Guitarists From The United States

"i) To me this album is the purest expression of Elvis there was. In fact, when I was young, I used to think Elvis was the voice of truth. I don't know what that means, but his voice, shit man, it sounded so fucking pure. The hillbilly cat never let you down. ii) You’re either an Elvis man or a Beatles man, and I’m an Elvis man."

"That's it for now from us, at the first ever Presidential summit in Graceland, so thank you, thank you very much."

"Warhol was in the process of shifting from commercial illustrator to artist, and I both witnessed and experienced firsthand his tactics, his method of incision into the art world He used contemporary icons (Elvis and MM),as motifs in his works"

"No person should be allowed to be so great looking and with so much talent. LOL. He's standing on a stage all by himself, like a person in a boxing arena Now the swagger and the swooning are awesome, but the interesting thing about him is how he gets the emotion into the song. And it all sounds so authentic because he believes in what he sings."

"Presley makes no secret of his respect for the negroes, nor of their influence on his singing. Furthermore, he does not shun them, either in public or private"

"In 1957, I worked with Elvis a bit on ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ and got to know him as well as anybody in Los Angeles at the time. Anyways, that same year I had a beach house that I sublet to him while I was doing ‘Peyton Place.’ He needed it as a getaway, and basically wrote me a check for that month's rent. I wish I had kept the check, that would be worth more than the money I got LOL."

"He had it all going on: Punk, Algerian chaabi music, Rai, techno, and he drew inspiration from the music of North Africa, New Orleans jazz, The Clash, the delta blues and Elvis Presley."

"White teenagers embraced rock and roll, when the civil-rights struggle cultivated an awareness of African-American culture. Youths such as Elvis Presley listened to late night, rhythm-and-blues radio shows that challenged and broke down racial barriers. During the Sixties, white teens readily accepted African-American performers such as the Ronettes, the Temptations, and the Supremes who had been carefully groomed for success in a mainstream market. At the same time in Britain, teenagers such as the Rolling Stones became obsessed with Chicago blues and brought their version of the blues back to adoring fans in America. Later in the decade, white youth bought soul records and revered Jimi Hendrix as the ultimate guitar hero. By the Eighties, young white suburbanites wore baggy pants and chanted the lyrics of inner-city rappers. In the new century, American teens danced at massive festivals to the African-American sounds of house music and techno."

"Some of Symms' most popular images came from a newspaper assignment covering the June 27, 1956 performance of a young Elvis Presley before 6,000 screaming fans jammed into Augusta's Bell Auditorium. When Presley arrived, he found Symms in an alley awaiting him with a 4X5 Crown Graphic camera. Most remember hearing Presley sing several hits including "Hound Dog", which he would record a month later, but it was Symms' photos which preserved their memories of the performance and continued to sell reprints over the next half-century."

"It blew my brain apart. It was like Star Wars combined with Elvis Presley and these crazy, sped-up electro beats that I'd known since I was 11 years old.”"

"We didn't care as much for Elvis and his music - but once we met him - our mouths completely dropped. We could not believe a man was allowed to be this beautiful. We almost lost our job with Elvis because we focused so much on what he looked like that we forgot the lyrics to our songs. He was without doubt the most beautiful man that ever lived. And what's more beautiful: he didn't know it. - Good Lord he was beautiful!"

"They listened to music all the way over. And one of them kind of likes Elvis Presley"

"I may be the only person who knows Colin Powell and Elvis Presley..."

"I approve of his moves last night at the Pan Pacific (October 29, 1957), and saw nothing wrong with them but unfortunately neither my wife nor I could hear a single word out of his mouth because of all the screaming. But he is everything he is reported to be."

"When Elvis' daddy had a heart attack, Elvis wanted him to have a private room. That was not the problem, but before getting there, rules made it impossible for him to have a private intensive care room, despite the unit was totally empty. So Elvis spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and booked the entire intensive care unit..."

"It was a bit like the Elvis Presley excitement, something new, completely revolutionary,"

"So who got covered on LIFE? Thirty-six covers from the first 64 years portrayed one or more of the Kennedy family. John F. Kennedy was on 25 covers, while Jackie edged him out to appear on 26 and earn the number one spot. Robert F. Kennedy appeared on five covers while Edward Kennedy was on nine. Rose Kennedy even made a solo appearance on one cover. Richard Nixon ranked third behind JFK and Jackie in number of appearances by a single individual with 15. Ronald Reagan had 11. But Marilyn Monroe beat him with 13 cover appearances, while Elizabeth Taylor was close behind at nine. Barbra Streisand made four cover appearances. Nikita Krushchev appeared on more covers (9) than Winston Churchill (7), Dwight D. Eisenhower (7), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (5) or Bill Clinton (4). The Reverends Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr. each made it onto two covers, while various popes appeared on eight covers between 1936–2000. (Those) never appearing on a LIFE cover included Elvis Presley, Monhandas K. Gandhi and Mother Teresa."

"I wanted to say to Elvis Presley and the country that this is a real decent, fine boy, and wherever you go, Elvis, we want to say we've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you."

"Growing up in Beverly Hills in the 1960s, there was no such thing as being star-struck — my neighbors were movie stars. Going shopping one day, after coffee crunch cake at Blum's, I found myself in front of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel staring at a man so beautiful and charismatic that I was magnetically drawn to him as if by a tractor beam. As I approached, he was swarmed by large burly men in Hawaiian shirts. ‘Let her through,’ he said. As if in a dream, I found myself in the magnificent presence of Elvis Presley! He signed my hand and a $5 bill. He spoke to me kindly and gently in soft Southern tones. The autographed bill? I spent it in my college tuition when I ran out of money"

"Elvis was one of a kind. He bought me my first car and that's how I attended my first Hollywood premiere. Elvis said, 'Kid if you're going to go to something like your first Premiere you deserve to attend in the right Style'. And he made sure that I did""

"Though he is widely considered one of the biggest cultural icons of the 20th century, many may not know that Elvis stuttered. In a 2007 interview, his Tupelo childhood friend Mary Magdalene Morgan recalled how Elvis would stutter in elementary school, always seeming nervous, never completely sitting still, stammering, but not to the point you couldn't understand him. When he was 13 years old, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he would listen to a variety of musicians and singers on the now famous Beale Street. Influenced by country, gospel, and blues among other styles, Elvis recorded his first songs with Sun Record but it took multiple recordings and several rejections before one of Elvis' songs hit the radio waves in mid July of 1954. In an interview in August of 1956, Elvis talked about his stuttering: ʽWhenever I get excited, I stutter a little bit. I have a hard time saying ‘when’ or ‘where’ or any words that start with ‘w’ or ‘i.’ In fact, evidence of his stuttering as an adult can be heard on recordings from the Louisiana Hayride at the start of his career. On one of these, he can be heard stuttering when he talks to the audience in between songs. After he stutters, he stops himself, pauses and then begins again, changing the words slightly. Today, almost forty after his death he is still the best-selling solo artist in the history of recorded music. He had a dream to become a successful performer and entertainer, and he didn't let his stuttering stand in his way. People struggling with stammering issues can find inspiration in knowing that they share something deeply personal with the most successful singer of all time."

"The Melbourne General Cemetery has been operational since 1852 and houses prestigious monuments to Malcolm Fraser, Sir Robert Menzies and Burke and Wills. For 100 years, the 36-tonne Burke and Wills monument was the most visited spot in the cemetery – until 1970 when the Elvis Presley memorial was erected. It is located in such a prominent area of the cemetery that you would have to deliberately avoid it to miss it. During peak hour, as cyclists whiz by on the path, an elderly couple passes it while walking their fluffy dogs. It's a deeply unusual monument to find in the historic grounds, particularly when considering that Elvis never even visited Australia. But then, the 1970s were a strange time for the cemetery. For a while, it was the world's first memorial erected after his death and the only official monument outside the US. In fact, it came about in a whir of circumstances, including a mystery donor"

"The general idea is that Mississippi claims to be the birthplace of America's music and can pretty well back it up. The spiritual home of rock in roll in our state to me is Elvis Presley's birthplace in Tupelo. The B.B. King Museum and Interpretive Center over in Indianola, up in the Delta, that's where the blues live. The Grammys put in a museum at Delta State University, so that's the north part of the state. And the central part, kind of in the land of Jimmie Rodgers, is going to be Marty Stuart's Congress of Country Music Hall. That's where my collection, that's where the spiritual home of country music will live, as far as I'm concerned."

"The immediate feeling you have is of the entirety of his life. You feel a young man full of potential. On seeing this 13 acres, you realize that he was at a point in his life that because of creativity, he was able to buy it. You feel all the happy times and all the people that have come and gone, dignitaries and musicians. I just wished that the walls could have talked. But in actual fact, the real treat was the private tour of the mansion, which the good folks of Graceland gave to the General Hospital crew. One of the special features is Elvis' white piano and I wish I could have played it, but we weren't allowed on that side of the velvet ropes. It's a big, white Steinway with actual ivory keys. It certainly has a history and you could just imagine Elvis himself playing there."

"I was with Elvis for a few months. He was so physically beautiful, I thought I couldn't breathe. So one night he said, do you want me to sing something to you? So he played his "Spanish Eyes" song and sang it to me, seven times, back to back, as I requested he did. He was kind to his friends, to his family, to strangers, talented, thoughtful, funny. This girl came to a party in his house and I noticed she had two prosthetic legs. So I asked who she was and he said it was someone he didn't know really, but invited to his parties every fortnight so that she could feel wanted, loved....."

"Multiple scholars have probed the Elvis cult's Celtic, Gnostic, Hindi, and vodun derivations; have contemplated Graceland's status as "sacred space"; and considered how and why some insist that Elvis, like Jesus, defeated death. Less charitable writers cynically attribute the entire phenomenon to the highly successful mass-marketing techniques of his estate and to the susceptibility of an apparently passive public bent on real-world escapism through, especially, the "transformative" ideology of consumerism."

"For international visitors, Amtrak is a very common and comfortable means of transportation. To eliminate that, because we're such a strong destination, namely with Elvis Presley home Graceland, Beale Street and Memphis music history being such big draws for international tourists, would be a big, big loss, as lots of people have taken Amtrak train and it has given even more people the opportunity to visit and fall in love with our city."

"I never understood his records at first, and then many years later, I thought, "God this guy is good". He had that wonderful sexuality about him, and energy, he was a star, you know, he was bigger than life. Anyways, because I'd met him a couple of times, singing with him was kind of easy, it felt like our spirits were kind of touching..."

"It as a real hoot to meet him. After he toured the plane he introduced himself, like 'Well, Ron, I guess you know who I am.' I said 'Yes sir, Mr. Presley.' And then he said 'Oh no, it's not sir or mister. Just call me Elvis."

"Elvis Presley is a means of seduction, a tool of US imperialism, to make the Communist youth lose its values in the midst of a possible atomic war."

"I was always a fan of Elvis as I was growing up. When I saw him in Vegas, with Phil Spector and his wife, in 1971, he was just awesome, had tremendous energy, charisma, such a handsome man, and a great voice, so actually there was nothing not to like about him. And then, after meeting him backstage, you realize that you are in the presence of someone so gifted, and that it's humbling, really."

"We played Anaheim, CA in 1973. I was told to fix a problem with an unauthorized limo trying to get in the back entrance, so I tapped on the chauffeur's window but he said I should talk to the lady in the back. I knock, and there she was, . I was 22 but I had to tell her to walk through the entrance. Same thing in 1974, this time in Philadelphia, PA, but for once the unauthorized limo was carrying someone Elvis already knew, so he got to stay. It was ."

"The most important entertainer in the 20th Century, certainly, and the only people that could even challenge him were the Beatles, but they weren̪'t single performers, so it̪s Elvis Presley."

"More than 30 years ago, the Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) Fraternity joined the fight against childhood cancer when Danny Thomas, founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and fraternity member from the Gamma-Nu chapter at the University of Toledo, asked his fraternity to help him with his cause. Before Thomas could make his dream of building St. Jude a reality, he garnered the help of, inter-alia, Rock 'n' roll legend and fellow Tau Kappa Epsilon member Elvis Presley, who instantly became one of Danny's supporters by lending his talents to help raise funds for cancer-stricken children."

"The third day started with a biscuit breakfast on the bus as we headed set course toward Tupelo to visit Elvis Presley's birthplace. I had given our group a loose itinerary, but what the group didn't know is that I had arranged for an Elvis tribute artist to stand on the side of the road five miles out of Oxford with his thumb out, hitchhiking. We picked him up, Jack Curtis was his name, and he performed a concert of Elvis' classics, up and down the aisle of the bus, all of the way in to Tupelo. We got out to tour the Elvis Presley birthplace and my guests said, “I don’t know how you’re going to top this.”...."

"i) I mean, they treat me like I'm Elvis there, they really do. ii) Elvis was the king. No doubt about it. People like myself, Mick Jagger and all the others only followed in his footsteps. iii)Bloody Elvis, beating me to the top from the grave.iv) He had it all, But I am not doing too bad myself LOL"

"As soon as we were done with the first shot, he said, ‘You wanna talk?’ I was shocked. He pulled up two chairs together, we sat down, he took my hand and then he began to tell me about his mother. He talked about how much he missed her, how when he was in the Army, they wouldn't let him go see her when she was dying. It wasn't like he was flirting, he was just being very sweet and could not have been nicer."

"I believe we need to restore confidence in Illinois. We deserve a state government that you can trust. It has been my mission as your state representative to support, sponsor, and vote for common sense solutions that provide for balanced budgets, to resist tax increases without a commitment to responsible spending, and to secure jobs for working families. I believe doing so will help you have more faith in our state government. I agree with Elvis Presley. “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”"

"Alas, this turned out to be his only time on UK soil..."

"One word to describe him̜? Sexy"

"Elvis was big for me, even from a very young age; That was the music that was around my house; I love that stuff, great songs and, as a singer, he was 'The Great' rock and roll singer."

"Back in 2002, Eminem rapped about “little hellions, kids feeling rebellious — embarrassed their parents still listen to Elvis.” Plenty of those little hellions rebelled against their parents (and the carefree ignorance of the pre-9/11 world) and grew up into today's hipsters."

"Elvis Presley, Hugh Hefner, Frank Sinatra – maybe not the kind of men you'd expect to embrace environmentally-friendly technology even if they were around to see it. However they were all diehard Cadillac guys, and we have to think that if anyone can convince its set-in-their-ways customers to go electric, it's Detroit's most famous luxury brand."

"I'll never forget it. We were in the rehearsal hall, and all of a sudden, we heard this commotion coming down the hall and there was this entourage of people coming into the room, When Elvis walked into the room, my mouth dropped. I'm like, Wow, I now understand why this guy is the biggest star in the world. He had magnetism. He filled the room. He really did. And to be able to sing with him for about a year and a-half of my life was an amazing experience. He was just a great singer. When you listen to Elvis' records, back in the day when he recorded, everything was recorded analog. There were really no computers to tune your voice or anything. He just had a natural talent. And he recorded in a recording studio just like he sang on stage. He held a microphone in his hand. He walked around the recording studio, and it was like he was doing a live performance. And he hardly ever shaded a pitch. He was just so talented, he really was.”"

"The Warriors had cut the lead to as little as two points in the third quarter, the inevitable onslaught stemming from a groin injury that took LeBron James out of the game for good. But then it was Stephenson of all people, former LeBron archival known for blowing in his ear as much as for his questionable shot selection, hitting a momentum-regaining 3-pointer as the third quarter buzzer sounded. True to form, he followed up the huge shot with his trademark guitar-playing celebration -- though this one had some extra hip gyration that would have made Elvis Presley stand up and applaud."

"When Elvis Presley rolled up his sleeve in October 1956 and was photographed receiving the new polio vaccine hours before his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, he became a massive force for the wonders of public health. Before Elvis got his shot, the number of teenagers to get the vaccine was 0.6%. After the show, the rates went up to 80%."

"Certainly the most famous performer to be attached to a tongues-speaking fellowship was Elvis Presley; shortly after the Presleys arrived in Memphis, from Tupelo, a First Assembly of God bus swung through their rundown neighborhood, so they climbed aboard and became regulars of Pastor James Hamill's congregation; Hamill remembers Elvis attended Sunday school and was exposed there to the best in Pentecostal music; in 1957, after he achieved international acclaim, Presley said 'We used to go to these religious sing-ins all the time, and there were these perfectly fine singers nobody responded to, but there were also these other singers who cut up all over the place, jumping on the piano, moving every which way, and all of which the audience liked, so I guess I learned from them'; uninhibited Pentecostalism gave young Elvis ideas about music and performance and, from then on, he was sometimes called the "Evangelist" by his inner circle of friends."

"An oldies station was on the radio and it was playing that old Elvis song, 'I Want You, I Need you, I love you" so I just started singing my own song but it was 'I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.' I remember going home and I tried so hard but the best I could do was: 'I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you, don't be sad, 'cause two out of three ain't bad' So it was still a twist but it was my closest to a simple song, and one Elvis could have done."

"Elvis is like a bull in the ring. He belongs to the crowd—and they refuse to let him go."

"Actually, he was an easy-going guy. No putting on airs, like he was some big star. An ordinary person, very polite, very obliging, a wonderful man, when I look back on it. It's a shame he had to go so soon.”"