Actors From Mississippi

"Mickey Mantle's mystique is unquantifiable. He's like Clint Eastwood and Elvis Presley. There's something there. An aura. The manliness of all three of them. Each of them is a classic in their field."

"From his eerie 1954 reading of “Blue Moon” up to 1976's “Hurt,” Elvis established himself as a pre-eminent ballad singer, something a lot of people forget in the flurry to hail his anarchic rock material. “It Hurts Me” from 1963 isn't the first great ballad of his career, but it's one of the finest. Recorded in Nashville at the same session which yielded his supple version of Chuck Berry's “Memphis, Tennessee,” “It Hurts Me” fuses Elvis' love for gospel melisma with the heartache of a lover forced to stand on the sidelines of a romance. He approaches the song — a forbearer of the Four Seasons' “Silence Is Golden” — at first delicately, as if he's afraid any force would snap the song's tension. By the second bar, the song is all tension, with the pain of watching the right woman with the wrong man becoming too much to bear. When the roaring finale comes sweeping through, its two minutes and some-odd seconds seem to have encompassed a lifetime of anguish."

"As a youngster I discovered what I could do almost by accident. I grew up in Lima, where my father was a folk singer and my mother managed a pub that presented live music. So, as a teenager, I would sometimes sing a variety of popular songs from Elvis Presley onwards. I was drawn to music from the start so I started guitar lessons at 11 and began to learn music theory at about 14. Then I started to write my own songs but always this was pop-oriented. It was only when I entered the National Music Conservatory at age 17, that I started to discover classical music. In fact, I came late to classical music, preferring instead pop music and Elvis Presley."

"I learned music listening to Elvis' records. His measurable effect on culture and music was even greater in England than in the States.""

"No, because Vince is Elvis Presley. Elvis never did Johnny Carson even once. I get asked more about what kind of guy Vince McMahon is than anybody else in the wrestling business."

"Elvis....Elvis Presley.............. Im all shook up"

"After Elvis goes through basic training, he should do entertaining. That's what I did did five years ago — and it was the greatest experience of my life. I don't know what he's got. Certainly, he's no singer; even he must admit that. Maybe it's the beat. All the rock 'n' roll singers have it, and the beat seems to be important in today's market. And frankly, I don't think Elvis is right in the way he plays on the emotions of the young girls."

"Nobody ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and all I wanted to be was Elvis Presley. But listening to Elvis was not allowed."

"I want him to have an earring hanging from his tongue. He is the REAL love of my life. When I am with him, and I walk with him, is like being with Elvis Presley."

"Not wanting to spoil anyone's party, but in the context of the Grand Bear market of that time, and it certainly was a Very Grand Global Bear Market, the demise of Lehman Brothers was by no means the most important event, and it happened quite late on the timeline as well. Today, books have been written and the event features in a number of documentaries, while the question "Where were you when Lehman went bankrupt?" sits right up there with 9/11, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of Elvis Presley."

"People say “If Elvis had been a more astute businessman or taken more interest in the workings of his career, he would have been a much bigger star.” But God Almighty, he made more money than anybody I know of. And next to Jesus and Coca-Cola, nothing’s any better known than Elvis Presley..."

"It's like people saying Elvis Presley was only famous because he was white. He had, y'know, the rhythm of James Brown but he had his own thing. He was Elvis, he wasn't just a white man. Things like that are going to be picked up between black people and white people and anybody, it doesn't mean a person is or isn't great because they're influenced by something associated with another race. It doesn't matter. Anyway, that period was different, like when he was there, they were stopping everything, and he had the moment for real. While I'm here, its not all about 50 Cent, but it was all about Elvis.”"

"Priscilla was a bride in a sort of fallow land. Elvis took her to Graceland when still a teenager, put her in "pause", then married her once she became a woman.."

"At that moment, Ali seemed to me to be not so much a measuring stick against other great heavyweights such as Louis, Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano, as of Elvis Presley. Elvis was the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, The Greatest in his own sphere, a man who was both drawn to and repelled by the limelight he so easily attracted. And I wondered if the golden cage of fame, sought by many, attained by few, was all it was cracked up to be when Muhammad Ali embarked on his quest to put himself on a pedestal unknown to any boxer. In 1993, the United States Postal Service conducted a nationwide poll to determine which version of Elvis Presley should appear on a commemorative stamp. One version was of the 1956 lean and hip-swiveling Elvis; the other was the 1970s sequin-jump-suited and noticeably plumper Las Vegas model. The vote was, of course, a landslide for the young Elvis. Were a similar vote be put to the American public for an Ali stamp, one being the young, sleek and impossibly gifted boxer who did things no heavyweight had done before or since, or the older, retired Ali who was cited for his humanitarian and philanthropic contributions to society, the outcome would be as preordained as had been the one for Elvis. That class of humanitarians and philanthropists might be in short supply, but they still are more plentiful than individuals who can perform feats of athletic excellence that can make mere mortals gasp in amazement."

"It's been more than five decades, but there's still such freshness to the recording, such unexpectedness bursting through the familiarity. Scotty Moore and Bill Black, on guitar and upright bass, hang on for all they're worth, trying to keep up with this crazy kid as Elvis's voice – urgent, insinuating – floats out over the beat, a croon that joins joy and nerves and arrogance (already you can hear his sneer), and that voice turns almost spectral as it slides into its upper register whenever it comes to allll ri-iiiiii-ght. (Forget “E pluribus unum’’ or “In God we trust.’’ The words that should appear on our currency are “That’s all right. What I was hearing transcended beauty..."

"I have enjoyed a lot of songs of various genres in my life but Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and John Denver are my favorite American male singers."

"Well I did a couple of movies with Elvis, he was really fun to work with, a really nice guy"

"John and Paul hit it off very quickly. There was something both of them had that just locked together. Perhaps it was a crazy kind of attitude towards life, a contemptuous mockery that later became the trademark of the four Beatles, or perhaps it was just a teenage friendship that stuck. As far as John was concerned, Paul was not only a good guitarist – as good as John himself – but he also resembled their mutual idol, Elvis.”"

"Teenagers dominated the mid-20th century, the term being invented only in the 1930s, and no one gave them more visibility than Elvis Presley, who began his own career at 18, embodying the teen desire for liberation from their parents' culture and mirroring their more open sexuality, as he gave youth everywhere in the world music to call their own."

"Elvis Presley shared the soul of black music's best performers. He was a reflection of our life experience"."

"I was fortunate enough to auction Elvis Presley's jet, which was kind of cool"

"Elvis Presley would probably have to be my biggest musical influence. After all, he was from the same region as I am and it inspired me to continue my music career into college, even though my major is architecture."

"Had he not kissed, he'd be our Jesus."

"Then candidate Joe Biden, didn't even run for President in 2020. The press ran for him against Donald Trump. In fact, there were more Elvis sightings in the summer of 2020 than Biden's sightings"

"The moment I first saw him, the presence he had, wow, he was so beautiful, and had such a charisma that no one could even utter a word. Anyways, a couple of days later, at the MGM Commissary, which was a gigantic place, you know, full of stars, directors, I was seated in a table, my back was facing the door, and then everybody started to get up, and they were all rushing outside, so I turned around and you know, when you are trying to look through a glass, with the sun behind you, so you kind of cover your face, and it was Elvis, outside, looking for me, inside, so there he was, at one of the lowest times in his career, and all 700 people, many celebrities themselves, rush and try to meet him. He almost didn't have a chance to survive THAT kind of celebrity..."

"I remember when I first saw Elvis, I had been playing guitar since I was 8, so then I saw him I said, WOW, finally people are gonna know what a guitar is. (After him) it was cool to have a guitar around your neck, when before, it wasn't""

"In 1956, cast me as a bullfighter in the film adaptation of 's "The Sun Also Rises", with most of the cast as well as Hemingway himself opposing me. But when Zanuck saw me learning the trade in Mexico, he said “The kid stays in the picture. And anybody who doesn’t like it can quit.” By 1957, when the film opened, I was receiving more mail than anyone else at Twentieth Century Fox, apart from Elvis Presley."

"I really am a big Elvis fan – at six foot three I’m one of the biggest. In all the excitement about accompanying the Beatles to their meeting with Elvis, I sent my suit to the cleaners to prepare for the big meeting. However, the cleaners had sewn up my pockets where I kept a bunch of guitar picks that I always had on hand for the boys. So, inevitably when Elvis asked for a guitar pick that night, I went into a panic. I couldn’t access the picks in my sewn-up pockets, so I frantically ran into the kitchen and smashed up a bunch of plastic spoons to create makeshift picks. I’d have loved to have given Elvis a pick, have him play it, then got it back and had it framed."

"I guess I should have set a price before I set foot in the boat, but I felt pretty ritzy later that day as we stepped into our gondola. "How much to sing "O Sole Mio?" I asked. I had been taken with the song and Venice since seeing it in movies. If there was one piece of music associated with Venice and its canals, it was this. I knew that Pavarotti had recorded it. So had Caruso. And Mario Lanza. And Elvis Presley, recently released from the Army, had a version written for him called "It's Now Or Never." Without missing a beat the gondolieri told me, "Sixty dollars, U.S." He put his oar in the water and we splashed off. He was a pretty good singer, actually, and I imagined that we were in an old MGM Technicolor musical. My wife Roz was smiling and I was thinking, Yeah, this is a magical moment. I thought about imagining this moment from the time I was growing up in Brooklyn, and that I probably never would have wanted anything better. When we had gotten married all those years before, taking a gondola on a Venice canal, listening to "O Sole Mio" and "It's now or never", it wasn't something I even dared consider. It would have been a fantasy. Now, I was living that fantasy as we held hands and he wound up with a full-throated last note. When the sail ended, I peeled off three twenty-dollar bills, and thanked him. We walked away, humming."

"It had been expected for a half a million dollars to be raised from the music festival which included appearances by Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson, the Staple Singers, the Dells and others, including the Rolling Stones. With the money raised, plans had been made to use part of it for some work to be done on the Robert F. Kennedy Park and Playground in Fayette. More than 47 years later, the then Mayor Charles Evers finally revealed that Presley, who along with the Stones did not participate in the festival, had wanted to come and perform there, especially because of his being a huge follower of B.B. King. Evers said he and his brother, Medgar, fought for change because they knew Mississippi would be the greatest state in the nation if that change took place. With the nomination of Evelyn Gandy, James Hardy, Aaron Henry, Ida B. Wells and Elvis he now believes Mississippi is one of the greatest states to live in..."

"By virtue of Elvis Presley being Mississippi's most beloved son."

"Well, Jesus and I are Capricorns, and Elvis Presley was born on the same day as me. I read an article the other day about only children and about they being more successful because they never have to compete for love,"

"Alemayehu Eshete is one of the most popular singers to emerge from the golden age of music in the capital Addis Ababa. His “rock n roll funk” stylings and Elvis manner of dress and way of acting has given him “dint of rampant Americanism,” as well as the nickname of The Ethiopian Elvis,"

""I was in Washington studying music and wanted to meet the perfect boyfriend, get married, etc. But for some reason I also wanted to visit a convent in Nashville but had no money to finance the trip, so a friend who was going to Graceland to pay her respects offered me a ride and, as a result and thank God for Elvis, I became a nun!!"

"i) And as a human being? As long as I live, I know I will never see anyone have such a profound effect on people. He could make anyone feel like he was the most important person in the world just by talking with him. He had charisma and charm that is just indescribable and he didn't even have to sing. When Elvis entered a room, you could feel the energy of his presence tingle at your nerves because the power of his magnetism was that intense and Elvis was just as perplexed by this phenomenon as you or I. He was a humble man but keenly aware of his unique gifts and spent most of his life searching the spirituality, over and over throughout his life asking himself, Why me? Since his death I have asked myself the same question, “why me?” and why, of all the people Elvis met in the service, did he pay special attention to me? In fact, why was I even in the Army? Did destiny lead me into the Army for the sole purpose of meeting Elvis Presley? Why was I selected to become “right hand man to the most celebrated entertainer in history, and to be chosen by Elvis Presley as a best man at his wedding? ii) When you worked for Elvis it wasn’t eight hours a day or 10 hours a day. It was 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because we did everything together. went on vacations together, traveled together. Everything we ever did we all did it together."

"In 1982, we went to Washington DC, and did the tour of the FBI Building, visited Pres. Kennedy's grave at Arlington Memorial and had our pictures taken outside the White House. From there we went to Graceland. Pablo loved Elvis. While we were there he bought his entire record collection. From that moment on, he played his tapes all the time, even danced like him. In 1991, when we first surrendered to the Colombian Army authorities, that collection was one of the few things he took to prison with him. When we escaped from prison a year later, we could not take it with us even if we had wanted to. The reason? It had been just stolen by a jail mate, something Pablo deeply regretted..."

"I would occasionally miss the bus that took me from my post back to my living quarters. When that happened, a fellow soldier in my battalion, the most celebrated soldier in the Army, Elvis Presley, who lived a few doors away would offer me a ride. And despite all the hoopla surrounding his military service, he remained remarkably humble and grounded. I'd first met him at Fort Hood in Texas and saw each other every day while we finished training in a M48 tank battalion. After six months, our company was then shipped off to Germany. There Elvis lived a few doors from me. In fact, throngs of German girls camped out in front of his residence. If he revealed in all the attention, he didn’t show it, was kind of on the shy side and wasn’t one to shout out, ‘I’m Elvis Presley the superstar.’ He just kind of kept to himself. But keeping to himself also didn't mean he was aloof. Out in the field, he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty and never shied away from the work that was expected of him, and the rest of the tank company. After our two-year enlistment ended we parted ways and wouldn't see each other again until 1972, a short time before he was to play a concert at the old Chicago Stadium. I knew a Chicago police watch commander who was working security that night and although the police tried to stop us, my wife and I, from getting backstage at first, Elvis saw them and talked with them for a few minutes. It was the last time we would see or talk to him."

"When I visited Graceland, I expected rhinestones and shag carpet. I didn’t expect to be emotionally moved. As I toured the house, I found myself increasingly wrapped up in the story of Elvis’s private life. Graceland uses iPads and headphones for self-guided tours, which provide narration, archival images and options that allow you to learn more about each room. I hadn’t fully appreciated how versatile Elvis was as an artist — or how young. He recorded his first song at 18, and by 23 he was already a global star. And by 42, he was gone. As I made my way through the complex, I was struck by the epic scale of Elvis’s short-but-eventful life. In just 42 years, Elvis made more than 30 films, performed over 1,600 live shows and built a fan base that spanned the globe. The tour gave me a sense for his charisma, kindness and crowd-pleasing charm, but also the fatigue, the pressure and the toll of his relentless fame. For me, the most moving part of the tour was the Meditation Garden, Elvis’s final resting place. He is buried there alongside his parents, grandmother and a memorial to his stillborn twin brother. The space is quiet with flowers, fountains and a low stone wall that curves around the graves. After all the flash and fame on display, this part of Graceland tells a more personal story, one that feels unexpectedly tender.Before going to Graceland, I thought I had a pretty clear picture of Elvis, from his early stardom to Vegas glitz. But being there added layers I didn’t expect. Graceland is not just a museum about a musician: it’s a window into a unique American life and a reflection of the era that shaped it."

"In keeping with the spirit of the week, Senator Ernst introduced the "Cost Openness and Spending Transparency Act (COST Act) after a report released this week from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified several government projects which did not follow the guidelines, incluiding a $90,000 NIH study focused on a sour cream and onion flavored potato chip resembling Elvis Presley."

"Yes, life has taught me not to leave anything for tomorrow. I've made a list, some are personal, intimate, others are places I have to visit before I die, like going to Japan, which I did two weeks ago. And, it all actually started when I was at the intensive care unit, and all I kept thinking was that I wasn't going to make it to see Elvis' house."

"The so called “self-lecture” series meets during one day of the month, allowing anyone to give a lecture in one of our halls on any topic to do with culture — ranging from Peter the Great's insistence on exhibiting fleas at the oldest museum in Russia, the Kunstkamera all the way to arguing about the finer points of Elvis Presley's music. This is a chance not just for the audience-attendance being always free-to-learn something new and interesting but also for the orator to practice public speaking and get even more immersed in a topic of interest."

"The idea of Elvis Presley cherishing the Book of Mormon had captured the popular imagination of Latter-day Saints. The story of this book has been told by fireside speakers, classroom teachers, newspaper columnists, and an independent filmmaker. And the story continues to circulate throughout the market for “uplifting” books and social media. However, after carefully analyzing the historical opportunities for Presley to have read this volume and the handwriting throughout its pages, I affirm that Elvis Presley did not write in this Book of Mormon. A detailed presentation of the analysis with photographic evidence will be published in a forthcoming issue of BYU Studies, but my findings about the book's history, its forged signature, and its forged annotations are as of this moment, final"

"I do not think they should meet Elvis through the efforts of any newspaper representative. In my view, the meeting can only be arranged as entirely private and unpublished. It is absolutely inadvisable to allow any pressman or photographer to interview, or take pictures whilst they are in his house."

"On the sunny side, there was that moment, during Pres. Trump's 2019 State of the Union address, when the place erupted with a gusty/lusty HAPPY BIRTHDAY. This was to honor a man in the audience Trump saluted for valor in surviving first the Holocaust and then the Pittsburgh “Tree of Life” massacre – and now his 81st birthday. There was nearly breakdancing and moonwalking in the balconies of Congress. Decorum be damned. We are Americans. Freedom is our bequest. Frivolity is our nature. I saw the same gusto at the Navy base in Haifa; also for an impromptu birthday. They are Israelis. Their love of life and country runs so deep they can't sit still and prefer to party, as it was that day in America. For where else but in America and Israel would a solemn occasion turn spontaneously to rock and roll? Try that in the parliaments of other countries while the leader speaks, and see who comes out alive. Instead, we insist on joy. We celebrate our freedoms through acts of whimsy. Long ago we traded in their Richard Wagner for our Elvis Presley."

"Elvis Presley is the supreme socio-culture icon in the history of pop culture..."

"He personified a new form of American popular music in the mid-1950s. Rock and roll was a guitar-based sound with a strong (if loose) beat that drew equally on African American and white traditions from the southern United States, on blues, church music, and country music. Presley’s rapid rise to national stardom revealed the new cultural and economic power of both teenagers and teen-aimed media—records, radio, television, and motion pictures."

"When it was announced in early 1958 that Presley had been drafted and would enter the U.S. Army, there was that rarest of all pop culture events, a moment of true grief. More important, he served as the great cultural catalyst of his period, projecting a mixed vision of humility and self-confidence, of intense commitment and comic disbelief in his ability to inspire frenzy. He inspired literally thousands of musicians—initially those more or less like-minded Southerners, from Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins on down, who were the first generation of rockabillies, and, later, people who had far different combinations of musical and cultural influences and ambitions. From John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan to Prince, it was impossible to think of a rock star of any importance who did not owe an explicit debt to Presley."

"So his mother Julia took him to services at the St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Pittsburgh every weekend, several masses back-to-back on Sunday. I filmed in that church where you see the iconostasis that includes several images of saints with gold leaf paint, in very static poses with a gesture. Those look very similar to Andy’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, and even “Triple Elvis.” Many art historians believe that Andy internalized and absorbed the formal look of those icons and also the almost-glamor that they projected within his world growing up...."

"The first time I laid eyes on him was a couple of years before I met and worked with him. He got out of a white Cadillac, on his way to the theatre he had rented on Memphis, he was on the sidewalk and I was at a distance of three feet from him, and I kept walking and remember thinking that I had never seen a better looking person in my life, like if he wasn't real. He was cute..."

"I'll tell you one thing. One respect I do have for that guy was that, well, obviously he was a great artist. When I was trying to learn "Jailhouse Rock" for the "Without me" video, I was like "Man, this guy could dance!!""