Elvis Presley
Elvis Aron Presley, who was born
This is an excerpt from the paper...
Elvis Aron Presley, who was born in Tupelo, Mississippi on January 8, 1935 and died in Memphis, Tennessee on August 16, 1977, is still considered "the King of Rock 'n' Roll." According to The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music Presley is "among the biggest stars of the 20th century, for sociological as well as musical reasons" (Clarke 930). In the South the young Presley attended Pentecostal churches, Me heard country music and black blues on the radio, and these were to influence him as he started to sing. He won a talent contest singing Red Foley's sentimental song "Old Shep" when he was 10 years old, and he received a guitar for his birthday. As a teenager he worked as a truck driver, saving up enough money to record himself at Memphis Recording Service. These recordings came to the attention of Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Elvis signed with Sun, making his first commercial sessions with Bill Black on bass and Scotty Moore on guitar. Presley sang ballads and country tunes, but one day he was fooling around with Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's All Right (Mama)" and Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and he discovered the style that soon made him world famous. Phillips was looking for a white singer who could sing like a,black man, and in Presley he found his ideal. A number of events helped to solidify Presley as a major star in the mid-1950s. The first was that Colonel Tom Parker became his manager. The second was that RCA Records bought out Philli
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ight time. "Sam Phillips . . . has suggested that the true import of Elvis's music had very little to do with musical content, let alone musical innovation" (Palmer 46).
This observation refers back to this paper's opening quote that Presley was a groundbreaker for both sociological and musical reasons. Even though he forged a style and tone in rock music that has never been improved upon, he remains a superstar in a category all his own because he "became a catalytic force, showing young people that they had their own music and their own life style" (Flippo 37).
It can be said that Presley's intense creativity both inspired his art form and also hindered his personal relationships. In his later years, Presley became so involved in his career that he was unable to stay married to his wife Priscilla. Their divorce, coupled with the death of his mother, sent Presley into a tailspin that he tried to combat with drugs.
Presley was such a big star that he began to isolate himself from the rest of the world. His intense creativity forced him to only socialize with his "good ol' boy" network of Southern pals, and they were a bad influence on him as he dug himself deeper and deeper into drug addiction.
This is how Presley's a
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Approximate Word count = 1605
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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