American Country Singers

"i) Q magazine bravely attempted to name the best and worst singers ever. They did a good job, wisely going big with Elvis as the to choice. ii) There was no model for Elvis Presley's success; what Sun Records head Sam Phillips sensed was something in the wind, an inevitable outgrowth of all the country and blues he was recording at his Union Avenue studio; enter Presley in 1954, bringing with him a musical vocabulary rich in country, country blues, gospel, inspirational music, bluegrass, traditional country, and popular music -- as well as a host of emotional needs that found their most eloquent expression in song; his timing was impeccable, not only as a vocalist, but with regard to the cultural zeitgeist: emerging in the first blush of America's postwar ebullience, Presley captured the spirit of a country flexing its industrial muscle, of a generation unburdened by the concerns of war, younger, more mobile, more affluent, and better educated than any that had come before; (as such), the Sun recordings were the first salvos in an undeclared war on segregated radio stations nationwide. iii) At Sun Studio in Memphis Elvis Presley called to life what would soon be known as rock and roll with a voice that bore strains of the Grand Ole Opry and Beale Street, of country and the blues. At that moment, he ensured – instinctively, unknowingly – that pop music would never again be as simple as black and white.”"

"Though Elvis seems nearly as much a function of time and place as of talent and personality, his rise was clearly no accident. Peter Guralnick presents Elvis as the vessel, Sam and Dewey Phillips as the catalysts, and rock 'n' roll as a historical inevitability. Now, "Why him?" is what other Memphis boys kept asking in the summer of 1954, when Sun issued his first single, "That's All Right Mama" backed with "Blue Moon of Kentucky". There were a hundred other kids in Memphis with talent and ambition, any one of them as accomplished as Elvis so, again, why him?. To Marion Keisker, Sam's assistant, "He was like a mirror in a way: whatever you were looking for, you were going to find in him. In short, he had all the intricacy of the very simple." This ability to mirror the dreams and yearnings of others is the hallmark of every great star, from Judy Garland to Marilyn Monroe to James Dean. Within two years, Elvis would be one of them."

"In December of 1968, while punching a heavy bag in a gym in L.A. I hear a voice sing out, 'Hey, Lionel! What's doin'?' And it was Elvis Presley himself. I was in awe of him, but he said he was in awe of me (LOL)."

"I was really impressed and surprised to learn a lot of things about him,"

"It had been a sensational interview and I knew I had everything I needed for an excellent story for Rolling Stone. I truly felt a real connection with Paul Rogers and his new band Band Company which gave me the courage to do what I did next: invite the singer to see Elvis Presley, who was performing on the night of May 11, 1974 at the Inglewood Forum. And I knew Rodgers was a huge fan, even trying to sneak into Graceland one time back when he was with his previous band Free. As we made the 45-minute drive to the Inglewood Forum —a huge 20,000-seat arena where the Los Angeles Lakers played— Paul couldn't stop talking about finally seeing Elvis. We parked and I handed Paul his ticket. He looked at it like it was the Holy Grail itself. We walked inside, found our seats and from the moment Presley took the stage, Rodgers could barely contain himself, screaming, shouting and jumping up and down like a kid, acting the way I did when I first saw his previous band, Free, so many years earlier when they opened for Blind Faith. Watching Paul while he watched a then-34-year old Elvis do his thing felt like an out-of-body experience. It was like some perfect circle. When the lights came up and as everybody was exiting the arena, Paul saw various members of Led Zeppelin along with Peter Grant, who by then managed both Bad Company and Led Zeppelin, going backstage. I knew I wouldn't be able to go there myself, but I didn't really care, all I wanted was for Paul to get to meet his hero. However, we were stopped by a pair of burly bodyguards guarding the backstage entrance. I tried to explain to them that this was Paul Rodgers, but they weren't bulging. Eventually, we had a message relayed backstage and when Peter finally came back out, he told Paul he couldn't get him in. If Paul was hurt by being treated so selfishly —it felt as if Led Zeppelin wanted an audience with the King all by themselves— he didn't show it. Paul was still jubilant so when we returned to the hotel, that's when Paul told me, “I’ll just tell my friends I talked to him anyway." He had purchased a souvenir booklet and would use that as evidence though Paul and I would always know the truth."

"Few have probably heard of him unless you're a serious fan of Jewish cantorial music. But if you have, you know he's the equivalent of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Luciano Pavarotti -- a singer to be remembered forever."

"Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland, is behind me. I just went on a tour throughout the crib. Very enlightening. Elvis was a legend, an icon. As we all can see, me and Elvis had a lot of things in common. His ranch is Graceland, mine is Promiseland. I love the planes. I love he was a hustler. He was a man amongst the people. I’m doing something different today.”"

"It was a nice shot of adrenaline for him.."

"His 2019 election victory took him from popular buffoon to prime minister just like Elvis’ comeback TV special in 1968, which crowned him the undisputed king of rock ‘n’ roll. However, after a year, the name ‘Boris’ suddenly no longer sounded like a buddy, but now carried the same contemptuous undertone as ‘Maggie’ , the last person in office who was customarily referred to by her first name. Once the brand has become a dirty word, there is no turning back. The fact is Johnson is now in the ‘Fat Elvis’ stage of his career"

"I was contacted, not all that long ago, by the son of a military officer who was at the time the military attache to Prime Minister Harold Holt. He told this story just before he died to his son who told me that his dad was in Harold Holt's office and Harold was struggling with popularity and the anti-war movement. The officer said to Harold Holt “what you need is an Elvis Presley. Get Normie Rowe called up”. If the Prime Minister says something is going to happen then there is a pretty good chance it is going to happen"."

"After Maria Callas, Elvis Presley is the #2 of the Holy Trinity for taking blues, gospel and spirituals, and sexing them together while also desexualizing the more rough-edged and raunchy root ingredients (ie: removing the black stigma) to make it into rock n' roll and music for the masses. Elvis had an undeniably great voice and incredible moves..."

"Even as a kid, I knew music was central to my personality. Like many of us, I recognized that it could also be my source of income after I saw Elvis Presley on The Tommy Dorsey Show. When he made it so big, all us Southern boys thought maybe we had a shot, too."

"In Bedford there’s probably more chance of seeing Elvis than seeing your local GP.”"

"David Trimble was a huge fan of Elvis Presley and his favourite film was "King Creole", The song used during the tribute, "Trouble", is the most well known song from that film and was used to reflect his wide range of interests."

"As he stepped back into the ring, singing as if his life depends on it, you can feel the visceral thrill as this underdog eagerly reclaims his title. It paid off in spades, rejuvenating his career and proving that, as pop culture spun on its axis, even its most stalwart participants could change gears and reinvent themselves. It wasn't quite Ali vs. Foreman, but as 1968's highest-rated television special, it was close."

"He was a really, really, really good looking guy who could really sing, Elvis is the definition of IT. He is one of the people that I owe for choosing a life in music."

"We three became four again when my sister Loree, who had entered a convent just a couple of years before me decided to return to the outside world. It was later transpired that it was the nuns who had decided Loree should return to the world. In fact, as a novice she had refused to surrender her Elvis Presley vinyls to Mother Superior. Later, (Our own) Mother became convinced that the Good Lord might have had a different vocation in mind for Loree."

"Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman's "Viva Las Vegas"(1963), was custom-written as the title song for Elvis Presley's 14th film, a rollicking tribute to the city of gambling given a spirited performance by Presley and his session musicians; strangely, it remained an underrated Presley song for a long time, finally beginning to gain some recognition from an unexpected quarter when the "Dead Kennedys" recorded it in 1980, their radical recontextualization of it helping the song to an independent life beyond its origins; on its own, it can now be appreciated as a tribute to Las Vegas that probably deserves to be the city's official anthem."

"After his show, Sammy Davis Jr said he would arrange for my wife Joyce and I to see the best entertainer in Las Vegas which, considering Sammy´s fame, was quite a compliment (Once at the show), the audience was enthralled as the singer sang songs of every genre. And that evening I became a fan of Elvis Presley. Even today, particularly on Sundays when we do not get to church, Joyce and I listen to Elvis singing gospel songs."

"They decamped to Munich in June 1979, and he had just checked in at the glittering Bayerischer Hof Hotel and stepped into the bath to wash away the travel grime, when a melody came to him. It was a hiccup-y rockabilly number, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It had affectionate elements of the recently departed Elvis Presley, who had been a major vocal influence on him. Calling for assistant Peter Hince to fetch him an acoustic guitar, he wrapped a towel around his body and began to bash out the skeleton of what might be the most uncharacteristically simple song he ever wrote, which took him five or 10 minutes, doing it on the guitar as he did, and in one way it was quite a good thing because he was restricted, knowing so few chords."

"Entertainment-wise Elvis Presley played a big part for me because I'm out kicking my foot across the stage, but Elvis Presley did the same thing I do. He can get away with it. (It) kind of opened the door for me, along with B.B. King and all the guys who have come before me (Chuck Berry, Little Richard) who set a trail for me to come through the door. Now I'm one of the top five who are left to do this and I thank God for putting me in this position. I never thought that I would be an icon as the leading role of the blues cats, man, especially the black blues cats. I never thought I'd be here."

"In the '50s, listening to Elvis on the radio in Bombay – it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me. I suppose what's interesting about rock and roll is it was the first cultural phenomenon that was about, for, controlled by and made by young people. And your mother didn't like it. Certainly my mother didn't, though she got used to it, eventually. In fact, I think Elvis was the one who got to her."

"For me it goes back to Elvis. The reality is, my experience with Elvis and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ as a wonderful revelation is exactly the same experience that Paul McCartney had, that Keith Richards had, that Mick Jagger had, that they all had because they're all just sitting in England wondering what they're going to do. And Elvis comes over the airwaves and changes everybody's life.”"

"It's funny – because we didn't talk a great deal about him. That was one thing we never got around to. When I played Elvis, in 1979, then in 2001, a lot of people said to me “Boy, you must be a great Elvis fan”. When you play a real person you have parameters. When you play a famous person that everyone knows, now the parameters become very finite. It's your job to go right up against the edges of those parameters. I said I worked with him, as a child, in 1962, but I did not know that much about his career or anything. I remember him distinctly, because I worked with him for two weeks on the movie and most of it was with him. I saw him off-camera a lot. But in 1979, I learned about him. And when I learned about him, I became a pretty decent Elvis fan. But nothing like Quentin, he probably knows everything about him. He knows about his music, he's probably seen all his movies. Yeah, so someday I'll say hey, tell me some of your feelings about Elvis."

"I'm a big Elvis fan, so I went to see him when he was playing in Las Vegas and, after the show, I was invited up to his room to meet him. I was very excited so I blurted out: "Why did you make all those stupid movies?" I couldn't believe I've said that and felt so embarrassed but Elvis just said, "Last thing I remember I was driving a truck" So now every time I say something stupid, I think of Elvis.""

"I had met him on a few occasions, but we hadn't spent any time together. One night in 1971 after a show at the International, I went backstage, where he was with a group of his buddies discussing where they were going to eat. He spotted me and called me over. 'Hey, man, you ever have a peanut butter and banana sandwich, on white bread?' "I thought he was putting me on, so I played along. 'Love 'em,' I said." 'Great, man! You're coming with us!'"'Where we going?' I asked. "'San Francisco, brother" So we flew out of McCarran Airport on Elvis's private jet, landing there about an hour later. There were eight of us, and he did the ordering. An initial round of sixteen sandwiches was sucked up in minutes, washed down by gallons of lemonade. I had one. After the meal, we got back on the plane and flew back to Vegas. Once we were in his suite, he decided he wanted to watch a Western movie. A projector was set up and a 1930s oater with Hoot Gibson began. As i saw it, Elvis and his crew were whooping it up like real cowboys, and I wondered what the hell I was doing there. Then the guns came out. Elvis packed a 1942 Beretta 9 mm pistol given to him by General Omar Bradley, with the others having revolvers. He fired the first shot into a wall, and everyone followed suit as if mimmickimg the action in the movie, where Gibson was chasing a bunch of bad guys and trading shots with them. I thought a couple of live rounds would've been it, but then Elvis started overturning furniture, and the guys divided up into two sides. I ducked behind a couch as everyone hid behind cover and traded shots. They aimed high, but bullets can travel through walls, and who knows where they could've wound up. Within a minute, the "Gunfight in Suite 3000" was over and every­one repaired to the bar to get loaded, pun intended. I stayed a while, but I couldn't hear a damn thing because I was temporarily deaf from the gunfire. But I love Elvis. He was unique for what he was, he was statuesque""

"It seems like since the early days of rock and roll, there's been a uniform that's consisted of jeans, T-shirt and black leather jacket," she says. Elvis Presley, though, served his version with a twist: He was very much influenced by African American style on Beale Street in Memphis and incorporated everything from shiny suits to the poet-sleeved shirts his mother made for him into his wardrobe. But Presley wasn't exactly one for playing by the rules"

"To have two cycling riders of the calibre of Kelly and Roche emerge independently of one another within the space of four years, is akin to the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, producing a second Elvis Presley shortly after the first. It is a most astonishing accident of history."

"Elvis Presley summed it up perfectly when filming the musical "Roustabout". The director, John Rich, wasn't particularly impressed with his entourage hanging around and playing practical jokes on one another. When Rich approached him about his traveling companions clowning around and disrupting, he didn't back down from his director. He told Rich, "When these damn movies cease to be fun, I'll stop doing them." Cheers, Elvis. Couldn't have said it better myself."

"There were maybe thirty people in the room and he walks in and the first thing that happens is our eyes meet. He's probably fifteen feet away from me and then he flings a grape that hits me right between the eyes, in the forehead. I didn't talk to him that night other than when he came over and knelt down while apologizing. So he then joined the rest of the people in the room and so I took my cue and left. Elvis had qualities that no other human being has, had, will have. Some of them are so hard to describe because the charisma, the qualities that he had were almost not of this world, you know. They were, a lot of times, angelic. But it was his innocence that really impressed me. His biggest joy was in the giving..."

"Although the beachside hotels on the bay supplemented most of the older hotels, El Mirador maintained its status, primarily because of the iconic cliff divers, or clavadistas, who dived from a platform outside the hotel more than forty meters into the water below. The classic image of cliff divers in Acapulco was immortalized in popular culture worldwide by the film "Fun in Acapulco" (1963), in which Elvis Presley plays a former acrobat, down on his luck and stranded there."

"Every time he'd appeared on Letterman, he'd had to change his act. Written down, worked out, pre-approved by the production staff, his sweet improvisational melody was sliced and diced into a sampled, discordant riff. He just didn't come across. And he hadn't yet figured out what to do about it. At least not until that twelfth appearance. His ghost appearance, resonating forever in the memory of the Ed Sulli­van Theatre, there, center stage, near Elvis's swiveling hips. Another really big show, never to be seen."

"Elvis Presley was more influential as a performer than any other musician in world history. In some respects he resembled other influential performers, including the famous Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) and the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886). Like them Elvis was exciting, charismatic, and enormously successful. Unlike Liszt and Paganini,however, Elvis did not compose any of his own music, yet the ways in which he performed the songs he sang transformed twentieth-century popular music worldwide. At his best, was most influential as a Southern White singer who introduced audiences throughout the United States and around the world to Black American music, especially to rock ‘n’ roll, a form of rhythm and blues. He was also influential because he combined in his performances elements from different American singing styles, including gospel, rockabilly, country-western and standard' pop numbers; he even employed bel canto singing in a few songs borrowed from Italian music. His stage persona was extremely influential as well, simultaneously glamorising, as he did, rock music and making it seem ‘dangerous’, thus even inspiring aspects of punk rock in the 1970s. Later, his performances as a touring artist and a Las Vegas entertainer contributed to the birth of glam rock."

"We finished a take and the phone rang and it was one of Elvis's associates, a guy I had met through Chet [Atkins] many times. And so this associate of Elvis says "Buffy? Elvis just recorded your song, "Until It's Time For You To Go." By this time I was pretty much over Elvis. When I was thirteen, Elvis was fresh. He was young. He was healthy and beautiful, and he was sexy and a natural musician. He was everything. He was just everything. But, it was just a total surprise as Elvis had by then already gone into kind of a different style. He no longer had that young rebel thing going for him. But when he recorded "Until It's Time For You To Go," it was just amazing. It was as if Santa Claus had said yes to coming to your birthday"

"Bill was about 16 when he drove from Blanco, Texas, to see Elvis Presley play at the then Municipal Auditorium. And when he found out the show was sold out, he climbed a tree to try to get into a window. He saw Elvis there in the window so Elvis motioned to him and asked him, 'What are you doing up there in the tree?' And Bill Wittliff explained , and Elvis Presley tore out a paper towel and wrote to the ticket taker to let these three boys in. They're friends of mine. We have that piece of paper on display at the Wittliff Collection."

"I was publishing a book with the title "The case against Muhammed", dealing with the founder of Islam, from a critical point of view, and many people were asking me "why do you do that? And my answer was always "because you are asking me". Because you wouldn't if the book had been called "The Case against Elvis Presley". You would accept any criticism of any historical figure, you will consider it as freedom of art, of research, of opinion, but in the case of Muhammed, you say "The Prophet is the Muslim's world last stone of identity, so why do you attack HIM, let him in peace". And I then always answer my Muslim friends, that maybe he became the last stone of their identity because they left him in peace, alone, for fourteen hundred years."

"Often overlooked, probably because of his immense popularity and mega-star status, Elvis was an extremely generous and compassionate human. I remember an appearance by Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show on a Sunday night while my grandmother was babysitting me. Sitting in a rocking chair and looking over the top of her glasses while she was knitting she uttered, “That boy is going places”. I was 7 or 8, she was 60 something and that moment is etched indelibly in my mind. Hey Nana, you were right."

"Shortly after midnight, arriving at San Antonio International airport on Hugh Hefner ‘Playboy’ DC-9 and wearing a long coat with white fur trim, he was greeted by fans before his manager, Col. Tom Parker, took him away in a black limousine to an unknown hotel destination. Fans, when interviewed, felt that if he looked that good when he traveled, that they could only imagine what he will look like on stage. He didn't disappoint. During the concert, a lady who was bitten in a fight over a scarf he threw into the crowd was later taken to the hospital where she was given a tetanus shot from a physician who thought the whole thing was humorous, particularly as the lady said her attacker could be identified by a bald spot on her head, which she had, in turn inflicted, on her...."

"I suppose you'd had to call him a lyric baritone, although with exceptional high notes and unexpectedly rich low ones. But what is more important about Elvis Presley is not his vocal range, nor how high or low it extends, but where its center of gravity is. By that measure, Elvis was all at once a tenor, a baritone and a bass, the most unusual voice I've ever heard."

"I found him to be a gentleman. Elvis won everyone over. It’s true that Elvis was glowing. He also said that he wasn’t worried about the rest of his career, that he would like to focus on movies and that he was glad that he had his folks come over to Germany to be close to him. He seemed relaxed and his behavior seemed to surprise those who were covering his stay."

"And to think I only wanted to imitate Elvis"

"He was the greatest. In fact, he was the most charismatic individual I have ever seen both off and on the screen, he was the kind of person who could not walk into a room and not stop whatever was happening in that room. Every person, man or woman would turn to look at him, he was that magical, There are no words in the vocabulary, unless it is that he had magic."

"At the start, I listened to my older brother's collection of Paul Anka and Elvis Presley records. When the Beatles arrived, at home it became a fight between my brother, who loved Elvis and I, who loved the Beatles.. but we both stayed the course...."

"What Presley accomplished was a fusion of modes, not theft"

"I just wanted to be like my dad. He was absolutely charming, adorable and irresistible. I looked at him the way other people looked at him, like if he was Elvis. I was like: ‘Man I want what he’s got!’ I didn't realize I was born with it."

"He liked to do the bumps and grinds as I did them, and that was basically what he used in his routine from 1957. Eventually, he proposed to me, but I told him if anyone knew about us it would cost him his career."

"On stage, any chance I get to put the teeth in and bite people, I will take. “Dance of the vampires" is great if only because it lets itself to be really, really silly. Any character I play has at least one if not three animal images that I use. And for the role of Count von Krolock, I said he's part panther, part eagle, and part Elvis Presley. And Elvis Presley — he's sexy as hell.”"

"But my generation did not ONLY love America because she defended freedom. We also loved America because for us she embodied what was most audacious about the human enterprise, because America for us embodied the spirit of conquest. We loved America, because for us, America was a new frontier that was continuously being rolled back, a constantly renewed challenge to the inventiveness of the human spirit. My generation, without even coming to America, shared all of your dreams. In our imaginations, our imaginations were fueled by Hollywood, by the great conquest of the western territories, by Elvis Presley, and you probably haven't heard his name quoted often here -- but for my generation, he is universal."

"There's more chance of Elvis Presley being Chancellor of the Exchequer than John McDonnell. I've never come across such financial illiteracy.""

"While touring Memphis, I was in the dressing room and my knee went and I crawled into a ball and couldn’t get up. I was carried off by a big security guy called Michael who’d once played for the Miami Dolphins. I heard he had an important boss but he didn’t tell me who his boss was. But the next day his boss called me. It was Elvis Presley. He came on the phone singing "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing", down the line. ‘I love that song, man. I hear Michael has been looking after you and that you’re a great guy. And you need to come over to the house’. he said. I was stunned, and got ready to go to spend a few days with Elvis and his girlfriend Ginger. But the next morning I heard on the radio Elvis had been taken to hospital and died. Years later, I began to think I must have dreamt the whole thing. But I met Ginger at a dinner in London, and she said ‘Elvis had been so excited at the idea of spending a few days with you.’ I had tears in my eyes when she said that.”"