Gospel Singers

"When you walk into a New Zealander's home there's occasionally a portrait of the Queen or the Pope, but more often than not, hanging on a lounge wall, is a piece of Elvis Presley memorabilia. You'd see a hell of a lot of Elvis. As far as we kiwis are concerned, Elvis never left the building."

"Like most black people in the South, and to whom God has pressed down the harp of a thousand strings, that harp only needed tuning. Elvis' voice was that type of voice that agreed with the thought of Calvary. He had that type of bent and that type of inclination, AND ATTITUDE, that suggested that God could use him. I gave the music a different approach, a new beat, one beat, two beats, high or low, it didn't matter. So, I said come on in here and put your things together. And it was a glorious experience and Elvis was in that group. And when Elvis passed away it was a saddening thing. It was as if the clouds themselves started crying."

"A supplicant asks priest and television star Father Gavlin "Who is more pupular, the Pope or Elvis Presley?" The question is rhetorical..."

"Heartbreak, jealousy, loneliness-, Elvis Presley gave luxuriant voice to these less than cheerful emotions, but did you ever think of him as a balladeer of the unbearable bleakness of being, of the horror of existing without purpose in a godless universe? In the improbably vivacious London-born production of "Woyzeck", vintage Elvis recordings provide much of the background music for Daniel Kramer's adaptation of Georg Büchner's great, prophetic drama of existential emptiness from the 1830's. Dolly Parton and, more predictably, Beethoven, make aural guest appearances but it's the voice of the Pelvis that sets the rhythm of life. And if the "wedding" of Presley and Büchner is more shotgun marriage than natural love match, at least you leave the theater feeling less suicidal than you normally do, after two hours with one of the grimmest heroes in Western literature."

"Winston Churchill would add wisdom, war stories and outrageous comments. As a dyslexic, and I love to learn from people with very different minds to my own, English mathematician and early computer developer, Ada Lovelace would be my second of six guests. Elvis Presley, one of the greatest entertainers of all time and an example of people with great talent, along with Nelson Mandela, would bring magic to the evening. Finally, the only person on my list whom I have already met is Princess Diana, the most delightful company, her presence at my dinner party spreading joy, laughter, and kindness around the room."

"Elvis Presley bloated, over the hill, adolescent entertainer, suddenly drawing people into Las Vegas, had nothing to do with excellence, just myth. It’s convenient for people to believe that something is wonderful, therefore they’re wonderful."

"Elvis defined the concept of celebrity before it became ubiquitous. His evolution from prodigy to recording artist to actor to movie star and ultimately to myth are all depicted in the collage. AI was used to create his final transformation into a resurrected larger-than-life idol"

"I was in Las Vegas giving a corporate presentation, because that's how I made money in the off season. Elvis called and I was skeptical at first. But then there is that specific way he spoke, and it was definitely him. He told me he liked the way I played and invited me to see him. It showed how much of a fan he was, that he wanted an NFL player to come and play with him and his buddies. But I had to catch a flight in an hour and man, it would have been the story of a lifetime, playing backyard football with Elvis. And I still think about it now."

"Some of the girls were telling me about him, this new kid on the block and I was thinking, who is this upstart? Anyways, I was playing a concert with Johnny Horton in Odessa, TX,and when the curtain opened there was only six people in the audience. Elvis was playing nearby and that's where everybody was. So we gave the people their money back and all headed over to the high school field house to see Elvis. We went backstage but he was swarmed by girls. He couldn't even get out. We tried to get his attention but there were too many people. And then I met him. I'd never seen anybody like him. He had a cute half-grin and these sleepy eyes, and he laughed a lot. I was so struck by his looks, that I probably didn't hear the first fifteen things he said to me. Mom didn't care for him in the beginning, but when he snarfed up two of her biscuits in a matter of seconds and whispered to me, 'Does she have any more?' she began to warm to him. She saw him then, I think, as more like one of her own sons. After that, she'd even smile a little when I'd mention him. When we'd travel to shows in Texas or Arkansas, Elvis and I would sit in the backseat and sing gospel songs at the top of our lungs. The guys in the front would plug their ears and we'd just die laughing. We never officially broke up or said goodbyee. That's the last time I ever saw him, until he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show..."

"He was such a nice guy to work with, a quick study. He'd go over and play the demo acetate and listen to a bunch of them. When he finally found one he liked, by the time he walked from there back over to the mic, he knew the song."

"When I was in high school, playing for Crystal City High at an away game in Memphis, I climbed up the wall that surrounded Graceland, reached over to a limb that was from a tree inside the wall, snapped the leaf off the tree and kept that leaf in my wallet for about six years."

"To have Elvis come home, so to speak during this bicentennial year for the state he was born into is very exciting,"

"My celebrity crush was Elvis Presley. I got to first meet him with George at Madison Square Garden in 1972."

"He loved Elvis. He once said to me, ‘Elvis is real pretty. People love him because all the women love him – he’s so pretty. I’m not as pretty as Elvis and he draws all the women out of nowhere’. Now, whenever Muhammad and I were in Elvis’s company he was always down to earth, similar to Muhammad, loving to give and help others. Sometimes when people are that great or popular they have arrogance and an ego, but Elvis and Muhammad did not. He used to play his records all the time..."

"Apparently Elvis heard my demos, because we were both on RCA, and Colonel Parker thought I should be introduced to him and maybe the two of us start working in a production-writer capacity. But it never came to pass. I would have loved to have worked with him. God, I would have adored it. He did send me a note once, which read "All the best, and have a great tour." I still have that note. He was a major hero of mine and I was probably stupid to think that having the same birthday as him meant something."

"We've drafted people who are far, far more important than he is."

"i) We must not condemn music which is not on a level as high as we’d like. A person who is listening to Elvis Presley in a five and ten is listening to a folk singer and is getting something from it. ii) The only thing he does like me is that he doesn´t come back for an encore. When he walks away the show is over."

"Like a bloated Elvis"

"I may consider filing a resolution for Indiana to honor Elvis, after all we should do something to recognize the fact that his last concert was here in Indiana."

"He was not quite a hillbilly, not yet a drugstore cowboy. He was a Southern — in that word's connotation of rebellion and slow, sweet charm."

"We became very good friends, leased homes in Bel Air and visited each other. And back then, in the early 60's of course, I had a wife, and four little children, he was not married, and would come over some afternoons unannounced and visit with me, my wife and my children. They would maybe jump out of the swimming pool, and come running up and get in his lap, and he would become soaking wet, you know, and I would say, 'Girls, don't do that'. And Elvis said, 'Oh, no, let them, let them'. And I knew that he wanted a family."

"When Bob King and I hosted our radio shows on WBMK and WKGN in the 1980s, we played R&B music of the 1940s through 1969, talked about the music, the artists and stories related to the music industry and revealed the real names of the performers while taking requests from the listeners. We would chuckle as we introduced “The Twist” by Ernest Evans. How could our audience know that the real name of the man who recorded “It’s Just a Matter of Time” was Benjamin Franklin Peay? I believe I would have changed my name to Brook Benton, too. Yet one could go from bad to worse. I don't know why Otha Elias Bates McDaniels changed his name to Bo Diddley. Dinah Washington had 34 top 10 records. She didn't like her birth name, Ruth Jones, and changed it. Some of the others were James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with 107 hits during the time we were on the air. Billie Holiday, the great jazz singer changed her name from Eleanor Gough. Many referred to her as Lady Day. Ella Fitzgerald, the most honored jazz singer of all time, won the DownBeat magazine poll as top female vocalist more than 20 times. Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul with 60 numbers on that chart during our broadcast. Although we did not play any Bessie Smith, we knew she had been dubbed Empress of the Blues. Finally, on our shows we recognized Elvis Presley, who had 33 numbers on the R&B chart, as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll."

"Elvis Presley was serving in the military in 1959 when he came under the weather. Doctors diagnosed tonsillitis and suggested that the vocalist, then the biggest performer in the universe, have his tonsils removed. Presley, already more trustworthy than most modern performers in his pleasant acceptance of military duty, agreed. The problem was that no doctor nearby wanted to risk operating on the star, fearing that malpractice would leave him without his golden voice, and either a lawsuit or an an angry fan could ruin any medical career and/or life. They gave him penicillin instead and fortunately everything worked out"

"I identify a lot with Elvis. He was a loyal guy and love his style of singing."

"i) I recently met with Coretta Scott King, John Lewis and some of the other leaders of the American civil rights movement, and they reminded me of the cultural apartheid rock & roll was up against. I think the hill they climbed would have been much steeper were it not for the racial inroads black music was making on white pop culture. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival were all introduced to the blues through Elvis. He was already doing what the civil rights movement was demanding: breaking down barriers. You don't think of Elvis as political, but that is politics: changing the way people see the world. ii) In Elvis, you had the whole lot; it's all there in that elastic voice and body. As he changed shape, so did the world. His last performances showcase a voice even bigger than his gut, where you cry real tears as the music messiah sings his tired heart out, turning casino into temple. I think the Vegas period is underrated. I find it the most emotional. By that point Elvis was clearly not in control of his own life, and there is this incredible pathos. The big opera voice of the later years -- that's the one that really hurts me."

"We Germans will never understand U.S. foreign policy. You save Europe with The Marshall Plan, Berlin with the Airlift, and then you turn around and give us.... Elvis Presley.""

"Three friends of mine and I were singing ‘Teddy Bear" and I remember thinking it not at all remarkable that we would sing this Elvis Presley song. So here's these four black young men singing, ‘Just wanna be your Teddy Bear,’ We just said, “This is OK, this guy is alright.‘ I think my peers thought Elvis Presley was OK."

"At age 5, he decided that he wanted to be a musician when his father took him to the Elvis Presley concert in his home town of Sioux City on May 26, 1956."

"She came back, and that was that. We never spoke about it again. Kind of flattering, now that I look back, to know that she chose me over Elvis. Very few men can say that..."

"We're now trying to get the National Park Service to recognize his home in Louisville as a national historic landmark. Hopefully we can partner with them to continue to run it as a museum, like they've done it with Martin Luther Kings home in Atlanta and with Elvis Presley's home in Memphis. Ali walks among those giants.”"

"There is no denying that Elvis had a great talent. He possessed a pliant voice with extensive range and a soft and enveloping timbre. Plus, he was an extremely charismatic person. It’s curious that the two songs of his I sing the mosthave a long history behind them. In both cases, Elvis' versions are extraordinary and memorable. Yet I have the wishful thinking that I too had something to say, to add, artistically speaking, to the performance of these classics. The melody of "Love Me Tender" comes from a sentimental ballad from the time of the American Civil War. It’s a song with roots that go back to the 1800s. As for "Can't help falling in love" the melody is even older, being taken from a very famous Romanza composed at the end of the 18th century, Plaisir d'amour, a well-known French love song that was composed in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini."

"I remember well the afternoon when Elvis Presley and his mother came into the Tupelo Hardware. He wanted to buy a .22 rifle and his mother wanted him to buy a guitar. I showed him the rifle first and then I got the guitar for him to look at. I put a wood box behind the showcase and let him play the guitar for some time. Then he said he did not have that much money, which was only $7.75 plus a 2% sales tax. His mother told him that if he would buy the guitar instead of the rifle, she would pay the difference for him. The small amount of money that he had to spend had been earned from running errands and doing small jobs for people."

"He had an amazing charisma, was so passionate about what he did, and the people could feel it."

"But better Elvis should pay those multi-millions in taxes (thereby doing as much for the War on Poverty) than you or I. "If his manager", said Goldman, "had sheltered his income from the taxman and invested it intelligently, Elvis Presley could have been as wealthy as Bob Hope". Well, I ask you. But I think we can be grateful to Elvis for his grin, his pelvis, his leap, and for the punky, biracial, engaging, ineluctably erotic and still mysterious tenor of his voice."

"From Thursday to Sunday, fans traveled in a mob mentality with Tiger Woods, sprinting from hole to hole and emphatically yelling “He’s like Elvis Presley,” and, “We want to roar with you, baby!” along the way. It was the “Walking Dead” meets “Caddyshack.” A strange combination.. but the truth."

"Record producer Phil Spector, who is currently serving his sentence for the 2003 shooting death of actress ,finally settled his divorce with his third wife, Rachelle Short. In the settlement, signed December 4, 2018, they are forced to sell their infamous castle and evenly divide the proceeds, while she keeps many of her vehicles, most notably a 2015 Aston Martin Vanquish and even a small aircraft. He, on the other hand, keeps his various Grammy Awards, Gold and Platinum Records, a 1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III and John Lennon memorabilia, including an electric guitar and a lithograph, as well as a pair of diamond cufflinks gifted personally to him by Elvis Presley."

"My grandmother, known as Ms Topp at the local public school, lived on Church Street. She taught Elvis Presley music and I'll tell you a funny story about it. Years later when I asked what he was like, she said ‘Oh you know, he really was a sweet boy but he didn’t have a lick of talent’ so that tells you something about how we judge talent in our family that's for sure,” LOL."

"The moment he walked in, it was almost like all the guys there were bowing down to him, but he didn't care whatsoever. It was an amazing time, because the electricity just floated through the air. Everybody there was on cloud nine but he just acted the way a country boy would act. Elvis was truly a gentleman and a sweetheart of a guy."

"He would probably be considered a baritone, but he could reach notes that most baritone singers could not. Much of his abilities emanated from a very intense desire to execute a song as he wanted to do it, which meant that he really sang higher than he would normally be able to. When the adrenaline is going, and the song is really pumping, you can get into that mode where you can actually do things, vocally, that you couldn't normally do. So he had a tremendous range because of his desire to excel and be better, and that's why he could do a lot of things that most people couldn't."

"I was in a friend's studio when a buddy of his called and told him. 'I got some news for you. Do you want me to tell you now or later?' I said later because I was in the studio when President Kennedy was killed and also when Martin Luther King was killed, so I knew the effect bad news can have on a session. When the session was over he told me and I thought he was joking and it didn't hit me until I lay down to sleep. The one other time that I experienced that was when my mother and my son died. It wasn't because he wouldn't he doing any more of my songs. It was like a piece of the whole business. I mean some people you just figure are never going to die. Inside, they'll always live. When they're gone, a certain piece goes and you just can't believe it."

"Cilla would record and perform Beatles numbers throughout her career, but in the 60s and up to the mid-70s, she did more than most. Her renditions of "Yesterday", "For No One", "Across The Universe" and others became big favourites with radio DJs, not to mention with The Beatles, who always liked the way she interpreted their material. Previous praise from Randy Newman, for her take on one of his songs had been sweet music to her ears. And just imagine how she felt when Paul McCartney said to her that her "Long And Winding Road" was the song's definitive version. She had, however and this to her dying day, something to be immensely proud of – Elvis Presley had her "You're my world" on his famous jukebox at Graceland."

"The Elvis effect, resulted in a lot more people getting poliovirus vaccinations. We need a series of ‘Elvises’ to promote vaccination for COVID-19 protection"

"I’m a kid of the ’60s. When I was growing up I used to love going to see Elvis Presley in the cinema. I’m still a big Elvis fan. They’ve rehashed some of his music, with Elvis singing, along with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Really incredible, so beautiful. Myself and my wife actually played one of the songs – And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind – at our marriage ceremony, as we were walking into the registry office."

"Time magazine at the turn of the century asked its readers to tell them who they thought was the person who contributed most to the 20th century. Well, obviously people said Martin Luther King Jr, others said Nelson Mandela and Elvis Presley. But who do you think was chosen? Einstein, whose books I saw being burned in 1933..."

"His privileged access let him show Muhammad Ali away from the ring: preaching or sleeping, posing with black leaders like Malcolm X and James Meredith or playing with his children or with Elvis Presley."

"So I said "Why don't we turn out all the lights so we don't see this vast empty looking studio the size of a football field and make it as intimate as we can?" We could barely make Elvis out through the glass from the control room into the studio when we cued him the backing-track. And then, Elvis started to sing. It was magic,. Next thing I know he's curled on the floor in almost a fetal position singing with a microphone next to his mouth. The hair on my arms were standing up. And that's the take that we wound up using on the soundtrack album. I did not use it in the TV show because I'm a total believer that if you're doing television I don't want anyone lip-syncing. I want the real thing. And to be completely honest, as great as the sit-down shows are, had I been able to get cameras and tape him there, it would have been even greater. I never put anybody I worked with on a pedestal, yet the first time I saw him, I was awed, first of all, by the way he looked. If he was not famous, you would still stop and stare. As a director, you're looking to see which is the good side, the bad side. Elvis was perfect from every angle. It was like a god walking in towards me..."

"Singer Lloyd "Lonzo" George (of the "Lonzo and Oscar" C&W duo), was visiting his relatives, so his teenage nephew, Jim, invited all his friends to his house to meet his famous uncle. But there was one quiet 15-year-old boy whom Jim's parents would not allow to come inside their house. He was poor so they called him “white trash” and treated as if he was from a lower class. When Jim told Uncle "Lonzo" that the boy outside had a guitar but didn't know how to tune it, he gladly offered to show him how. Since he not allowed inside the house, they arranged to meet outside. It was obvious to "Lonzo" that the boy was embarrassed and felt out of place in a rich neighborhood. The boy's guitar was old, cheap, and hung around his neck with just a piece of string. After "Lonzo" showed the shy teenager how to tune his guitar, he offered to teach him some songs. The boy was so surprised and happy that Lonzo spent two whole hours playing and singing with him that he started feeling confident in his own ability to play and sing. "Lonzo" never met that boy again, at least not face to face. That boy was Elvis Presley."

"Well, it started when I saw him was as a little kid at a 1957 concert at LA's Pan Pacific Auditorium concert. 'Then, I became a hairdresser, so the first time I cut his hair, which was in 1964, it took about me 45 minutes to finish it and the whole time Elvis didn't say a word, but his eyes would follow every move I made. I was then already working with people like Warren Beatty & Paul Newman and the most handsome guys of the movies, but I can tell you Elvis eclipsed them all. He had the face, the voice, the career, the fans, the fame, the money and he had.... the hair, which was unbelievable to work on. He insisted that I trim his animated and eccentric moustache."

"What thrills is that people are still getting upset by a bunch of herberts larging it and carrying on.That’s exactly what rock ‘n’ roll is there to do: Elvis, Little Richard, the Sex Pistols Kneecap. Music is meant to shake things up"

"The inspiration for my career came from Elvis Presley. I heard him singing ‘My Way" and that somehow gave me the strength to start a painting business. I knew it was time, as they say, to take the bull by the horns, create my own job. Almost fifty years later, I am still painting, still doing it my way."