Elvis A.Presley

"What have we here?"
Early life
Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935 at around 4:35 a.m. in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Vernon Presley, a truck driver, and Gladys Love Smith, a sewing machine operator. Vernon Presley is described as "taciturn to the point of sullenness"[5] and as "a weakling, a malingerer, always averse to work and responsibility,"[6] whereas his mother, Gladys, was "voluble, lively, full of spunk."[7] Priscilla Presley describes her as "a surreptitious drinker and alcoholic." When she was angry, "she cussed like a sailor."[8] Presley's twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was stillborn, thus leaving him to grow up as an only child. Jesse Garon Presley was buried in a shoebox in an unmarked grave, in Priceville Cemetary in Priceville, Mississippi.
Presley's parents were very protective of their only surviving child. The little boy "grew up a loved and precious child. He was, everyone agreed, unusually close to his mother."[9] His mother Gladys "worshipped him," said a neighbor, "from the day he was born." Elvis himself said, "My mama never let me out of her sight. I couldn't go down to the creek with the other kids."[10] In his teens he was still a very shy person, a "kid who had spent scarcely a night away from home in his nineteen years."[11]
He was teased by his fellow classmates who threw "things at him - rotten fruit and stuff - because he was different, because he was quiet and he stuttered and he was a mama's boy."[12] Gladys was so proud of her son, that, years later, she "would get up early in the morning to run off the fans so Elvis could sleep".[13] She was frightened of Elvis being hurt: "She knew her boy, and she knew he could take care of himself, but what if some crazy man came after him with a gun? she said... tears streaming down her face."[14]
In 1938, when Presley was three years old, his father was convicted of forgery. Vernon, Gladys's brother Travis Smith, and Luther Gable went to prison for altering a check from Orville Bean, Vernon's boss, from $3 to $8 and then cashing it at a local bank. Vernon was sentenced to three years at Mississippi State Penitentiary.[15] Though Vernon was released after serving eight months, this event deeply influenced the life of the young family. During her husband's absence, Gladys lost the house and was forced to move in briefly with her in-laws next door. The Presley family lived just above the poverty line during their years in East Tupelo.
In 1941 Presley started school at the East Tupelo Consolidated. There he seems to have been an outsider. His few friends relate that he was separate from any crowd and did not belong to any "gang", but, according to his teachers, he was a sweet and average student, and he loved comic books. In 1943 Vernon moved to Memphis, where he found work and stayed throughout the war, coming home only on weekends.
In January 1945 Gladys took Elvis shopping for a birthday present at Tupelo Hardware. She bought him his first guitar, in lieu of a bike and rifle, for $12.75.
In 1946 Presley started at a new school, Milam, which went from grades 5 through 9, but in 1948 the family left Tupelo, moving 110 miles northwest to Memphis, Tennessee. Here, too, the thirteen-year-old lived in the city's poorer section of town and attended a Pentecostal church. At this time, he was very much influenced by the Memphis blues music and the gospel sung at his church. His only reason for waking up in the morning was to give those he deemed "squares" a "haircut on the neckline."
Presley entered Humes High School in Memphis and worked at the school library and after school at Loew's State Theatre. In 1951 he enrolled in the school's ROTC unit and tried unsuccessfully to qualify for the high school football team, (the coach supposedly cut him from the team for not trimming his sideburns and ducktail). He spent his spare time around the African-American section of Memphis, especially on Beale Street. In 1953 he graduated from Humes, majoring in History, English, and Shop.
After graduation Presley worked at the Parker Machinists Shop, and, after working at the Precision Tool Company with his father, worked for the Crown Electric Company driving a truck. Here he began wearing his hair in his signature pompadour style.
Voice characteristics
Elvis Presley was a baritone whose voice had an extraordinary compass — the so-called register — and a very wide range of vocal color.[16] It covered 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 was in the middle, D-flat to D-flat. "He has always been able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers. But he has not been confined to that one type of vocal production." In ballads and country songs he was able to belt out "full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritone might envy," showing a remarkable ability to naturally assimilate styles. His "voice has always been weak at the bottom, variable and unpredictable. At the top it is often brilliant. His upward passage would seem to lie in the area of E flat, E and F."[17]
Presley's range, though impressive in its own right, did not in itself make his voice that remarkable, at least in terms of how it measured against musical notation. What made it extraordinary, was where its center of gravity lay. By that measure, and according to Gregory Sandows, Music Professor at Columbia University, Presley was at once a bass, a baritone, and a tenor, most unusual among singers in either classical or popular music.
Sun recordings
On July 18, 1953 Presley paid $3.25 to record the first of two double-sided demo acetates at Sun Studios, "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin", which were popular ballads at the time. According to the official Presley website, Presley gave it to his mother as a much-belated birthday present. Presley returned to Sun Studios (706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee) on January 4, 1954. He again paid $8.25 to record a second demo, "I'll Never Stand in Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You" (master 0812).
Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, who had already recorded blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, B.B. King, Little Milton, and Junior Parker [7], was looking for "a white man with a Negro sound and the Negro feel," with whom he "could make a billion dollars," because he thought black blues and boogie-woogie music might become tremendously popular among white people if presented in the right way.[18] The Sun Records producer felt that a black rhythm and blues act stood little chance at the time of gaining the broad exposure needed to achieve large-scale commercial success."[19]
Phillips and assistant Marion Keisker heard the Presley discs and called him on June 26, 1954, to fill in for a missing ballad singer. Although that session was not productive, Phillips put Presley together with local musicians Scotty Moore and Bill Black to see what might develop. During a rehearsal break on July 5, 1954, Presley began singing a blues song written by Arthur Crudup called "That's All Right". Phillips liked the resulting record and on July 19, 1954, he released it as a 78-rpm single backed with Presley's hopped-up version of Bill Monroe's bluegrass song "Blue Moon of Kentucky". Memphis radio station WHBQ began playing it two days later; the record became a local hit and Presley began a regular touring schedule hoping to expand his fame beyond Tennessee.
However, Sam Phillips had difficulty persuading Southern white disc jockeys to play Presley's first recordings. The only places that played his records at first were in the Negro sections of Chicago and Detroit and in California. However, his music and style began to draw larger and larger audiences as he toured the South in 1955. Soon, demands by white teenagers that their local radio stations play his music overcame much of that resistance and as Rolling Stone magazine wrote years later in Presley's biography: "Overnight, it seemed, 'race music', as the music industry had labeled the work of black artists, became a thing of the past, as did the pejorative 'hillbilly' music." [8] Still, throughout 1955 and even well into 1956 when he had become a national phenomenon, Presley had to deal with an entrenched racism of die-hard segregationists and their continued labeling of his sound and style as vulgar "jungle music". Allegations of racism were made against Presley, possibly by those segregationist elements who hated what he was doing. Jet examined the issue and in its August 1, 1957 edition, the African American magazine concluded that: "To Elvis, people are people regardless of race, color or creed."[20]
Country music star Hank Snow arranged to have Presley perform at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry and his performance was well received. Nonetheless, one of the show's executives allegedly told Presley, "You ain't going nowhere, son. You may as well stick to driving a truck." Indeed, at the start of his fame, Presley didn't look like a rising star. Guitarist Scotty Moore described him as a "typical coddled son", still "very shy", and "more comfortable just sitting there with a guitar than trying to talk to you." [21]
Presley's second single, "Good Rockin' Tonight", with "I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine" on the B-side, was released on September 25, 1954. He then continued to tour the South. On October 16, 1954, he made his first appearance on Louisiana Hayride, a radio broadcast of live country music in Shreveport, Louisiana, and was a hit with the large audience. His releases began to reach the top of the country charts. Following this, Presley was signed to a one-year contract for a weekly performance, during which time he was introduced to Colonel Tom Parker.
National exposure began on January 28, 1956, when Presley, Moore, Black, and drummer D.J. Fontana made their first National Television appearance on the Dorsey brothers' Stage Show. It was the first of six appearances on the show and the first of eight performances recorded and broadcast from CBS TV Studio 50 at 1697 Broadway, New York. After the success of their first appearance, they were signed to five more in early 1956 (February 4, 11, 18 and March 17 and 24.
Presley and his manager "Colonel" Tom Parker
On August 15, 1955, Presley was signed by "Hank Snow Attractions", a management company jointly owned by singer Hank Snow and "Colonel" Tom Parker. Shortly thereafter, "Colonel" Parker took full control and, recognizing the limitations of Sun Studios, negotiated a deal with RCA Victor Records to acquire Presley's Sun contract for $35,000 on November 21, 1955. Presley's first single for RCA "Heartbreak Hotel" quickly sold one million copies and within a year RCA would go on to sell ten million Presley singles.
Elvis Presley at the Mississippi-Alabama State Fair, 1956Parker was a master promoter who wasted no time in furthering Presley's image, licensing everything from guitars to cookware. Parker's first major coup was to market Presley on television. First, he had Presley booked in six of the Dorsey Shows (CBS). Presley appeared on the show on January 28, 1956, then on February 4, 11 & 18, 1956, with two more appearances on March 17 & 24, 1956. In March, he was able to obtain a lucrative deal with Milton Berle (NBC) for two appearances. The first appearance was on April 3, 1956. The second appearance was controversial due to Presley's performance of "Hound Dog" on June 5, 1956. It sparked a storm over his "gyrations" while singing. The controversy lasted through the rest of the 50's. However, that show drew such huge ratings that Steve Allen (ABC) booked him for one appearance, which took place early on July 1, 1956. That night, Allen had for the first time beaten The Ed Sullivan Show in the Sunday night ratings, prompting Sullivan (CBS) to book Presley for three appearances: September 9, and October 28, 1956 as well as January 6, 1957, for an unprecedented fee of $50,000. On September 9, 1956, at his first of three appearances on the Sullivan show, Presley drew an estimated 82.5% percent of the television audience, calculated at between 55-60 million viewers. On his third and final appearance (January 6, 1957) on the The Ed Sullivan Show, Sullivan was so impressed by Presley that he pointed to him and told the audience "This is a real decent, fine boy. We've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you ... You're thoroughly all right." Presley remains the only one on Sullivan's show to have received such a warm and personal accolade. However, it has also been said that Presley's manager orchestrated the compliment in exchange for permitting Presley to appear, after Sullivan had earlier publicly stated his refusal to allow Presley on his program.
Parker eventually negotiated a multi-picture seven-year contract with Hal Wallis that shifted Presley's focus from music to films. Under the terms of his contract, Presley earned a fee for performing plus a percentage of the profits on the films, most of which were huge moneymakers. These were usually musicals based around Presley performances, and marked the beginning of his transition from rebellious rock and roller to all-round family entertainer. Presley was praised by all his directors, including the highly respected Michael Curtiz, as unfailingly polite and extremely hardworking.
Presley began his movie career with Love Me Tender which opened on November 15, 1956. The movies Jailhouse Rock (1957) and King Creole (1958) are regarded as among his best early films.
Parker's success led to Presley expanding the "Colonel's" management contract to an even 50/50 split. Over the years, much has been written about "Colonel" Parker, most of it critical. Marty Lacker, a lifelong friend and a member of the Memphis Mafia, says he thought of Parker as a "hustler and scam artist" who abused Presley's reliance on him. Priscilla Presley admits that "Elvis detested the business side of his career. He would sign a contract without even reading it."[22] This would explain the strong influence the Colonel had on Presley. Nonetheless, Lacker acknowledged that Parker was a master promoter.[23]
Presley and African American music
Even in the 1950s era of blatant racism, Presley would publicly cite his debt to African American music, pointing to artists such as B. B. King, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Jackie Wilson, Robert Johnson, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Fats Domino. The reporter who conducted Presley's first interview in New York City in 1956 noted that he named blues singers who "obviously meant a lot to him. I was very surprised to hear him talk about the black performers down there and about how he tried to carry on their music."[citation needed] Later that year in Charlotte, North Carolina, Presley was quoted as saying: "The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin' now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in their shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind 'til I goosed it up. I got it from them. Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now and I said if I ever got to a place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw."[24] 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."[25] B. B. King said he began to respect Presley after he did Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup material and that after he met him, he thought the singer really was something else and was someone whose music was growing all the time right up to his death.[26]
Up to the mid 1950s black artists had sold minuscule amounts of their recorded music relative to the national market potential. Black songwriters had mostly limited horizons and could only eke out a living. But after Presley purchased the music of African American Otis Blackwell and had his "Gladys Music" company hire talented black songwriter Claude Demetrius, the industry underwent a dramatic change. In the spring of 1957 Presley invited African American performer Ivory Joe Hunter to visit Graceland and the two spent the day together, singing "I Almost Lost My Mind" and other songs. Of Presley, Hunter commented, "He showed me every courtesy, and I think he's one of the greatest."[27]
However, certain elements in American society began to simply dismiss Presley as no more than a racist Southerner who stole black music, but in the words of Black R&B artist Jackie Wilson, "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."
"Racists attacked rock and roll because of the mingling of black and white people it implied and achieved, and because of what they saw as black music's power to corrupt through vulgar and animalistic rhythms. ... The popularity of Elvis Presley was similarly founded on his transgressive position with respect to racial and sexual boundaries. ... White cover versions of hits by black musicians ... often outsold the originals; it seems that many Americans wanted black music without the black people in it,"[28] and Elvis had undoubtedly "derived his style from the Negro rhythm-and-blues performers of the late 1940s."[29]
The Elvis stole black music theme is an enduring one with arguments for and against published in books (see: "Dispelling The Myths An analysis of American Attitudes and Prejudices", Todd Rheingold, Believe In The Dream Publications, USA, 1992, LOCC:93-090296, and on Elvis websites and popular music messageboards. Several arguments are presented on the Elvis Information Network website [9]in its Spotlight On The King section.
"Many White people would be surprised to learn that Elvis Presley's hit 'Hound Dog' was first popularized by a Black woman, Big Mama Thornton. Elvis and his music live on the collective memory of Whites, yet Little Richard, some of whose work Elvis borrowed, has been forgotten."[30] A southern background combined with a performing style largely associated with African Americans had led to "bitter criticism by those who feel he stole a good thing," as Tan magazine surmised.[31] No wonder that Elvis became "a symbol of all that was oppressive to the black experience in the Western Hemisphere".[32] What is more, Presley was widely believed to have said, "The only thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my records."[33] It was claimed that the alleged comment was made either in Boston or on Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person.[34] A black southerner in the late 1980s even captured that sentiment: "To talk to Presley about blacks was like talking to Adolf Hitler about the Jews."[35]
In his scholarly work Race, Rock, and Elvis,[36] Tennessee State University professor Michael T. Bertrand examined the relationship between popular culture and social change in America and these allegations against Presley. Professor Bertrand postulated that Presley's rock and roll music brought an unprecedented access to African American culture that challenged the 1950s segregated generation to reassess ingrained segregationist stereotypes. The American Historical Review wrote that the author "convincingly argues that the black-and-white character of the sound, as well as Presley's own persona, helped to relax the rigid color line and thereby fed the fires of the civil rights movement." The U.S. government report stated: "Presley has been accused of "stealing" black rhythm and blues, but such accusations indicate little knowledge of his many musical influences." "However much Elvis may have 'borrowed' from black blues performers (e.g., 'Big Boy' Crudup, 'Big Mama' Thornton), he borrowed no less from white country stars (e.g., Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe) and white pop singers (e.g., Mario Lanza, Dean Martin)," and most of his borrowings came from the church; its gospel music was his primary musical influence and foundation."
"A danger to American culture"
By the spring of 1956, Presley was fast becoming a national phenomenon[37] and teenagers came to his concerts in unprecedented numbers. There were many riots at his early concerts. Scotty Moore says, "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."[38] When he performed at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair in 1956, 100 National Guardsmen surrounded the stage to control crowds of excited fans. The singer was considered to represent a threat to the moral well-being of young American women, because "Elvis Presley didn’t just represent a new type of music; he represented sexual liberation."[39] In 1956, a critic for the New York Daily News wrote that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley." The Roman Catholic Church denounced him in its weekly magazine in an article headlined "Beware Elvis Presley."[40]
In an interview with PBS television, social historian Eric Lott said, "all the citizens' councils in the South called Elvis 'nigger music' and were terribly afraid that Elvis, white as he was, being ambiguously raced just by being working-class, was going to corrupt the youth of America."[41] Robert Kaiser says he was the first who gave the people "a music that hit them where they lived, deep in their emotions, yes, even below their belts. Other singers had been doing this for generations, but they were black."[42] Therefore, his performance style was frequently criticized. Social guardians blasted anyone responsible for exposing impressionable teenagers to his "gyrating figure and suggestive gestures." The Louisville chief of police, for instance, called for a no-wiggle rule, so as to halt "any lewd, lascivious contortions that would excite the crowd."[43] Even Priscilla Presley confirms that "his performances were labeled obscene. My mother stated emphatically that he was 'a bad influence for teenage girls. He arouses things in them that shouldn't be aroused.'"[44]
According to rhythm and blues artist Hank Ballard, "In white society, the movement of the butt, the shaking of the leg, all that was considered obscene. Now here's this white boy that's grinding and rolling his belly and shaking that notorious leg. I hadn't even seen the black dudes doing that."[45] Presley complained bitterly in a June 27, 1956, interview about being singled out as “obscene”.[46] Due to his controversial style of song and stage performances, municipal politicians began denying permits for Presley appearances. This caused teens to pile into cars and travel elsewhere to see him perform. Adult programmers announced they would not play Presley's music on their radio stations due to religious convictions that his music was "devil music" and to racist beliefs that it was "nigger music." Many of Presley's records were condemned as wicked by Pentecostal preachers, warning congregations to keep heathen rock and roll music out of their homes and away from their children's ears (especially the music of "that backslidden Pentecostal pup.") However, the economic power of Presley's fans became evident when they tuned in alternative radio stations playing his records. In an era when radio stations were shifting to an all-music format, in reaction to competition from television, profit-conscious radio station owners learned quickly when sponsors bought more advertising time on new all "rock and roll" stations, some of which reached enormous markets at night with clear channel signals from AM broadcasts.
In August, 1956 in Jacksonville, Florida a local Juvenile Court judge called Presley a "savage" and threatened to arrest him if he shook his body while performing at Jacksonville's Florida Theatre, justifying the restrictions by saying his music was undermining the youth of America. Throughout the performance, Presley stood still as ordered but poked fun at the judge by wiggling a finger. Similar attempts to stop his "sinful gyrations" continued for more than a year and included his often-noted January 6, 1957 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (during which he performed the spiritual number "Peace in the Valley"), when he was filmed only from the waist up.
American icon
According to Rolling Stone magazine, "it was Elvis who made rock 'n' roll the international language of pop." A PBS documentary described Presley as "an American music giant of the 20th century who single-handedly changed the course of music and culture in the mid-1950s."[47] His recordings, dance moves, attitude and clothing came to be seen as embodiments of rock and roll. His music was heavily influenced by African-American blues, Christian gospel, and Southern country.
Presley sang both hard driving rockabilly, rock and roll dance songs and ballads, laying a commercial foundation upon which other rock musicians would build their careers. African-American performers like Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Chuck Berry came to national prominence after Presley's acceptance among mass audiences of White American teenagers. Singers like Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and others immediately followed in his wake. John Lennon later observed, "Before Elvis, there was nothing."
During the post-WWII economic boom of the 1950s, many parents were able to give their teenage children much higher weekly allowances, signaling a shift in the buying power and purchasing habits of American teens. During the 1940s bobby soxers had idolized Frank Sinatra, but the buyers of his records were mostly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. Presley triggered a juggernaut of demand for his records by near-teens and early teens aged ten and up. Along with Presley's "ducktail" haircut, the demand for black slacks and loose, open-necked shirts resulted in new lines of clothing for teenage boys whereas a girl might get a pink portable 45 rpm record player for her bedroom. Meanwhile American teenagers began buying newly available portable transistor radios[48] and listened to rock 'n' roll on them (helping to propel that fledgling industry from an estimated 100,000 units sold in 1955 to 5,000,000 units by the end of 1958). Teens were asserting more independence and Presley became a national symbol of their parents' consternation.
Elvis Presley in the 1957 musical drama Jailhouse RockPresley's impact on the American youth consumer market was noted on the front page of The Wall Street Journal on December 31, 1956 when business journalist Louis M. Kohlmeier wrote, "Elvis Presley today is a business," and reported on the singer's record and merchandise sales. Half a century later, historian Ian Brailsford (University of Auckland, New Zealand) commented, "The phenomenal success of Elvis Presley in 1956 convinced many doubters of the financial opportunities existing in the youth market."[49] Elvis even became very popular to British audiences as well.
Military service
On December 20, 1957, Presley received his draft board notice for his mandatory service in the United States Army. He was worried that his absence in the public eye for 2 years, while serving in the Army, might end his career. Even more worried were Hal Wallis and Paramount who already spent $350,000 on pre-production of Presley's latest film King Creole and they feared of suspending the project or worse canceling it. Fortunately, the Memphis Draft Board granted Wallis and Colonel Parker a deferment until March 20 so Presley could complete his film project.[50] On 24 March 1958, Presley joined his unit, 1st Battalion, US 32nd Armored Regiment and was posted to Ray Barracks, Friedberg, Germany.
"In the army he was forced into interaction with strangers. This is where Elvis developed the gruff, macho and boastful nature as a mode of survival," says Peter Guralnick. "He'd always been the chief and now he had to be a scout." While serving in Germany, Presley met his wife-to-be, the 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, and also the noted International Herald Tribune correspondent and humorist Art Buchwald, future US Secretary of State Colin Powell (then a lieutenant with the Third Army Division in Germany), and Walter Alden, the father of Presley's fiancee Ginger Alden who inducted Presley into the Army.
His rankings and dates of promotions were as follows: Private (upon draft March 24, 1958); Private First Class (November 27, 1958); Specialist Fourth Class (June 1, 1959); and Sergeant (January 20, 1960). While in the Army, he earned sharpshooter badges for both the .45 pistol and the M1 rifle, and a marksman badge for the M2 carbine, as well as a Good Conduct Medal.[51]
Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of Sergeant (E-5) on March 5.[52] One of his post-discharge photos shows him wearing dress blues with the grade of Staff Sergeant (E-6), but this was a tailor's error.[53]
After serving his duty in the military, he became more mature and lost his raw and rebellious edge.[54] However, he gained respect from older and more conservative crowds who initially disliked him before he entered the Army.
1960s film career
Presley admired the style of Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Tony Curtis and returned from the military eager to make a career as a movie star. Although "he was definitely not the most talented actor around",[55] he "became a film genre of his own."[56] Pop film staples of the early sixties, such as the Presley musicals and the AIP beach movies were mainly produced for a teenage audience and called by film critics a "pantheon of bad taste".[57] In the sixties, at Colonel Parker's command, Presley withdrew from concerts and television appearances, with the exception of a charity concert (Pearl Harbor, 1961) and a TV appearance with Frank Sinatra on NBC entitled "Welcome Home Elvis" where he sang "Witchcraft/Love Me Tender" with Sinatra. From then on it was full-time movies. "He blamed his fading popularity on his humdrum movies," Priscilla Presley recalled in her 1985 autobiography, Elvis and Me. "He loathed their stock plots and short shooting schedules. He could have demanded better, more substantial scripts, but he didn't." According to most critics, the scripts of the movies "were all the same, the songs progressively worse."[58] The latter were "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll."[59] For Blue Hawaii and its soundtrack LP, "fourteen songs were cut in just three days."[60] Julie Parrish, starring in Paradise, Hawaiian Style, says that Presley hated such songs and that he "couldn't stop laughing while he was recording" one of them.[61]
Although some film critics chastised these movies for their lack of depth, the fans turned out and they were enormously profitable. According to Jerry Hopkins's book, Elvis in Hawaii, Presley's "pretty-as-a-postcard movies" even "boosted the new state's (Hawaii) tourism. Some of his most enduring and popular songs came from those movies."[62] Altogether, Presley had made 27 movies during the 1960s, "which had grossed about $130 million, and he had sold a hundred million records, which had made $150 million."[63] Overall, he was one of the highest paid Hollywood actors during the 1960s. However, during the later sixties, "the Elvis Presley film was becoming passé. Young people were tuning in, dropping out and doing acid. Musical acts like the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, the Doors, Janis Joplin and many others were dominating the airwaves. Elvis Presley was not considered as cool as he once was."[64]
For an interesting and diverse look at Elvis's film career and films about him see Elvis Information Network, specifically its Celluloid Elvis section [10]
1968 comeback
Presley's star had increasingly faded over the 1960s as he made his movies and America was struck by changing styles and tastes after the "British Invasion" spearheaded by the Beatles.
Until the late sixties Presley continued to star in many B-movies that, although profitable, featured soundtracks that were of increasingly lower quality. Chart statistics for the summer of 1968 show that his recording career was floundering badly. He had apparently become deeply dissatisfied with the direction his career had taken over the preceding seven years, most notably the film contracts with a demanding schedule that eliminated creative recording and giving public concerts. This lead to a triumphant televised performance later dubbed the '68 Comeback Special, aired on the NBC television network on December 3, 1968, and released as an album by RCA. Although the Special featured big, lavish production numbers (not dissimilar to those in his movies), it also featured intimate and emotionally charged live sessions that saw him return to his rock and roll roots (he had not performed live since the Pearl Harbor concert of 1961). Rolling Stone magazine called it "a performance of emotional grandeur and historical resonance." [11] Presley was greatly assisted in the success of the '68 Comeback by the fact that the director and co-producer, Steve Binder, worked hard to make sure the show was not just a selection of Christmas songs, as Presley's manager had originally planned.
The comeback of 1968 was followed by a 1969 return to live performances, first in Las Vegas and then across the United States. The return concerts were noted for the constant stream of sold-out shows, with many setting attendance records in the venues where he performed.
However, this was also the beginning of the singer's "jumpsuit era". In that era, Presley was distanced from the main currents of rock 'n' roll, which were seized by groups such as The Beatles and the Rolling Stones during the 1960s. This moving away from his roots was much criticized by critics and other rock musicians. "There was so little of it that was actually good," David Bowie says. "Those first two or three years, and then he lost me completely."[65]
Two concert films were also released: Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972)
1969-1977 - Elvis's final years
After seven years off the top of the charts, Presley's song "Suspicious Minds" hit number one on the Billboard music charts on November 1, 1969.[66] He also reached number one on charts elsewhere: "In the Ghetto" did so in West Germany in 1969 and "The Wonder of You" did so in the UK in 1970.
From 1969 to 1971 Presley would dominate singles charts in many countries with a string of Top 20 hits, although this was at a time when album sales were growing significantly. Album sales was not an area where Presley (at the time) competed at the same level with artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and The Monkees.
After a decade dominated by making films, 1970 saw Presley embark on more of a musical career beginning with the release of his single Kentucky Rain which sold over 500,000 copies in the US alone, going Gold. The same month the singer returned to the International Hotel in Las Vegas for another series of performances. Presley broke his own attendance records with his shows (which he set in 1969). The following month he released his single The Wonder of You. The single became a Top 10 Gold hit in the US and went to #1 in the UK. Presley also released his album On Stage. The album was recorded live the previous month in Las Vegas. The album went platinum (1 million copies sold) in the US and sold over 2.5 million worldwide. That month he played to over 200,000 fans during 6 shows at the Houston Astrodome. The summer of 1970 saw him release his single I’ve lost You/The Next Step is Love which won a gold record award. The song is taken form the up coming That’s The Way It Is album. Following this Presley returned to the International Hotel for more performances. This time MGM was there to film some of the shows and behind the scenes footage for a documentary called Elvis: That’s The Way It Is. He released an album later on of the same name. That fall he embarked on his first tour since 1957. It was an 8 date sold-out US tour. The following month he released the gold award single You Don't Have To Say You Love Me. That November he went back on the road for another tour and the year ended with the release of the album That’s The Way It Is, the live album In Person at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada and the single I Really Don’t Want To Know. Both albums and the single achieved a gold award.
In 1971 Presley released the album Elvis Country which became another gold award record. The album contains the previous year's hit I Really Don’t Want To Know. He went back to the International Hotel for more performances. When he finished these dates, the new single Rags To Riches was released. The single sold over 100,000 copies. That May he released the single Life, taken from the forthcoming Love Letters album. The album Love Letters sold a claimed 2 million+ copies worldwide. However, the album only sold 300,000 units in the USA according to Sony-BMG executive, Ernst Jorgensen, in his book with Peter Guralnick, Elvis Day By Day The Definitive Record of His Life and Music (Ballantine Books, 1999, ISBN 0345420896, page 295).
The next month Presley went to Lake Tahoe for a series of performances. Once again he broke attendance records. The following month he went the International Hotel for more performances and the single I’m Leavin was released (selling a poor 275,000 copies in the US according to Guralnick & Jorgensen). While Presley's record sales were falling his performance career was consistently strong. He ended the year with a 15 date U.S. tour - all the dates being sold-out. The single Its Only Love was released. 1971 saw Presley named 'One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation' by the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce (The Jaycees) and he won the Bing Crosby Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (the organization that also presents Grammy awards).
Elvis started 1972 off at the International in Vegas for more performances and released his new album Elvis Now which achieved a gold record. The same month the Top 40 hit single Until Its Time For You To Go was released, selling over 200,000 copies in the US alone. That March the single He Touched Me was released, followed in April by an album with the same name. The He Touched Me album achieved platinum status in the US and went on to win Elvis his second Grammy Award, (Best Inspirational Performance). On April 5, 1972 (in Buffalo, New York) Elvis embarked on a 15 date US tour ending on April 18, 1972 in San Antonio, Texas. MGM filmed some of the shows for the film Elvis On Tour, which won a Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary of 1972. The day before the tour began Elvis released the single American Trilogy. The next month he began a 14 date US tour which started with 4 consecutive sold out shows at Madison Square Gardens in New York - the first artist ever to achieve this. A live album was recorded on June 10th and was rush released on June 18th. The album As Recorded Live At Madison Square Garden became a triple-platinum seller in the US and sold over 5 million copies worldwide. After the tour, Presley returned to Lake Tahoe for more performances and, on August 1, 1972, released the single Burning Love / "It's A Matter Of Time". The single achieved platinum status in the US and went to #2 on the charts. It would be his last top 10 hit. In November he began another sold-out tour and released the single Separate Ways, which earned him another gold record.
In 1973 Presley began the year with two sold-out January shows in Hawaii. The second show was broadcast live around the world. Known as the "Aloha from Hawaii" concert, it was the first of its kind to be broadcast worldwide via satellite and was seen by at least one billion viewers worldwide - a quarter of 1973's world population. The same month Presley was back in Vegas for more performances. In February he released the album Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite. The album went to #1 and spent 52 weeks on the charts. The album went 5x platinum in the U.S. In March the single Steamroller Blues (with B-Side song Fool) was released and it became a Top 40 hit. The following month Elvis was back on a 12 date US tour. In May the singer was back in Lake Tahoe for more performances. The next month Presley was on the road again with a 17-date sold-out US tour. During the tour the album Elvis was released. The album sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide. The year finished with him going back to Vegas for more performances and the releases of the single Raised on Rock and the album of the same name. Raised on Rock sold another 1.5 million copies worldwide.
However, after his divorce in 1973 Presley became increasingly isolated, overweight, and was battling an addiction to prescription drugs which took a heavy toll on his appearance, health, and performances. According to Anna Paterson, "binge eating led him to gain large amounts of weight. It wasn't just the quantity of food that he was eating which caused the problems. Elvis frequently consumed very high fat foods. His favourite meal was reportedly peanut butter and banana sandwiches grilled in butter. Another famous meal he enjoyed was 'Fool's Gold Loaf'. This was a hollowed out white loaf, drenched in butter and then stuffed with peanut butter, jam and bacon." This harmful behavior was "coupled with a heavy prescription drug problem."[67]
Regardless of such problems, the star continued performing concerts. In 1974, Presley went to Vegas for more performances with packed houses. The new single I've Got A Thing About You Baby was released on January 11. On March 20 the album Good Times was released, despite the fact it was the third new album released in just 8 months. He embarked on a 25-date sold-out U.S. tour. In May the singer was back playing a 5-date tour and the single If You Talk in Your Sleep / Help Me was released on May 10th. The same month he went back to Vegas for more performances. The next month saw another massive sold-out U.S. tour. The album Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis was recorded on March 20th and released on July 7th and achieved gold status. When the tour ended Presley went back to Lake Tahoe for more shows and followed this with another successful U.S. tour. The single Promised Land was released during the tour, on September 27th. The song becomes a Top 20 hit and sold well. The year ended with him returning to Lake Tahoe for more performances."
1975 started with the album Promised Land being released on his 40th birthday. It sold well over 1 million copies worldwide. The Top 20 hit My Boy was released. In March Presley went to Vegas for more performances. The next month he set out on another successful tour and the single T-R-O-U-B-L-E was released. The single was taken from the album Today which was released in May of 1975. He spends May, June and July on tour. In August, he was back in Vegas for more performances. In October, the single Bringing It Back was released. The year ended with Elvis playing more shows in Vegas and a massive sold-out concert in Michigan where he played to over 62,000 fans. His live recording of "How Great Thou Art" from the album recorded at one of his Memphis concerts in 1974 won the Grammy for 'Best Inspirational Performance'. This was his third and final Grammy won out of fourteen nominations.
However, by '74 and '75 Presley was exceedingly overweight. Although he would at times go on starvation diets, he would immediately go on binges and gain all the weight back. It was obvious to those around him "that he no longer had the motivation to loose his extra poundage. Likewise, as he became self-conscious of his appearance, his self-confidence before the audience declined. Headlines such as 'Elvis Battles Middle Age' and 'Time Makes Listless Machine of Elvis' were not uncommon. In the Suracuse Post Standard, Dale Rice wrote that 'Elvis was fat, and musically his performances were mediocre."[68]
After taking a break from releasing records and touring, he returned on March 12, 1976 with his new single Hurt/ "For The Heart" Both songs were featured on an upcoming album. He also went back on tour for March and April playing to sell-out crowds all across the U.S. In May he was back in Lake Tahoe for more performances and the album From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee was released. The album went 'gold' in the U.S. From the end of May till November he tour extensively across the U.S. to sold-out shows. In December he returned to Vegas for more shows and the single Moody Blue was released. The month ended with another 5-date tour.
Presley took a break for the month of January, 1977 but began touring again in February. He spent the rest of the year till his death on tour and Billboard Magazine rated him the year’s top grossing live act. However, by the beginning of 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."[69] When he was in Alexandria, Louisiana, a local journalist complained that the star was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand." In Baton Rouge, Presley didn’t go on at all. He was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and his manager Parker cancelled the rest of the tour.
On April 21 the year’s third tour began, a Midwestern swing. The reviews "ranged from concern for his health to perplexity over how little he seemed to care," writes Peter Guralnick. According to a Detroit journalist, Elvis "stunk the joint out" in that city. Fans, too, Guralnick relates, "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." In Knoxville, Tennessee, on May 20, "there was no longer any pretense of keeping up appearances," Guralnick writes. "The idea was simply to get Elvis out onstage and keep him upright for the hour he was scheduled to perform." So it went for the rest of that spring, with Presley stumbling and lurching through show after show.
Notwithstanding, shows on June 19, in Omaha, Nebraska & 21 (in Rapid City, South Dakota) were recorded by RCA for an upcoming live album and videotaped for an upcoming CBS-TV television special: “Elvis In Concert’’. The live album Elvis In Concert, which was recorded during the CBS special, eventually sold 3 million copies in the US alone, but wasn't released until October 3, 1977. In June the single Way Down was released. The single became a platinum seller in the US and went to #1 in the UK. The following month the album Moody Blue was released. It was the last album Presley released whilst he was alive. It sold well, going 'gold' in his lifetime but after his untimely death the album sold another 1.5 million copies in the US and 14 million worldwide.
Rick Stanley recalls that Presley was almost totally bedridden during the days of his last year. "We'd fly into a city and he'd go right into bed as soon as we got there. We'd have to get him up to do the show." During his last tour in 1977, "he performed poorly". When he did his show in Rapid City, "he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk. ... He was undoubtedly painfully aware of how he looked, and he knew that in his condition, he could not perform any significant movement. He looked, moved, and gestured like an overweight old man with crippling arthritis. Perspiration poured from him, enough for a river."[70]
Following the June 21, 1977 show in Rapid City, he performed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on June 22. Then followed concerts in Des Moines, Iowa on June 23, Madison, Wisconsin on June 24 and Cincinnati, Ohio on June 25. On June 26, 1977, he performed in Indianapolis, Indiana to end the tour. He returned to Graceland for a two month vacation. There he rarely left his bedroom. On August 17, 1977 he was scheduled to begin another tour in Portland, Maine.
Presley recorded a number of country hits in his final years. Way Down was languishing in the American Country Music chart shortly before his death in 1977, and reached number one the week after his death. It also topped the UK pop charts at the same time.
Between 1970 and 1977 Presley gave 1,096 sold-out performances in Las Vegas and on tour. He was the first artist to have four shows in a row sold to capacity crowds at New York's Madison Square Garden, on June 9-11, 1972.
From 1971 to his death in 1977 Presley employed the Stamps Quartet, a gospel group, for his backup vocals. He recorded several gospel albums, earning three Grammy Awards for his gospel music. In his later years his live stage performances almost always included a rendition of How Great Thou Art, the 19th century gospel song made famous by George Beverly Shea. Although some critics say that the singer travestied, commercialized and soft-soaped gospel "to the point where it became nauseating.",[71] twenty-four years after his death, the Gospel Music Association inducted him into its Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001).
Presley made his last live concert appearance in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena on June 26, 1977. The Indianapolis Star wrote: "The big question was ..., had he lost weight? His last concert here, nearly 2 years ago, found Elvis overweight, sick and prone to give a lethargic performance. As the lights in the Arena was turned down after intermission, you could feel a silent plea rippling through the audience: Please, Elvis, don't be fat. And then he appeared, in a gold and white jumpsuit and white boots, bounding onstage with energy that was a relief to everyone. At 42, Elvis is still carrying around some excess baggage on his mid-section, but it didn't stop him from giving a performance in true Presley style."
Abuse of drugs
In her 1985 book, Elvis and Me, his wife Priscilla wrote that the star suffered from severe insomnia and by 1962 when she moved to Graceland he was taking placidyls to get to sleep and began to do so in ever increasing doses. It is thought by some that Presley started his drug habits by taking drugs given to soldiers to keep them awake since they were on late shifts. But, according to author Albert Goldman in his 1990 book Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, the pills were first given to him by Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips. Priscilla recounted how he would wake up at his normal time around 4:00 in the afternoon but would be groggy and irritable for a few hours from the heavy dose of pills. He started taking Dexedrine to wake up. She stated that over time, she saw "problems in Elvis's life, all magnified by taking prescribed drugs."
Priscilla also wrote the two of them tried marijuana but did not like it because it made them ravenously hungry, with extra weight the unwanted result. Although she said her husband abhorred street drugs, she tells in her book how they tried LSD. While they both thought it had been an "extraordinary experience" they were afraid of it and experimented that one time only. During the time when Presley was searching for peace in his life and consulting an Indian guru (as The Beatles and others were doing at the time), he read numerous books including Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception" and Timothy Leary's "Psychedelic Experience". In his book, Careless Love, biographer Peter Guralnick discusses in detail the singer's rampant prescription drug abuse. Cliff Gleaves, one of Elvis' friends and a reliable eyewitness, said about the singer's abuse of drugs, in this case speed:
"Elvis didn't care if anyone else took them or not. He was getting off on them. He loved to sit there high and wiggle in the chair, ... just sit there and watch TV. He didn't give a damn whether you did anything. He was going to do what he wanted anyway."[72] Bernard J. Gallagher writes about the use of drugs: "Social or recreational use is usually harmless, but intensified or compulsive use can prove fatal. This was true in the case of Elvis Presley,"[73] Though the singer abused prescription drugs, Priscilla wrote that he never considered it wrong because it was a medical doctor prescribing them and he in fact publicly denounced the use of hard drugs. At a meeting with U.S. President Richard Nixon, Presley even asked the President to appoint him "Federal Agent at Large" for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Although his personal physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, was exonerated in Presley's death, in July 1995 he had his license suspended after the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners found that he had improperly dispensed potentially addictive drugs to a number of his patients.
Priscilla Presley pointed out in her book that even if Elvis would have admitted he needed help, in those days there was no Betty Ford Clinic where someone like him could get treatment. The singer's abuse of prescription drugs increased during the last years of his life, particularly after the breakup of his marriage in 1972.
Death and burial
On August 16, 1977, at his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, Presley was found lying on the floor of his bedroom's bathroom by his fiancee, Ginger Alden, who had been asleep. A stain on the bathroom carpeting was found that indicated "where Elvis had thrown up after being stricken, apparently while seated on the toilet. It looked to the medical investigator as if he had 'stumbled or crawled several feet before he died'." [74] He was taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital, where at 3:30 P.M. doctors pronounced him dead. Presley was 42 years old, and when he died, "he weighed 159 kilograms."[75].
Elvis Presley funeral procession.At a press conference following his death, one of the medical examiners declared that he had died of a cardiac arrhythmia from an intake of a large amount of drugs.
Rolling Stone magazine devoted an entire issue to Presley (RS 248) and his funeral was a national media event. [12] Hundreds of thousands of Presley fans, the press, and celebrities lined the street to witness Presley's funeral and Jackie Cahane gave the eulogy.
Presley was originally buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis next to his mother. After an attempted theft of the body, his remains and his mother's remains were moved to Graceland to the "meditation gardens."
Following Presley's death in 1977, US President Jimmy Carter said, "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."[76]
Controversy surrounding death
In her 1987 book Elvis and Kathy, friend and backup vocalist Kathy Westmoreland wrote "Everyone knew he was sick, that each public appearance brought him to the point of exhaustion." Kathy has been known to counter common misconceptions concerning Elvis's lifestyle and health leading up to his death.
According to Peter Guralnick's book, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (1999), "drug use was heavily implicated in this unanticipated death of a middle-aged man with no known history of heart disease...no one ruled out the possibility of anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills he had gotten from his dentist, to which he was known to have had a mild allergy of long standing...There was little disagreement in fact between the two principal laboratory reports and analyses filed two months later, with each stating a strong belief that the primary cause of death was polypharmacy, and the BioScience Laboratories report...indicating the detection of fourteen drugs in Elvis's system, ten in significant quantity."
Michael M. Baden and Judith Adler Hennessee say, "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."[77]
In his book, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, Albert Goldman even went as far as to suggest that Presley committed suicide by overdosing on a stash of drugs that he stockpiled. David Stanley, Presley's stepbrother, who was at Graceland the day Presley died, is alleged to have removed the needles and drug packets near Presley's body before the paramedics arrived, suggesting that he did not want to see Presley's name tarred with the brush of suicide. These rumors have been strongly rejected by some of Elvis's family and friends such as Joe Espositio during past appearances on the Larry King Show.
On the other hand, some of his closest family members, friends, band members, and background singers have long disputed stories concerning Presley's alleged prescription drug abuse and "self-destructive" lifestyle. At the same time, they have not denied that he did take prescription medications for bona fide or suspected health problems. For instance, Vernon Presley, Kathy Westmoreland, Charlie Hodge, and J.D. Sumn