Two years later, in 1954, he came to the attention of Sam Phillips, owner of Sun Records. After graduating from high school in 1952, Elvis took a job driving a truck. In 1948 the Presley family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, a good-sized city famous for Beale Street, a fourblock-long collection of hotels, bars, restaurants, and other venues for Black (African American) music-making. He also listened to the hillbilly music associated with poor white Southerners and their social problems. As a child he listened mostly to gospel music and later sang in several gospel choirs as a member of the First Assembly of God Church. Except for a little instruction on the guitar, Elvis was entirely self-taught as a performer. Elvis’s family was poor his father was often unemployed and once went to jail for fraud. Elvis was born Elvis Aron (or ‘Aaron’) Presley on 8 January 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi, a small town in the Deep South of the United States.
As John Lennon, a member of the Beatles, once said: “Before Elvis there was nothing.” Insofar as the history of rock music goes, Lennon was more or less correct. Yet the ways in which he performed the songs he sang, all of them written by other people, transformed twentieth-century popular music worldwide. Unlike Liszt and Paganini, however, Elvis did not compose any of his own music. Elvis also had his groupies, thousands of them. Liszt was the first European performer to attract groupies: young women who followed him wherever he went. Like them Elvis was ‘wild’: an exciting, charismatic, and enormously successful performer. In some respects Elvis resembled other influential performers, including the famous Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) and the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt (1811-1886). “Hound Dog” (1956) “Baby, Let’s Play House” (1955) “It’s Now or Never” (1960) “Crying in the Chapel” (1960) “Suspicious Minds” (1969)Įlvis: An Introduction Elvis Presley was more influential as a performer, and only as a performer, thanĪny other musician in world history. No part of this publication can be reproduced in any form or by any means, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.įive Representative Songs as Sung by Elvis Presley © Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The Musical Characteristics of Elvis Presley Michael Saffle The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Education Bureau 2009 The Musical Characteristics of Elvis Presley
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