Guitarists From The United States

"My father, Herbert Stein was at the time Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and worked at the White House, often took me for lunch there where top dogs were allowed to have delicious meals, served by Navy Mess NCOs. We saw many famous people there, but one day, roughly three years before I myself started working there, he leaned towards me confidentially and said, “If you saw Elvis Presley in person, would you recognize him?” “I think so,” said I. “Well, look behind you.” I swiveled my hairy head around, and to my total shock, there was Elvis Presley eating with President Richard Nixon's Chief of Staff, Bob Haldeman a much feared but extremely pleasant and smart man. I got up, made my excuses to Mr. Haldeman, and said to Elvis, “Sir, everyone in the world is your fan, but I am your biggest fan.” In a voice and with a phrase that is incredibly famous, he simply said, “Thank yew ver’ much.” I was dazed. But I did not forget. And if you were to ask me to cite a lesson from it, it would be a line from a great Joan Didion novel called "Play It As It Lays: “You can’t win if you’re not at the table.” “Connections are golden.” Well worth remembering."

"Finally, he wove into ‘Hound Dog’ and bounced off the stage, carrying the mike with him. There, on the 50-yard-line, he sank to his knees, rose, wove, bumped, ground and sank again, time after time. The girls screamed themselves silly. If that may have been obscene, but it was in the same way the climax of a revival meeting is obscene. Elvis worked himself over to the grass alongside the stage, sank almost out of sight and suddenly slipped into the waiting Cadillac. A motorcycle cop roared out in front, the car drove off and quickly the bowl's overhead lights were turned on. The shrieks became groans of disappointment. But the ball was over, the spell was broken. Noisily, the fans began filing out of the stadium, spent."

"Elvis was my first massive record obsession. I didn’t quite move like him, but I use to dress up as him sometimes as a kid"

"I think the chances of that are roughly the same of Elvis Presley walking in here right now."

"I didn't know him personally, but I was a fan of his, loved his music, energy and his voice: he had that fast vibrato that was so nice. At that time you weren't allowed to express yourself in those ways, so they showed him from the waist up, not the waist down. I mean, he was a little sexy guy! I was a little kid, but I asked 'Why won't they show all of him?' He would wiggle all the way down, and the girls would be screaming, and when I saw him on TV, I would be screaming too! And I loved the way his hair would shake when he got so emotional, you know? So when I got the chance to do his music, I welcomed it. (The racist controversy) never troubled me, because he wrote me a note. it was at the time I was divorcing Clarence Carter, and my stuff ended up all over the place, so I don't know what happened to the note, Back then I didn't think anything of it – I thought he would live forever but he told me he really, really, really loved my version of 'In The Ghetto". I have no idea where it is after all this time. Back then I didn't think anything of it – I thought he would live forever.”"

"If I fly in, can you arrange seating arrangements at one of his shows?"

"Return to sender..."

"My mom brought me home from the hospital after my birth with the radio off. This, she told me, was so when we got home and she danced me around to Elvis Presley's “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” it was the first musician I would ever hear."

"I credit my sister Cleedy and my father for the Staple Singers, because Pops would have her singing in a minor. Her soprano was different from anybody else's. And Pops had on his guitar a tremolo. He went to the music store one day, and he came back with this tremolo. I was too young to know who he was, but Elvis Presley told me one time, “I like the way your father plays guitar. He plays a nervous guitar.” I said, “Nervous?! That’s the first time I heard that.” But that was a good name for it. Nervous. Our sound was so unique. What helped Elvis was that when he did interviews, he would tell that he got it from blacks'"

"It's because you reminded me so much of Robert. He was gorgeous, and so are you..."

"If Elvis were playing through a stack of amplifiers, he would be called a heavy metal singer today. The problem is some of the kids who grew up loving everything he stood for, are now journalists who have become what they feared most, parents. No one name says more than his, ELVIS. It roars while others whisper."

"Elvis Presley was my rock ’n’ roll favorite, bigger than life to me. No one had seen somebody that looked like that or moved like that, not in staid, suburban, white society"

"Evis called and said that he liked to screen "Rocky", and that he was going to rent a theater in Memphis so that we could watch the film together. And I didn't go. I was shy, believe it or not. And I remember, when he died in 1977, I was doing "F.I.S.T". So now I try to instill in my children: Grab something when it's offered."

"I asked him if he wanted me to pull up. He said, 'No.' I said, 'Are you sure? I could leave a welt.' He replied, 'That's OK.' So I belted him. That slap you hear in the film was not put in afterward – that was the slap.""

"Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds and Cant help falling in love........."

"The way that I would entertain my family was via impersonations, and I had this very strange combination of who I would do: Yasser Arafat and Elvis Presley. That's just who I impersonated as a seven-year-old. My family was like, ‘Oh, these are good,’ and they would all laugh. I think it made them think I would be an actor."

"i) FUN ... it is waiting for you, Mr. and Mrs. Everyday American, and guess what? It is your birthright,” writes Springsteen of that galvanic Elvis moment. Springsteen’s familiar stage voice, his corny carny barker way with action verbs, leaps from the page in assessing what Elvis promised: “The life-blessing, wall-destroying, heart-changing, mind-opening bliss of a freer, more liberated existence. ii) Somewhere in between the mundane variety acts on a routine Sunday night in the year of our Lord 1956, THE REVOLUTION HAS BEEN TELEVISED iii) There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king. iv)it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody’s ear, and somehow we all dreamed it. ii) When I heard it, it just shot straight through to my brain. And I realized, suddenly, that there was more to life than what I'd been living. I was then in pursuit of something and there'd been a vision laid out before me. You were dealing with the pure thrust, the pure energy of the music itself. I was so very young but it still hit me like a thunderbolt."

"And nobody can bring it all back like Elvis did. And that is why there are sightings, and visits to his home, and why now there is even a stamp. Finally, Elvis can be licked but he can not ever be beaten"

"I'd seen Elvis seated on first class as I entered the plane, so when he came to the coach section before the plane landed and went up and down the aisle signing autographs to all of us there I said “Hey, would you sign this for my girlfriend Allison, you know, Steve Binder manages me,” and he said, “Yes, Yes, I love Steve, Steve’s great,” It didn't then mean much to me (1972), but it was all pretty cool and he was a very sweet guy. In fact, I wasn't a big Elvis fan at the time, but I am now."

"I was sitting at a writing desk in a hotel lobby writing a letter, and he just came up to me and started talkin How could you not know who he was even then?. I was friendly and told him I loved his record, Heartbreak Hotel. Then he took me to the gift shop to show me a magazine. This says I'm a hillbilly. I'm not, am I?' he said, 'No, you're a singer.' And after that I was with him and the guys all the time. There wasn't a crowd then, just a few guys. Back then, Elvis was surrounded by the first wave of what would become known as the Memphis Mafia. I was the only woman in the group. Girls come and go but sisters stay forever. This sister lasted forever. We were friends till the day he died. We were like kids in 1956 In the afternoons in Las Vegas we would ride bumper cars at an amusement park and went out for adventures where we could escape the crowds. He loved the fact that I had a light blue Cadillac, and he bought the same car for his mother in pink. One day we drove my car out into the desert, and his cousin came with us. Elvis drove that car as fast as it could go, and I was in the front seat whooping and screaming and laughing. His cousin was on the floor in the back he was so scared. But I'd been a stunt player in the movies, and Elvis couldn't go fast enough to scare me. When they visited Graceland, we stayed up all night listening to Elvis singing and playing the piano. He liked to sing hymns. I didn't know any hymns, but I do now. He introduced me to Amazing Grace." in Los Angeles, where Elvis made movies, I remember going out on a Sunday with him and his friend, actor Nick Adams. Elvis decided to stop in a sports store and buy us bows and arrows. It was just whimsy. We went up to Mulholland Drive and were shooting bows and arrows, and nobody saw us. When his mother, Gladys, died in 1958, Judy came to the funeral. I've never seen anyone as sad as Elvis was. He grieved. He cried continuously. We were in the front hall at Graceland, and he stood there hugging me for a half-hour. He was crying and crying and crying. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. In later years, I attended his Las Vegas concerts, and he would stop the show to introduce me to the audience. I had married by then and so had he. By the time drugs invaded his life, I was less involved I never think of him as he was the last year or year and a half," I think of him as so vibrant and beautiful and funny. When he died, a whole part of my life changed, and I died a little.""

"Even as a young man, that's what Presley sounded, like a man. I wasn't of a culture nor a region that found Presley appealing, and I've never seen a Presley movie through but, a few years ago when in a tribute to him various modern singers covered some of his originals, followed, or enclosed by, his versions of the same songs, I was struck by how much fuller, deeper, and richer his were."

"It remains a camp and cult classic and was one of my favorite films during my formative years."

"The “Hamilton” fiasco, with members of the hit Broadway show berating Vice President-elect Mike Pence from the stage, brought to mind another New York event from 44 years ago, when entertainers – at least some of them – had a vastly different idea of their place in American culture. On June 9, 1972, Elvis Presley, about to perform a series of sold-out concerts at Madison Square Garden, held a press conference. It being 1972, it was inevitable that he would be asked about what was then a new phenomenon: the politicization of the arts. One questioner asked him, “Mr. Presley, as you’ve mentioned your time in the service, what is your opinion of war protesters and would you today refuse to be drafted? ”Elvis answered: “Honey, I’d just sooner keep my own personal views about that to myself cause I’m just an entertainer and I’d rather not say. Asked next “Do you think other entertainers should also keep their personal views to themselves, he answered: “No, I can’t even say that!” Elvis was right. The cast of “Hamilton,” and the legions of their virtue-signaling followers are wrong. Elvis, unlike them, grasped that audiences might enjoy “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Suspicious Minds,” or “Hamilton” or any other work of art of any genre, without necessarily subscribing to, or caring about, or even knowing, the political views of the artist. . The performing arts are growing increasingly politicized, and that is why it is harder and harder to find apolitical entertainers like Elvis. It will take performers of courage to remember that no one own the culture, and to regain the spirit of Elvis and go back to being simply entertainers. Until those performers emerge, the stage and screen will find their audiences steadily diminishing, and fewer and fewer political enemies in the audience to lecture. If the “Hamilton” cast doesn't want them around, there are plenty of Elvis records to play to while away the evening."

"He's a great singer. Gosh, Elvis is so great. You have no idea how great he is, really, you don't. You have absolutely no comprehension—it's absolutely impossible. I can't tell you why he's so great, but he is. He's sensational. He can do anything with his voice. Elvis can make some masterful records and can do anything. He can sing any way you want him to..."

"The budget is $269 million and Montpetit thinks it will finish under budget. We’re in the middle of a resurgence in the capital, and called the old train station part of a cultural landscape, a national landscape that once saw soldiers leave for war and return years later and one that welcomed Winston Churchill, the Emperor of Japan, and Elvis Presley."

"I think Elvis is the sexiest man to ever walk the earth. I love him."

"On 25 October 1760, the then 76 year old King George II of Great Britain died suddenly after visiting the toilet. His physician, Dr. Frank Nicholls, immediately performed a rare autopsy and found that he had suffered a ruptured thoracic aortic aneurysm – a ballooning of the body’s main artery. Whether it’s sudden cardiac death, fainting and falls or microbial exposure, the toilet is not always the sanctuary we imagine. It’s a space where anatomy, privacy and risk intersect – often unnoticed until something goes terribly wrong. On August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley, aged just 42, was found collapsed on the bathroom floor of his Memphis, TN home. Though some in the media speculated about a drug overdose, the post-mortem narrative revealed a more complex and tragic medical picture as he had suffered from chronic constipation, possibly exacerbated by a high-fat, low-fibre diet, prolonged opiate use and a 'megacolon' – a pathologically enlarged colon. On the morning of his death, he was reportedly straining forcefully. A wrong manoeuvre may have triggered a fatal arrhythmia in a heart already compromised by years of prescription drug abuse and poor health."

"I’m from the Southern Midwest. My mom was an Elvis memorabilia collector. We were raised on Elvis"

"So you went into this movie really tuned..."

"Don't get too hot and bothered. We have heard some expressions of annoyance among the older set over the current teenage rage, a young hillbilly entertainer named Elvis Presley. We were about to identify Mr. Presley more explicitly as a singer, but out of deference to sensitive feelings we chose the less controversial noun. Elvis puts on the most active act on TV, contorting his face and body as though in great pain, whomping the daylights out of his defenceless guitar, and uttering unintelligible shrieks and groans. The latter manifestations, preserved on phonograph records, are selling like mad. A good many parents seem fearful for the future of American youth if it can see merit in Mr. Presley's aggravated assaults on the musical idiom. We would remind such worriers of their own youth. Don't they recall their parents threatening to smash the loud speaker of the battery radio if Rudy Vallee megaphoned the 'Maine Stein Song' through it once again? Or fretting over juvenile appreciation for Cab Calloway's scat lyrics? But somehow the youngsters of yesterday grew up to be the sensible citizens of today, and now Rudy's crooning and Cab's hi-de-hi sound sort of pleasantly old-fashioned. So brace up, parents of '56. In another 20 years Elvis Presley really won't seem so bad, and your grown-up teenagers will be biting their nails over the entertainment sensation of '76.""

"As with Marilyn, Liz and Marlon, Warhol instinctively understood the Elvis brand as an industrialized construct and radically revealed it as a precisely composed non-reality. Of course Elvis offered Warhol the biggest brand of all, and he accentuates this by choosing a manifestly contrived version of Elvis-the-film-star, rather than the raw genius of Elvis as performing Rock n' Roll pioneer."

"Imagine growing up in post-war Britain. Ration coupons. Rain-slick streets. Bombed-out terraces of dingy brick. And then, shimmering on the horizon, the prospect of salvation: American popular culture. Who needs spirit-sapping austerity when Elvis Presley can cheer you up?"

"If one goes to the Licensing Convention in Las Vegas, the three most iconic images of the 20th century are Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Muhammad Ali."

"In some ways, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) can already be called a success due to its democratic accountability and the active involvement of civil society, but I would like to quote the famous philosopher Elvis Presley, in one of whose timeless hits he asked for “A little less conversation, a little more action -please”. So let's listen to Elvis – and act now!"

"Chris Richards should look up the accomplishments of Elvis Presley. Presley did more to further black music than any artist on the planet. He made it acceptable and paved the way. Almost all rock historians agree. Richard's article quoted an obscure obscenity from one racist musician but did not include even one of hundreds of positive quotes from his rivals of the day, who loved Presley and his uniting spirit."

"He was causing riots wherever he went. On May 5, 1955, he was chased at intermission and across the field by a pack of women at Ladd Stadium in Mobile, right after he finished singing, which had been set to start before intermission...."

"Older than Red State versus Blue State, older than the Montagues versus the Capulets, humankind’s primal combat is the age-old conflict between the Early Birds and the Night Owls. Early Birds are those who for some reason think a sunrise is one of life’s great experiences. At their helm is Benjamin Franklin, who famously said, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”. Night Owls are those who believe the pleasure of staying up late is exceeded only by that of sleeping in the next morning—or the next afternoon, if it comes to that. Their hero is Elvis Presley, who famously said, “The sun’s down and the moon’s pretty; it’s time to ramble.”"

"Elvis Presley came to Weeki Wachee. He could have gone anywhere, but he came here. He was so good looking and he was this total, ultimate Southern gentleman. He had each one of us come up and he presented to us his latest record. He signed mine 'Warmest wishes, to Vicki. Elvis Presley". I always tell the audience before each show that I did swim, as a mermaid, for Elvis Presley and that he was so cute! But so was I in 1961!""

"They've got signs of Elvis. They got billboards of Elvis and Graceland. There should be billboards of Ja Morant. Elvis is dead… It's over. God rest his soul.”"

"It was at age 13, in 1977, when I would discover my real passion while watching the live TV coverage of Elvis Presley's funeral. I liked the immediacy of it all, and I knew right then I wanted to do that someday..."

"To me, Bob Dylan always represented rock'n'roll – I never thought of him as a folk singer or poet or nothing. I just thought he was the sexiest person since Elvis Presley"

"i)The Houston Rodeo people didn't want us to come. There was a message sent to leave the black girls, they didn't need the black girls. And so Elvis responded with, 'Well if they don't come, I don't come'. But he was really upset about it. There was one person in particular who had sent the message. So when we got there, we were greeted by this little blonde in a convertible and she had to drive us around and she was his daughter. So Elvis always made sure he got even. I'm sure he said, 'And I want your daughter to drive them'. But, when it was happening we didn't know. We learned that later ii) When in true form, he was fabulous, his voice and vocal pitch a lot more remarkable than it ever came off on record; in fact, Elvis was a much better singer than could ever be captured; you know, some singers' voices are just too big, and Elvis' was like that."

"A lot of Presley's good stuff was overlooked. Like the NME viewpoint that he died when he came out of the army. I think the opposite, his best stuff came after the army. Look, Elvis was the King right? To me, Elvis IS King 'cos he sustained it"

"I worked in a credit store and he came in to open an account. I asked his name and he wouldn't give it to me if I didn't give him mine first. LOLː Same with the phone, the address. LOL. Anyways, that's how I met him, and then he introduced me to his first cousin Gene, and it all started from there. Years later he and all his entourage were at a Cadillac dealership in downtown Memphis. It was Xmas. He gave each and every one of them a Caddy and, as he was waiting for a special Caddy he had ordered he saw an African American lady who was waiting for her husband to pick her up. So finally he shows up, with a cranky Concord. It was then that Elvis asked her how a lady of her age was s still working. And the lady said that was how all the bills would be paid, rent, etc. So, when his car finally arrived there, he gives her the car he had ordered. With all the commotion, everyone had left, the lady left, left the Concord there, and Elvis was standing in the middle of Beale Street, alone, in the middle of the night. He saw a light in a nearby store, so he asked the African American who was there cleaning to give him a ride home, as all his friends had left, and so had the African American lady, he explained. Willie, that was his name, who didn't know who Elvis was at first, told him that if he waited, he would take him to Graceland but warned him his car did not have seats in the back and that the one in the passenger side, up front, was broken, so Elvis told him he will sit anywhere to get home. Once there he asked him for his address and work number, as he didn't have a home phone. The next day Willie was invited to Graceland and when he came in, he drove there with a brand new car..."

"The medium of TV and the birth of Elvis came at exactly the same time. Before, it didn't matter as much what you looked like, with radio or records. With Elvis, it was the whole package."

"What's better than Jaden Smith rapping about Elvis Presley and driving around with Harry Potter in the most surreal of ways? Well, Jaden Smith rapping about Elvis Presley and driving around with Harry Potter in the most surreal of ways and with only other voices as his accompaniment."

"The week I started working at Federal Express was probably one of the most significant times in recent history in Memphis due to the death of the Elvis Presley. On the day after his death, we had to set up the sorting tables, yes, tables not belts since we were still doing manual sorting as we waited on the first automated sort belts to be installed. We were all working side by side for about 30 minutes and as we were all ready to leave, someone reached out to shake my hand. As he shook it, he introduced himself as Fred Smith and I then countered with "Nice to meet you, Fred and I’m Elvis Presley". I did that because all I knew about Federal Express at that time was that the founder was an enterpreneur named Fred Smith. The man turned to me and said "No, really I’m Fred Smith" and I said "No, really I’m Elvis Presley". As he walked away he turned and looked back with a slight smirk on his face and a little chuckle. A few minutes later, Mike Ducker, my first boss slapped me upside the head as he laughed at my early introduction to one Fred Smith."

"I was in Holland and our dressing room was next door to the one being used by the supergroup The Last Shadow Puppets. Anyways, I went to the toilet and who walks in but Alex Turner? He is a hero of mine and, to me, he looked like Elvis Presley..."

"Each singer (of the so-called folk variety), is recognized as much from its characteristic sound, as from what they actually sing or play, and they manipulate tone colour with a virtuosity that owes nothing to either the classical, or the Tin Pan Alley tradition; one thinks, for example, of the voice of Elvis Presley, an expressive vehicle, shifting from high to low tones, groaning, slurring, and producing breathless changes of rhythm; to many listeners, the voice may have seemed crude, but its folk immediately resided in its crudeness."

"It's like Ron Howard trying to be the Fonz. It's hard for an English rap artist to have that kind of a cool "Fonzie" effect to Americans and a wide-variety audience. So either you have to go a comical route or something, a Pee Wee Herman-route. I don't know, something! You've got to come with something other than trying to be Elvis Presley."