Gospel Singers

"As a jazz educated singer I had reservations about entering the Elvis world. There can be a lot of judgement about his music and the image that has been created of him over many years. But I found myself completely falling in love with his songs. Each night on stage I would discover another lyric, another chord change, another nuance that thrilled and moved me all at once. Studying the Elvis songbook, I found breathtaking recordings of the same songs by other artists. I was literally stopped in my tracks. These musical masterpieces were being revealed to me and I had Elvis to thank for it"

"Elvis was technically fearless and instinctive in his use of technique. In his early material in particular it is as if his voice is finding and creating the lyrics as he is singing them."

"Anywhere in the world, not before, during or after has there been a bigger music star than Elvis Presley. I always wanted to record one of his ballads, but in English, and I chose the title track for his second movie, "Loving you" ..."

"Sixty-two years ago Sunday, Elvis Presley took the stage at CBS studios in New York and smiled as a city health official stuck a needle in his left arm. The publicity stunt, broadcast nationwide before Presley's 2nd appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” was meant to convince the American public that the new polio vaccine was safe. It worked. And playing to Presley's demographic apparently helped. About 75 percent of Americans under 20 had received at least one polio shot by August 1957, when the first national survey was taken; this rose to nearly 90 percent by September 1961, according to a 1962 public health report."

"This friend of mine and I got tickets for a couple of bucks apiece. In fact, was just a kid when a country music show came to Baton Rouge, LA. In the middle of the show, they announced a special guest sensation from Memphis. So this guy comes out in a pink suit – he didn't even have a drummer – and starts jumping around while they're setting up the amp and a big acoustic bass. Then he started in with, “Well that’s all right, mama,” and we all went, “Hey, that’s the song we like on the radio,” because the station was playing it in Baton Rouge. There was Elvis. He did That's All Right and Blue Moon Of Kentucky, the B-side of his first record. We went to the back of the school afterwards, where he had this little Cadillac pulling a trailer, and they were loading the bass and stuff into it. He was talking to some of the country music guys about cars. He was probably 18 or 19, and I was 12 or 13. I'm just looking at him, thinking this guy is really cool and different. Little did we know..."

"In "T.R.O.U.B.L.E", (1975), his baritone was still as solid as ever, with its humorously cavernous bottom and its nasal vibrato on top. When he is putting out, reaching for the top notes and shaping phrases with the same easy individuality that has always marked his best work, he is still the King."

"John Lennon said that before Elvis there was nothing. After Elvis, nothing was the same. Perry Como is said to have said that Elvis was a threat to the moral health of the nation. What brighter endorsement could you wish for? Dial him up singing ‘Lonesome Tonight’ and marvel at the shambling majesty even as you ache for what's lost. Another thing about Elvis was that he was the most beautiful man in the world. To be as beautiful as that and also as bad was an alluring combination, love potion and lethal poison. When Pope Paul VI died within a year of Elvis, many of us shrugged. There'd be another Pope along in a minute. But there'd never ever be another Elvis. Dissing the dead Pope while singing hosannas to Elvis's immortality was the pitch-perfect response...-"

"My goodness, we all loved him, I met him many times, our children went to school together, he was terrific, a true gentleman"

"Music, like marketing, is one of those areas of film making that often get overlooked by producer/directors. I know of one who had a budget of USD $1,000,000 and never thought about spending any of that money on music. While this would be problematic for any type of movie, it was particularly bad in that the movie was a biopic about Elvis Presley. After three years, he moved on to other failed projects, but his investor, knowing that he'd poured a lot of money into a movie that can't even be released, eventually broke down and paid Presley's estate significant more money to acquire at least some music royalties for the movie. Since he didn't want to overspend, he ended up purchasing the rights to just one hit song and one “deep cut.” And the producer's brother ended up composing most of the Elvis-esque music for the film..."

"Here is what is was for me. Elvis came along and this soundwave came out that ran right through me"

"I thought Janet Leigh, who played my part in the movie, was beautiful and that Kay Medford should have done the mother. Maureen Stapleton is a brilliant actress, but she’s not funny and Kay was funny. Somebody else should have played the Elvis Presley part. That’s my opinion, but who the hell am I?"

"i) It was the highest rated documentary ever, catchin a 43 % share, until Monica Lewinsky interview by Barbara Walters. ii) If I wanted to have someone come to my house to entertain my family for the Thankgiving holidays, I would choose Elvis."

"I never quite “got” Elvis until after his death, but now I fully understand people's fascination with him. That man could really sing. He reinvented himself more times than David Bowie and I remember dancing to this song with the most beautiful woman in the world."

"For me, he was always "Saint Elvis", so when I had the chance to sing in Las Vegas at a luxury hotel and as back up to the Smothers' Brothers act, I immediately rushed to the Hilton, where he was appearing. Just his entrance was out of this world, indescribable and peerless, and, as singer he always pushed the envelop, an amazing performer all the way to the end"."

"On my radio show, I recall hearing Elvis Presley's “Heartbreak Hotel” playing on my Aunt Babe's radio. It was my most impactful musical memory. That happened when I was six and it just slayed me. Nothing would ever be the same."

"In our survey the option that most people liked was 'Well-known popular music from any period'. This was closely followed by 'Well-known classical music' and 'Well-known music from the last year'. What do these categories actually mean when it comes to artists? Maybe think of the top 3 as Elvis Presley, Luciano Pavarotti and Katy Perry."

"He was a kind, very nice, honest and beautiful person. He had a lot of heart and that’s why he sang so nice."

"My orchestra shall always aim to create a vibrant atmosphere bringing Sostakovich, Ravel, Elvis and Sinatra together."

"Although many people have a hard time defining charisma, they believe they know it when they see it. Most will agree that certain historical leaders, say like Presidents Kennedy, FDR, Ronald Reagan and leaders of social movements, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, as well and celebrities like Elvis Presley all had charisma. But when it comes to the specific political leader that people support, charisma may be in the eye of the beholder. Charismatic leadership, as theorized by sociologist, Max Weber, was primarily in the relationship between leader and followers. According to Weber, certain followers are drawn to a particular leader and imbue that individual with charisma. An emotional bond forms between leaders and followers, and as long as the followers are happy with their chosen, charismatic leader, all is well. One thing is certain, however. In order to be considered charismatic an individual has to have the ability to connect with and “captivate” followers. So what is the common element that underlies charisma potential? It seems to be the ability to communicate emotionally to others – to be able to inspire them with emotions communicated nonverbally."

"In 1954, R&B̪ writer Charles Singleton and I wrote "Trying to Get to You," which was first recorded by The Eagles, a black vocal group. Elvis Presley heard their version in a store in Memphis, and he decided to record the song. Elvis did it like The Eagles. Amazing how he did that. He wasn't a big star at that point, and we thought that he couldn't sing. We just didn't understand, yet, were grateful to him. Thank God for Elvis."

"I went to the cinema to see "Loving You" and when I decided to pursue a career in rock, I changed my last name to that of the character played by Elvis."

"I remember him being tall, slender and so beautiful. I mean, what a beautiful man. And he had this beautiful voice. He was a spiritual guy, and he loved to read anything about being spiritual. He wasn’t so much religious, but spiritual. And I, too, was fascinated by those things. So we bonded over that. We used to exchange books on the set, and it was great fun. We would have conversations all the time about being spiritual. It was a good relationship, very solid. I knew he really wanted to be taken seriously as an actor. He was almost too beautiful to be thought of as serious. It must be very awful to be at the very top like that because nobody could possibly relate to what it’s like to be there and expect you to stay there. He of course embraced it beautifully. But I think he was also pretty lonely and wanted more for himself. He was, of course, very special. But I don’t think he saw himself that way. There was a sadness about him. It just makes you wonder what could have been. I loved Elvis."

"It's like if you're playing Elvis Presley and you've only got whatever amount of scenes in the movie, you're not gonna work any less hard on the part because you've got less material. You're gonna be like, 'I'm playing Elvis Presley!"

"I am working on several, actually. I've just delivered scripts on George Washington, John Lennon and Yoko Ono and I am also looking at making something on Elvis Presley."

"Best wishes"

"A Graceland expansion would mean economic growth. Representatives with Elvis Presley Enterprises told the council that this decision would be a big deal for the city, with local impact over the next 30 years expected to be $9.3 billion dollars."

"His 2019 election victory took him from popular buffoon to prime minister just like Elvis’ comeback TV special in 1968, which crowned him the undisputed king of rock ‘n’ roll. However, after a year, the name ‘Boris’ suddenly no longer sounded like a buddy, but now carried the same contemptuous undertone as ‘Maggie’ , the last person in office who was customarily referred to by her first name. Once the brand has become a dirty word, there is no turning back. The fact is Johnson is now in the ‘Fat Elvis’ stage of his career"

"As far as rock, he was the boss..."

"I want to thank Jim Carrey, one of my biggest fans, then Will Smith, my Mama, Elvis Presley, J. Cruz, Cece, Power 106, my girl, my kids and Eddie Murphy.""

"On board I sing a song that Andrew Lloyd Webber and I wrote for Elvis, “It’s Easy for You.” We have a little Elvis interlude. When I was a spotty 15-year-old, Elvis was my hero, and I never dreamt that many years later, he would sing a song that we wrote. When he was in Vegas, we met his music publisher, Freddy Bienstock, and he said, "Oh, Elvis’s always looking for good songs.” This was after Elvis had broken up with Priscilla Presley, and we wrote “It’s Easy for You,” about leaving a wife and child for another woman. In 1977 it came out: It was the last track on the last album he recorded before he died. It's the one song many people haven't heard, but one I think they enjoy very much in the shows."

"The 146.5 million cumulative RIAA Album Awards, spanning 101 separate Gold (or higher) albums, makes Elvis the earner of the most Gold and Platinum Album Awards of any artist in the history of the RIAA"

"When I was a child of 5 or 6, I loved my little record player, but, other than children's storytelling albums, I owned only two albums — both gospel: Johnny Cash's “The Holy Land" and Elvis Presley's Gospel."

"I found that I could do Elvis's "Jailhouse Rock", and that's the great thing, you could pick it up and in a few hours, you could get to something that make you feel good. (Years later), Freddy wrote "Crazy little thing called love" as a tribute to Elvis, of whom he was very fond of."

"I owe Elvis Presley my career and the entire music business owes him its lifeline..."

"One day, when I was very very young, We ended up playing poker. During the game he casually asked one of his entourage about the new Chrysler car that was released that day and then handed him a wad of cash and said, ‘ Go get one.’ ‘ Any special colour?’ ‘ Nah, I don’t care’ he said ii) Had he done "A star is born" he would have been incredible, like Streisand wanted him to""

"I got to meet Elvis, an adorable, sweet Southern boy as charming as he could be. No wonder all the girls fell all over him.He was as wonderful in person as he was on the screen. He didn't want to make some of those films at all, but you know, you have to do what you have to do and now Elvis is gone, we're lucky we have what he did do."

"Many of them had camped out overnight, and on the morning of June 7 they filed through the estate's famous iron gates. That day, 3,000 Elvis Presley fans paid $5 to be the first to visit Graceland, the mansion where he had lived and found dead in 1977 at the age of 42. Moving through the gaudy Southern mansion, as Reuters described it, fans saw the trophy building, with its gold records and costumes, the living room's stained-glass peacocks, and the meditation gardens, where Elvis was buried. Paul Simon made a pilgrimage to Graceland in song, and Bruce Springsteen actually leaped over the wall in 1976. But in 1957, it was just a nice, colonnaded mansion in the Memphis suburbs that Elvis, then 22, bought for his parents for $102,500. Today 600,000 people a year visit Graceland, and it lives on in dreams."

"Good records just get better with age. But the one that really turned me on, like an explosion one night, listening to Radio Luxembourg on my little radio when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, was “Heartbreak Hotel”. That was the stunner. I'd never heard it before, or anything like it. I'd never heard of Elvis before. It was almost as if I'd been waiting for it to happen. I'm supposed to be asleep; I'm supposed to be going to school in the morning Then, “Since my baby left me” – it was just the sound. It was the last trigger. That was the first rock and roll I heard. It was a totally different way of delivering a song, a totally different sound, stripped down, burnt, no bullshit, no violins and ladies' choruses and schmaltz, totally different. It was bare, right to the roots that you had a feeling were there but hadn't yet heard. I've got to take my hat off to Elvis for that. The silence is your canvas, that's your frame, that's what you work on; don't try and deafen it out. That's what “Heartbreak Hotel” did to me. It was the first time I'd heard something so stark. Then I had to go back to what this cat had done before. Luckily I caught his name. The Radio Luxembourg signal came back in. “That was Elvis Presley, with ‘Heartbreak Hotel.'” sh*t!"

"The record industry is fully aware that premature death sells records. After Chester Bennington, the 41-year-old lead singer of the group Linkin Park took his own life, there was a 7,000% surge in the group's music plays. When rock 'n' roll legend Chuck Berry died aged 90, his music sales went through the roof, even though he hadn't released a new album in nearly 40 years. Prince was the top-selling artist of 2016, according to Billboard, outselling every other artist, living or dead, with a total of 7.7 million that year. While in even more notable moments of music history, John Lennon's musical comeback album went on to sell seven million copies in the following six months. But it was Elvis Presley who eclipsed them all. If there was Elvis product in stores following his death, they all got picked clean". In fact, Presley catalogue sales reportedly totalled 200 million copies worldwide in the four months after his passing."

"Take a track like "One Sided Love Affair"(1956), and really examine every nuance of his voice, every caress, every tease and every growl that he lets loose for the song's duration, and you`ll you come to understand that the reason Presley's voice has been so often imitated is because it was unique and, furthermore, fuckin' great; no phony piano intro, not even a puerile lyric could have ever stopped him from turning this song into a real classic; imagine, then, how great it is when Elvis gets to sing material that is up to his standards — like on the Sun Records label song "Tryin' To Get You" (1955) - , probably the bluesiest song on this record, where Presley shows a sense of determination, not just a combination of nobleness and sex, but an expression of guts as well; quite simply, this is a guy who knows what he wants, and knows he's gonna get it, and his confidence – never arrogance –, is so contagious that by the end of the song, you believe it too."

"I wasn't a big fan of him as I only knew him from the Dorsey and Sullivan Shows. But then he won me over when I spent the entire day of the concerts with him, in his dressing room, where he took a lot of his time talking to me and asking me questions about Jazz music and my musical influences. From his part, he said he loved gospel music and the blues the most. I found him to be an earthy kid, a first class gentleman and an exceptional family person."

"Elvis Presley was a legend, even in my homeland of Korea. When I received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Elvis Presley and told me that he was interested in continuing his studies in the martial arts under my direction, it occurred to me that this was most probably someone's idea of a joke; however, several hours later, I found myself seated behind my desk with him, seated across from me. Elvis then told me that it was at Master Ed Parker's suggestion that he contacted me. I was more than flattered, I was overwhelmed. He then insisted on training in regular classes with other students. He quickly realized that students were watching him rather than paying attention in the class so he asked me to arrange a demonstration which would allow the students to view his technique and see that he was attending class as a martial artist, not as an entertainer. I selected a day when a promotion (rank advancement) test was already scheduled and combined the two events. I selected this day because Elvis particularly enjoyed working with children and the student to be tested was a boy. Elvis was very humble. As a student of the martial arts, he was physically strong, his technique was excellent, one of the best. He was a master entertainer and a master showman, but he was also a Master human being. In many ways, Elvis taught me more than I taught him."

"A decision to get vaccinated isn’t made by each of us, individually, looking at available information and making a choice for ourselves. In other words, it’s not necessarily about the evidence. It’s about something bigger. People tend to respond to community norms. If we think about it, it’s somewhat logical. We tend to look to people who we think are either similar to us or who share our beliefs. There have been previous public health campaigns, for instance, that provided information from breast cancer to polio. In fact, in a more unified era, giving Elvis Presley his polio vaccine during a staged photo op attempted the same feat."

"I am a big fan of Elvis music. He shaped the future of rock and roll and I would take my daughter and my mum who is 85 and lots more family and friends to Graceland. It would be a great trip"

"He did have talent, that excitement. We knew the effect he had on future singers and players. I ran out and bought a guitar after I saw him."

"In 1968, he moved into Las Vegas quickly. He bought a piece of land across from the Flamingo Hotel. It was 80 acreHe was originally the landlord for that property, and he made millions on that deal. He then shortly thereafter bought an off-strip property, the first one that had ever been done.That’s where the International Hotel was built. It was a very, very expensive property at the time, it was off-strip. The first two people to appear in the show room there were Barbara Streisand and Elvis Presley and that was the beginning of Kirk Kerkorian’s ascension as the largest power broker in Las Vegas."

"The first time I met him I was blown away, I just looked at him and said, 'damn, you about the best looking thing I ever did see, kinda wish I was a girl right now, Elvis."

"Throughout the hearing, Mattis was treated to bipartisan praise with Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain announcing at the start that he couldn't be happier that Mattis had been nominated. "I think you're going going to be an extraordinary defense secretary,", Senator Ted Cruz then told Mattis, including a story about how excited his chief of staff, a former Marine, had been when Mattis visited Cruz's office. "If Elvis Presley had walked into the office, he wouldn't have been more thrilled than to see you walk in, General.""

"Then, like Alice through the looking glass, I stepped through a door still bearing a desiccated Christmas wreath, and that's when everything got awesome. Graceland's formal rooms are all white carpet and gold trimmings and mirrors. With its hide-covered furniture and lamps hanging from chains and vines draping a stone wall, the Jungle Room did not disappoint, but downstairs was the real action: a room with three televisions embedded in the walls, a sectional sofa with sequin-bedecked pillows, a mirror-topped coffee table bearing a bizarre porcelain creature of indeterminate origin gazing toward the door, and a billiards room with walls and ceiling entirely upholstered in pleated floral fabric that might have been fashioned by a seamstress on mushrooms. Somehow it felt like more than checking off an item on a bucket list. Maybe it had something to do with a dawning sense that I was moving past the delayed gratifications of motherhood, past the time of putting off what I wanted to do. Or maybe it had something to do with coming full circle, of making a vow just as our marriage was beginning and finally seeing it through just as we were on the verge of being alone again. Mirror after mirror, there I was, right in the heart of Graceland: smiling and smiling and smiling. Unquote"

"Channeling our inner Elvis with some help from the best in the business. What a night ."