Gospel Singers

"Elvis' initial hopes for a music career involved singing in a gospel male quartet. His favourite part was bass baritone, and he himself had an almost 3-octave vocal range... Yet to posterity's surprise, such a superlative and magnetic natural talent always remained humble --perhaps too humble to keep performing forever."

"While in Italy, my brother Ira got a guitar and visited a teacher for an introductory lesson. He saw the teacher's long nails on his right hand and was told that he would have to practice classical music. Absolutely not, said Ira, I want to be Elvis Presley. So then I volunteered to take his place and had an instrument custom-made, just to know that it was something personal, that I wasn't sharing it with other kids, like a piano, and that impressed me. It was something I could cradle and caress. When you hold a guitar, it becomes part of you. You can feel the vibration. I was a shy kid. So being able to play something that wasn't loud and bombastic, it expressed my own feelings."

"Elvis is one of the few artists who's much, much bigger than the music. He's almost mythological, representing so much to history and popular culture. His is not a life, but a series of chapters in history, an icon in the strict sense of the word. It's blues, it's rock, but it's about a masculinity and sexuality that had been repressed and then comes out on TV. And it's like, 'Wow, nothing's really going to be the same after this.'""

"At a certain point, the absurdities pile one on top of the other to such a height, that any form of denial of history is legitimated by the UNESCO approach. If there are no Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, one might as well say that Elvis Presley signed the American Declaration of Independence, such is the level and the type of discourse UNESCO is engaging in."

"We've played this song for a couple of years now and we really wanted to capture it live so we recorded it acoustically for the 7 inch... it's a well travelled song – not just for Elvis, and one that means so much to us and our journey so to say we're proud of it coming out on vinyl is a massive understatement"

"Who would have thought, as a young kid walking along the streets of Birmingham, that I would one day be mentioned in the same breath as Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley."

"Results were calculated using a song's beats per minute (BPM) and energy to determine how fast, loud and noisy a track feels. To ensure safer driving, the music you listen to should mimic the human heartbeat, with a BPM that falls in-between 60 and 100. The Vehicle Finance Provider Moneybarn, after analyzing almost one hundred of the most popular Christmas songs, ranked Elvis "O Little Town of Bethlehem" as the fifth safest, with "Carol of the Bells" by John Williams being the safest, and ̊"Underneath The Tree" by Kelly Clarkson, the least safe."

"Our route home from the library took us east on Main Street. As we passed city hall, I happened to glance over, and there on the grassy field, perhaps the most prominent spot in the town, was a statue of Elvis mimicking the pose from the iconic 1956 photograph of him performing at the Mississippi-Alabama Fairgrounds in Tupelo. Somehow -- and I'm not sure how to put it into words -- my feelings about the man had changed from what they had been two hours earlier. No longer did I see Elvis as the one-dimensional character whose on-stage flamboyance spawned hundreds of impersonators, but rather a shy, ambitious country boy intoxicated by the richness of the music all around him, who absorbed that music and made it uniquely his own."

"There was something every bdecade since Elvis and his hips"

"As far as famous people go, once you're known by a single name, you're on a whole different level. Madonna. Bono. And of course, the biggest celebrity of all: Elvis. And if you think of an Elvis recipe, likely only one dish comes to mind, which makes Elvis' Grilled Peanut Butter And Banana Bacon sandwich the greatest celebrity recipe of all time."

"Sinatra and Elvis were geniuses, I am not. In fact, I analyzed the singing of Sinatra, Elvis, Nat King Cole, and Marvin Gaye, and they all sang from the gut. They are my favorite singers. In fact, I haven't bought an album in thirty years but you can always catch me listening to Elvis and Marvin Gaye. Of all of them, Elvis is the biggest phenomenon that popular music has experienced in the last 50 years."

"My only idol is Elvis Presley, I have all his songs and a number of his films at my Miami apartment."

"Early in Eric Idle's "sortabiography", "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", the comedy legend describes how, in the brutal, abusive environment of the Royal Wolverhampton School, it was Elvis Presley who saved his life. The curative power of rock'n'roll kept the spark alive in boys who might otherwise have lost all hope in a cold world. How does it feel, then, a good six decades later, for Idle himself to know that for someone like me, he IS Elvis?"

"Elvis or Elvis Presley"

"As long as I can continue doing what I love, I don't care how I'm described. Maybe I should be flattered – after all Elvis was a kind of revolutionary. Actually, if he had trained he might have been a great opera singer.""

"One thing Cary did admit when we worked together in 1966, – the two of us, sitting and talking between scenes, was that he had a crush on Elvis Presley."

"I was always struck by the idea that when John Lennon was singing back in Germany, he was trying to be Elvis Presley, but it was nothing like Elvis Presley. That's very exciting to me that you can be inspired by something so much that it drives you to this point, but nobody outside of yourself can see that that is where it's coming from."

"It is a daunting task to unveil a sculpture of a man who is still one of the most recognised figures in the world, 40 years after his death, but I am honoured to be given the chance."

"The Democratic majority has gone angling for headlines and air-time. On the other side, the Republicans are sycophants who conjured up every conspiracy theory short of blaming the Russian probe on Elvis Presley."

"We spent the day together, singing 'I Almost Lost My Mind' and other songs. He is very spiritually minded, showed me every courtesy, and I think he's one of the greatest'"

"In the end, though, it is his voice above all, that lives on; from the very beginning as a bright and eager youngster capering around the SUN studios, excitedly hammering together two musical styles to create an unforgettable allow, all of his own, right up until the later years, spent booming out ballads in the massive auditoria that were his domain during the seventies – even during the frequently written-off Hollywood years-, his voice never let him down; it is impossible from this perspective to imagine a world without Elvis, his voice booming out from radios and computers, from spaceships circling the further reaches of the galaxy, his voice echoing back; (in fact), it is almost inconceivable that any single individual could have made such a mark."

"The show I will never forget and that influenced my soul as a performer was in Las Vegas. As soon as the signature intro began, it was like being transported to another world. The anticipation of him walking onstage was electric. Last-minute big shots and their girlfriends handed maître d's thick tips to get closer. His show was so polished and took you on a journey that made you laugh and cry. He was filled with humility and charisma and tongue-in-cheek humor. It was a total roller coaster. The audience was just as exhausted as he was by the end of the show. Backstage, and I — both quiet and shy — waited with our own guests for Elvis' second entrance, this time to greet us. He bumped his head and said, “I never could figure out how to get out of that door." That was a pretty good icebreaker. Elvis was concerned as he sat down to chat. “Did I introduce you OK?" Ha! I was in awe and he was worried about my intro. I wish I'd had an iPhone! About 4 years earlier, when I first met him, he didn't shake my hand, he embraced me. And I thought "My god, I couldn't believe it. We became friends. He was one of the greatest, most affectionate people I have ever met."

"When Elvis first started at Humes, he was really poor. The office sent a letter home about a classmate who couldn't come to school when the weather was bad because he had holes in his shoes, had no warm coat and needed a haircut. It didn't name him, but we all knew who it was. My mom gave me some money and a jacket she had bought for my brother Bill. I was so proud to take the jacket and the money to the office. My parents had hearts of gold. Now, whenever he walked by any one of us, we would look at each other and laugh and giggle. One day he asked one of our classmates why we laughed when he walked by. She was so dumbfounded that she blurted out "It's because we think you are so good-looking." I guess he was surprised also,so he just broke into a grin and walked away."

"I have been praying for you for many years, you are my bellsheep, I said to him. He didn't know what that meant, so I explained, that in a Holy Land there is one sheep with a bell, so when he moves, the bell makes noise, and they all go his way. So I then told him that I will be praying so that he will have the spiritual experience to lead million of people to our Lord. And it was at this time that he was so moved that he began to weep and his body began to tremble, and I had a prayer with him, asking the Lord to give him strength and peace, through the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, his daughter Lisa Marie came in, and she asked me, "Why is my dad crying", and then he gently touched her head, asked her to wait outside, and closed the door. I told him that there were many people outside waiting for him, and he said. "No, not now, I want us to stay here, please don't leave me."

"Interest on Elvis has helped generate $3.2 billion in tourism and create 35,000 jobs in our city. In fact, it was the opening of Graceland that was the beginning of tourism as we know it today, in Memphis..."

"Now, to skip a half century, somebody is going to rise up and tell me Rock and Roll isn’t jazz. First, two or three years ago, there were all these songs about too young to know—but. The songs are right. You’re never too young to know how bad it is to love and not have love come back to you. That’s as basic as the Blues. And that’s what Rock and Roll is— teenage Heartbreak Hotel—the old songs reduced to the lowest common denominator. The music goes way back to Blind Lemon and Leadbelly—Georgia Tom merging into the Gospel Songs—­Ma Rainey, and the most primitive of the Blues.(2) It borrows their gut-bucket heartache. It goes back to the jubilees and stepped-up Spiri­tuals—Sister Tharpe—and borrows their I’m-gonna-be-happy-anyhow-in-spite-of-this-world kind of hope. It goes back further and borrows the steady beat of the drums of Congo Square—that going-on beat­—and the Marching Bands’ loud and blatant yes!! Rock and Roll puts them all together and makes a music so basic it's like the meat cleaver the butcher uses—before the cook uses the knife—before you use the sterling silver at the table on the meat that by then has been rolled up into a commercial filet mignon. A few more years and Rock and Roll will no doubt be washed back half forgotten into the sea of jazz. Jazz is a great big sea. It washes up all kinds of fish and shells and spume and waves with a steady old beat, or off-beat. And Louis must be getting old if he thinks J. J. and Kai—and even Elvis—didn't come out of the same sea he came out of, too. Some water has chlorine in it and some doesn't. There're all kinds of water."

"Walter Anderson, B.B. King, Jim Henson and Elvis Presley, these are artists who have had a lasting impact on Mississippi culture. That is why the “Mississippi to THE MAX” project is being put in place for elementary school students throughout Meridian Public schools. We contracted with a local teaching artist who wrote four lesson plans integrating social studies, math, science and reading, along with the arts,” In February after all these lessons are taught, our fourth grade students will go to the MAX museum and they will get to see our exhibits there. And in addition to the usual exhibits, they’ll get to see the brand new Jim Henson exhibit. Only fourth grade students are a part of this project since Mississippi history is a topic in their social studies curriculum. And it’s so important I believe for our students to understand that Mississippi has produced some of the greatest, most well-known artists of our time. And the impact that those artists have had on our culture, as well as the nation’s culture, and the world."

"His presence, the star power, the voice, the dance moves, I mean that's what you call a superstar and his gospel roots were transcending"

"'Baby, if I made you mad/Something that I might have said?/Please forget the past/The future looks bright ahead/Don't Be Cruel', As Elvis said, it's tempting to forget the past, and look ahead to a brighter future. I suppose that's especially common in the halls of government..."

"I am over the f.....g moon, I can't wait, so proud of my honey"

"So what it boils down to was Elvis produced his own records. He came to the session, picked the songs, and if something in the arrangement was changed, he was the one to change it. Everything was worked out spontaneously. Nothing was really rehearsed. Many of the important decisions normally made previous to a recording session were made during the session. What it was was a look to the future. Today everybody makes records this way. Back then Elvis was the only one. He was the forerunner of everything that's record production these days. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone imitated him. People started doing what Elvis did."

"Afer Elvis Presley, nothing was the same. Rock ’n’ roll might have emerged in the international consciousness 10 months earlier with "Rock Around the Clock", but nobody wanted to be Bill Haley. Everybody wanted to be Elvis. If you didn't want to be Elvis, you wanted to be with him. With a series of now legendary — and at the time risque — TV appearances on Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey's Stage Show and the Milton Berle Show, "Heartbreak Hotel" rose quickly to No 1 by April 21, 1956. It stayed there eight weeks. Presley, with his first million-seller, had rearranged the musical and social landscapes of a changed America. He was just 21 years and 137 days old. He had 21 years and 30 days to live."

"Elvis' early vocals, was a witches' brew of gospel swoops, falsetto shrieks, growls, howls, and scat...an anthem to human cockiness, to the healing, transcendent powers of the life-force..."

"We were all in a room with my mom and the Sweet Inspirations and this man walks in, with a mink coat, glasses and it wasn't like you say "Nice to meet you, Elvis". In fact, you don't really JUST meet Elvis, you LOOK at Elvis. Amazingly beautiful"

"Elvis loved gospel music, he was raised on it, and he really did know what he was talking about; we would jam with him for an hour, and he had a feel for it and was "tickled" to have four "church sisters" backing him up; he was singing Gospel all the time, (in fact), almost anything he did had that flavour. You can't get away from what your roots are."

"I would like to make this like Elvis Street, Elvis Presley. Aretha Street. Aretha Franklin. Her museum and whatever else we can do around here"

"We lived at Faxon and Stonewall. Elvis Presley and I were good friends and he liked to come over to my house because my mother would make him toasted cheese sandwiches and his beloved peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Three years after graduation, I received a phone call from Miss Ginny Allensworth asking me to come over to Humes and help Elvis with his English because he had been invited to sing on the Ed Sullivan Show. I laughed and said, "Miss Ginny, Elvis wouldn't listen to me when we were in school and I doubt if he would listen to me now." I did meet Elvis at Humes and he agreed to let me coach him. After talking for a while, he said, "Well, if you are so intent on helping me, why don't you come to New York, too, to be sure I do it right." I ended up backstage at the Ed Sullivan Show and got to see Elvis perform...."

"When Elvis Presley first hove into sight like a Kansas tornado on Milton Berle's show, I decided to have none of him. I've neither seen nor met him. l've been appalled by the whole Presley disease. But when I learned he was appearing at our Pan-Pacific, I asked Col. Tom Parker for a couple of tickets and' went; it was a shattering experience. Now I understand why 9000 people lost their minds over him. He's a split personality, young, likable, wanting to please; but when he went into his act, it was very like a neighbor of mine in Altoona who had fits, fell down and writhed on the sidewalk.Elvis rolled over and over on the floor still clutching the mike, but his performance isn't sickness, (in fact), whole families were there, nice people. Dozens of policemen surrounded the stage but turned their backs on Elvis to watch the audience and see that no one moved. They were told if they got up or walked down the aisle toward Elvis the show would be over. In former days police would have been looking at the performance. I've seen performers dragged off to jail for less. But Elvis' audience got the emotional workout of their lives and screamed their undying love for the greatest phenomenon I've seen in this century."

"Elvis invited me out to the 20th Century Fox recording studio. I was standing about five yards away from him, and he was singing into a mike and I couldn't hear him. I thought how strange it was. And then he asked for a playback and his voice came out and I thought 'Wow!' I knew so little about music, it was a different world to me, that he could be actually recording something that would come out that clearly, and yet I was like in touching distance off him and I couldn't hear his voice. I showed him around Hollywood and we got to know each other pretty well for the two weeks. He was a very sweet and innocent naive kind of guy"

"I can close my eyes and remember the day my friend died. It was a hot summer day. He was someone I had never met, who never even knew that I existed. But he was someone who touched my life in a profound way, possibly even saved it in those lonely wee hours of the silent mornings when the demons made their play for my soul. My mom died in February of 1976, when I was 15. I felt lost, depressed, unwanted. I felt my mom was the only person that loved me, and that I would never know love again. And it got worse.I had never gotten along particularly well with my father, and that relationship withered and died in the years that followed. He told me he wished I had died instead of my mom, told me when I fell asleep that he was going to kill me. I spent many nights sleeping under my bed, or trying to surround myself with boxes as I slept sitting up in a corner of my bedroom. The time he stuck a shotgun in my mouth and said he was going to blow my head off, I no longer cared. I just closed my eyes and waited for the gun to go off. The truth is I wanted to die. I used to sleep with a loaded pistol pointed at my head, hoping that I would accidentally shoot myself in my sleep. I thought that I would never know sunshine again. But, through it all, when my thoughts darkened and I'd cry and wish I was dead, there was always one ray of happiness that winked through the storm. It was that friend, Elvis. When I was depressed—and that was often—it was usually the sound of Elvis's voice that brought me back from the edge of the abyss. Yeah, we never met, but he was my friend all the same. He helped walk me through a difficult time in my life and he's been there ever since. Elvis may have left the building, but he'll never leave my heart. I love you, Elvis; and thanks for being a friend."

"It was on a Sunday, on September 15, 1967, when a yardman who had worked at Graceland, went to Vernon Presley's nearby home to see about getting his job back at Graceland. Vernon told him the job was not available anymore as it had been a temporary one only, while the regular man, an African American was sick. The yardman complained that it was pretty raw to give his job to "a negro", then left Vernon's home, after threatening both Vernon and Elvis. A half hour later, according to police reports, he appeared at the Graceland Gates, drunk, arrogant, cursing, then taking a shot at Elvis. He missed his target, and Elvis then knocked him to the ground with one punch."

"I spent my 71 birthday at his Graceland home, my wife decided it would have to be in his car museum and I even played on his last piano. In fact, President Clinton, who is also a great Elvis fan, recommended on the last time I saw him, to read "Last Train to Memphis", and I have. I Love Elvis..."

"Elvis is just a young, clean-cut American boy who does in public what everybody else does in private. He has more hair on his sideburns than Bing Crosby does on his head."

"I regret that it was not possible for me to see you during your visit to our HQ's. However, I do hope you enjoyed the tour of our facilities. Your generous comments regarding this Bureau and me are appreciated and you may be sure that we will keep in mind your offer to be of assistance."

"He not only ate in Waco during his years at Fort Hood, but he slept here, too, and the house where he did is now open for others to do the same. The children of Eddie Fadal, a local DJ and businessman who befriended him when the rock 'n' roll star was in Central Texas, have repurposed their family's three-bedroom red-brick home at 2807 Lasker Ave. into a vacation rental with a '50s and '60s flavor and decorated with Elvis memorabilia. It's called, naturally, The Elvis House."

"This song I'm dedicating to a really good friend of mine who has passed on. One of the greatest ever entertainers. The song 'Tupelo', it was his favorite song of mine, and it's where he was born. Dedicating this to Mr. Elvis Presley. And I hope wherever he is, he's resting at ease.""

"He' just like Elvis, there will never be another like him"

"None of us could have made it without Elvis"

"They sent us all the songs they had clearance for and I wanted to do something that had not been done before, so that's why I chose Elvis' version of The Wonder of you. Not only I had already sang the others, but they would be much of a challenge. I wanted to "jenifferize" that tune and put my own stamp on it."

"So what happened to the gifted scholar who spent his years in Rhodesian jail to acquire a long list of degrees and whose only frivolity was his passion for Elvis Presley?"