Guitarists From The United States

"The Star Wars movies belong in the same category as Elvis Presley movies: They’re popular yet are all but unwatchable — except that the Presley pictures evince a human touch"."

"If Rock and Roll were a religion, Elvis was its most prolific disciple, responsible for more converts than anyone before or after him; if it had been country, Elvis was a Founding Father and his lyrics were the documents of freedom that helped to birth the nation; if it were a sickness, Elvis-itis would be the most potent and contagious virus known to man, infecting victims who just looked at his image, heard his voice or saw him perform in person or through a recording. But since Rock and Roll is music, we’ve all decided the world over to just call Elvis…the King."

"The voice is so melodious, and – of course, by accident, this glorious voice and musical sensibility was combined with this beautiful, sexual man and this very unconscious – or unselfconscious stage movements. Presley's registration, the breadth of his tone, listening to some of his records, you'd think you were listening to an opera singer. But...it's an opera singer with a deep connection to the blues, which leads me to the role of the great enunciator, because he delivered us the greatest cultural boon. Nobody ever did more for the American people. He gave them the great present of black music transmitted through his own sensibility, his own sensitivity. Of course Elvis was a different kind of white purveyor of black music because it was naturally black and it was real and he was a conduit. And America was really changed. I'm talking about American music and our culture in general. We owe far more to Elvis Presley than all the British groups put together.""

"Believe me, Benny just had this incredible electricity about him. He was the Elvis Presley of Cleveland."

"We all know, of course, that Elvis was a philanthropist and humanitarian. The stories of his generosity are legendary. Yet here is a tidbit that I believe is a monumental testament to his true nature, one that most people have never heard. On Christmas Eves when most of us spend that entire special evening with our families, Elvis would leave the house and go to the local jail. He visited every prisoner no matter their race, gender, creed and the severity of the alleged crime and talked with every single one. I was told by the officers he would ask each one why they were there and how he could help them. And help them he did in any way he could. He took notes, planned what he would do for each and every one he could possibly do something for. Of course in most of our religions and particularly Christianity, we are taught that Jesus told us to comfort those in need, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, shelter the homeless etc. "I was in prison and ye visited me" is one that I venture to guess not many of us, even though we call ourselves Christian believers, would ever do. Elvis Presley not only believed what he was taught, but physically acted on those teachings. Most of us (including me) somehow decide this one instruction is just easy to ignore and/or better left "out" of our good deeds. Still, he kept contacting their families to see if they needed financial assistance. Were their children alright? Their husbands or wives̞? And he made certain they would be helped once they served their time and that they had proper representation in the court by a decent attorney. How many of us would do this at any time, let alone on Christmas Eves?"

"With his blue eyes he should photograph well with black hair."

"Jimi is a huge Elvis fan, so we always start off by listening to 'Elvis’ Christmas Album'"

"Warhol was fascinated by popular and celebrity culture, and Elvis undeniably represented the ultimate subject for the artist, even more than his iconic explorations of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor (As a result),there is an enormous number of works dedicated to Elvis realised by Warhol between 1962 and 1963."

"We had crew cuts, wore tee-shirts and blue jeans, Elvis had the long duck-tail, the long sideburns and he wore the loud clothes, and naturally he was a target for all the bullies. One day luckily I walked into the boys' bathroom at Humes High School and 3 guys were going to cut his hair just, you know, to make themselves look big or make them feel big or whatever, and I intervened and stopped it. And I guess that stuck because a couple of years later after Elvis had his first record he came over and asked me if I would like to go with him, I think it was Grenada, Mississippi or somewhere, and I went and I was with him from then on, except for a couple of years in the Marine Corps."

"I once met a young man from Mexico who asked me why Elvis didn't like Mexican people because he'd heard the rumours that he had criticized his countrymen. I told him it was all lies and that Elvis loved Mexicans. He told me that Elvis was supposed to have said Mexicans were greasy haired people. I told him to remember that Elvis was the one who put stuff in his hair to make it greasy and he even died it black too. There were many reports about things Elvis was supposed to have said that he never did, in fact he was upset that he wasn't allowed to go into Mexico because of riots. On the set of Fun In Acapulco, Elvis got upset with the director,(Richard Thorpe, who had already directed him in "Jailhouse Rock") because he got onto a couple of the actors because they spoke broken English and even yelled, “Jesus Christ, can’t you get the lines right?”. Elvis took him aside and said, 'Sir, those people were hired by the producer and he knew how they spoke and also knew their language, but he wanted them and they're doing the best they can. Rehearse with them more or whatever but please don't be doing that. I don't like you doing that to them' and the director stopped it."

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

"Can I talk to Elvis? said the caller. “This is Jimmy Carter”. Indeed it was the then President-elect calling from Atlanta, where he'd seen him the day before, to ask Elvis to be a youth spokesman. A few hours later, with the temperature near zero and the wind gusting to 30 mph, Elvis rousted his entourage and ordered everyone to the airport for the flight home. They got on the Lisa Marie, but the pilot couldn't get it started right away, so they all huddled together in blankets waiting for the plane to start and heat up. And then they get word of a bomb threat, so they had to sign papers authorizing it to take off anyway. As the plane rolled down the runway at Pittsburgh airport, we all just sat there in silence looking at each other and wondering if this was going to be it. Had that been “it,” Elvis would have gone out on a high note."

"He was almost at the point where he was being recognized as a national star, but not quite. I'll give you an example. Once, in a railroad station in Chattanooga, TN, we were waiting to change trains. Elvis went over to a magazine rack and picked up a movie magazine. He found a photo of himself inside and says to me 'Al, can I have a pen?' I gave him one and he scribbled his name inside the magazine. Then he goes over to the two girls working at the rack. He had the spread open to his picture, showing it to them. He's also looking back at me with a huge Cheshire Cat grin. Their reaction was 'That'll be 35 cents sir'. Then Elvis said to them 'No, this is for you. I'm Elvis Presley'. In the meantime, I'm capturing pictures of all of this, which is really what I wanted."

"He a had a magic combination of looks and voice, and you can't discount how good looking he was as a young man and he was the guy who really brought black music into the vocabulary."

"He played the San Diego Arena in the spring, and my family lived in nearby La Jolla, so I went to the concert. "Heartbreak Hotel" was already a radio hit, and I couldn't get enough of it. Hearing that song was a real turning point for me as a teenager. When I saw him in action, he was mesmerizing, dressed as he was in a pair of loose trousers, loafers, a shirt and open jacket. When he moved, he was smoldering, his hair falling over his eyes, his tone sensual. His delivery on "Heartbreak Hotel" was also in a minor key, which always triggered a reaction in me. But it was when he slipped in those low-register Elvis-isms— you know, the huh-huh thing— it came from his body, not from his head. He had that emotional intensity that was impossible to resist."

"We faced unique challenges filming during the pandemic, particularly recreating a performer whose signature move is to get down from the stage in the audience and kiss just about every member of the audience you can find. There was something about making a film in this kind of perfect isolation and perfect focus that I think produced an extraordinary result.."

"I put Elvis Presley up there with Jolson and Sinatra, and I'll go one step further: Elvis was the greatest pop entertainer of the 20th century. Like Al Jolson, he gave his all when performing: He sang from his heart, his body, the very essence of his total being, when sharing what he felt.""

"When you picture past presidents of the United States, whom do you see? Perhaps you envision John F. Kennedy as a doting father playing with his children in the West Wing. Maybe you remember Richard Nixon as the smiling yet stiff leader who posed hand-in-hand with Elvis Presley in the Oval Office."

"No one had any expectations, he being was such a strange, quiet fellow — so completely foreign, but he sang and read a scene from The Rainmaker and answered questions asked from off-screen — and it was phenomenal. It was amazing to be there, one of those life-changing experiences.""

"Elvis was probably the most important thing in music, maybe ever"

"Is it 2018 and the subject is the Long Range Stand-Off Weapon (LRSO)? No, it's 1956 and the subject is the AGM-28 cruise missile. Choosing the same solution (for the same aircraft!) decades apart seems like eye-roll material, but modern drone makers can draw much inspiration from the older missile. By the mid 1950s Soviet air defenses could shoot down American bombers well before they got within bombing range of important targets, so in 1956 the Strategic Air Command (SAC) asked for a supersonic cruise missile big enough to carry an H-bomb several hundred miles, and small enough for a B-52 to carry along with its bomb load. The missile's onboard inertial navigation system let it place its 1.45-megaton W-28 warhead within two miles of its target at six-hundred-miles range. It ran like a scalded dog and took its name from the Elvis Presley tune—the "Hound Dog". Peak deployment spanned the 1960s into the middle 1970s, with up to 29 bomber wings carrying them on patrol. But as early as 1966 Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sought to retire them, so they went to the kennels in 1975 for dead storage, and the last one (save for a few museum displays) was scrapped about a year after Elvis himself died. They lingered long enough for their whiz-bang terrain-matching guidance system to become perfected and miniaturized in America's modern cruise missile weapons as deployed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Future drone motherships are certain to adopt and adapt its close bond with its owner— the fuel, thrust, electrical and data hosted by the motherships will be essential to swarms. The Hound Dogs will shed their fleas, indeed."

"I went to see Col. Parker with the million dollars he'd asked me to put up, which I got in two days, from an investor since I didn't have a cent to my name, so that is when he introduced me to Elvis, as his promoter. And Elvis, who was actually two years older than me just said "Thank you very much, Sir". Anyways, by the time the two week tour wound up, in San Diego, I was a millionaire, too (LOL)."

"It was seeing Elvis Presley on The Milton Berle Show, before Ed Sullivan. I already was pretty musical and seeing Elvis and his band, particularly his drummer, D.J. Fontana, just kind of grabbed me. Then, of course, four or five months later, he was on The Ed Sullivan Show and everything just... well, that was the Big Bang."

"Everything is collectible, it seems, even human hair. Outbidding an international field of collectors, an unnamed Londoner paid $13,000 last week to purchase a lock of Napoleon's hair, reportedly snipped a day after the Emperor's death in 1821. For those in the know, that's a relative bargain, particularly in view of what collectors have spent on strands from another famous head, namely that of Elvis Presley, whose small jar of hair sold for $115,000 in 2002. (In fact), Presley's barber had reportedly saved his hair in a bread bag. "I have no idea what [the collector] intends to do with it," said a representative from the Chicago company, MastroNet, that held the internet auction."

"Elvis Presley. That lit the fuse for me."

"Keith Richards taught me rock and roll. We’d have nothing to do all day and we’d play these records over and over again. I learned to love Muddy Waters. Keith turned me on to how good Elvis Presley was, and I’d always hated Elvis up ’til then."

"Whereas Ottawa has the unique distinction of being just one of three cities outside of the United States where Elvis Presley had a live performance, April 3 shall henceforth be known as Elvis Presley day in the capital."

"In my seventeen years as doorman to the top hotel in Hollywood, the biggest star that ever stayed there was Elvis Presley. He was indeed one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. If I introduced any person to him, he would show the utmost courtesy and respect that they ever encountered. Sometimes, over the long years I felt that God had put him on this earth for a very special reason. When you use the phrase "a very special person", that was Elvis Presley, in my opinion."

"I better watch out. I believe whitey's picking up on the things that I'm doing"

"Elvis' range was about two and a quarter octaves, as measured by musical notation, but his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all."

"i) Elvis Presley got the polio vaccine backstage on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, then publicized it on radio, and vulnerable teenagers flocked to follow. Today’s stars should, too. Another tool: incentives. President on Wednesday called on employers to give paid time off for vaccination; how about other inducements, such as bonuses?"

"I've just worked with this guy ( in reference to Austin Butler) on stage and I've never seen a work ethic like it."

"There would be no current popular music without Elvis. He not only synthesized everything that had come before him in a really unique way, but he influenced everybody who came after — so you can have Blake Shelton and Adam Lambert influenced by the same cat."

"As a single woman, I could always spot a handsome man. Elvis Presley was one of the prettiest, yes, prettiest and nicest people I ever known. Pictures and videos of him really did not do him justice. In 1969, when I opened at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and he had opened at the International, I once went to see my aunt Cissy Houston (a member of Elvis' vocal backing group, the Sweet Inspirations), during one of their sound checks. Elvis was there and Cissy introduced me to him. He let me know he was a a fan of my recordings then had all the Vegas record stores place a photo of him inside of my albums. This he announced from the stage and added that anyone who bought any of my albums would find an autographed photo of him inside of it. That week I think I sold more albums in Las Vegas than I ever had. I will never forget this act of kindness. We lost an icon when he made his transition."

"When we first met, I was like, 'OK, Pam, don't act a fool, but I was trying to keep my composure, because this was fricking Prince. It's like Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson. It doesn't get any higher than that.""

"Elvis Presley existed not only as a flesh-and-blood person but also as millions of pictures on album covers and movie screens, in newspapers and magazines. He was infinitely reproducible. Similarly, through use of the silkscreen printing process, Warhol could produce as many Elvis paintings as he pleased."

"i) I liked Dylan, the way he created a brilliant new style. I even gave him one of my silver "Double Elvis" paintings. Later on, though, I heard rumors that he had used it as a dart board up in the country. When I'd ask, ‘Why did he do that?’ I'd invariably get hearsay answers like ‘Listen to Like a Rolling Stone — I think you’re the ‘diplomat on the chrome horse, man.’. I didn't know exactly what they meant by that — I never listened much to the words of songs — but I got the tenor of what people were saying — that Dylan didn't like me ii) For forty-five minutes nonstop Ali raged on about prostitution on the steps of the White House, gravity, meteorites, jumping out of the window, Israel, Egypt, Zaire, South Africa, drugs, broken skulls, delusions, angel food cake, yellow hair, judgment day, Muslim morality, Jesus, boxing, Sweden, the Koran, friendship, and Elvis, relating it all to the central point that ‘man must obey the laws of God or perish!’”"

"Arguably the finest recording found in all the Sun sessions, "Trying To Get To You"(1955), is a song that Presley made his own due to his hugely committed vocal, and the simple carefree abandon with which he performs it; at first, it feels like a classic country song with simple, elegant lyrics; but it is at the bridge – where Elvis really lets fly –, that the song is transformed from a lovely country lament, into deep blues; although the 1955 version is magnificent, Elvis manages to better it on his "1968 Comeback Special", in which he sings the song with so much intensity, it prompted critic Greil Marcus to exclaim "this is probably the finest rock and roll ever recorded."

"This era of biracial musical creation and consumption has been largely erased from popular memory. It lies buried beneath simplistic parables of white expropriation and exploitation of black culture in which Elvis Presley has become emblematic of centuries of uncompensated and unacknowledged white appropriation of black cultural ingenuity and labour. There is enormous moral power to this perspective and, to be sure, plenty of evidence of just such exploitation and theft. Nonetheless, it still makes for unpersuasive history and fails to help us to understand the significance of Elvis and the whole biracial rock-and-roll phenomenon that intersected with the dawn of the modern civil rights movement."

"Is it true Elvis took you often to tour the morgue? Why̞?"

"This is something I've always wanted to do: Take an evening, invite an audience and just be me. What you can expect is me playing music, answering almost all questions anyone would ask (except the ones that may incriminate me), a big screen power point presentation put together and narrated by me, guitar shop talk, slide guitar 101, true stories of road craziness, playing more music and I’m particularly excited to talk about my Elvis experiences —what he meant to me and what I meant to him. We’ll conclude with a Town Hall Meeting, including a strategy and platform discussion for my candidacy to run for President of the United States in 2020 and sing ‘God Bless America’ or something else (Elvis would want that).""

"A Presley motion picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood.”"

"With the way he was marketed, he didn't even need to be able to sing the way he could. But Elvis had talent, plain and simple. The guy had a thousandth-octave range, and a variety in his vocal styles and approach, he could make more vocal tones, with just his voice, than a guitar player with 50 pedals and gadgets. If you never even saw the guy, you could plain feel, not just hear, the emotion and passion in his voice, and you are immediately taken in, one hundred percent. On the merit of vocals alone, he had more talent in the barbecue stuck in his teeth than the singers who sell millions of records do today."

"Well, now wait. You say he has no talent and yet I think that you'll agree that he has been taken into the bosom of America in a certain sense and has been very well paid for it..."

"Basically, Elvis Presley was doing self-defense techniques because he couldn't spar, it was simply too dangerous. He had to preserve his voice, so contact to the face or neck was out. He also didn't want to risk breaking any bones, so he'd just train on and demonstrate self-defense moves like taking full-power shots to the stomach. He was a fine athlete, not a fighter, but that doesn't mean he wasn't able to fight, though. His technique —his side kick and his punches— looked as good as anybody else's. He wanted to do karate because he'd learned a bit of it in the Army and really liked it. The best part of working with him was beating up all of his people, like Red and Sonny West, Jerry Shilling and all the others. I just relegated them to pulp."

"We have to still care about Elvis because if we don't, then we don't like music. He was the big bang, the sun around which all the other planets circled ever since and when he went down, we lost the first and the best."

"In constructing his own public image during the early 1950s, Elvis unconsciously appropriated, synthesised and ultimately capitalised upon images from a series of contemporary cultural icons. These ranged from Captain Marvel and Dean Martin to Jackie Wilson. ‘Cultural production’, states Madow, ‘is always (and necessarily) a matter of reworking, recombining, and redeploying already existing symbolic forms, sounds, narratives, and images’. To this effect – on the current standing of US publicity rights law – one could actually begin to question Elvis's right to call the Elvis image his own in the first place; however, few would deny that the Elvis whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The overall effect of his efforts was to create a unique image which had a fresh and vital meaning in post-war society. If there did not exist any rights of control over power of the creation of cultural symbols then there would be little financial incentive for individuals to spend the time, energy and resources to develop their ‘talents and produce works which ultimately benefit society as a whole Elvis signs and their multiple meanings are so strong that Elvis has, in effect, mediated his own celebrity culture beyond the grave."

"i) One day we are in a recording session, here at RCA B, and he was talking to one of the clean up guys. Then three RCA people from New York, with suits and they walked up to Elvis, but he paid no attention to them. The clean up guy stopped talking, but Elvis said "Go ahead, Sir". When he finished, the clean up guy shook his hand and thanked Elvis for talking to him. Then Elvis approached the guys from New York and said "Gentlemen, if you see me talking to somebody, don't interrupt me, don't even walk up to me, I know when it{s your turn and I will walk up to you. And that was the end of it. ii) The best I have ever seen him look was in 1967, at the Circle G Ranch. His hair was black to blonde like it was naturally, the colour of a fawn. Just as shiny as could be. He had a suit and shoes the same color of his hair, so he walked in and we were stunned. He had been out riding his horses, was tanned and his eyes shunned like diamonds. We couldn't believe it. We just stood there and looked at him. Finally, he said "Shall we dance?""

"I had a 45 rpm record player, one of those that accommodated little records with big holes in the middle and with the capacity to hold, what, 10 or so records, to drop down one at a time, until all 10 had played. But that's too general for what I've been thinking about. Specifically, it's one of the songs, really the only song I can say with certainty that I played, over and over and over again. “Lavender Blue” by Sammy Turner. And it, and others, made me know I loved music — most all kinds excusing jazz and opera. And then, it was Elvis. Controversial Elvis Presley. Would my folks let me listen to his music or watch him on our little black and white television? Then, before we knew it, Elvis was too big to be avoided or ignored. You had to watch him..."

"In fact, I first provided clothing for her during her first pregnancy in 1981, and continued to do so until her death in 1997. One such outfit, which Diana herself called her ‘Elvis Dress’, was worn by her both to the British Fashion Awards in October 1989 and then on an official visit to Hong Kong. The year of her passing away, the dress was bought for £81,203 at a benefit auction by The Franklin Mint, a company which produces memorabilia such as a portrait doll featuring her wearing this dress, thus making it one of the best-known of Diana's many outfits, and the second highest prized. The Mint returned the dress to the Diana Estate a few years later."