American Country Singers

"Alemayehu Eshete is one of the most popular singers to emerge from the golden age of music in the capital Addis Ababa. His “rock n roll funk” stylings and Elvis manner of dress and way of acting has given him “dint of rampant Americanism,” as well as the nickname of The Ethiopian Elvis,"

""I was in Washington studying music and wanted to meet the perfect boyfriend, get married, etc. But for some reason I also wanted to visit a convent in Nashville but had no money to finance the trip, so a friend who was going to Graceland to pay her respects offered me a ride and, as a result and thank God for Elvis, I became a nun!!"

"i) And as a human being? As long as I live, I know I will never see anyone have such a profound effect on people. He could make anyone feel like he was the most important person in the world just by talking with him. He had charisma and charm that is just indescribable and he didn't even have to sing. When Elvis entered a room, you could feel the energy of his presence tingle at your nerves because the power of his magnetism was that intense and Elvis was just as perplexed by this phenomenon as you or I. He was a humble man but keenly aware of his unique gifts and spent most of his life searching the spirituality, over and over throughout his life asking himself, Why me? Since his death I have asked myself the same question, “why me?” and why, of all the people Elvis met in the service, did he pay special attention to me? In fact, why was I even in the Army? Did destiny lead me into the Army for the sole purpose of meeting Elvis Presley? Why was I selected to become “right hand man to the most celebrated entertainer in history, and to be chosen by Elvis Presley as a best man at his wedding? ii) When you worked for Elvis it wasn’t eight hours a day or 10 hours a day. It was 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because we did everything together. went on vacations together, traveled together. Everything we ever did we all did it together."

"In 1982, we went to Washington DC, and did the tour of the FBI Building, visited Pres. Kennedy's grave at Arlington Memorial and had our pictures taken outside the White House. From there we went to Graceland. Pablo loved Elvis. While we were there he bought his entire record collection. From that moment on, he played his tapes all the time, even danced like him. In 1991, when we first surrendered to the Colombian Army authorities, that collection was one of the few things he took to prison with him. When we escaped from prison a year later, we could not take it with us even if we had wanted to. The reason? It had been just stolen by a jail mate, something Pablo deeply regretted..."

"I would occasionally miss the bus that took me from my post back to my living quarters. When that happened, a fellow soldier in my battalion, the most celebrated soldier in the Army, Elvis Presley, who lived a few doors away would offer me a ride. And despite all the hoopla surrounding his military service, he remained remarkably humble and grounded. I'd first met him at Fort Hood in Texas and saw each other every day while we finished training in a M48 tank battalion. After six months, our company was then shipped off to Germany. There Elvis lived a few doors from me. In fact, throngs of German girls camped out in front of his residence. If he revealed in all the attention, he didn’t show it, was kind of on the shy side and wasn’t one to shout out, ‘I’m Elvis Presley the superstar.’ He just kind of kept to himself. But keeping to himself also didn't mean he was aloof. Out in the field, he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty and never shied away from the work that was expected of him, and the rest of the tank company. After our two-year enlistment ended we parted ways and wouldn't see each other again until 1972, a short time before he was to play a concert at the old Chicago Stadium. I knew a Chicago police watch commander who was working security that night and although the police tried to stop us, my wife and I, from getting backstage at first, Elvis saw them and talked with them for a few minutes. It was the last time we would see or talk to him."

"When I visited Graceland, I expected rhinestones and shag carpet. I didn’t expect to be emotionally moved. As I toured the house, I found myself increasingly wrapped up in the story of Elvis’s private life. Graceland uses iPads and headphones for self-guided tours, which provide narration, archival images and options that allow you to learn more about each room. I hadn’t fully appreciated how versatile Elvis was as an artist — or how young. He recorded his first song at 18, and by 23 he was already a global star. And by 42, he was gone. As I made my way through the complex, I was struck by the epic scale of Elvis’s short-but-eventful life. In just 42 years, Elvis made more than 30 films, performed over 1,600 live shows and built a fan base that spanned the globe. The tour gave me a sense for his charisma, kindness and crowd-pleasing charm, but also the fatigue, the pressure and the toll of his relentless fame. For me, the most moving part of the tour was the Meditation Garden, Elvis’s final resting place. He is buried there alongside his parents, grandmother and a memorial to his stillborn twin brother. The space is quiet with flowers, fountains and a low stone wall that curves around the graves. After all the flash and fame on display, this part of Graceland tells a more personal story, one that feels unexpectedly tender.Before going to Graceland, I thought I had a pretty clear picture of Elvis, from his early stardom to Vegas glitz. But being there added layers I didn’t expect. Graceland is not just a museum about a musician: it’s a window into a unique American life and a reflection of the era that shaped it."

"In keeping with the spirit of the week, Senator Ernst introduced the "Cost Openness and Spending Transparency Act (COST Act) after a report released this week from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified several government projects which did not follow the guidelines, incluiding a $90,000 NIH study focused on a sour cream and onion flavored potato chip resembling Elvis Presley."

"Yes, life has taught me not to leave anything for tomorrow. I've made a list, some are personal, intimate, others are places I have to visit before I die, like going to Japan, which I did two weeks ago. And, it all actually started when I was at the intensive care unit, and all I kept thinking was that I wasn't going to make it to see Elvis' house."

"The so called “self-lecture” series meets during one day of the month, allowing anyone to give a lecture in one of our halls on any topic to do with culture — ranging from Peter the Great's insistence on exhibiting fleas at the oldest museum in Russia, the Kunstkamera all the way to arguing about the finer points of Elvis Presley's music. This is a chance not just for the audience-attendance being always free-to-learn something new and interesting but also for the orator to practice public speaking and get even more immersed in a topic of interest."

"The idea of Elvis Presley cherishing the Book of Mormon had captured the popular imagination of Latter-day Saints. The story of this book has been told by fireside speakers, classroom teachers, newspaper columnists, and an independent filmmaker. And the story continues to circulate throughout the market for “uplifting” books and social media. However, after carefully analyzing the historical opportunities for Presley to have read this volume and the handwriting throughout its pages, I affirm that Elvis Presley did not write in this Book of Mormon. A detailed presentation of the analysis with photographic evidence will be published in a forthcoming issue of BYU Studies, but my findings about the book's history, its forged signature, and its forged annotations are as of this moment, final"

"I do not think they should meet Elvis through the efforts of any newspaper representative. In my view, the meeting can only be arranged as entirely private and unpublished. It is absolutely inadvisable to allow any pressman or photographer to interview, or take pictures whilst they are in his house."

"On the sunny side, there was that moment, during Pres. Trump's 2019 State of the Union address, when the place erupted with a gusty/lusty HAPPY BIRTHDAY. This was to honor a man in the audience Trump saluted for valor in surviving first the Holocaust and then the Pittsburgh “Tree of Life” massacre – and now his 81st birthday. There was nearly breakdancing and moonwalking in the balconies of Congress. Decorum be damned. We are Americans. Freedom is our bequest. Frivolity is our nature. I saw the same gusto at the Navy base in Haifa; also for an impromptu birthday. They are Israelis. Their love of life and country runs so deep they can't sit still and prefer to party, as it was that day in America. For where else but in America and Israel would a solemn occasion turn spontaneously to rock and roll? Try that in the parliaments of other countries while the leader speaks, and see who comes out alive. Instead, we insist on joy. We celebrate our freedoms through acts of whimsy. Long ago we traded in their Richard Wagner for our Elvis Presley."

"Elvis Presley is the supreme socio-culture icon in the history of pop culture..."

"He personified a new form of American popular music in the mid-1950s. Rock and roll was a guitar-based sound with a strong (if loose) beat that drew equally on African American and white traditions from the southern United States, on blues, church music, and country music. Presley’s rapid rise to national stardom revealed the new cultural and economic power of both teenagers and teen-aimed media—records, radio, television, and motion pictures."

"When it was announced in early 1958 that Presley had been drafted and would enter the U.S. Army, there was that rarest of all pop culture events, a moment of true grief. More important, he served as the great cultural catalyst of his period, projecting a mixed vision of humility and self-confidence, of intense commitment and comic disbelief in his ability to inspire frenzy. He inspired literally thousands of musicians—initially those more or less like-minded Southerners, from Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins on down, who were the first generation of rockabillies, and, later, people who had far different combinations of musical and cultural influences and ambitions. From John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan to Prince, it was impossible to think of a rock star of any importance who did not owe an explicit debt to Presley."

"So his mother Julia took him to services at the St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Pittsburgh every weekend, several masses back-to-back on Sunday. I filmed in that church where you see the iconostasis that includes several images of saints with gold leaf paint, in very static poses with a gesture. Those look very similar to Andy’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, and even “Triple Elvis.” Many art historians believe that Andy internalized and absorbed the formal look of those icons and also the almost-glamor that they projected within his world growing up...."

"The first time I laid eyes on him was a couple of years before I met and worked with him. He got out of a white Cadillac, on his way to the theatre he had rented on Memphis, he was on the sidewalk and I was at a distance of three feet from him, and I kept walking and remember thinking that I had never seen a better looking person in my life, like if he wasn't real. He was cute..."

"I'll tell you one thing. One respect I do have for that guy was that, well, obviously he was a great artist. When I was trying to learn "Jailhouse Rock" for the "Without me" video, I was like "Man, this guy could dance!!""

"For Mrs. Clinton to suggest I was telling Barbara Bush personal stories about the Clintons is extreme paranoia. First, I would never ever do such a thing, and second, anyone who knows Barbara Bush knows she would never tolerate or listen to such nonsense. What was interesting was Bill Clinton's allergies to Christmas trees, George H.W. Bush calling himself “Mr. Smooth," and the large collection of Elvis Presley CDs stored in the East Wing."

"With a name that blends two of the most famous musical legends of all time, Elvis Marley Aparecido Bittencourt is not just a footballer — he’s a walking tribute to Elvis Presley and Bob Marley. It’s a name that sounds like a concert tour more than a footballer’s, but that’s exactly what makes it so special. Elvis Marley played with a rock-star flair that made his name both fun and unforgettable. A footballer who embodies two musical icons in his name? That’s Brazilian football at its quirkiest."

"I think because he’s kind of this godlike figure and he’s larger than life, the most interesting thing to me was finding this little boy in him - because he’s kind of stunted, because he became so massive, sort of so quickly."

"After his midnight show on August 24, 1974, tired of the racist implications inherent in the white angels mounted on the huge walls of the Hilton Showroom, Elvis used a ladder and with the help of , proceeded to paint them all black, save for one, who he said represented Jerry, then in a serious relationship with one of his backing singers, Myrna Smith of the African American group the . He then also painted one of the decorative eighteenth century, court-of-Louis-XIV ladies also hanging on the showroom wall black, to represent Myrna. On the next day and in nearly all of the succeeding shows, he jokingly compared himself to Michelangelo, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Hilton management, which had nothing to do with the placing of the angels and or the ladies, this being done by the art designers hired by the previous management under Kirk Kerkorian, could only listen..."

"To quote Elvis Presley my favorite artist, "Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can’t help falling in love with you.""

"Elvis' manager whose real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, was an illegal immigrant with a dubious history, who adopted the guise of a Southern gentleman with the name 'Colonel Tom Parker, then concealed his origins and further exploited Elvis, a genuine good-hearted talented young man from Tupelo Mississippi."

"As a teenager in England, the first record I ever owned was a 78rpm copy of Elvis' Tutti Frutti/Blue Suede Shoes. I became a huge fan and was always first in line at my local record store to buy his new singles. To me he was the absolute epitome of a star. He never toured in the UK, so in 1969, when I was on the road with Jethro Tull, we made the pilgrimage from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to see his performance at the International Hotel. That evening stands out as a milestone event in my life."

"I was fourteen when I met him and took photos of him. One morning, I persuaded my mother to drive before daylight to where I believed Elvis was filming on location. A pink Cadillac with Tennessee plates, parked outside of an unassuming house told me my hunch was right. Elvis suddenly strolled out and up to me and began nonchalantly chatting. He had an amazing aura as he almost seemed to float, not walk towards me. I then told him about how neighborhood kids had made fun of my adulation for him. The blood rushed to my head and I could feel myself blushing as my mother blurted out to Elvis, "Oh, you have no idea how many days he would come home from school having been in fights to defend you!" "I'll teach you something to take care of that," Elvis grinned. "Karate?" I asked. "Yeah. "Well, I had no idea what karate really was. I only knew the term because I had read so much about Elvis' fascination with the sport. I had some idea that it had to do with judo. He never mentioned the offer when I saw him over the next month or so. As we sat around and chatted Elvis' moods seemed to roller coaster regularly. Oh, he was always friendly, always sweet but you could see lonely wash up regularly. All these years later, I am still starry-eyed as I fondly remember the softly spoken and seemingly shy Elvis behaving like a comforting big brother."

"In January 1971, I was attending a conference on the 10 Outstanding Young Men of America, which that year was held in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis Presley was one of the ten being honored and then-congressman George H.W. Bush was the guest speaker. At the end of the program, Bush ran up to Presley and shook his hand. I was able to photograph the encounter. So years later I said, "Oh my gosh. I was right up there on Elvis but I didn’t realize how important Bush was going to be. I met Presley later at the conference and hoped to get a photo with him, but I got his autograph instead. The truth is I wimped at the last moment when I met him that night in the receiving line..."

"Having those voices surround me as I sang was the most indescribable feeling I had ever experienced. Now I understand why this means so much to you."

"And here this entity was standing in the doorway, this black suit on, and there was absolutely a dead silence in the room, just like somebody had sucked all of the air out of it. And he came in and stood behind a chair, and Dad got up and walked around and shook hands with him, and he sat down at the end of the table. And then the sergeant-at-arms from the legislature, they were meeting in a joint session, which meant that the Senate and the House of Representatives all came together there. And the galleries were filled with people screaming. And when the sergeant-of-arms came down and said it was time for Dad and Elvis to go on upstairs to the legislature, that was when Elvis came up and sat down next to me, the sergeant-of-arms said, 'Okay, time to go,' Elvis says, 'You're going, aren't you?' And I said, 'No, I'm not gonna be a part of this'. And he says, 'Yeah, I need for you to go'. And I said, 'I don't think I'm supposed to go. There's not seats arranged up there for me, and seats were a premium, believe me'. And he said, 'Yeah, you've got to go'. He grabs my hand, and Dad gives the nod, it's okay, go ahead, you know. And here we go, out through the crowd, down the hallway, up the steps, and then into the opening, and the Speaker of the House, Mr. James Bomar announced that Elvis Presley would be presented to the House of Representatives. At first I was somewhat nervous around him. I mean the persona was so immense, you know. And then it didn't take long though, when he became comfortable with you, that all of that just dissipated. And it was just like you had known him forever..."

"Any president who wants to be a king - he should go to another country if he wants to be a king. We don't have kings here. Only Elvis"

"Now tell me all about Elvis Presley? Will he come to England?'""

"Rock n' roll won't last. Labels don't make money on long play albums. No single artist is worth $35,000. That's what the majority believed when Elvis Presley signed on RCA's dotted line and released his debut self-titled album in March of 1956. The bulk of RCA ’s rock n’ roll gamble was recorded in Nashville and augmented with a few previously unreleased SUN selections to round out the platter. I could argue that the chemistry between Elvis, guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black was put through the washin' machine once the Blue Moon Boys went to RCA– but I'd probably lose the debate. Even for hardcore rockabilly enthusiasts who consider SUN the alpha and omega, it's hard to fault the version of “Money Honey” or lambast the album's cover of Ray Charles' iconic (if misogynistic) “I Got A Woman”. The crown jewel of the album is the lead track, “Blue Suede Shoes”. In fact, Elvis Presley became the first rock n' roll album to sell a million copies, shattering industry notions, establishing Elvis as the genre's first megastar, and for good or ill, changed popular music forever after."

"Some of the mossbacks of our city, who haven't had a youthful thought since the Civil War, say that rock and roll music is the theme song of juvenile delinquency and that Elvis Presley is making ‘dead end kids’ out of the whole generation. Nothing could be more idiotic. It is supposed to be perfectly all right for every bald-headed man in American to drool as Marilyn Monroe goes slithering across the pages of our time on the arm of husband number three. But the very moment that youth dance and Elvis shakes his left leg a bit, it's supposed to be juvenile delinquency of the worst sort."

"My girlfriends and I are writing all the way from Montana. We think it's bad enough to send Elvis Presley to the army, but if you cut his sideburns off, we will just die. You don't know how we feel about him, I really don't see why you have to send him in the Army at all, but we beg you please please don't give him a G.I. hair cut, oh please please don't! If you do, we will just about die!"

"When I was seven years old, I saw Elvis Presley on TV. That hit me as to why I wanted to play music. Through a succession of different instruments, I ended up with the guitar. Then when I was 24, I heard my first mandolin player, Jethro Burns, at a bluegrass festival in Indiana. Those two and Bill Monroe, of course, were my main, early influences."

"I can remember sitting in front of my television set at age 25 and watching the Elvis special. I already knew that I could never do what he did as an artist, but seeing that show had a great deal to do with my dreams of having a career in television production."

"I ask him what it's like to know that he's now part of a franchise that will outlive him. It's an impossible question for him to answer, and when he does it, he endears himself to me forever by quoting Lester Bangs’s 1977 obituary for Elvis Presley, which doubled as a eulogy for the community bred by shared reverence. “At the end of it, Bangs is like, ‘We’re not gonna ever have this again, so instead of saying goodbye to Elvis, I’ll say goodbye to you,’ ”"

"The myth makes it bigger but when you go in there, you know where you are. I've been in many places bigger than that and it ain't the same""

"He was a very happy, joyous kid, great to be around. He had an ability to stir people's souls, an enormous talent. Needless for me to say that he was very dear to my heart"

"Elvis Presley has only become more legendary in recent years with so many films and documentaries about his iconic life. Let's face it — he's the one who showed us all how rock stardom was done from the start.”"

"He could sing good. An enormous talent, he had an ability to stir peoples"

"I was talking with Elvis' manager, and he said, ‘Come on up to my room, and you can meet him.’ I've had people up to my room when I've been on the road who have turned out to be boors, and I didn't want to do that to him. So I said, ‘No, but thank you.’ I figured since we also had the same promoter that I'd be bound to run into him — but then, of course, he died three or four months later so I never did get to meet him."

"A musician who also felt the power of Presley's Madison Square Garden shows was Paul Stanley, the rhythm guitarist and primary lead vocalist of the rock band Kiss who, as a struggling musician and part-time cab driver at night took numerous customers to, and from the Garden during the three days of Presley's NYC engagement. Hearing about and feeling the excitement directly from those who shared his numerous rides made him think very seriously about his future career, promising himself to one day fill the Garden, something which he accomplished with his band in early February 1977, some 5 months before Presley's death."

"He was a lovely, lovely human being, gentle, kind, and I loved his music."

"In 1971, at a hotel, he treated me like a peer, just a great guy. So cool, great manners. I had seen him first in Phoenix in 1956, and we sat at the Grand Stand at the Fairgrounds, so girls are climbing on top of the fence. And then a car enters through the race track, stops, girls are going crazy, Then nothing, until the door pops open and he gets out and on to the stage, starts singing, man that was exciting., What a great way to come in a show. I was country, but seeing this, I turned into rock, because Elvis was the one who defined and made it huge."

"He's one of the three greatest of all-time along with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley."

"I remember him working on the next stage, always with an entourage of about 15 guys. And I also recall that everybody was doing fast draw – that was the gimmick then. Who was the fastest gun? I was particularly good at it and I can remember taking on Elvis. He was a good guy. And we knew each other and, at that time, we both felt were on the brink of really going somewhere. I get a kick out of my wife, who is quite a few years younger. She’ll say, ‘Did you know Elvis Presley?’ I’ll say, ‘Sure’ She’ll look at some old picture of me and say, ‘What a babe!’ (Laughs) We were all hanging around at the same time, in the 1950s. We were all here in town, and all struggling in various things. I was doing Rawhide. There was a camaraderie among the younger group."

"i) When I first heard Elvis' voice, I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. ii) Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun didn't think much of my songs. He produced some great records, no question about it, like Ray Charles, Ray Brown, just to name a few. But Sam Phillips, he recorded Elvis and Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Radical eyes that shook the very essence of humanity. Revolution in style and scope. Heavy shape and color. Radical to the bone. Songs that cut you to the bone. Renegades in all degrees, doing songs that would never decay, and still resound to this day. Oh, yeah, I'd rather have Sam Phillips' blessing any day. iii) You feel like an impostor, when someone says something you know you're not, like you're a prophet, or a saviour. Elvis, yes, I could easily want to become him. iv) I went over my whole life. I went over my whole childhood. I didn't talk to anyone for a week after Elvis died. If it wasn't for Elvis and Hank Williams, I couldn't be doing what I do today. v) When I first heard Elvis's voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. He is the deity supreme of rock and roll religion as it exists in today's form. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. I think for a long time that freedom to me was Elvis singing 'Blue Moon of Kentucky.' I thank God for Elvis. vi) I liked Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley recorded a song of mine. That's the one recording I treasure the most ... it was called "Tomorrow Is a Long Time." I wrote it but never recorded it."

"Well, you might have known trouble was coming if you were here in 1957. That was the year Elvis Presley paid us a visit. I think we might have made him famous, too.""

"Kim Jong-il was obsessed with Elvis Presley, his mansion crammed with his idol's records and his collection of 20,000 Hollywood movies included Presley's titles. He even copied the King's Vegas-era look of giant shades, jumpsuits and bouffant hairstyle."