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Elvis Presley
1935–1977 · 42 years Tier I
The music teacher told him he had no aptitude for singing
His twin, Jesse Garon, was stillborn 35 minutes before him. Three years later his father went to jail for eight months for altering a check and the family lost the house. He sang Old Shep at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, at 10 years old, and came fifth. In Memphis, at Humes High School, he got a C in music and was told he had no aptitude for singing, so he brought his guitar in and sang. He was too shy to perform and got teased as a mama's boy. He also grew sideburns, bought the loud clothes at Lansky Brothers on Beale Street, and listened to WDIA, which played what the industry then called race records.
He cut That's All Right at Sun Records in Memphis on July 5, 1954, and listeners who called the station to hear it again assumed the singer was Black. On November 21, 1955, RCA Victor bought his Sun contract for an unheard-of 40,000 dollars. Heartbreak Hotel went to number one in January. RCA sold ten million of his singles inside a year. Then came the films and the soundtrack albums, most of them derided, and two years in the Army. His 1968 television special took 42 percent of the viewing audience and got him back into a studio, which led to a Las Vegas residency at a million dollars a year and the first solo concert broadcast around the world. He has sold an estimated 500 million records. Of 14 Grammy nominations he won three, all of them for gospel.
His manager was born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk in Breda, entered the United States illegally at 20, and never held a passport. Apart from a few dates in Canada in 1957, Presley never performed outside his own country. Parker's publishing arrangement required songwriters to give up a third of their usual royalties for the privilege of having Presley record them, and in 1956 and 1957 Presley took co-writing credit on songs he had no hand in writing, Heartbreak Hotel and Don't Be Cruel among them. The rest was medical. In the first eight months of 1977 his physician George Nichopoulos wrote prescriptions for more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics in Presley's name. By then he was reading spiritualism books in his room and struggling to get through an hour on stage.
His fiancée found him on a bathroom floor at Graceland on August 16, 1977. He was 42. Before the autopsy was finished the Memphis medical examiner announced cardiac arrest and said drugs had played no role, a conclusion the pathologists had not reached. The laboratory reports named 14 drugs in his body, ten of them in significant quantity. A 1994 review of the same file concluded that everything pointed to a sudden heart attack. Outside the funeral a car ran into a group of fans and killed two young women. After someone tried to steal the body in August, he was moved to the Meditation Garden at Graceland on October 2, which is where the visitors go.
Lifespan
Elvis Presley's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
That's All Right
song
Arthur Crudup's 1946 blues, cut late at night at Sun after a session that had gone nowhere 1954 -
Heartbreak Hotel
song
His first RCA single and his first number one 1956 -
Elvis Presley
album
His debut album for RCA Victor 1956 -
Jailhouse Rock
film
The best remembered of the films, from the Leiber and Stoller years 1957 -
Elvis
television
The NBC comeback special, and the highest-rated show of the season 1968 -
From Elvis in Memphis
album
Recorded at American Sound Studio after the special 1969
Life in brief
with age at each point- October 3, 1945 aged 10 Sings Old Shep at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show He was 10 and recalled placing fifth.
- November 1948 aged 13 The family leaves Tupelo for Memphis
- July 5, 1954 aged 19 Records That's All Right at Sun Dewey Phillips played it repeatedly on WHBQ and the phones did not stop.
- November 21, 1955 aged 20 RCA Victor buys his Sun contract for 40,000 dollars He was 20 and legally a minor, so his father signed.
- March 24, 1958 aged 23 Drafted into the Army at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas
- May 1, 1967 aged 32 Marries Priscilla Beaulieu in a brief ceremony at the Aladdin Hotel
- December 3, 1968 aged 33 The NBC comeback special airs It took 42 percent of the total viewing audience.
- December 21, 1970 aged 35 Meets Richard Nixon in the Oval Office and asks for a narcotics bureau badge
- June 26, 1977 aged 42 Plays his last concert, at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis He died seven weeks later, the day before another tour was to begin.
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