Elvis Presley

Elvis Aron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Vernon and Gladys Presley. His twin brother, Jessie Garon, was stillborn, so Elvis grew up an only child. In 1948 the family moved to Memphis, where he graduated from Humes High School in 1953. As a teenager he belonged to a Pentecostal church and sometimes went to all-night gospel sings; he also absorbed the rhythm and blues he heard on Memphis’s Beale Street, as well as country and bluegrass. After high school he took a job driving a truck.

In 1953 and 1954 Presley cut demo records at Sun Records, whose owner, Sam Phillips, had been looking for a white singer who could perform in the style of traditionally Black music. Phillips teamed him with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, and during a sluggish 1954 session Elvis started goofing around with Arthur Crudup’s rhythm-and-blues song “That’s All Right.” Phillips recorded it and released it as Elvis’s first single. His five Sun singles blended rhythm and blues with country music into the sound later called rockabilly; his singing was so close to R&B that some Southern disc jockeys felt they had to tell listeners he was white. On the road, his gyrating hips caused an uproar and earned him the nickname “Elvis the Pelvis.”

Late in 1955 Phillips sold Presley’s contract to RCA Victor for $35,000, and Colonel Tom Parker became his manager. “Heartbreak Hotel” (1956) became his first number-one hit, and appearances on national television, including The Ed Sullivan Show, made him an overnight star. Hits like “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Hound Dog” — first recorded by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton — followed, and in late 1956 he starred in his first film, Love Me Tender. Drafted into the Army in 1958 at the height of his fame, he had his pompadour cut and served in Friedberg, Germany, while records he had made earlier kept topping the charts.

Presley drew openly on the gospel, blues, and rhythm and blues he grew up with, and he moved easily between styles — from the edgy “hillbilly cat” of the Sun years to smooth balladeer, movie idol, and caped Las Vegas showman. He was also generous: a 1961 benefit concert he gave in Hawaii raised more than $65,000 toward the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

To many adults in the 1950s, Presley’s provocative stage moves were scandalous, and the controversy only fed his fame. His rise also raises questions about race in American music: Sam Phillips had gone looking for a white singer who could sound like Black musicians, and some of Presley’s biggest hits, like “Hound Dog,” had first been recorded by Black artists. After the Army, he gave up live concerts for nearly a decade to make two or three movies a year — films that were popular but never won the critical respect his music did.

Presley returned to live performance in 1969 with a series of shows in Las Vegas and new hits such as “In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds.” He died at Graceland, his Memphis home, on August 16, 1977, at forty-two. In 1986 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles,” said John Lennon, who recalled that when he first heard “Heartbreak Hotel,” his “whole life changed.” Graceland draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, and Presley remains, for much of the world, simply “the King.”