Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor, born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, and known across popular culture as the “King of Rock and Roll.” He came of age in the American South during a transformative era in race relations, and his music carried a mixture of influences across color lines. His energetic, sexually provocative performance style brought him enormous success and early controversy, especially as rock and roll moved from the margins into the center of youth culture.

Presley’s early life was marked by closeness to his parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, and by financial strain. His twin brother, Jesse Garon, was stillborn shortly before him. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where Presley found his first musical inspiration. As a child, he was shy about singing in public, though he received a guitar for his birthday and learned from relatives, a pastor, and later from musicians around him. In 1948, when he was 13, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he attended L. C. Humes High School. Beale Street, Memphis’s thriving blues center, record stores with listening booths, country singers, gospel music, and radio programs all helped form his ear.

Presley began his music career in 1954 at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Playing guitar with Scotty Moore on lead guitar and Bill Black on bass, Presley became a pioneer of rockabilly, a fast, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. Drummer D. J. Fontana joined in 1955, completing Presley’s classic quartet. That same year, RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who managed him for the rest of his career.

His first RCA Victor single, “Heartbreak Hotel,” was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. Within a year, RCA Victor sold ten million Presley singles. Television appearances and chart-topping records made him the leading figure of the newly popular rock and roll. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender. After being drafted into military service in 1958, he returned to recording two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. During much of the 1960s, guided by Parker, he focused on Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, including Jailhouse Rock, Blue Hawaii, and Viva Las Vegas.

In 1968, Presley returned to the stage in the acclaimed NBC television special Elvis, which led to a long Las Vegas concert residency and profitable tours. In 1973, Aloha from Hawaii became the first concert by a solo artist broadcast around the world. He sold an estimated 500 million records worldwide, won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at 36, and was later inducted into multiple music halls of fame. Presley died at Graceland on August 16, 1977, at age 42, after substance abuse and unhealthy eating had severely harmed his health. His words still fit the urgency that surrounded his life and work: “You only pass through this life once; you don’t come back for an encore.”