Guitarists From The United States

"As completed his first 90 minutes in the Premier League for Arsenal in over three years, and was arguably their best player in the 0-0 draw at West Ham's London Arena on Wednesday evening, "A Little Less Conversation", the song by Elvis Presley, was the tune that played the players off the pitch, the lyric urging for "a little more spark" a fair assessment of the game. But it is the line about the need for "a little less conversation, a little more action" that best sums up his situation at Arsenal..."

"He started drawing on my front all the way down to my navel, doodling as I spoke to him, in front of hundreds at his dressing room after his August 1970 opening show at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Incredible sensation, he used a biro!!! That night back at my hotel, alone, I undressed and there they were, the doodlings. I did not wash until they wore off..."

"His generosity.."

"On the evening of the Oscars, with Austin seated next to me, I understood intimately what he felt when it was time to learn if he would climb those stairs to the stage. So, I took his hand and held it softly as the winner was announced. Although his name wasn’t called, Austin is no less a winner. The time had come for Austin to say goodbye to Elvis as he began to embrace an infinite universe of possibilities as an actor. I can’t wait to see what he brings us next."

"While Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison were ruling the rock-pop charts in the US, he had everyone grooving to his music in Nepal. The song "Deula yo joban timilai deula" may have sounded similar to what was trending internationally, but was given a funky twist of his own, and arguably was responsible for introducing rock and pop to the entire nation. He became a heartthrob in his country and was soon called the Elvis Presley of Nepal because he came like a breath of fresh air in a music scene dominated by traditional tunes."

"What's more, the asset class “fine art” is to investing,is what science fiction is to the rest of literature. The "extreme" characteristics of sci-fi and high-end art help teach investors—or readers—important lessons. Science fiction speaks to human nature, while art offers a window on the nature of asset markets. What then qualifies as "extreme"? Take Andy Warhol. In 1986, collectors could buy a Warhol "Triple Elvis" painting for about $200,000, but a "Triple Elvis" went for $81.9 million at auction in 2018. That's a 400-fold gain—an investor's dream. The average annual return of the "Triple Elvis" works out to about 20.6%. Pretty good. And there is nothing more fundamental to investing than returns."

"I just come off the air and got a phone call telling me that they had just found Elvis dead, so I was in shock, as I thought for a moment that we had contributed to his death, minutes earlier having been, as I was, the first person to review the book that laid it all out. Moreover, given that people knew that I didnt make up stories and because of the large audience I had just reached in "Good Morning America", I thought that we may have had sent Elvis over the edge. I'll never know..."

"Not only did Elvis give teens their own music with which to identify, he proved that much of the disposable income of this generation would be spent on music, fashion, and media of its own choosing and thus turning that generation into a high-pro!le, identifiable group with their own fashion sense, hair styles, slang, taste in music, preferences in movie stars and other favorite pastimes."

"A few days before Christmas one year, Elvis was in the store buying guns for some of his friends as gifts. There was a customer off to the side looking at a display case that held nothing but expensive Browning over-under shotguns. Presley went up to the gentleman and commented on how nice the guns were. The man agreed, but said they were way out of his price range, since they were all probably in the thousand dollar plus area. Elvis asked the guy which one he would buy if he was purchasing, and the fellow said probably the Diana grade with the gold inlay. Elvis then went back to the counter where Jerry Knight was, and as he left said to Jerry, "When that guy gets ready to leave, take that Diana grade shotgun out and put it on the counter and give it to him. Tell him Elvis said Merry Christmas." Jerry said he did just that, and he thought the guy was going to faint when he received the gift."

"I like Brando's acting ... and ... and . Quite a few of 'em I like."

"In 1956, I was President of his Los Angeles Fan Club and when I met him I noticed he had bad complexion and realized he wasn't perfect. So maybe it was a chance for me to make it in Hollywood (LOL)"

"Another time we played with Herman's Hermits who were very popular. Frankly, we didn't rate them musically, but we were impressed when they told us about they having met with Elvis Presley, "Elvo" to us. And when they told Ian Anderson he sang like 'Elvo' he was very flattered and to this day the rest of the band and I always call Ian 'Elvo'!”"

"Our son's name would be Elvis...."

"Baritones UnBound continues the second season of Asolo Rep's five-year American Character Project, an in-depth look at this nation and its people. No other voice has defined the United States quite like the booming sound of the baritone. From Sinatra to Elvis and much more, this musical journey chronicles some of the most beloved singers and songs of all time. Conceived by Broadway leading man and threetime Tony Award nominee Marc Kudisch and created by Merwin Foard, three dynamite baritones take the stage to give us a captivating musical tour of the baritone voice throughout history, namely Marc Kudisch, Jeff Mattsey, and Timothy Splain. Veteran singers Jeff Mattsey and Mark Delavan join Kudisch in an illuminating performance studded with classics from Broadway, opera and beyond. From Gregorian chants to well-known arias (“Ah! Per sempre,” “Largo”) including show tunes (“I am a Pirate King,” “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’”) and popular music (“It Was a Very Good Year,” “It’s Now or Never,” and “Pretty Women”)"

"By the time we got towards the end of our stay there, Elvis was worn out, so he got all the singers individually to do a song. Of course, all the musicians knew that I play and sang and they knew some of my songs. Elvis was obviously hesitating and thinking of something else to do, and Ronnie said: 'Let Bardwell sing'. He just went, 'Yeah, right ...'. And Guercio said, 'No, really. You wanna do something else, let him sing, because he can sing'. So Elvis went, 'Ladies and gentlemen, my bassplayer is going to sing now'. So Charlie Hodge gave me his guitar and I got Charlie's mike. Charlie was holding another mike on the guitar, for me to play it. And I didn't know what to do. I mean, how am I going to follow Kathy Westmoreland doing 'My Heavenly Father'? And Donnie Sumner said, 'Do the Hurricane song'. You know, 'Please Don't Bury Me' by . I got to the last verse of the song that's a bit off color. We were going from 'My Heavenly Father' to 'Kiss My Ass Goodbye', and it just took everybody by surprise. That was a really good moment, because I had shown Elvis a part of me that he didn't know of. He knew that what we had just done was show business, and it was good show business, because it was entertaining. I went back to the dressing room after the show, and Tom Diskin knocked on the door. We let him in, and he said 'I have a message for you from the Colonel' So I figured that I was fired when he sent Tom Diskin into the dressing room, but he said, He wants me to tell you that that's one of the funniest things he's ever seen at an Elvis Presley show'. I was thrilled with that. If I didn't do anything else I had done that. That was fun"

"Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to ... juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear ... Mother Goose rhymes."

"I have nothing to do with him and therefore no reply is necessary"

"Elvis' lowest effective note was a low-G, as heard on "He'll Have To Go"(1976); on "King Creole" (1958), he growls some low-F's; going up, his highest full-voiced notes were the high-B's in "Surrender"(1961) and "Merry Christmas Baby" (1971), the high-G at the end of "My Way" (1976 live version), and the high-A of "An American Trilogy"(1972); using falsetto, Elvis could reach at least a high-E, e.g, as in "Unchained Melody" (1977), so, it was very nearly a three-octave range, although more practically two-and-a-half."

"I mean, don't tell me about Lenny Bruce, man – Lenny Bruce said dirty words in public and obtained a kind of consensual martyrdom. Plus which Lenny Bruce was hip, too goddam hip if you ask me, which was his undoing, whereas Elvis was not hip at all. Elvis was a goddam truck driver who worshipped his mother and would never say "shit" or "fuck" around her, and Elvis alerted America to the fact that it had a groin with imperatives that had been stifled. Lenny Bruce demonstrated how far you could push a society as repressed as ours and how much you could get away with, but Elvis kicked "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window" out the window and replaced it with "Let's fuck." The rest of us are still reeling from the impact. Sexual chaos reigns currently, but out of chaos may flow true understanding and harmony, and either way Elvis almost single handedly opened the floodgates."

"It was the autumn of 1971, and two tickets to an Elvis show turned up at the offices of Creem magazine, where I was then employed. It was decided that those staff members who had never had the privilege of witnessing Elvis should get the tickets, which was how me and art director Charlie Auringer ended up in nearly the front row of the biggest arena in Detroit. Earlier Charlie had said, “Do you realize how much we could get if we sold these things?” I didn't, but how precious they were became totally clear the instant Elvis sauntered onto the stage. He was the only male performer I have ever seen to whom I responded sexually; it wasn't real arousal, rather an erection of the heart, when I looked at him I went mad with desire and envy and worship and self-projection. I mean, Mick Jagger, whom I saw as far back as 1964 and twice in ‘65, never even came close."

"I might be the biggest Elvis fan you've ever met. I mean, I've seen it all. And I just loved him. I don't know what it was. I mean, probably the same reason everybody loved Elvis. Cause he was electric. He was just electric, the greatest entertainer I've ever seen, and I think the reason why was because — and I heard him say it many times in interviews — , he always did what he felt. Genuinely did what he felt. It wasn't choreographed. It wasn't, OK, well, I'm gonna do this move at this time. It was coming up from inside of him, and it was coming out. That's what it was, and that's why people connected with it. Cause it was the real deal.”"

"Then, in 1954, Elvis happened. The influence that the softly spoken Mississippi native had on popular music – and in particular rockabilly – is incalculable. First billed as 'The Hillbilly Cat' (again a nod towards black and white influences), the boy with the seemingly rubber limbs sang both blues and country songs infused with elements of this new rockabilly movement to the bemusement of a music industry not yet aware of the significance of what they were listening to. They didn't know it at the time, but the music establishment had just changed forever. Two years later he signed with RCA and the ensuing exposure he received on national television introduced rockabilly to its widest audience yet and, like fire to kindling, there was no stopping its spread. Other labels swooped to sign up any artists who sang even vaguely similar to Elvis and there was a bona fide musical gold rush underway and record executives and studio bigwigs fell over themselves to capitalise on this musical trend which was now sweeping the nation – ultimately playing a big part in rockabilly's eventual downfall, as more and more people tried to make money from it, (thus) watering down its raunchiness as they tried to make it appear to as large a market as possible, and (finally) taming its sound beyond recognition."

"With him, it's the pictures that spoke loudest about the man behind the genius. Take Sunday Times photographer Chris Smith's classic shot in which a scowling Seve, handsome head turned from the driving rain, jacket held across his chest like a matador's cape, and he is curling his lip. It tells you everything you need to know about his mood, his game, and his grim determination to outfox the elements and annihilate his opponent. It's pure Elvis."

"I don't think any two men on this planet ever had the charisma of Elvis Presley and Jackie Wilson. The two of them remind me of each other: the charisma"

"Presley's voice was remarkable in the sense that, through it, he touched people in a way only great artists can do. (In fact), the people he touched are as diverse as humanity itself and, because of that his popularity has transcended race, class, national boundaries, and culture. There is no simple answer about why that is so, all I can say is he had that magic. When Elvis Presley was first popular, many people said that he did not have a good voice. Almost everyone, today, knows that he did, but more people today should see him not simply as a performer, but as an artist with a great soul."

"He was fantastic. When he danced, the people danced, the girls would actually faint because of what he was doing. The people didn't care if he was white or black, he was a good artist and they felt his music."

"i) We can even hazard a little analysis as to what made his voice so appealing. "That curious baritone," one critic called it. Actually, that is inexact. The voice had mixed propensities, hovering between tenor and bass and everything in between. Even a convincing falsetto lay within his range. One thing he was not, ever, was "Steve-'n-Edie", the polished, professionally accomplished Vegas artistes who once pronounced on an afternoon interview show (Mr. Lawrence enunciating the sentiment for himself and his partner/wife, Ms. Gorme), "We don't really think of Elvis as a singer. But he was a star." It is only when, years later, one gets past the indignation of hearing such apparent ignorance, that the sense of the observation becomes clear. A singer is someone like Steve Lawrence rolling effortlessly (and meaninglessly) through a shlock-standard like "What Now, My Love?". More or less like doing the scales. A star is the persona in whom one invests one's vicarious longings, a being who is constantly hazarding — and intermittently succeeding at — the impossible stretches that every soul wishes to attempt but lacks the means or the will to. It's not a matter of virtuosity. ii) Take My Baby Left Me (1956) by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, the black Mississippi sharecropper whose That's All Right had literally been Elvis' first recording, in 1954. Crudup kept his blues in a bucket; Elvis put the lid on, and cooked; bar by bar, the song comes together; first comes D.J. Fontana's rapped-out drum riff, then a top-to-bottom run from Bill Black's stand-up bass, then the controlled gallop of Scotty Moore's lead guitar; then, last of all, Elvis singing in that imperious velvet growl of his, "Yes, my baby left me! Never said a word"; it is the most underestimated song in the canon; there is lightning in that bucket, and it could drive a train, any train. It literally took us into a new age. Endow a university! Elvis was a university. Whoever those mystics are who teach that the universe began with sound could use him as their full curriculum""

"In May of 1998 I was in the middle of an Elvis Presley obsession, so I went to Graceland. Everything about the place seemed awesome to me, from the giant Corinthian columns out front, to the purple and yellow room with three televisions built into the wall, to the big man’s grave out back. But what has stuck with me the most from the visit is a particular story about Elvis. Elvis had grown up poor, and I’m sure when he was poor money was important. But when he started to make more money than he could ever spend, or maybe just enough money to have every material thing he wanted, it no longer held importance to him. So, during a party at Graceland he was inside with a guest who came from a poor background, and the other partygoers were outside on the lawn. His friend commented on how sophisticated all of the partygoers seemed. Elvis walked over to his desk, pulled a stack of money from one of the drawers, opened a window, and threw the bills out the window. The partygoers scrambled after the bills, shoving each other, trying to grab as much money as they could. Elvis turned to his friend and said, “They’re not that sophisticated.”"

"I'm living proof that Elvis was a pretty good driver. As innocent as the BMW 507 with its white paintwork might have looked, with a 150-horsepower V8 under the bonnet, it was something very special and Elvis drove like a maniac! Foot hard on the gas, then hard on the brakes, switching between lanes, slaloming between cars – it was like all hell had broken loose. (I was scared), and as a result wasn't quite able to enjoy the experience. The unvarnished truth is that I was just happy that we managed to get the car back to the dealership without a scratch on it. That short time I spent with Elvis was wonderful, though. The next day, I wrote to my mother , saying that I'd driven 100 miles up the autobahn with Elvis Presley. She thought I was kidding.”"

"Did I? That was extremely immodest and foolish of me, my apologies. I would never dare to be so presumptuous. I am only interested in the legacy my father has left behind, and I would like to work towards giving it strength and respect for as long as I live."

"I doubt it, although he did record "Any Day Now", and that’s one of those things where you think, “Great!”, and you hear it and it’s not so great. It was the same thing with Frank Sinatra and the Count Basie band, with Quincy Jones producing. They did "Wives and Lovers", which is in 3/4 time, but they did it in 4/4. I said, “Quincy, what happened?” He said: “The Basie band can’t play in 3/4.”"

"I was about to say you were doing a disservice to fat Elvis who had much more dignity than Donald Trump does right now. What the hell is he talking about? He doesn’t have a clue. That’s just sad.”"

"1) Ed Sheeran 2) Will Smith 3) James Cordon 4) Peter Kay 5) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 6) Elvis Presley 7) Prince Harry 8) Michael Jackson 9) Beyonce and 10) Kim Kardashian"

"When Elvis came back from the service and he was greeted by all the publicity, the press, the photographers, reporters, and so forth, someone said to him "Well, what do you think now that you're not number one but Avalon is ?" And he said " Oh, I love his song "Venus" and there's room for everybody." And I thought that was really genuine, nice compliment."

"Coming upon these tapes, unspooling them and watching them glide across an Ampex 440 reel-to-reel deck for the first time was the closest I'll ever get to being a real life . Beyond the staggering realization of what we had found, there was a musical element that also knocked our socks off: On these tapes Glen is singing pure rock and roll and with a sense of joy, passion and wild abandon that can only have come from knowing that his idol, the avatar Elvis Presley, would be an audience of one for these recordings.”"

"Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business. He was white, but he sang black. It wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time. Did I have any sense of how big he was going to be when he first came to RCA? Oh yeah, we knew. Back in those days, if a guy got hot in one area you could spread it around the country, maybe the world. He was already so big in East Texas and Louisiana you couldn't get him off stage with a firehose. We knew. When he came in to do “Heartbreak Hotel” I called up my wife and told her to come over. I said, You might not get a chance to see him again, he's gonna get so damn big."

"In times of trouble, I put my faith in Elvis Presley, who represented the South's better angels. He was a hard worker, and although he lived the high life, he never forgot that he had been born into poverty. And he was a self-made talent, perhaps the greatest entertainer of all time, born in a two-room shack in Tupelo, Miss., in 1935. I've been to that small shotgun house many times, reflecting on what it says about America. Greatness can be born anywhere. His father Vernon was a laborer who was often out of work, and the Presleys relied on the kindness of family and neighbors to get them through the hard times.When Elvis was young, the Presleys lost it, and they ended up shuttling around Tupelo, often living in black neighborhoods, where Elvis famously developed an ear for black gospel and blues to supplement his love of the old-time gospel he knew from his own church.I still believe in my heart that most Southerners are still more like Elvis than President Trump. We are most likely to pull over and help someone stranded on the roadside. Most of the people I know in my Mississippi town would give you the shirt off their backs. Most Southern preachers don't spend Sundays in the pulpit spewing hatred and intolerance. Most people agree that racism and white supremacy are evil. Even preschoolers know it's always better to tell the truth and take your lumps than lie and evade. And yet here we are. We know right from wrong, but most of us down here voted for wrong. As Elvis once said, “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away."

"Princesses Margrit of Denmark (now HRH, the Queen of Denmark), Margaret of Sweden and I, were assigned to represent the people of Scandinavia on the SAS' maiden intercontinental flight to Los Angeles. We went to Disneyland, then to the Paramount Studios. He was making a film, we watched him sing a song and then he greeted us. He was very polite, a man with an M in capital letters. He was very pretty, had been our idol and we three had heard all his records, seen all his movies, so when I found out he had died, I was very saddened."

"I found him to be an interesting person, had an entourage of good old boys, was busy with karate, breaking his hand while doing it, but he was nice and cooperative and friendly. I really liked him."

"Where were you when you learned of Elvis Presley's death? I was at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center near Juneau, Alaska, escorting a group of senior adults. Like JFK’s assassination, the first moon landing and 9/11, it's one of the events engraved in our memory, at least for us of a certain age. Elvis may have left the building for the last time 46 years ago, but he is still very much a part of our lives."

"He was stationed in Germany doing his service so on the occasion he would go visit Paris coinciding with my time there. On his first visit, he took 40 dancing girls from the Lido to the Prince des Galles Hotel. On his next, he suddenly took a great shine to me but when someone told him I was trans-sexual, he stayed away. But, if by chance we would be in the same club, he would sent me a bottle of champagne every time. He was a divine human being."

"And he left the game wanting. I think Bjorn could have won the U.S. Openan the Grand Slam. But by the time he left, the historical challenge didn't mean anything. He was bigger than the game. He was like Elvis or Liz Taylor or somebody. He'd lost touch with the real world"

"I am the greatest contemporary artist of all-time."

"Arguably some of the most important tracks in the history of Rock and Roll, Elvis' SUN recordings demonstrate what a dynamic and talented vocalist he was; the young, raw, unadulterated Elvis whom musicologist Francis Davis once called "the greatest white blues singer”; I'm not one to argue with Mr. Davis."

"Naming the single greatest cultural icon of the 20th century is subjective and highly debatable, but Elvis Presley's claim is one of the strongest. His unparalleled influence on music, fashion, and youth culture fundamentally reshaped popular entertainment and made him a global symbol of rebellion and charisma."

"Of course, it was 1957, he had a beautiful blonde on the back of his motorcycle. Now, I wasn't watching the blonde and I didn't know who he was, so I took him down to the Las Vegas police station where I then worked and I gave him a pass..."

"My cuban blood was flowing. My hips were revolving. I would have made Elvis look as if he was standing still"

"I'm definitively going to make a record with him. You would be surprised what we could do together. You ask me if I think he is good. How many Cadillacs was it he bought.? That boy's no fool..."

"When my cousin, four years older than me, played me two and a half minutes of music, which changed my life. That music was Elvis Presley, singing Hound Dog, and for the next six months – to my mother's absolute horror – I didn't want to hear anything but the rawest rock'n'roll I could lay my hands on. Do you know? For those who didn’t live through the Fifties, it’s really hard to imagine the enormous cultural gulf which existed between England and America at that time. Elvis himself was a God and in some of the first footage that we saw in England, seemed to us like an alien super being from a distant universe."

"The biggest surprise about his singing had been revealed when he gave us a private concert and sang "Love me tender" a soft, ultra-slow ballad at the quaint music bungalow on the far west side of 20th Century lot. It was away from the bustle of traffic and from the big stages and it looked like the kind of cottage Walt Disney would have built for Snow White and Prince Charming. This was where Elvis felt relaxed, comfortable. So Ken Darby sat at the grand piano at the far end of the living room and Elvis stood a few feet behind him and in front of a tall stained-glass window. He stood erect, as if he was in a choir. Ken started to play the soft melody and I hardly knew that Elvis had started to sing, as his voice, barely louder than the piano, was pitched slightly higher than his usual. It had a lot of resonance and vibration and Elvis was on-key for every note, no matter how long, short, high or low. When he finished, it seemed only normal to express our amazement. "People think all I can do is belt, I used to sing nothing but ballads before I went professional. I love to sing slow, but seldom get to do it", he said, then continued to explain that, as a boy, an only child, he would sing like that when he sang with his mother and dad in church. "It was a small church, only seated about 75, you couldn't sing too loud there.""