Presley, Elvis (1935–1977), singer, actor.Elvis Aaron Presley was born in a two‐room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s. When he was a toddler, his father was imprisoned for forgery, and the family sank further into poverty. The Presleys moved to Memphis in 1948. Here Elvis sang in the Assemblies of God choir, graduated from high school in 1953, and briefly was a truck driver.
Music—rock‐and‐roll—took Elvis to pop‐culture immortality. His first recording, on Sam Phillips's Sun label in 1954, featured
That's All Right Mama and
Blue Moon of Kentucky. Like Phillips, Elvis had color‐blind musical tastes; in high school he even emulated the “look” of
African‐American musicians and dyed his blond hair inky black. Likewise, his 1956 appearance on Ed Sullivan's
Talk of the Town television show, which made him a household name, was as much visual as musical. His on‐stage gyrations stunned audiences, his pelvic thrusts outraging parents and delighting teenagers. In retrospect, Presley's wiggles seem perfectly suited to a medium that showed the movements and performance styles that
radio listeners could only imagine. This full‐body style epitomized the freedom and spirit of sexual exploration implicit in the new postwar culture.
The year 1956 also brought his first million‐record hit,
Heartbreak Hotel, and the first of his thirty‐three movies,
Love Me Tender. After military service (1958–1960), he resumed a phenomenal career of records, movies, and personal appearances. Until his premature death (from long‐term abuse of prescription drugs), Elvis reigned as a pop‐culture icon. Critics scoffed at the low‐budget films; forgettable songs; and, in his later years, the extravagant costumes and operetta‐like musical arrangements of his Las Vegas shows. But he remained a towering presence whose capacity to reinvent himself ultimately transcended questions of musicianship or movie quality. Elvis was a star, an American original. Graceland, his antebellum‐style Memphis mansion, symbolizing his rise from poverty and obscurity to wealth and fame, seemed a concrete validation of the American dream. Two decades after his death, Graceland was, after the
White House, the most visited private home in America.
See also
Fifties, The;
Music: Popular, Music;
Popular Culture.
Bibliography
Peter Guralnick , Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, 1994.
Karal Ann Marling , Graceland: Going Home with Elvis, 1996.
Karal Ann Marling
