Elvis Presley

Popular singer and film actor, born in Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. An only child (a twin brother was stillborn), he was raised in a religious home. As a boy he sang with his local Assembly of God church choir, which emulated the style of African-American psalm singing. At age 10 he won a school singing contest and taught himself the rudiments of the guitar (though he never really could read music). In 1948 he moved with his family to Memphis, TN, where he graduated from high school (1953) and began working as a truck driver and studying at night classes to be an electrician. Later that year he made a private recording for his mother at the Memphis Sound Studio, where he attracted the attention of proprietor Sam Phillips (1923–2003), who also operated Sun Records, a fledgling blues label. In July 1954 Phillips had Presley record his first singles, ‘That's All Right, Mama’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, a synthesis of rhythm-and-blues and country-and-western that was for a time described as ‘rockabilly’. The record made an immediate impression on local listeners, who were bewildered to learn that Presley was white, but their enthusiasm for his style of dress, bodily movements, and music signalled the beginnings of rock 'n' roll.
He toured the South as the Hillbilly Cat and performed on a Shreveport, LA radio station, and after releasing his first national hit on Sun Records, he moved to RCA Records under the tutelage of his ambitious personal manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker. His first national television appearance was actually in 1955 on Jackie Gleason's Stage Show, but it was his 1956 appearance on Ed Sullivan's Talk of the Town that made him a national sensation: his pelvic gyrations were considered so scandalous that he was shown only from the waist up. That same year he released his first million-selling single, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and starred in Love Me Tender, the first of 33 relatively bland films he eventually made. He was forced to interrupt his career while serving in the US Army (1958–60), but he returned to his recording and film careers with undimmed success and solidified what became virtually an industry.


He scored his last chart-topping single in 1969, but in 1973 his television special, ‘Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii’ was broadcast to a potential worldwide audience of over a billion people, and he carved out a new career as a flashy nightclub performer even as he broadened his repertoire to include traditional and religious songs. In 1973, following his divorce from his wife Priscilla Presley, he became increasingly drug-dependent and overweight, and he spent his last years living reclusively at his Memphis home, Graceland. His death at age 42 shocked his many admirers, who have never given up on the music, mementoes, and memory of the man they regard as ‘the King of rock 'n' roll’. A remix of an earlier song ‘A Little Less Conversation’ topped the UK charts in 2002, giving Elvis his 18th number one hit in Britain. He was inducted into the inaugural UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004. In January 2005, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ was re-released to commemorate what would have been his 70th birthday and topped the UK charts. Later the same month his single ‘One Night’ made history by becoming the 1000th UK number one.