American Country Singers

"Elvis are you out there somewhere Looking like a happy man? In the snow with Rosebud And King of the Mountain."

"I'd like to wake up in the morning and hear on CNN that Elvis lives again"

"It was seeing Elvis Presley on The Milton Berle Show, before Ed Sullivan. I already was pretty musical and seeing Elvis and his band, particularly his drummer, D.J. Fontana, just kind of grabbed me. Then, of course, four or five months later, he was on The Ed Sullivan Show and everything just... well, that was the Big Bang."

"Is it 2018 and the subject is the Long Range Stand-Off Weapon (LRSO)? No, it's 1956 and the subject is the AGM-28 cruise missile. Choosing the same solution (for the same aircraft!) decades apart seems like eye-roll material, but modern drone makers can draw much inspiration from the older missile. By the mid 1950s Soviet air defenses could shoot down American bombers well before they got within bombing range of important targets, so in 1956 the Strategic Air Command (SAC) asked for a supersonic cruise missile big enough to carry an H-bomb several hundred miles, and small enough for a B-52 to carry along with its bomb load. The missile's onboard inertial navigation system let it place its 1.45-megaton W-28 warhead within two miles of its target at six-hundred-miles range. It ran like a scalded dog and took its name from the Elvis Presley tune—the "Hound Dog". Peak deployment spanned the 1960s into the middle 1970s, with up to 29 bomber wings carrying them on patrol. But as early as 1966 Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sought to retire them, so they went to the kennels in 1975 for dead storage, and the last one (save for a few museum displays) was scrapped about a year after Elvis himself died. They lingered long enough for their whiz-bang terrain-matching guidance system to become perfected and miniaturized in America's modern cruise missile weapons as deployed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Future drone motherships are certain to adopt and adapt its close bond with its owner— the fuel, thrust, electrical and data hosted by the motherships will be essential to swarms. The Hound Dogs will shed their fleas, indeed."

"He played the San Diego Arena in the spring, and my family lived in nearby La Jolla, so I went to the concert. "Heartbreak Hotel" was already a radio hit, and I couldn't get enough of it. Hearing that song was a real turning point for me as a teenager. When I saw him in action, he was mesmerizing, dressed as he was in a pair of loose trousers, loafers, a shirt and open jacket. When he moved, he was smoldering, his hair falling over his eyes, his tone sensual. His delivery on "Heartbreak Hotel" was also in a minor key, which always triggered a reaction in me. But it was when he slipped in those low-register Elvis-isms— you know, the huh-huh thing— it came from his body, not from his head. He had that emotional intensity that was impossible to resist."

"So you were an artist. Big deal! Elvis was an artist. But that didn't stop him from volunteering for the military in time of service. And that's why he's The King, and you're a schmuck."

"Elvis was probably the most important thing in music, maybe ever"

"We all know, of course, that Elvis was a philanthropist and humanitarian. The stories of his generosity are legendary. Yet here is a tidbit that I believe is a monumental testament to his true nature, one that most people have never heard. On Christmas Eves when most of us spend that entire special evening with our families, Elvis would leave the house and go to the local jail. He visited every prisoner no matter their race, gender, creed and the severity of the alleged crime and talked with every single one. I was told by the officers he would ask each one why they were there and how he could help them. And help them he did in any way he could. He took notes, planned what he would do for each and every one he could possibly do something for. Of course in most of our religions and particularly Christianity, we are taught that Jesus told us to comfort those in need, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, shelter the homeless etc. "I was in prison and ye visited me" is one that I venture to guess not many of us, even though we call ourselves Christian believers, would ever do. Elvis Presley not only believed what he was taught, but physically acted on those teachings. Most of us (including me) somehow decide this one instruction is just easy to ignore and/or better left "out" of our good deeds. Still, he kept contacting their families to see if they needed financial assistance. Were their children alright? Their husbands or wives̞? And he made certain they would be helped once they served their time and that they had proper representation in the court by a decent attorney. How many of us would do this at any time, let alone on Christmas Eves?"

"When he joined the U. S. Army in March of 1958, the Navy, the Air Force and the Pentagon were left disappointed. All the armed services had put considerable effort into being his choice. The Navy had gone so far as proposing a special “Elvis Presley company,” which would be drawn from Presley's buddies, and others from Memphis. If that wasn't enough, Elvis would also be assigned quarters entirely for his own use. The Army, also eager to win his favor, suggested he might be flown globally from base to base in order to boost the morale of the troops. The Pentagon, for its part, floated the idea of Elvis immediately joining the Special Services, thus sidestepping the need for regular training. But regular training was precisely what Presley wanted. He joined the army, but turned down all offers of special treatment. Private Presley he was, and was paid $78 a month. His last day of active duty was March 5, 1960."

"I better watch out. I believe whitey's picking up on the things that I'm doing"

"In my seventeen years as doorman to the top hotel in Hollywood, the biggest star that ever stayed there was Elvis Presley. He was indeed one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. If I introduced any person to him, he would show the utmost courtesy and respect that they ever encountered. Sometimes, over the long years I felt that God had put him on this earth for a very special reason. When you use the phrase "a very special person", that was Elvis Presley, in my opinion."

"Whereas Ottawa has the unique distinction of being just one of three cities outside of the United States where Elvis Presley had a live performance, April 3 shall henceforth be known as Elvis Presley day in the capital."

"Elvis' range was about two and a quarter octaves, as measured by musical notation, but his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all."

"There would be no current popular music without Elvis. He not only synthesized everything that had come before him in a really unique way, but he influenced everybody who came after — so you can have Blake Shelton and Adam Lambert influenced by the same cat."

"I've just worked with this guy ( in reference to Austin Butler) on stage and I've never seen a work ethic like it."

"i) Elvis Presley got the polio vaccine backstage on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, then publicized it on radio, and vulnerable teenagers flocked to follow. Today’s stars should, too. Another tool: incentives. President on Wednesday called on employers to give paid time off for vaccination; how about other inducements, such as bonuses?"

"As a single woman, I could always spot a handsome man. Elvis Presley was one of the prettiest, yes, prettiest and nicest people I ever known. Pictures and videos of him really did not do him justice. In 1969, when I opened at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and he had opened at the International, I once went to see my aunt Cissy Houston (a member of Elvis' vocal backing group, the Sweet Inspirations), during one of their sound checks. Elvis was there and Cissy introduced me to him. He let me know he was a a fan of my recordings then had all the Vegas record stores place a photo of him inside of my albums. This he announced from the stage and added that anyone who bought any of my albums would find an autographed photo of him inside of it. That week I think I sold more albums in Las Vegas than I ever had. I will never forget this act of kindness. We lost an icon when he made his transition."

"Keith Richards taught me rock and roll. We’d have nothing to do all day and we’d play these records over and over again. I learned to love Muddy Waters. Keith turned me on to how good Elvis Presley was, and I’d always hated Elvis up ’til then."

"Arguably the finest recording found in all the Sun sessions, "Trying To Get To You"(1955), is a song that Presley made his own due to his hugely committed vocal, and the simple carefree abandon with which he performs it; at first, it feels like a classic country song with simple, elegant lyrics; but it is at the bridge – where Elvis really lets fly –, that the song is transformed from a lovely country lament, into deep blues; although the 1955 version is magnificent, Elvis manages to better it on his "1968 Comeback Special", in which he sings the song with so much intensity, it prompted critic Greil Marcus to exclaim "this is probably the finest rock and roll ever recorded."

"i) I liked Dylan, the way he created a brilliant new style. I even gave him one of my silver "Double Elvis" paintings. Later on, though, I heard rumors that he had used it as a dart board up in the country. When I'd ask, ‘Why did he do that?’ I'd invariably get hearsay answers like ‘Listen to Like a Rolling Stone — I think you’re the ‘diplomat on the chrome horse, man.’. I didn't know exactly what they meant by that — I never listened much to the words of songs — but I got the tenor of what people were saying — that Dylan didn't like me ii) For forty-five minutes nonstop Ali raged on about prostitution on the steps of the White House, gravity, meteorites, jumping out of the window, Israel, Egypt, Zaire, South Africa, drugs, broken skulls, delusions, angel food cake, yellow hair, judgment day, Muslim morality, Jesus, boxing, Sweden, the Koran, friendship, and Elvis, relating it all to the central point that ‘man must obey the laws of God or perish!’”"

"Elvis Presley existed not only as a flesh-and-blood person but also as millions of pictures on album covers and movie screens, in newspapers and magazines. He was infinitely reproducible. Similarly, through use of the silkscreen printing process, Warhol could produce as many Elvis paintings as he pleased."

"This era of biracial musical creation and consumption has been largely erased from popular memory. It lies buried beneath simplistic parables of white expropriation and exploitation of black culture in which Elvis Presley has become emblematic of centuries of uncompensated and unacknowledged white appropriation of black cultural ingenuity and labour. There is enormous moral power to this perspective and, to be sure, plenty of evidence of just such exploitation and theft. Nonetheless, it still makes for unpersuasive history and fails to help us to understand the significance of Elvis and the whole biracial rock-and-roll phenomenon that intersected with the dawn of the modern civil rights movement."

"A Presley motion picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood.”"

"With the way he was marketed, he didn't even need to be able to sing the way he could. But Elvis had talent, plain and simple. The guy had a thousandth-octave range, and a variety in his vocal styles and approach, he could make more vocal tones, with just his voice, than a guitar player with 50 pedals and gadgets. If you never even saw the guy, you could plain feel, not just hear, the emotion and passion in his voice, and you are immediately taken in, one hundred percent. On the merit of vocals alone, he had more talent in the barbecue stuck in his teeth than the singers who sell millions of records do today."

"This is something I've always wanted to do: Take an evening, invite an audience and just be me. What you can expect is me playing music, answering almost all questions anyone would ask (except the ones that may incriminate me), a big screen power point presentation put together and narrated by me, guitar shop talk, slide guitar 101, true stories of road craziness, playing more music and I’m particularly excited to talk about my Elvis experiences —what he meant to me and what I meant to him. We’ll conclude with a Town Hall Meeting, including a strategy and platform discussion for my candidacy to run for President of the United States in 2020 and sing ‘God Bless America’ or something else (Elvis would want that).""

"When we first met, I was like, 'OK, Pam, don't act a fool, but I was trying to keep my composure, because this was fricking Prince. It's like Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson. It doesn't get any higher than that.""

"Is it true Elvis took you often to tour the morgue? Why̞?"

"Elvis Presley. That lit the fuse for me."

"i) One day we are in a recording session, here at RCA B, and he was talking to one of the clean up guys. Then three RCA people from New York, with suits and they walked up to Elvis, but he paid no attention to them. The clean up guy stopped talking, but Elvis said "Go ahead, Sir". When he finished, the clean up guy shook his hand and thanked Elvis for talking to him. Then Elvis approached the guys from New York and said "Gentlemen, if you see me talking to somebody, don't interrupt me, don't even walk up to me, I know when it{s your turn and I will walk up to you. And that was the end of it. ii) The best I have ever seen him look was in 1967, at the Circle G Ranch. His hair was black to blonde like it was naturally, the colour of a fawn. Just as shiny as could be. He had a suit and shoes the same color of his hair, so he walked in and we were stunned. He had been out riding his horses, was tanned and his eyes shunned like diamonds. We couldn't believe it. We just stood there and looked at him. Finally, he said "Shall we dance?""

"In constructing his own public image during the early 1950s, Elvis unconsciously appropriated, synthesised and ultimately capitalised upon images from a series of contemporary cultural icons. These ranged from Captain Marvel and Dean Martin to Jackie Wilson. ‘Cultural production’, states Madow, ‘is always (and necessarily) a matter of reworking, recombining, and redeploying already existing symbolic forms, sounds, narratives, and images’. To this effect – on the current standing of US publicity rights law – one could actually begin to question Elvis's right to call the Elvis image his own in the first place; however, few would deny that the Elvis whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The overall effect of his efforts was to create a unique image which had a fresh and vital meaning in post-war society. If there did not exist any rights of control over power of the creation of cultural symbols then there would be little financial incentive for individuals to spend the time, energy and resources to develop their ‘talents and produce works which ultimately benefit society as a whole Elvis signs and their multiple meanings are so strong that Elvis has, in effect, mediated his own celebrity culture beyond the grave."

"We have to still care about Elvis because if we don't, then we don't like music. He was the big bang, the sun around which all the other planets circled ever since and when he went down, we lost the first and the best."

"I had a 45 rpm record player, one of those that accommodated little records with big holes in the middle and with the capacity to hold, what, 10 or so records, to drop down one at a time, until all 10 had played. But that's too general for what I've been thinking about. Specifically, it's one of the songs, really the only song I can say with certainty that I played, over and over and over again. “Lavender Blue” by Sammy Turner. And it, and others, made me know I loved music — most all kinds excusing jazz and opera. And then, it was Elvis. Controversial Elvis Presley. Would my folks let me listen to his music or watch him on our little black and white television? Then, before we knew it, Elvis was too big to be avoided or ignored. You had to watch him..."

"I think about Elvis all the time."

"I loved everything about him.I grew up with singers, dancers and comics. At 15, I discovered Elvis Presley. A girl whom I wanted to take to the prom showed me a magazine clipping of her "boyfriend." It was Elvis. This guy looked like a Greek god, and then I saw him on television. I loved everything about him, so I became a fan. I always wanted to stand in the same place he stood the night he caused all the commotion at the Ed Sullivan Theatre. May I?"

"In fact, I first provided clothing for her during her first pregnancy in 1981, and continued to do so until her death in 1997. One such outfit, which Diana herself called her ‘Elvis Dress’, was worn by her both to the British Fashion Awards in October 1989 and then on an official visit to Hong Kong. The year of her passing away, the dress was bought for £81,203 at a benefit auction by The Franklin Mint, a company which produces memorabilia such as a portrait doll featuring her wearing this dress, thus making it one of the best-known of Diana's many outfits, and the second highest prized. The Mint returned the dress to the Diana Estate a few years later."

"It was my mother's Elvis concerts from the 70's on VHS tapes that first drew me to the sheer thrill of an all-you-can-eat live performance. I just had this fascination for him. I was going to the Punters Club in Fitzroy but a lot of the bands I was watching were staring at their shoes, I mean shoe gaze was massive. Then I'd go home to my mother's Elvis' tapes and nobody was owning a spotlight like that, nobody. I wanted to start a band that was putting on show. I wanted to reward people for leaving their living rooms if they were going to come out to watch a band, let's give them something visual as well as a band that sounds good."

"Basically, Elvis Presley was doing self-defense techniques because he couldn't spar, it was simply too dangerous. He had to preserve his voice, so contact to the face or neck was out. He also didn't want to risk breaking any bones, so he'd just train on and demonstrate self-defense moves like taking full-power shots to the stomach. He was a fine athlete, not a fighter, but that doesn't mean he wasn't able to fight, though. His technique —his side kick and his punches— looked as good as anybody else's. He wanted to do karate because he'd learned a bit of it in the Army and really liked it. The best part of working with him was beating up all of his people, like Red and Sonny West, Jerry Shilling and all the others. I just relegated them to pulp."

"I asked him how he felt about Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson from the Democratic National Convention, and about the Andrea Doria disaster, the Empire waistline in the world of fashion, and Pablo Casals, the world's greatest cellist. His answer was that he would rather keep his views to himself because he did not want to be labeled, so I left him alone. Later I found out that Elvis always enjoyed telling the story of how he managed to outsmart me and every other reporter by answering questions without really answering them."

"Wide raging voices̠ː Singers with extensions from B1 to A5. Elvis Presley's B1 may be heard on the song "Such a Night" and on "Mystery Train" an A5 is reached towards the end. Later in his career, he developed a rich baritone voice which still mastered the higher register with immense power, such as on "American Trilogy", "Unchained Melody" or the joking "Little Darlin""

"Long before the plans for an actual rock museum in Cleveland were hatched, a group headed by Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner and Atlantic Records' Ahmet Ertegun started off the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with two induction ceremonies-cum-concerts, in 1986 and 1987, bringing in a total of 25 blues-and-rock groundbreakers primarily from the ‘50s, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Presley is in fact rock’s greatest presence, shaking a country with a single-handed nuclear reaction of country, gospel, and the blues. Along with the Beatles, he is the epitome of pop stardom as well."

"After seeing "Jailhouse Rock", where Elvis gets out of jail and makes his own records, takes them to the radio stations himself to finally put his records in the stores, I then made records and put them in stores."

"While I was recuperating at Veterans' Hospital in Portsmouth, VA, I went to nearby Norfolk, where I first saw an up and coming singer named Elvis Presley perform at Hank Snow's All Star Jamboree. This experience changed my life. Seeing him on television, as well, I practically launched out of the hospital bed and onto the stage..."

"Yes, I believe I am an Elvis, the Elvis of Vallenato"

"Any young man who calls his mother “baby” and speaks baby-talk with her must love her tenderly. But Elvis Presley didn't just love his mother – he worshiped her. In return, she inspired him to create a sound that would change popular music forever. It was Gladys who gave her son his first guitar for his 11th birthday, even though Elvis had preferred a bicycle. And it was his love for Gladys that prompted him to record his first song, My Happiness as a special birthday gift for her. The spiritual bond between mother and son had existed from the minute Elvis was born. On 8 January 1935 the then 22-year-old Gladys suffered a hemorrhage and barely survived giving birth to a set of twins. The first one, Jesse Garon, was stillborn, which led Gladys to believe that the surviving twin, Elvis Aaron, had inherited Jesse's soul. Elvis, she believed, was “the One”. Throughout his childhood she instilled in him how special he was. So when the studio receptionist at Sun Records asked Elvis what kind of singer he was, the 18-year-old answered, “I don’t sound like nobody.” The belief in her only son's special calling, whatever that would turn out to be, made Gladys very protective of Elvis. Over the objections of her husband, Vernon, she made sure he never spent a night away from home until he was 17. Once Elvis's musical career took off in a big way in 1956 things went south for his muse. Then, in 1958, when Elvis was drafted into the Army, she succumbed to a heart attack. After her death Elvis remained an incredibly successful artist. In 1977, at the age of 42, he died from an overdose of medications at Graceland. The date was 16 August – the very same day he had buried his beloved mother 19 years earlier and inconsolably wept, “Oh, God, everything I have is gone.”"

"I was into black dudes like Ray Charles, Little Richard and Wilson Pickett, so when Elvis came to see our band it wasn’t a big deal for me, he wasn’t then, in my view, the big legend he turned out to be later on. Presley came to stay in the Paradise Island hotel that we were working the lounge in, We were doing three or four shows a night and his wife, Priscilla, would come down to look at the band with her entourage, three or four women that she used to hang around with. ‘I have to get Elvis down to hear you guys’ she said. Lo and behold, one night we get the word that he’s coming in. I’m being disparaging here, but I wasn’t excited about that. Now, if they said Ray Charles is coming in, that would have been a different vibe altogether. Elvis arrived and sat about two tables away from the front. There was a guy in my band who started impersonating Elvis, and Presley was killing himself laughing. The rest of the guys in the band hung around afterwards to say hello to him, but I had something to do. I wasn’t being disrespectful, I just had something else to do and I wasn’t that much interested in him. I was coming in, the next afternoon, to set my guitar up for the evening and as I walked through the lobby he was there with the Memphis Mafia guys. He spotted me, waved and walked over and he started complimenting me on my singing. I swear to God I said to him, ‘I’m giving singing lessons up in room 4670, if you want to drop up.’ We ended up having a great laugh and a great conversation. He was a really, really nice dude, a very handsome lookin’ dude."

"Everything is collectible, it seems, even human hair. Outbidding an international field of collectors, an unnamed Londoner paid $13,000 last week to purchase a lock of Napoleon's hair, reportedly snipped a day after the Emperor's death in 1821. For those in the know, that's a relative bargain, particularly in view of what collectors have spent on strands from another famous head, namely that of Elvis Presley, whose small jar of hair sold for $115,000 in 2002. (In fact), Presley's barber had reportedly saved his hair in a bread bag. "I have no idea what [the collector] intends to do with it," said a representative from the Chicago company, MastroNet, that held the internet auction."

"No, many thanks but I am just a tourist here and prefer no photos are taken."

"He is the Elvis of Sea ice Science"

"I was born in Greenville but raised in Farmville and went to Farmville High School, class of 1985. I always loved music and I was drawn to it. My mother had a 1964 RCA console … a big piece of furniture, and my teething marks were on that console because I was pulling up to it immediately. So from a very early age, I was drawn to music and entertainment. "He spent so much of his money on Elvis records", said his mother, that his death in 1977 probably cost the record companies thousands of dollars because I was such a huge Elvis fan and bought everything" ."

"Well, now wait. You say he has no talent and yet I think that you'll agree that he has been taken into the bosom of America in a certain sense and has been very well paid for it..."