American Country Singers

"My uncle Bob was an Indiana hillbilly. He was the kind of guy who had a clear plastic suicide knob on the wheel of his two-tone Chevy, that featured a photo of a lady in a naughty cheesecake pose. Uncle Bob knew his Rock and Roll and all his nephews were all baptized in the church of Elvis. That early intervention saved me. Pat Boone may get to a higher place, but he should know before he goes that the Holy Ghost will have Elvis playing on heaven's record player"

"He was the atomic bomb. Period."

"This, I think, is as close to the "real" Elvis as we were ever permitted to glimpse during his lifetime, a funny, self-deprecatory star who loved to hack around with his guys, but who had no trouble reeling them back in when they started having a little too much fun. We, at home, watched and understood how lovable so many people thought he was. The show, when it aired, became one of the top-rated of 1968. Most of the TV critics of the time didn't get it, certainly not the way the show's producer and audience did, the critics being, frankly, rather bad stuck-in-the-mud old fogies and tired, bitter conscripts from elsewhere in the newsroom who were about to be superseded in the early '70's by a new generation of TV critics who had not only grown up with Elvis, but with TV itself"

"This looks to be a movie made for theaters, a major event.-"

"I don’t know what President Trump’s future holds, but I think Elvis rock ’n’ roll music’s still playing"

"Elvis Presley was an explorer of vast new landscapes of dream and illusion. He was a man who refused to be told that the best of his dreams would not come true, who refused to be defined by anyone else's perceptions. This is the goal of democracy, the journey on which every American hero sets out. That Elvis made so much of the journey on his own is reason enough to remember him with the honor and love we reserve for the bravest among us. Such men made the only maps we can trust."

"Many artists are taking pictures of Elvis Presley, for example, and flipping them to create various iterations of color or texture. A lot of what Pop-Art has become is solely based on the familiar image and very little behind it. With my work, I want to talk about why Elvis or Audrey Hepburn will live on forever. Icons of mid century American history are still so prevalent today because they had interesting stories and immense talent, not just great marketing skills. Warhol said it best, that everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. The important aspect is having something positive to say."

"i) The biggest thing Elvis had was the command he had on stage, how he could control the crowd and the band. There’s a performance where he does ‘Hound Dog" and at the end he slows it down, and – to me – it looked like an improv moment, not like something they rehearsed. It was like Presley saw girls in the audience freaking out and said to himself: ‘Watch me slow it down – and then really go nuts.’ And he slows it down at the end and then starts his little dance.....ii) impersonating Elvis at the age of four is when I first realized I wanted to become a performer."

"Critiques of the Ed Sullivan program assumed that the Presley appeal was strictly telegenic—not vocal. His vocal style, in fact, was every bit as mobile as his hips. Since most of the journalists on the Elvis beat denied him any artistry, his two-and-a-third-octave range was never mentioned and the music itself was rarely analyzed."

"Elvis made more girls cry than anyone so the reference ( to flip the script there with a song about making boys cry), was irresistible. It was important that the song could represent empowerment without being divisive, because that's how Elvis was. In fact, I didn't know a lot about him until I visited Graceland recently. Beyond his music, I'm moved by how much he cared for people. I've been telling my friends and fans some of the things I learned about it, and I'm excited that some of them are discovering him for the first time because of my video for ‘Boy Cry.’””"

"If any individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis Presley is the one. In his wake more than music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness, but of our own potential. As to his comeback in 1968, it was the finest music of his life. If ever there was music that bleeds, this was it.The second edition of my book came out after Elvis died, and I was asked to put the whole Elvis chapter in the past tense, and I said no. The reason was that Elvis' presence was so powerful, I felt he's always in the present tense. When you listen to anything that says Elvis Presley to you, whoever you are, whether it's "Long Black Limousine" or "Jailhouse Rock" or "Milkcow Blues Boogie" or "Any Day Now" — I could go on forever — but the physical presence is so strong that death walks away. There's an obscene Elvis outtake of "Stranger in My Hometown". Elvis is singing and suddenly it becomes completely autobiographical, and he explodes — he says "I'm gonna start driving my motherfucking truck again. All them cocksuckers stopped being friendly, but you can't keep a hard prick down." He just goes off, yet it's completely musical, not just breaking down and screaming. He's right there. Every one of his greatest performances is in a way unfinished, because the emotion in them is so rich and so strained, in the best way, trying so hard to say what you mean emotionally, though you can never say everything, so as you listen, you add to that, you're engaged, you're taking part in the dialogue. So that will always be the present tense."

"He was ahead of his time because he had such deep feelings and had the privilege of deep feelings because he was deeply loved by his mother, Gladys. He was able to appreciate profound beauty in sounds and he started a musical revolution. In fact, they say all revolutions start from love."

"While Archbishop Justin Welby has denied statements about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s secret wedding that took place three days before their publicized royal wedding in 2018, pictures have proven otherwise, showing Welby dressed as Elvis in the secret ceremony, with a quiff that represented the famous rock singer’s hair, sideburns, and shades. Archbishop Welby also held and strummed a red guitar in tribute of Meghan’s love for the late Elvis Presley."

"William and Harry remembered Diana listening to Elvis and them all singing "Hound Dog.”"

"Pistol was the Elvis of Basketball"

"One of the 17 objectives of sustainable development is the reduction of inequality. A listen to Elvis Presley's "In the guetto", about poverty in Chicago, can help focus this strategy, which has no bounds, in view of globalization, of race, color or creed."

"I never met him, although I saw his show in Las Vegas, and the great feeling I had after listening to his version of "Somos Novios" ("Its impossible") was always so well known in music circles that the other day I received the main master, in acetate form, from a friend who just passed away. It's without a doubt my most valuable treasure."

"Actually I wouldn't be here in jail if not for those people you call family. They are the ones who put me here. I didn̪'t want to be seen, just be left alone in the desert. But they said, he is our star. I would have gone ahead and let you bleed an Elvis Presley, you could have HIM for your little dreams, not me. I lived in Elvis Presley’s house, man. He ran me out of the yard. I got mad at him, I was going to throw some rocks at him. I never liked him even a little bit, but everybody else always kow-towed to him because he was rich and everything. To me, I don’t give a fuck how rich you are, I’ll just bust you up anyway."

"It is difficult to imagine two more dissimilar personalities than Elvis Presley and Mahatma Gandhi. And yet the words of Elvis Presley are strangely close to Gandhi's thinking when he said that he dreamt of an India where he would be able to wipe the last tears of the last child, words reminiscent to what Elvis once said and I quote "I figure all any kid needs is hope and the feeling that he or she belongs. If I could do or say anything that would give some kid that feeling, I would believe I had contributed something to the world""

"Elvis Presley swam under musical waters where country ballads, New Orleans trumpets and urban and rural blues converged. In the US South, music was not a passtime, rather a way of life, a contradiction which fascinated and transcended the day to day hardships, congregation and the devil's music. Elvis' genious was to absorb it all, then propell the so called rock and roll amalgam into open space, while simultaneouly becoming its only true King"

"This was the plan: we would take a holy and sacred picture of Elvis Presley, to the very summit of the earth; once there, we would place it with sincere reverence amongst the chimerical shimmering palaces of ice and snow and then, accompanied by some weird Zen magic, we would light joss sticks, dance about making screechy kung-fu noises, get off our faces, and that would be it: Planet Earth saved. Simple.”"

"It wag a lead pipe cinch that at the first masquerade party around these parts, some guests were sure to come as Dodger baseball players. Sure enough Harry James, Betty Grable and Mrs. Monte Proser did it first at the "howling" Halloween shindig hosted by Sy Devore and Sol Meadows. Debbie Reynolds was a clown and Eddie Fisher a "teenage" werewolf. Marie McDonald, had no trouble looking like a gorgeous princess on the arm of Harry Karl, her private life prince. Joanne Bradshaw came as "backless" Vikki Dougan. Nat "King" Cole showed up as Elvis Presley, although the original was present. No people in the world love getting dressed up in costume more than actors who spend their lives getting dressed up in a costume for a living, so a large time was had by all."

"It was a little painful for me to get involved in the 1968 Special. There were two choreographers already hired by NBC, Claude Thompson and Jaime Rogers and although I had danced for Elvis, I wasn't one of their dancers, nor they knew who I was. But either Elvis, director Steve Binder or Joe Esposito suggested I be allowed to dance, so they assigned me to Jaime's dancers. After an embarrasing start, after all, each choreographer prefers to use their own dancers, things were better for me. I was in a scene which Jaime directed but the NBC censors cut, the bordello scene. Now, on the side Lance Legault and I worked with Elvis on some the dancing sequences and we would sometimes give him advice. He was an amazing listener, and one of the best natural dance movers that I ever worked with. He could do everything, an ability to just feel it from the inside out. But the one thing that stood out in my mind on the set was when I was called over to where the guys all hung out, taking a break. And he was talking, seated while giving a donation to a group of nuns that were on the set. And I am thinking to myself, OK, this man makes a very good living, I would assume but he was taking his five minute break to talk to each one of these nuns, and find out where they were all from. And I was just standing there listening. And that meant so much to me. It was unbelievable experience to watch him give like that. To give money is one thing, but to give of his time, and to give of his soul and to care about where all of these nuns came from, that was just such a highlight and memory for me."

"The music of Elvis Presley is very lively and popular, and I am glad to know that you are as fond of his music as I am, too."

"Be like Elvis, go man go"

"The audience listened attentively as Eric Meola told about the one that got away – a sore spot for every professional photographer. It was catching up with Bruce Springsteen in an airport the day Elvis Presley died. Meola recounted how as he approached, he saw Bruce sitting on some luggage reading a newspaper with the headline proclaiming the end of Elvis. Bruce put the paper down and noticed Meola coming and at that point the moment was gone. "I wasn't about to ask him to recreate it", he said."

"Since emerging in 2003, Chen has become China's highest-profile fashion photographers. Her work regularly appears on the covers of the Chinese editions of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle. She is known for her bold, vibrant style that merges Chinese tradition with high fashion; Gender reversal is a central theme in Chen's work, as seen in a series of portraits, where Chen cast the Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, as various pop culture icons, namely Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Superman, Bruce Lee, and Elvis Presley."

"Other than Sinatra, there are only a handful of people who meant as much to the world of film as they did to the world of music, Bing Crosby, Doris Day and Elvis Presley"

"Ever since I was a kid, I was just glued to the record player. I would save allowances to buy Elvis records every week and still remember when I first heard "It's Now or Never". I thought that was the greatest rock 'n' roll record I ever heard. It just blew my mind. But it blew my mind even more when my mom showed me it was actually an Italian aria. O Sole Mio, remains a part of my performance repertoire to this day. It was like, 'There you go. There is a connection with all of this music.' It all started from there.""

"I always thought that singers have what I call the Elvis Presley syndrome — they think they're Elvis Presley. But they're not Elvis Presley."

"Elvis took risks by being a pioneer in his adaptation of black culture. He received huge stick for perpetuating what some of his Southern brethren were referring to as “degenerate nigger music” and the threat it posed to the social order by the fact that blacks and whites were digging his music whether listening to it on the radio or live at (segregated) venues. Much has been made of the way in which he conducted his private life, but this had a lot to do with his living within a kind of fame that few humans could comprehend. So many people often remember how well mannered and humble he appeared to be in his interactions. He may not be ‘The King’ to all but his impact on the course of music history cannot be denied and should not be denigrated."

"In "Clambake", Elvis was going to do a scene in a bar with Shelley Fabares, and in the back these waiters were wearing —you know, the tasseled cup hats and also wearing vests with gold trim and stuff, so I went and put one of those on, as a joke, and then they put a moustache on me. So I'm cleaning up a table, and Elvis is about 5 or 10 feet away from where I'm cleaning, and as he's talking to her, I'm knocking over glasses and finally they said, “Cut!” And he didn't look around —he just kind of shrugged— but I did it purposely three times in a row, and on the third time he turned around and said, ““What the hell are you doing over there? Well, anyways, I did the next take right, and you can spot me back there. He used to called me “Double Trouble,” actually because they did a movie where he was playing cousins and he had to play a blonde, so his Memphis Mafia kept teasing him: “You look like that guy on The Big Valley! So we used to play tricks on each other all the time. He’d be on stage at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, and I’d come off the other side from where he’s leaning down and singing, and I’d get some scarves and bring ’em out, and he’d hear this roaring over there from the other side of the stage, and he’d see me and go, “What the hell are you doing over there?” We'd do stuff like that all the time. We had a good time and yeah, well, Elvis and I were friends. It's too bad he died so young."

"My next book is about how the U.S. Army tried to ‘transform’ itself to meet the challenges of the atomic bomb, as well as the American experiment with a large peacetime, short-service citizen-soldier force and conscription. The idea that someone as famous and controversial as Elvis Presley could be drafted and become a symbol of the U.S. military and the nation's commitment to the defense of the free world fascinates me. His exemplary military service was well chosen, for that young man quietly accepted the call to duty, raised his hand and took the oath, wore the uniform and performed soldierly tasks as well as he had cavorted on the stage before adoring teenyboppers. Thus, after years of unremitting effort, the all-volunteer force that many call “the best Army this or any other nation has ever fielded” has come to face new enemies, new challenges with, if not sublime confidence, at least sturdy resolution. In considering the long hard period of transformation, one ponders the profound commentary of Elvis Presley's first sergeant: “By submitting to the draft and entering the Army as an ordinary private, Elvis accepted the discipline of an institution that had come to play a vital role in transforming men from assorted backgrounds into soldiers and Americans. A condensed version of those lines might stand as a pretty good inscription on the Pelvis’ tombstone."

"Performing a few more classics like "Crossroads" and "Vincent" from his "American Pie" album, he takes a break between songs to talk about setting off from his hometown for the first time to pursue his music in California and witnessing the the MGM Studio auctions in the late 60's. Moving on, he took a step back in time to "And I Love You So", from his debut album, Tapestry, released in 1970. The song became an instant classic at its release, and was covered by many of the greats including "my favorite", McLean revealed, "Elvis Presley", who recorded it and used it in 125 of his live performances from 1975 until his death in 1977."

"I had not paid attention to Elvis before 1969 but I really hadn't cared about music at all, until I was about 12, so I got into the Beatles and Elvis in my mind, at that time, was always this old dude. And then I heard "Suspicious Minds", "Any day now", and many songs that he did after the movie contracts were over and that is when I really started to love Elvis, and that was all the way to the end."

"Yes, I've known him for his music and films, and indeed he is one of my favourites"

"In his Grammy-winning 1986 song "Graceland," Paul Simon reveals his thoughts during a road trip to the home of Elvis Presley in Memphis. In the lyrics, Simon states, “For reasons I cannot explain there’s some part of me wants to see Graceland.” Even though I can't list myself as a dedicated fan, I have always appreciated his tremendous talent and the major impact he had on the world of entertainment. Not only his musical talent crossed many genres, but there's no question that he is one of the cultural icons of the 20th century. So once there, we were impressed by the mansion itself, which continues to have the feel of the 1960s-style residence Elvis developed and loved so much. The original 10,266-square-foot Colonial Revival style mansion was built in 1939 for a Memphis socialite and her husband. The expansive surrounding property includes the “Meditation Garden,” containing the graves of the singer, his parents Vernon and Gladys and his grandmother Minnie Presley. So, do we recommend the Graceland experience? The answer is yes, as the house, property and family cemetery are all definitely worth seeing."

"When Ed made his weekly call to the Trendex ratings service, he confirmed what he had suspected: Allen's show with Elvis had soundly beaten his, garnering a 20.2 rating with a 55.3% share (about 40 million viewers), compared with his own show's 14.8 rating and 39.7 % share (roughly 19 million). Within the week, he called Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It was time to make a deal. Colonel Parker, knowing he had Ed where he wanted him, extracted a whopping $50,000 for three appearances, far more than any previous Sullivan guest. On September 9, 1956, the camera would pull up at times to show only his upper torso. Yet the limited camera angle didn't dampen the effect —if anything, his facial expression, the abandon on his face, was more potent than even his gyrating hips. This was untamed beatific energy, the definition of charisma, a bolt of white-hot energy. The all-girl cheering section sounded like it was on the verge of storming the stage. Never before had so much female sexual desire been broadcast into so many American living rooms. The evening was a decisive ratings triumph, garnering a 43.7 Trendex rating, an 82.6% share, translating to some sixty million people, or about a third of the country— the largest television audience to date. Indeed, Elvis' performance of “Hound Dog” that night would be one of a small handful of moments that defined the decade."

"I came home from school one day in the fall of 1857 and my mother said she read in the newspaper that Elvis Presley was going to play the arena right near my high school. She didn't want me to go see Elvis. But years later, when the Electric Factory Concerts I then headed booked Elvis at the Spectrum, in 1971, she was the first to ask me for tickets..."

"It was Elvis’ 1957 film Jailhouse Rock which first inspired my brother and I to pursue a life in pop music. To this day, the track ‘(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care’, from the movie, remains my favourite. We saw the film when we were really young. Even if you divorce it from that scene in the movie, for me, it’s musically kind of the essence of everything that pop music should be. That track awoke something in me, beckoning me to the world of pop stardom. Upon watching the movie, my younger self couldn’t help but think, “Oh God, someday, I want to be that guy at that swimming pool, being as cool as I can possibly be, standing there singing in front of all these women at the pool party.“ With this song, there’s something so basic about it, and it’s really, really short. I think it’s just around two minutes long, but it also shows you don’t need to overstay your welcome in a pop song. You can say it all in around two minutes, and if you’ve got the goods, like he did, there’s no problem. It just makes you go and want to replay it that much quicker. There was the Elvis in his pre-army days, and he was the absolute coolest person there was."

"Oh, they can kiss my ass,” she says of critics who might accuse her of borrowing other cultures’ fixtures. It's a topic she seems interested to discuss. “I’m not appropriating anything. I’m inspired and I’m referencing other cultures. That is my right as an artist. They said Elvis Presley stole African-American culture. That’s our job as artists, to turn the world upside down and make everyone feel bewildered and have to rethink everything.”"

"He is probably more famous than anyome who has ever been famous"

"France's Elvis brought a part of America into our national pantheon. And all of us in France have something of Johnny Hallyday in us."

"But it is Presley's singing, halfway between a western and a rock 'n' roll style, that has sent teenagers into a trance; they like his wailing in a popular song like "Blue Moon" or such western tunes as "I'll Never Let You Go", but they go crazy over the earthy, lusty mood of such rock 'n' roll numbers as "Money Honey"; and the reason is simple enough: Presley sings with a beat; and you can be certain that there'll always be music with a beat and that, whether you like it or not, there will always be an Elvis Presley."

"Others get a kick out of Elvis, a passing phase so I recommend the Government feed the souls of men with the music of Beethoven and Dvorak. I never realized that I was so far out of date until I saw this artist on a CBC television production. Heaven help us if that is the way our generation is going..."

"It might seem strange to write the phrase “a nobody” in the same sentence as Elvis Presley. But really, in rock ’n’ roll icon terms these days you're nobody until you have had a major multimedia museum exhibition in London. The Presley estate’s 1.5 million artefacts have been curated down into about 450 pieces on display here. No musical artist – or probably any human being ever – is surrounded by as many out-there stories. And as much as the music or the clothes, it is the myths that make Elvis ELVIS. There’s the police light he used to place on top of his car so he could pull people over and give out his autograph instead of tickets. LOL. The cheque for $3,000 he carried around with him until he found the perfect golden palomino horse to buy (he finally handed it over to someone, folds and all, in January 1967). A secure Mark 900 briefcase and phone with handwritten instructions, the pad with the notes for his proposed kung-fu film and the tiny white faux fur coat he had made for Lisa-Marie when she was a toddler. And on and on it goes, serving as a reminder that however weird and wild The Beatles or Bowie or Michael Jackson or Prince or Madonna or Kanye or anyone else may have got, Elvis Presley was weirder and wilder before them all. He invented the idea of the megastar eccentric and looked and sounded fabulous while doing it. This great exhibition is fitting testament"

"I don't know where that story came from. The other day, my niece begged me to tell her, so I had to swear to her, on my life, that Elvis and I had never met. And we did not."

"I used to mime music-making to records before I started formal piano lessons around age nine, but it was seeing Elvis Presley perform on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957 that really got me excited about playing music. I was totally in love with both Elvis and Bo Diddley, but that wasn't allowed in my house. I wanted to be a guitar player, but they wouldn't allow a guitar in the house. I had to play classical music on the piano, so it took a long time to get somewhere. Eventually, my dad bought me an alto saxophone and I fell into playing sax but before long, rock ‘n’ roll struck as part of the British Invasion, and I reverted to the keyboard."

"Certainly the most recognisable and ubiquitous semiotic marker in American cultural history, he embodies the quintessence of the postmodern condition."

"After playing the ukulele I told my mother I wanted a solid body guitar, because I would then be able to sing Elvis. I really liked his songs, was determined to play guitar, and ended up recording “Don’t Be Cruel”, In fact, in grade schools they started calling me Elvis Presley, the black Elvis, - they said I was trying to wear my hair like Elvis. Then I formed an all an all girls band, Bobby Lynn and the Idols."