Elvis Aaron Presley - Elvis Aaron Presley is the king of rock and roll, the creator of rockabilly - a fusion of blues and country. He was not the first rock and roll performer, but managed to become his most commercially successful popularizer. World popularity did not leave him after his death, numerous of his collections are reprinted regularly in our time. His biography and music will probably never stop finding a mass of followers, just amateurs and fans. More than a billion of his records have been sold; Presley is a three- time Grammy Award winner. And if anyone in this world is not given death and oblivion, then this is for sure Elvis Presley.
Biography
The famous musician was born in January 1935 in the state of Mississippi. The town of Tupelo, where Elvis' parents lived - Vernon and Gladys Presley - was religious and musical, like most of the provincial towns of the American South. It is difficult to determine what kind of family roots nourished the talented boy: in his family there were immigrants from Germany, Scotland, Ireland, Normandy and even Cherokee Indians.
The family was not rich, and this is putting it mildly. Sovereign Gladys, Vernon was a gentle character, and it was probably this inability to defend himself that influenced his fate, he even spent two years in prison on the strange charge of falsifying checks. There is an opinion that here he was framed.
Elvis Presley, whose biography is considered in the article, as a boy, literally grew up in the church, from the youngest years he began to sing in the choir and so moved his parents that for the eleventh birthday they gave him the guitar (there was not enough money for the bike that Elvis dreamed about) . Perhaps the parents chose the guitar also because by that time Elvis was already singing not only in the temple - he managed to get a prize at the annual fair after performing folk songs from the stage.
Memphis
In 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where there were much more opportunities to find work for Elvis's parents. It was there that the famous singer first touched the music that made his life. It was this music from the black neighborhoods that helped out of an ordinary boy to make a star, which became Elvis Presley. His biography as a musician was just beginning.
However, the first samples of instant success did not bring. Even a singing teacher at school noticed that he could not sing. But Elvis stubbornly took guitar lessons, knocked down a yard music team, with whom he played and sang right in front of the country and gospel house. And his housemates were occasionally visited by the Burnett brothers and Johnny Black. In the future, Burnetta will be rockabilly stars, and John will be the bass player on Elvis Presley.
First recording
But this is in the future. In the meantime, Elvis accumulated eight dollars and recorded two songs in the Memphis Recording Service studio: "My Happiness" and That's When Your Heartaches Begin. He said that as a gift to mom. Phillips Elvis liked it, he even ordered the secretary to take a note of the boy.
However, this did not go beyond this. There were no offers, they didn’t accept the quartet, and at the Memphis club the audition failed. They all repeated as one that the singer would not work out of him. And Elvis Presley, whose biography was so unpretentious in those days, continued to drive a truck.
Sun records
Only in June 1954 did Sam Phillips remember the singer he liked and invited him to audition. As a performer of the song Without You Presley did not make an impression again, but a week later, rehearsing with guitarist Moore and bassist Black, during the break he began to play the familiar blues in a completely new manner, but it was so fascinating that the colleagues immediately joined, and already came to these sounds and Phillips himself.
So That's All Right was recorded, which the radio disc jockey was forced to repeat several times per hour. The singer who conquered the audience was Elvis Presley. The biography of Presley as a musician began on that day. A few days later, without losing luck, Presley, Black and Moore recorded Blue Moon of Kentucky - the single became the fourth in the hit parade and was sold in a circulation of twenty thousand copies. Elvis Presley, whose work was just beginning to understand, was on the path, preordained by the stars.
Way to success
Elvis and his good luck friends began performing in clubs, on the radio, recorded the second single, Good Rockin 'Tonight, then three more and gradually gained popularity. A year later, Presley records became crowded in the American South. They began to write about the singer in the magazines Billboard and Cashbox as the future country star. In January 1956, Elvis Presley was recorded - the first swallow under the name "Elvis Presley", whose albums after this success were recorded by inspiration itself. And the success was tremendous: the first place in the US charts, a million long-playing records with this album was sold almost instantly.
The singer quickly found fame of a truly national scale, and even more than that: his singles began to take first places in England, and in Canada, and in Australia, as well as in Italy and South Africa. His records were not sold in the USSR, but in 1957 he was more popular than anyone else in Moscow. So, Presley appears on television, gives concerts and, of course, records new material. And in October 1956, he was first called the king of rock and roll, it was the magazine Variety. Elvis Presley didn’t invent rock-roll, he did it before him. But the best modern music in the world of rock and roll was thanks to the talent that Elvis put into the performance.
Subsequent albums
Elvis in 1956 starred in the movie "Love Me Tenderly", was very passionate and busy with this, but his second album - Elvis - was made by him first-class. As a result - the first place in the charts. Then a completely unplanned album especially thundered when Elvis came to Memphis to visit Sam Phillips. Karl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis happened to be there, the musicians staged a jam session, as the journalists put it, "The Million Dollar Quartet." Million Dollar Quartet was not published immediately, in 1980, when it was not able to add at least something to the exclusive glory of Elvis, but fans cried.
And Presley continued to act in films. He liked it. As a result, we have nine films - real evidence of the singer’s charm. It was then that he (for the film) dyed his hair black and never returned to its natural color. Unless in 1958, when he had to serve in the American army. Yes, and the army was Elvis Presley, his biography is capacious.
Army
During the service, Elvis did not give a single concert. He served in a tank division in West Germany. During this time, he lost his mother and found a wife. He served merrily: he rented a house where his friends had gathered, his father and other relatives moved, and Elvis Presley spent time there. Rock was then in his life.
He first saw Priscilla Beauley, fourteen, in 1959. They started dating and later married. Very soon - in 1967. Elvis skillfully combined military service with the recordings of his new music, singles were constantly released for a year! Four LPs with albums. And in 1960, Presley still tightened film career, and he moved to Hollywood.
Hollywood
Films in which Elvis played, for the most part, did not have audience success, with the exception of Blue Hawaii. In principle, all the films where Presley participated were started only for the sake of his music. In the meantime, new stars came to rock and roll, and they were no less of a magnitude. Trends in the music industry have changed under the "British invasion": in 1965, Presley secretly met The Beatles.
Only the Beatles and Elvis Presley - photos, press releases, etc. were absent. After this meeting, Presley recorded another album with a religious component - How Great Thou Art. For this work, he received the second Grammy Award. The main task set for sound engineers Elvis was this: to reconsider the role of instruments and bring the sound to the level of the Beatles and Rolling Stones.
Las Vegas and Memphis
By 1969, Elvis had almost moved away from rock and roll. His recordings at Memphis Studio American combine country, rhythm and blues and pop music. Two albums with studio session musicians were released here: From Elvis in Memphis and Back in Memphis, which are considered his best works.
In Las Vegas, Elvis Presley, whose work seemed to have a second wind, created the group of musicians who accompanied him until the end of his life: a rock band with guitarist Burton, black singers The Sweet Inspirations, the gospel quartet The Imperials - the only group with which Elvis subsequently had to leave, replacing her with The Stamps, and a band of a pop-symphony orchestra of thirty-five people. Within a month, this line-up gave fifty-eight concerts to the mountain.
Step back
Back in 1958, it seemed that ahead was a completely straight, without any obstacles path. But what happened to Elvis was completely unforeseen. So, in 1962, he suddenly disappeared after a concert in Memphis. What kind of assumptions were not expressed by the press! A singer with a lush cocoon on his forehead, meanwhile, was sitting in his mansion and reading the Bible. True, during the breaks he fired his pistols aiming at expensive trinkets. Neither boredom, nor apathy, nor whiskey, nor drugs were alien to him.
When Priscilla and Elvis Presley reunited in 1967 (the photos of this time are magnificent!), The melancholy seemed to have come to an end: as soon as Lisa Maria was born, Elvis began touring and already in 1971 entered the top ten most popular personalities in the USA . Five years passed serenely, and given the rhythm of life of a creative person, this is very, very much. Then the wife took her daughter and left the singer, tired of fighting the destructive habits of her husband.
Philosophy
Presley was one of one hundred and fifty Americans with a black belt, but neither training, nor close acquaintance with Bruce Lee saved the singer from alcohol, depression and gluttony. He tried to fight: he was being treated by doctors, sometimes he was starving on his own, but by the mid-seventies it was clear that Elvis was seriously ill. And in 1977, on August 16, Presley was found dead. Fourteen kinds of drugs were found in his blood .
Priscilla grieved like no one, but she had the strength to turn Graceland, where Elvis almost always lived, into a house museum. After the White House, this is the most visited place in America so far. Many idols knew the world. The same Sinatra, from which the ladies fell into ecstatic fainting. But Elvis is different. There were no such passions on earth yet.