American Country Singers

"I believe in moments that change everything, are powerful, mostly unplanned, and define lives. I remember the exact moment I met Toni. We were both at Batson Children's Hospital, she as a patient with her mother, and I was the visitor. I was with a team of people whose entire purpose in being there was to treat the soul while the physicians treated the body. We were responsible for giving children moments of relief from months of pain. Toni needed a moment. She had not felt like coming out of her room in a while. Leukemia will do that. This was our first moment. Our next was Hallowing also at Batson. Toni's mother and I exchanged numbers, and I stayed in touch regularly. She told me Toni's whites were very low and she was in isolation. No visitors. Our final moment was at the end of 2016, when Toni introduced me to a song I'd never heard before, in a church of all places. I sat in the back by myself until Toni's Childlife workers from Batson came to show their respects and maybe have one more moment and then we listened to Elvis Presley sing that "There must be peace and understanding sometime, strong winds of promise that will blow away, the doubt and fear" What a moment! I wish I could say I planned all of my life-changing moments, but I can't. Proverbs 16:9 says, “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” I planned to be at Batson, but I didn't plan the moment. That was all God and a little girl named Toni. Now, I'm so thankful for unplanned moments. Those little bits of peace and understanding from God and someone else who had no idea they were shaping my life. If we can be anything for anyone, why not a moment? Why not live Elvis' song and be a strong wind of promise that blows away someone's doubt and fear.......if only for a moment?"

"As sound leaves the body, it needs to resonate against something specific. There are options – you can direct that flow of sound to the nose, the throat, the jaw or to the sinus cavities in the face-, but I think what Elvis did – as evidenced by his lip curl – was to aim the vibration stream right at his teeth."

"Every day, there are new stories about deepfakes and Artificial Intelligence-cloned voices and images that manipulates someone’s likeness without their consent. This is not just a problem that effects celebrities, this is a human problem that affects us all. As a mother of three daughters, I am terrified by how this technology has been used to exploit teenagers. It’s fitting that this bill is named the ELVIS Act, because Elvis Presley performed so many different types of songs–from love songs to the blues, from pop songs to gospel music–but he infused them with his distinct voice, likeness, and personal qualities to create something new. Every individual should have the right to control their unique God-given qualities."

"I have a crush on Elvis Presley."

"I was in a Hollywood restaurant having lunch and he bounded up and said he'd seen me in "King Solomon’s Mines" more than 60 times. I told him I was flattered. Elvis then shook his head sadly and added: ‘I didn’t have any choice in the matter, Mr Granger. You see, at the time I was working as an usher in a cinema where the godawful film was playing. LOL."

"But that doesn't mean I view systematically scrubbing Alex Jones from the internet, as Apple, Facebook, and YouTube have tried to do, as a victory. Why? Because I enjoy hip-hop, Elvis Presley, and "The Catcher in the Rye" -- and at some point in our country's history, all three were in the sights of people who didn't approve of its content (or in Elvis' case, hips). Again, I don't like what Jones has to say but I do like the fact I can call him an idiot. That's America, baby."

"We were shooting a musical number on a merry-go-round where he's taken this little girl to the park and she's riding around and Elvis is singing to her. Well, she was a very young girl and she could only work for a few hours a day with us getting into all kinds of penalties and overtime. So when it came time to do Elvis' close up the little girl wasn't available to do the offstage. So Elvis said to me, 'I always feel better if I can sing to somebody'. He says, 'I wonder if you would mind standing beside the camera and let me sing to you when I do my close ups'. So I had Elvis Presley sing a song directly to me in a movie, and that was quite a thrill. (In fact), of all the people I've ever worked with in my entire life, and I've been a director for 47 years, Elvis was wonderful, the politest and nicest actor I ever worked with. A great guy.""

"I never met him but I believe I will see him in heaven because he was very deeply religious, especially in the last two or three years of his life."

"On May 3, 1957, at Hollywood̺'s Radio Recorders Studios, Elvis and his band were working on a soundtrack session for “Jailhouse Rock". Bill Black had a difficult time laying down the bass line for (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care on his new electric bass, and he eventually gave up, frustrated. Elvis surprised everyone by picking up the bass and playing the part – so perfect that Jerry Lieber performed a scratch vocal, and the two recorded the perfect instrumental master for Elvis to sing a new vocal track over, which he did less than a week later."

"When he shot the television set? He also shot at 50 other people. LOL. What I do remember was when we sat together backstage for two hours. And he was a charming, delightful man. And at one point I said, "That's a beautiful ring you have there." He said "You like it?" I said, "It's beautiful!" He took it off his hand and put it on mine. He gave me his ring. And years later all the jewelry I had in my house – I trust everybody. I was brought up to believe that you cannot steal, cheat or lie and I've been stolen from, cheated or lied to all of my life. And so jewelry – who needs it? But this one was something special to me and it's gone."

"That the prime exponent of this new style of music should be a singer who possessed no prior professional experience was an anomaly; (in fact), not only were most of the mannerisms that would define his vocal style present at the creation — from the sudden swoops in register to the habit, derived from gospel singing, of starting his lines with a throat-clearing "well" that gave whatever followed the feeling of a retort, but what was even more impressive was the extent to which his first professional recording was marked by the trait that has characterized every great popular singer: the absolute assertion of his personality over the song; from this, it might be concluded that Presley was simply a "natural.", but the truth, as ever, was more complex than that."

"I had always wanted to meet Elvis. I was deeply involved in musical comedy. I was a chorus boy on Broadway — I was brought up and trained that way. So I asked if we could arrange for me to come and meet Elvis… and I got it. I brought Joey [Walsh], the guy who wrote ‘California Split’ with me, to see Elvis. Joey and I went into the dressing room and Elvis opened the door. He had a gold-gilded .45 pistol in his belt. His father, Vernon, and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker were there and then left. I told him to be a free spirit. He said, ‘Hey, man, you’re crazy,’ and then I said, ‘I ain’t crazy, Elvis. I’m scared just like you. Your daddy and the Colonel aren’t going to let us be alone for too long. You’re a cash cow to these people. Why don’t you come out (with us) and just be free, just be a free spirit? Leave Elvis here and come out and be free.'"

"My uncle Perry came in, when I was six and started to create this character in the mirror. Because he was putting on this show, all my family were in the act so I was head of security, wearing this little official gold jacket, and suddenly there are all these screaming people, and my uncle – who has a moustache, a birthmark on his face and no hair – becomes Elvis and he's amazing. When the show was over, it felt like this weird emotional storm had taken over our house and sometimes when I try to figure out why I'm acting, I figure that had to be it."

"It’s always been my dream to come to Madison Square Garden and be the warm-up act for Elvis."

"In the music world, there had always been a distinction between black and white music, the assumption being that black was R&B and white was pop. But with the explosion of Elvis and rock and roll those clear distinctions began to disappear. In fact, Elvis Presley was the first white artist to blur the lines of color among artists."

"I remember having a conversation with some of the older artists at STAX about when Elvis was breaking in the mid 1950's like the Reverend Bishop Dwight Arnold “Gatemouth” Moore, a disc jockey who had been a huge blues singer in the 1920´s and 1930's and became a gospel singer thereafter. In fact, it was he who said, 'Elvis gave us a second career'. That's what some people thought, but it's like you hear, some thought he was doing great things for African-Americans, bringing a respect to that music. I've read the newspaper articles of the time and the sense of fear and anger that Elvis instilled and the way he was despised was a real jolt, and it remains an amazing representation of America at the time. At the same time, the fact it was a white guy doing it made it different and I think a lot of people did get a new life."

"Mississippi is also about people helping people. We lead the nation in charitable donations per-capita. When disaster strikes, our people respond with immediate relief for their neighbors, as they did after the Mississippi River flood of 1927 and following devastating hurricanes like Camille and Katrina of recent times and dozens of tornadoes and fires. Elvis Presley helped to rebuild McComb after a January 1975 tornado nearly leveled the place by giving a concert to aid storm victims. Today, Presley's birthplace in Tupelo is among the state's leading travel destinations, rivaling the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River-area casinos that annually pour millions of badly-needed dollars into the state treasure. There are more musicians, singers and other artisans of note per square foot here than anywhere else in America. Presley and Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner presided over our creative class, but they have been surrounded by a skyful of bright lights in the artistic constellation."

"It's real gold, it cost $2500, some sort of impregnated unborn calf skin. It's very dramatic and almost unbelievable when you see an artist walk out on a stage and receive an ovation like the one we have witnessed tonight"

"Until recently, Western research on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union all but ignored the role of rock music in those societies. There have been a few academic articles on rock in socialist countries, but no serious book-length studies. Last November, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies held its first session ever on the subject. However, the recent collapse of the Iron Curtain has revealed societies not only aware of, but also significantly involved in, Western-style rock culture. In fact, none other than Raisa Gorbachev has publicly declared herself a fan of Elvis Presley"

"He acknowledged to me that he was part of a new generation of communists who embraced Western rock and roll, including Elvis."

"I was told a couple of pieces of advice, one was ̊"just remember that whatever you do, try your best, because they aren't going to choose your best scene with Elvis, but Elvis' best with you". When I met him, he was utterly flattering. I then felt like an older sister for him, even taught him to twist. There was something about his wholesomeness, his courtesy, and that is why he is still as big as he is."

"I had never seen him in person. I could hardly speak when I saw him..."

"They had me convinced that no teenage girl was safe around him. They wanted to have him watched at the theater and they wanted his hotel room watched. They had him pictured as a real villain. In my chambers, I warned him and his manager that I would be present at the first of six shows and that I had prepared warrants charging him with "impairing the morality of minors". As if for proof, deputies would be stationed in wings of the theater, I added. Once on the stage, he opened with "Heartbreak Hotel", threw his hips out once and so I immediately told the lawyer on the theater, in a whisper that I was going to put him in jail, sure as anything. But then, miraculously, Elvis caught himself. "Wait a minute. I can't do this. They won't let me do this here," I heard Elvis say. To everyone's amazement, instead of shaking, wiggling, and jumping around, Elvis stood perfectly still, wiggled his little finger suggestively in place of his usual movements, which thrilled the crowd, who I guess found "the finger" both hilarious and deeply erotic. So in the end, my wife, my three daughters and their girlfriends all watched as Elvis wiggled his finger suggestively throughout the show. And they roared when Elvis dedicated "Hound Dog" to me. Everybody in the audience got the biggest charge out of that. I was later told that Elvis continued the finger twitching movements throughout the other five Jacksonville shows. But he had made some new fans, including my grandson, Tony, who would grow up to idolize him by plastering his posters all over his bedroom walls."

"He is to the US National Football League what Elvis Presley is to rock-and-roll. He’s the king.”"

"Gorgeous ! - or same equally effusive effeminate word – is the only way to describe Elvis Presley's latest epiphany at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Not since Marlene Dietrich stunned the ringside with the sight of those legs encased from hip to ankles in a transparent gown has any performer so electrified this jaded town with a personal appearance. Without twanging a string, burbling a note or offering a hint of hip. Elvis transfixed a tough opening night audience of flacks and entertainers simply by striding on-stage in the costume of the Year. Not quite the erotic politician that Jim Morrison proved to be when he disrobed on stage. Elvis manages very well his constituency by occasionally grabbing a lady at ringside and kissing her firmly on the mouth. Grander than the "Fountainblue," the International has found itself an attraction magnetic enough to pull the shut-in generation over 30 out of their ranch houses onto nonstop jets and down in to the Valley of Loose Gold where the King presides over his people, with eternal youth and joy and jamboree."

"The day that Elvis died, Aug. 16, 1977 was a pretty big deal. Not as well remembered was Oct. 28, 1956, the day that he got a polio shot. The event, staged at CBS studios by the New York City health department, made the national television evening news and the New York Times. Photos suggest that he was having a blast. The New York City health department arranged for the public inoculation in order to encourage adolescents — the group most susceptible to polio after young children — to get their shots. Only a very low percent of the city's teenagers had received the newly licensed Salk vaccine. I'd like to think that if Elvis were still with us he'd be getting an HPV shot — vaccination rates for the cancer-causing human papilloma virus are among the lowest of recommended vaccines — and tweeting about it. But he has left the stage. Instead of Elvis posing for a shot we have celebrities caught up in the trap of unscientific thinking promoting vaccine refusal last year. This is not a red-blue issue: Green Party candidate Jill Stein is a vaccine skeptic as well. If that irrational fear-based movement continues to gain ground and data-driven medical science and advances that can save lives are ignored, we'll watching people get sick or even die from preventable diseases. Luckily, the movement has a way to go in the United States.. August is National Immunization Awareness Month, a good time to check that you and your family are up to date on vaccine coverage/ According to a survey conducted in 2014, and published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 87.6% to teenagers were up-to-date with the Tdap (tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis) vaccine and 60% had meningitis vaccine coverage. The rate for HPV vaccine, which requires 3 doses, was lower, perhaps because of its cost or opposition to the inoculations on the grounds that the way to avoid a sexually transmitted disease is to abstain from sex. HPV is transmitted sexually and the vaccine can prevent most genital warts and most cases of cervical cancer, which is projected to kill 4,120 women in 2016. Young men and women who get the vaccine also can dramatically lower their risk of some anal and oral cancers, which are on the rise. I miss Elvis, the King of Vaccines."

""Elvis" “Tupac,” “Obama”"

"Our bomb shelter generation revolted against the stiff, straight old ways. They threw away their traditional leather shorts for blue jeans and started standing and walking like cowboys. They were bored with '0 Tannenbaum!' and skipped 'Ach du lieber Augustin' to hear rock n' roll. Elvis Presley was just what they were looking for -- an American Pied Piper to lead them to excitement.""

"He became nationally known in April 1945 when, as CBS's morning-radio man in Washington, he took the microphone for a live, firsthand account of President Roosevelt's funeral procession. The entire CBS network picked up the broadcast, later preserved in the Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly record series, I Can Hear it Now. Later, through his Talent Scout television show, he significantly assisted the careers of Pat Boone, Tony Bennett, Eddie Fisher, Connie Francis, Leslie Uggams, Lenny Bruce, Steve Lawrence, Connie Francis, Roy Clark, and Patsy Cline. Yet he proved fallible. In April of 1955, he turned down Elvis Presley."

"The same mystic power Michelangelo held in his hands Elvis held in his windpipe, a power nobody should have been allowed to put a price on, but for the love of the ‘ching!’, they did."

"As far as I know, Presley and Gould never crossed paths. A media-mediated symbiotic relationship existed between the two of them, however, which extended beyond their dependencies, night-crawling work habits, and inner circles of hard-core loyal friends. Like Gould, Presley had the hermit's need for sanctuary in the studio, where his genius, every bit the equal of the pianist's, harnessed the full potential of playbacks and editing to sharpen and refine even the most thrown-off sounding uh-huh. The degree their sexuality was groomed for media consumption was another shared attribute."

"Fred Maddox came back from a Louisiana Hayride Show and told me I should listen to this kid singing. On April 2, 1956 Fred called me and asked me to come to San Diego if I was interested in meeting Elvis. On the trip down I thought that since I'd seen other acts play at the Arena, I doubted he'd fill it. It was packed, Presley went wild, the girls never stopped and you could hardly hear him over the noise. I had never heard such a reaction to an artist, even being on shows with some of the biggest country singers of the day, so that's when I decided, that this is what I had to do"

"We"ll survive Elvis. He can't last, I tell you flatly, he can’t last"

"I was living in France about five years ago, and that's when I discovered the Elvis Sun Sessions recordings. To me, most people know the later Elvis stuff, you know, "Blue Suede Shoes" and what he later recorded at RCA. But this stuff just has the energy and modesty and integrity of where he came from. It's his start and it was really the start of rock and roll, holding on to the roots of American music in every way, the blues, rockabilly. I think these recordings represent really the discovery of one of the greatest singers and performers of all time. It's the beginning"."

"When I was about 10, my dad took me to an Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash concert in Lubbock. That had a profound effect on me. As a result, I completely fell in love with that New Orleans (sound) that I liked on the radio, with Little Richard and Fats Domino. That music is really in a sense still my very favorite."

"It was Elvis' Jailhouse Rock that made me first pick up a guitar and say, ‘I’ve got to do a bit of that. He was absolutely brilliant. Elvis, in his very early years, was staggering"

"I wasn’t really known as a country music performer. I was trying to be more like Elvis and those people at the time. I didn’t consider myself a country act."

"Along with the rest of "Deep Purple", I once had the chance to meet Elvis. For a young singer like me, he was an absolute inspiration. I soaked up what he did like blotting paper. It's the same as being in school — you learn by copying the maestro. His personality was also extremely endearing, his interviews were very self-effacing (and), he came over as gentle and was generous in his praise of others. He had a natural, technical ability, but there was something in the humanity of his voice, and his delivery. Those early records at the Sun Records label are still incredible and the reason is simple: he was the greatest singer that ever lived."

"He was very good, great, nice, sweet and a gentleman."

"The likelihood is that the last movie (Pres. John F. ) Kennedy saw was "From Russia With Love", but he isn’t the only Bond fan in the book. Elvis Presley hired out a Memphis cinema to screen "The Spy Who Loved Me" in the weeks before the end credits rolled in his own life. From this starting point, the Presley chapter spirals off into a playlist of songs, including one from the movie "Roustabout" which featured a small role for Richard Kiel, who went on to play the metal-toothed baddie in … yes, "The Spy Who Loved Me"."

"i) I don't really think Elvis' voice was significantly lower than those of any other baritones. The color of the voice and the sense of warmth and richness of tone gave the sense that the voice was much deeper. Elvis, in fact, did not force his lower register, comfortable as he was with it, which in turn gave the impression that it was lower than those of other baritones. ii) People will often say that opera singers sound too stiff and operatic when singing contemporary music. This is because the vowels in an operatic style tend to be more open, whereas in a rock style singers tend to thin out the vowel. There is nothing wrong, and everything right, in opening the vowel in the higher register so that the higher notes can be sustained. Elvis Presley was very open in his singing style even though he was 'the' rock and roller."

"The Museum of the Bible is without a doubt the newest, most intriguing and most talked-about attraction in DC. Since opening in December 2017, more than 200,000 people have visited it. The second floor of the building, called “The Impact of the Bible.” clearly deals with the bringing of the book to the United States and its impact on the nation. There, its most popular item is Elvis Presley's Bible. It's not exactly archaeology, but people had their pictures taken next to its glass display case with way greater excitement than any other item, including what was observed next to a stone brought from Jerusalem."

"I’m all shook up by the glowing reviews. One (I am most proud of) was from a guy who is a self-confessed Elvis nerd. And He said he was looking for errors and facts that were not right but they were all spot on, so I was really excited about that. I’m truly holding my breath and hoping readers love it as much as I’ve loved writing it."

"In the collective memory of his fans, he reigns as the sleek musical genius who soaked up the multiple influences of America's vernacular music -gospel, country swing, rhythm 'n' blues—, and made them his own; Bob Dylan, one of pop's favorite poets, put it best: Elvis, he said, was "the incendiary atomic musical firebrand loner who conquered the western world."

"Know thyself means that you need to know what you want out of life. What are your strengths your weakness, your values, your morals, your beliefs. Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, Abraham Lincoln and Harry S. Truman are listening to this class from the walls of this classroom where their photos hang. Hopefully, you, my students are, too, because if you are one to be happy, you need to love yourself for who you are, always striving to improve. My fear is that too many people judge themselves on who they are NOT and what they don't possess physically and materially. I think life is too short to focus on the negative.”"

"i) Religion in and of itself and spirituality are the absolute pure tools of a songwriter. For instance, if you listen to mountain music or immigrant music or bluegrass music, religion was the only subject. So when you listen to that kind of music, you realize they didn't have anything else but religion. So religion over the years and through rock ‘n’ roll and through people like Elvis Presley, hey, just listen to him singing gospel music, c'mon.... It never went away, it never will and the idea of true faith is behind every artist that ever gets to the place they want to be ii) I remember the time I stopped in at Graceland to say hello to Elvis after he had performed in Las Vegas a version of a song I wrote, "Words". I was allowed to go up the driveway – the yellow brick road if you like – and I got to the front door and there was a limousine there. His uncle told me I could go up and knock on the door and I might get to meet him. So I knocked. But for some reason he didn't come out. But that’s ok, because I looked inside the limo and saw the first television in a car I’d ever seen and that was all a thrill anyway."

"Wearing a black outfit with a classical cut, a white shirt with a stiff collar and a pearl gray tie, it was the non-casual nature of Elvis’ clothing which was was the first surprise of seeing him. Based on photographic documents in our possession, we were expecting a more audacious and more casual look. Rather than slouching in an armchair and spreading out like a warmed-up marshmallow, he sat behind a small table covered with a green rug, a classic at press conferences. It was hard to imagine that, not so long before, this young man was turning upside down the nervous, sympathetic, lymphatic, digestive and other systems of American teenagers.”"

"Presley of course was not only a pioneer in music, but also a cultural icon whose influence has endured over generations. One of the earliest musicians to make rockabilly – an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music, rhythm and blues – popular, Presley was also a consummate showman. And he had a huge influence on Bollywood as well, most obviously on Shammi Kapoor, who was inspired by him all the way from his looks to his moves, and to his movies as well."

"What intrigues me is how memory colors history, what remains in the end is collective memory. Elvis in that sense was an excellent way to study the period after the Second World War, for epitomizing those times. It was the beginning of the cold war, but also the start of a firm and optimistic belief in the future."

"Elvis Presley's spirit is another that keeps coming forward, but seemingly, is not at rest. He wants to communicate, he’s there..."