American Country Singers

"Then, in 1954, Elvis happened. The influence that the softly spoken Mississippi native had on popular music – and in particular rockabilly – is incalculable. First billed as 'The Hillbilly Cat' (again a nod towards black and white influences), the boy with the seemingly rubber limbs sang both blues and country songs infused with elements of this new rockabilly movement to the bemusement of a music industry not yet aware of the significance of what they were listening to. They didn't know it at the time, but the music establishment had just changed forever. Two years later he signed with RCA and the ensuing exposure he received on national television introduced rockabilly to its widest audience yet and, like fire to kindling, there was no stopping its spread. Other labels swooped to sign up any artists who sang even vaguely similar to Elvis and there was a bona fide musical gold rush underway and record executives and studio bigwigs fell over themselves to capitalise on this musical trend which was now sweeping the nation – ultimately playing a big part in rockabilly's eventual downfall, as more and more people tried to make money from it, (thus) watering down its raunchiness as they tried to make it appear to as large a market as possible, and (finally) taming its sound beyond recognition."

"With him, it's the pictures that spoke loudest about the man behind the genius. Take Sunday Times photographer Chris Smith's classic shot in which a scowling Seve, handsome head turned from the driving rain, jacket held across his chest like a matador's cape, and he is curling his lip. It tells you everything you need to know about his mood, his game, and his grim determination to outfox the elements and annihilate his opponent. It's pure Elvis."

"I don't think any two men on this planet ever had the charisma of Elvis Presley and Jackie Wilson. The two of them remind me of each other: the charisma"

"Presley's voice was remarkable in the sense that, through it, he touched people in a way only great artists can do. (In fact), the people he touched are as diverse as humanity itself and, because of that his popularity has transcended race, class, national boundaries, and culture. There is no simple answer about why that is so, all I can say is he had that magic. When Elvis Presley was first popular, many people said that he did not have a good voice. Almost everyone, today, knows that he did, but more people today should see him not simply as a performer, but as an artist with a great soul."

"He was fantastic. When he danced, the people danced, the girls would actually faint because of what he was doing. The people didn't care if he was white or black, he was a good artist and they felt his music."

"i) We can even hazard a little analysis as to what made his voice so appealing. "That curious baritone," one critic called it. Actually, that is inexact. The voice had mixed propensities, hovering between tenor and bass and everything in between. Even a convincing falsetto lay within his range. One thing he was not, ever, was "Steve-'n-Edie", the polished, professionally accomplished Vegas artistes who once pronounced on an afternoon interview show (Mr. Lawrence enunciating the sentiment for himself and his partner/wife, Ms. Gorme), "We don't really think of Elvis as a singer. But he was a star." It is only when, years later, one gets past the indignation of hearing such apparent ignorance, that the sense of the observation becomes clear. A singer is someone like Steve Lawrence rolling effortlessly (and meaninglessly) through a shlock-standard like "What Now, My Love?". More or less like doing the scales. A star is the persona in whom one invests one's vicarious longings, a being who is constantly hazarding — and intermittently succeeding at — the impossible stretches that every soul wishes to attempt but lacks the means or the will to. It's not a matter of virtuosity. ii) Take My Baby Left Me (1956) by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, the black Mississippi sharecropper whose That's All Right had literally been Elvis' first recording, in 1954. Crudup kept his blues in a bucket; Elvis put the lid on, and cooked; bar by bar, the song comes together; first comes D.J. Fontana's rapped-out drum riff, then a top-to-bottom run from Bill Black's stand-up bass, then the controlled gallop of Scotty Moore's lead guitar; then, last of all, Elvis singing in that imperious velvet growl of his, "Yes, my baby left me! Never said a word"; it is the most underestimated song in the canon; there is lightning in that bucket, and it could drive a train, any train. It literally took us into a new age. Endow a university! Elvis was a university. Whoever those mystics are who teach that the universe began with sound could use him as their full curriculum""

"In May of 1998 I was in the middle of an Elvis Presley obsession, so I went to Graceland. Everything about the place seemed awesome to me, from the giant Corinthian columns out front, to the purple and yellow room with three televisions built into the wall, to the big man’s grave out back. But what has stuck with me the most from the visit is a particular story about Elvis. Elvis had grown up poor, and I’m sure when he was poor money was important. But when he started to make more money than he could ever spend, or maybe just enough money to have every material thing he wanted, it no longer held importance to him. So, during a party at Graceland he was inside with a guest who came from a poor background, and the other partygoers were outside on the lawn. His friend commented on how sophisticated all of the partygoers seemed. Elvis walked over to his desk, pulled a stack of money from one of the drawers, opened a window, and threw the bills out the window. The partygoers scrambled after the bills, shoving each other, trying to grab as much money as they could. Elvis turned to his friend and said, “They’re not that sophisticated.”"

"I'm living proof that Elvis was a pretty good driver. As innocent as the BMW 507 with its white paintwork might have looked, with a 150-horsepower V8 under the bonnet, it was something very special and Elvis drove like a maniac! Foot hard on the gas, then hard on the brakes, switching between lanes, slaloming between cars – it was like all hell had broken loose. (I was scared), and as a result wasn't quite able to enjoy the experience. The unvarnished truth is that I was just happy that we managed to get the car back to the dealership without a scratch on it. That short time I spent with Elvis was wonderful, though. The next day, I wrote to my mother , saying that I'd driven 100 miles up the autobahn with Elvis Presley. She thought I was kidding.”"

"Did I? That was extremely immodest and foolish of me, my apologies. I would never dare to be so presumptuous. I am only interested in the legacy my father has left behind, and I would like to work towards giving it strength and respect for as long as I live."

"I doubt it, although he did record "Any Day Now", and that’s one of those things where you think, “Great!”, and you hear it and it’s not so great. It was the same thing with Frank Sinatra and the Count Basie band, with Quincy Jones producing. They did "Wives and Lovers", which is in 3/4 time, but they did it in 4/4. I said, “Quincy, what happened?” He said: “The Basie band can’t play in 3/4.”"

"I was about to say you were doing a disservice to fat Elvis who had much more dignity than Donald Trump does right now. What the hell is he talking about? He doesn’t have a clue. That’s just sad.”"

"1) Ed Sheeran 2) Will Smith 3) James Cordon 4) Peter Kay 5) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 6) Elvis Presley 7) Prince Harry 8) Michael Jackson 9) Beyonce and 10) Kim Kardashian"

"When Elvis came back from the service and he was greeted by all the publicity, the press, the photographers, reporters, and so forth, someone said to him "Well, what do you think now that you're not number one but Avalon is ?" And he said " Oh, I love his song "Venus" and there's room for everybody." And I thought that was really genuine, nice compliment."

"Coming upon these tapes, unspooling them and watching them glide across an Ampex 440 reel-to-reel deck for the first time was the closest I'll ever get to being a real life . Beyond the staggering realization of what we had found, there was a musical element that also knocked our socks off: On these tapes Glen is singing pure rock and roll and with a sense of joy, passion and wild abandon that can only have come from knowing that his idol, the avatar Elvis Presley, would be an audience of one for these recordings.”"

"Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business. He was white, but he sang black. It wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time. Did I have any sense of how big he was going to be when he first came to RCA? Oh yeah, we knew. Back in those days, if a guy got hot in one area you could spread it around the country, maybe the world. He was already so big in East Texas and Louisiana you couldn't get him off stage with a firehose. We knew. When he came in to do “Heartbreak Hotel” I called up my wife and told her to come over. I said, You might not get a chance to see him again, he's gonna get so damn big."

"In times of trouble, I put my faith in Elvis Presley, who represented the South's better angels. He was a hard worker, and although he lived the high life, he never forgot that he had been born into poverty. And he was a self-made talent, perhaps the greatest entertainer of all time, born in a two-room shack in Tupelo, Miss., in 1935. I've been to that small shotgun house many times, reflecting on what it says about America. Greatness can be born anywhere. His father Vernon was a laborer who was often out of work, and the Presleys relied on the kindness of family and neighbors to get them through the hard times.When Elvis was young, the Presleys lost it, and they ended up shuttling around Tupelo, often living in black neighborhoods, where Elvis famously developed an ear for black gospel and blues to supplement his love of the old-time gospel he knew from his own church.I still believe in my heart that most Southerners are still more like Elvis than President Trump. We are most likely to pull over and help someone stranded on the roadside. Most of the people I know in my Mississippi town would give you the shirt off their backs. Most Southern preachers don't spend Sundays in the pulpit spewing hatred and intolerance. Most people agree that racism and white supremacy are evil. Even preschoolers know it's always better to tell the truth and take your lumps than lie and evade. And yet here we are. We know right from wrong, but most of us down here voted for wrong. As Elvis once said, “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away."

"Princesses Margrit of Denmark (now HRH, the Queen of Denmark), Margaret of Sweden and I, were assigned to represent the people of Scandinavia on the SAS' maiden intercontinental flight to Los Angeles. We went to Disneyland, then to the Paramount Studios. He was making a film, we watched him sing a song and then he greeted us. He was very polite, a man with an M in capital letters. He was very pretty, had been our idol and we three had heard all his records, seen all his movies, so when I found out he had died, I was very saddened."

"I found him to be an interesting person, had an entourage of good old boys, was busy with karate, breaking his hand while doing it, but he was nice and cooperative and friendly. I really liked him."

"Where were you when you learned of Elvis Presley's death? I was at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center near Juneau, Alaska, escorting a group of senior adults. Like JFK’s assassination, the first moon landing and 9/11, it's one of the events engraved in our memory, at least for us of a certain age. Elvis may have left the building for the last time 46 years ago, but he is still very much a part of our lives."

"He was stationed in Germany doing his service so on the occasion he would go visit Paris coinciding with my time there. On his first visit, he took 40 dancing girls from the Lido to the Prince des Galles Hotel. On his next, he suddenly took a great shine to me but when someone told him I was trans-sexual, he stayed away. But, if by chance we would be in the same club, he would sent me a bottle of champagne every time. He was a divine human being."

"And he left the game wanting. I think Bjorn could have won the U.S. Openan the Grand Slam. But by the time he left, the historical challenge didn't mean anything. He was bigger than the game. He was like Elvis or Liz Taylor or somebody. He'd lost touch with the real world"

"I am the greatest contemporary artist of all-time."

"Arguably some of the most important tracks in the history of Rock and Roll, Elvis' SUN recordings demonstrate what a dynamic and talented vocalist he was; the young, raw, unadulterated Elvis whom musicologist Francis Davis once called "the greatest white blues singer”; I'm not one to argue with Mr. Davis."

"Naming the single greatest cultural icon of the 20th century is subjective and highly debatable, but Elvis Presley's claim is one of the strongest. His unparalleled influence on music, fashion, and youth culture fundamentally reshaped popular entertainment and made him a global symbol of rebellion and charisma."

"Of course, it was 1957, he had a beautiful blonde on the back of his motorcycle. Now, I wasn't watching the blonde and I didn't know who he was, so I took him down to the Las Vegas police station where I then worked and I gave him a pass..."

"My cuban blood was flowing. My hips were revolving. I would have made Elvis look as if he was standing still"

"I'm definitively going to make a record with him. You would be surprised what we could do together. You ask me if I think he is good. How many Cadillacs was it he bought.? That boy's no fool..."

"When my cousin, four years older than me, played me two and a half minutes of music, which changed my life. That music was Elvis Presley, singing Hound Dog, and for the next six months – to my mother's absolute horror – I didn't want to hear anything but the rawest rock'n'roll I could lay my hands on. Do you know? For those who didn’t live through the Fifties, it’s really hard to imagine the enormous cultural gulf which existed between England and America at that time. Elvis himself was a God and in some of the first footage that we saw in England, seemed to us like an alien super being from a distant universe."

"The biggest surprise about his singing had been revealed when he gave us a private concert and sang "Love me tender" a soft, ultra-slow ballad at the quaint music bungalow on the far west side of 20th Century lot. It was away from the bustle of traffic and from the big stages and it looked like the kind of cottage Walt Disney would have built for Snow White and Prince Charming. This was where Elvis felt relaxed, comfortable. So Ken Darby sat at the grand piano at the far end of the living room and Elvis stood a few feet behind him and in front of a tall stained-glass window. He stood erect, as if he was in a choir. Ken started to play the soft melody and I hardly knew that Elvis had started to sing, as his voice, barely louder than the piano, was pitched slightly higher than his usual. It had a lot of resonance and vibration and Elvis was on-key for every note, no matter how long, short, high or low. When he finished, it seemed only normal to express our amazement. "People think all I can do is belt, I used to sing nothing but ballads before I went professional. I love to sing slow, but seldom get to do it", he said, then continued to explain that, as a boy, an only child, he would sing like that when he sang with his mother and dad in church. "It was a small church, only seated about 75, you couldn't sing too loud there.""

""Are You Lonesome Tonight?” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on Nov. 28, 1960, becoming Elvis' 15th No. 1 single. It would remain at the top of the chart for six weeks and nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Performance by a Pop Single Artist and Best Male Vocal Performance. A live version recorded in 1969 in which Elvis cracks up laughing almost throughout the spoken-word section would be a minor hit in England in the 1980s. At one point in that recording, Elvis becomes even more amused at one of his backup singers, who continues her part despite his laughter. That singer was Cissy Houston – Whitney Houston's mother."

"( After a year of playing Elvis Presley on the screen), is still talking like him Not a bad person to be stuck talking like. Unfortunately, his next project is "The Jerry Lewis Story" LOL."

"It was the early 1970s. I was 22, working in some little show in a hotel that's now gone, and he was doing a gig at the Las Vegas Hilton. We met backstage at a Tom Jones concert, then he showed me some karate moves, with a small party of folks ending up at his penthouse suite. There, he turned to me and said he had something to show me in his bedroom, so I thought, 'Oh, here comes the cliche,’ Turns out, he just wanted to read to me from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet.” It was a sweet moment, as he sat on a footstool beside me and read like a child, his finger following the text. He signed the book, gave it to me and told me to have a blessed life. He was so sweet, that's what struck me the most. In retrospect, I view him as a prisoner of his fame. That, and his roots in gospel music and the church, fueled his desire to seek out more knowledge about the world and self-realization."

"One day while he and Richard Davis were conversing he removed the watch from his wrist, handing it to Davis and stating there was something wrong with the back of it. When Davis turned the timepiece over to inspect it, he saw to his great surprise that the case back had been inscribed, "To Richard, From E.P. Elvis then said, "I guess it's yours now". He was known for being extremely generous, often giving away his valuable personal belongings as presents so it was not surprising that he gifted his prized 18kt yellow gold Buckingham to Davis."

"I have visited Graceland and you could see the man was overwhelmingly honest. He never professed any taste other than his own, that is, country boy made good. He never pretended to be anyone else."

"I want to celebrate his life. He was so gifted, I just cherish his memory, his generosity, and he was so private, like I am. He knew about honour, and respect, and was so considerate, and his manners, and the way he was so civilized. And as an entertainer he will never be repeated. I wanted him to know all that, and I did tell him, but very few others did..."

"In Vegas, we'd meet and we'd talk about everything. Slowly he started coming over to see my show; he'd sit up there and I'd come back after the show and we'd talk music. He would show up, this incredible God-like figure. He had everything, and the voice —what a great voice he had. Then, on August 17, 1977 I happened to be in Las Vegas, so when I turned on the news and learned of his death, I cried all day. He was a cool, nice man."

"Beto, he's a rock star right now, he's Elvis Presley,"

"After doing ‘Dr. No’ with , the brass at Paramount proposed that I co-star with Elvis. At first I turned the offer down, mainly because after having dated , I had imagined Elvis to be an "ordinary" person. So they organized a meet-up and, to my amazement, I immediately fell for his charm. He was extremely well educated and when I told him I hated Rock and that I liked Gospel, he gave me his entire collection of gospel songs. Little did I know that was his main source of inspiration. Anyways, we became instant friends and he loved to cook for me when we were on location. He told me he would have loved to live in Europe and, when I told him my husband had sold our , he gave me another as a present. Twenty years later, in 1982, I auctioned the one Elvis gave me for US$300,000 and then the person who bought it from me later sold it for 1.2 million (USS dollars). He was in fact, a one in a billion type, a wholly adorable person and we remained in touch till his death."

"His latest album, "Piano", is a collection of his past work, stripped down so all you hear is his beloved piano. It was hearing an Elvis Presley song that sparked his passion for the piano when he was young."

"Unbelievable! To hear my father grouped together with Elvis Presley, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, it's a dream."

"I discovered the blues in a funny kind of a way, from the age of seven when I was listening to my father's war-time collection of big band jazz. It had that thing about it – I didn't really know what it was –, that set the pulse racing a bit; and then I heard echoes of it again, with early Elvis Presley."

"After one of Elvis Presley's last shows, I was heading back to my car when a matron from Zachary stopped me and gushed about how wonderful he had been. Didn't you just LOVE him?" she asked. "Well, I thought he looked tired and sick and was just going through the motions." Whereupon she whacked me on the head with the rolled-up Elvis poster she was carrying. LOL. I took it in stride — nobody ever said it was easy being a music critic. ..."

"Obama is like Elvis, there will always be demand for impersonators of such popular and historical people."

"Rock n' roll, through Elvis, became a target of southern segregationists, who believed that race mixing led, inevitably, to miscegenation and that exposure to black culture promoted juvenile delinquency and sexual immorality"

"It embodies everything I look for in a tune, simple and striking at the same time"

"I was standing in the hallway, just before the show, and one of the managers told him there was a girl on the telephone who was in the hospital. She said she had tickets for the show but couldn't come as she had a serious illness. And Elvis said, 'I want to talk to her', so he marched into a room and held up the entire show for fifteen minutes to talk to that girl, asking her several questions, with warmth and interest. Just before hanging up, I remember he said, 'No, honey I don't have a blue Cadillac. I've got a pink one, a black one, a white one – a pause, and then he said, oh yeah, I do have a blue one'. He was a gentleman and I respected that immensely."

"Let us remember that Elvis’s style — which often included all-leather outfits and flashy jumpsuits — was also controversial for its mid-century time period. So, is Post Malone truly our modern-day Presley? Judging by his care-free attitude and penchant for leather Cuban heeled boots —another, Presley favorite—the verdict would appear to be yes."

"As a child, I saw Elvis Presley. So that was something, I mean he was this person with a guitar and that was the image I wanted to be. I wanted to be a musician so I got my first guitar when I was thirteen years old, and I felt, oh man, now that I have the guitar, I got the music. But it started from that...."

"When Elvis Presley died in 1977 I was no more than six. On that summer night in August I was sitting between my parents in my grandfather’s house in Italy where we were spending the summer holiday. We were watching television, then delivering to viewers the news of his death, with scenes of fans wailing at the departure of the artist who had engaged the world with his music and gyrating dancing, and personal charisma that made him adored by girls and an inspiration for boys. Last Thursday, at around midnight I received a call from one of my friends telling me that Michael Jackson had died, and one website confirmed the news even before CNN had. Both of them died, and there have still been those who say that death has not touched them and that they still live amongst us with their music and greatness."

"I remember we were in his bathroom, he took my hand, asked me to sit down in a black leather chair, said some beautiful things and then he asked me to marry him."