Guitarists From The United States

"Well I am so glad to be in Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley. I shouldn't say this, because they are going to say I am conceited, but other than the blond hair when I was growing up they all said I looked like Elvis. I always felt that it was a great compliment. And we just gave him the Medal of Freedom in the White House. We love Elvis don̪'t we̞?"

"I mean Elvis made us move, instead of standing mute he raised our voice. And when we heard ourselves something was changing, you know, like for the first time we made a collective decision about choices, America hurriedly made Pat Boone a general, in the army they wanted us to join, But most of us held fast to Elvis and the commandants around him Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent, you know, like a different Civil War all over again. Man, like he woke us up, and now they're trying to put us back to sleep. So we'll see how it goes, Anyway, look at the record, man, Rock ’n’ roll is based on revolutions, going way past 33⅓, you gotta understand, man, he was America's baby Boom Ché. I oughta know man, I was in his army"

"Before I made my first record, we had a three night tour of an Army base in Freidberg, Germany. I was told: “Jackie, there’s someone I’d like you to meet". So I walked in through the front door of a house in Bad Neuheim, off-base, to find Elvis himself smiling at me. I nearly fainted! We sang together, talked plenty, and I kinda fell in love with him..."

"My first political act was to get kicked out of class for arguing with a teacher for criticizing Elvis"

"i) Making their second appearance at Worthy Farm, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey delighted the crowds as the sun set on the final day of Glastonbury 2015 by performing a number of hits from across their career. They also referenced Kanye West's claim during his own headline slot the night before that he was "the greatest living rockstar on the planet", with Townsend and then Roger Daltrey saying, "We're gonna send you home now with a rebellious 'who's the biggest fucking rockstar in the world? 'It must be Elvis Presley. ii) We have to focus on his early work, and just one or two of his movies, and elements of his TV shows, to keep his memory pure. People now know that Elvis could play a mean rhythm guitar himself, and needed no other musicians to perform a great song. But Elvis was not just a rock star, he was an all-round entertainer."

"Listening to these songs today, their most remarkable feature is Presley's voice itself. He takes the Platters' Tony Williams's techniques, and any other predecessor's, to new, uncharted pinnacles. For a singer who was only just encountering widespread popularity, his singing resonates with amazing fortitude and confidence, especially on "Heartbreak Hotel," (1956), where Presley alternately shouts words with full lungs, then gulps the following back, as if under water but without missing a beat. In "Loving you" (1957), Presley's baritone on this, the ultimate slow dance number, is almost too powerful, virtually rumbling the floor..."

"I think Elvis Presley will never be solved."

"I was shocked to hear that a man of integrity like Hal Wallis had referred to Presley as a great dramatic actor. It just shows how far a man will go for the almighty dollar. —"

"While Elvis was primarily perceived as a baritone and most of the tessitura of his songs was on that key, he was, in my opinion, a tenor. Technically, he never properly worked to smooth his passagio and bring more weight up to the top of his voice. However, one has only to look and listen to much of what Elvis sang, and recorded – especially from about 1974 onward – to realize that, had he gone in an entirely different direction musically, he could very well have sung opera. Although in bad physical condition toward the end of his life, the in concert recordings from his last tour reveal, rather hauntingly, what might have been. Listen especially to the way he sang the Timi Yuro classic "Hurt." Vocally, he was incredibly exciting."

"Elvis Presley. I'm not sure if he's "of the "moment" but now and then there is a new release of his music."

"What's the difference between Elvis and a smart politician? Elvis has been sighted."

"I've got a cutout of Elvis Presley outside my door so people at the US Capitol can find my office. Right now, he's wearing a big pennant that says ‘Go Golden Knights,"

"Elvis Presley was also known for his work on the big screen. The “Heartbreak Hotel” singer made his debut in 1956's Civil War film “Love Me Tender“. It was a stunning one, and it helped propel him to the top ten of the box office for a decade in movies like "Jailhouse Rock“ and “King Creole" Eventually, he would return to music entirely after Hollywood stopped giving him challenging film roles but by then, he'd proven that he could tackle everything.""

"Elvis Presley, the 21-year-old bobby-soxers' delight, shot the Ed Sullivan Show's rating up to 43.7—highest in two years. Actor Charles Laughton, his glib tongue in his dumpling cheek, introduced Elvis with: "Ed insisted I give a high tone to the proceedings," then, to the frenzied shrieks of the teenagers, let Hillbilly Presley take over. Crooner Presley, sideburns dripping with sweat and goose grease, mumbled through three songs, gave his guitar a thorough clouting, contorted his mouth suggestively and his pelvis more so. When it was over, parents and critics, as usual, did a lot of futile grumbling at the vulgarity of this strange new phenomenon that must somehow be reckoned with."

"i) A double voice that alternates between a high quaver, reminiscent of Johnnie Ray at his fiercest, and a rich basso that might be smooth if it were not for its spasmodic delivery. 'Heartbreak Hotel', yelps the high voice, is where he's going to get away from it all. Answers the basso: 'he'll be sorry ii) Without preamble, the three-piece band cuts loose. In the spotlight, the lanky singer flails furious rhythms on his guitar, every now and then breaking a string; in a pivoting stance, his hips swing sensuously from side to side and his entire body takes on a frantic quiver, as if he had swallowed a jackhammer; his loud baritone goes raw and whining in the high notes, but down low it is rich and round. As he throws himself into one of his specialties— "Blue Suede Shoes" or "Long Tall Sally", his throat seems full of desperate aspirates or hiccuping glottis strokes, but his movements suggest, in a word, sex."

"Are you kiddin̠g? I am not gonna do an Elvis song, not at the White House̜. No one can outsing the King."

"I had taken my song "Dreamy Eyes" to George Klein, Memphis DJ and Elvis friend and said to George: "I can really hear Elvis singing this song," because I felt Priscilla had the prettiest eyes I'd ever seen. About eight months later I got a call that Elvis had recorded one of my songs, and I assumed that it was "Dreamy Eyes," but it turned out to be "It Keeps Right On a Hurtin." When Elvis was in Germany getting ready to work, he was listening to Country Music and heard my song, and he wanted to record it. That's the way Elvis picked his music, when he heard something that he liked, he recorded it. Elvis put his song in one of his albums "From Elvis In Memphis", and I couldn't have been more thrilled and proud, because Elvis was my idol."

"Elvis spiritual crisis started in 1964, led him to meditate with Larry Geller, his then recent hairstylist. Elvis was always a dedicated Christian, with the book "The Prophet" being an inspiration as far as incarnation and following the death of his mother. His family and most of his friends rejected this spiritual quest. He was insulated form the world, so it must have been very frustrated that very few in his circle agreed with this part of his life. He was always very generous, from his infancy, but in time became more and more so, to the point of being extremely magnanimous. In 1965, he started becoming more involved with his spirituality, with yoga, and healing."

"To make things even harder, public-health communicators no longer have the benefit of public figures such as Elvis Presley, who once gave a lift to a national immunization campaign with a single photograph of a rolled-up sleeve. These days, even our most mass-appeal celebrities are not nearly as appealing. Each of them has done something to annoy some chunk of the population, and I’m even talking about Bruce Springsteen right now, and I’m even talking about Hilary Duff."

"They're talking ‘bout the hood, talkin’ ‘bout where we all come from. My mother always listened to Presley' song when I was young. It talk about the things she went through, you know. She had a bunch of kids, like 9 kids, you know what I’m sayin’. That's how you get somebody to listen to your song, you talk about what they know about and what they want to hear.”"

"I'm from Tupelo, where Elvis was born. When he would do a gospel album, he would always pick the great gospel quartets of the day to sing on his records. That's what I want to do.""

"Elvis is inside of me"

"Just as the producer's job is to achieve the best recording possible – the kind of perfection that so grabs listeners like - so the editor should push the writer beyond the bounds of what he thinks he can achieve. It's hard to escape the feeling that there's a better book here waiting to get out. Essentially, this is a memoir consisting of 10 essays each of which attempting to examine a fairly arbitrary category of music. “Boys and Girls and Girl Groups”; “Vulnerability”; “The Spectacle of Anguish” etc. The opener looks at “The Horsemen in the Box” - Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley – who he feels would have represented the end of pop music history had the Cuban Missile Crisis not turned out so well."

"As the lad himself might say, cut my legs off and call me Shorty! Elvis Presley can act. Acting is his assignment in this shrewdly upholstered showcase, and he does it."

"One day in the 70s, I talked Elvis into going with me to the local McDonald's restaurant near Graceland. I was sick and tired of us never going out together. So I made a bet with him — I said no one would recognize him and he could relax a little. Elvis said he not only would be recognized but mobbed as well. We walked in the McDonald's, approached the counter, and put in our orders. Elvis ate his meal in wonder at the situation but really enjoyed his quiet night out. So far, so good. Then a man walked up to our table, looked at Elvis, and said he hated how men tried to look like Elvis Presley. He said there was only one Elvis and the others should give up. Shocked at the man's assumption that he was as impersonator, Elvis informed the stranger that he was indeed Elvis. The man would not believe him, and said he pitied him for thinking he was. Elvis tried again but could not convince the man. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole situation and had an inspired idea. I turned to Elvis and said, “Okay, Bob, enough is enough. Stop playing". Elvis told me to confirm who he was and I replied, “Will you cut the crap, Bob.” My ruse worked. The man left their table. Elvis was totally dumbfounded by what had happened, but he and I had a good laugh. Anyways, I was always a fan, but I didn't think he would transcend time and space and become the iconic, almost religion he is now."

"My daughter, who is 11, saw the movie and then asked me "Mommy who is thaaaaat man",and hey, Elvis was spiritual and you juist nailed it."

"What makes USA the most aspirational destination to Indians is probably our own pop culture. Out of 1.3 billion Indians, there are 700 million young people who are under the age of 35. By 2020, the median age is going to be 29 years and when I think about a younger demographic, everything in the United States is appealing to them. Pop, short for popular music originated in neighborhoods across the US, when people of various ethnicities came together and merged their musical talents transcends geographical borders, races, and even traditional music styles. It is the music of today. Traditional guitars or electric ones, playing of pop music is not restricted to instruments either. Elvis Presley, in fact, is one of the first stars associated with the popularity of pop music. He fused country music with black rhythm and blues and came up with rock-and-roll."

"There is nothing that could force Donald Trump to release his tax returns, but precedent and Hillary Clinton's willingness to release hers would have nudged most other presidential hopefuls into taking the action. All this reminds me of the fact that accountants for Elvis Presley begged him at times to take advantage of the legal loopholes available to him. It would have saved him millions. He demurred on the basis that the patriotic thing to do was to pay for the privilege of his success."

"Ladies and gentlemen, the McDonnell Douglas aircraft have left the air. Yeah, they were as iconic as Elvis Presley."

"I remenber when I took Elvis by the hand and slowly pulled him on stage. And I said 'Ladies and gentlemen ..... Elvis Presley!! And he did that willow with that leg two or three times and it was over and the show was really over and the people, these were black people, they stormed that place trying to get to Elvis. And never, never in your life have you seen such a surge of black faces all converging upon a stage at the same time. I know of only two people that would have that type of magnetism that would just, they could just pull people to them, the kind of magnetism to just draw crowds in instantly effect them. [Elvis being one], the only other was Martin Luther King. The fact is people like music and if it's good it makes no difference who's doing it, black, blue, green even plaid if it's like that. And I love good music and Elvis was doing blues, rhythm and blues because that was his beginning."

"People think that we're crazy because we do six nights a week, and then you see how much Elvis put into every show, for which he created this larger than life style, and he pulled it off."

"Just last month, nurse Lindsay readily agreed to the request of 9-year-old Desiree Mohammadi, daughter of a Queens pediatrician, and held her small hand as a pediatric nurse administered a Covid jab. Afterward, Desiree sent her idol a grateful thank-you letter. The photos and video of the nurse who was the first person in the US to be vaccinated for Covid-19 will be in textbooks soon, but she is already inspiring children to seek a better understanding of both science and nursing .But perhaps the most significant reason that Dr. Lindsay is our Nurse of the Year is this: as Elvis did with the polio vaccine, she set an example that is saving lives""

"He didn't buy it for himself, he never used it, it was from the start an act of charity, and I certainly hope that once we auction it, it will one day be enshrined, as it has been the witness of history for almost two decades, especially during Pres. FDR's time."

"For some people, they are just cars from the past. But classic cars represent an important market segment for investors. With their rising by more than 500 per cent in the past decade, the 2016 Motorworld Classics Fair in Berlin is a good chance for anyone interested in that kind of investment. A perfect example is a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado showcased here. It is not a very rare car, nor is it in a good state, but it was once owned by Elvis Presley, which bumps up the price tag to about half a million euros."

"I love Elvis because he was my generation, but then again, he's everyone's generation and will always be"

"At one point, the Chargers and Raiders planned to share a stadium in Carson. Instead, the Chargers got Los Angeles, and the Raiders are headed to Las Vegas in the next few years. So, prior to this Sunday's game between the Raiders and Chargers in Carson, the Chargers trolled their rivals by playing Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas" as the Raiders took the field at StubHub Center."

"I couldnt believe I was singing with Elvis. My nerves were a wreck..."

"He performed at the auditorium in 1955 and 1956. For the first appearance, Elvis was paid $150. He grossed $9,000 when he returned a year later."

"Elvis Presley transcended his being called the King of Rock and Roll, even the music he made famous, in favour of his later becoming one of the XX Century's greatest cultural icons. But it is his versatile voice and his unusual delivery of numerous musical idioms, as well as the attraction he held, physically, and sexually, that led him to his being the greatest solo artist in the history of popular music."

"As a child, I’d stand on a table and sing Elvis at the drop of a hat."

"Elvis was very classically orientated with his voice, and diction, and very sincere and wanting to get everything perfect."

"I strongly believe he knew he was ill, but didn't know why. In retrospect, his was a classic case of cumulative head trauma, followed by an autoimmune inflammatory disorder. None of this was known or even recognized in his day and I'm confident he would have been pleased to know that the knowledge that now exists about his predicament will in future help others, as he was a kind and generous person"

"Elvis Presley. I don't do impersonations, but Elvis is the most impersonated performer in the world. Just the more I've read about him, the more he's someone I've wanted to get into. I want to do the "Walk the Line" version of Elvis. Like Joaquin Phoenix doesn't look like Johnny Cash but I still felt like I was watching Johnny Cash in that movie."

"Back in 1956, Elvis Presley recorded his massive hit “Don’t Be Cruel.” With all due respect to the King, this great song has many virtues but providing a guide to policy isn’t one of them. Yet it appears to be dictating Democrats’ current approach to the red-hot immigration issue despite its profound inadequacy in the policy realm. Consider that Democrats have been unremittingly hostile to Trump’s immigration policy since he began his second term, despite its undisputed success in completely shutting down the southern border to illegal immigration. Instead, Democrats have focused relentlessly on the question of interior enforcement—that is, the activities of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) aimed at detaining and deporting illegal immigrants currently living within the United States. The general approach has been to portray all ICE actions as essentially illegitimate, arbitrary and, well, cruel.Conspicuously lacking has been any recognition that, in fact, interior enforcement against illegal immigration is an entirely legitimate law enforcement operation and that ICE is the government agency charged with these legitimate activities. Therefore, what ICE does is presumptively legitimate not illegitimate. Obviously, the current Democratic vogue for treating all ICE activities as illegitimate and susceptibility to dumb maximalist slogans like “Abolish ICE” points them in precisely the wrong direction for dealing with the thorny and complex realities of the immigration issue. They’re just setting themselves up for future failure. In short, it’s time to stop coddling the “In This House, We Believe” crowd and adopt a serious, grown-up approach to immigration and immigrants. “Don’t Be Cruel” isn’t gonna cut it."

"I was in California, saw "Jailhouse Rock" and changed my name to Vince Taylor, the former from the first name of the character played by Elvis in "Jailhouse Rock"."

"If you’ve made art after 1954, then the chances are you’ve been influenced by Elvis Presley"

"When I’m here, I’m not James Taylor the entertainer, I’m James Taylor the Elvis fan,’"

"Before Elvis, white America was shackled by crippling conservatism. Then, four years into the 1950s, a singer from Tupelo, Mississippi, had what record producer Sam Phillips was looking for, a “white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel”, language that makes us cringe now — but at the time, Elvis' "sound" and "feel" did more to break down color barriers in popular music than any white singer ever had. Elvis' low, trembling transmission to teenage America was emancipation in the form of rockabilly, gospel, schlocky love songs, Christmas standards and muddy blues. In the ’60s, his voice was muted by forgettable films, but in 1968, wearing a leather jumpsuit, he reminded America that the suffering in his voice was sex in a sexless society — a pink Cadillac crashing into daddy’s station wagon. —"

"The reasons for honouring Elvis are not sentimental but political. I don't own a single Elvis album but he was a champion for those amongst our people who turned against our country's Soviet-backed Government in October 1956. And although the revolution was quashed, Presley saluted the uprising in January 1957 during his last appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and performed "Peace in the Valley", a gospel standard, as a tribute to our plight. At his request, Sullivan solicited the TV audience to donate towards our relief efforts, raising US$6 million (the equivalent of US$ 49 million in 2012 dollars), or about 26 million Swiss francs."

"I walked into the lobby of the International Hotel in Las Vegas with Tom Jones, which was like walking in with the Good Lord himself, and next minute we were in Elvis Presley's dressing room. As I stared at him, stunned, one of Elvis's assistants said to me, ‘Sir, will you give this drink to Elvis?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ took the drink and stood there gaping, like a stagestruck schoolgirl. Couldn't move a muscle. Tom nudged me and said, ‘Give ’im the drink for God’s sake. I struggled to speak to Elvis because I was so overwhelmed and amazed to be in the presence of such a great singer. Next night, it was Elvis who came to Tom’s room. I was in heaven..."