Elvis Presley

"Elvis" redirects here. For other uses, see Elvis (disambiguation).

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron (or AronTemplate:Fn) Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American musician and actor. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley at the age of thirteen moved with his family to Memphis, Tennessee. He began his career there in 1954 as one of the first performers of rockabilly, an uptempo fusion of country and rhythm and blues with a strong backbeat. His novel versions of existing songs, mixing "black" and "white" sounds, made him popular—and controversial—as did his uninhibited performances. With his commercial breakthrough in 1956, he was recognized as the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll. Presley had a versatile voice and unusually wide success encompassing many genres, including country, pop ballads, gospel, and blues. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.

After two years of military service beginning in 1958, Presley returned to the studio and reinforced his popularity by recording some of his most commercially successful material. He staged few concerts, however, and proceeded to devote most of the 1960s to making unmemorable Hollywood movies and soundtrack albums. In 1968, after seven years away from the stage, he returned to live performance in a celebrated comeback television special which led to a string of successful tours and concert residencies, notably in Las Vegas. In 1973, Presley staged the first global live concert via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii, seen by approximately 1.5 billion viewers. It remains the most watched broadcast by an individual entertainer in television history. Prescription drug abuse severely compromised the singer's health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at the age of 42.

Presley is regarded as one of the most important figures of twentieth-century popular culture. He is the best-selling solo artist in the history of popular music, with sales of approximately 1 billion units worldwide. Among many honors, he was nominated for 14 competitive Grammys (winning 3 times) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36. He has been inducted into four music halls of fame.

History

1935–53: Early years

Childhood in Tupelo

Presley's birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi

Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Vernon Elvis and Gladys Love Presley. In the two-room shotgun house built by his father in readiness for the birth, Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn. Growing up as an only child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an unusually tight bond with his mother. The family lived just above the poverty line and attended an Assembly of God church where he found his initial musical inspiration.

Presley's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix—Scots-Irish, with some French Norman; one of Gladys's great-great-grandmothers was Cherokee and, according to family accounts, one of her great-grandmothers was Jewish. Gladys was regarded as the dominant member of the small family by relatives and friends. Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evidencing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. In 1938, Vernon, along with one of Gladys's brothers and another friend, was jailed for altering a check written by the farmer on whose land he had built the family home and who retained ownership of the property until repayment of a loan. During Vernon's eight-month incarceration, Gladys lost the house, and she and her son moved in with relatives.

In September 1941, Presley entered the first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average". He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley's country song "Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, saw the singer's first public performance: dressed as a cowboy, the ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, for his eleventh birthday, Presley received his first guitar. He had wanted a considerably more expensive bicycle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family's church. Presley recalled, "I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it, you know."

Presley listened regularly to Mississippi Slim’s show on the Tupelo radio station WELO. Slim's younger brother, a classmate of Presley's, described him as "crazy about music". Entering a new school, Milam, for sixth grade in September 1946, Presley was regarded as shy and a loner; the following year, he began bringing his guitar in on a daily basis. He would play and sing during lunchtime, and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played hillbilly music. The family was by then living in a largely African American neighborhood; they often had trouble keeping up with the rent, and changed residences frequently. Mississippi Slim supplemented Presley's guitar tuition by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was 12 years old, he scheduled two on-air performances by the young singer. Overcome by stage fright the first time, Presley was unable to perform, but succeeded in doing so the following week.

Teenage life in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they gained admission to a two-bedroom apartment in the city-run public housing complex known as the Courts. Presley was enrolled at Humes High School, where he received a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him he couldn't sing, he brought his guitar to class the next day and sang a recent hit, "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me" in an effort to prove otherwise. Classmate Katie Mae Shook recalled that the teacher "agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn't appreciate his kind of singing." That incident aside, he was generally perceived as too shy to perform openly. He was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy". Sometime in 1950, Presley began practicing guitar regularly in the laundry room under the family apartment. His tutor was Jesse Lee Denson, a neighbor two-and-a-half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, Presley began ushering at Loew's State Theater to boost the family income, but his mother made him quit as she feared it was affecting his school work. Other jobs followed during his school years: Precision Tool, Loew's again, MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, he began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew out his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. On his own time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing them. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Courts, he competed in Humes's "Annual Minstrel" show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with Teresa Brewer's "Till I Waltz Again With You". The performance seems to have done much for his popularity at school.

Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and played by ear. He frequented record stores with jukeboxes and listening booths. He knew all of Hank Snow’s songs and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills. The Southern Gospel singer Jake Hess, one of Presley's favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. Presley was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the clear influence of African American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations that played "race records": spirituals, blues, and the backbeat-driven music known as rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he knew Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated high school in June 1953, Presley already seems to have singled out music as his future.

1953–55: First recordings

Sam Phillips and Sun Records

Main article: Elvis Presley's Sun recordings

In August 1953, Presley walked into the offices of Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". He would later claim he intended the record as a gift for his mother, or was merely interested in what he "sounded like", though there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer Peter Guralnick argues that he chose Sun with the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, "I sing all kinds." When she pressed him on whom he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, "I don't sound like nobody." After he recorded, Sun boss Sam Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man's name, which she did along with her own commentary: "Good ballad singer. Hold."

Presley cut a second acetate a few months later, in January 1954—"I'll Never Stand In Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be The Same Without You"—but again nothing came of the recording session. Not long after, he auditioned for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows: rejected by the group, he explained to his father, "They told me I couldn't sing." Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that Elvis was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver. His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, who was leader of Smith's professional band and was looking for a singer. This Presley did, and he was given a tryout session at the Hi Hat club on May 15. Bond rejected him after the first session, advising Presley to stick to truck driving "because you're never going to make it as a singer."

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused to a broader audience. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars'". When he acquired a demo recording of "Without You" and was unable to identify the vocalist, she reminded him about the teenaged singer. She called Presley on June 26. However, Presley was not able to do justice to the song. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many songs as he knew and, impressed enough by what he heard, he invited two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to audition Presley. Though they were not greatly impressed, they asked him to attend a studio session the following evening.

The session proved almost entirely unfruitful, but late in the evening, as they were about give up and go home, Presley launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open [...] he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the last two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended in order to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed he was black. During the next few days the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the flip.

Early live performances

Moore became Presley's official manager on July 12 and, along with Black, began playing regularly with him. They gave brief performances on July 17 and July 24 to promote the Sun single at the Bon Air, a rowdy music club in Memphis. On July 30 the trio made their first paid appearance at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming. Moore recalled, "During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild". Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as "really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something".

Soon after the trio's first show, DJ and promoter Bob Neal became their new manager and Moore and Black left their old band, the Starlite Wranglers. From August through October, the group played frequently at the Eagle's Nest club and returned to Sun Studio for more recording sessions. Presley's stage presence quickly grew more focused and confident. According to Moore, "His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He'd do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick." Presley made his lone appearance on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry on October 2. Performing "Blue Moon of Kentucky", he drew only a mild response. Tillman Franks, talent coordinator for Louisiana Hayride, called Phillips to ask if he could book "that black boy with the funny name." The show, broadcast out of Shreveport to 190 radio stations in 13 states, took place on October 16. During Presley's first set, the reaction was muted; before the second began, Franks advised Presley, "Let it all go!" He and his bandmates did, inspiring shouts and applause from the crowd. House drummer D.J. Fontana brought a new element to the sound, complementing Presley's movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs. In November, Presley signed a contract for a year's worth of appearances on the Hayride, every Saturday night. Between their Shreveport and Memphis gigs, his trio began playing regularly in new locales such as Houston, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas.

In early January 1955, Neal signed a formal management deal with Presley. Neal at the time was establishing a connection with "Colonel" Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—Dutch-born, though he claimed to be from West Virginia—had successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold. In 1948, he had arranged to acquire an honorary colonel's commission from country singer turned Louisiana governer Jimmie Davis. He was now managing the new number-one country star, Hank Snow, with whom he was partners in a booking agency. In late January, Parker booked Presley on the Hank Snow Tour for a stretch the following month. Presley, via his regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases, was already a substantial regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. Phillips, though he clashed personally with Parker, shared Neal's assessment of him as a promoter and felt the need for someone who could bring Presley the sort of national attention that now seemed within reach. At the same time, he was aware that Sun's limited distribution capacity meant that his own ongoing involvement was threatened by Parker's relationship with the much bigger RCA Victor label.

When Snow's tour reached Odessa, Texas, in February, a nineteen-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. ... I just didn’t know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it." Presley made his television debut on March 3 on the KSLA-TV broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Later that month, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, which aired nationally on CBS. By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill"; on the most recently recorded ones, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like "That's All Right", were in what one Memphis journalist described as the "R&B idiom of negro field jazz"; others, like "Blue Moon of Kentucky", were "more in the country field", "but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both". This was the blend that came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed and labeled in the media as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".

Signing to RCA

Presley renewed Neal's management contract on August 15, 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser on a one-year renewable deal. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, "it was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we'd have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody'd always try to take a crack at him. They'd get a gang and try to waylay him or something." The band had grown: drummer D.J. Fontana, whom the band was familiar with from their many Hayride appearances, joined as a full member. Moore and Black had convinced Presley to hire Fontana in part by agreeing to share the cost of his salary. Beginning in October, Parker informed them, they were being put on salary as well; instead of each receiving 25 percent of the act's gross income, they were now paid $200 weekly when on the road and half that as retainer during downtime. In business terms, the act was now Presley, solo. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose "Rock Around the Clock" had been a number one hit the previous year. Presley was thrilled to share a bill with such a major star. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads if he wanted to wow the crowds.

Several record companies had shown interest in signing Presley and, by the end of October, three major labels had made offers of up to $25,000. On November 21, Parker and Phillips negotiated a deal with RCA Victor to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000, $5,000 of which was a bonus for the singer for back royalties owed to him by Sun Records. Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father had to sign the contract. Parker also cut a deal with Hill and Range Publishing Company to create two separate entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all of Presley's songs and accrued royalties. The owners of Hill and Range, brothers Julian and Jean Aberbach, agreed to split the publishing and royalties rights of each song equally with Presley. Hill and Range, Presley, or Parker's partners then had to convince unsecured songwriters that it was worthwhile for them to give up one third of their due royalties in exchange for the kudos of having their compositions recorded by Presley. One result of these dealings was that Presley was given credit as cowriter on several songs where he had no hand in the writing process.Template:Fn By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.

1956–57: Commercial breakout and controversy

First national TV appearances and debut album

File:Elvispresleydebutalbum.jpeg

The "iconic cover" of Presley's debut album, featuring a photo taken July 31, 1955

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending the singer's by now customary backup of Moore, Black, and Fontana, RCA enlisted pianist Floyd Cramer, guitarist Chet Atkins, and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill out the sound. The session produced "Heartbreak Hotel/I Was The One", which was released on January 27.

To increase the singer's exposure, Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS's Stage Show for six appearances over two months. The program, shot in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. For his first appearance, on January 28, Presley was introduced by Cleveland DJ Bill Randle. He stayed in town and, on January 30, recorded at RCA's New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins' rockabilly anthem "Blue Suede Shoes". Public reaction to "Heartbreak Hotel" was sufficiently strong that RCA released it as a single in its own right on February 11. The same month, Presley's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart. Neal's management contract was terminated after Presley's parents expressed a wish for Parker to become the sole representative for the singer's recording contract. Parker became Presley's manager on March 2. On March 23, RCA Victor released Presley's self-titled debut album. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the new sound of rock and roll: "Blue Suede Shoes"—"an improvement over Perkins' in almost every way", according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presely's stage repertoire for some time, covers of Ray Charles, Little Richard, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these "were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists ... who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions of songs in the '50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases." It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks Cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argues that the album's cover image, "of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar...as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music."

Milton Berle Show and "Hound Dog"

Parker negotiated a lucrative deal for two appearances on NBC's The Milton Berle Show. The first, on April 3, featured Presley on the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, where he was cheered by an audience of appreciative sailors and their dates. A few days after, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when the plane lost an engine and almost went down over Texas. That same month, twelve weeks after its original release, "Heartbreak Hotel" became Presley's first number one pop hit.

Presley began a four-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip on April 23—billed this time as "the Atomic Powered Singer" (a name Parker thought would be catchy as Nevada was a major site for atomic weapons testing). The shows were so badly received by critics and the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests that Parker cut the engagement to two weeks. Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures (see "Acting career").

In mid-May, Presley began a tour of the Midwest, during which he played 15 different cities in as many days. While in Vegas, he had been struck by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys' performance of "Hound Dog", a hit in 1952 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton. He soon made it the closing number of his act. Following a May 14 concert in La Crosse, Wisconsin, someone associated with the local Catholic diocese wrote an urgent letter to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, warning that "Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. ... [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. ... After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley's room at the auditorium. ... Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls ... whose abdomen and thigh had Presley's autograph."

Amid another hectic tour, of California and Arizona, Presley made his second appearance on The Milton Berle Show on June 5 at NBC's Hollywood studio. On this occasion, Berle persuaded the singer to leave his guitar backstage, advising, "Let 'em see you, son." Thus unencumbered, during the performance Presley abruptly halted an uptempo version of "Hound Dog" with a wave of his arm, launching straight into a slower version accentuated with exaggerated and energetic movements of his body. Presley's gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. ... His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. ... His one specialty is an accented movement of the body ... primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway." Ben Gross of the New York Daily News opined that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley. ... Elvis, who rotates his pelvis ... gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos". Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation's most popular, declared him "unfit for family viewing". To Presley's displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as "Elvis the Pelvis", which he called "one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin' from an adult."

Steve Allen Show and first Sullivan appearance

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC's The Steve Allen Show, recorded in New York. Allen, no fan of rock and roll, believed that his show should be one "the whole family can watch" and introduced a "new Elvis" in white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang "Hound Dog" for less than a minute to a basset hound in a top hat and bow tie. As described by television historian Jake Austen, "Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd... [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition". Allen, for his part, later wrote that he found Presley's "strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing" and simply worked the singer into the customary "comedy fabric of our program". Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. Later that night, he appeared on Hy Gardner Calling, a popular local TV show. Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, "No, I haven't, I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong. ... I don't see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it's only music. ... I mean, how would rock 'n' roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?"

The next day, Presley recorded "Hound Dog", along with "Any Way You Want Me" and "Don't Be Cruel". The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, the singer made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis at which he announced, "You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight." In August, a Florida judge called Presley a "savage" and threatened to arrest him if he shook his body while performing in Jacksonville. The judge declared that Presley's music was undermining the youth of America. Throughout the performance, which was filmed by police, he kept still as ordered, except for wiggling a finger in mockery of the ruling. The single pairing "Don't Be Cruel" with "Hound Dog" ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley's second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the writers of "Hound Dog", provided "Love Me".

Allen's show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings. Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked the singer for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience. Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan recuperated from a car accident. According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Having viewed clips of the Allen and Berle shows, Sullivan told his producer that Presley "got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants—so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. ... I think it's a Coke bottle. ... We just can't have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!" Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, "As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots." In truth, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style—screaming. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.

Crazed crowds and movie debut

The audience response at Presley's live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, "He’d start out, 'You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog,' and they’d just go to pieces. They’d always react the same way. There’d be a riot every time." At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, fifty National Guardsmen were added to the police security to prevent crowd trouble. Elvis, Presley's second album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one. On October 28, he returned to the Sullivan show, hosted this time by its namesake. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned Presley in effigy.

His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21. Though he was not top billed, the film's original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on the popularity of his latest single: "Love Me Tender" had hit the top of the charts on November 3. To further take advantage of Presley's popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The film was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office, becoming the 23rd-highest grossing movie of 1956, despite being released fewer than five weeks before the end of the year. Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and jammed with them. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley recordings, he made sure the trio's performance was captured on tape. (Johnny Cash is often thought to have performed with them, but he was present only briefly at Phillips' instigation for a photo opportunity.) The recording, long speculated about, would eventually surface in 1977 on a bootleg titled The Million Dollar Quartet, and RCA would finally release an authorized version a few years later. On December 29, Billboard revealed that Presley had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since record charts began. This news was followed by a front page report in the Wall Street Journal on December 31 that suggested Presley merchandise had grossed more than $22 million in sales.

Leiber and Stoller collaboration and draft notice

Presley made his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance on January 6, 1957. On this occasion, he was indeed shot only down to the waist. Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity. In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley "did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in The Shiek, with all stops out." Then, displaying his range and defying Sullivan's wishes, Presley closed with a gentle black spiritual, "Peace in the Valley". At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley "a real decent, fine boy". Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1A and would probably be drafted sometime that year.

Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: "Too Much", "All Shook Up", and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear". Between film shoots and recording sessions, he also found time to purchase an eighteen-room mansion eight miles south of downtown Memphis for himself and his parents: Graceland. Loving You—the soundtrack to his second film, released in July—was Presley's third straight number one album. The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for Jailhouse Rock, Presley's next movie. The songwriting team effectively produced the sessions, and they developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his "good-luck charm". Their title track was yet another number one hit, as was the Jailhouse Rock EP. Presley undertook four brief tours during the year, as well. He continued to generate crazed audience responses. In Detroit, a newspaper suggested that "the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you're liable to get killed." In Philadelphia, Villanova students pelted him with eggs. In Vancouver, the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage.

Frank Sinatra, who had famously inspired the swooning of teenaged girls in the 1940s, did not have a high opinion of the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article he was credited as writing, he decried "the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear—I refer to rock 'n' roll. It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. ... This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore." Asked for a response, Presley said, "I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it. ... This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago." Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis' Christmas Album. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley's request: "Santa Claus Is Back In Town", an innuendo-laden blues. The holiday release stretched Presley's string of number one albums to four and would eventually become the best selling Christmas album of all time. After the session, however, Moore and Black—still drawing only modest salaries, sharing in none of Presley's massive financial success—resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks letter, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley's inner circle for some time. On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. Paramount and producer Hal Wallis had already spent $350,000 on the forthcoming film King Creole, and the draft board granted Presley a deferment to finish it.

1958–60: Military service and mother's death

"Don't", another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presely's tenth number one pop hit a couple of weeks into the new year. It had been only 21 months since "Heartbreak Hotel" had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood mid-January. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be their final collaboration with Presley. A studio session on February 1 marked another ending: the last occasion on which Black performed with Presley. He died in 1965. On March 24, Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army as a private, under the service number US 53 310 761, at Fort Chaffee near Fort Smith, Arkansas. Captain Arlie Metheny, the information officer, was unprepared for the media attention the singer received on arrival at Fort Chaffee. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus, and photographers accompanied him into the base. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military stint, saying he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: "The Army can do anything it wants with me." Later, at Fort Hood, Texas, Lieutenant Colonel Marjorie Schulten gave the media carte blanche for one day, after which she declared Presley off-limits to the press.

Parker visited occasionally with news of sales and to discuss strategy, and to obtain Presley's signature when necessary to proceed with arrangements. Another visitor, Eddie Fadal, a businesman Presley had met when on tour in Texas, said the singer had become convinced his career was finished—"he firmly believed that." During a two-week leave in early June, Presley cut five sides in Nashville. He returned to training, but in early August his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis and her condition worsened. Presley was granted emergency leave to visit her, arriving in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure, aged forty-six. Presley was devastated. Their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

File:Elvis compressed.jpg

Presley aboard USS General George M. Randall (AP-115) en route to Friedberg, Germany, September 29, 1958

Presley completed basic training at Fort Hood on September 17, before being posted to Friedberg, Germany, with the 3rd Armored Division, where his service began on October 1. Some months after his mother's death, Presley was introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant while on maneuvers. He became "practically evangelical about their benefits"—not only for energy, but for "strength" and weight loss, as well—and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, later including it in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley's wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity while in the service. To supplement meager under-clothing supplies, Presley bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit. He also donated his Army pay to charity, and purchased all the TV sets for personnel on the base at that time.

Currie Grant, a friend of Presley's in Army Special Services, spotted 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu at a club used by army personnel and their families. He introduced her to the singer at Presley's home in Bad Nauheim on September 13, 1959. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. Presley had not elected to join Special Services, which would have allowed him to avoid certain duties and maintain his public profile. However, Priscilla has said that he was eager to serve in the detachment, where he would have been able to give some musical performances and remain in touch with the general public. In her autobiography, she states that it was Parker and RCA who convinced Presley he should serve his country as a regular soldier to gain respect from the public, despite the singer's worries that this might instead ruin his career. He continued to receive massive media coverage, with much speculation echoing his concerns about his career. However, RCA Victor producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had planned ahead with the February and June 1958 recording sessions. Armed too with unreleased songs from earlier sessions, they aimed to supply a regular stream of releases during Presley's two-year hiatus. The strategy was successful. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the number one "Hard Headed Woman", and "One Night" in 1958, and "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number one "A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959. RCA also managed to generate four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis' Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

1960–67: Focus on movies

Elvis Is Back

Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant on March 5. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans. Back in Memphis, he wasted no time in returning to the studio. His first recording session, on March 20, was attended by several representatives of RCA; none had heard him sing for two years, and there were inevitable concerns about his ability to recapture his previous success. The session was the first at which Presley was taped using an advanced three-track machine, allowing stereophonic recording, higher fidelity, and postsession remixing. A second session in early April yielded two of Presley's best-selling singles, the ballads "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" Many of the other tracks recorded during the two sessions appeared on Elvis Is Back! Greil Marcus described its defining sound as full-on Chicago blues "menace, driven by Presley's own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis's singing wasn't sexy, it was pornographic." Released only days after the second session, Elvis Is Back! reached number two on the album chart.

Presley returned to television on May 12, as a guest on The Frank Sinatra-Timex Special, an ironic move for both stars given Sinatra's not-so-distant excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March—the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker, who had made the arrangement months in advance, secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for six minutes of singing. He hoped that the appearance would help boost Presley's popularity with Sinatra's older, pop-oriented following; still, he made sure that 400 Presley fan club members were in the studio audience. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley's first film since his return, was a number one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later. It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in Great Britain, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, raising over $60,000 for 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, Presley was awarded a plaque by RCA for worldwide sales of over 75 million records. Another benefit concert was staged on March 25, in Hawaii, after Parker read an article stating that no "permanent memorial stands in salute to the dead of Pearl Harbor". The event was held at Bloch Arena in aid of the USS Arizona Memorial Fund, which was $50,000 short of its target: the concert raised over $62,000. It was to be the last public performance Presley would give for seven years.

Lost in Hollywood

Parker had already pushed Presley into a heavy moviemaking schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical-comedies. Of the 27 films Presley made during the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs. The rapid production and release schedules of the films—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: "three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie". As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse". Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that Presley hated many of the songs chosen for his films; he "couldn't stop laughing while he was recording" one of them. Most of the movie albums featured a couple of contributions from respected songwriters such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll." Whatever the quality of the tunes, some observers argued that Presley generally sang well, with commitment, and always played with distinguished musicians and backing singers. Rock critic Dave Marsh disagreed: on most of the soundtrack recordings, to his ears, "Presley isn't trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like 'No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car' and 'Rock-a-Hula Baby.'"

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley's soundtrack albums hit number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and "Return to Sender" (1962). ("Viva Las Vegas", the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished. During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top ten hit: "Crying in the Chapel" (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-movie albums, between the June 1962 release of Pot Luck and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art, recorded in May 1966 and released in 1967. It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As described in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, Presley was "arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs."

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Elvis proposed to Priscilla. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic movies and assembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. "By then, of course, the damage had been done", as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. "Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans."

1968–73: Comeback

'68 Comeback Special

Main article: Elvis (1968 TV program)

The '68 Comeback Special produced "one of the most famous images" of Presley. Taken on June 27, 1968, it was adapted for the cover of Rolling Stone in July 1969.

Presley's only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career. Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, and none higher than number 28. His forthcoming soundtrack album, Speedway, would die at number 82 on the Billboard chart. Parker, finding it difficult to obtain financing for more feature films, shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra-Timex show in 1960. Parker maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a one-hour special.

Recorded in late June, the special aired on December 3, 1968 as a Christmas telecast called simply Elvis. Later known as the '68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed live with a band in front of a small audience—Presley's first live appearance as a performer since 1961. The live segments saw Presley clad in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days. Director and coproducer Steve Binder had worked hard to reassure the nervous singer and to produce a show that was not just the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. When the ratings were released the next day, NBC reported that Presley had captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. It was the network's highest rated show that season. Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, "There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock 'n' roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy." The New Rolling Stone Album Guide calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance."

By January 1969, the single "If I Can Dream", one of the key songs written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack of the special broke into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man." Binder said of Presley's reaction, "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, 'Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in.'"

From Elvis In Memphis and the International

Main article: From Elvis in Memphis

Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio since Elvis Is Back! As described by Dave Marsh, it "is a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement." The album featured the hit single "In the Ghetto", issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley's first top ten hit since "Crying in the Chapel" and his first non-gospel top ten since "Bossa Nova Baby" back in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: "Suspicious Minds", "Don't Cry Daddy", and "Kentucky Rain".

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?" In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley. He was scheduled to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31, after Barbra Streisand opened the new venue. Presley assembled top-notch accompaniment, including an orchestra and some of the best soul/gospel backup singers available. Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been a disaster. Parker oversaw a major promotional push, with billboards, full-page advertisements in local and trade papers, and souvenirs in the hotel's lobby. He intended to make Presley's return the show business event of the year. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.

Presley took to the stage with no introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note. A second standing ovation followed his performance, and a third came after his encore, "Can't Help Falling in Love". Backstage, many well-wishers, including Cary Grant, congratulated Presley on his triumphant return which, in the showroom alone, had generated over $1,500,000. At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as "The King", Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that’s the real king of rock and roll." The next day, Parker's negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at a salary of $1 million per year. Newsweek commented, "There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars." Rolling Stone called Presley "supernatural, his own resurrection." In November, the double album From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis was released; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. "Suspicious Minds" reached the top of the charts—Presley's first U.S. pop number one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television's Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as showgirl. She recalls of their encounter, "He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, 'Don't ever do that again.'" Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

On tour and meeting Nixon

Presley returned to the International Hotel in January 1970 for a month-long engagement, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage. In late February, Presley performed six more attendance-breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome in Texas. In April, the single "The Wonder of You" was issued—a number one hit in Great Britain, it topped the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart, as well. MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August, for the documentary Elvis: That's the Way It Is. Presley wore a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live performances in the 1970s.

Presley meets U.S. President Richard Nixon in the White House Oval Office, December 21, 1970

Around this time Presley was threatened with kidnapping at the International. Phone calls were received, one demanding $50,000—if unpaid, Presley would be killed by a "crazy man". Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge. The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts went off without incident. After closing his Las Vegas engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on his first concert tour since 1958. Exhausted by the tour, he spent a month relaxing and recording before touring again in October and November. He would tour extensively until his death, frequently setting attendance records.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a bizarre meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and his contempt for the hippie drug culture. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was therefore important he "retain his credibility". Presley told Nixon The Beatles exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture. (Presley and his friends had had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles five years earlier.) On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he "felt a bit betrayed. ... The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him", a reference to Presley's death, hastened by prescription drug abuse. Belying his own comments, Presley regularly performed the Beatles songs "Yesterday", "Something", and "Get Back" in concert during the early 1970s.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley "One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation" on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard". The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization. Three studio albums of new, non-movie Presley songs were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, "the truest statement of all", according to Greil Marcus. "In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of 'Merry Christmas, Baby,' a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. ... If [Presley's] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life".

Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii

Main article: Aloha from Hawaii

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year. His gospel album He Touched Me, released in April, is described by The New Rolling Stone Album Guide as a "wonder". It would earn him his second Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance. A 14-date tour started with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in LP form a week later. Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden would became one of Presley's biggest-selling albums, reaching triple-platinum status. After the tour, the single "Burning Love" was released—Presley's last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart. "The most exciting single Elvis has made since 'All Shook Up'", wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. "Who else could make 'It's coming closer, the flames are now licking my body' sound like an assignation with James Brown's backup band?"

File:ElvisPresleyAlohafromHawaii.jpg

Presley in Aloha From Hawaii, broadcast live via satellite on January 14, 1973. The singer himself came up with his famous outfit's eagle motif, as "something that would say 'America' to the world."

Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting, and he was anyway frequently absent on tour. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of her moving in to Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, whom Presley had recommended as a karate instructor. Priscilla reported that Presley "grabbed ... and forcefully made love to" her, declaring, "This is how a real man makes love to his woman." Presley lived with Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, from July 1972 until their breakup in late 1976. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18, 1972.

In January 1973, Presley performed two charity concerts in Hawaii for the Kui Lee cancer foundation in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii. The first concert, on January 12, was primarily a practice run, serving too as a backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. Aired as scheduled on January 14, Aloha from Hawaii was the first global live concert satellite broadcast, reaching approximately 1.5 billion viewers. Budgeted at a record $2.5 million, the show raised $85,000—more than three times what had been anticipated. Presley's outfit became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert costumes with which his latter-day persona became closely associated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, "At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure." The accompanying album, released in February, went to number one, spending a year on the charts. It proved to be Presley's last U.S. number one pop album during his lifetime.

The same month, a disturbance during a midnight show left Presley in a state of shock. When four men rushed onto the stage in what appeared to be an attack, security men leapt to Presley's defense, and the singer's karate instinct took over as he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, "There's too much pain in me ... Stone [must] die." His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, "Aw hell, let's just leave it for now. Maybe it's a bit heavy."

1973–77: Health deterioration and death

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Since his comeback in 1968, Presley had staged more and more live shows with each passing year, and in 1973 he had the busiest schedule of his professional life, with 168 concerts. In March, Presley and Parker negotiated a deal with RCA that resulted in a lump sum payment to Presley of $5.4 million in lieu of all future performance royalties for any songs he had recorded up to that time. (Presley would retain performance royalties on future recordings.) Under the terms of Presley's contract with his manager, Parker received 50 percent of the payment. In terms of Presley's own interests, the deal was terrible, "right up there with the Indians selling Manhattan for twenty-four dollars", as Jack Soden of Elvis Presley Enterprises later described it.

Presley's divorce took effect on October 9, Elvis and Priscilla agreeing to share custody of their daughter. After the divorce, Presley became increasingly unwell. The problems he had been having with keeping his weight under control became more obvious. He twice overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. According to his main physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley was "near death" in November, the result of side effects of Demerol addiction. His subsequent hospital admission necessitated extraordinary measures to protect his medical details. Lab technicians went so far as to sell samples of his blood and urine. Nichopoulos says that Presley "felt that by getting [pills] from a doctor, he wasn't the common everyday junkie getting something off the street. He ... thought that as far as medications and drugs went, there was something for everything."

Despite his failing health, in 1974 Presley undertook another intensive touring schedule. In April, rumors spread that he would play overseas after years of offers. A million-dollar bid came in for an Australian tour, but Parker was uncharacteristically reluctant, prompting those closest to Presley to speculate about the manger's past and the reasons for his apparent unwillingness to apply for a passport. Parker ultimately squelched any notions Presley had of working abroad, claiming that foreign security was poor and venues unsuitable for a star of his status. The debut of his annual August residency at the Las Vegas Hilton introduced a brand-new program and earned a rave from the Hollywood Reporter, which called it his "best show ... in at least three years. [Presley] looks great, is singing better than he has in years ... the packed Hilton showroom gave him several standing ovations."

Soon thereafter, his condition seems to have declined precipitously. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers Presley's arrival at a University of Maryland concert in September: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.' He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?" Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "The lights go down, and Elvis comes up the stairs. He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. You couldn't hear him hardly. ... We were in a state of shock. [Conductor] Joe Guercio said, 'He's finished...'. I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions on the stage." Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, "I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, 'Boss, why don't you just cancel this tour and take a year off...?' I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, 'It'll be all right. Don't you worry about it.'"

Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. A 1975 tour ended with a concert in Pontiac, Michigan, attended by over 62,000 fans. Cultural critic Marjorie Garber has described the significance of Presley's physical transformation, particularly in the context of his Vegas appearances of the period: "heavier, in pancake makeup wearing a jumpsuit with an elaborate jeweled belt and cape, crooning pop songs to a microphone: in effect he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers".

On July 13, 1976, Presley's father fired "Memphis Mafia" bodyguards Red West, Sonny West, and David Hebler. The dismissal took all three by surprise, especially Red West, who had been friends with Presley for two decades. Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggest the singer was too cowardly to face the three himself. Vernon Presley cited the need to "cut back on expenses"; another associate of Presley's, John O'Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans frequently gave rise to lawsuits and lawyers' fees. Presley historians David E. Stanley and Frank Coffey, however, have claimed that the bodyguards were really fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley's drug dependency.

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio at all in 1974. Parker sold RCA on another concert record, Elvis: As Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. Exemplifying the label's demand for new product, it was recorded on March 20, the very day that the Good Times studio album was issued, and came out just three-and-a-half months later. It included a version of "How Great Thou Art" that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of a total of fourteen nominations—were for gospel recordings.) Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker's attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.

For all the concerns of his label and manager, in studio sessions between July 1973 and October 1976, Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977). The story was similar with his singles—there were no major pop hits, but Presley was a significant force in not just the country market, but on adult contemporary radio as well. Eight of the singles he recorded in the studio during this period and released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. "My Boy" was a number one AC hit in 1975; "Moody Blue" topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the AC in 1976; and "Way Down", released in June 1977, made it to the top of both the country and UK pop charts just days after his death. Three other studio tracks from these years issued posthumously as singles also rose to the country top ten. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came in 1976 with what Greil Marcus described as his "apocalyptic attack" on the soul classic "Hurt". "If he felt the way he sounded", Dave Marsh wrote of Presley's performance, "the wonder isn't that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long."

Final year and death

Journalist Tony Scherman writes that by early 1977, "Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts." In Alexandria, Louisiana, the singer was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand". In Baton Rouge, Presley failed to appear: he was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and the rest of the tour was cancelled. In Knoxville, Tennessee, on May 20, "there was no longer any pretence of keeping up appearances. The idea was simply to get Elvis out on stage and keep him upright". Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most of touring commitments. Shows in Omaha, Nebraska, and Rapid City, South Dakota, were recorded for an album and CBS television special, Elvis In Concert.

In Rapid City, "he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk", according to Presley historian Samuel Roy. "He was undoubtedly painfully aware of how he looked, and he knew that in his condition, he could not perform any significant movement." The story was much the same in Omaha. According to Guralnick, fans "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Elvis, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books." A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat, recounting things like his favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past japes, but "mostly there was a grim obsessiveness... a paranoia about people, germs... future events", that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes. Presley's final performance was in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena, on June 26, 1977. He was now living with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden, who later reported that she and Presley became engaged. His stepbrother David Stanley confirms that Presley proposed and gave her a ring, but says he believes he wanted to secure her companionship and had no intention of marrying again.

Presley's final resting place at Graceland

The book Elvis: What Happened?, written by Steve Dunleavy and the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley's years of drug misuse. According to David Stanley, he "was devastated by the book. Here were his close friends who had written serious stuff that would affect his life. He felt betrayed. [But] what they wrote was true." By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments—glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated, and possibly caused, by drug abuse. After re-examining Presley's X-rays in the 1990s, Nichopoulos concluded that he was probably also suffering from degenerative arthritis, fueling his addiction to painkillers.

Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour. That afternoon, Alden discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with "permanently chang[ing] the face of American popular culture" (see "Legacy"). Hundreds of thousands of fans, the press, and celebrities lined the streets of Memphis, many hoping to see the open casket in Graceland. One of Presley's cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer's biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18. Among the mourners were Ann-Margret, who had remained close to him since they co-starred in Viva Las Vegas 13 years before, and his ex-wife, Priscilla. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. Presley was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis, next to his mother. An attempt was made to steal his body eleven days later. After zoning issues were addressed, the remains of both Elvis Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland's Meditation Garden on October 2.

Since 1977

In 1982, Graceland was officially opened to the public. Attracting over half a million visitors annually, it is the second most-visited home in the United States, after the White House. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Presley has been inducted into four music halls of fame: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (1997), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001). In 1984, he received the W. C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation and the Academy of Country Music’s first Golden Hat Award. In 1987, he received the American Music Awards’ first posthumous presentation of the Award of Merit.

A Junkie XL remix of Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" (credited as "Elvis Vs JXL") was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over twenty countries, and was included in a compilation of Presley's number one hits, ELV1S. Released the same year, the album too achieved international success. In 2003, a remix of "Rubberneckin'", a 1969 recording of Presley's, topped the U.S. sales chart, as did a 50th-anniversary re-release of "That's All Right" the following year. "That's All Right" was an outright hit in Great Britain, reaching number three on the pop chart.

In 2005, another three reissued singles, "Jailhouse Rock", "One Night"/"I Got Stung", and "It's Now or Never", went to number one in Great Britain. A total of 17 Presley singles were reissued during the year—all made the British top five. Forbes magazine named Presley, for the fifth straight year, the top-earning deceased celebrity, grossing US$45 million for the Presley estate during the preceding year. In 2006, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain headed the list after the sale of his song catalogue, but Presley reclaimed the top spot in 2007. In 2009, he was ranked fourth.

Musical style and evolution

Influences

Presley's earliest musical influence came from Gospel music. His mother recalled that from the age of two, at the Assembly of God church in Tupelo attended by the family, "he would slide down off my lap, run into the aisle and scramble up to the platform. There he would stand looking at the choir and trying to sing with them." Later, the family sang together as a gospel trio. In Memphis, Presley as a young teenager frequently attended all-night gospel singings at the Ellis Auditorium, where the likes of The Statesmen Quartet led the music in a style which, as Guralnick illustrates, sowed the seeds of Presley's own future stage act:

The Statesmen were an electric combination [...] featuring some of the most thrillingly emotive singing and daringly unconventional showmanship in the entertainment world [...] dressed in suits that might have come out of the window of Lansky's [...] Meanwhile bass singer Jim Wetherington, known universally as the Big Chief, maintained a steady bottom, ceaselessly jiggling first his left leg, then his right, with the material of the pants leg ballooning out and shimmering. 'He went about as far as you could go in gospel music,' said Jake Hess. 'The women would jump up, just like they do for the pop shows.' Preachers frequently objected to the lewd movements, [...] but audiences reacted with screams and swoons. It was a different kind of spirituality, but spirituality nonetheless".

Genres

A guitar player from the age of 11, the young Presley, immersed in gospel music from birth, sang and played the instrument in church, and also began to branch out, singing country and hillbilly songs at home and with friends. Music scholar Paul Friedlander describes the elements of the rockabilly style, which he characterizes as "essentially ... an Elvis Presley construction", that the singer and his band mates developed at Sun Records: "the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country". Moore's guitar solo in "That's All Right", the group's first record, "a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion."

At RCA, the rock and roll sound with which Presley became identified grew distinct from rockabilly with the inclusion of backup singing groups and more heavily amplified electric guitars. While he was known for taking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he also recorded songs in other genres from early in his professional life, from the pop standard "Blue Moon" at Sun to the country ballad "How's the World Treating You?" on his second LP to the blues of "Santa Claus Is Back In Town". In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP Peace in the Valley. Certified as a million seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his career.

After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but the characteristic style was substantially toned down from his early RCA recordings. His first post-Army single, the number one hit "Stuck on You", is typical of this shift. RCA publicity materials referred to its "mild rock beat"; discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it "upbeat pop". The modern blues/R&B sound captured so successfully on Elvis Is Back! was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966–67 recordings as "Down in the Alley" and "Hi-Heel Sneakers". The singer's output during most of the 1960s emphasized pop music, often in the form of ballads such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", a number one in 1960. While that was a dramatic number, most of what Presley recorded for his movie soundtracks was in a much lighter style.

While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the '68 Comeback Special, the sound of the show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He would record few new straight-ahead rock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they were "hard to find". A significant exception was "Burning Love", his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley's subsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations. His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul. Much of Elvis In Memphis, as well as "Suspicious Minds", cut at the same sessions, reflected the new soul/rock fusion he pursued. In 1970, he cut an album's worth of country material in various idioms that became Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old). Later in the decade, many of his singles found a home on country radio as the Nashville sound in general became more rock oriented.

Vocal range and style

Music critic Henry Pleasants observes that "Elvis Presley has been described variously as a baritone and a tenor. An extraordinary compass ... and a very wide range of vocal color have something to do with this divergence of opinion." He identifies Presley as a high baritone, calculating his range as two octaves and a third, "from the baritone low G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension in falsetto to at least a D-flat. Presley's best octave is in the middle, D-flat to D-flat, granting an extra full step up or down." In Pleasants' view, his voice was "variable and unpredictable" at the bottom, "often brilliant" at the top, with the capacity for "full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritone might envy." Scholar Lindsay Waters, who measures a range of two and a quarter octaves, emphasizes that "his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all." Presley was always "able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers," writes Pleasants, and also demonstrated a remarkable ability to assimilate many other vocal styles.

Questions over cause of death

"Drug use was heavily implicated" in Presley's death, according to Guralnick. "No one ruled out the possibility of anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills ... to which he was known to have had a mild allergy." A pair of lab reports filed two months later each strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; one reported "fourteen drugs in Elvis' system, ten in significant quantity." Forensic historian and pathologist Michael Baden views the situation as complicated: "Elvis had had an enlarged heart for a long time. That, together with his drug habit, caused his death. But he was difficult to diagnose; it was a judgment call."

The competence and ethics of two of the centrally involved medical professionals were seriously questioned. Medical Examiner Dr. Jerry Francisco publicly offered a cause of death while the autopsy was still being performed and before toxicology results were known. He declared that cardiac arrhythmia was the cause of death, a condition that can be determined only in someone who is still alive. Allegations of a cover-up were widespread. While Presley's main physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, was exonerated of criminal liability for the singer's death, the facts were startling: "In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics: all in Elvis's name." His license was suspended for three months. It was permanently revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of over-prescription.

In 1994, the Presley autopsy was reopened. Coroner Dr. Joseph Davis declared, "There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death from drugs. In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack." Whether or not combined drug intoxication was in fact the cause, there is little doubt that polypharmacy contributed significantly to Presley's premature death.

Racial issues

Dewey Phillips, the first man to play Elvis Presley on the radio, was a white disc jockey who played a large number of records by African American performers and enjoyed a substantial black audience. When he first aired "That's All Right", many listeners who contacted the station by phone and telegram to ask for it again assumed that its singer was black. From the beginning of his national fame, Presley expressed respect for African American performers and their music and disregard for the norms of segregation and racial prejudice then prevalent in the South. In a 1956 interview, he described listening to blues musician Arthur Crudup—the originator of "That's All Right"—"bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw." The Memphis World, an African American newspaper, reported that Presley, "the rock ’n’ roll phenomenon", "cracked Memphis’s segregation laws" by attending the local amusement park on what was designated as its "colored night." Such statements and actions led Presley to be generally hailed in the black community during the early days of his stardom. By contrast, many white adults, according to Billboard's Arnold Shaw, viewed him as "the first rock symbol of teenage rebellion. ... They did not like him, and condemned him as depraved. Anti-negro prejudice doubtless figured in adult antagonism. Regardless of whether parents were aware of the Negro sexual origins of the phrase 'rock 'n' roll', Presley impressed them as the visual and aural embodiment of sex."

Despite the largely positive view of Presley held by African Americans, a rumor spread in mid-1957 that he had at some point announced, "The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." A journalist with the national African American weekly Jet, Louie Robinson, pursued the story. On the set of Jailhouse Rock, Presley granted him an interview, though he was no longer dealing with the mainstream press. He denied making such a statement or holding in any way to its racist view. Robinson found no evidence that the remark had ever been made, and on the contrary elicited testimony from many individuals indicating that Presley was anything but racist. Blues singer Ivory Joe Hunter, who had heard the rumor before he visited Graceland one evening, reported of Presley, "He showed me every courtesy, and I think he's one of the greatest." Though the rumored remark was wholly discredited at the time, it was still being used against Presley decades later. The identification of Presley with racism—either personally or symbolically—was expressed most famously in the lyrics of the 1989 rap hit "Fight the Power", by Public Enemy: "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me / Straight-up racist that sucker was / Simple and plain."

The persistence of such attitudes was fueled by resentment over the fact that Presley, whose musical and visual performance idiom owed much to African American sources, achieved the cultural acknowledgment and commercial success largely denied his black peers. Into the 21st century, the notion that Presley had "stolen" black music still found adherents. Notable among African American entertainers expressly rejecting this view was Jackie Wilson, who argued, "A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man’s music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis." And throughout his career, Presley plainly acknowledged his debt. Addressing his '68 Comeback Special audience, he said, "Rock 'n' roll music is basically gospel or rhythm and blues, or it sprang from that. People have been adding to it, adding instruments to it, experimenting with it, but it all boils down to [that]." Nine years earlier, he had said, "Rock 'n' roll has been around for many years. It used to be called rhythm and blues."

Influence of Colonel Parker and others

Parker and the Aberbachs

Main article: Colonel Tom Parker

Once he became Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker insisted on exceptionally tight control over his client's career. Early on, he and his Hill and Range allies, the Aberbachs, perceived the close relationship that developed between Presley and songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller as a serious threat to that control. Parker effectively ended the relationship, deliberately or not, with the new contract he sent Leiber in early 1958. Leiber thought there was a mistake—the sheet of paper was blank except for Parker's signature and a line on which to enter his. "There's no mistake, boy, just sign it and return it", Parker directed. "Don't worry, we'll fill it in later." Leiber declined, and Presley's fruitful collaboration with the writing team was over. Other respected songwriters lost interest in or simply avoided writing for Presley because of the deal his team insisted on: the surrender of a third of the usual songwriter's royalties.

By 1967, Parker had contracts with Presley that gave him 50 percent of most of the singer's earnings on recordings, films, and merchandise. Beginning in February 1972, he took a third of the profit from live appearances; a January 1976 agreement entitled him to half of that as well. Priscilla Presley noted that "Elvis detested the business side of his career. He would sign a contract without even reading it." Agreeing that Presley had no feel for business, his friend Marty Lacker regarded Parker as a "hustler and scam artist" who abused Presley's trust.

In 1969, record producer Chips Moman and Presley recorded with musicians handpicked by Moman at his American Sound Studio in Memphis. Given the control customarily exerted by RCA and the music publishers, this was a significant departure, instigated by Marty Lacker. Moman still had to deal with Hill and Range staff on site, whose song suggestions he regarded as unacceptable. He was on the verge of quitting the sessions, until Presley ordered the publishing personnel out of the studio. Although one RCA executive, Joan Deary, was later full of praise for the producer's song choices and the quality of the resulting recordings, Moman, to his fury, received neither credit on the records nor any royalties for his work. No producer was to override Hill and Range's control again.

Parker arguably exercised tightest control over Presley's movie career. In 1957, Robert Mitchum asked Presley to costar with him in Thunder Road, on which Mitchum was both writer and producer. According to George Klein, one of his oldest friends, Presley was offered starring roles in West Side Story and Midnight Cowboy. In 1974, Barbra Streisand approached Presley to star with her in the remake of A Star is Born. In each case, any ambitions the singer may have had to play such parts were thwarted by his manager's negotiating demands or flat refusals. The operative attitude may have been summed up best by a comment of Jean Aberbach's—made, he claimed, on Parker's insistence: when Leiber and Stoller brought a promising, serious film project for Presley to Parker and the Hill and Range owners for their consideration, Aberbach warned them to never again "try to interfere with the business or artistic workings of the process known as Elvis Presley".

Memphis Mafia

Main article: Memphis Mafia

In the early 1960s, the circle of friends with whom Presley constantly surrounded himself until his death came to be known as the "Memphis Mafia". "Surrounded by the[ir] parasitic presence", as journalist John Harris puts it, "it was no wonder that as he slid into addiction and torpor, no-one raised the alarm: to them, Elvis was the bank, and it had to remain open." Tony Brown, who played piano for Presley regularly in the last two years of the singer's life, observed his rapidly declining health and the urgent need to address it: "But we all knew it was hopeless because Elvis was surrounded by that little circle of people ... all those so-called friends". In the Memphis Mafia's defence, Marty Lacker has said, "[Presley] was his own man. ... If we hadn't been around, he would have been dead a lot earlier."

Larry Geller became Presley's hairdresser in 1964. Unlike others in the Memphis Mafia, he was interested in spiritual questions and recalls how, from their first conversation, Presley revealed his secret thoughts and anxieties: "I mean there has to be a purpose...there's got to be a reason...why I was chosen to be Elvis Presley. ... I swear to God, no one knows how lonely I get. And how empty I really feel." Thereafter, Geller supplied him with books on religion and mysticism, which the singer read voraciously. Presley would be preoccupied by such matters for much of his life, taking trunkloads of books with him on tour.

Sex symbol

Main article: Relationships of Elvis Presley

Presley's sexual appeal and photogenic looks were widely acknowledged. For example, television director Steve Binder, who was not a fan of Presley's music when he oversaw the '68 Comeback Special, reported, "I'm straight as an arrow and I got to tell you, you stop, whether you're male or female, to look at him. He was that good looking. And if you never knew he was a superstar, it wouldn't make any difference; if he'd walked in the room, you'd know somebody special was in your presence." Evincing both the focus on Presley's imagined sexual prowess and the attempts to explain or dismiss his charisma, Marjorie Garber quotes a male rock critic from 1970 who "praised Elvis as 'The master of the sexual simile, treating his guitar as both phallus and girl ... rumor had it that into his skin-tight jeans was sewn a lead bar to suggest a weapon of heroic proportions.'" She similarly cites a boyhood friend of Presley's who claims the singer used a cardboard toilet roll tube to make it "look to the girls up front like he had one helluva thing there inside his pants." This belief found a famous echo in Ed Sullivan's declaration that he perceived a soda bottle in Presley's trousers during his earlier television appearances.

The title and marketing of Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962) took advantage of Presley's sex symbol status.

While Presley was regarded, and marketed, as an icon of heterosexuality, latter-day cultural scholars argue that his persona was more ambiguous than that. Brett Farmer places the "orgasmic gyrations" of the title dance sequence in Jailhouse Rock within a lineage of cinematic musical numbers that offer a "spectacular eroticization, if not homoeroticization, of the male image". In the analysis of Yvonne Tasker, “Elvis was an ambivalent figure who articulated a peculiar feminised, objectifying version of white working-class masculinity as aggressive sexual display.”

Supporting Presley's image as a sex symbol were the reports of his dalliances with various Hollywood stars and starlets. June Juanico of Memphis, one of Presley's early girlfriends, later blamed Parker for encouraging Presley to choose his dating partners with publicity in mind. Presley, however, never grew comfortable with the Hollywood scene, and most of these relationships were insubstantial. Natalie Wood, who dated him briefly in 1956, claimed that his mother's influence had "wrecked everything". "God it was awful," she told her sister. "He can sing but he can’t do much else."

Speculation about Presley's romances appeared frequently in the gossip columns during the 1960s. One of the first celebrities he was linked with after his return from military service was Nancy Sinatra. Lori Williams, a bit player in two of his films, dated the singer for a while in 1964. She says their "courtship was not some bizarre story. It was very sweet and Elvis was the perfect gentleman." While shooting Viva Las Vegas, Presley and his co-star, Ann-Margret, became very close, though she has never made clear whether they were sexually intimate. A publicity campaign devoted to their assumed romance was launched during production of the film. Whatever the nature of their early involvement, they maintained a lifelong friendship. After Presley split from his wife, he briefly dated Candice Bergen and Cybill Shepherd. Peggy Lipton writes that he still seemed very boyish and claims that he was "virtually impotent" with her, attributing this to his drug use. Presley's status could also be intimidating. Cher remembers with regret how, when he asked her to stay with him in Las Vegas, she turned him down because she was too nervous.

Acting career

Presley first became interested in acting in his youth. Despite his later declarations that he had no acting experience, fellow Humes High students recall that he was often cast as the lead in the Shakespeare plays they studied in English class. He admired actors such as James Dean and Marlon Brando, and reportedly paid close attention to their performing styles long before he ever set foot on a movie set. On March 26–28, 1956, just days after the release of his first album, he did a screen test for Paramount Pictures. Part of the test was an audition for a supporting role in The Rainmaker, starring Burt Lancaster. Screenwriter Allen Weiss compared his acting to that of "the lead in a high school play." Then, to his recording of "Blue Suede Shoes", Presley gave a lip-synched performance, complete with gyrations. In Weiss's description, "The transformation was incredible...electricity bounced off the walls. ... [It was] like an earthquake". In a radio interview two weeks later, Presley excitedly declared that he would be making his motion picture debut in The Rainmaker. The part ultimately went to Earl Holliman.

King Creole (1958) was Presley's personal favorite among his many films.

On April 25, Presley signed a seven-year contract with Paramount that also allowed him to work with other studios. In November, he made his big-screen debut with the musical western Love Me Tender. Its commercial success led to the release of three more Presley film vehicles over the next twenty months. The singer would go on to star alongside several well-established actors, including Walter Matthau, Carolyn Jones, Angela Lansbury, Barbara Stanwyck, and Mary Tyler Moore. An eleven-year-old Kurt Russell made his screen debut in It Happened at the World's Fair (1963).

A couple of Presley's early films, Jailhouse Rock (1957) and King Creole (1958), called for relatively dramatic performances. The dance sequence to the former's title song is often cited as his greatest moment onscreen. Howard Thompson of the New York Times began his review of the latter, "As the lad himself might say, cut my legs off and call me Shorty! Elvis Presley can act." But the majority of Presley's movies aimed for little more than reliable returns on modest investments and the promotion of their accompanying soundtrack albums. His first film after his return from the Army, G.I. Blues (1960), directed by Norman Taurog, set the tone. As described by critic Al Clark, it was the "first in a series of nine bland Presley vehicles directed by Taurog, and the film which engendered a career formula of tepid, routine comedy-musicals." Presley at first insisted on pursuing more serious roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein—Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961)—were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. For most of the 1960s, during which he made 27 movies, there were few exceptions.

Presley's movies were generally poorly received—one critic dismissed them as a "pantheon of bad taste." As a typical comment put it, the scripts "were all the same". Hal Wallis, who produced nine of Presley's films, also had a reputation for such prestige productions as Becket (1964), starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole. But Wallis's goals were clearly very different for his most reliably profitable star: "A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood," he said. Presley later branded Wallis "a double-dealing sonofabitch", realizing there had never been any intention to let him develop into a serious actor. According to Priscilla Presley, in the late 1960s, he blamed his fall in popularity on his forgettable films.

For all that, Presley's films were indeed commercially successful, and he "became a film genre of his own." The silver screen gave many of his fans around the world their only opportunity to see him, given the almost complete absence of international appearances by the singer. (The only concerts Presley ever gave outside of the United States were in three Canadian cities in 1957.) Still, as film critic and historian David Thomson asked, "Is there a greater contrast between energy and routine than that between Elvis Presley the phenomenon, live and on record, and Presley the automaton on film?"

Change of Habit (1969) was Presley's final non-concert movie. His last two theatrical films were concert documentaries in the early 1970s. In 1974, he lost the opportunity to co-star with Barbra Streisand in a big-budget remake of A Star Is Born when Parker demanded 50 percent of the profits from the production along with other extravagant financial demands. With Kris Kristofferson as the male lead, the film became a major hit.

Legacy

Further information: [[:Cultural depictions of Elvis Presley; Cultural impact of Elvis Presley; Elvis Presley phenomenon]]

Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique and irreplaceable. More than 20 years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense, and he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor of his country.

— President Jimmy Carter
August 17, 1977

Presley's rise to national attention in 1956 transformed the field of popular music and had a huge effect on the broader scope of popular culture. As the catalyst for the cultural revolution that was rock and roll, he was central not only to defining it as a musical genre but in making it a touchstone of youth culture and rebellious attitude. With its racially mixed origins—repeatedly affirmed by Presley—rock and roll's occupation of a central position in mainstream American culture facilitated a new acceptance and appreciation of black culture. In this regard, Little Richard said of Presley, "He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music." Al Green agreed: "He broke the ice for all of us." Presley also heralded the vastly expanded reach of celebrity in the era of mass communication: at the age of 21, within a year of his first appearance on American network television, he was arguably the most famous person in the world.

File:Elvis Presley Briefmarke Deutsche Bundespost 1988 postfrisch Schuschke.png

Stamp depicting Presley issued by the German post office in 1988

"Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century", said composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. "He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything—music, language, clothes. It's a whole new social revolution—the sixties came from it." Bob Dylan described the sensation of first hearing Presley as "like busting out of jail". Others, however, focused on what they saw as squandered potential. John Lennon, who had once been famously quoted to the effect that "before Elvis, there was nothing", opined in 1980 that Presley "died when he went into the army...that's when they killed him, that's when they castrated him, the rest of it was just a living death." Not only Presley's achievements, but his failings as well, are seen by some cultural observers as adding to the power of his legacy, as in this description by Greil Marcus:

Elvis Presley is a supreme figure in American life, one whose presence, no matter how banal or predictable, brooks no real comparisons. ... The cultural range of his music has expanded to the point where it includes not only the hits of the day, but also patriotic recitals, pure country gospel, and really dirty blues. ... Elvis has emerged as a great artist, a great rocker, a great purveyor of schlock, a great heart throb, a great bore, a great symbol of potency, a great ham, a great nice person, and, yes, a great American.

For much of his career, Presley enjoyed the kind of worldwide fame that had never been seen before, and that has rarely been seen since. The global satellite concert Aloha From Hawaii remains the most viewed performance by any solo entertainer in history. His name, image, and voice are instantly recognizable on every continent and among most cultures. He has inspired a legion of impersonaters. In polls and surveys, he is recognized as one of the most important popular music artists and influential Americans,Template:Fn and he is one of the top selling musicians of all time.

For those too young to have experienced Elvis Presley in his prime, today’s celebration of the 25th anniversary of his death must seem peculiar. All the talentless impersonators and appalling black velvet paintings on display can make him seem little more than a perverse and distant memory. But before Elvis was camp, he was its opposite: a genuine cultural force. ... Elvis’s breakthroughs are underappreciated because in this rock-and-roll age, his hard-rocking music and sultry style have triumphed so completely.

— The New York Times
August 16, 2002

Discography

Main article: Elvis Presley discography

See also: List of Elvis Presley songs, Elvis Presley hit singles, and Elvis Presley hit albums

A vast number of recordings have been issued under Presley's name. His career began and he was most successful during an era when singles were the primary commercial medium for pop music. In the case of his albums, the distinction between "official" studio records and other forms is often blurred. In addition, for most of the 1960s, his recording career focused on soundtrack albums. In the 1970s, his most heavily promoted and best-selling LP releases tended to be concert albums. This summary discography lists only the albums and singles that reached the top of one or more of the following charts: the main U.S. Billboard pop chart; the Billboard country chart, the genre chart with which he was most identified (there was no country album chart before 1964); and the official British pop chart.Template:Fn In the United States, Presley also had five or six number one R&B singles and seven number one adult contemporary singles; in 1964, his "Blue Christmas" topped the Christmas singles chart during a period when Billboard did not rank holiday singles in its primary pop chart. He had number one hits in many countries beside the United States and United Kingdom, as well.

Number one albums

Year	Album	Type	Chart positions
			US	US Country	UK
1956	Elvis Presley	studio/comp.	1	n.a.	1
	Elvis	studio	1	n.a.	3
1957	Loving You	sound./studio	1	n.a.	1
	Elvis' Christmas Album	studio	1	n.a.	2
1960	Elvis Is Back!	studio	2	n.a.	1
	G.I. Blues	soundtrack	1	n.a.	1
1961	Something for Everybody	studio	1	n.a.	2
	Blue Hawaii	soundtrack	1	n.a.	1
1962	Pot Luck	studio	4	n.a.	1
1964	Roustabout	soundtrack	1	—	12
1969	From Elvis in Memphis	studio	13	2	1
1973	Aloha from Hawaii: Via Satellite	live	1	1	11
1974	Elvis: A Legendary Performer Volume 1	compilation	43	1	20
1975	Promised Land	studio	47	1	21
1976	From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee	studio	41	1	29
1977	Elvis' 40 Greatest	compilation	—	—	1
	Moody Blue	studio/live	3	1	3
	Elvis in Concert	live	5	1	13
2002	ELV1S: 30 #1 Hits	compilation	1	1	1
2007	The King	compilation	—	—	1

Number one singles

Year	Single	Chart positions
		US	US Country	UK
1956	"I Forgot to Remember to Forget"	—	1	—
	"Heartbreak Hotel"	1	1	2
	"I Want You, I Need You, I Love You"	1	1	14
	"Don't Be Cruel"	1	1	2
	"Hound Dog"	1	1	2
	"Love Me Tender"	1	3	11
1957	"Too Much"	1	3	6
	"All Shook Up"	1	1	1
	"(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear"	1	1	3
	"Jailhouse Rock"	1	1	1
1958	"Don't"	1	2	2
	"Hard Headed Woman"	1	2	2
1959	"One Night"/"I Got Stung"	4/8	24/—	1
	"A Fool Such as I"/"I Need Your Love Tonight"	2/4	—	1
	"A Big Hunk o' Love"	1	—	4
1960	"Stuck on You"	1	27	3
	"It's Now or Never"	1	—	1
	"Are You Lonesome Tonight?"	1	22	1
1961	"Wooden Heart"	—	—	1
	"Surrender"	1	—	1
	"(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame"/"Little Sister"	4/5	—	1
1962	"Can't Help Falling in Love"/"Rock-A-Hula Baby"	2/23	—	1
	"Good Luck Charm"	1	—	1
	"She's Not You"	5	—	1
	"Return to Sender"	2	—	1
1963	"(You're The) Devil in Disguise"	3	—	1
1965	"Crying in the Chapel"	3	—	1
1969	"Suspicious Minds"	1	—	2
1970	"The Wonder of You"	9	37	1
1977	"Moody Blue"	31	1	6
	"Way Down"	18	1	1
1981	"Guitar Man" (reissue)	28	1	43
2002	"A Little Less Conversation" (JXL remix)	50	—	1
2005	"Jailhouse Rock" (reissue)	—	—	1
	"One Night"/"I Got Stung" (reissue)	—	—	1
	"It's Now or Never" (reissue)	—	—	1

Filmography

Main article: Elvis Presley filmography

See also

• List of best-selling music artists
• List of artists by total number of U.S. number-one singles
• List of artists by total number of UK number one singles
• List of honorific titles in popular music

Notes

• Template:Fnb The correct spelling of Presley's middle name has long been a matter of debate. The physician who delivered him, Dr. William Robert Hunt, wrote "Elvis Aaron Presley" in his ledger. The state-issued birth certificate reads "Elvis Aron Presley". The name was chosen after the Presleys' friend and fellow congregation member Aaron Kennedy, though a single-A spelling might have been intended in order to parallel the middle name of Presley's stillborn brother, Jesse Garon. It reads Aron on the 1950 application for his Social Security number and on his draft notice, and this is apparently what Presley thought of as the proper spelling. When, late in his life, he sought to officially change the spelling to the more traditional biblical rendering, Aaron, he discovered that, despite the spelling on his birth certificate, official state records already listed it that way. Knowing his plans for his middle name, Aaron is the spelling his father chose for Presley's tombstone, and it is the spelling his estate has designated as official.
• Template:Fnb Songs credited to Presley as a cowriter include eight recorded in 1956–57: "Heartbreak Hotel"; "Don't Be Cruel"; all four songs from his first film, including the title track, "Love Me Tender"; "Paralyzed"; and "All Shook Up". The only two songs he actually did cowrite to have been officially released were recorded in 1961–62: "That's Someone You Never Forget" and "You'll Be Gone".
• Template:Fnb VH1 ranked Presley #8 among the "100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll" in 1998. The BBC ranked him as the #2 "Voice of the Century" in 2001. Rolling Stone placed him #3 in its list of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004. CMT ranked him #15 among the "40 Greatest Men in Country Music" in 2005. The Discovery Channel placed him #8 on its "Greatest American" list in 2005. Variety put him in the top ten of its "100 Icons of the Century" in 2005. The Atlantic Monthly ranked him #66 among the "100 Most Influential Figures in American History" in 2006.
• Template:Fnb (1) The year given is the year the record first reached number one, rather than its original year of release. For instance, in 1974, Elvis' 40 Greatest, a compilation on the budget Arcade label, was the fourth highest selling album in the United Kingdom; at the time, the main British chart did not rank such compilations, relegating them to a chart for midpriced and TV-advertised albums, which Elvis' 40 Greatest topped for 15 weeks. The policy was altered in 1975, allowing the album to hit number one on the main chart in 1977, following Presley's death. (2) Before late 1958, rather than unified pop and country singles charts, Billboard had as many as four charts for each, separately ranking records according to sales, jukebox play, jockey spins (i.e., airplay), and, in the case of pop, a general Top 100. According to Billboard convention, historical recordings are now given the highest ranking they achieved among the separate charts. (3) In accordance with the canon of The Official UK Charts Company, the "official British pop chart" is the New Musical Express chart from 1952 to 1960; the Record Retailer chart from 1960 to 1969; and the Official UK Singles Chart from 1969 on. (4) Several Presley singles reached number one on the British pop charts as double A sides; in the United States, the respective sides of those singles were ranked separately by Billboard.

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Further reading

• Allen, Lew (2007). Elvis and the Birth of Rock. Genesis. ISBN 1905662009.
• Ann-Margret and Todd Gold (1994). Ann-Margret: My Story. G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0399138919.
• Cantor, Louis (2005). Dewey and Elvis: The Life and Times of a Rock 'n' Roll Deejay. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 025202951X.
• Chadwick, Vernon (ed.) (1997). In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, Religion. Westview. ISBN 0813329876.
• Dickerson, James L. (2001). Colonel Tom Parker: The Curious Life of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager. Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0815412673.
• Doss, Erika Lee (1999). Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image. University of Kansas Press. ISBN 0700609482.
• Finstad, Suzanne (1997). Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. Harmony Books. ISBN 0517705850.
• Goldman, Albert (1981). Elvis. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070236577.
• Goldman, Albert (1990). Elvis: The Last 24 Hours. St. Martin's. ISBN 0312925417.
• Marcus, Greil (1999). Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674194225.
• Marcus, Greil (2000). Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternative. Picador. ISBN 057120676X.
• Moscheo, Joe (2007). The Gospel Side of Elvis. Center Street. ISBN 1599957299
• Nash, Alanna, et al. (2005). Elvis and the Memphis Mafia. Aurum. ISBN 1845131282.
• West, Red, Sonny West, and Dave Hebler (as told to Steve Dunleavy) (1977). Elvis: What Happened? Bantam Books. ISBN 0345272153.

External links

• Elvis Presley at IMDb
• Elvis Presley at AllMovie
• Elvis Presley at Find a Grave
• Elvis Presley Enterprises official site of the Elvis Presley brand
• Elvis Presley Interviews on officially sanctioned Elvis Australia site
• Elvis Presley at Curlie
• Elvis Presley Ancestry at Genealogy.com