feel comfortable and at ease, which was amazing. He did not have any of that stuff where 'it's all about me'. He was a perfect gentleman. And he made you feel comfortable right away, at least he did with me. I'd go further and say that Elvis was clearly a guy with a rural or country attitude about life. He had that simple kinda point of view that said you stand up, you're polite to people. In spite of the money and the Cadillacs and all that, it was he and his pals, he never changed. And you could see that the minute he said hello to you. He was not a guy that would talk to you and look over your shoulder to see who else was in the room. Elvis Presley had a genuineness that was very noticeable and quite impressive the first time I met him. And Elaine and I went home really liking him and thinking 'what a terrific guy'. And everytime I saw him after that, he remembered everything, was always gracious and complimentary to people. It wasn't easy to get to see him, I mean, he had a very limited circle of friends. But when you did get in his company it was a real pleasure."

"In examining how rock, soul and R&B grew from the roots of gospel, our program on the Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul shall highlight such highly influential artists as who transitioned from gospel to secular music and her early rock stylings and Elvis Presley, who helped expose white audiences to gospel music. Examples of some of the most beloved contemporary pop music of the last 60 years from artists such as Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, and Ray Charles illustrate gospel music's influence. Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul also features exclusive live performances recorded by WXPN within the last year from gospel groups The Fairfield Four, The McCrary Sisters, and The Dixie Hummingbirds."

"We put all the photos we received into albums. I remember we got fan letters from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Cuba and from the Soviet Union. We got them from all over the world and I used to collect the stamps for my son. Elvis really loved reading the fan mail and seeing the albums, especially the girls. We got post cards from everywhere. We would save him a lot of letters if they were funny and thought he would enjoy them and he surely did."

"My mother took me to see "Jailhouse Rock" when I was three. She loved Elvis. I guess I thought, like John Lennon, that that looked like a pretty good job. I bought my first Elvis record at seven. I got an old tennis racket and I'd go around the house playing it like a guitar, playing Elvis songs. I'd turn my collar up and do the lip sneer, the whole thing. I was a little boy being Elvis! I knew I was a little girl, but I was being myself. I never understood the gender difference, frankly. It never stopped me: I never thought, 'I'm a little girl, I can't do this.'"

"Elvis was my first piece of vinyl. It was also a gift when I was only 7 years old. Some things are just too amazing not to share with you all. Thank you Priscilla and thank you BAM I love you bro. I’ll cherish this forever and I love y’all!!”"

"I first heard him in 1959, when I was 27. My favourite song of his is “Are You Lonesome Tonight, a 1961 song in which I found solace, by playing it over, and over, and over again during the weeks preceding and following the aborted 1991 coup against ."

"It's our responsibility as musicians to keep pushing each other, to keep competing with each other. It's a really great competition. I see here artists like Beyonce and Alicia Keys and Rihanna and Chris Brown and Chris Martin, all in the same room, and we're going to push this music to the point where it was like in the 1960s and '70s, when the talk was about Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles. We (all) will be the new Beatles. We (all) will be the new Hendrix; (in fact) in any other industry, they'll tell you that you're supposed to do better than those in the past, so when you say, 'I want to be Elvis,' they say, 'What's wrong with you?' Well, I wanna be Elvis."

"i) Both "Elvis" and "Priscilla" present a vision of Elvis Presley framed by a third party, rather than one viewed directly, with the luxury of omniscience, by the person behind the camera. In "Elvis", Baz Luhrmann shapes Elvis’ story through the eyes of Parker, the man who helped make him and did more than his share to break him. And in "Priscilla", Elvis, for once, isn’t the center of attention; it’s Priscilla’s experience that matters. The suggestion of both movies is that Elvis Presley, like an eclipse of the sun, is too dazzling, too potentially disorienting, to be viewed without a filter...ii) Elvis Presley has been gone for 48 years now, but he hasn’t really died. The second half of the 20th century took shape around his almost mystical youthful charisma, and later around his ghost. Peter Guralnick has already given us the definitive Elvis biography with his two-volume classic, "Last Train to Memphis" and "Careless Love" published in the ’90s but now his "The Colonel and the King: " is a sympathetic, surprising, and assiduously researched book—a coda to that essential work."

"Some of those we have lost in 2019ː Elvis Presley (singer, actor, 84), perpetrator of the finest prank in history and of two of the best comeback concerts ever seen..."

"This is the mysterious part about music, the people who mean it, like Elvis, are generally the ones who are processing some kind of loss, and we connect to it."

"He is the Elvis of cultural theory"

"He liked to do the bumps and grinds as I did them, and that was basically what he used in his routine from 1957. Eventually, he proposed to me, but I told him if anyone knew about us it would cost him his career."

"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."

"On stage, any chance I get to put the teeth in and bite people, I will take. “Dance of the vampires" is great if only because it lets itself to be really, really silly. Any character I play has at least one if not three animal images that I use. And for the role of Count von Krolock, I said he's part panther, part eagle, and part Elvis Presley. And Elvis Presley — he's sexy as hell.”"

"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...."

"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."

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

"But my generation did not ONLY love America because she defended freedom. We also loved America because for us she embodied what was most audacious about the human enterprise, because America for us embodied the spirit of conquest. We loved America, because for us, America was a new frontier that was continuously being rolled back, a constantly renewed challenge to the inventiveness of the human spirit. My generation, without even coming to America, shared all of your dreams. In our imaginations, our imaginations were fueled by Hollywood, by the great conquest of the western territories, by Elvis Presley, and you probably haven't heard his name quoted often here -- but for my generation, he is universal."

"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."

"Shortly after midnight, arriving at San Antonio International airport on Hugh Hefner ‘Playboy’ DC-9 and wearing a long coat with white fur trim, he was greeted by fans before his manager, Col. Tom Parker, took him away in a black limousine to an unknown hotel destination. Fans, when interviewed, felt that if he looked that good when he traveled, that they could only imagine what he will look like on stage. He didn't disappoint. During the concert, a lady who was bitten in a fight over a scarf he threw into the crowd was later taken to the hospital where she was given a tetanus shot from a physician who thought the whole thing was humorous, particularly as the lady said her attacker could be identified by a bald spot on her head, which she had, in turn inflicted, on her...."

"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."

"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."

"And to think I only wanted to imitate Elvis"

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