7 Elvis Presley 7

Elvis Presley

(b. Jan. 8, 1935, Tupelo, Miss., U.S.—d. Aug. 16, 1977, Memphis, Tenn.)

A

merican popular singer Elvis Aaron Presley, widely
known as the “King of Rock and Roll,” was one of
rock music’s dominant performers from the mid-1950s
until his death.
Presley grew up dirt-poor in Tupelo, moved to Memphis
as a teenager, and, with his family, was off welfare only a few
weeks when producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records, a local
blues label, responded to his audition tape with a phone
call. Several weeks’ worth of recording sessions ensued
with a band consisting of Presley, guitarist Scotty Moore,
and bassist Bill Black. Their repertoire consisted of the
kind of material for which Presley would become famous:
blues and country songs, Tin Pan Alley ballads, and gospel
hymns. Presley knew some of this music from the radio,
some of it from his parents’ Pentecostal church and the
group sings he attended at the Reverend H.W. Brewster’s
black Memphis church, and some of it from the Beale
Street blues clubs he began frequenting as a teenager.
Presley was already a flamboyant personality, with rel-
atively long greased-back hair and wild-coloured clothing
combinations, but his full musical personality did not
emerge until he and the band began playing with blues
singer Arthur (“Big Boy”) Crudup’s song “That’s All Right
Mama” in July 1954. They arrived at a startling synthesis,
eventually dubbed rockabilly, retaining many of the original’s
blues inflections but with Presley’s high tenor voice adding
a lighter touch and with the basic rhythm striking a much
more supple groove. This sound was the hallmark of the
five singles Presley released on Sun over the next year.
Although none of them became a national hit, by August
1955, when he released the fifth, “Mystery Train,” arguably
his greatest record ever, he had attracted a substantial