American Country Singers

"Elvis was almost pure style, his clothes, hair, the way he sang, the way he moved on stage, his half-kidding sneer. The first superstar..."

"I often wondered if Elvis mania will ever truly die. I'm too young to remember the apex of his career, but I vividly remember the deep mourning that followed his death. For years — maybe, still? — his birthday and death day were marked by vigils in Memphis. The other day, I was charmed by a TV commercial that features Elvis impersonators from around the world using FaceTime to sing the Elvis ballad "There's Always Me." Anyone under 30 probably wonders who these strangely dressed guys are. To me, the commercial was literally music to my ears."

"I was a 13 year old kid sitting on the front row on Hank Williams' last performance at the Municipal Auditorium. It changed my life. A couple of years later, during one of Elvis ̪Presley's appearances with the Louisiana Hayride, I was also in attendance there, with a friend, and we got real mad at all of the girls screaming when Elvis was doing his shaking. It upset us that we couldn't hear anything"

"Someone I knew invited me into the house. At the far end of the room was the gleaming copper coffin that contained his body. A couple in their late twenties stood beside the casket, she was sobbing and he had his arm around her. Behind the coffin, an arch led to another room where a glass statue stood high off the floor, twirling slowly, adorned by glass beads that leaked like water. Potted plastic palms surrounded the coffin and on the wall was a painting of a skyline on black velveteen. When Priscilla entered she offered me a Coke then introduced me to his father, Vernon Presley, who was watching the 10 o'clock news in a nearby bedroom. Nobody in the group around him spoke. Later, at the front door, I interviewed Charlie Hodge “It’s really hard to believe,” he said. “I went to the dentist with him on Monday night around 9:30. We were getting ready for the tour and we talked about the songs we’d use. But we never did rehearse" Outside the front door were hundreds of wreaths, some spelled ‘Elvis’ in flowers, others were shaped like crowns, broken hearts, hound dogs and blue suede shoes...."

"My first of ten fantasy dinner guests is Elvis, someone I first fell in love with when I was a kid but I wasn’t quite sure what it was I fell in love with. It wasn’t as much his music as his charisma – and I don’t think I really understood charisma until I saw him. I remember one Christmas as a kid I watched "Jailhouse Rock" and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was so charismatic that even in the scenes where he was in the background, it was him I paid attention to. For me, he was the one who always set the pace, so I would want him at my party."

"Elvis Presley was rock & roll's first real star, not to mention one of the most important cultural forces in history, a hip-shaking symbol of liberation for the staid America of the 1950s. A white Southerner singing blues laced with country, and country laced with gospel, he brought together American music from both sides of the color line and performed it with a natural sexuality that made him a role model for generations of cool rebels. He was repeatedly dismissed as vulgar, incompetent, and a bad influence, but the force of his music and his image was no mere merchandising feat. Presley signaled to mainstream culture that it was time to let go. Four decades after his death, Presley's image and influence remain undiminished."

"That Elvis boy can sure dance but he's not as good as me though (LOL)"

"A hard drinker with an ever-present cigarette in his mouth, he liked to dress like Elvis at company meetings and maintain a level of fun in the workplace."

"He was out for fun, he never rehearsed. He was 19 and he had a motorcycle and he liked to ride the streets, looking for excitement. So often I'd see him zipping along Union Street, a new girl on the back of that motorcycle, or walking with two or three girls at once. Later he'd tell me, 'I'm sorry I didn't introduce you, Marion. I didn't know their names'.""

"What's happened to the alliance is that the great relationship we have had with the Americans in wartime, and the cultural affinity with the jazz period of the 1920s, the swing era in the 1940s, Elvis Presley and rock and roll, Hollywood, the sitcoms, and the relationship between the citizens of Australia and the citizens of America, society to society, has been suborned by this now sacramental and foolish tone we are ­encouraged to have about the ­alliance."

"Next to the kitchen door, Elvis Presley is sticking his tongue into a young woman’s mouth. I never understood why he made millions of girls cry, until I saw that photo, used as an ad as it was, for Sam Shepard’s play "Fool for Love"."

"Presley's early days represent a kind of liberation in his fans own lives, which to that point were painted in black and white and dominated by their parents' conservative views. His music gave them an art form, and to a degree, an identity all their own. More than anything else though, it's the uniqueness of Presley's voice and talent that shall prevail. There's never been anyone like him and likely won't be."

"In 1969, I hitched from New England to Nevada to see him, to meet him, so I showed at the Las Vegas International Hotel's delivery room, I hid in a closet, until Elvis and his entourage passed by, so that is when I jumped out and told him I was one of his biggest fans, and wanted to be a star to which Elvis replied, "I believe that will happen, son". I got his blessing..."

"It shows that anything's possible because I wasn't the president of the student body. It was certainly a very fateful and important meeting in the course of my life. Too bad I hadn't been there the day before — I would have met Elvis."

"He was criticized for turning down the role of Sundance in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", after insisting unsuccessfully on doing the film with Elvis Presley as Butch."

"Elvis is the one man that stands alone in the history of Rock-N-Roll. He was the first and the best, shook the world by its very foundation. Over the years I've seen stars come and go, but never have I seen a star match the impact of Elvis Presley. Elvis may be gone, but the echo will never die."

"To go out Albemarle Rd, to the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round, and seeing Elvis at the Carolina Theater."

"Elvis Presley was known for his kind and generous heart. Every Christmas he would donate $100,000 to local charitable organizations. He personally delivered a wheelchair to a disabled woman and gave a necklace to a sick child in a hospital unable to see him perform. Moreover, it is hard to explain an admiration for one particular individual such as Elvis. I admired this man not only for his contribution to the music industry, but also for his love for all of his fans,"

"The young Elvis Presley, without any doubt."

"I want to produce music that is timeless, music that lasts for decades and centuries, like Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, The Temptations and Prince's songs. One-hit wonders are for lucky people, not talented people,"

"He was electrifying in his white jumpsuit, with his cape on, quite humble but he had an aura. There are very few people who have triple-X charisma, and Elvis was one."

"During his rendition of "Hurt", (1976), he was in even better voice, singing in a register that gave more impact to his phrasing, and even hitting notes that could cause a mild hernia. And, after they drew a good crowd reaction, he offered them in a reprise that was tantamount to masochism."

"From the darkest of backgrounds, Elvis' voice emerges with such realism that you could take singing lessons, his vocals so irresistible and smooth, and with such startling definition, that the clearest and most concise way I can describe the experience, is that I never felt as though I was listening to a recording."

"I was working in the early 2000s with Wieden & Kennedy, an exclusive, high-brow ad agency based in Amsterdam, and they were literally on the same street where my studio was. We knew each other really well, had worked together and, at a certain point, somebody knocks on my door, walks inside, and says, "Tom, I've got something, but we don't know what to do with the music." He plays me this world championship soccer commercial for NIKE directed by Terry Gilliam, a five-minute movie where you see all the star soccer players play games with one another in the belly of a ship. The commercial was called, "The Secret Tournament" , they were looking for music and had tried a few different things, like Elvis' A Little Less Conversation,' and I said, 'Oh, I know that song.'" But they said, " Problem is that it's too short and we need five minutes." I said, "I can make this work. Give me a couple of days or a week and I'll come back to you." He said, "You don't have a couple of days or a week, I need this in five hours." And I said, "Well, just give me five hours (laughs)." So he left, and at that point in time, I was producing the first record of a UK-based DJ by the name of Sasha, the biggest thing on the planet. So he came in and he said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I've gotta spend four or five hours on this Elvis thing." So he said, "I'm gonna go get a massage and get some food, I'll be back in five hours and we can continue working." So he goes to get a massage, comes back at 8:00 pm. And when I played it for him, he smiled and looked at me and said, "This is a number one hit." I said, "Ah, you're kidding, this is just for a commercial," but he said, "No. You don't understand what I'm saying: this is a number one hit." Famous last words! So I sent it out to NIKE, and they loved it, and they started talking to the Elvis estate. They were talking with the lawyer of the Elvis estate, and he says, "We just played the track for Priscilla Presley, and she really loved it. Tell me, who is the producer on this track?" And then the guy on the NIKE side says, "His name is Junkie XL." And it goes quiet. After half a minute, he says, "You have to be kidding me, right?" So we shortened it to JXL and it went into the commercial, which ran worldwide and did really well. And then the track started having a life of its own and eventually, we decided to release it as a single. So I spent a little bit more time on it to produce it as a proper release, and that's the track most people know today, yes, the one that became a number one hit in many countries."

"I wanted to look at Elvis the non-saint, as well as the nature of songs from the ‘50’s, all that postwar optimism; he’s iconic, a wonderful singer with an amazing body of work, but he’s a bit like Billie Holiday, you’re not ‘allowed’ to be critical."

"The memory that stands out most in my mind is the first time I saw that face, the face that was soon to be the most recognized face in the world: the deep-set eyes that would make girls scream and cry; the full, pouting lips that would make them swoon. I'll never forget the first time I saw the flawless face of Elvis Presley.”"

"Of the millions of cars that have ever been built, only a handful of individual vehicles are truly legendary. James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder. Ingrid Bergman’s Ferrari 375 MM. Frank Sinatra’s Dual Ghia. The Lincoln Continental in which John F. Kennedy was assassinated. There are others, of course, but it’s a short list in any case. And no matter what the criteria, only two BMWs truly deserve to be on it. One is the Touring-bodied 328 coupe that won the Gran Premio di Brescia in 1940; the other is the 507 owned by Elvis Presley while stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army."

"I watched the audience as he walked out on stage, and so many had their faces in their hands. They'd sit there and cry. It was almost Biblical, as if the clouds had parted and down a shaft of light came the Angels."

"Pharaohː Male, a Baritone with a registry from a Low B to High G#. He is the most powerful man in Egypt living in a strange psychological place and is desperately searching for the truth in his dreams. The character is in style an homage to Elvis Presley."

"Your CD is wonderful, and you have a great sounding voice. Reminds me of an Elvis jazz sound. I just I always loved Elvis's sound, but you're definitely an original and certainly are my taste. You have a jazz sound. Just great!!"

"He would appear twice a night at the Hilton in Las Vegas so after the second show one night, I asked the guard behind the stage if I could meet him. As I was then playing with Cowboys, I was let in. So there he was with a towel around his head exhausted after performing two shows, but was very friendly. He was also a huge fan of Coach (Paul W. 'Bear') Bryant, my coach at the University of Alabama, so we got along extremely well. I think the key was that we came from similar backgrounds, just country boys who remained the same even after hitting the big stage."

"I think it’s a little bit too much and kind of overwhelming. I mean, it puts a real big strain on me personally in my life. It’s always great to be respected and admired, but to a point where it exceeds certain living situations, and it’s not that much fun to me. I think it was fun to a certain degree, but it really was kind of embarrassing the way people treated as if I was an Elvis Presley or a God, and that’s a very uncomfortable feeling for me.”"

"The Presley, Beatles and Castro appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show have one thing in common: at the conclusion of the appearances, Sullivan stands at center stage and declares them all to be outstanding citizens of their countries..."

"Elvis is my man."

"I feel good. It was kind of nail-biting all day yesterday. It'd be nice to have $3,300 in my pocket and still have the cup, and I hate to see it go. In fact, it's really going to be weird putting something that has that kind of value in an envelope and sending it off to the people who bid the most in auction, the owners of the "Icon Hotel" in Luton, U.K"

"Not any big ones, but I had a picture taken that haunts me to this day. I'd just come off stage at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to be greeted by Elvis Presley, Merv Griffin and Norm Crosby. Elvis knew how to work himself up for pictures and he ended up looking like, well, Elvis, any doubling of the chin magically concealed. So naive, grinning me, however, clearly had an extra chin, later to be surgically eliminated. It was something to do with the singing. I had it cut out, now I've got the mark of Zorro under my chin, that's why I grew this beard. Never have your photo taken with Elvis Presley."

"Blues, country, pop, rock and roll, gospel, and beyond, this man could sing anything. From the rockabilly of the Sun Sessions, to the MOR of "Wooden Heart"(1960), to the later day "Burnin' Love"(1972), Elvis proved that he had the skills as a vocalist that few have, or will ever have."

"i) So we left that CREATIVE era of jazz, bebop, bigband and went into the '50s. It was like coming from modern jazz to poop tunes like "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window," and so on. It was unbelievable. But then Elvis Presley changed that whole thing because he opened the way for black music to come in ii) Even from 30 feet, as I sat in the front of the CBS orquestra section, and with his back to me, as we all faced the camera, I knew right and then that he would be a huge star"

"Elvis was great. I loved him. When we worked on "Love Me Tender", everyone to a person, was determined to detest him. They couldn't believe he could just show up and be a movie star. They were prepared to hate him. By the time the shoot was over, everyone adored him. I'll tell you a story about him that probably nobody else knows. We were doing "Stay Away Joe" and were the only two actors working that day. And I just happened to look across the highway, and there was an old battered pickup truck, patched up and with the tires gone. And there was a rocking chair in the back of it with a lady tied to it.It turned out the lady was in her eighties and she was a true Elvis fan, had no money and her family had driven 300 miles with her tied in the rocking chair because she was crippled up and couldn't get in the cab. Me being blabbermouth, I went over and told Elvis. He stopped everything. He had them back the truck over and put it right up next to the camera. He got her situated, and he always had his band with him, so they broke out their instruments and they gave her a thirty-minute performance. She stayed with us the rest of the day. He took her to lunch, and just took her everywhere he went. That's Elvis Presley."

"I guess everybody in the world tried to be a little like Elvis at the time, but there was no way you could compete with him if you just were doing country."

"Now and then in a magazine, you will come across one of those features about your dream dinner party guests, encouraging you to wonder whether, inter alia, you could sit Elvis Presley next to Mother Teresa. I saw one in a mid-market woman's magazine the other day. Well, all I can say is that I'll be at the top table, after scrubbing John Lennon from the list, and certainly leaving Elvis, Mother Teresa, Ian Dury, Orson Welles and Peter Sellers. Incidentally, I wouldn't want to sit down with Karl Marx unless he was genuinely interested in what I'd been doing at work all day..."

"Years later I met him, by chance in Hollywood where I was living. He was riding in a limousine and I was out walking my dog. He spotted me and pulled over. We went over to my home and sat out front talking about old times. After a while he grew melancholy and confided in me, “Carolyn, I’ve lost my way home.” It was heartbreaking as he had grown weary and disillusioned..."

"I think Elvis and BB King both did as much for the world of music coming through Memphis as anyone."

"He's started the whole thing. I liked his early records."

"The Bee Gees for their harmonies, the Beatles because they were so ahead of their time and Elvis, who was indeed, an amazing swagger, had incredible moves and his voice is so iconic."

"Hendrix and Elvis were the ones who sparked my interest in music. When I saw Elvis play the acoustic guitar back in the day with 'Jailhouse Rock,' that's when I wanted to play. I think I was 6. All I could think of back then, was that would be a great job..."

"i) I've been asked to write down who I am most grateful for in this holiday season. And the answer is Elvis Presley. We are a very musical family and he sings my favorite Christmas song, which "Why cant everyday be like Christmas". So now it's turned out that I've sang it to all my daughters when they were babies and they all fell asleep on me. ii) Woman wanted him, men wanted to BE him, or just hang out with him.”"

"Elvis Presley was born to a death. His twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered first, didn't live at all, and everything that happened next was a swaggering wobble between those two poles. Denis Johnson, who passed away from liver cancer at 67 in May 2017, references Elvis glancingly in several of his works — "Train Dreams" (2011), "Tree of Smoke" (2007), "Jesus’ Son" (1992), and in both the final pages of his first novel, "Angels" (1983) — and the last of five stories in his posthumous collection "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden", where the author makes liberal use of the legendary performer."

"Honestly, the first one was Elvis Presley. When I listened to Elvis when I was a kid and heard “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog" — you want to talk about an 8-year-old kid losing his mind? “Jailhouse Rock,” songs like that, made him kind of an American hero. But he also came across as kind of taboo, kind of a little bit rowdy, and a little bit too much for some people. That really stuck with me. Yeah, I was born ten years after he died, but everybody loves Elvis. Hell, my grandma loves Elvis. But when he came out, man, he was a little bit of a bad boy, too. He had that edge. Something about Elvis made you think if you smarted off, he might slap you. I heard that in his music. I heard that “I don’t really care what y’all think,” that whole “I’m going to boogie-woogie if I want to boogie-woogie” attitude."

"These days the bright London boy who passed his 11-plus and left school without any exams is touring the country with a talk show. In the likes of Southampton, ­Workington, ­Peterborough and Coventry he'll focus on the social significance of his life's soundtracks, from Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the rest. Music is his passion, politics always an interest. In the 1960s he was in a couple of rock bands as a rhythm guitarist and backing singer but when it became apparent that he wasn't going to become an overnight rock star, he got a job as a postman instead. However his love of music has never faded. Johnson adds "I was was a huge fan of Elvis and The Beatles so when Radio 1 celebrated its 50th anniversary recently it made me feel nostalgic as I remember when it first started broadcasting and what an incredible treat it was to be able to listen to pop music all day. I still play the guitar but I don’t think I’m going to be back on the stage any time soon"."