Elvis Presley

The image is one thing and the human being is another... it's very hard to live up to an image.

Elvis Aaron Presley (8 January 1935 – 16 August 1977) was an American singer, musician, and actor. Popularly known by his first name as "Elvis," as "The King of Rock and Roll" or simply as "The King," he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.

Quotes by Elvis Presley

The first time that I appeared on stage, it scared me to death. I really didn't know what all the yelling was about. I didn't realize that my body was moving. It's a natural thing to me.

So to the manager backstage I said, "What'd I do? What'd I do?" And he said, "Whatever it is, go back and do it again."

I'm never going to sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another picture I don't believe in.

Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to ... juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear ... Mother Goose rhymes.

• I like Brando's acting ... and James Dean ... and Richard Widmark. Quite a few of 'em I like.
  • When asked to name his favorite male actors, in "Elvis Exclusive Interview" with Ray Green in Little Rock, Arkansas (16 May 1956), as published in Elvis — Word for Word : What He Said, Exactly As He Said It (1999)

• Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to ... juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear ... Mother Goose rhymes.
  • Pop Chronicles, Show 7 – The All American Boy: Enter Elvis and the rock-a-billies. Part 1, interview recorded 1956.

• ... I just know that, right now, ... the biggest record selling business there is is rock and roll.
  • Pop Chronicles: Show 55 – Crammer: A lively cram course on the history of rock and some other things, interview recorded 1956.

• I'm never going to sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another picture I don't believe in.
  • After hearing Walter Earl Brown's If I Can Dream, the song inspired on Martin Luther King Jr. that would close Elvis' comeback show in 1968, and the phrase was remarked to its producer, Steve Binder.[1]

• It just happened. I like to sing, and well, I just started singing and folks just started listening. I can't tell folks that I worked and learned and studied, and overcame disappointments, because I didn't.
  • Pop Chronicles, Show 7 – The All American Boy: Enter Elvis and the rock-a-billies. Part 1; C. Robert Jennings, "Elvis Lives!", 1968-Feb-18, L.A. Times Magazine, p. M28.

• I'd like to thank the Jaycees for electing me as one of their outstanding young men. When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed, has come true a hundred times... And these gentlemen over here, these are the type of people who care, they're dedicated, and they realize that it is possible that they might be building the kingdom of heaven, it's not just too far fetched, from reality. I'd like to say that I learned very early in life that "Without a song, the day would never end; without a song, a man ain't got a friend; without a song, the road would never bend — without a song." So I keep singing a song. Goodnight. Thank you.
  • Acceptance speech for the 1970 Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation Award (16 January 1971), published in Elvis — Word for Word: What He Said, Exactly As He Said It (1999) by Jerry Osborne, p. 188

• The first time that I appeared on stage, it scared me to death. I really didn't know what all the yelling was about. I didn't realize that my body was moving. It's a natural thing to me. So to the manager backstage I said, "What'd I do? What'd I do?" And he said, "Whatever it is, go back and do it again."
  • Interview (March/April 1972), as quoted in The Leading Men of MGM (2006) by Jane Ellen Wayne, p. 406

• The image is one thing and the human being is another...it's very hard to live up to an image.
  • Press conference (June 1972),also quoted in Elvis Culture : Fans, Faith, & Image (1999) by Erika Lee Doss, p. 218

• Man, I was tame compared to what they do now. Are you kidding? I didn't do anything but just jiggle.
  • Press conference (June 1972) as quoted in Elvis — Word for Word : What He Said, Exactly As He Said It (1999), by Jerry Osborne, p. 208

• A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It's my favorite part of the business — live concerts.
  • Press conference (5 September 1972), also quoted in Paranoia & Power : Fear & Fame of Entertainment Icons (2007) by Gene N Landrum, p. 60

• 'To judge a man by his weakest link or deed is like judging the power of the ocean by one wave.'
  • Handwriten message on Elvis' King James -Bible
• 'There is a season for everything, patience will reward you and reveal all answers to your questions.'
• 'Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away.'
  • Another handwriten message on Elvis' King James -Bible [2] No proof it was handwritten with this link.

• What honey? What is that? It's a sign, I can't see it, wait a minute. Oh, thank you darlin', thank you very much. Oh, thank you. The thought is beautiful dear, and I love you for it, but I, I haven't been caught up in this thing and I can't accept this kingship thing because to me there's only one, which is Christ.
  • September 30, 1974. South Bend, IN. Notre Dame Ath Center.

• I had too much praise, too much flattery and fawning over and I needed to remember who I was, where I came from. One time I called a relative in Tupelo. It was Christmas and they were havin' dinner. I asked, 'What?' and she was kind of quiet, then said, 'Meat loaf.' I was shocked as we'd had the best, you know, turkey, ham, steak, everything. She said that it was near the first and they'd run out of money so they just had meat loaf. It hurt me. and so, I ate meat loaf for about eight months, every night, so I'd remember where I came from and to remind me of how many people were unable to have what I did. It was kind of a penance...
  • originally from the book Blue Star Love by By Maia Chrystine Nartoomid.

• I'm strictly for [Adlai] Stevenson. I don't dig the intellectual bit, but I'm telling you man, he knows the most.
  • Elvis Presley Was Always Too Busy to Vote for President

Song lyrics

• Baby, if I made you mad
  For something I might have said,
  Please, let's forget the past,
  The future looks bright ahead.
  Don't be cruel to a heart that's true.
  I don't want no other love,
  Baby it's just you I'm thinking of.
  • Don't Be Cruel, written by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley (1956)

• When you looked into my eyes,
  I stood there like I was hyp-notized.
  You sent a feeling to my spine,
  A feeling warm and smooth and fine.
  But all I could do were stand there paralyzed.
  When we kissed, ooh what a thrill,
  You took my hand and, ooh baby, what a chill.
  I felt like grabbin' you real tight,
  Squeeze and squeeze with all my might.
  But all I could do were stand there paralyzed.
  • Paralyzed, written by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley (1956)

• A well I bless my soul
  What's wrong with me?
  I'm itching like a man on a fuzzy tree.
  My friends say I'm actin' wild as a bug.
  I'm in love,
  I'm all shook up.
  Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!
  • All Shook Up, written by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley (1957)

• The way she held your hand,
  The little things you planned.
  Her memory is with you yet,
  That's someone you'll never forget.
  • That's Someone You Never Forget, from Pot Luck, written by Elvis Presley and Red West (1961)

• Sweetheart we're alone
  And you are mine.
  Let's make this night a night to remember.
  Don't make our love a cold dying ember,
  For with the dawn, you'll be gone.
  • You'll Be Gone, written by Elvis Presley, Red West and Charlie Hodge (1961)

Disputed

• Love me tender, love me sweet,
  Never let me go.
  • "Love Me Tender" (1956), the lyrics of this song are credited to Presley and co-writer Vera Matson, but were primarily written by Matson's husband, Ken Darby, who when asked why he credited his wife as co-writer with Presley replied "Because she didn't write it either."

Misattributed

• The only thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my music.
  • Misattributed in "He wasn't my king" by Helen Kolawole in The Guardian (15 August 2002) apparently citing an unsourced anecdote, that has been debunked in Counterpunch (29 August 2002) which cites an article in Jet magazine (1 August 1957):

"Tracing that rumored racial slur to its source was like running a gopher to earth", Jet wrote. Some said Presley had said it in in Boston, which Elvis had never visited. Some said it was on Edward Murrow's on which Elvis had never appeared. Jet sent Louie Robinson to the set of Jailhouse Rock "When asked if he ever made the remark, Mississippi-born Elvis declared: 'I never said anything like that, and people who know me know I wouldn't have said it.'"

• More on this misattribution at Snopes.com

Quotes about Elvis Presley

By honoring Presley with the Medal of Freedom, the President paid tribute to someone who arguably did as much to bridge the cultural and racial divide as anyone who ever lived, an impressive and unifying act from someone usually considered the most divisive of presidents. ~ Gary Abernathy

Of course, it was 1957, he had a beautiful blonde on the back of his motorcycle. Now, I wasn't watching the blonde and I didn't know who he was, so I took him down to the Las Vegas police station where I then worked and I gave him a pass... ~ Joe Arpaio

I don't think any two men on this planet ever had the charisma of Elvis Presley and Jackie Wilson. The two of them remind me of each other: the charisma. ~ Hank Ballard

In Las Vegas, he was a different Elvis, putting on the blitz, the neon signs dared him. In a sense, he codified, encapsulated, permeated, embodied Americana. It was so real in its total artificiality, as Elvis brought it all together and made it work. ~ Tom Constanten

The last names, or names by which people are best known and whose quotes are included below are arranged alphabetically, for ease of referenceː

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

A

• When I was about five years old, they again showed "Aloha from Hawaii" here in Norway. I had my parents wrapped around my finger, so they would let me stay up and watch it, because it was on after midnight. I was so amazed by the performance.........
  • Abbath, Norway's globally renowned black metal superstar, as told to Tim Dawson of Team Rock, and published on 15 November 2016....

• That is why we can waste no time promoting legitimate role models. This is where N.B.A. players come in. In 1956, Elvis Presley received his polio vaccine before one of his appearances on television, launching a highly effective vaccination campaign that by 1960 had reduced annual occurrences of polio by 90 percent. Health policy professionals suggest that public health campaigns using celebrities should focus on celebrities who are influential in particular communities in order to build trust. N.B.A. players, 81.1 percent of whom are Black, appeal to the under-35 and African-American demographics
  • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in an Opinion Editorial on the Covid 19 pandemia, entitled "We Should Let Some N.B.A. Players Jump the Vaccine Queue", as published in the NYT's February 1, 2021 edition.

• It's probably asking too much that “Ruben Brandt, Collector” sustain its pop-art ebullience across its entire running time. But the dips are hardly depressions, and there's nearly always a frisky detail to enjoy or virtuosic tableau to bathe in, all of it augmented wonderfully by Tibor Cári's appealing score. Mostly, though, Krstić, whose background encompasses set design and sculpture, painting and photography, has shown everybody how to throw down the first-feature gauntlet at the age of 66: with Warhol's holstered “Elvis I & II” facing down our hero and declaring, “Draw!”
  • Robert Abele, reviewing for the Los Angeles Times Milorad Krstić's animated film “Ruben Brandt, Collector” and as published in their November 13, 2018 edition.

• By honoring Presley with the Medal of Freedom, the President paid tribute to someone who arguably did as much to bridge the cultural and racial divide as anyone who ever lived, an impressive and unifying act from someone usually considered the most divisive of presidents.
  • Gary Abernathy, contributor for the Washington Post, in an article dated 20 November 2018, and entitled "Trump honoring Elvis? It's about time", in reference to Elvis' being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in a ceremony held at the East Room in the White House, on November 16, 2018

• In 2004,at age 13, I became such an Elvis fan that I wanted to either marry him or be him, then I made my parents listen. He is my mentor...
  • Valentina Acevedo, Argentinean rocker, as noted in an interview pubished in the TUS Radios Necochea's edition of 26 January 2024.

• Songwriter Earl Brown was tapped to create a special finale song that reflected Elvis' emotions about the social upheaval of the time. According to the show's director Steve Binder, the resulting song, “If I Can Dream,” was recorded with Elvis in the dark, almost in a fetal position, writhing on top of the studio's cement floor. And when he got done, Elvis came in the control room and asked for the song to be played more than a dozen times. Later, Binder also crafted a gospel segment populated with racially diverse singers and dancers, which he knew would spotlight the Southern-born Presley's disdain for prejudice. Fittingly, it was the highest-rated TV special of 1968 and signalled the rebirth of Elvis's career.
  • Lori Acken, of ReMIND Magazine, reviewing NBC-TV's 1968 Elvis special, as published on February 6, 2018

• I loved Elvis since i was a kid, as my dad was a huge Elvis fan. His range was incredible high, or low and he could croon. His impact on me was his love of African American music.
  • Yolanda Adams, in a filmed interview for Gracelancom

• I am reminded of a comment made shortly after the death of Elvis Presley by a musician he had worked with. He pointed out that despite an impressive vocal range of two and a half octaves and something approaching perfect pitch, Elvis was totally willing to sing off-key when he thought the song required it. Those off-key notes were art.
  • Patrick H. Adkins, The Dream Vaults of Opar

• One of the pieces recently up for auction by Phillips-- and setting the record for the most expensive Omega ever to sell at auction – was a wrist watch given to Elvis Presley by RCA Records in 1961 to celebrate his 75 millionth record sold. The 33 mm 18-karat white gold manually wound watch features a bezel set with 44 brilliant cut diamonds. The caseback features the engraving: “To Elvis, 75 Million Records, RCA Victor, 12-25-60. We were in on the bidding for that watch, which, according to our man there, Petros Protopapas, was very intense, with several watch collectors and Elvis collectors in on it. It was the most anyone at Omega had ever authorized to put a bid in for, and ultimately we garnered the piece at a hammer price of $1.8 million with buyers’ fees and premiums. In fact, we could have secretly bid on it, but we wanted people to know that it was us bidding for it and why we were doing it as this is an important part of our past and it should not be locked in a safe, but in our Museum, so we can shared it with the world.
  • Raynald Aeschlimann, CEO of Omega, discussing with Forbes the power of vintage watches as published on their January 7, 2019 edition.

• Black culture has historically pioneered music, dance, fashion, and it’s then been emarketed as Elvis (Presley) or whatever.....
  • Ben Affleck, a year after he and his fourth wife Jennifer Lopez, as well as her daughter by a previous marriage, were photographed on their wedding day, in 2022, as they proudly posed inside a plush pink Cadillac they insisted had been one of Elvis' properties, the above quote from Mr. Affleck as noted in an article published in the "Essentially Sports' March 18, 2023 edition which detailed his producing, directing and starring in the 2023 movie "Air", about Michael Jordan's joining the Nike brand.

• I went to college in New Jersey and started off singing at open-mic spots in bars. I was so dreadful it embarrasses me even now to think about it. Music was always a passion growing up, like I used to translate Elvis Presley songs into Russian and sing them at home. Now that I've had a few multi-platinum albums in Russia, I want to have a go at Ireland, the UK and the rest of Europe. My heroes were Elvis, Elvis and Elvis! One of my favourite Elvis songs is My Boy, and now that I have been told that it was written by an Irishman [Phil Coulter] I love it even more.
  • Emin Agalarov, singer and businessman, son of Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov, and married to Leyla Aliyeva, the daughter of the Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, in an article published in the USA Today affiliated North New Jersey's July 13, 2017 online edition, as well as following an interview published in the Irish Times̪ March 22, 2015 edition.

• It must have been in January of 1958 when I went to a record store to buy a 45rpm single for my older sister's birthday. I was 8 years old. When I got there, I asked if they had "Wake up little Suzie" by the Everly Brothers, a song she had told me was her favourite of those then playing on Mexican radios. They did, and just as it was being wrapped up the salesperson told me that there was a special, if I bought another. I asked which one should I get and he said, "Of course, anything by Elvis". So, in spite of never having heard of Elvis, I got the "two for one" special and headed back home. When my sister arrived from school I gave the Everly's record to her, "two weeks in advance" I said, but only as long as she allowed me to play the one I had bought for free. It was "Don't be cruel" with "Hound Dog" on the B side. The moment I heard the A side, that was it...
  • Enrique Sealtiel Alatriste y Lozano, Mexican writer, promoter and diplomat, in his article, "Elvis Presleyː An out of time obituary", as published in la Revista de la UNAM. His timing was superb, as in less than 12 months, in June of 1959, there would be no Elvis records to be found in Mexican stores, as the second of his many bans there began to executed by the Government authorities.

• He was an extraordinary figure of his and our time, his legacy tremendous in terms of the music he created, his films, and as an entertainment personality. The generosity that he showed toward others is simply remarkable and I think it's these aspects of his character, his persona, that make him such a special person.
  • Albert II, Prince of Monaco, after his visit to Graceland on August 7, 2010 as noted by EPE.

• In an era when radio stations refused to play Chuck Berry songs, calling it “race music”, Elvis broke down barriers.
  • Janet Albrechtsen, Australian columnist, in an article entitled "Beware mob rule in the new racism" published in The Australian on 23 November 2017.

• I've kind of been infatuated with Elvis since I was a kid, just always watching documentaries and stuff on him. It had a little bit to do with that and, honestly, I just wanted him to have something that wasn't very common.
  • Jason Aldean, explaining why he and his wife named their first son Memphis, as published on Soundslike Nashville on September 30, 2017.

• I remember we were in his bathroom, he took my hand, asked me to sit down in a black leather chair, said some beautiful things and then he asked me to marry him.
  • Ginger Alden, who found Elvis lifeless in the main bathroom at Graceland, six weeks after he asked her to marry him in that same bathroom, in an interview for CBS aired in 1982.

• When Elvis Presley died, he left a worldwide legion of music fans in mourning. It was no different on Long Island, where he had been scheduled to perform at the Nassau Coliseum a week later. As many as 700 fans had camped out overnight to buy tickets to the concert, which sold out quickly. On Aug. 22, the night the concert had been scheduled, over 5,000 fans gathered in the Coliseum parking lot for an impromptu tribute to Elvis that lasted two hours. Of the 16,700 tickets that had been sold, only 1,250 were returned for refund....
  • Michael Alexander, quoting an Editor's note of a Newsday story originally published on Aug. 17, 1977.

• When Elvis Presley died in 1977 I was no more than six. On that summer night in August I was sitting between my parents in my grandfather’s house in Italy where we were spending the summer holiday. We were watching television, then delivering to viewers the news of his death, with scenes of fans wailing at the departure of the artist who had engaged the world with his music and gyrating dancing, and personal charisma that made him adored by girls and an inspiration for boys. Last Thursday, at around midnight I received a call from one of my friends telling me that Michael Jackson had died, and one website confirmed the news even before CNN had. Both of them died, and there have still been those who say that death has not touched them and that they still live amongst us with their music and greatness.
  • Yasser Al Ghaslan, Saudi blogger and journalist, as noted in the Global Voice's 30 June 2009 edition.

• To host a Warhol show in a Hollywood Regency home felt like such an incredible opportunity, so when we were presented with it, we jumped at the chance. Given Warhol's fascination with Elvis, it was like this incredible opportunity to reenergize the home with the ghosts of the past in a supercool way. Part of what we love at the Future Perfect in general is the possibility to create that social interaction with the work that we present, because it completely changes the psychology of how you view it.”
  • David Alhadeff, founder of Future Perfect, a design gallery one of whose Los Angeles locations is at Elvis former home at the Trousdale Estates, now known as Casa Perfect, in an article published at Vogue Fashion's February 20,2019 edition.

• As a child, I saw Elvis Presley. So that was something, I mean he was this person with a guitar and that was the image I wanted to be. I wanted to be a musician so I got my first guitar when I was thirteen years old, and I felt, oh man, now that I have the guitar, I got the music. But it started from that....
  • Lucky Ali, on what pushed him towards music, in an interview with WION'a published in their April 6, 2022 edition.

• Let us remember that Elvis’s style — which often included all-leather outfits and flashy jumpsuits — was also controversial for its mid-century time period. So, is Post Malone truly our modern-day Presley? Judging by his care-free attitude and penchant for leather Cuban heeled boots —another, Presley favorite—the verdict would appear to be yes.
  • Cristian Allaire, for Vogue, in an article entitled "Is Post Malone the new Elvis Presley of today?", as published on December 2, 2018

• I was standing in the hallway, just before the show, and one of the managers told him there was a girl on the telephone who was in the hospital. She said she had tickets for the show but couldn't come as she had a serious illness. And Elvis said, 'I want to talk to her', so he marched into a room and held up the entire show for fifteen minutes to talk to that girl, asking her several questions, with warmth and interest. Just before hanging up, I remember he said, 'No, honey I don't have a blue Cadillac. I've got a pink one, a black one, a white one – a pause, and then he said, oh yeah, I do have a blue one'. He was a gentleman and I respected that immensely.
  • Lew Allen, a then 17 year old student who went on to earn an Associate's Degree in photography and a B.A. in Fine Arts/Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He was asked to photograph Elvis at the Cleveland Arena in Ohio, on November 23, 1956 because of a labour strike affecting the three major newspapers, as told by Mr. Allen in an interview published in Rock paper on June 6, 2005.

• I didn't know very much about him, and those in the business knew very little about him. But, he was in the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, so I saw this kid and it was hard to say what he had, but there was something unusual about him. He had an interesting quality and his sound wasn't that important. It was the way he conducted himself, the way he put a song over. Anyway, I made a note immediately to book him for our new show, and we just had the good fortune that between that night and when he appeared a few weeks later suddenly there was a lot of controversy and media attention.
  • Steve Allen's answer as to how did the Elvis appearance in his ABC.TV show, which drew 40 million viewers following the NBC TV Milton Berle controversy came about, as told in an interview on June 30 of 1996.

• When in Tupelo, MS, you have to visit Elvis Presley’s birthplace with Elvis himself
  • Darby Allin, after touring Elvis' Tupelo birthplace on June 2, 2023

• It was like a country show back then and we got to open it and we did a couple of his songs, which was just stupid because we thought we'd impress him and he'd like us. The first time I saw him play – I'd seen him one time before that particular tour came to town where we opened the show for him- I just couldn't believe it. He was such a rocker. I'd never seen anything like that before. Buddy was terribly impressed as well. All of us the same. Turned into a big fan. Buddy tried to sound like him for months. And personally, he was as charismatic as he could be...
  • Jerry Allison, drummer for Buddy Holly, as well as the Crickets, recalling the early days when they opened for Elvis at Buddy Holly's hometown of Lubbock, Texas, as published in Classicbands.com

• Rock n' roll, through Elvis, became a target of southern segregationists, who believed that race mixing led, inevitably, to miscegenation and that exposure to black culture promoted juvenile delinquency and sexual immorality
  • Glenn C. Altschuler, in his book "All Shook Up: How Rock 'n Roll Changed America" (Oxford University Press 2003)

• Obama is like Elvis, there will always be demand for impersonators of such popular and historical people.
  • Ilham Anas, Indonesia's most successful Obama impersonator, as reporter in This week in Asia, on November 5, 2016.

• After one of Elvis Presley's last shows, I was heading back to my car when a matron from Zachary stopped me and gushed about how wonderful he had been. Didn't you just LOVE him?" she asked. "Well, I thought he looked tired and sick and was just going through the motions." Whereupon she whacked me on the head with the rolled-up Elvis poster she was carrying. LOL. I took it in stride — nobody ever said it was easy being a music critic. ...
  • Music critic Smiley Anders, writing for The Advocate in an article published on their March 25, 2019 edition.

• Elvis Presley has been such a determining force in music, before and after his death. On a personal level, I owe so much to Elvis as he is essentially the musician who pushed me to be the performer I am. I have always loved his music so I am returning to celebrate him along with some of my amazing musician friends.
  • Daniel Anderson, vocalist in the Harvey World Travel East of London-organized benefit for the Cancer Association of South Africa (Cansa)'s, entitled The Wonder of You: The Story of Elvis, as reported by the Go&Express, on October 6, 2017

• I discovered the blues in a funny kind of a way, from the age of seven when I was listening to my father's war-time collection of big band jazz. It had that thing about it – I didn't really know what it was –, that set the pulse racing a bit; and then I heard echoes of it again, with early Elvis Presley.
  • Ian Anderson, singer, flautist and leader of Jethro Tull, explaining to G.Brown, of the Denver Music Examiner, his first experience with hearing the blues, starting at the age of 7, as published in that newspaper's online edition, on August 11, 2008.

• Unbelievable! To hear my father grouped together with Elvis Presley, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, it's a dream.
  • John Anderson, son of painter Waltyer Inglis Anderson, speaking of his father's induction into the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience Hall of Fame, as reported by ABC center on December 16, 2017, with the other 17 members being Jimmie Rodgers, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Leontyne Price, Elvis Presley, James Earl Jones, Jim Henson, Morgan Freeman, Oprah Winfrey, Sela Ward, George Ohr, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and John Grisham

• His latest album, "Piano", is a collection of his past work, stripped down so all you hear is his beloved piano. It was hearing an Elvis Presley song that sparked his passion for the piano when he was young.
  • About ABBA-founder Benny Andersson's decision to take up piano, at age 11 in his native Sweden, specifically after hearing "Treat me nice", the B side of the "Jailhouse Rock" single, as noted by Tom Power of CBCRadio on December 10, 2017

• After doing ‘Dr. No’ with Sean Connery, the brass at Paramount proposed that I co-star with Elvis. At first I turned the offer down, mainly because after having dated James Dean, I had imagined Elvis to be an "ordinary" person. So they organized a meet-up and, to my amazement, I immediately fell for his charm. He was extremely well educated and when I told him I hated Rock and that I liked Gospel, he gave me his entire collection of gospel songs. Little did I know that was his main source of inspiration. Anyways, we became instant friends and he loved to cook for me when we were on location. He told me he would have loved to live in Europe and, when I told him my husband had sold our BMW 507, he gave me another as a present. Twenty years later, in 1982, I auctioned the one Elvis gave me for US$300,000 and then the person who bought it from me later sold it for 1.2 million UK pounds. He was in fact, a one in a billion type, a wholly adorable person and we remained in touch till his death.
  • Swiss actress Ursula Andress in an interview published in Mujer Hoy, on 12 January 2016.

• His knowledge was even more extensive than mine. I prided myself on knowing all that stuff. And man, we'd be hanging out and Elvis would be talking about singers I didn't even know about!!!.
  • Sherman Andrus, Gospel Music Hall of Fame and one of the first African Americans to be integrated into a Southern Gospel group, (Elvis' personal group The Imperials), attesting to Elvis' deep knowledge of African American Gospel music, from the Gospel side of Elvis.

• My older brothers played Elvis all the time and there was a lot about his music that inspired us all. Not only an inspiration but he showed up to give his generation permission on a lot of fronts to carry a torch. When I finally met him in Houston, it was like a receiving line at a wedding, as surreal a moment as any in my life. I could not even actually shake his hand. I just bowed.
  • Canadian singer Andy Kim, interviewed by phone from Toronto by Patrick Bales and published on the Orillia Packet & Time website on March 17, 2017

• Beto, he's a rock star right now, he's Elvis Presley,
  • Maximo Anguiano, of the Texas Organizing Project, in reference to Beto O’Rourke being the candidate who could unseat Sentaro Ted Cruz in the 2018 mid-term elections.

• In Vegas, we'd meet and we'd talk about everything. Slowly he started coming over to see my show; he'd sit up there and I'd come back after the show and we'd talk music. He would show up, this incredible God-like figure. He had everything, and the voice —what a great voice he had. Then, on August 17, 1977 I happened to be in Las Vegas, so when I turned on the news and learned of his death, I cried all day. He was a cool, nice man.
  • Paul Anka, from his autobiography "My way"

• I want to celebrate his life. He was so gifted, I just cherish his memory, his generosity, and he was so private, like I am. He knew about honour, and respect, and was so considerate, and his manners, and the way he was so civilized. And as an entertainer he will never be repeated. I wanted him to know all that, and I did tell him, but very few others did...
  • Actress and entertainer Ann Margret, in an interview with Charlie Rose, as broadcast on February 11, 1994.

• I think there was that part of the so-called punk idea that everything in the past was rubbish and all that mattered was punk. I was never really interested in the spitting and the safety pins or that nonsense. I liked the Sex Pistols, and that was about it. Adam and the Ants were very much outside of that anyway. So my liking of Elvis and rock and roll music that I'd grown up with was always in there; it was always something that was a big influence. Elvis's death was tragic, I remember when he died, it was a very sad day in general, so it's obviously a great loss to everybody. I never thought, Oh, he was something that didn't matter, because he did. I have visited Graceland and you could see the man was overwhelmingly honest. He never professed any taste other than his own, that is, country boy made good. He never pretended to be anyone else.
  • Adam Ant, leader of Adam and the Ants, a punk rock band, in an article published on September 5 2017, at the Tampa Bay Times

• One day while he and Richard Davis were conversing he removed the watch from his wrist, handing it to Davis and stating there was something wrong with the back of it. When Davis turned the timepiece over to inspect it, he saw to his great surprise that the case back had been inscribed, "To Richard, From E.P. Elvis then said, "I guess it's yours now". He was known for being extremely generous, often giving away his valuable personal belongings as presents so it was not surprising that he gifted his prized 18kt yellow gold Corum Buckingham to Davis.
  • Antiquorum Auctioneers's notes for those attending the November 11 2018 auction held in Geneva, Switzerland, and highlighting the sale of a yellow 18k gold Corum 1960 Buckingham wristwatch gifted by Elvis to Richard Davis, his long time friend and last wardrobe manager, as detailed in Antiquorum webpage.

• It was the early 1970s. I was 22, working in some little show in a hotel that's now gone, and he was doing a gig at the Las Vegas Hilton. We met backstage at a Tom Jones concert, then he showed me some karate moves, with a small party of folks ending up at his penthouse suite. There, he turned to me and said he had something to show me in his bedroom, so I thought, 'Oh, here comes the cliche,’ Turns out, he just wanted to read to me from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet.” It was a sweet moment, as he sat on a footstool beside me and read like a child, his finger following the text. He signed the book, gave it to me and told me to have a blessed life. He was so sweet, that's what struck me the most. In retrospect, I view him as a prisoner of his fame. That, and his roots in gospel music and the church, fueled his desire to seek out more knowledge about the world and self-realization.
  • Actress Susan Anton, as told to Michael Grossberg at Dispatchcom.

• "Are You Lonesome Tonight?” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on Nov. 28, 1960, becoming Elvis' 15th No. 1 single. It would remain at the top of the chart for six weeks and nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Performance by a Pop Single Artist and Best Male Vocal Performance. A live version recorded in 1969 in which Elvis cracks up laughing almost throughout the spoken-word section would be a minor hit in England in the 1980s. At one point in that recording, Elvis becomes even more amused at one of his backup singers, who continues her part despite his laughter. That singer was Cissy Houston – Whitney Houston's mother.
  • Charles Apple, in an article entitled "Hitmaker" as published in Spokane's The Spokesman-Review's November 22, 2020 edition

• The biggest surprise about his singing had been revealed when he gave us a private concert and sang "Love me tender" a soft, ultra-slow ballad at the quaint music bungalow on the far west side of 20th Century lot. It was away from the bustle of traffic and from the big stages and it looked like the kind of cottage Walt Disney would have built for Snow White and Prince Charming. This was where Elvis felt relaxed, comfortable. So Ken Darby sat at the grand piano at the far end of the living room and Elvis stood a few feet behind him and in front of a tall stained-glass window. He stood erect, as if he was in a choir. Ken started to play the soft melody and I hardly knew that Elvis had started to sing, as his voice, barely louder than the piano, was pitched slightly higher than his usual. It had a lot of resonance and vibration and Elvis was on-key for every note, no matter how long, short, high or low. When he finished, it seemed only normal to express our amazement. "People think all I can do is belt, I used to sing nothing but ballads before I went professional. I love to sing slow, but seldom get to do it", he said, then continued to explain that, as a boy, an only child, he would sing like that when he sang with his mother and dad in church. "It was a small church, only seated about 75, you couldn't sing too loud there."
  • Army Archerd, a columnist for Variety then interviewing Elvis for the Photoplay magazine and who was present at the sessions, including an intimate concert for a dozen or so, which preceded the actual recording of the "Love Me Tender" soundtrack, as noted in a document entitled "Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1956)" as digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Media History Digital Library.

• In the high-stakes game of Los Angeles real estate, a good celebrity pedigree is always a bonus. Of course, not all celebrities are created equal. A home that was once owned by Cary Grant or Elizabeth Taylor, for instance, would probably hold broader appeal than one formerly inhabited by, say, Zsa Zsa Gabor. On that score, David Alhadef definitely struck gold when he discovered the new location for Casa Perfect, the L.A. outpost of his furniture mecca, the Future Perfect: designed in 1958 by architect Rex Lotery and renovated in the mid-1960s, the house is an idiosyncratic mash-up of classic California modernism and Hollywood Regency. For six years, it belonged to Elvis Presley.
  • Mayer Rus, for Architectural Digest in an article entitled "Elvis Presley's Once-Home roars back to life as a dazzling showplace for contemporary furnishings, as published in AD's February 18, 2018 edition.

• When I actually received the phone call, I couldn’t help my mind racing back to one magical day in 1956, that’s always remained vivid in my memory. When my cousin, four years older than me, played me two and a half minutes of music, which changed my life. That music was Elvis Presley, singing Hound Dog, and for the next six months – to my mother's absolute horror – I didn't want to hear anything but the rawest rock'n'roll I could lay my hands on. Do you know? For those who didn’t live through the Fifties, it’s really hard to imagine the enormous cultural gulf which existed between England and America at that time. Elvis himself was a God and in some of the first footage that we saw in England, seemed to us like an alien super being from a distant universe. I was 11 years old and I couldn’t in any way imagine being part of the same world. These early years were something of a dream. By 1964, we got a recording contract with Decca and then unbelievably by Christmas, found ourselves topping the U.S charts with our first record, “She’s Not There.” This magic land, which only eight years before had seemed so unimaginably remote and unconquerable and even more unbelievably, something we didn't find out until many years later, Elvis actually had our records on his jukebox. I could not believe that!
  • Rod Argent English musician, speaking about his reaction when told his band the Zombies would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as noted by RollingStone's 30 March,2019 edition..

• I had been called up for national service and was stationed in Germany at the same time as Elvis when I came across an article on him in a magazine. The article even had his address in Germany, so with a girl friend we set off one morning to find him. We went there and rang the bell, it was a Sunday morning. The maid answered it and told us he'd be down in a few minutes. There was nobody else there, except my friend and I. He took us inside the hallway, and we had a nice chat. He posed for photographs and signed autographs. We were very lucky that morning.
  • Arthur Armstrong, on his love of Elvis Presley, as originally featured in a 2011 article in The Impartial Reporter and again reproduced on their issue of 7 January 2019, following his death at age 81 on December 12, 2018.

• If anything, it's a lot of people here right now. It's like my record collection is actually sitting in this room. I'm truly fortunate. You know, I've always loved rock & roll music. I always have. Soon as I opened my eyes and took my first breath, I was a fan. With my brother David, we listened to Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe and Cheap Trick and Pyromania by Def Leppard. My oldest brother Alan, he had the Beatles and the Stones and the Kinks. My sister Hollie was like "Kool and the Gang." My sister Anna for that record collection that turned my world inside out. And my sister, Marci, who's pretty much the person who showed me Elvis Presley for the first time. Thank you so much.
  • Excerpted from Billie Joe Armstrong's acceptance speech, as the founder, lead singer and frontman of the US punk supergroup Green Day, one of the 5 artists being chosen as performers at the 2015 edition of the inductees gala for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as published in its entirety by RollingStone magazine on April 18, 2015.

• I'm definitively going to make a record with him. You would be surprised what we could do together. You ask me if I think he is good. How many Cadillacs was it he bought.? That boy's no fool...
  • Louis Armstrong, interviewed by Memphis Press Scimitar, March 1, 1957 edition.}

• My cuban blood was flowing. My hips were revolving. I would have made Elvis look as if he was standing still
  • Desi Arnaz, in his bio, "A book" , referring to his moves in 1939, while doing the conga.

• George H.W. Bush was equally at ease in all settings, something that seemed so characteristic of the man I revered. But my work with him didn't end when he left politics. While working in government relations for Shell, I sometimes hosted foreign Ambassadors visiting Houston. On one occasion the Ambassador of Ukraine, Yuriy Shcherbak, was in town to meet with officials at NASA, give speeches and join up with the Ukrainian community there. On the last morning the Ambassador, who was a fan of Elvis Presley, did a live television interview on what by sheer coincidence happened to be Elvis' birthday, and the station had an Elvis impersonator on the set, to do a routine. When “Elvis” and the Ambassador crossed in the green room, the two exchanged bear hugs, and we took pictures. We later arrived at Bush's office, and he cordially received Ambassador Schckerbak and asked how the visit had gone. He politely talked about the various events, then with a twinkle in his eye said: “And this morning Bill introduced me to Elvis!”. Bush gave me a quizzical look as if to ask, “What have you done now?” The Ambassador then recounted the whole tale, followed by robust laughter all around...
  • Bill Arnold, former advance man for the then ( in 1980, therefore three years after Elvis̪ death), Vice Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush and, since 2000 Professor at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, at Rice University, recalling the Ukrainian Ambassador̪ to the US's fascination for all things Elvis, in an article written for the Houston Chronicle on the day after President Bush, for whom he worked, was laid to rest, December 5, 2018.

• Of course, it was 1957, he had a beautiful blonde on the back of his motorcycle. Now, I wasn't watching the blonde and I didn't know who he was, so I took him down to the Las Vegas police station where I then worked and I gave him a pass...
  • Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, recalling his most memorable traffic stop, which involved a speeding motorcycle driven by a young Elvis, as published in an interview with CBS's channel 5 on August 8, 2018.

• Arguably some of the most important tracks in the history of Rock and Roll, Elvis' SUN recordings demonstrate what a dynamic and talented vocalist he was; the young, raw, unadulterated Elvis whom musicologist Francis Davis once called "the greatest white blues singer”; I'm not one to argue with Mr. Davis.
  • Art's Strange World review of the CD "The Sun Sessions" (15 August 2007)

• Elena Quarestani, an Italian collector with a Salvador Dalí painting, was entangled in these onerous rules, namely the Milanese officials wanting to protect his "Figure at a Table" (1925) as an example of Italian cultural heritage even though it is an early work of his that does not incorporate any of the motifs for which he is known. He would likely be amused by the surreality of the government's arbitrary ruling. Similarly, Andy Warhol would have loved that two of his early paintings hung in a casino in the German town of Aachen, a spa city near the border with Belgium and the Netherlands. On their way to slot machines and poker tables, gamblers passed "Triple Elvis", a 1963 silkscreen painting of three life-size images of Elvis Presley on a silver background and "Four Marlons", a 1966 silkscreen painting of four life-sized images of Marlon Brando on a motorcycle. Purchased in the late 1970s for $185,000 (approximately $700,000 today), the paintings were part of a plan to glamorize an otherwise off-the-beaten-track gambling parlor. When the casino conglomerate that owned the Aachen operation fell on hard times, a German state-owned bank seized control of the company and decided to sell the paintings. The sale was a reasonable action by the owners to raise cash for a troubled company. But protesters emerged, claiming this was a dangerous sale of cultural property owned by a state-run financial institution. The sale went ahead anyway, and the works sold for $151.1 million.
  • Artsy's Doug Woodham, in an article entitled "Why Becoming a National Treasure Can Lower an Artwork’s Value", as published on their January 2, 2019 edition.

• I am the greatest contemporary artist of all-time.
  • Rapper ASAP Rocky´s claim, which writer Jake Boyer of "Highnobiety" sarcastically said "puts him the same playing field as everyone from Michelangelo to Elvis Presley", as published in their online page on November 22, 2017.

• He was stationed in Germany doing his service so on the occasion he would go visit Paris coinciding with my time there. On his first visit, he took 40 dancing girls from the Lido to the Prince des Galles Hotel. On his next, he suddenly took a great shine to me but when someone told him I was trans-sexual, he stayed away. But, if by chance we would be in the same club, he would sent me a bottle of champagne every time. He was a divine human being.
  • April Ashley, a MBE, born George Jamieson and the first male Briton to have full sex reassignment surgery, recalling the time she met Elvis in 1959, as published in the Mirror on November 4, 2018.

• Where were you when you learned of Elvis Presley's death? I was at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center near Juneau, Alaska, escorting a group of senior adults. Like JFK’s assassination, the first moon landing and 9/11, it's one of the events engraved in our memory, at least for us of a certain age. Elvis may have left the building for the last time 46 years ago, but he is still very much a part of our lives. For a man of the cloth whose worldview is woven with the fabric of faith, something called Graceland calls to mind much more than just a must-see landmark in Memphis. For me the name Graceland suggests an atmosphere where grace is embraced with intentionality and gratitude. It’s a realm in which forgiveness and fresh starts comprise the air we breathe. Graceland is the territory of trust I believe the Creator created for His creatures to inhabit. After arriving in Florida on my recent flight, I noticed a street sign in the Sarasota neighborhood where I was staying. I did a double take. From a distance the sign appeared to say GRACELAND. But as I looked more closely it read GRAZELAND. Again, my always-looking-for-a-good-sermon-illustration radar detector began to flash with insight. Holy Week provides Christians an opportunity to revisit the central message of their faith and determine if they are currently living in the city limits of Graceland, or Grazeland.
  • Chaplain Greg Asimakoupoulos, as published in the April 2, 2023 issue of the Kitsap Sun

• I found him to be an interesting person, had an entourage of good old boys, was busy with karate, breaking his hand while doing it, but he was nice and cooperative and friendly. I really liked him.
  • Ed Asner, on the first time he met and worked with Elvis, namely during the shoot of "Kid Gallahad", in 1962, in an article published on July 16, 2018 on the Houston Chronicle.

• South African Elvis fans won't see his new movie 'Flaming Star' in their country. The government, which has strict laws to keep the races separate, banned the picture because Presley plays the son of an American Indian woman and a white man
  • An Associated Press report from Johannesburg, dated May 31, 1961, the day when the film was set to open at theatres throughout the then Apartheid-ruled Republic of South Africa. A day later, 20th Century-Fox appealed and as a result the Board of Censors lifted the ban, on condition that the film not be shown to the country's indigenous population, with the film then opening to segregated theatres, starting in Durban in early June. However, it was permanently banned on cinemas in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, as colonial government officials in those territories were afraid the movie could reignite racial tensions in the aftermath of the bloody Mau Mau rebellion.

• Princesses Margrit of Denmark (now HRH, the Queen of Denmark), Margaret of Sweden and I, were assigned to represent the people of Scandinavia on the SAS' maiden intercontinental flight to Los Angeles. We went to Disneyland, then to the Paramount Studios. He was making a film, we watched him sing a song and then he greeted us. He was very polite, a man with an M in capital letters. He was very pretty, had been our idol and we three had heard all his records, seen all his movies, so when I found out he had died, I was very saddened.
  • Princess Astrid of Norway, as told to Roger Mogstad, son of Tor Mogstad, the Princess's personal hairdresser on October 12, 1987, and as detailed in a clip from youtube, THE KING, THE PRINCESS & ME

• In times of trouble, I put my faith in Elvis Presley, who represented the South's better angels. He was a hard worker, and although he lived the high life, he never forgot that he had been born into poverty. And he was a self-made talent, perhaps the greatest entertainer of all time, born in a two-room shack in Tupelo, Miss., in 1935. I've been to that small shotgun house many times, reflecting on what it says about America. Greatness can be born anywhere. His father Vernon was a laborer who was often out of work, and the Presleys relied on the kindness of family and neighbors to get them through the hard times.When Elvis was young, the Presleys lost it, and they ended up shuttling around Tupelo, often living in black neighborhoods, where Elvis famously developed an ear for black gospel and blues to supplement his love of the old-time gospel he knew from his own church.I still believe in my heart that most Southerners are still more like Elvis than President Trump. We are most likely to pull over and help someone stranded on the roadside. Most of the people I know in my Mississippi town would give you the shirt off their backs. Most Southern preachers don't spend Sundays in the pulpit spewing hatred and intolerance. Most people agree that racism and white supremacy are evil. Even preschoolers know it's always better to tell the truth and take your lumps than lie and evade. And yet here we are. We know right from wrong, but most of us down here voted for wrong. As Elvis once said, “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.
  • Ace Atkins, in his article, "In Elvis we trust", part of TIME magazine's August 6 special issue on the American South.

• Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business. He was white, but he sang black. It wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time. Did I have any sense of how big he was going to be when he first came to RCA? Oh yeah, we knew. Back in those days, if a guy got hot in one area you could spread it around the country, maybe the world. He was already so big in East Texas and Louisiana you couldn't get him off stage with a firehose. We knew. When he came in to do “Heartbreak Hotel” I called up my wife and told her to come over. I said, You might not get a chance to see him again, he's gonna get so damn big. Lots of people have asked me if Elvis could play guitar. Well, he played pretty good. And he played piano and drums. The first sessions he'd come in and work. After that, when he got more confident, he'd come in and play drums a while, then guitar, then piano only to then go to work starting around 11 o'clock at night. But he loved gospel music. The first time I ever heard him I thought, “What in the hell is this?” I couldn't tell if he was black or bluegrass or gospel or what. Of course that was what made him what he was. He was so damn versatile he could sing anything.
  • Chet Atkins, Pop Chronicles, Show 8 – The All American Boy: Enter Elvis and the rock-a-billies. Part 2, interview recorded January 1968.

• I was on third grade, listened to Elvis and then my dad bought me a guitar. I stuck with it, that is how it started.
  • Mickey Atkins, R&B musicians, founding member of Funkadelic, for Ultimate Classic Rock, as publshed on 6 August 2018

• Coming upon these tapes, unspooling them and watching them glide across an Ampex 440 reel-to-reel deck for the first time was the closest I'll ever get to being a real life Indiana Jones. Beyond the staggering realization of what we had found, there was a musical element that also knocked our socks off: On these tapes Glen is singing pure rock and roll and with a sense of joy, passion and wild abandon that can only have come from knowing that his idol, the avatar Elvis Presley, would be an audience of one for these recordings.”
  • Stephen Auerbach, detailing for RollingStone what he felt after finding and playing tapes which had been lost of Glen Campbell doing demos for Elvis, as published on October 31, 2018.

• When Elvis came back from the service and he was greeted by all the publicity, the press, the photographers, reporters, and so forth, someone said to him "Well, what do you think now that you're not number one but Avalon is ?" And he said " Oh, I love his song "Venus" and there's room for everybody." And I thought that was really genuine, nice compliment.
  • Frankie Avalon, as noted in whenstarsmeetstars.

• 1) Ed Sheeran 2) Will Smith 3) James Cordon 4) Peter Kay 5) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 6) Elvis Presley 7) Prince Harry 8) Michael Jackson 9) Beyonce and 10) Kim Kardashian
  • UK Avis Budget Group's list of most favoured celebrity travel buddies, from a poll taken in July of 2018, of over 14,000 consumers across Europe, aged 18-66+ including 1,000 British nationals

• I was about to say you were doing a disservice to fat Elvis who had much more dignity than Donald Trump does right now. What the hell is he talking about? He doesn’t have a clue. That’s just sad.”
  • John Avlon's retort to Jim Acosta's comparison of former President Trumnp to what he called "Fat Elvis" during a CNN interview, as broadcast on May 2nd, 2021

B

• I doubt it, although he did record "Any Day Now", and that’s one of those things where you think, “Great!”, and you hear it and it’s not so great. It was the same thing with Frank Sinatra and the Count Basie band, with Quincy Jones producing. They did "Wives and Lovers", which is in 3/4 time, but they did it in 4/4. I said, “Quincy, what happened?” He said: “The Basie band can’t play in 3/4.”
  • Burt Bacharach's pompously ridiculous answer during an interview by Dave Simpson, a reporter from The Guardian on whether there were any great singers or musicians he'd wish to have worked with, or did work with, specifically Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie and Quincy Jones, as published in the newspaper's May 25, 2016 edition.

• Did I? That was extremely immodest and foolish of me, my apologies. I would never dare to be so presumptuous. I am only interested in the legacy my father has left behind, and I would like to work towards giving it strength and respect for as long as I live.
  • Indian entertainer and former politician Amitabh Bachchan's answer to a question posed by a reporter on whether he recalled his once saying that he would like to leave a lasting legacy in the world, to be a sort of Elvis Presley, as published on the "Asian Age" on May 13, 2018

• I'm living proof that Elvis was a pretty good driver. As innocent as the BMW 507 with its white paintwork might have looked, with a 150-horsepower V8 under the bonnet, it was something very special and Elvis drove like a maniac! Foot hard on the gas, then hard on the brakes, switching between lanes, slaloming between cars – it was like all hell had broken loose. (I was scared), and as a result wasn't quite able to enjoy the experience. The unvarnished truth is that I was just happy that we managed to get the car back to the dealership without a scratch on it. That short time I spent with Elvis was wonderful, though. The next day, I wrote to my mother , saying that I'd driven 100 miles up the autobahn with Elvis Presley. She thought I was kidding.”
  • Gus Backus, a member of the racially mixed doo-wop group The Del Vikings, recounting for BMW Group Classic the time then Private Elvis Presley asked him (then serving with the US Air Force in Germany), to accompany him as he was test driving a BMW 507 in Frankfurt. It was after the test drive that Elvis ordered specifications be made on another BMW 507, the now famous BMW 507 chassis #70079 previously owned by German car racer Hans Stuck and which is currently housed at the BMW Museum after a two year multi million euro restoration.

• In May of 1998 I was in the middle of an Elvis Presley obsession, so I went to Graceland. Everything about the place seemed awesome to me, from the giant Corinthian columns out front, to the purple and yellow room with three televisions built into the wall, to the big man’s grave out back. But what has stuck with me the most from the visit is a particular story about Elvis. Elvis had grown up poor, and I’m sure when he was poor money was important. But when he started to make more money than he could ever spend, or maybe just enough money to have every material thing he wanted, it no longer held importance to him. So, during a party at Graceland he was inside with a guest who came from a poor background, and the other partygoers were outside on the lawn. His friend commented on how sophisticated all of the partygoers seemed. Elvis walked over to his desk, pulled a stack of money from one of the drawers, opened a window, and threw the bills out the window. The partygoers scrambled after the bills, shoving each other, trying to grab as much money as they could. Elvis turned to his friend and said, “They’re not that sophisticated.”
  • Brett Baker, for Chicago now, published on December 22, 2016.

• i) We can even hazard a little analysis as to what made his voice so appealing. "That curious baritone," one critic called it. Actually, that is inexact. The voice had mixed propensities, hovering between tenor and bass and everything in between. Even a convincing falsetto lay within his range. One thing he was not, ever, was "Steve-'n-Edie", the polished, professionally accomplished Vegas artistes who once pronounced on an afternoon interview show (Mr. Lawrence enunciating the sentiment for himself and his partner/wife, Ms. Gorme), "We don't really think of Elvis as a singer. But he was a star." It is only when, years later, one gets past the indignation of hearing such apparent ignorance, that the sense of the observation becomes clear. A singer is someone like Steve Lawrence rolling effortlessly (and meaninglessly) through a shlock-standard like "What Now, My Love?". More or less like doing the scales. A star is the persona in whom one invests one's vicarious longings, a being who is constantly hazarding — and intermittently succeeding at — the impossible stretches that every soul wishes to attempt but lacks the means or the will to. It's not a matter of virtuosity. ii) Take My Baby Left Me (1956) by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, the black Mississippi sharecropper whose That's All Right had literally been Elvis' first recording, in 1954. Crudup kept his blues in a bucket; Elvis put the lid on, and cooked; bar by bar, the song comes together; first comes D.J. Fontana's rapped-out drum riff, then a top-to-bottom run from Bill Black's stand-up bass, then the controlled gallop of Scotty Moore's lead guitar; then, last of all, Elvis singing in that imperious velvet growl of his, "Yes, my baby left me! Never said a word"; it is the most underestimated song in the canon; there is lightning in that bucket, and it could drive a train, any train. It literally took us into a new age. Endow a university! Elvis was a university. Whoever those mystics are who teach that the universe began with sound could use him as their full curriculum"
  • Jackson Baker, i) in "Memphis Magazine" (July 2002) ii) as published in "The Memphis Flyer", August 8-14, 1996 edition

• He was fantastic. When he danced, the people danced, the girls would actually faint because of what he was doing. The people didn't care if he was white or black, he was a good artist and they felt his music.
  • Lavern Baker, commenting on her covering one of Presley's best early 60's songs, with a few changes in the lyrics, which she recorded in late 1961 as a answer to Presley's "Little Sister".

• Presley's voice was remarkable in the sense that, through it, he touched people in a way only great artists can do. (In fact), the people he touched are as diverse as humanity itself and, because of that his popularity has transcended race, class, national boundaries, and culture. There is no simple answer about why that is so, all I can say is he had that magic. When Elvis Presley was first popular, many people said that he did not have a good voice. Almost everyone, today, knows that he did, but more people today should see him not simply as a performer, but as an artist with a great soul.
  • John Bakke, professor emeritus of the University of Memphis, in an interview with the US State Department, transcripted by UNUSINFO on July 18, 2006 on the legacy of Elvis Presley

• I don't think any two men on this planet ever had the charisma of Elvis Presley and Jackie Wilson. The two of them remind me of each other: the charisma
  • Hank Ballard, rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, lead vocalist of the Midnighters, as noted in the book "Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops" by Tony Douglas.

• With him, it's the pictures that spoke loudest about the man behind the genius. Take Sunday Times photographer Chris Smith's classic shot in which a scowling Seve, handsome head turned from the driving rain, jacket held across his chest like a matador's cape, and he is curling his lip. It tells you everything you need to know about his mood, his game, and his grim determination to outfox the elements and annihilate his opponent. It's pure Elvis.
  • About Seve Ballesteros, Spain's all time greatest golfer, as reported in the Sunday Times on May 8, 2011.

• Then, in 1954, Elvis happened. The influence that the softly spoken Mississippi native had on popular music – and in particular rockabilly – is incalculable. First billed as 'The Hillbilly Cat' (again a nod towards black and white influences), the boy with the seemingly rubber limbs sang both blues and country songs infused with elements of this new rockabilly movement to the bemusement of a music industry not yet aware of the significance of what they were listening to. They didn't know it at the time, but the music establishment had just changed forever. Two years later he signed with RCA and the ensuing exposure he received on national television introduced rockabilly to its widest audience yet and, like fire to kindling, there was no stopping its spread. Other labels swooped to sign up any artists who sang even vaguely similar to Elvis and there was a bona fide musical gold rush underway and record executives and studio bigwigs fell over themselves to capitalise on this musical trend which was now sweeping the nation – ultimately playing a big part in rockabilly's eventual downfall, as more and more people tried to make money from it, (thus) watering down its raunchiness as they tried to make it appear to as large a market as possible, and (finally) taming its sound beyond recognition.
  • Excerpted from an article entitled "The Roots of Rockabilly: Examining the origins of a rock n' roll movement", by John Balfe, and as published in www.entertainment.ie

• I might be the biggest Elvis fan you've ever met. I mean, I've seen it all. And I just loved him. I don't know what it was. I mean, probably the same reason everybody loved Elvis. Cause he was electric. He was just electric, the greatest entertainer I've ever seen, and I think the reason why was because — and I heard him say it many times in interviews — , he always did what he felt. Genuinely did what he felt. It wasn't choreographed. It wasn't, OK, well, I'm gonna do this move at this time. It was coming up from inside of him, and it was coming out. That's what it was, and that's why people connected with it. Cause it was the real deal.”
  • Country music songwriter and singer Frankie Ballard who, along with a few others, voted Elvis as the top entertainer in CMT Top 40 artist countdown, as published in CMT´s online edition of November 21, 2014.

• It was the autumn of 1971, and two tickets to an Elvis show turned up at the offices of Creem magazine, where I was then employed. It was decided that those staff members who had never had the privilege of witnessing Elvis should get the tickets, which was how me and art director Charlie Auringer ended up in nearly the front row of the biggest arena in Detroit. Earlier Charlie had said, “Do you realize how much we could get if we sold these things?” I didn't, but how precious they were became totally clear the instant Elvis sauntered onto the stage. He was the only male performer I have ever seen to whom I responded sexually; it wasn't real arousal, rather an erection of the heart, when I looked at him I went mad with desire and envy and worship and self-projection. I mean, Mick Jagger, whom I saw as far back as 1964 and twice in ‘65, never even came close.
  • Rock critic Lester Bangs's opening sentence in Elvis' obituary, by special request from and published by the Village Voice on 20 August 1977.

• I mean, don't tell me about Lenny Bruce, man – Lenny Bruce said dirty words in public and obtained a kind of consensual martyrdom. Plus which Lenny Bruce was hip, too goddam hip if you ask me, which was his undoing, whereas Elvis was not hip at all. Elvis was a goddam truck driver who worshipped his mother and would never say "shit" or "fuck" around her, and Elvis alerted America to the fact that it had a groin with imperatives that had been stifled. Lenny Bruce demonstrated how far you could push a society as repressed as ours and how much you could get away with, but Elvis kicked "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window" out the window and replaced it with "Let's fuck." The rest of us are still reeling from the impact. Sexual chaos reigns currently, but out of chaos may flow true understanding and harmony, and either way Elvis almost single handedly opened the floodgates.
  • Lester Bangs, "Where Were You When Elvis Died," originally published in "The Village Voice", August 29, 1977. Republished in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung pg. 215-216

• Elvis' lowest effective note was a low-G, as heard on "He'll Have To Go"(1976); on "King Creole" (1958), he growls some low-F's; going up, his highest full-voiced notes were the high-B's in "Surrender"(1961) and "Merry Christmas Baby" (1971), the high-G at the end of "My Way" (1976 live version), and the high-A of "An American Trilogy"(1972); using falsetto, Elvis could reach at least a high-E, e.g, as in "Unchained Melody" (1977), so, it was very nearly a three-octave range, although more practically two-and-a-half.
  • George Barbel, as a follow up to a question on what was Elvis' range, as published in All Experts.com, on 20th May, 2007.

• I have nothing to do with him and therefore no reply is necessary
  • Brigitte Bardot's answer to a journalist who had been present at Elvis Press Conference at the Prince des Galles Hotel in Paris, on June 17, 1960, and where Elvis had stated he would welcome meeting her during what turned out to be his first of three US Army furloughs in Paris. Would she meet him? the journalist asked. As published in Briggite Bardot.net's August 16, 2017 edition.

• By the time we got towards the end of our stay there, Elvis was worn out, so he got all the singers individually to do a song. Of course, all the musicians knew that I play and sang and they knew some of my songs. Elvis was obviously hesitating and thinking of something else to do, and Ronnie said: 'Let Bardwell sing'. He just went, 'Yeah, right ...'. And Guercio said, 'No, really. You wanna do something else, let him sing, because he can sing'. So Elvis went, 'Ladies and gentlemen, my bassplayer is going to sing now'. So Charlie Hodge gave me his guitar and I got Charlie's mike. Charlie was holding another mike on the guitar, for me to play it. And I didn't know what to do. I mean, how am I going to follow Kathy Westmoreland doing 'My Heavenly Father'? And Donnie Sumner said, 'Do the Hurricane song'. You know, 'Please Don't Bury Me' by John Prine. I got to the last verse of the song that's a bit off color. We were going from 'My Heavenly Father' to 'Kiss My Ass Goodbye', and it just took everybody by surprise. That was a really good moment, because I had shown Elvis a part of me that he didn't know of. He knew that what we had just done was show business, and it was good show business, because it was entertaining. I went back to the dressing room after the show, and Tom Diskin knocked on the door. We let him in, and he said 'I have a message for you from the Colonel' So I figured that I was fired when he sent Tom Diskin into the dressing room, but he said, He wants me to tell you that that's one of the funniest things he's ever seen at an Elvis Presley show'. I was thrilled with that. If I didn't do anything else I had done that. That was fun
  • TCB Bass player Duke Bardwell's story of how how he got to sing John Prine's ‘Please Don’t Bury Me’ during the October 14th, 1974 closing show in Lake Tahoe, NV, in an interview with Arjan as published on the FECC Forum'spage.

• Baritones UnBound continues the second season of Asolo Rep's five-year American Character Project, an in-depth look at this nation and its people. No other voice has defined the United States quite like the booming sound of the baritone. From Sinatra to Elvis and much more, this musical journey chronicles some of the most beloved singers and songs of all time. Conceived by Broadway leading man and threetime Tony Award nominee Marc Kudisch and created by Merwin Foard, three dynamite baritones take the stage to give us a captivating musical tour of the baritone voice throughout history, namely Marc Kudisch, Jeff Mattsey, and Timothy Splain. Veteran singers Jeff Mattsey and Mark Delavan join Kudisch in an illuminating performance studded with classics from Broadway, opera and beyond. From Gregorian chants to well-known arias (“Ah! Per sempre,” “Largo”) including show tunes (“I am a Pirate King,” “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’”) and popular music (“It Was a Very Good Year,” “It’s Now or Never,” and “Pretty Women”)
  • Baritoners Unbound's 2015' Press Release, in an article entitled Celebrating the UnCommon Voice of the Common Ma"n

• Our son's name would be Elvis....
  • Travis Barker, drummer for the band Blink 182, to his ex-wife Shanna Moakle, a former Miss USA, who expressed shock that Barker would tell his future bride to be Kourtney Kardashian, via an Instagram dated 9 November 2021, that he would choose that moniker due to its connection to the film "True Romance".

• Another time we played with Herman's Hermits who were very popular. Frankly, we didn't rate them musically, but we were impressed when they told us about they having met with Elvis Presley, "Elvo" to us. And when they told Ian Anderson he sang like 'Elvo' he was very flattered and to this day the rest of the band and I always call Ian 'Elvo'!”
  • Barriemore Barlow, drummer for Jethro Tull in an interview with Nick Dent-Robinson, recalling their attending Elvis' August 11, 1969 show at the International Hotel in Las Vegas on the special invitation of UK record producer Terry Ellis and as published on 03/04/2014 at the Jethro Tull Forum.

• In 1956, I was President of his Los Angeles Fan Club and when I met him I noticed he had bad complexion and realized he wasn't perfect. So maybe it was a chance for me to make it in Hollywood (LOL)
  • Gregg Barrios, award-winning playwright, poet, and journalist, from an oral history interview on June 21, 2016, San Antonio, TX.

• A few days before Christmas one year, Elvis was in the store buying guns for some of his friends as gifts. There was a customer off to the side looking at a display case that held nothing but expensive Browning over-under shotguns. Presley went up to the gentleman and commented on how nice the guns were. The man agreed, but said they were way out of his price range, since they were all probably in the thousand dollar plus area. Elvis asked the guy which one he would buy if he was purchasing, and the fellow said probably the Diana grade with the gold inlay. Elvis then went back to the counter where Jerry Knight was, and as he left said to Jerry, "When that guy gets ready to leave, take that Diana grade shotgun out and put it on the counter and give it to him. Tell him Elvis said Merry Christmas." Jerry said he did just that, and he thought the guy was going to faint when he received the gift.
  • Ken Barnes, who worked at Kerr's Beverly Hill's Sports Shop, as published by the Californian on December 13, 2017.

• Not only did Elvis give teens their own music with which to identify, he proved that much of the disposable income of this generation would be spent on music, fashion, and media of its own choosing and thus turning that generation into a high-pro!le, identifiable group with their own fashion sense, hair styles, slang, taste in music, preferences in movie stars and other favorite pastimes.
  • Richard Barnet in his book The Story Behind the Song: 150 Songs that Chronicle the 20th Century. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

• I just come off the air and got a phone call telling me that they had just found Elvis dead, so I was in shock, as I thought for a moment that we had contributed to his death, minutes earlier having been, as I was, the first person to review the book that laid it all out. Moreover, given that people knew that I didnt make up stories and because of the large audience I had just reached in "Good Morning America", I thought that we may have had sent Elvis over the edge. I'll never know...
  • Rona Barrett in the documentary The Definitve Elvis, The Memphis Mafia

• What's more, the asset class “fine art” is to investing,is what science fiction is to the rest of literature. The "extreme" characteristics of sci-fi and high-end art help teach investors—or readers—important lessons. Science fiction speaks to human nature, while art offers a window on the nature of asset markets. What then qualifies as "extreme"? Take Andy Warhol. In 1986, collectors could buy a Warhol "Triple Elvis" painting for about $200,000, but a "Triple Elvis" went for $81.9 million at auction in 2018. That's a 400-fold gain—an investor's dream. The average annual return of the "Triple Elvis" works out to about 20.6%. Pretty good. And there is nothing more fundamental to investing than returns.
  • Barron's December 6, 2019 laud of the value of a "Triple Elvis" by Andy Warhol, as noted in an article entitled Don't Pay $120,000 for a Banana by Al Root. article entitled "Other Investing Lessons From Art Basel

• While Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison were ruling the rock-pop charts in the US, he had everyone grooving to his music in Nepal. The song "Deula yo joban timilai deula" may have sounded similar to what was trending internationally, but was given a funky twist of his own, and arguably was responsible for introducing rock and pop to the entire nation. He became a heartthrob in his country and was soon called the Elvis Presley of Nepal because he came like a breath of fresh air in a music scene dominated by traditional tunes.
  • About Kumar Basnet, as noted in the Kathmandu post's March 15 edition.

• On the evening of the Oscars, with Austin seated next to me, I understood intimately what he felt when it was time to learn if he would climb those stairs to the stage. So, I took his hand and held it softly as the winner was announced. Although his name wasn’t called, Austin is no less a winner. The time had come for Austin to say goodbye to Elvis as he began to embrace an infinite universe of possibilities as an actor. I can’t wait to see what he brings us next.
  • Excerpt of Angela Bassett's laud of Austin Butler, who as a result of his lead role in Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis", was listed as one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2023, as published on the said magazines' April 13, 2023 edition.

• His generosity..
  • Natasha Bassett's reply to a reporter asking what in her view defines Elvis the most, as beamed live on May 25, 2022 at the opening of ELVIS, at the Cannes Film Festival

• He started drawing on my front all the way down to my navel, doodling as I spoke to him, in front of hundreds at his dressing room after his August 1970 opening show at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Incredible sensation, he used a biro!!! That night back at my hotel, alone, I undressed and there they were, the doodlings. I did not wash until they wore off...
  • Shirley Bassey, as told to talk host Graham Norton.

• As Jack Wilshere completed his first 90 minutes in the Premier League for Arsenal in over three years, and was arguably their best player in the 0-0 draw at West Ham's London Arena on Wednesday evening, "A Little Less Conversation", the song by Elvis Presley, was the tune that played the players off the pitch, the lyric urging for "a little more spark" a fair assessment of the game. But it is the line about the need for "a little less conversation, a little more action" that best sums up his situation at Arsenal...
  • Adam Bate, one of Sky Sports top anchors, assessing Wilshire's performance for his network, in an article published on December 11, 2017 ( Since Elvis' "The Wonder of you" is the song played at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium before players enter the field this could explain West Ham fans' decision to play "A little less conversation" when they, in turn, feel their own team needs to improve its play).

• He had a musically textured rhythmic voice that had emotional intelligence; concentrate on his voice: sweet, remorseful, defiant, suggestive.
  • Eileen Battersby, literary correspondent, citing the reasons for her being hooked on Elvis after "discovering" him inadvertently as she changed the dial looking for her favorite classical music radio station, as published in the "Irish Times" in August of 2002.

• Ronnie James Dio, Bon Scott, Bruce Dickinson and Elvis Presley..
  • Blaze Bayley, lead singer of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden, citing his biggest musical influences in an article published in Metalcastles's February 29, 2020 online edition.

• In "Mystery Train" (1955), he rocks out with an astounding depth, Elvis' voice never sounding so rich, nor so pleading; best of all is his final spontaneous laugh & whoop of excitement, worth its weight in gold.
  • Review of the CD "Elvis at SUN", by Piers Beagley, as published in EIN, on 30th June, 2004

• Imagine Beatty in the Paul Newman part and you can kind of see it, but what about the Redford part? Apparently, Redford wasn't cast yet and Beatty had a mighty strange idea for his co-lead. Yes, that's right, he wanted Elvis Presley. Ultimately, though, Beatty did not appear in the film, reportedly because he found the two-hander was too similar to his recent "Bonnie and Clyde". Now, picturing Beatty and Elvis in those parts is a fascinating "What if?" but what the public got was probably the best possible version of that movie...
  • About Warren Beatty having chosen Elvis as his co-star in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a movie which he later passed on, in an article by Eric Vespe entitled "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid could've starred Warren Beatty And Elvis" as published in the November 8, 2022 edition of Slash Film

• They are two equivalent beasts even with their differences. Diego Maradona is Elvis Presley singing 'My Way' at his last concert at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. He embodies the deity, the absolute power, the sunset, the snowy peaks and the abyss. And Lionel Messi is Paul McCartney, the long-play list, the continuity and the health. To ask one of them to have what the other has doesn't look to be a proof of social intelligence but one of galloping dissatisfaction of a country that doesn't conform with having two of the three best footballers in history in less than 40 years.
  • Argentinean novelist Juan José Becerra, in an article published in July of 2016 at El Clarin, his country's most prestigious newspaper.

• I'd have been off playing with my bow and arrow or something and Cliff Gallup had a big impact on me too, of course, but the Elvis stuff was the real start of it. It was the rocket ship taking off for a whole bunch of us
  • Jeff Beck, explaining how after hearing his older sister's 78rpm record of "Heartbreak Hotel" the idea of becoming a musician instantly popped into his head, as stated in an article in Guitar Player Magazine's July 1997 issue.

• I met Elvis in 1968 at the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas and had a drink with him. A lady asked him for an autograph but he didn't have a pen, so I gave him mine. Then he gave me the pen back and that's when I said, “Naw, you keep it Elvis. I don’t think anyone’s going to be asking for my autograph.
  • William O. Beck, in an interview with Jeff Sterling for the Titusville Herald, and published on August 13, 2018.

• Elvis is right up there with death and taxes in things that can't be avoided,
  • Writer Joel Beers, reviewing the 1968 NBC TV Elvis Special for OC Weekly, on January 4, 2018.

• I was scared of him when I was a child. He was very sexual. There was something — the sexual vibe of Elvis was out there, big time.
  • Joy Behar, who was 14 in 1956, speaking about his feelings for Elvis, as director Sofia Coppola stopped by her show, to talk about her movie "Priscilla", as broadcast on October 31, 2023.

• Like some sort of Grammy-powered "Super Friends", John Legend, Post Malone, Jennifer Lopez, Blake Shelton and more than a dozen more artists joined forces on February 17, 2019, for a prime time television special titled “Elvis All-Star Tribute". The union of Post Malone and Urban demonstrated that — for Elvis Presley Enterprises, at least — the show's mission, in large part, was to affirm the idea of Elvis' universal appeal. Adam Lambert wore a blue suit and blue suede shoes during his version of "Blue Suede Shoes", while Jennifer Lopez went full J.Lo during "Heartbreak Hotel"- Another highlight was Mac Davis' solo rendition of "Memories," a song he wrote for the original 1968 special. Davis, 77, the elder statesman amongst the performers (beating John Fogerty by four years), shared a poignant memory of holding the then infant Lisa Marie Presley during a visit to Elvis' Bel Air home. He later was joined by John Legend, who sang a Davis composition that has emerged as one of Elvis' biggest posthumous hits, "A Little Less Conversation." Others on the show included Darius Rucker, Ed Sheeran, Kelsea Ballerini, Alessia Cara, Josh Groban, Pistol Annies and Little Big Town. Lisa Marie did not perform, but introduced a gospel medley segment featuring Carrie Underwood and Yolanda Adams; similarly, actress Riley Keough, Lisa Marie's only daughter, introduced Dierks Bentley, who contributed with the rocker, "Little Sister". “I’m here tonight because 50 years ago a King returned,” said Shelton, host of the program and — not coincidentally — a judge on the hit NBC vocal competition program, “The Voice.”, then adding that the original special had been often imitated but never surpassed while, in addition changing, as it also did, the game forever in music and television.
  • John Beifuss, writing for the Commercial Appeal in an article entitled "Post Malone, J.Lo, Blake Shelton: The Elvis '68 Comeback comeback",as published on their February 18, 2019 edition.

• Different as our sounds were in 1956, I could see that we were in parallel tracks, Elvis was interpreting one kind of black music, R&B, while I found my inspiration in black folk songs, spirituals and calypso. ( A year passed, and while in Las Vegas) Elvis came backstage to say hello and he couldn't have been more decorous, insisting in calling me Mr. Belafonte. Only later would I learn that he had hung out for years with a lot of black musicians and had come by his style legitimately. (Alas), he performed with such put on flash that over the next years, I noticed, he inspired a whole generation of R&B players who thought they could put that flash on, and become Elvis, too..
  • Harry Belafonte in his autobiography, My song, published in 2011.

• I have been following the sound of my own voice since childhood, growing up in a family of academics in Knoxville. I spent my formative years playing air guitar while listening to the monolithic stereo console in my parents. My first concert experience was seeing an Elvis Presley in Knoxville. I was just about four years old but have some vivid memories of holding my parents' hands and people screaming, so it was kind of scary. I also remember him doing ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Teddy Bear.’ And ‘Teddy Bear’ was such a favorite at the age of four that I brought out a big styrofoam guitar for it.
  • Brian Bell, discussing the effect seeing Elvis show in Knoxville, on April 8, 1972 had on him, for Live4ever, published on April 15, 2007.

• I knew Elvis getting the bug to entertain, singing gospel music for the congregation in his own church, but there was something that was more important to him. It was black music. He wanted to be a gospel singer the way the black people sang. Long back, he'd sing to a broom, pretending it was a guitar. We thought he was crazy....
  • Sam Bell, Elvis' closest African American childhood friend in East Tupelo, MS, and the main source for Director Baz Luhrmann's research on Elvis' pre-teen years for his 2022 movie Elvis, in an interview taped in Memphis, TN in December of 2020

• My favourite song of all time? I like Elvis' "Love me".
  • Jude Bellingham,in an Mackenzie interview brooadcast on June 28, 2024.

• One evening, it's said he rocked around the clock all night before disappearing into one of the rooms along with eight eager Bunnies. What happened behind closed doors remains a mystery, but Hugh Hefner was apparently so impressed that he named the spot 'The Elvis Room'.
  • Alex Belloti, in an article entitled "Playboy mansion secrets – ghost sightings, Elvis' wild night with Bunnies, 'sex rituals" as published in the Daily Mirror's August 6, 2021 edtion.

• The whole exhibition is focused on artists that I’ve listened to at some point in my life who represented something. Lana Del Rey, I was listening to her a lot when I was around 14, and that was really the start of me developing my own taste in music. Adele, she’s iconic as well, and a lot of people would recognize that album. Elvis Presley too — he’s a huge artist. So I wanted the album (cover) to be recognizable, but also for the Western artists to be big, just to show how important these Arab artists are as well.”
  • Zineb Belrhiti, the UAE's top album designer, telling the Arab News why she chose Elvis images as well as those of Lana del Rey and Adele as inspiration for the album covers of Arab artists, in an article published on August 5, 2021.

• Elvis Presley is undeniably one of the most iconic and influential figures of the 20th century.
  • Bendigo Art Gallery's Curator Lauren Ellis' laud of Elvis, as noted in Scenestr's March 28, 2022 edition.

• Did you ever meet Elvis Presley?
  • Pope Benedict XVI's question to the then terminally ill Irish comedian Frank Carson, who, in 1987, had been ordained with a Papal knighthood of the "Order of St. Gregory" by the now Saint Pope John Paul II. The then sitting Pope's interest, expressed some 30 years after Presley's death, may lie in the fact that he was stationed, as a young professor within the German priesthood at a town not too far from Presley's barracks during his 18 month stay in Germany with the US Army. Carson's zany reply to the Pope? "Not yet, your Holiness, but I soon will", (Published in the Belfast Telegraph on August 10, 2017).

• I think she's going to become as big as Elvis Presley. He was, incidentally, the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person too.
  • Tony Bennett, referring to singer, songwriter, and actress Lady Gaga in an article on Billboard published on August 17, 2011 and during an interview with the Guardian, on 17 October, 2013.

• I remember the first time in '56, I saw Elvis. I'm like, I'm buying that record because it's just the look that gets you, it's almost as much as the music. I kind of always had this theory that you look and listen with your eyes and your ears at the same time. He was the first rock 'n roll artist I loved. In my life, I started with him, but as I got into music, Elvis and the Rolling Stones led me to blues.
  • Bill Bentley,American music industry executive in an interview with Salon, published on May 25, 2018.

• I listen to a lot of Elvis on the school bus. My bus driver, Ken Lyons, is — was, he's not with us anymore — but he's the biggest Elvis fan. So Channel 13 on SiriusXM radio, many, many nights listening to Elvis Presley and him educating me on Elvis. He's great, he's one of a kind. You can label him however you want to, but his country career was unbelievable. He had a voice that even if you didn't see all the moves and how good looking he was and all that stuff, you just listen to his voice when he's on the Louisiana Hayride with Faron Young and it's like, 'Wow, his voice is really unbelievable.' Great singer. And lot to learn.

• • Dierks Bentley, in an interview with popculturecountry and published on their February 15,2019 edition.

• i) New Eminem diss!! ‘RAP ELVIS’ If he don’t respond in 48 hours he’s cancelled,“ ii) ‘Rap Elvis’ already destroyed him. mI already killed him with ‘Rap Elvis.’ Where’s he at? Where’s the response? I want to battle him face-to-face. I think he’s overrated and sucks as a rapper.”
  • Benzino, dissing Eminem i) in an Instagram following his release of a song entitled "Rap Elvis" which he launched on January 31, 2024 and ii) in another instagram dated 24 February, 2024.

• The reason I chose Elvis Presley' songs as the teaser for this article is to trigger some autobiographical memories for adults who were adolescents when his music topped the charts, which he dominated throughout the 1950s. Hopefully, these songs will inspire older adults, baby boomers, and people of all ages to get up from your chair and dance....
  • Christopher Bergland, activities of daily living in an article entitled ̊"One More Reason to Keep Dancing̊" as published in Psychology Today's December 19, 2018 edition.

• Appropriation, then, has something to do with intent. When another culture's property is exploited for profit, that's appropriation, and it's always deserving of criticism. Elvis was just being Elvis. In "Elvis Presley:The Searcher" an HBO documentary, its signal achievement is in showing how the singer's early years, family culture, and socioeconomic background made inevitable the musician he was to become. It makes clear that he was, first, and foremost, a committed artist, utterly dedicated to music and its ability to move people.
  • Robby Berman, as published on the Big Think's April 19, 2018 edition, in an article entitled "Was Elvis Presley a cultural appropriator of black music?

• Fernest Acernaux was not playing zydeco on that accordion, it was rhythm and blues. And you couldn’t make it playing French, so we played blues and rock ‘n’ roll from Fats Domino, Bobby Blue Bland and Elvis Presley.
  • Rod Bernard, celebrating his 72 years of pioneering "swamp pop", which combines New Orleans-style rhythm and blues, country and western, and Cajun and black Creole music, as ´published in the Daily Advertiser on November 6, 2017.

• Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution – the 60's comes from it.”
  • Leonard Bernstein, as told to TIME founder Henry Luce's top aide Richard Clurman in an article published by TIME on August 10, 2017.

• Describe Elvis Presley? He was the greatest there ever was, is, or ever will be. We did not have the airwaves he had, but he delivered what he obtained brilliantly. Let me conclude by saying that I realized during those early years that Elvis and I were creating a new sound. When I heard on the radio that he had died, I had to pull my car over to the shoulder of the road as I couldn't believe the initial reports. Elvis's art was a unique art, his style influential enough to be copied by many. But, no one can copy his. The one thing Elvis had that no one else had was THAT voice
  • Chuck Berry as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html as noted in Harry DeWitts Elvis, the Sun years, and In a AugusT 18 of 1977 phone interview

• Eventually, everybody has to die, except Elvis.
  • Dave Berry, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• We all had similar tastes in the band it seemed. I don't remember the first album I bought but the first record I got was Hound Dog by Elvis.And of course, everybody listens to Elvis now and then.
  • Pete Best,the Beatles' first drummer, in an article published on May 4th, 2015 in which he was asked what was the first record he bought and whether he still listens to Elvis 40 years after his death.

• Welcome to the "Veranda Suite", Elvis Presley used to stay here...
  • The Beverly Wilshire Hotel's Front Desk introduction to room 1001 on the 10th floor, which highlights a rooftop yurt purported to provide its guests with a one-in-a-million urban glamping experience right in the centre of the city of Los Angeles, as detailed in an article in the Telegraph on February 21, 2018.

• i) When you think of Vegas, of show business, of flash, of those performances, you think of Elvis. He is iconic; a lot of performers today look to that for inspiration ii) You have to have soul to sing like Elvis, and Elvis had soul" "
  • Beyonce, i) as published in www.graceland.com and ii) Elvis Viva Las Vegas documentary.

• Elvis Presley movies – I'm a big Elvis fan – although I don't think you should feel guilty about pleasures.
  • UK comedian Sanjeev Bhaska's answer to a question on what is his biggest guilty pleasure, in an interview with the Mail Online published on July 29, 2018.

• When they asked me where I would want them to place my statue, I said I wanted it to stand between the figures of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson,
  • Asha Bhosle, Superstar singer from India, on what she told the Madame Russaaud people in London on the day her statue, only the second from a woman from her country, was unveiled,as published on INDIARV's online website on October 2, 1917.

• Elvis Presley is the pivotal figure in our story about a spectacular house where everything is questioned to subvert the traditional view of private space, which becomes a stage.'
  • Alberto Biagetti, commentong on the Atelier which bears his name's forthcoming exhibit which challenges the idea of domestic space while painting a psychological portrait of a generation whose most private moments are not private at all, and as published in Wallpaper's April 17, 2023 edition.

• Elvis Was A Democrat
  • Joe Biden's ad, as circulated before the 2020 Presidential election.

• Intensity of communication, emotion, how the fusion of poetry is related to me as a listener. I'm disappointed by the bland and perfect vocal accomplishment, which I hear on so many recordings. Which is not to say that classical singers shouldn't try to become vocally masterful. I take my cue more and more from good pop singers. The other day I was looking at an early concert of Elvis Presley. It was fascinating to watch, the body language, the vocal suppleness
  • Conor Biggs, Irish bass/baritone and classical singer, a founding member of Psallentes, a Gregorian chant ensemble, explaining to Michael Dervan, of the Irishman, for tips he looks for in a recital, as a way to better communicate with a listener, as published on that paper on February 1, 2013

• In late 1959, Ibn Saud, the then King of Saudi Arabia. was spending time in Germany for medical reasons. One of his sons was a huge Elvis admirer, giving him a precious garment with golden applications, a waterpipe and a tea set with the royal crest on it, as a thank you gesture for his having left the Grunwald Hotel so that his father and his entire entourage could make total use of it. Soon after posing with the garment for the King's son at his newly rented house on #14 Goethestrasse, his friend and fellow GI Charlie Hodge had a zany idea: why couldn't he go out and walk in front of the German people, or anyone, for that matter, using the garment so as not to be recognized. This was finally done on February 1960, as he took a cab to the "Mainzer Karneval", a big public party, staying there for 3 days in the nearby town of Mainz which was not far from Bad Nauheim. And nobody noticed the by then Sgt Elvis Presley, in spite of him being accompanied by Hodge, plus two bodyguards all dressed as sailors as well as by a mysterious girl from Bad Nauheim, who did the translations. Elvis joined the whole programme, the clubs, the pubs, the bars, parades but stayed sober. The others did not, LOL. but they all returned safe, late at night.
  • As published by BILD, Germany's highest selling tabloid, in an article published in March of 1960.

• (For) Mississippi: Elvis Presley. He served as perhaps the most important figure in the mainstream popularization of early rock, his Billboard chart legacy being equally astounding. He's scored 109 Hot 100 hits between the chart's start in 1958 and 2020 (!) and boasts the most charted albums in the archives of the Billboard 200 albums chart. Simply, he's still the King of Rock & Roll.
  • Billboard,in an article focussing on the top 50 US artists from each of the 50 states of the Union, as published on their July 4, 2020 edition

• So I said "Why don't we turn out all the lights so we don't see this vast empty looking studio the size of a football field and make it as intimate as we can?" We could barely make Elvis out through the glass from the control room into the studio when we cued him the backing-track. And then, Elvis started to sing. It was magic,. Next thing I know he's curled on the floor in almost a fetal position singing with a microphone next to his mouth. The hair on my arms were standing up. And that's the take that we wound up using on the soundtrack album. I did not use it in the TV show because I'm a total believer that if you're doing television I don't want anyone lip-syncing. I want the real thing. And to be completely honest, as great as the sit-down shows are, had I been able to get cameras and tape him there, it would have been even greater. I never put anybody I worked with on a pedestal, yet the first time I saw him, I was awed, first of all, by the way he looked. If he was not famous, you would still stop and stare. As a director, you're looking to see which is the good side, the bad side. Elvis was perfect from every angle. It was like a god walking in towards me...
  • Steve Binder, director of the 1968 NBC/TV Special explaining how Elvis recorded "If I can dream", on June 23, 1968, exclusive for The King's court, on February 6, 2010, as well as in an interview with Vanity Fair published on August 17, 2018.

• His privileged access let him show Muhammad Ali away from the ring: preaching or sleeping, posing with black leaders like Malcolm X and James Meredith or playing with his children or with Elvis Presley.
  • About Howard Bingham, the photographer who took an estimated 1 million pictures of Muhammad Ali over more than 50 years while becoming one of the boxer's closest friends, as published in his obituary in the Seattle Times, on December 23, 2016

• Time magazine at the turn of the century asked its readers to tell them who they thought was the person who contributed most to the 20th century. Well, obviously people said Martin Luther King Jr, others said Nelson Mandela and Elvis Presley. But who do you think was chosen? Einstein, whose books I saw being burned in 1933...
  • Journalist and Holocaust survivor Walter Bingham

• I’m a kid of the ’60s. When I was growing up I used to love going to see Elvis Presley in the cinema. I’m still a big Elvis fan. They’ve rehashed some of his music, with Elvis singing, along with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Really incredible, so beautiful. Myself and my wife actually played one of the songs – And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind – at our marriage ceremony, as we were walking into the registry office.
  • Irish Journalist Charlie Bird in an interview with the Irish Examiner as published on their March 11, 2021 edition.

• The Elvis effect, resulted in a lot more people getting poliovirus vaccinations. We need a series of ‘Elvises’ to promote vaccination for COVID-19 protection
  • Pamela Bjorkman, structural biologist at the California Institute of Technology, in an article published by USA Today's April 19, 2021 edition.

• Cilla would record and perform Beatles numbers throughout her career, but in the 60s and up to the mid-70s, she did more than most. Her renditions of "Yesterday", "For No One", "Across The Universe" and others became big favourites with radio DJs, not to mention with The Beatles, who always liked the way she interpreted their material. Previous praise from Randy Newman, for her take on one of his songs had been sweet music to her ears. And just imagine how she felt when Paul McCartney said to her that her "Long And Winding Road" was the song's definitive version. She had, however and this to her dying day, something to be immensely proud of – Elvis Presley had her "You're my world" on his famous jukebox at Graceland.
  • About UK singer Cilla Black, in an article published at the Sunday Post̪'s December 28, 2018 edition but which nevertheless fails to highlight that it was her "You're my world" which was actually being played at Elvis' jukebox when the Beatles visited him at his 525 Perugia Way home in Bel Air, California on August 27, 1965.

• I was in a friend's studio when a buddy of his called and told him. 'I got some news for you. Do you want me to tell you now or later?' I said later because I was in the studio when President Kennedy was killed and also when Martin Luther King was killed, so I knew the effect bad news can have on a session. When the session was over he told me and I thought he was joking and it didn't hit me until I lay down to sleep. The one other time that I experienced that was when my mother and my son died. It wasn't because he wouldn't he doing any more of my songs. It was like a piece of the whole business. I mean some people you just figure are never going to die. Inside, they'll always live. When they're gone, a certain piece goes and you just can't believe it.
  • Reaction of Otis Blackwell, the African-American songwriter, singer, and pianist, whose work significantly influenced rock and roll, to the death of Elvis Presley

• He would probably be considered a baritone, but he could reach notes that most baritone singers could not. Much of his abilities emanated from a very intense desire to execute a song as he wanted to do it, which meant that he really sang higher than he would normally be able to. When the adrenaline is going, and the song is really pumping, you can get into that mode where you can actually do things, vocally, that you couldn't normally do. So he had a tremendous range because of his desire to excel and be better, and that's why he could do a lot of things that most people couldn't.
  • Terry Blackwood, lead singer of the Gospel group, the "Imperials".

• The moment he walked in, it was almost like all the guys there were bowing down to him, but he didn't care whatsoever. It was an amazing time, because the electricity just floated through the air. Everybody there was on cloud nine but he just acted the way a country boy would act. Elvis was truly a gentleman and a sweetheart of a guy.
  • Drummer Hal Blaine, telling Rollingstone what it felt like to be with Elvis in the studio during the taping of 1968 NBC special, and in an article published on August 16, 2017.

• My grandmother, known as Ms Topp at the local public school, lived on Church Street. She taught Elvis Presley music and I'll tell you a funny story about it. Years later when I asked what he was like, she said ‘Oh you know, he really was a sweet boy but he didn’t have a lick of talent’ so that tells you something about how we judge talent in our family that's for sure,” LOL.
  • Marion Blakey, former head of Rolls-Royce North America and of the Federal Aviation Administration, recalling what she calls her "first claim to fame", in an interview to Tupelo's Daily Journal published on October 31, 2018.

• Record producer Phil Spector, who is currently serving his sentence for the 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson,finally settled his divorce with his third wife, Rachelle Short. In the settlement, signed December 4, 2018, they are forced to sell their infamous castle and evenly divide the proceeds, while she keeps many of her vehicles, most notably a 2015 Aston Martin Vanquish and even a small aircraft. He, on the other hand, keeps his various Grammy Awards, Gold and Platinum Records, a 1965 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III and John Lennon memorabilia, including an electric guitar and a lithograph, as well as a pair of diamond cufflinks gifted personally to him by Elvis Presley.
  • Blast magazine, in an article entitled "Phil Spector splits castle with ex-Wife, keeps diamond cufflinks from Elvis in divorce settlement", published twenty days after it was finalized, in an article published on December 24, 2018.

• From Thursday to Sunday, fans traveled in a mob mentality with Tiger Woods, sprinting from hole to hole and emphatically yelling “He’s like Elvis Presley,” and, “We want to roar with you, baby!” along the way. It was the “Walking Dead” meets “Caddyshack.” A strange combination.. but the truth.
  • Jon Blauvelt, recalling the way Tiger Woods captivated the attention of thousands upon thousands of people who stormed upon Ponte Vedra Beach for the sole reason of watching him play, as published in the Ponte Vedta Reporter on May 13, 2018.

• But better Elvis should pay those multi-millions in taxes (thereby doing as much for the War on Poverty) than you or I. "If his manager", said Goldman, "had sheltered his income from the taxman and invested it intelligently, Elvis Presley could have been as wealthy as Bob Hope". Well, I ask you. But I think we can be grateful to Elvis for his grin, his pelvis, his leap, and for the punky, biracial, engaging, ineluctably erotic and still mysterious tenor of his voice.
  • Roy Blount Jr., reviewing Albert Goldman's Elvis, for the NYT in 1981. See also Kelly Phillips Erb's essay on Forbes, focusing on Elvis being his country's highest personal taxpayer for almost a decade.

• He had an amazing charisma, was so passionate about what he did, and the people could feel it.
  • James Blunt in a 1997 filmed interview

• I remember well the afternoon when Elvis Presley and his mother came into the Tupelo Hardware. He wanted to buy a .22 rifle and his mother wanted him to buy a guitar. I showed him the rifle first and then I got the guitar for him to look at. I put a wood box behind the showcase and let him play the guitar for some time. Then he said he did not have that much money, which was only $7.75 plus a 2% sales tax. His mother told him that if he would buy the guitar instead of the rifle, she would pay the difference for him. The small amount of money that he had to spend had been earned from running errands and doing small jobs for people.
  • Forrest L. Bobo, of the Tupelo Hardware store in Tupelo, MS, in an affidavit written in 1979 where he confirmed the details of the purchase of Elvis first guitar, a 1940 Kay model, paid for by both Elvis, with his savings, and his mother, for his eleventh birthday and on January 8, 1946.

• There is no denying that Elvis had a great talent. He possessed a pliant voice with extensive range and a soft and enveloping timbre. Plus, he was an extremely charismatic person. It’s curious that the two songs of his I sing the mosthave a long history behind them. In both cases, Elvis' versions are extraordinary and memorable. Yet I have the wishful thinking that I too had something to say, to add, artistically speaking, to the performance of these classics. The melody of "Love Me Tender" comes from a sentimental ballad from the time of the American Civil War. It’s a song with roots that go back to the 1800s. As for "Can't help falling in love" the melody is even older, being taken from a very famous Romanza composed at the end of the 18th century, Plaisir d'amour, a well-known French love song that was composed in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini.
  • Andrea Bocelli's laud of Elvis the singer and the artist,in an interview with The Express as published in their January 15, 2022 edition

• We're now trying to get the National Park Service to recognize his home in Louisville as a national historic landmark. Hopefully we can partner with them to continue to run it as a museum, like they've done it with Martin Luther Kings home in Atlanta and with Elvis Presley's home in Memphis. Ali walks among those giants.”
  • George Bochetto, trial lawyer and former Pennsylvania State Boxing Commissioner in an article published at Wave3 on February 24, 2019

• She came back, and that was that. We never spoke about it again. Kind of flattering, now that I look back, to know that she chose me over Elvis. Very few men can say that...
  • Peter Bogdanovich, commenting on how he reacted to Cybil Shepherd's returning to him after Elvis and she were having an affair in 1972 and, after a month or so, he asked her to choose between them, in an interview for the Biography channel on the life of Cybil Shepherd

• At age 5, he decided that he wanted to be a musician when his father took him to the Elvis Presley concert in his home town of Sioux City on May 26, 1956.
  • About US musician Tommy Bolin, (1951–76) former lead guitarist for the UK band Deep Purple, in an article penned by Tom Longden and published on the Des Moines Register on 23 December 2017.

• Three friends of mine and I were singing ‘Teddy Bear" and I remember thinking it not at all remarkable that we would sing this Elvis Presley song. So here's these four black young men singing, ‘Just wanna be your Teddy Bear,’ We just said, “This is OK, this guy is alright.‘ I think my peers thought Elvis Presley was OK.
  • Julian Bond, African American Civil rights leader recalling the time, in 1957, when he and his friends found themselves singing an Elvis song at an ice-breaker event at Atlanta's prestigious black Morehouse College, as published by the Independent on August 16, 2017.

• We Germans will never understand U.S. foreign policy. You save Europe with The Marshall Plan, Berlin with the Airlift, and then you turn around and give us.... Elvis Presley."
  • The Federal City of Bonn's Public Relations Office on the arrival of PFC Elvis Presley to Germany, on October 3, of 1958.

• i) I recently met with Coretta Scott King, John Lewis and some of the other leaders of the American civil rights movement, and they reminded me of the cultural apartheid rock & roll was up against. I think the hill they climbed would have been much steeper were it not for the racial inroads black music was making on white pop culture. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival were all introduced to the blues through Elvis. He was already doing what the civil rights movement was demanding: breaking down barriers. You don't think of Elvis as political, but that is politics: changing the way people see the world. ii) In Elvis, you had the whole lot; it's all there in that elastic voice and body. As he changed shape, so did the world. His last performances showcase a voice even bigger than his gut, where you cry real tears as the music messiah sings his tired heart out, turning casino into temple. I think the Vegas period is underrated. I find it the most emotional. By that point Elvis was clearly not in control of his own life, and there is this incredible pathos. The big opera voice of the later years -- that's the one that really hurts me.
  • Bono lead singer of U2, for Rolling Stone magazine, as published in their April 15, 2004 edition.- 2004 Issue Rolling Stone

• I identify a lot with Elvis. He was a loyal guy and love his style of singing.
  • Jon Bon Jovi as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• Elvis Presley was serving in the military in 1959 when he came under the weather. Doctors diagnosed tonsillitis and suggested that the vocalist, then the biggest performer in the universe, have his tonsils removed. Presley, already more trustworthy than most modern performers in his pleasant acceptance of military duty, agreed. The problem was that no doctor nearby wanted to risk operating on the star, fearing that malpractice would leave him without his golden voice, and either a lawsuit or an an angry fan could ruin any medical career and/or life. They gave him penicillin instead and fortunately everything worked out
  • Ryan Book, in The Music Times Dec 1, 2014

• When Bob King and I hosted our radio shows on WBMK and WKGN in the 1980s, we played R&B music of the 1940s through 1969, talked about the music, the artists and stories related to the music industry and revealed the real names of the performers while taking requests from the listeners. We would chuckle as we introduced “The Twist” by Ernest Evans. How could our audience know that the real name of the man who recorded “It’s Just a Matter of Time” was Benjamin Franklin Peay? I believe I would have changed my name to Brook Benton, too. Yet one could go from bad to worse. I don't know why Otha Elias Bates McDaniels changed his name to Bo Diddley. Dinah Washington had 34 top 10 records. She didn't like her birth name, Ruth Jones, and changed it. Some of the others were James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with 107 hits during the time we were on the air. Billie Holiday, the great jazz singer changed her name from Eleanor Gough. Many referred to her as Lady Day. Ella Fitzgerald, the most honored jazz singer of all time, won the DownBeat magazine poll as top female vocalist more than 20 times. Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul with 60 numbers on that chart during our broadcast. Although we did not play any Bessie Smith, we knew she had been dubbed Empress of the Blues. Finally, on our shows we recognized Elvis Presley, who had 33 numbers on the R&B chart, as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
  • Robert J. Booker African American freelance writer and former executive director of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, in an article published by the Knoxville News Sentinel on 11 October 2016.

• We became very good friends, leased homes in Bel Air and visited each other. And back then, in the early 60's of course, I had a wife, and four little children, he was not married, and would come over some afternoons unannounced and visit with me, my wife and my children. They would maybe jump out of the swimming pool, and come running up and get in his lap, and he would become soaking wet, you know, and I would say, 'Girls, don't do that'. And Elvis said, 'Oh, no, let them, let them'. And I knew that he wanted a family.
  • Pat Boone, in an exclusiv3e interview with David Adamas, for elvisaustralia

• He was not quite a hillbilly, not yet a drugstore cowboy. He was a Southern — in that word's connotation of rebellion and slow, sweet charm.
  • Stanley Booth, casting back to the 1950s in his Esquire magazine article “Situation Report: Elvis in Memphis, 1967.”

• I may consider filing a resolution for Indiana to honor Elvis, after all we should do something to recognize the fact that his last concert was here in Indiana.
  • Bruce Borders Representative for the 45th District in the Indiana House of Representatives, former Mayor of Jasonville, Indiana and an Elvis ETA since 1980.

• i) We must not condemn music which is not on a level as high as we’d like. A person who is listening to Elvis Presley in a five and ten is listening to a folk singer and is getting something from it. ii) The only thing he does like me is that he doesn´t come back for an encore. When he walks away the show is over.
  • Comedian Victor Borge,present at the Civic Auditorium, in Omaha, on May 20,1956.

• We've drafted people who are far, far more important than he is.
  • Chairman of the Memphis Draft Board Stanley Bowers's statement to the media, made public about a month before it became known that he had made a special visit to Graceland, over the 1957 Christmas period, to PERSONALLY inform Elvis of his impending draft, the first time that such a special gesture had ever been made by any Army Board, to any draftee, in the history of the US Armed Forces, as noted in the book, "Colonel Parker, the Curious life of Elvis' manager"

• Apparently Elvis heard my demos, because we were both on RCA, and Colonel Parker thought I should be introduced to him and maybe the two of us start working in a production-writer capacity. But it never came to pass. I would have loved to have worked with him. God, I would have adored it. He did send me a note once, which read "All the best, and have a great tour." I still have that note. He was a major hero of mine and I was probably stupid to think that having the same birthday as him meant something.
  • David Bowie, commenting on what could have taken place had he and Elvis worked together, as published in interview bowiewonderworld and wwwelvisnet.

• He loved Elvis. He once said to me, ‘Elvis is real pretty. People love him because all the women love him – he’s so pretty. I’m not as pretty as Elvis and he draws all the women out of nowhere’. Now, whenever Muhammad and I were in Elvis’s company he was always down to earth, similar to Muhammad, loving to give and help others. Sometimes when people are that great or popular they have arrogance and an ego, but Elvis and Muhammad did not. He used to play his records all the time...
  • Belinda Boyd, AKA Khalilah Ali, the former wife of Muhammad Ali, and mother of 4 of his children,in an article published in the Mirrors's September 9, 2023 online edition.

• My celebrity crush was Elvis Presley. I got to first meet him with George at Madison Square Garden in 1972.
  • Patty Boyd, the former wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, in an interview with the Sydney Herald in an article entitled " Pattie Boyd: What my marriage to George Harrison and Eric Clapton taught me, as published on May 5, 2018. Two years later, she accompanied Clapton to a meet up with Elvis at a Memphis cinema. (Kindly refer to Clapton's entry).

• To have Elvis come home, so to speak during this bicentennial year for the state he was born into is very exciting,
  • Betsy Bradley, Director of the Mississippi Museum of Art, in Jackson, MS, commenting on the loan of a "Triple Elvis" by Andy Warhol, from Richmond's Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and which is being shown at the Jackson museum as part of its Mississippi bicentennial exhibition and as reported by CBS's WJTV Channel 12, on November 29, 2017.

• When I was in high school, playing for Crystal City High at an away game in Memphis, I climbed up the wall that surrounded Graceland, reached over to a limb that was from a tree inside the wall, snapped the leaf off the tree and kept that leaf in my wallet for about six years.
  • Bill Bradley, NY Knicks forward, then U.S. Senator for the state of New Jersey who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in the 2000 election. in an article for CJonline, published on January 27, 2000

• He was such a nice guy to work with, a quick study. He'd go over and play the demo acetate and listen to a bunch of them. When he finally found one he liked, by the time he walked from there back over to the mic, he knew the song.
  • Harold Bradley, guitarist who worked with Elvis in Nashville, as noted in his obituary published on CMT News̺'January 31, 2019 edition.

• Some of the girls were telling me about him, this new kid on the block and I was thinking, who is this upstart? Anyways, I was playing a concert with Johnny Horton in Odessa, TX,and when the curtain opened there was only six people in the audience. Elvis was playing nearby and that's where everybody was. So we gave the people their money back and all headed over to the high school field house to see Elvis. We went backstage but he was swarmed by girls. He couldn't even get out. We tried to get his attention but there were too many people. And then I met him. I'd never seen anybody like him. He had a cute half-grin and these sleepy eyes, and he laughed a lot. I was so struck by his looks, that I probably didn't hear the first fifteen things he said to me. Mom didn't care for him in the beginning, but when he snarfed up two of her biscuits in a matter of seconds and whispered to me, 'Does she have any more?' she began to warm to him. She saw him then, I think, as more like one of her own sons. After that, she'd even smile a little when I'd mention him. When we'd travel to shows in Texas or Arkansas, Elvis and I would sit in the backseat and sing gospel songs at the top of our lungs. The guys in the front would plug their ears and we'd just die laughing. We never officially broke up or said goodbyee. That's the last time I ever saw him, until he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show...
  • Singer Carolyn Bradshaw, whose hit "The marriage of Mexican Joe", preceeded Elvis ' first professional recording at SUN, in an article published in Newsweek's October 22, 2023 edition.

• I was in Las Vegas giving a corporate presentation, because that's how I made money in the off season. Elvis called and I was skeptical at first. But then there is that specific way he spoke, and it was definitely him. He told me he liked the way I played and invited me to see him. It showed how much of a fan he was, that he wanted an NFL player to come and play with him and his buddies. But I had to catch a flight in an hour and man, it would have been the story of a lifetime, playing backyard football with Elvis. And I still think about it now.
  • Terry Bradshaw, recalling with much fondness the day when the phone rang at his Las Vegas hotel room, in the midst of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 1970s glory days, as noted in an article entitled "NFL, the story of Elvis and his NFL fandom" as reported by Fox News on their January 8, 2018 edition.

• Elvis defined the concept of celebrity before it became ubiquitous. His evolution from prodigy to recording artist to actor to movie star and ultimately to myth are all depicted in the collage. AI was used to create his final transformation into a resurrected larger-than-life idol
  • Marco Brambilla, explaining to DesignBoom magazine the reasoning behind his having fit Elvis' pilgrimage into a Las Vegas Sphere at the Venetian Resort’s larger-than-life LED screen —the highest resolution screen ever built, with its 16,000×16,000 pixels of resolution, as published in the magazine's October 1, 2023 online edition.

• Elvis Presley bloated, over the hill, adolescent entertainer, suddenly drawing people into Las Vegas, had nothing to do with excellence, just myth. It’s convenient for people to believe that something is wonderful, therefore they’re wonderful.
  • Marlon Brando, as stated in an interview published in Playboy magazine's January 1979 edition, thus only seventeen months after Presley passed away but more than three decades BEFORE his companion of eight years Rita Moreno, wrote in her 2014 autobiography entitled "Rita Moreno: A Memoir", that during their time together she once went out on a date with Elvis then duly informed Brando, but in both cases only to make him jealous. Brando, who threw chairs all over when told, died in 2004, weighing 310 pounds and was never aware of her ruse.

• Winston Churchill would add wisdom, war stories and outrageous comments. As a dyslexic, and I love to learn from people with very different minds to my own, English mathematician and early computer developer, Ada Lovelace would be my second of six guests. Elvis Presley, one of the greatest entertainers of all time and an example of people with great talent, along with Nelson Mandela, would bring magic to the evening. Finally, the only person on my list whom I have already met is Princess Diana, the most delightful company, her presence at my dinner party spreading joy, laughter, and kindness around the room.
  • UK Billionaire Richard Branson's ideal dinner party, albeit partial, list, as published in Real Clear Life's edition of September 30, 2016.

• Heartbreak, jealousy, loneliness-, Elvis Presley gave luxuriant voice to these less than cheerful emotions, but did you ever think of him as a balladeer of the unbearable bleakness of being, of the horror of existing without purpose in a godless universe? In the improbably vivacious London-born production of "Woyzeck", vintage Elvis recordings provide much of the background music for Daniel Kramer's adaptation of Georg Büchner's great, prophetic drama of existential emptiness from the 1830's. Dolly Parton and, more predictably, Beethoven, make aural guest appearances but it's the voice of the Pelvis that sets the rhythm of life. And if the "wedding" of Presley and Büchner is more shotgun marriage than natural love match, at least you leave the theater feeling less suicidal than you normally do, after two hours with one of the grimmest heroes in Western literature.
  • Ben Brantley, Chief Theater critic for The New York Times, in his article "Where Existential Despair Meets Elvis" (18 November 2006)

• A supplicant asks priest and television star Father Gavlin "Who is more pupular, the Pope or Elvis Presley?" The question is rhetorical...
  • Gaylord Brewer, discussing celebrity on the Woody Allen "A Casebook" (p.124).

• Like most black people in the South, and to whom God has pressed down the harp of a thousand strings, that harp only needed tuning. Elvis' voice was that type of voice that agreed with the thought of Calvary. He had that type of bent and that type of inclination, AND ATTITUDE, that suggested that God could use him. I gave the music a different approach, a new beat, one beat, two beats, high or low, it didn't matter. So, I said come on in here and put your things together. And it was a glorious experience and Elvis was in that group. And when Elvis passed away it was a saddening thing. It was as if the clouds themselves started crying.
  • W. Herbert Brewster, African American Baptist minister, composer, dramatist, singer, poet and community leader, explaining both how he changed the format of many gospel composed songs that led to him writing legendary Gospel songs many iconic Gospel legends such as Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin and others would go on to record, as well as the chance of fate that led to him meeting a yet unknown teenage Elvis Presley when radio DJ Dewey Phillips reached out to him in the early 1950's to integrate his All-Black Church services with some of Dewey's White listeners of his R&B music station, and as quoted in both "Elvis Presley & The Black Community – That Echo Will Never Die" and in his book "People Get Ready!: A New History of Black Gospel Music".

• When you walk into a New Zealander's home there's occasionally a portrait of the Queen or the Pope, but more often than not, hanging on a lounge wall, is a piece of Elvis Presley memorabilia. You'd see a hell of a lot of Elvis. As far as we kiwis are concerned, Elvis never left the building.
  • Jackie Bridges, secretary of the Memory of Elvis Fan Club New Zealand, recalling her times in real estate in the city of Auckland, in an article entitled " Kiwis can't help falling in love with the memory of Elvis Presley", as published in Stuff.co.nz on August 11, 2018.

• I didn’t really know what it was, but they were interested in me reading the script. I wasn’t an actor and wasn’t pursuing being an actor. It was just an avenue, to be honest, of making some money because I’d just left school. They flew me to New York, and I had an audition, and I got the thing.
  • Brigitte Call me baby's lead singer Wes Leavins on getting the part of Elvis Presley in a NY theatre's production of the "Million Dollar Quartet", as published in WTTW's March 1, 2024 edition.

• In early 1969, at American Studios in Memphis, I had a secret entrance made from an underground garage, a trap door coming from underneath the basement, so Elvis could drive in and the people wouldn't chase him. Girls would pull his hair, as well as his clothes off and all that stuff, which was fun, but eventually it got to be a pain. So I told him how he wouldn't have that problem, he could just go in, come up the steps, and we would record..
  • David Briggs, in an article published on Billboard magazine, November 25, 2016 and entitled "As Nashville Grows and Gentrifies, David Briggs Sets About Preserving Music Row History"

• I'd have Sir David Attenborough though I think everyone would have him. Then Emma Thompson was one that I think would be really nice to have dinner with as she's always seemed like a really interesting lady, so she would be on my alive list of guests. In terms of deceased people, I would have a young Elvis I think, or before he was at his peak anyway. Then JFK. They would be four interesting people, with different backgrounds. You could go right back and say Julius Caesar but I am NOT sure he would totally get what David Attenborough's been doing...
  • Miles Briggs, British politician and member of the Scottish Parliament after the 2016 election, answering a question of what would be his ideal short list of dinner guests at his table, as published in Horywood on January 17, 2018

• i) The late writer Norman Mailer, used to tell me that, in history, only a few names get known. So, you know, Andy Warhol would paint Mao Tse Tung or Elvis Presley. I think Trump always wanted to be in that class of a known name.ii) I see Elvis as someone who was a pioneer in smashing up some of the conformity of the Eisenhower fifties. There was something about him, an aura, that he created which made him one of the revolutionarfigures of Cold War America.
  • Douglas Brinkley, describing the by then former US President Donald Trump as someone clever and smart but with no sense of history,in an interview with CNN on 15 July 202 and ii) as quoted in Paramount ?lus' in Reinventing Elvis.

• That's when the price of art really started going up....
  • Billionaire Eli Broad, after pointing towards Andy Warhol's "Single Elvis", since 2015 gracing the walls of the then recently built family-owned Broad Museum in Los Angeles, CA, and as told to reporter Jeffrey Fleishman who interviewed him and his wife Edye inside the museum for the LA Times on August 22, 2015..

• We at Fox were the only people who could put John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe in movies and not have them do any business,
  • Jack Brodsky, Fox producer, as noted in Vanity Fair's April 1998 edition

• In the live music business, it doesn’t get any bigger than stadium concerts. Thanks to the large seating capacity of most stadiums, artists playing at the top echelon of touring can earn $4 million to $5 million per show — double and triple what they can earn at arenas.But the model for stadium touring business wasn’t drafted by a major concert promotion company or a professional sports executive, but by a 16-year-old girl named Kay Wheeler who found herself swept off her feet by a Mississippi singer named Elvis Presley. According to the new book "Rock Concert" by Wall Street Journal music and arts contributor Marc Meyers, Wheeler convinced the Cotton Bowl to host a concert headlined by the “Blue Suede Shoes” crooner, convinced a local radio station to be her partner, and drew in a capacity crowd thanks a letter writing campaign promoting the concer
  • Dave Brooks, reviewing ** Marc Meyers,'s "Rock concert", an oral history telling the story of the individuals who helped launch the modern live music industry, as published in Billboard's December 18, 2021 edition

• I'm sitting in the drive-through and I've got my three girls in the back and this station comes on and it's playing "Jailhouse Rock," the original version, and my girls are jumping up and down, going nuts. I'm looking around at them and they've heard Dad's music all the time and I don't see that out of them."
  • Garth Brooks, as published in www.graceland.com

• I like what he's doing. He’s rocking the blues, that's all he's doing. Rock and roll is here to stay because it comes from natural people. Rock and roll is a natural steal from the blues, and the blues will never die and the blues can't die because it's a natural steal from the spirituals.
  • Bluesman Big Bill Broonzy, considered a profound influence on numerous African American musicians, including Muddy Waters, all of whom admired him, not just for his musicianship, but for having the courage to write several songs dealing with the injustices African-Americans suffered, particularly in the Jim Crow era, as stated in one of Studs Terkel's Chicago radio shows, sometime in 1957. Also equally important, perhaps even more important, were Big Bill Broonzy's blues songs of protest (he wrote a number of them) about African-Americans and what they were dealing with in the Jim Crow era.

• I named it Planet Elvis (17059) because I had discovered a similar one, just two days before and which I called Rock and Roll (17058). It just seemed befitting...
  • Australian astronomer John Broughton, after having discovered a couple of small planets at the Ready Creek Observatory, located at the Gold Coast, in Queensland Australia, on April 13 and 15 of 1999, both of which now duly inscribed in Wikipedia's List of Minor Planets.

• Well, they were James Brown, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Rick James, Prince and Donny Hathaway....
  • Bobby Brown, naming his biggest musical influences in a 1989 interview

• He always felt like somebody I should do and I think the Luhrmann film bounced the idea back into my head. So when I came to paint, he just sort of made sense. Elvis is one of these big characters that end up populating your life even if they’re in the background, even if you don’t listen to them or watch them a lot. Years ago I had this quite clear thought that at some point, shortly before death, we’ll each have this sense of ‘Oh those were all the people, not just celebrities but anybody who populated my life
  • Illusionist Derren Brown on the affection he has acquired foricons like Elvis, and thus his having made him the first subject of a painting since the lockdown, as noted in the Express', September 17, 2023 edition.

• Imagine Elvis with a master's degree performing a whole set about mandatory staff meetings.
  • About Eddie Brown, who in 2017 posted a video called, 'What Teachers Really Say." which went viral, as did his next 60, making him an icon among educators throughout the US, as highlighted in the CBS Evening News' edition of February 9, 2018-

• He said I was good and I said he was good, we never argued about that. I wasn't just a fan, I was his brother; Elvis was a hard worker, dedicated, and God loved him. Last time I saw him was at Graceland, We sang 'Old Blind Barnabus' together, a gospel song. I love him and hope to see him in heaven. There'll never be another like that soul brother.
  • James Brown, in the book Elvis Has Left the Building: The Day the King Died, p 30

• He was one of a kind, nobody like him. And they all respected him. The unique thing about talking football to another celebrity is that it never comes as real, but with Elvis you could because he understood it at that level and that made it good for me to exchange because I could talk to him as I couldn't talk to an actual novice. He was the biggest personality, was truly big and I'm happy he was a friend of mine
  • Jim Brown, in a documentary entitled NFL Elvis, released on 30 November of 208.

• Elvis was just his own thing, man. My grandmother was a huge fan of Elvis; I remember she used to have this amazing Elvis bag that she would take everywhere, it was just her face unwrapped in a handbag. As I got older, I started listening to his music, and if you really listened to him, he wouldn’t be afraid to do anything. I find myself trying to look like him all the time, in “Blue Christmas” or “Hound Dog.” No matter how long this world lasts, he will still be talked about.
  • Kane Brown, stating his love for Elvis in an article entitled "Why Ken Brown loves Cookie Monster, Elvis Presley, and ‘Ted Lasso’ and published in the NYT's January 11, 2022 edition

• As a vocalist, Elvis Presley possessed the rare ability to give the melodramatic a genuine authenticity; it's easy to take Elvis Presley for granted and yes, we all know that Elvis had a huge role in defining rock in the beginning, but few of us really know what that means; but then there's that voice, which Elvis uses to cut through to the most complex meaning of the song — the meaning that the song's writers might not even know exists — and lay it bare. On "From Elvis In Memphis", he takes the longing sentiment in "Any Day Now" (1969), his voice lending it a certain buoyancy that most artists would never even think belongs, and in doing so he embeds a deceptively simple pop song with depth and mystery, all through inflection; a craftsman at heart, his experimentation didn't manifest itself in innovation, but in refinement of his already incomparable technique; as a result, "From Elvis In Memphis" documents what happens when an artist who instinctively personalizes the songs he sings decides to get even more personal; the outcome is raw, stripped of all pretense, and dedicated to the idea of the song, his voice bringing with it a grave amount of weight; if you want an indication of why Elvis deserves a place in current pop culture, pick up "From Elvis In Memphis"; the music speaks for itself; authenticity never goes out of style.
  • Marty Brown, music critic for Culture Cartel.com, reviewing "From Elvis in Memphis", on 15 August 2002

• In 1969 I was playing piano for the Stamps and we got invited to go to the Elvis suite at the International, after his first show there on July 31, 1969. J.D. Sumner, who was Elvis' idol from way back and the leader of the Stamps, said that we would have to flip a coin to see who would go with him to the suite and meet Elvis. And I won, and then when I entered the room, and saw him, I thought "Man if I could look like this dude, I could get every chick in the world. He was the coolest person I have ever seen in my life. Playing piano for him, even if it was only fir the last two years of his life, defines my own life, in spite of all the success I've had as a producer since.
  • Tony Brown American record executive and pianist, known primarily for his work in country music, producing Reba McEntire, Vince Gill, and George Strait, in an interview with the Today show, on August 16, 2017.

• Elvis Presley, at age 13
  • Argentinean singer and director of the the Espacio Malaver Singing School Franciso Brunetta's answer as to who was his first and greatest influence, and at what age that took place, as published in Queen's Chronicle's edition of September 15, 2016. Brunetta was born actually 5 years AFTER Presley's death.

• I‘m a music man and like to DJ on the decks in my kitchen, where I often listen to tunes while rustling up food, a bit like Gordon Ramsay. I love Ray Charles, Sting, Dire Straits and sometimes I‘ll even drop some Elvis and all that has got me into a bit of bother with neighbours
  • Frank Bruno, in an article entitled "UK Boxing legend Frank Bruno in trouble with neighbours for blasting out Elvis tunes" as published in the "Stock Daily Dish" 's December 1, 2019 edition.

• What's amazing is that when we were walking up the stairs to come up, I was like ‘Gosh, a lot of cool people have come up these stairs.' That’s when Stephen Colbert pointed out to me that Elvis Presley performed right where our interview was taking place. He’s your dream collaboration,” Dierks Bentley, who was co-hosting then asked me: “Living or dead? I choose Elvis, which is a weird thing to ask somebody. People are like, ‘Living or dead? Who would you like to perform with?’ I'm like, ‘That’s kind of weird, but I always say Elvis. In fact, try to perform my shows like Elvis is watching and try to do the best I can night in and night out and have a big ol’ performance."
  • Luke Bryan, during the taping of his segment at the Ed Sullivan Theatre, for CBS's Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as published on CMT News on March 29, 2017

• His death is like that of Elvis Presley.
  • African American Kobe Bryant fan, on his death at age 41 following a horrific helicopter crash, as told in an interview outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA, on January 26, 2020

• My first-grade music teacher played a video of an Elvis performance for the class and that was it for me. My mom dyed my hair black and I got a leather jacket, and she made me a gold lamé jacket, and I started writing ‘Elvis’ on all my papers because I believed, in first grade, that I was Elvis.”
  • Tyler Bryant, frontman for Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown, arguing in favor of music programs not being cut in elementary schools, in an interview with Billboard and published on 26 October, 2017

• I hold no brief for Presley and I’ve never seen him, but when police are allowed to set up cameras and be judge, that’s an invasion of an artist’s rights and should be looked into, mighty carefully, by every artist and actors’ agency in our business.
  • Yul Brynner Oscar winner for Best Actor in 1957, defending Elvis after the Los Angeles police set up cameras to watch his second show at the Pan Pacific Auditorium and ostensibly have some kind of proof should his behaviour be deemed inappropriate, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, on 29 October, 1957.

• I think that soul has little to do with the colour of your skin or where were you born. It's the same with acting, if the actor believes in the story, so does the public, so I thank Elvis, who is one of my favourite singers in both the R&R and R&B fields, for doing the music I love the most.
  • Canadian superstar Michael Bublé, in an interview to the Diario La Razon, in Buenos Aires, prior to his performing in his wife's country, and as published in that daily's online edition on 10 September 2014

• At first his Vegas career didn't go quite as planned. In fact, Elvis's first appearance in the gambling capital was in 1956 at the New Frontier Hotel. However, he didn't receive the support from local publications, with many believing that his rough sound wasn't what the middle-aged audience in Vegas at the time wanted. Therefore his two-week residency was cut short after just a week. Nevertheless, he made the perfect comeback with hundreds upon hundreds of consecutive sell-outs from 1969 until December 1976. He opened the then-International Hotel Casino, with more than 2,000 fans turned out for opening night in July 1969 which saw the line that lead into the city's largest showroom stretch to the hotel's front lobby. No one has quite made as much of an impact since.
  • Brett Buchanan, in an article entitled "Who Is The Biggest Celeb To Perform At Vegas?" published at Alternative Nation on October 14, 2016

• Just the other day, I was interviewed for a story, and sure enough, the interviewer brought up my night with Elvis in Paris and couldn't believe I had been in that close a relationship with him. People don't want to hear about President de Gaulle, President Kennedy or Frank Sinatra. They weren't that important, compared with him. A picture was taken of the two of us, but I can't find it. People just have to take my word for it. This is how it all happened. Elvis, in his Army uniform and on leave from Germany was staying at the Hotel Prince de Galles, so the moment I got the tip I went there to interview him and at one point I said, "What are you doing tonight?" He said, "Nothing, sir."I said, "Come out with me and I'll show you Paris." He said: "That would be very nice, sir. No one has offered to take me out in Paris." "That's because they don't know you're here. We'll just go out, the two of us, so we won't be bothered by a lot of fans." I came home for dinner and told my wife, "I'm going out with Elvis Presley tonight." She didn't believe it. I said: He's in Paris all alone and I'd be doing our country a service by showing him around." My wife didn't like the idea of the two of us going out on the town. She said, "I'd like to come along." I told her, "I promised Elvis it would only be the two of us." She said, "Why didn't you bring him here for dinner?" I said, "That wouldn't be Paris." I recall now her saying to my children, "Do you know who Daddy's going out with tonight?" They asked, "Who?" My wife said, "I can't tell you, but you have his records in your room." I picked Elvis up at his hotel and told him the Lido had the best show in town and I could get him the best table. After the show, we went backstage and that's when all the fun began. Everyone who has interviewed me wants a complete description of how he performed that night. I have been living off Elvis Presley ever since. To this day, when people ask me what was my greatest night in Paris, I tell them it was at the Lido with him. If only I could find that damn photo...
  • Art Buchwald, Pulitzer Prize winner journalist, humorist and commentator recalling his time spent with Elvis in Paris in June of 1959 in an article entitled The King and I, and published by the Paris based newspaper he worked for many years as a columnist, the International Herald Tribune, in 2006.

• Presley brought an excitement to singing, in part because rock and roll was greeted as his invention, but for other reasons not so widely reflected on: Elvis Presley had the most beautiful singing voice of any human being on earth. Presley, for some fans, was primarily a balladeer. "Don't Leave Me Now" (1957), is a love song given distinctiveness by Presley's twangy enunciation, and sustained by the guitar and rhythm sections designed perfectly to complement the balladeer, filled out towards the song's end – as with so much of Presley- ,with what one conveniently calls the heavenly choir, which wafts him home but never overwhelms the country lilt Presley gives his music. said:
  • William F. Buckley, Jr. in his article "The Crooner, R.I.P.: Perry Como and the casual mode," published by the National Review on June 11, 20

• I think it's a little harder to churn out interfaces with sociology. When I was a kid and Elvis broke through it was a sociological phenomenon that lasted through the Beatles and even a bit through Fleetwood. I grew up in Atherton, California, with my two older brothers, one of whom, Jeff turned me onto Elvis. Without Jeff, I probably wouldn't be here today, so damn you, Jeff!!!."
  • Lindsay Buckingham, lead singer and guitarist for the UK/American band Fleetwood Mac, speaking at the University of Southern California after a two-hour performance and Q&A session at the University's Bovard Auditorium and as published by Billboard on May 1, 2015

• And then of course, the same Phillips auction that saw the new Speedmaster record, also gave us the new overall record for an Omega wristwatch in the form of a watch was owned by Elvis Presley. It absolutely crushed its pre-sale estimates of CHF 50,000-100,000 on the way to $1.8 million, overtaking a record set by a rare observatory tourbillon sold at Phillips's in November of 2017 Geneva sale.
  • Jon Bues, writing in an auction report on the sale of Elvis' 1960 Omega on May 12, 2018, the buyer being the Omega Museum on Biel Switzerland.

• Angel loved kittens, horses, shopping and Elvis Presley. Most of all she loved giving hugs. Her parents would often take her mushroom hunting, usually carrying her Bible with her .
  • The Buffalo Reflex's obituary of Angel Elizabeth King, age 10, who died of brain cancer on December 15, 2018 and as published on their December 22, 2018 online edition.

• He was the only man from Northern Mississippi who could shake his hips, and still be loved by rednecks, cops and hippies.
  • Jimmy Buffet, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• I will release my tax returns if Donald Trump does too and yes, I will again wear my Elvis costume and even dance with Hillary in the streets of Omaha, as she wants, if she wins.
  • US Mega Billionaire Warren Buffet's promise, as delivered in an interview following an article published on the Washington Post on August 1, 2016.

• In 1967, we were once performing two sets at DC's Cellar Door (a 163-seat music club) at 34th and M streets and as we were changing for the second set, the manager tapped on our door and said, ‘You have five minutes. By the way, 'The King' is in the house. I was the baby in the group and the others had seen queens and kings, they perform all over the world. I had never seen a king. I changed my clothes and cleaned up. I peeked and when I looked out, there was Elvis. He and Col. Parker were secluded from the audience. They had been there for the first set. When he stood up I was breathless. He asked me to sit down, but I had to go. I said, ‘I want you to know, I followed your career.’ And he said in his Elvis voice, ‘The Platters were very influential in my career. You did extremely well on ‘I Only Have Eyes for You.’ He said he liked the way I sang it in the first set. I went back and told the guys and they didn't believe me. I said, ‘Yes he is out there.’ We go on stage and I was looking for him. I had the microphone in my hands and he was gone.....
  • Milton Bullock when asked what was his favourite moment as a singer for The Platters,in an interview for the Daily Herald and published on 16 September 2018.

• He had a love for God, his family, the congregation and a true reverence of Elvis Presley.
  • About Reverend Clayton Burch, of Goshen Free Will Baptist Church in Mount Holly, as quoted from his eulogy by Rev. Tommy Bulla, and as reported in the Gaston Gazzete on December 8, 2018

• One male vocalist stands out above all others, and that is Elvis Presley. To understand why, I suggest listening to Elvis's 1954 Sun recording of "Blue Moon" and his 1960 version of "Fever." And be sure not to miss his rockabilly version of "Good Rockin' Tonight." Then check out his tender, sweet version of "Crying in the Chapel." Next, listen to the powerful high notes he hits on "American Trilogy," especially his version of "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Then listen to his undervalued masterpiece "What Now My Love" and "It's Now or Never." The latter is wonderfully sweet, until the power of Elvis's voice kicks in and takes the song to another dimension. Now listen to him growl out "One Night." Finish by listening to his enchanting country-flavored "That's Alright (Mama)" and gospel songs like "Peace in the Valley." Try as I may, I can't think of another male singer who can go from nearly infinite sweetness, to ferocity, to spirituality, to tremendous power the way Elvis does. With the right song in hand, he was untouchable. But was Elvis the greatest male falsetto singer of all time? It's hard to say if Elvis was really singing falsetto at times because his voice was so wonderfully high, pure, sweet and effortless. But does it really matter how he did what he did?
  • Poet and music columnist Michael R. Burch, as noted in his website The Hyper Texts and for an article entitled the World's Greatest Falsetto singers

• Rock and roll then, is a combination of gospel songs, blues, bebop, the love ballad, the folksy material of the hillbilly or western type song, and things based on personal experience. Rock and roll today has no color lines in its listening appreciation or in its development.
  • Dan Burley, African American musician and journalist, as quoted in a chapter detailing the mass reaction to the early Elvis by the black community and as noted in page 135 of the book entitled "Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race"by Brian Ward.

• He stepped onto the stage, the band started to play, His hips began to move. He sang 'Good Rockin' Tonight' and before he was done, the crowd was whirled into a frenzy. Boy, he was different. As soon as he walked into the building you could feel his energy. He had the looks, the songs and the charisma. Whatever a star has, he had it – more than anyone else.”
  • Guitarist Sonny Burgess, talking about seeing Elvis perform, in 1955, in an article on the WashingtonTimes.com

• When at last I made my journey to the land of the blues, I never dreamt for one minute that I'd actually become friends with the guys who were my mentors, heroes and my cultural icons. (Witherspoon's) voice held a great mysticism for me, like when I first heard the voice of Elvis Presley—you knew it was coming from the source.
  • Eric Burdon, lead singer of "The Animals", commenting on his meeting bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon, as published in Gadfly's March 1998 edition.

• When I was on 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' I met Elvis. He was doing his 2nd appearance there, was super hot, very sweet and I even got his autograph for my kid sister. And did I think there would be something between us? Well, yes I thought so, but he didn't.(LOL)
  • Comedian Carol Burnett, in an interview with Andy Cohen, and speaking about meeting the 20th Century's greatest celebrities, as published on TooFab on May 10, 2018.

• We never played together but I went to where he was playing and doing the blues. He took the blues and made rock 'n' roll out of it. And he give an account of everything he did. He said this is so-and-so's music. You know down in Birmingham, I can't think of the guys name, but Elvis did one of his numbers. Had it on a record, ya know. He went down there where Elvis was playing and walked up and his car had quit on him on the highway.After he got done with his album, he bought him a brand new car. He would do things like that. He made 2 or 3 people down in Atlanta and Birmingham rich, ya know. He had been doing their music and they didn't think they were gonna get nothing out of it, but he went down and found 'em, in fact bought 'em homes, gave them money and everything. I think he helped the black people. I sure enough do...
  • R.L Burnside, African American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist, as published in Rockmattares, from an interview in 1996 entitled "One bad ass bluesman"

• Burroughs is "The Elvis of Letters!
  • About William S. Burroughs, as noted in AllMusic, in an article about the 1985 release of the album of the said name.

• He's Elvis. We've found Elvis and he looks like Tiger.
  • Rick Burton, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Centre at the University of Oregon, comparing Tiger Woods with Elvis Presley.

• One day, my mother-in-law received a call from the school principal, who said that George was in his office, after having disrupted his music class. In true Elvis fashion, he'd taken a piece of charcoal and drawn sideburns and then tried to perform as Elvis for the other children."
  • Former US First Lady Laura Bush, recalling his mother in law's, the also US First Lady Barbara Bush, having to go to school to pick up the future President of the United States, then 10 year old, after his having been on partial detention for imitating Elvis.

• You Memphis politicians had better watch out if Elvis Presley ever decides to enter politics.
  • George H. W. Bush, during a speech at a luncheon previous to the Jaycees ceremony honoring Elvis, in 1970.

• Elvis Presley was a great entertainer who helped define an era. Thirty years after his death, his unmissable sound and sensational performances continue to influence generations of artists and inspire countless fans. This week is an opportunity to celebrate his life and career and be recognize his enduring contribution to popular culture.
  • US President George W. Bush's laud of Elvis on the 30th Anniversary of his death, in a letter addressed to EPE and the Presley family, sent from his White House office and signed by him on Jul 19, 2007

• I heard Elvis Presley and I knew what my life was meant to be.
  • Robert Butcher, English born photographer, best known for his American Madonnas and Liars, as published in Geeks of Doom.

• i) I am just profoundly honored that Baz has invited me on this journey with him. It’s an extraordinary privilege. And I just feel so blessed to be working with such singular directors like him and Quentin Tarantino. ii) It was huge shoes to fill. I think when I began the process of this I set out to get my voice to sound identical to his. I held that for a long time and what that does is it also instills fear; that I'm not going to achieve that or whatever. That got the fire inside of me burning to work and work and work.
  • Austin Butler, i) as reported by People magazine on its July 23, 2019, edition in connection with his being cast as Elvis in Baz Luhrmann's 2020 biopic ii) and by MENAFN on their March 17, 2022 edtion

• I've got nothing on the King
  • Mark Butler, downplaying his Elvis singing, at a political rally, as reported in newscomaustralia's October 25 2023 edition.

• Why can't you see, what you're doing to me....
  • Gral. Micael Bydén, Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, singing "Suspicious Minds" while marching in front of a huge crowd at 2018's Stockholm's Pride parade.

• The third time I saw him I was with Bobbie Gentry and he asked me, and my friends to go up to his suite, at the Las Vegas Hilton, which I did with my manager. It was so nice.
  • John Byner, while promoting his book “5 Minutes, Mr. Byner”, as recirded in an interview for youtube in 2018.

C

• Elvis Presley? I can't see that he has any talent.
  • Cab Calloway, as reported in The Ottawa Citizen (April 3, 1956, before he ever saw Presley perform)

• You got Elvis and David Bowie … they’re my heroes. It’s clear to me that Elvis was an opera singer
  • Nicholas Cage, as noted in the Verve Tomes' January 28, 2021 edtion

• It was weird to play Elvis when I was 42, knowing that he died at that same age. TCB, baby!
  • Bruce Campbell, on his X account, reflecting on playing Elvis in the comedy horror film "Bubba Ho-Tep" , as published in Screen Rant's August 16, 2024 online edition.

• His life took a major turn at the age of 10, when listening to Radio Luxembourg and he heard Elvis Presley.
  • Cindy Campbell, speaking about his dad, Irish Musician Eamonn Campbell, in an article published on October 27, 2017 by Irish Herald

• I didn't see a color, he wasn't white, he wasn't black... he was Elvis.
  • Naomi Campbell, UK model and actress, in Elvis Lives an ABC 2002 Special.

• I met him in Albuquerque, NM, in 1956 and I got to see him on the raw, with Bill, Scottie and DJ. They were just awesome, so electrifying, with so much energy. I could understand why he was becoming so big then, and become even bigger later. He was a very handsome man, his aura and his honesty. His charisma was huge, but his was very special.....
  • Glen Campbell, in an interview with Elvisaustralia.

• Had Presley never sung a note he might have still caused a stir, but sing he did. Watershed hits such as "All Shook Up" (1957) or, for instance, "Are You Lonesome Tonight", (1960), were eminently Presley's from the moment he put his stamp on them. His jagged, bubbly highs, and Southern baritone jump from those recordings like spirits from a cauldron. Elvis crooned romantically, then screeched relentlessly, always pouring his heart into the lyric and melody. After Elvis, the male vocalist could no longer just sing a song, especially in the new world of rock-n-roll. The "feel" of a performance far out-weighed the perfection of the take.
  • James Campion, in his book "The 25 Most Influential Americans of the 20th Century", published in 1996.

• The Camarón Island is for San Fernando what Elvis Presley is to Memphis
  • Antonio Canales (flamenco), flamenco dancer extraordinaire,. discussing the tourist attractions in the Cameron Islands as published in Andalucia Information's 25 July online edition.

• We let him sing, he did fine and the crowd loved him but I thought at the time he would be a flash in the pan.
  • Ace Cannon, recalling the night in the late summer of 1954 when DJ Dewey Phillips brought a guy to the Eagles's Nest, where Ace was playing with his band, and asked him to let him sing a song, as published in Scotty Moore's online page.

• I don't get it. Why would all these people stand in line for so long to get my husband's autograph? I wouldn't stand in line for anyone, except for one person – Elvis Presley.
  • Dot Cannon, wife of Billy Cannon, twice a Heisman Trophy winner for LSU's football team, and an All American who later became a pro player in teams in both the AFL and the NFL.

• When I met him the first time in Memphis at the Peabody Hotel, it was a thrill. The thing was, he turned around and said to me “Freddy, I bought 'Tallahassee Lassie' and put it in my jukebox at Graceland”. All these singers were in the room, like Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker, you could go down the line. So when he said that in front of all of them, he made me feel like a hundred feet tall. He liked my record because it was rock-and-roll. That was the biggest compliment of my life.
  • Freddy Cannon in his autobiography "Where the action is"

• You can not knock the fact that he's one of the kings of rap. His ability is second to none and he's definitely gonna go on the Mount Rushmore of Rap as one of the kings. He's Elvis Presley, the guy that took it to another level
  • Nick Cannon for HipHopDX, speaking about Eminem, in an article published on their January 3, 2019 edition

• There is no way to describe the pandemonium. I never saw as many women in my life. They were screaming, yelling. I was just horrified. I thought, 'They're going to kill him.' And they would have if they could have gotten loose, I'm afraid.
  • Comedian Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, who'd come in on the flight with Elvis to be one of his co-stars at the Pearl Harbor USS Arizona Memorial benefit, as noted in Biography's December 4, 2018 online edition.

• The opening strains of "Heartbreak Hotel", which catapulted Presley's regional popularity into national hysteria, opened a fissure in the massive mile-thick wall of post-war regimentation, standardization, bureaucratization, and commercialization in American society and let come rushing through the rift a cataract from the immense waters of sheer, human pain and frustration that have been building up for ten decades behind it.
  • Critic Robert Cantwell, in his memoir Twigs of Folly

• Elvis Presley gave me the only dinner party I've ever heard of his giving in Las Vegas. He lived very near me in Palm Springs, CA, and just as he was going to open at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, he invited me for dinner at the hotel. I had never seen him before, but he was nice and I sort of liked him.
  • Truman Capote, on the night he met Elvis at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, in August of 1969, as published on hellsunutterablelament's August 2, 2010 edition.

• In Memphis, they had built a football stadium, so we televised it for a two weeks to test the market. One Monday I am in the hotel, and so I get a phone call and this guy identifies himself as one of my fans, and he says he's Elvis Presley. I thought he was kidding, so he said "You don't believe me, go down to the front of the hotel in 10 minutes, and I ll prove it to you" So I went down there and he walks out of a Rolls Royce, we shake hands and takes me to Graceland. So after 15 minutes, I went to do the basket ball game then I came beck to his house. We sang, spoke, and suddenly he asked me if I had dinner, and if I liked barbecue ribs, so I stayed until 6 am eating a barrel of BBQ Ribs from The Rendevous, a restaurant which he called to make the order himself. That is how sensitive that guy was.
  • Harry Caray, sportscaster on radio and television, in a 1998 interview with Roy Firestone

• I almost died when I was told I would be his co-star. He was an extraordinary handsome person with a very down to earth personality and a velvet voice. When he sang in the film I would melt. "Why is this happening to me?" I would say. I just couldn't believe it...
  • Elsa Cardenas, Mexican actress who starred with Elvis in 1962's Paramount-produced "Fun in Acapulco"

• In New Haven, they put me on the stage to help whip up some interest in "Bayou". They hollered when I did the dance. It out-Elvises Elvis. Years later, during the filming of Change of Habit, he came up to me and said, ‘Aren’t you Timothy Carey? Didn’t you do The World's greatest sinner?" I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I always wanted to see that movie- Do you have a 16 mm version?’ I only had a 35 mm, but we proceeded to talk about it. He knew all about it. I only had four prints. That was one of the reasons that I didn't send it. All hail the King! Oh, and Elvis too.
  • Timothy Carey, who would later appeared in Elvis last film, Change of Habit (1969), recalling the time he played the first of two characters, the other being the lead in "The world's greatest sinner", whose dancing was totally and purposely based on Elvis's act, as told to columnist George Murray in 1958.

• The first thing I think of when I think about coming to Las Vegas and playing is always Elvis, it's always the first thing on my mind. When we were working on 'The Joke, my producer Dave Cobb wanted me to understand the emotion and intensity in a song, so suggested my listening to 'American Trilogy'
  • Brandi Carlile, as published in www.graceland.com and on Billboard's edition of February 2, 2018.

• Elvis? He was a bogus white guy with sex appeal and good looks who ripped off a lot of great black music, watered it down and made it safe for lame whites who couldnt handle the experience of raw emotional black music. Never grew as an artist, remained an entertainer. Fuck Elvis"
  • George Carlin, comparing four amongst the greatest entertainers of the 20th Century and rudely dismissing Elvis, Sammy Davis Jr and Frank Sinatra. His choice for the greatest amongst them was Michael Jackson who, as he put it, "should be given a bunch of kids and let him dance, as noted in a You Tube entitled "Michael Jackson beats them all" and which quite understandably has yielded less tha 3,000 views in 10 YEARS. .

• Both came from humble backgrounds and meteorically captured their respective fields in a way that seemed to break entirely with the past and they both went into film as a means of exploring the mythic dimensions of their celebrity.
  • John Carlin, as quoted in Christie'e laud of both Elvis and Andy Warhol, in connection with the May 15, 2019 sale of a Double Elvis, as noted by Christie's online page.

• In 1957, I traveled for the Toronto Telegram to Buffalo for Elvis' first concert there. I observed that he was a quiet, soft-spoken fellow, not so much affected by his new-found stardom as bewildered by it. He was savvy enough to hoist himself onto a backstage sawhorse so that, in a photo of the two, he appeared much taller than me, though the difference was actually only an inch. That photo became my treasured family memento.
  • Canadian reporter Mike Carmichael, as noted in the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Telegram, on 23 November, 2017 in an obituary entitled "Carmichael, a witness to history".

• The success of posthumous duets is often indirectly correlated to the respect with which the dearly departed is treated: the higher the pedestal, the less convincing the result. Wisely, the female country stars on “Christmas Duets” try to match Elvis Presley's mood, whether it's Carrie Underwood's tenderness on “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (1957), or Wynonna Judd's brawn on “Santa Claus Is Back in Town.” (1957), On a wild eight-minute “Merry Christmas Baby,”(1971), Gretchen Wilson saunters up to the song, full of attitude, before giving in; it sounds as if she's flirting with Mr. Presley just across the bar.
  • Jon Carmanica, reviewing the "Christmas Duets" album for the New York Times, as published on 4 December, 2008

• In dealing with "Elvis", I am bringing a lot of my own feelings, because I really love Elvis, loved his music, in some sense, I feel lucky to direct a movie about a man who was bigger than life, a human being, yes, but who became mythical.
  • John Carpenter, in a 1979 interview on the making of the ABC film "Elvis" which he directed.

• I wanted to meet him so a few friends from Jackson and I traveled to Memphis on Jan. 18, 1971, to the Jaycees' 10 Outstanding Young Men of America ceremony. Elvis was the final recipient that evening at the old Ellis Auditorium. Of course, every one was trying to get to Elvis,but security would stop them and send them back. It looked like I wasn't going to meet him, after all. But my friends kept urging me, ‘Go on, Martha. Go see him.’ We were only about 40 feet from him. So I finally walked over toward him.” I was stopped by security, only to have Elvis step in: “Let her come on,” he said. I had my program for him to sign, and he did. Then Elvis said, ‘Would you like my water glass?’ I said, ‘Yes, please.’ He said, ‘Would you like my nametag?’ ‘Of course,’ I told him. That water glass has never been cleaned. It's in a shadow box with the nametag in the glass and the autographed program displayed. His DNA has never been washed out of that glass — and never will be.And the man who presented Elvis his award, George H. W. Bush, became America's 41st president 18 years later.
  • Martha Carr, recalling the day she met Elvis, for the Clarion Ledger, and as published on March 8, 2018

• I was 34 when I met him. You had to realize that my father, being Mexican American, was very, very strict. He never allowed us to hear rock 'n roll or anything on the radio. Anything that had to do with music was the Big Band era with the records they had and/or the ranchera Mexican American music and the Mexican artists. So, when I would hear about Elvis, Elvis, Elvis, I could not relate to the hysteria. Okay, so I was in Vegas and I was engaged to this doctor who took care of Elvis when he was there. One day he said, "Elvis wants to meet you." so I said, "Oh, yeah. Right!" He said, "No. Really. So, we went to his show, but my attitude was like "Show me!" I was looking at the show, obviously as a fellow performer the overall look of the show, the staging, the lighting and I was so impressed. Then his singers came out, The Sweet Inspirations. They were incredible. So, then he came out in his white suit. I noticed his stance and I'm thinking to myself, he is standing up there very sure of himself. Plant yourself well and the way his fingers would kind of bend. Of course now everybody's going crazy and I'm looking around and going, "Wow!" Then towards the end of the show he says, "Now I'd like to introduce one of the greatest singers because she sings from her gut" and I'm looking around because the people are all screaming and I said, "Oh, my God, who the heck is here?" (Laughs). He says, Miss. Vikki Carr!" My fiance said, "Vikki, stand up!" I said, "I'm trying to. My brain is saying stand, but my legs won't work. So, I finally stood up and then Elvis has his hand out. So, I went up and he gave me a kiss on the cheek. And then he dedicated It's now or never to me.He was wonderful to me.
  • Vikki Carr, as told to Gary James in an undated interview published on wwwclassibandscom.

• As explained by his wife and stylist Almudena Navalón, his fantastic "look" at concerts is inspired by the outfits used by music megastars as Elvis, Freddy Mercury or Mick Jagger.
  • About Manuel Carrasco's stage apparel, as noted ny Cadena 100's March 24, 2024 online edition.

• As the "The Times" correspondent reminds him of Elvis Presley, he pauses, then reconsiders, "Oh yes, I think he was a fantastic artist and the best in his field. Absolutely.
  • Spanish tenor Jose Carreras, in an interview for the Times in which he had suggested that no pop singer can take on classical music, except perhaps for Elvis

• i) Guess who celebrated their 40th birthday today?” Elvis Presley. He is now wearing orthopedic blue suede shoes He looks very young, though, but I hear he got an orthopedic, I mean he got a surgical hip lift...he is only allowed to swivel now in the presence of a registered nurse. That's what the nurse told me and ii) If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead
  • NBC TV's Johnny Carson, as taken from his monologues as broadcast on the Tonight Show, at NBC, on Jan. 8, 1975 and March 21, 1991, respectively.

• I listen to a lot of Elvis Presley. He is one of my favorite musicians of all time.
  • Singer Sofia Carson's answer to Parade as to who does she listens to the most on her iPod, as published on November 25th, 2016

• Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique, irreplaceable. More than twenty years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense. And he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country.”
  • President Jimmy Carter' official statement following Elvis' death, as reprinted by graceland.com

• He had a thing like sort of a quiet charisma because certain people have this confidence. And I am not saying he was Elvis Presley, but he ended up doing a sketch where he's kind of doing an Elvis type singer and did it so well.
  • Dana Carvey recalling hockey icon Wayne Gretzky's only appearance on Saturday Night Live, in 1989, which he hosted as well, in a segment entitled "Waikiki Hockey", a parody of Elvis movies, where Gretzky plays a busboy who enters a Hawaiian ice hockey tournament to impress a girl, as noted in an article entitled An Oral History Of The Time Wayne Gretzky Hosted SNL, as published on the Aug 29, 2019 edition of Forbes

• I don't know if I'd be in any hurry to do another research-intensive project. I found that out the hard way when I tried jumping into another one — during the final stages of production on ̊"Jesusfreak" — that dealt with the last few weeks of Elvis Presley's life. It seemed quite fitting to go from Jesus to Elvis...
  • Joe Casey, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter and describing why he felt his comic book, graphic novel entitled "Jesusfreak" should be bookended by the lives of Jesus and Elvis, as published on their March 18, 2019 edition

• That night at the "Eagle's Nest", I remember, he was playing a (1942) D-18 Martin acoustic guitar and he was dressed in the latest teen fashion, but the thing I really noticed though, was his guitar playing. Elvis was a fabulous rhythm player. He'd start into "That’s All Right", with his own guitar, alone, and you didn't want to hear anything else.
  • Johnny Cash, in "Cash, the autobiography", recalling the first time he saw Presley perform, at the "Eagles Nest", in Memphis (1954)

• Hey Elvis, how's Vegas?
  • David Cassidy's sarcastic reaction to someone at the other end of the phone who wanted to talk to him and had introduced himself as Elvis Presley. In fact, it was indeed Presley, in 1974, asking Cassidy, whom he had never met, whether his then 6 year old daughter Lisa Marie, a huge fan of David, could get the chance to meet him, which she did, on the next day, as noted in the book Elvis Presley: The Man. The Life. The Legend.

• We are seeing disruption, and it is freaking out the news media and the old establishment in Washington, Its like watching Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show.
  • Alex Castellanos, Cuban American Republican strategist, speaking about the situation after the US 2016 election at an ABC Sunday News Powerhouse Roundtable hosted by George Stephanopoulos and broadcast on December 4, 2016.

• At 4225 Beach Drive SW, stands the Chambliss House, a bright blue home on the Puget Sound with a plaque above the doorway that states "Elvis Presley Slept Here, May 18, 1962." The plaque speaks the truth, according to Alan Chambliss, building owner and 30-year resident. He wasn't around to witness Elvis, but tells the story like it happened yesterday. About 15 years ago, Chambliss noticed a man and woman filming his house. Wondering what the fuss was about, he asked them what they were doing. Their father, dying of cancer lived in the upstairs apartment years before and loved it so much the family wanted to document it as part of a remembrance video. While making their keepsake, the family mentioned that the dying man was Elvis Presley's army buddy and that Elvis once spent the night in the upstairs apartment. As proof of their story, they showed Chambliss pictures of their father with the music legend. Elvis and his chum kept in touch throughout the years. In 1962, Elvis came to Seattle to film "It Happened at the World's Fair" and the friend picked him up from Sea-Tac and drove him to the house on Beach Drive. "He didn’t expect to stay the night at first," Chambliss says. Perhaps the Rock-and-Roll Legend was a sucker for water views Chambliss let the dying man's family film the upstairs apartment. About three weeks later he received the plaque, now mounted above the doorway, along with a thank you note for being so welcoming.
  • As told by tenant Bob Castonguay, who now rents the upstairs apartment that Elvis slept in, as published in the West Seattle Herald

• Many of our vagabonds, the sons of the burgoise, can be seen gallivanting around with their tight trousers, some of them with a guitar heralding Elvis Presley attitudes which lead them to erroneously believe they will be able to freely attend rallies where they can lobby their gay and effeminate ways. But we will not allow such degenerate feelings.
  • Fidel Castro in a speech delivered in front of 100,000 at the steps of the University of Havana on 13 March 1963, the day that signaled the last nail on the coffin of rock music as an art form in Cuba, until at least the first decade of the 21sty Century.

• Elvis had a center of gravity that was low, but also set back and deep; his sexiest moves – legs lolling back and forth, smooth like jelly, hips rolling and tossing everywhere – were performed as if there were a paperweight on a string tied around his waist, and hung from his lower back; with his own weight adjusted to the back, he could free one leg to twist, pop, and jerk while maintaining perfect balance; Elvis' glory was in the shifting of his weight; when he gets going fast, the force of the shifts make his shoulders jerk so hard he looks like he is being electrocuted.
  • New York Sun columnist Pia Catton, explaining the reasons for Elvis' star quality, as a stage performer, (16 August 2007)

• You can't be both Elvis Presley and Miles Davis", I once said to him. But then when someone recently asked me what his dreams were when he was young he answer to me was that he wanted to be Elvis".
  • American entertainment producer and business owner Bob Cavallo, former manager of Prince, explaining his client's longings, as published by both the Texas Public Radio's online page on Saturday, December 6, 2014 and by the Examiner, on April 26, 2016.

• I was very moved by your letter. I’m sure your dad would have been very happy with his Elvis-themed funeral. Thinking about it, I would be very happy with one too — to be ushered into the next world by the voice of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll singer of them all. Kentucky Rain, that’s what I’d like, Kentucky Rain and How Great Thou Art — Elvis singing gospel, with heaven and all its angels listening. It was a lovely thing to do for your dad. Sounds like you did a great job.'
  • Nick Cave, when asked what songs would he like played at his funeral,as part of the Red Hand Files series and as published in its 19 August 2021 editio

• One day I was nervous and struggling with one scene that stretched into about 30 takes, and I could see the director was getting frustrated,so I started stuttering. Then Elvis said, 'That's it, it's a wrap, the little lady and I are going to have something to eat", so he took me to dinner and the next day I nailed the scene immediately. At that early age, I didn't understand the magnitude of his fame and popularity, but he was a true gentleman...
  • Vicky Cayetano, Philippine born child actress who at age 6 starred with Elvis in "It happened at the World's fair" and later became the First Lady of Hawaii, following her marriage to Governor Ben Cayetano (D).

• There was a crowd gathered in one corner of the PX store and the rest of it seemed deserted, though the parking lot was filled with Jeeps, so I asked what was going on and they said that Elvis Presley was over there. I thought to myself, well, that's interesting, and I went about my business, got what I had come for, then went out to my jeep to kill time for awhile. Some time later, I noticed that Elvis was walking out of the store directly toward me. His Jeep was parked right next to mine. So we hung out and talked for 45 minutes. I asked someone to shoot a photo, but I never got a print. I also asked for his autograph, which I sent home to the daughter of one of my store managers who was a fan. He was just the nicest guy you could meet, an ordinary guy, with one exception, and that was that he was even better looking than he was in pictures LOL.
  • Gus A. Chafoulias, Chairman of Titan and of GM Rochester, who served in the US Army with Elvis in Germany, in an article entitled "Business Person of the Year: Chafoulias, at 80, has no plans to slow down", as published on the March 8, 2019 edition of the Minnesota Post Bulletin.

• "Elvis", in fact I wish Austin could play him in my Bob Dylan biopic, especially since Dylan is on record as to his admiration of Elvis and his SUN Period.
  • Timothée Chalamet's answer as to which was his favourite biopic, in a joint inteview with Austin Butler, following their latest movie "Dune 2" and published in a you tube clip on March 6, 2024.

• I've always loved Elvis, how he entertained, how he performed, so that's where I try and take inspiration from
  • Jake Chamberlain, discussing "Miss Trouble", his first album in an interview with Amanda Hill and as published in the Standard Journal's online edition of March 13, 2015.

• Obviously after the Elvis concert, I said how can this any better? It was mid August of 1969. The year after, Bill Medley played the smaller lounge, and since I had been in high school a fan of the Righteous Brothers, I went with my girlfriend to see him, sat down in one of those half moon booths. So, in the middle of Bill's concert, I noticed the entire room, about 500 people, all stand up so I turn around and watch as Elvis walks down the aisle towards the stage. He had not even been introduced, and by a struck of luck, sat next to me and my girlfriend at the booth, So I rushed outside to see if I could get a pen, to get his autograph, which I did. When I came back, with paper and pen in hand, I waited until Bill stopped singing, and I then asked Elvis to sing an autograph. To my amazement, he instead started talking to me as if he and I were friends our entire lives, and when I told him I was a music major, he asked me about my courses at the University of Las Vegas. Unbeknownst to Elvis and I, Bill and the entire audience remained silent during our conversation, looking at us, for a full five minutes.LOL. So, finally, he signs the autograph, shakes my hand, and says " Stay in school". The impression of him being who he was, and of talking to a man who had changed the world, was amazing, but more than anything I will cherish how he treated me....
  • Christopher Chandlers's laud of Elvis Presley, on the 81st anniversary of Elvis birth, January 8, 2017 (YouTube)

• In a "Family Guy" parody of Rocky VI, Rocky goes to fight a boxing match on Mars. Even though there's no oxygen, he's not afraid of fighting an alien on another planet. Is there anything that would put fear into either Sly Stallone or Rocky Balboa? The answer is Elvis Presley. Since Elvis couldn't just go to- /a th02e/atr2e do-w them theatre down the block, he invited Sly to come down to Graceland with a copy of the film and do a private screening. Stallone was too intimidated and instead just sent a copy, which Elvis watched with friends and enjoyed
  • Chris Chan Roberson, in an article entitled "On the sly", published at CBR.com on October 8, 2018.

• Charlie was always aware of the public. While at the Manoir in the 1950's, a friend visited him and brought him a record of a new singer called Elvis Presley. Charlie hadn't heard of him. "This man has made a sensation in the States," his friend said. "I can't understand it. He wiggles his hips and sings and people go mad." "If he's made such an impact," Charlie replied, "he must have something. You can't fool the public." --
  • Charles Chaplin' in his biography by Jerry Epstein

• Jerry Quarry and I got married right before his August 31, 1973 2nd round KO of James J. Woody, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. And, after that, we to see Elvis in concert at the Las Vegas Hilton. In fact, Jerry's mom was with us and she loved Elvis. Once there, his mom asked Red West backstage if she could have a scarf for Elvis to sign. Some time later, Red handed her a scarf but when Elvis recognised me, he threw me up in the air and said, ‘Hi kid how are you doing?’ It was so cute, such a fabulous feeling. Then he looked at Jerry and said: “Listen, you’d better treat this girl good. I know her and if you don’t, I’m gonna kick your butt!” to which Jerry said “Yes sir! Yes sir! LOL. But then, suddenly, Jerry's mom threw the scarf back in my face. When I asked her why she had done that, she said “Look at this.....He signed this to you, not to me...
  • Arlene Charles, recalling the hilarious time when Elvis, with whom she had worked seven years earlier in "Spinout", finally got to meet her husband, heavyweight boxer Jerry Quarry as well as her mother in law, both of whom had been huge Elvis fans, as noted in the Express's July 14, 2020 edition.

• i) Ummm, OK. Here was a white kid that could rock and roll, made a lot of people listen to songs that they would not have listened to, rhythm and blues, or whatever you want to call it, and the girls would swoon over him. I dont want to talk more about Elvis because I am gonna lose one third of my fans LOL ii) I wasn't knocking Elvis. He did a lot for the music industry and particularly for the black music industry.
  • Ray Charles's answer on whether Elvis was talented, as told in a 1994 interview with Bob Costas ii) interview with Vancouver's The Province, in which he clarifies that his views on Elvis, as stated in the Costas interview, were strictly related to Elvis being called The King, as published in their February 1, 1995 edition.

• I once opened my mailbox and there was a letter from Elvis Presley. I opened it, read it and I was scared to hell. He asked me to discontinue using his name in association with the car so I never used it again"
  • Tommy Charles, singer and radio personality who had become famous in 1966, as the DJ who wanted to publicly immolate records by the Beatles after John Lennon said they were "bigger than Jesus", as stated in a 1970 interview with John Cargile of the Birmingham Post Herald, in turn reprinted in Jackie Jouret's book about the 1957 BMW 507 Elvis had once owned, a unit Charles bought second hand in 1961 for $4,500 and which he then drove in various races in the US South while enhancing its "worth" as "the Elvis Presley car". After a couple of more owners, and a two year restoration by BMW Classic, (2014-2016) the car with the chassis 70079 is now estimated to cost US$18 million.

• I've always been a big Elvis fan, so the idea of taking this classic and splattering it with some signature INK bloodshed struck me as a match made in hell...
  • Spencer Charnas, frontman for Ice Nine Kills, in reference to their 2021 haunting cover of "Can't help falling in love", as published by Livewire's February 11, 2021 edition.

• He looked like a prince from another planet, narrow-eyed, with high Indian cheek bones and a smooth brown skin untouched by his 37 years. When Elvis started to work with the mike, his right hand flailing air, his left leg moving as though it had a life of its own, time stopped, and everyone in the place was 17 again. It was a lesson in dominance; we had just seen the comic who couldn't control anybody, not even himself, and that had got us nervous; now Elvis made it all right again.Elvis used the stage, he worked to the people. The ones in front, in the best seats, the ones in back, and up in the peanut galleries. He turned, he moved, and when a girl threw a handkerchief on the stage, he wiped his forehead with it and threw it back, a gift of sweat from an earthy god. Young girls moaned, and stood in their seats trying to dance, and one kid took a giant leap from a loge seat clear to the stage, only to be caught and taken away. A special champion comes along, a Joe Louis, a Jose Capablanca, a Joe DiMaggio, someone in whose hands the way a thing is done becomes more important than the thing itself. When DiMaggio hit a baseball, his grace made the act look easy and inevitable. Friday Night at Madison Square Garden, Elvis was like that. He stood there at the end, his arms stretched out, the great gold cloak giving him wings, a champion, the only one in his class.
  • Chris Chase, critic for The New York Times, reviewing Elvis June 9 concert, the first of four back to back he performed there, and on Sunday, June 11, 1972

• He as such a nice person, when I found out he died, I really was saddened
  • Chubby Checker, recalling the time he found out about his death

• Take me, take me...
  • Eight year old Judy Chelette's retort to the then 20 year old Elvis after witnessing first hand her much older sister Mary Jo Chelette's decline of an invitation from Elvis for the two of them to go out on a date, this taking place on the night of 25 November 1955 and as noted in a eulogy for Judy by writer Ken Stickney published in the Port Arthur News' November 2, 2018 edition.

• The first concert I attended was an Elvis concert at Oakland when I was eleven. Even at that age he made me realize the tremendous effect a performer could have on an audience.
  • Cher, as published in www.graceland.com

• The series of Warhol inspired works by Russian artists was not done especially for this exhibition, but when the Moscow curator Andrei Yerofeyev heard about them, he did everything in his power to include the works in the show and catalog. The show ends with two black and white canvases facing each other from opposite walls with space for exhibition visitors in between them. On one wall is Elvis Presley dressed as a cowboy pointing a gun at the visitors. Across from him are executioners of the NKVD with red stars on their caps shooting back.....
  • Peter Cheremushkin of The Moscow Times's , review of the first massive Andy Warhol exhibition at the Sevkabel Port, in St. Petersburg and entitled "Russian Artists Take Andy Warhol's Pop Art Vision and Run With It", as published in the Moscow Times' July 2, 2021 editon.

• I was in the studio, and they were mixing it over at Little Victor. I probably shouldn’t tell this, but I’m gonna tell you the truth. I was a publisher also, and I had published all of these songs. We shipped to all of the little stations, and the record label would ship to all of the big stations. I’m thinking, ‘Man, we’re gonna have to ship every one of these things, and I’ve got to get it to these little stations. If they start playing it on the big stations first, then these DJs are going to be mad at me. I’m thinking about all the stuff that I’ve got to do as far as work on this thing, and dreading it. Then all of a sudden I thought: ‘Here I’ve got a single by [Elvis] coming out. This is the greatest thing you could have happen, and I’m sitting here dreading it. It’s time for me to get out of this business...LOL.
  • Jerry Chesnut, discussing the process of the release of Elvis'1975 single "T.R.O.U.B.L.E, which he had written and was in charge of distributing, as told in a 2014 interview with the Tennessean

• And the singer explodes, no longer laying back, now letting it fly. It is a raw, ragged sound, but the singer is so far into the moment that he doesn't care, and neither does anyone else. "When I read your lovin' letter, my heart began to sink," he roars with ache and ardor in his voice. "There's a million miles between us, but they didn't mean a thing." This glorious minute of "Trying to Get to You" is from Elvis Presley's 1968 television comeback special, one of 77 previously unreleased performances collected on a new four-CD box set, "Platinum: A Life in Music" (RCA). It affirms that 20 years after his death on Aug. 16, 1977, after countless books, albums, tabloid stories, imitators and Graceland tours have wrung seemingly every drop of mystery from his legacy, there remains plenty to learn about Presley. Or, perhaps more precisely, relearn. For in the last 20 years, the essential truth about Presley has been lost. But the truth of his 23 years of public music making is this: He was the most quintessentially American of singers, an artist who drew no boundaries between Saturday night blues and Sunday morning gospel, middle-of-the-road schmaltz and dirt-road hillbilly country. And he could swing a tune like nobody's business. More than anything else, those two factors--his openness to just about any kind of music and his ability to personalize that music with his unique feel for rhythm--are why Presley mattered, and still matters.
  • The Chicago Tribune's review of Platinum, published on August 3rd, 1997

• I don’t know if it was the algorithm … or the Elvis movie coming out, but I just became inundated with Elvis stuff [on my streaming feeds) so I started thinking a lot about Elvis and I was like, I’m going to try to collect some songs that I’d written, and some covers that I would want to pitch to Elvis. So the songs that I wrote, I was writing like an Elvis impersonation.
  • Tyler Childers,in an article entiotled Tyler Childers Embraces His Inner Elvis On New Album ‘Rustin’ In The Rain, as published in Live for Live Music's Friday, September 8th, 2023 edition.

• Having had the opportunity to work with these recordings, I am now more convinced than ever that Elvis Presley was the most passionate vocalist this world has known.
  • Andy Childs, US country music singer-songwriter, writing on the liner notes for the album "Where no one stands alone", released in 2018.

• Recorded at the Beatles' old Abbey Road Studios, it offers one more chance to enjoy Presley's voice in a different context, deliciously backed by a world-class orchestra geared toward the nuances of his delivery. It's a new twist on a very familiar, and treasured, body of work. This one is a tried and true concept, basically a variation on last year's quite successful posthumous pairing of Presley with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, but the fact that it's been done once before doesn't diminish the pleasure. There are few surprises, but it's a reminder of Presley's range and vocal dexterity. The orchestral style suits Elvis well: taken out of the rock and roll context, there is no need for his swagger or his snarl, as the orchestra is restrained and understated, allowing Presley's vocals alone to carry the day. The orchestral format also gives rise to "live" concerts with Elvis singing on screen while the Royal Philharmonic performs. A series of six British shows in major arenas this fall is expected to draw thousands of the faithful — the number doesn't seem to be dwindling, even 39 years after his death in a country, the UK, where he never performed.
  • The China Post's review of the album The Wonder of You, as published on 21 October 2016.

• Personally, I resent the ‘shouldn’t do that’ attitude of many guardians and reformers who want to straighten out the younger generation. I am young and don't doubt that I need a great deal of correcting, but when we stop listening to Elvis, stop reading comics, stop doing this, and stop doing that, what are we going to do then? In short, what have you older folks provided for us in the way of wholesome entertainment? Until you older folks can provide something in this line, I would appreciate it if you leave our literature, music, and Elvis alone.
  • Harry Chinnis, in an letter to the Editor of Charleston's Post and Courier, in regards to another letter to the Editor dated July 3, 1956, in which a man by the name of W.A Morris (kindly see his letter, under the last name Morris, below) had stted that it would probably would require a hurricane to de-contaminate the entire estate of South Carolina properly after Presley's appearance on June 28, 1956.

• One year I met President Eisenhower, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra and thought I had met all the important people in the world.,.
  • The Chordettes̼'s baritone singer, Carol Buschmann in an article published on December 17, 2018 by the USA Today Network and entitled 'Bring me a dream': Remembering Wisconsin's famed Chordettes

• We haven't been the same since Elvis. He defined an era, he was America, the fresh young outsider who shook up the system, the shining star with clay feet and the dissipated innocent who could not understand what he had become. That is the stuff of legends.
  • Sandra Choron and Bob Oskam, in the introduction to their book ̊"The 328 best (and worse) things ever said about Elvis Presley" published in 1991 by Citadel Press̼ Books.

• i) Then, in mid 1968 he taped a television special in a black leather suit, in front of a select live audience, opening with "Guitar Man" and closing with a mild social-conscience song, "If I Can Dream". But it wasn't until Greil Marcus brought out the recording of that performance for me, almost three years later, that I realized how significant it had been. Marcus has spent as much time listening as anyone who is liable to be objective, and he believes Elvis may have made the best music of his life that crucial comeback night. It's so easy to forget that Elvis was, or is, a great singer. Any account of his impact that omits that fundamental fact amounts to a dismissal. ii) Elvis made a great many major recordings, and no matter what jaded undergraduates think, few rock and rollers of any era have moved with such salacious insouciance. But it's my best guess that rocking or romantic, young or old, thin or fat, innocent or decadent, inspired or automatic, Elvis touches the millions he touches most deeply with that ineffable chestnut, the grain of his voice; from the pure possibility of "Mystery Train" and "Love Me Tender", to the schlock passion of "In the Ghetto", no singer has ever duplicated his aura of unguarded self-acceptance. The very refusal of sophistication that renders him unlistenable to Sinatraphiles is what his faithful love most about him. (In fact), listeners with looser standards in cultural articulation have a clearer pipeline to the meanings that voice might hold.
  • i) Rock critic Robert Christgau, from his article entitled, "The King and I", as published in www.robertchristgau.com and ii) in his 1973 book "Any old way you choose"

• It's called 'Love Song of the Year' and it's on the 'Promised Land' album, When I met Elvis, he leaned over and said, "How do you like what I did with your song?".Not one single artist who used my songs ever did something like that, but Elvis did.
  • Chris Christian as noted in an interview with Newswest 9, and published on their February 23,2019 edition.

• Elvis Presley is widely regarded as the most significant global cultural icon of the 20th century.
  • Auction house Christie's's laud of Elvis, as presented to bidders prior to the auction held in their NYC office on 17 May, 2018, and which later translated into an Andy Warhol's "Double Elvis" being sold, for the second time in 6 years, for another US̩37,000,000.

• Elvis was a brilliant artist. As a musicologist — and I consider myself one — there was always a great deal of respect for Elvis, especially during his Sun sessions. As a black people, we all knew that. (In fact), Eminem is the new Elvis because, number one, he had the respect for black music that Elvis had.
  • Chuck D explaining how his feelings for Elvis' legacy are much more complicated than it was suggested by the lyrics in his song, "Fight The Power", which was written 12 years earlier (published following an interview with the Associated Press in connection with the 25th Anniversary of Presley's death)

• I came late to the Elvis party. I never grabbed on to his shooting star in the ascendancy of his career. I was more into groups. And then a strange thing happened. Either Elvis changed or I did. Almost two decades ago, I began my oldies show on Thursday nights on WSRK in Oneonta and this is where I had the epiphany that Elvis Presley possessed one of the best male singing voices to ever climb the charts. Deep, passionate, powerful, no frills, no twang, no screaming. Classic. In the 1950s, nobody knew what he was. Still, it is the voice. I'm in awe of it and am a little embarrassed that I jumped on the bandwagon so late. But now that I am on it, I'm in the front seat, cheering all the way. Elvis is the King, let nobody doubt it. And if you are still a parade straggler, take my suggestion. Find yourself a copy of “An American Trilogy” (1972). It was recorded live before a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden. This is Elvis' magnum opus. As he slides from “Dixie” to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” you will be swept away. The orchestra provides the fanfare, the urban sounds of the background singers will mesmerize you and Elvis' vocals will lift you up. This one performance can actually be transformative. It is powerful yet sensitive, subtle yet bombastic. I don't know how, but it all works. And his voice was never better than on this song. “American Trilogy” is a Master Class. By a truly great artist.
  • Big Chuck, radio personality, WSRK in Oneonta. NY, as published in the Daily Star, on January 12, 2015.

• From 1952 to 1980, we called it the industrialization generation. From 1980 to 2000, it was the democratization generation. Post-2000 we call it the millennial generation. I came of age in the 1980s and I have been very much influenced by American culture. In fact, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley were the biggest stars for the Korean people.
  • Phillip Chun, Chairman of the Paradise Group, a market-leading integrated resort (IR) developer currently building Korea's first IR near the international airport in Incheon at a cost of more than $1 billion, in an article published on September 19, 2016 on the Worldfolio.

• When we visited Blenheim Palace, as Oxford University's Class of 1979 for post graduate diplomatc studies, the man who acted as Cicerone for us was Oxonian Godfrey Davis. As we got closer to the end of the tour, we approched a cardboard removable visual timeline where the largest photo was that of Sgt Elvis Presley. Questioned as to why was this so, Davis explained Sir Winston had come to like Elvis as a result of listening to "Its now ot never" and "Surrender...
  • About Sir Winston Churchill 's liking of Elvis Presley, as told to members of the Foreign Service Programme by Godfrey Davis, the translator of the Magna Carta, during a tour of Blenheim Palace in the winter of 1979.

• Elvis Presley has had an unprecedented and lasting global impact on music and pop culture Jody Gerson and I, along with the Universal Music Publishing Group teams around the world, couldn’t be more excited and honoured to work with the Authentic Brands Group in making sure that Elvis’ iconic legacy endures for generations to come.
  • Marc Cimino, Chief Operating Officer at Universal Music Publishing Group on the acquisition of Elvis catalog, as reported by PRNewswire on 13 April, 2022.

• Who the hell's limousine is that?” That was Elvis Presley’s reaction to the sight of a long, black limo parked in front of the General Cinema in Memphis–one of Elvis’s favorite spots for personal midnight movie screenings. The limo happened to belong to me. In fact I had made a pilgrimage to meet him, at the special request of Jerry Schilling, one of Elvis’s entourage. “I think it’s probably Eric’s!, Schilling later told me how he answered Elvis question. Now, inside the theatre, the chance for a great summit meeting seemed to diminish when Elvis walked in and saw me and Pattie Harrison (George’s ex), sitting about 12th row center--right in Elvis’s seats. There was some tension, until Schilling made the introductions, and right away I made it really clear how much respect I had for him. Seeing that, he relaxed and turned into a charming host, and we fell into a really nice, friendly conversation.
  • Eric Clapton in an article published in EC MUsic News, dated December 27, 2010.

• It’s rare when an artist’s talent can touch an entire generation of people. It’s even rarer when that same influence affects several generations. Elvis made an imprint on the world of pop music unequaled by any other single performer.”
  • Dick Clark, as published in Elvis.net

• I was lucky to be 12 years old when rock ‘n’ roll really busted out. I saw Elvis in Tulsa at the Fairground on his first big tour and all the girls screaming. I couldn't hear for days after that. He came out and did a half an hour without stopping. It was just amazing
  • US Photographer Larry Clark, recalling for Andy Warhol's Interview the time when as a 12 year old he saw Presley perform in April of 1956, and published on November 9, 2010

• I met him in 1969 with Karen Carpenter, neither of us had ever met him before, so we went so see him perform at a show in Las Vegas. He was on great form and then we were invited back to his dressing room and, well, he was flirting with us. In the end I got us out of there and that really amused Elvis and when I saw him again after that we both had a good laugh about it.
  • Petula Clark, her meeting Elvis, as noted in petula-clark-on-meeting-legends-of-stage-and-screen-13004/#ZUtve4JAGDc7XYvu.99

• Taking ownership in the wrong way (Michael Bolton trying to out-soul Percy Sledge in “When a Man Loves a Woman”) can lead to accusations of cultural appropriation — a nice euphemism for stealing. It's complicated. Pat Boone did sound like he was ripping off Little Richard with “Tutti Frutti.” But Elvis, to me (and to James Brown), sounded like he was delivering the goods".
  • Roy Peter Clark US editor, and teacher of writing in an article published on Pointer on August 16, 2018.

• The first time I heard Elvis was via the western movie "Love Me Tender" in 1956 or ’57. I was a cowboy nut. "Love Me Tender" was also the first time I came up against female hysteria. I haven’t got a homosexual bone in my body but that is the most handsome man that ever lived, without a doubt. You can’t take your eyes off him. Also, to have a voice like that. Incredible. Charisma ain’t a big enough word for it. I get asked if punk was a rejection of Elvis and his style of rock ’n’ roll. But people who have a go at Elvis just miss the point. Elvis would shoot at the TV, and if something was on that he didn’t like the look of, it was the Colt 45. Elvis out‑punked everything. He wrote the book on punk. I never saw punk rock as being a rebellion against Elvis Presley, otherwise I wouldn’t have done gigs with bands like "The Clash" and "the Sex Pistols".I’ve never been to Graceland, but before the pandemic my plan was to honour this. I had a full tour sheet stretching into next year and I thought, “As soon as we get these gigs out of the way, me and my wife are going to go on the holiday of a lifetime.” I was going to get an open-ended rail ticket from Grand Central Station in New York finishing at Graceland. Every August, on the anniversary of Elvis’s death, I write something about him. So I’ve got books and books and books of poetry and stuff around Elvis… The man who didn’t love Elvis is not as other men. He is condemned to miss the point time and time again.” Elvis, he’s the king of the world.”. And which song do I want to bne played at my funeral? Elvis' Peace in the valley-.
  • Punk rocker John Cooper Clarke on the October 14, 2021 edition of the Financial Times, as well as on the Guardian's Honest Playlist's 24 Apr 2023 edition.

• "It's Now Or Never" from "O Sole Mio", "Surrender" from Torna A Sorrento", "Tonight Is So Right For Love" from "Bacarolle and The Tales of Hoffman", "Today, Tomorrow And Forever", from "Liebestraume no. 3 in A flat", "Can't Help Falling In Love" from "Plaisir d'Amour", "Sleepy Heads" from "Guten Abend, Gut Nacht", "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Johann Strauss II, and "Tonight's all Right For Love", from Strauss "Tales from the Vienna Woods".
  • According to the UK's Classical FM, the 8 times Elvis Presley borrowed from classical music, as published on 14 February 2018

• He was a fantastic Monty Pythom fan. He would watch us, while seated in bed with his wife,and do our sketches while simultaneously having to learn all the dialogue.
  • John Cleese, in an interview with the Nightly Show, recounting what Priscilla Presley once told her friend Barbara Trentham (Cleese's 2nd of 4 wives)

• Very early in his rise to music fame, Elvis once visited the Tennessee Governor's mansion after his manager called ( my father) Governor Frank Clement and said he wanted him to meet Elvis. He told him to bring him out and also invited a group of African American state prison musicians called The Prisonaires. Everyone eventually retired to an upstairs room, where Elvis and the Prisonaires took turns performing numbers. Elvis got so carried away that he stayed until 3 am.He seemed shy, and so soft-spoken.
  • Tennessee Congressman Bob Clement's recollections of his father, Governor Frank G. Clement on a night in 1957 when he hosted a meeting at the Governor's mansion with Elvis and the R&B group the Prisonaires, as related in the book entitled "Presidents, Kings and Convicts" by the younger Clement, and as published by John Shearer in the Chattanoogan, on March 27, 2017.

• In fact, Dylan's most recent Broward Center concert came just one month after the Nobel announcement, and despite all the public confusion and pearls-clutching over his win, the then 75-year-old artist appeared to be in high spirits, even striking Elvis Presley-inspired poses while leaning on his microphone stand and breaking into bowlegged, broncobuster shuffles during songs that otherwise would seem to reject them..
  • Jake Cline, reviewing Bob Dylan's latest appearance in Ft Lauderdale, FL, in an article published on SouthFlorodacom on August 6, 2018 on

• You know, Bush is always comparing me to Elvis in sort of unflattering ways. I don't think Bush would have liked Elvis very much, and that's just another thing that's wrong with him. He was the first and the best, and is my favorite of all time.
  • Bill Clinton, during the 1992 presidential campaign, obviously unaware that Bush was a Presley admirer, and had in fact met him at the 1971 Jaycees ceremony, during his time as US Ambassador to the United Nations.

• No element of the South's culture has had more influence on the culture of the U.S. and other nations than its music. While the ballads and fiddle tunes brought by British settlers provided the foundation for what would become country music, the work songs and field hollers that were a vital part of the slaves' African heritage formed the basis of the blues. These musical forms did not always respect the South's racial divisions. There was more interaction than many realized as both the blues and country music grew more commercialized and, as members of both races left the farm in droves, more urbanized as well. When local radio stations and recording studios in cities like Memphis and New Orleans began to feature the work of both black and white performers after World War II, the closer contact and familiarity bred the revolutionary new sound that would become "rock 'n roll." Elvis Presley quickly won an enormous youthful following as a white singer who sounded "black," but if he succeeded by borrowing heavily from black stylings, he also helped to open the door to white audiences much wider for a host of black performers ranging from Little Richard to Chuck Berry.
  • Author James C. Cobb, in an article entitled History of the South, Abbreviated: The Ol' Bloviator Boils It Down, published in "Flagpole" magazine's 17 February 2016 edition.

• The "Shrine" Auditorium in Los Angeles, was his first California stop, then Long Beach. He's the cat man...
  • Eddie Cochrane, who turned to rock after seeing Elvis at a concert at the Sportatorium in Dallas, TX on April 16, 1955, correcting his wife Alice, who had said she had attended Elvis first concert in California, at the Long Beach Arena. The exchange took place in London, during Eddie's last tour there.

• You won't find many books that range from Elvis to Helen Keller to Sir Isaac Newton that can change your life. This one also could"
  • John Cochran, former ABC News and White House correspondent, speaking about Dr. E. Gaylon McCollough's memoirs and musings, in an interview with Fox News, Channel 10, on August 29, 2018.

• Sometime in the mid seventies, Elvis befriended a young black woman who was having trouble purchasing a car, struggling as a student in college at the time, so he went into the dealership got the car, then asked her to report to him the next day saying she would get a steady job answering the phones at Graceland (where most of her time was spent doing very little), thereby allowing for her to both have a place to study and focus on her school work and grades. She was ONLY required to report him every quarter showing him her grades. So not only did he buy a car for her, but he purposely *created* a job for her, where she could receive a steady paycheck while studying.
  • Marion Cocke, Elvis' nurse, in an interview for the documentary "Why Elvis"

• Elvis is the greatest blues singer in the world today.
  • Joe Cocker, who started his career imitating Elvis under the name Vance Arnold, circa 1961, as noted in about education.com

• Born in Tupelo, Miss., he was an only child whose parents scraped along on odd jobs until the family moved to Memphis when Elvis was 13. He was fanatically and unabashedly devoted to his mother. He was buried near her after the kind of awful, agonized public wake that attended the passing of Rudolph Valentino and Judy Garland. Eighty thousand fans jammed the street outside his Memphis mansion, Graceland, hoping for a view of the body; 30,000 were admitted to the house. Dozens swooned, cried, keened and passed out from the heat outside the mansion gates. Two people were killed when a drunken driver plowed into the crowd. After the funeral at Graceland, a cortege of 16 white Cadillacs led a slow procession down Elvis Presley Boulevard to the cemetery. There the lawn was banked with some 2,200 floral tributes — an imperial crown of golden mums, hortisculptured hound-dogs and guitars, sunflowers in wine bottles. Memphis ran out of flowers; reinforcements were sent in from California and Colorado. From out of the barrage of funeral images, one reaches for a single last memory.searches for an epitaph. Go back to one of his SUN Records, and there is one that seems particularly appropriate. "Well", Elvis starts off, in a raw drawl then rushes into the verse "I heard the news, there's good rocking tonight" Now there is, for everyone. Elvis saw to that. .
  • Abridged from Jay Cocks's obituary as published by TIME magazine in an article entotled "Last stop on the Mystery Train" and dated August 29, 1977.

• The healing power of music isn't just anecdotal and Music & Memory, a nonprofit organization that uses personalized music playlists to help improve the lives of those suffering from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, is dedicated to helping patients through the power of song. Along with enabling patients to find renewed meaning and connection by giving them access to music, the organization's work has been effective at reducing the use of anti-psychotic medications and helping manage the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia, according to a Brown University study. To celebrate the organization's fundraising efforts to provide music and joy to patients nationwide, I wish to share a playlist featuring several of the most popular songs from Music & Memory's facilities around the world, including nostalgic favorites from Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra to The Supremes. The latter's "Stop! In the Name of Love" tends to be one that people remember from high school and that makes them happy, according to the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Frank Sinatra's "Theme From New York, New York" is being requested by almost every nursing home in Delaware, bringing joy to many and improving mood and behaviors. Also, as reported bu the states of Wisconsin and Texas, Elvis' "Hound Dog" inspires movement in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
  • Dan Cohen, in an article entitled "Giving Tuesday playlist: songs that help bring joy to Alzheimer’s patients", as published in USA Today's November 27, 2018 edition.

• I was relieved that all the stuff we'd been feeling for so long found expression in Presley and in rock in general. I was playing his records all the time to friends when they'd come over. I'd say, 'This guy is a great singer' – and they thought this was some kind of inverse snobbery, but it wasn't. Presley had that special kind of voice which makes your heart go out to a singer. I was a huge fan of Elvis. In fact, I was in town until today and bought a compilation LP of the man. Soon you will hear me sing “Don’t” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight” – but not at the plate. My voice is too deep, with 20,000 cigarettes leading my tone of voice three to four notches down too far.
  • Leonard Cohen, as told to Bard Oses in an interview published on March 26, 2012 at "Leonard Cohen Jukebox" internet page. )

• Of course, the main harbinger of the homer era was probably Ruth himself. After “Heartbreak Hotel,” no one wanted to be Perry Como. They wanted to be Elvis Presley. After 1920, no one wanted to be Ty Cobb. They wanted to be Babe Ruth. The old game had been about precision, strategy, incremental progress. The new game was about power, the single blast that busts open the piñata.
  • Writer Rich Cohen, as published in the Washington Post on 27 October, 2017 in an article entitled Baseball didn't always love home runs. Here's how they took over the game.

• He treats the song as a private meditation, full of pain and the yearning to believe. Though the lyrics speak of hope, Elvis turns them into a cry, as if reaching for one last sliver of light in engulfing darkness. 'I am alone', he seems to be saying. But maybe, just maybe, we can find someone or something to cling to. In his case, it's God. But each of us, hearing him, reaches for our own salvation; if great art needs nakedness (then), those few minutes of Elvis alone at the piano amount to the most naked performance I've ever witnessed.
  • Nik Cohn, commenting on Elvis Presley's rendition, totally alone at the piano, of "You'll never walk alone", as witnessed by a full house of 17,500 gathering at the second of his two shows at the Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY, on 19 July, 1975, as published on the Guardian's Sunday edition, on January 21, 2007, in an article entitled "The 25 best gigs of all time".

• Forty one years ago this week, as the BBC's correspondent in Washington DC, I was filming an interview with a lawyer about political corruption when his secretary burst in. 'Oh my God,' she cried, putting her hands to her face. 'Elvis Presley's dead!' Without a word, my cameraman and I packed up and headed to Washington's National Airport. When we landed in Memphis, it was late. Early on the next morning, we were outside Graceland when I was suddenly aware of a very big man next to me. 'Mr Cole,' he said, very firmly, 'I am the Deputy Sheriff of Memphis. I am commanded by the Presley family to invite you to visit with the deceased. He then took me by the elbow eventually ushering me through the doors to a scene I shall never forget. In the hall, a coffin had been placed on trestles. Behind it, in a sombre arc, stood members of the Presley family, including Elvis's ex-wife Priscilla, daughter Lisa Marie, and his father Vernon. One by one, I shook hands with them, extending my arm across the coffin where the greatest singer of the 20th century lay dead at the age of 42. Twenty years later, in 1997, I was telephoned by a BBC producer. He said he was making a programme about cults. He said they looked through all the newspaper, radio and television coverage when Elvis died and were sure that I had been the first person to report that some people were refusing to believe that he was dead. What he didn't ask was how I could know for sure that it was Elvis in the coffin. And of course, I couldn't as I had never seen him in the flesh before that morning. So, when you next read about Elvis Presley being spotted, aged 83, down at the chip shop or on the Moon, you now know who to blame: Me.
  • Michael Cole, BBC Washington correspondent on the day Elvis died, as told in an interview for the Mail Online and published on August 14, 2018.

• You see through the eyes of Queen Victoria how she saw the world. When she was young, she drew ballerinas, opera scenes, melodrama, but when she was older she drew landscapes, children, very domestic, simple things. Also tremendously helpful to me were my own own two personal encounters with Queen Elizabeth II, who in 2015 succeeded her great-great grandmother Victoria, as the longest-reigning British monarch. Our first meeting was at the premiere of Dr. Who, at which time the she told me that to travel through time and space must be fun. I next saw her at a polo match. What was most interesting and helpful was how people responded to her. The Queen's presence, as opposed say, that of Elvis Presley, was a hushed silence followed by calm...
  • Jenna Coleman, UK actress playing Queen Victoria, as interviewed by Jane Levere for Forbes' January 12, 2019 edition

• This sound is like burnished gold, it shines. In Elvis's voice the ants will hear manifest destiny.
  • Nick Coleman, reviewing Elvis' voice in his book "Voices: How a Great Singer Can Change Your Life" , as published by The Guardian on January 14, 2018.

• I accidentally met Elvis in 1967 in Palm Springs, California. I was 15 years old, and had just finished marching in a parade with the high school drill team and band.All of a sudden, one of my pals shrieked, "There's Elvis Presley!" I looked across the street and there he was. My girlfriends and I ran across four lanes of traffic to see him up close. He looked tan, healthy, trim, was very cordial, charming even, to the people who had gathered in the crowd, signing things they handed to him. After several minutes, he thanked everyone and said he needed to go inside to see his dentist, I, being an overly excitable 15-year-old, yelled from the outskirts of the crowd, "Please, Elvis, just one more signature!"He looked over the heads in the crowd, smiled at me, and said, "Okay, just one more."And he let me through and I stood there, looking up at Elvis Presley.Gobsmacked doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. He asked me what I wanted him to sign and I realized I had nothing. So I said, "Sign my back. I meant the back of my shirt, but he lifted my hair and placed the pen on the back of my neck and started writing. "Sign the back of my shirt." I said. I could feel the pressure of his pen on my back and as he wrote he spelled out, "T-h-e b-a-c-k o-f m-y s-h-i-r-t" as though he were signing my exact words.I turned around and said, "Is that what you wrote?" And he gave me that curled-lip grin and said, "No, honey, I wrote my name." And he went inside the dentist's office...
  • Colleen Collins, award winning author and writer of dozens of novels published by Harlequin Enterprises, on the day she met Elvis, as published in her webstite's August 16, 2017 edition.

• Run by controversial ex-Lotus boss, Dany Bahar, and based on the Lamborghini Huracan, the Project Panther is designed to be a modern interpretation of the DeTomaso Pantera. Produced between 1971 and 1992, the Pantera was initially powered by a Ford V8 engine making around 250kW of power, before later models pushed that figure closer to 265kW. But the car isn't famous for its engine, nor its rakish good looks. Instead, it's best known as the car Elvis Presley shot. He bought a Pantera for then-girlfriend Linda Thompson. After a fight, he tried to leave in a blaze of V8-powered burnout smoke but the car refused to start. So rather than giving it the last laugh, Presley whipped out his revolver and fired three shots, leaving two holes in the steering wheel and one in the floor. As far as we can tell, there are no bullet holes in Bahar's modern re-interpretation....
  • Scott Collie, reviewing the Project Panther car for Caradvice on December 17, 2017

• Thomas A Dorsey's "Peace in the Valley" became one of the most popular songs during WWII. When the war was over, it might have been forgotten altogether if it wasnt for a single performance on January 6, 1957, when Elvis Presley dedicated it to the 250,000 Hungarian refugees fleeing a Soviet Invasion. Thanks to that performance more than US$6m. were raised.
  • Ace Collins in his book "Stories behind the Songs and Hymns about Heaven"

• I've come up under people that were before me that inspired me: Elvis Presley, Little Richard, you name it from back in the day, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone. All these cats had not only music, but they had expressions in what they wore."
  • Bootsy Collins African American musicians in a 2001 interview with Tom Murphy as published on the West Word Music

• Elvis Presley did more to change the course of popular music and youth culture than any other entertainer in the twentieth century, beginning with his meeting Sam Phillips in 1954, at the Sun Records label, in Memphis. In 1956, for Presley's first single at RCA, producer Steve Sholes was adamant that Phillips' sonic treatments be adhered to, as closely as possible. So, in attempting to recreate the Sun echo sound, Sholes relied on the ambiance of RCA's then-cavernous recording studio in Nashville, rather than the tape-delay method; the major problem facing Sholes was Presley's tendency to get carried away with the music and wander away from the microphone; so, rather than spoil the singer's fun, Sholes decided to position three microphones around Presley to capture his quivering voice, no matter where he strayed; the results were breathtaking.
  • Columbia University's "History of Record Production" (Part II of syllabus)

• Elvis was danger, and passion and sex, and he broke all those barriers.
  • M. Tye Comer, Editor for Billboard, in an interview with Geraldo Rivera for Fox's Rise to Fame, as broadcast on January 8, 2015.

• All the Christians felt Elvis was a sin, so my sister Sarah and I loved Elvis, We obtained an Elvis record, sneaked it into dad's study to listen to it, BUT NOT BEFORE placing a towel across the bottom of the door to muffle the sound. I then obtained an autograph from him while I visited Memphis, which remains one of my treasured possessions.
  • Charles Paul Conn, President of Lee University in Cleveland, TN, recalling his younger days in an article published in the Cleveland Daily Banner, on October 21, 2017

• The generosity and public spirited zeal with which you donate your services to the Arizona Memorial Fund are appreciated by all of us in the Navy.
  • Secretary of the Navy John Connally's words, read by Rear Admiral Robert L.Campbell, just prior to Elvis entering the stage to deliver his promise to donate all the proceeds, and more, towards the construction of the Arizona Memorial, on March 25, 1961. The above mentioned contribution, then set at US$64,000, is equivalent after adjustments made for inflation to $517,574, in 2016 dollars.

• The black leather concert from Elvis Presley's 1968 Comeback Special
  • Mezzo soprano Sarah Connally's answer to the question of what would she consider to be her musical guilty pleasure, as published in the Guardian's March 6, 2016 edition.

• About two days after Elvis's 1969 Vegas shows, I was back in New York and went into Albert Grossman's office because I was trying to see Bob Dylan and he managed him. He said that he was in Woodstock. For some reason he suddenly put me on the phone with Dylan and I didn't know what to say to him because I hadn't planned to interview him. I told him I'd just been to see Elvis. From that moment instead of me being a Bob Dylan fan we were both Elvis fans. Dylan asked me precisely, "What did he do? Did he do the Sun stuff? Did he do 'That's All Right, Mama'? Did he do 'Mystery Train'? Who's in the band?" Dylan read the New York Times review but he wanted to know what I thought of it. All these questions. Two days later I'm back in England and I'm on the phone with John Lennon and I get exactly the same questions from him about Elvis. Lennon asked, "How was the show? Did he do any of the Sun numbers? Did he play 'Mystery Train'?" It showed me more than anything that rock stars are basically fans.
  • Ray Connolly, UK columnist, novelist, script-writer and interviewer and biographer for both Lennon and Presley, as told to Ken Sharp, of EIN, on January 9,2010

• Prince had great respect for Elvis, the Bar Keys, Al Green and the influence on the music world from the Memphis' sound.
  • Norman Connors, African American music producer and University of Memphis professor whose spouse, R&B singer Cherrelle is Prince's cousin, in an interview from WREG News Channel 3 Memphis.

• I met Elvis on a football field. I was trying to get to him and I finally sent him to the floor. That's how we became friends. I like Elvis a lot, he is a legend who just died too young.
  • Robert Conrad in an interview with the PM show.

• In Las Vegas, he was a different Elvis, putting on the blitz, the neon signs dared him. In a sense, he codified, encapsulated, permeated, embodied Americana. It was so real in its total artificiality, as Elvis brought it all together and made it work.
  • Tom Constanten, keyboardist for the Grateful Dead, as interviewed by the BBC in 2017.

• In the mid fifties, Presley initiated a new phase in the popularizing of African American vocal techniques, combining them with influences from country music to create a unique style full of hiccups, between the beat accents, and striking register shifts, from chest voice baritone to falsetto. First, when writing about the echo effect in his early SUN recordings, Richard Middleton, in his "Studying Popular Music", says the effect is largely used to intensify star presence, in fact, Presley becomes larger than life. Conversely, as Henry Pleasants noted in his book "The great american Popular singers¨¨, Presley was said to dominate a vocal style appropriate to different generic contexts, thereby developing a vocal multiplicity, a sound for country, a sound for gospel, a sound for ballads and a sound for R&B.
  • Continuum Encyclopèdia of Popular Music of the World, Volume II (Performance and Production),section pertaining to relevant vocal techniques in modern music.

• The first thing you think of is his cool charisma, his electric personality, the larger than life thing that all those figures embody. But there’s also that little wide-eyed, innocent, naive country boy that is as much a part of it as anything. Elvis embodied both of those.
  • Mike Cooley, songwriter, singer, and guitarist from Tuscumbia and a member of the band Drive-By Truckers. talking about Elvis in an installment of the “Birthplace Sessions,” filmed on the front porch of the Presley home in Tupelo, Mississippi.

• Well, I love Elvis Presley.
  • CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's earnest assertion to another CNN reporter who asked him if he (who is not married and in fact is openly gay), wouldn't mind being married by an Elvis impersonator, as reported by CNN and as part of the 2018 New Year's celebration in a live broadcast from Las Vegas.NV.

• i) He was wearing giraffe skin pants and Aladdin shoes and a pair of socks that Elvis gave him ii) Rock has always had religion. After all, it started as gospel music. Elvis Presley knew every gospel song ever made. I'm not an alarmist or nihilist, but the world gets more dangerous every day. I think our natural survival instinct makes us question where we stand with God even if some claim atheism.”
  • Alice Cooper's tale of his visiting his friend, Salvador Dali, another huge Elvis fan, at the St Regis Hotel, in New York ii) As published in the foreword to Mark Joseph{s newest book on Rock and Religion.

• On his live versions of songs like "How Great Thou Art"(1975),"Unchained Melody"(1976) and "Hurt" (1977), you will be able to hear how high he can go; but, it is essentially on "What Now My Love" (sang live at his "Aloha from Hawaii" global telecast, which reached 1 billion viewers when first aired in 1973), where he goes up three octaves at the end of the song, that you can really hear his true vocal power.
  • Cory Cooper, vocal connoisseur, on Presley's vocal range, as published in ALLEXPERTS.com, on 4 February 2005.

• Elvis Presley all the way. He was my hero when I was seven and remains so to this day
  • UK poet John Cooper Clarke's answer to the question of who his heroes are, as published on the New Statesman magazine's November 7, 2018, edition.

• She was involved in everything we did at the Junior Shop, our ladies' wear store. I remember her working very hard, but one thing that always really stood out for me was when someone would come in needing a dress for a family member who had passed away. She would always say, ‘just take it. Even when some of those people insisted on paying anyway, she would tear up the check right after they walked out the door. She used to have us call the radio station to request Elvis Presley singing ‘How Great Thou Art’ all the time. As her health increasingly declined, I knew there was one last thing I could do for her, so I had it playing when she died.
  • Laura Cooper, speaking about the death of her mother Gaynelle Blackmon Nunnelley, a huge Elvis fan, in an article entitled "Remembered for kindness" and as published in the December 25, 2018 edition of Alabama's Arab Tribune

• Music has been very much democratized and that's good news and bad news. The threshold has gone down. Anyone can make music at home with a laptop. All you need is something to say. In older times you had to practice on an instrument and be good on an instrument to be able to make music, and then you had to go to the man to get a recording budget and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Now, it's completely democratic. Every darn fool can make music and I like that. It's like campfire music. It's purpose for humanity is not that it's specialists like me who get to sit on my throne on high and make the music and you just got to sit there and take it. The real purpose of music is for all of us to do it ourselves. The problem is being as big as Elvis Presley or The Beatles. I'm happy though because I like all that new competition. It's good that it is democratized, but not so great for being a rockstar....
  • Stewart Copeland, former Police drummer, on aspiring musicians not needing recording labels to make it, as published by the CBC in an interview made before his playing with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in late September of 2022.

• Since 1962, and the first appearance of Elvis, as silkscreened by Warhol, the face of America changed. The most insistent question posed by the ElvisWarhol series concerns the nature of their specifically charged content, and the viewing of Warhol's imagery not as signs, but as icons dealing with a larger content of culture in America. To a large group of Americans, Presley has long been a folk hero, yet his musical impact has overshadowed his sociological significance. Presley's importance is not simply as a popular entertainer but as a bearer of new verities.
  • UK art curator 's laud of Elvis Presley, as noted in his "Warhol and Elvis", Studio International, 1971.

• Often I err on the side of being too collaborative. I re-edited "The Outsiders" because Warner Brothers felt it was long, and that was a mistake. My father had also written a soaring, romantic score for it. I wondered if it was the right choice, but I couldn’t say that to him. By the time I recut the movie in 2005 he had passed away, and I balanced the schmaltzy music with more of what the Greasers would have listened to: early Elvis Presley....
  • Francis Ford Coppola in an article published in the Guardian's November 1, 2021 edition and entitled ‘Tom Cruise was an intense kid’: How Francis Ford Coppola made The Outsiders"

• SUN Records founder Sam Phillips was surprised that the then 19 year old Elvis Presley knew bluesmen like Arthur Crudup -- but he had spent his last 6 years immersing himself in the blues and Beale Street, where the music and culture of the black Mississippi Delta had settled. Presley was so "blue" -- and his speech so Deep Southern -- that radio announcers took pains to assure listeners in the still-segregated South that the young singer was white. If you go to Sun Studio today is like to travel in time. At 706 Union Ave., it's still 1954. "You are walking on holy ground," the guide tells visitors...
  • Christopher Corbett writing for the Washington Post, in an article entitled "Sun Worship" as published in their August 2, 1996 edition.

• One day at the MGM lot a round Italian looking guy came into the set. He said something like “I’m one of Elvis’ guys, we are shooting at stage 16 and since Elvis saw “Synanon” and loved it he would like to invite you to lunch.” What did I say? Hell yes! Before I knew it I was in Elvis’ dressing room eating a catered lunch.
  • Alex Cord, in reply to numerous of his fans asking him if he ever met Elvis, as quoted from his online page on its October 19, 2013 edition

• We are startled, on the amazing "Blue Moon,"(1954), by his trick of shifting, in a heartbeat, from saloon baritone to pants-too-tight wailing and by his near Hawaiian avoiding of consonants ("Ya-hoo A-know Ah can be fou'/ Sittin' home all alo'"), from "Don't Be Cruel" (1956), a song that comes close to redefining the art of the pop vocal; So, what's left? A terrific crooner who was closer, in intonation, vocal virtuosity and care for a song's mood, to Bing Crosby, than to any top singer of the rock era. Toward the end, he still had it as a Gospel balladeer, the choir-soloist power of the hymn "He Touched Me" (1971) — his voice breaking poignantly at the end of the hymn, as if he had just seen Jesus — still thrills and haunts. So does his desire to please an audience of kids and grandmas, instead of comfortably occupying a niche, as almost every pop star has done since.
  • Richard Corliss, TIME magazine`s Music Editor, reviewing the "Platinum", box-set, as published in the magazine`s January 8, 2003 edition.

• The Danish gave birth to not only Lego. Legends are also top billing in that part of Europe and most deal with Vikings and Norsemen pillaging and plundering — visiting neighbours not in a nice way —. But this boutique nation also houses a big tribute to Elvis Presley. Now, one probably knows about the mermaid statue in Copenhagen harbour and may be surprised to discover how small it is. And yet another may likewise be aware of Hans Christian Andersen, a Dane whose fairy stories, including The Little Mermaid, have delighted young readers and listeners all over the world. Presley's life was another sort of fairytale, all the more so for being cut short. And the legend came in tangible form to a Danish town, thanks to a fan who, as an eight-year-old boy, had heard "Burning love". On that day in 1973 Henrik Knudsen could not, as the song went, have been lifted any higher so by the time Elvis died in 1977, he was absolutely hooked. In school, his English teacher, who was from East Germany, told him his music was banned in her country. Forbidden? Music? Very interesting. So he got books from the library and found out all he could. For Henrik, the flame of love lasted into adulthood. In 1990 he founded The Official Elvis Presley Fan Club of Denmark and within three years he had gathered truck-fulls of Presleyana to open an exhibition. From there the only way was over the top and into a sizeable building in the town of Randers, about an hour's drive north of Aarhus, Denmark's second city. And then Graceland Randers was born...
  • Patrick Cornish, for the The West Australian, in an article published in the Travel section of their December 27, 2018 edition and focusing on how Henrik Knudsen and his extraordinary replica of Graceland, now a big tourist attraction in Denmark, came into being.

• Now Ali is in ring center, dancing around in that robe Elvis Presley gave him at his last fight in Las Vegas, some 6 weeks ago prior to his fight against British Champion Joe Bugner.
  • Sportscaster Howard Cosell's introduction of Muhammad Ali for his first fight against Ken Norton, an event he called for ABC TV' Wide World of Sport's on March 31, 1973

• Such was his star power, that I would compare him with Elvis Presley
  • Joan Coulson, on how much power she noticed, as a 15 year old, the future Archbishop and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu seemed to have over the minds of all South Africans, as reported in the Agence France Press's 30 Dec 2021 edition

• i) When my pop music pals were singing in the mirror pretending to be Elvis Presley, I was pretending to conduct his band. ii) I was once sitting in my youth in a terrace house listening to him singing "Hound Dog" so did I ever think in a million years that The King would one day sing something I had written? No. Sometimes I have to pinch myself about that. I still get tingles when some DJ with excellent taste plays Elvis singing "My Boy" and I remember when I sat down and wrote those lyrics
  • Phil Coulter, quoted in i)the Irish Times's October 12, 2019 edition.and ii) at the Newsletter's 14 January 2022 edition.

• He stood for rock 'n' roll at a time when rock 'n' roll was rebellion, but I think he stood for so many more things than that. He was a southern kid, came from very humble roots, became very popular and very rich and very famous. In this country, that's the American Dream. And that's the Elvis story. What was interesting is that at the outset, Elvis came in through the Country and Western world, signed by RCA in Nashville, not in New York, then went to Pop and soon started to have hits on all three charts, including the R&B chart, and was landing hits everywhere, a fact that totally surprised the music industry. But they were surely delighted to make the money..
  • John Covach, Professor and Chair, Department of Music, School of Arts and Sciences at the Eastman School of Music, at the University of Rochester, in an article for the Atlantic, published on January 8, 2016 and during his lecture entitled "Out of Nowhere: The Surprising Emergence of Elvis Presley and The Beatles, available on YouTube since March 7, 2014.

• With all the Led Zeppelin comparisons and stuff – it was very much a hybrid of 1957's 'Jailhouse Rock' by Elvis Presley and the middle piece was inspired by a Jeff Beck Group song called 'Rice Pudding.'
  • David Coverdale, Whitesnake's mastermind, discussing the band's staple 1987 hit "Still of the Night,"in an interview with Ultimate Guitar as published on 2 December 2017.

• He was was very funny and had charisma that was bigger than life. I enjoyed our friendship.
  • Ralph Wolfe Cowan, the only painter for whom Elvis ever sat, recalling the moments he spent with him, in 1969,as noted in an article published in the January 8, 2010 edition of the Smithsonian magazine.

• Of course everyone is influenced by hearing or seeing the music of the era being performed by the people that made it famous. Take for example Elvis Presley — I think at first glance you see this rock ‘n’ roll god who gets every girl, and then you hear such a beautiful melody and vocal and it completely changes the way you view music. It broadens your mind. Growing up listening to him, I think everything right from the phrasing, the presence on stage has influenced me in some way.
  • Harrison Craig, Australian singer who was runner up in the Voice's 2013 edition, in an interview for news.com.au, published on 9 March, 2017 on the influence the city of Las Vegas and Elvis had on his performing and singing style.

• But let's not be to harsh on Mr.Presley. Doubtless he is doing the best he can. But when the american public shell more than a million dollars in one year to see him, well, let us leave it at that, but maybe this is the Elvis Presley Century.,
  • Ed Creagh, for The Troy Messenger in an article entitled "Craig Wonders whether the 20th Century will be known as the Century of Elvis Presley", as published in The Troy Messenger's Friday Nov. 30, 1956 edition.

• I met Elvis only once and I figure him for a pretty nice guy. And as to music, I really dig his stuff.
  • Thomas W Creel, in late 1959, the member of the Army's Company D of the 13th Cavalry stationed in the then West Germany who was selected by Hollywood producer Hal Wallis as Elvis's double in the exterior scenes shot on that country for "G.I. Blues" mainly because Wallis felt he looked and walked like him from a distance, as reported in the Army-edited newspaper the Stars and Stripes's issue of November of 1959.

• It’s difficult to imagine the feeling in this city that has existed in the last few months since he’s actually been here. The impact he has had has gone beyond football, beyond that of Manchester and the Premier League – it’s absolutely incredible. What he did on Wednesday night is exactly what he’s here to do which is to bring magic to the stadium. It’s almost like Elvis Presley is in Manchester, he’s like a god.
  • About Cristiano Ronaldo's impact on the city of Manchester as noted by Gary Neville in an article published in the Daily Star's October 24, 2021 edition.

• It was a question that would occupy biographers, novelists and the public to the end of the century and beyond. It would spawn theories of conspiracies and cover-ups that would range from Hollywood to Washington. The imagery of Marilyn Monroe would survive to be reinvented and recycled in ways none of us could have imagined in 1962. Yet after 15 years, we might have learned something about that process when the news of Elvis Presley arrived in August 16 1977. I was on vacation that month. If the death of Marilyn seemed sensational, it was sedate compared to Presley's passing, which became a story of crowd control. Now, a good obituary invokes nostalgia in some, curiosity in others and no one could manage both better than my colleague Charles Kuralt, but he couldn't peer into the future and see all the peculiar ways in which Presley mania would persist. Almost two months later to that day, the top story on the CBS Evening News was the death of Bing Crosby. Now, he, Sinatra, Reagan, Churchill and others whose obituaries have been written all lived long enough to see their debts to fame settled.Monroe and Presley did not. They were given the riches, but they were cut off before their time. I don't know if they were unhappy, but for their public, it was easy to imagine their youth and self-destruction as a kind of romantic, self-inflicted martyrdom. To many, that aura is at least as fascinating as the person, or the work, but it only materializes after the obituaries have been filed, as life goes on, even in death.
  • Walter Cronkite for NPR News in an article entitled "The Art of the obituary" , and as published in their April 20, 2006 edition.

• I never went through the Elvis period.
  • David Crosby, in an interview published in the Fretboartd Journal's April 2013 edition.

• He helped to kill off the influence of me and my contemporaries, but I respect him for that because music always has to progress, and no-one could have opened the door to the future like he did.
  • Bing Crosby, as published in iheart.com

• Yeah, I think I do. Aside from the performing, we were up in his suite at the Sahara in Lake Tahoe and the guys were all just sitting around. We were having just a general conversation. He liked to do that. He would have that just about every night after work. The guys would all come up to his suite and they'd sit around and chat. And I remember him just getting so involved in the conversation and listening so carefully to what everybody else had to say. He never once dominated. He never once tried to say, 'Hey, I'm the boss'. You know, this is what I got to say. He really cared about what the other people contributed to the conversation and he listened. And I respected that so much because unfortunately as I said earlier, we have so many people in our business who are ego controlled who don't understand that maybe somebody else does know something. So I was very profoundly affected by that and respectful of him
  • Comedian Norm Crosby's answer to a reporter who asked him whether he had any special memorries of him, from an interview published in Facebook's Elvis Educatiuon Forum page.

• Titley uses the memoirs of mostly former nuns very adroitly to give us a sense of what life was like during this period for those who felt or were persuaded that they had a vocation. Despite the church's toxic fear of sexuality, the “Brides of Christ” designation for nuns had a very unhealthy aura of sexual desire built into it, channelling feelings that would otherwise have found outlets in human sexual partnerships. One nun recounts how her teacher (a nun) was thrilled when Dolores Hart, an actress who was the first to kiss Elvis Presley on screen, became a Benedictine sister: even Elvis could not compete with Jesus.
  • Catriona Crowe, Head of Special Projects at the National Archives of Ireland, reviewing Brian Titley's "Into Silence and Servitude" for the Irish Times, and published there on January 7, 2018.

• I still really don't know to this day what the fuck that was all about. All I know is, I arrived in LA, got to my hotel, as I'd done umpteen times before, started unpacking, and there was a knock at the door and a team of FBI guys wanted to sit down and discuss something with me. And then, for nearly two years, they were always around. I remember going to the Golden Globes and having, like, 16 security guys with me. I don't even know why...and of course, people were like: 'Look at him, he thinks he's fucking Elvis'
  • Russell Crowe,in an interview to the Daily Mirror, discussing the time he was targeted as a possible kidnapping subject by Al Qaeda, sometime in 2001.

• We should do it right now. You want a little bit of Elvis? "One for the money, two for the show...
  • Tom Cruise, after ackowledging he had never sang in public as broadcast

in the Jay Leno Show's 11 Dec 2008 edition.

• Yes, my dad killed JFK, he is secretly Elvis, and Jimmy Hoffa is buried in his backyard
  • Ted Cruz, in a tweet to Donald Trump, who suggested his father had been a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald,sent on May of 2016

• I wasn't thinking and thought I must press the suit and since it was a gold lamé, it wrinkled like the face of a modern Keith Richards!!!
  • Manuel Cuevas Mexican born designer best known for the creation of Elvis' US$10,000 Gold Lame suit for Nudie's in Hollywood. He was actually recalling, in 2016, what happened moments before Elvis and Col. Parker picked up the suit at Nudie's, in the spring of 1957, as told in the book "Manuel, the Rhinestone Rembrandt".

• There's also the Elvis connexion, the idea that he faked his death in 1977, but wanted to carry on being on screen, so he made a cameo appearance in "Home Alone". Remember the rocker at the airport?
  • Child actor and singer Macaulay Culkin, pointing out some of the interesting conspiracies that derived from the huge success of "Home Alone", in an interview with the Irish Times published on March 3, 2018.

• Actor Ed Asner and I quickly became friends. We would sit outside our dressing rooms and talk about politics and the civil rights movement. Ed described himself as a liberal and he didn't agree with what was going on in the country. One day as we were talking Elvis came over to join the conversation. So there the three of us were Elvis, Ed Asner and myself – kicking it around. Elvis played the doctor running a medical clinic in the ghetto. I played a black militant and Ed was the local police officer that played peacekeeper.I was impressed to be working with Elvis but you must remember these were turbulent times for our country and nobody knew what sudden provocation might shape or change our interactions on a daily basis. One evening after we finished shooting Elvis invited me to his dressing room. He was about to release a new album and wanted to get my opinion on one particular song; "In the Ghetto". I really enjoyed the song. I was impressed and I told him so. He was pleased that I liked it and he shared his satisfaction with me we had a drink or two. During a certain part of the evening I took it upon myself to ask him a question that had been on my mind for some time I was rather reluctant to ask given our conversation thus far has been so pleasant. but I felt like I had to pose this question to him. I said you know "Elvis, there is word going around our community that you said 'the only thing black people could do for you what shine your shoes and buy your records." Silence. More silence. Uncomfortable silence. I began to think that he was going to kick me out of his room. Suddenly he surprised me,got slightly emotional and look me dead in my eyes. "I've heard that rumor" he said "It's a vicious lie, and if I knew who started it I would flat kick their asses" He went on to say that he had a special place in his heart for black people declaring that he learned to sing by listening to black people sing gospel and the blues. He claimed he learned how to dance by watching black dudes do their thing. Some of the people closest to him, he said, were black. I could tell immediately that the rumor I had brought up deeply hurt his feelings. I could also tell that he was speaking to me from his heart. That conversation really opened my eyes to the person that Elvis Presley really was -- not the media portrayal ,not the stage persona, not the roles he played in movies, but the real Elvis Presley, the man. He truly earned my respect and we parted ways as friends.Years later I was on location in Knoxville Tennessee co-starring in a television series [Roots] when I got word of Elvis's passing. It shocked me and I was tremendously distressed by his death, as was the whole country.
  • African American actor Ji-Tu Cumbuka, from his biography" A Giant to Remember: The Black Actor in Hollywood"

• I think we're living in a very diverse country now, and if you look at the nativity, traditionally, it was Mary and Joseph, whereas every time I go to a Nativity play it's a loose story. I think it is time to modernise it a little bit and bring a bit of diversity. Why would people not want Elvis and Lobsters instead of Jesus? Come to think of it, when you go to watch the nativity you go and watch them perform.
  • Jessica Cunningham, former candidate in the Apprentice, making the case, to hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, for UK primary schools to ditch the traditional nativity in favour of a more modern and diverse play, the latter after a survey revealed that only 37% of schools will be performing a traditional nativity play, and as reported by UK Yahoo news on December 11. 2018.

• I'd been quilting for 40 years, lost all of my teaching gigs and seminars for the rest of 2020. They sell for about $9,500 each and I do four-day retreats that can cost $1,400 but after making more than 100 masks, I realized I was going to have to restructure my business. I did a lecture and studio tour on Zoom, and then hosted my first online class. I was skeptical as to how many people would pay $35 for it, but was thrilled that 268 people signed up for the webinar. It's not like I'm Elvis Presley, but that's a cheap workshop with me.”
  • Joe Cunningham, noted quilter from San Francisco, CA, on his now making a profit doing masks, after the 2020 pandemic and as reported by the Washington Post on their July 1, 2020 edition in an article entitled "The pandemic-fueled demand for masks has reignited interest in an age-old skill"

• Vocally is where I see him as this great synthesiser of American traditions; his voice is something of a shape shifter, it can sound high and mournful and soulful, and he can also sound like a preacher, or be quite gruff, or be a sweet crooner; it's not the tone, it's the technique, like he had to adopt all these other techniques and put them together to make something extraordinary; the reason there are so many Elvis impersonators is because the voice is undoable – it's a mystery.
  • Justin Currie Scottish songwriter and singer, explaining Elvis´art to staff writer Graem Thompson, as published in the Scottish Herald, on 26 July 2010.

• I was making 'The Rat Race' at Paramount and he was also on the lot, shooting "G.I. Blues". So I happened to be walking by a trailer when its door opens, I look up, and there he was, so he grabs me, pulls me in and he says, 'Mr Curtis, I want you to know what a fan I am. I used to watch your movies in Tennessee'. And I said, 'Please, don't call me Mr Curtis'. And this handsome kid looks at me and says, 'So what do you want me to call you?' And I said, 'Just call me Tony'. And I said, 'So what do I call you?' And he said, 'Mr Presley'. Bam, was he funny. We had a great time together.
  • Tony Curtis, as ´published in For Elvis Fans Only on May 18, 2008

• When I was asked to direct Elvis and after a few conversations with him, I began to sit up and take notice. This is a lovely boy, and he's going to be a wonderful actor. When I told him that he would sing three ballads without one single movement, I didn't get the answer you'd expect. Instead, he merely nodded and said simply, 'You're the boss, Mr. Curtiz.'I found him an amazingly restless, ever-searching young man, pliable, absorbing with a bounce like a rubber ball. In my manner of thinking, he possesses much the same qualities which Gary Cooper and John Wayne showed when they first started in pictures --with one notable exception, namely that they capitalized and still capitalize on an element of awkwardness, while Elvis is agile and resilient with a smoothness that you'd expect in a veteran. I guarantee that he'll amaze everyone. He shows a formidable talent. What's more, he'll get the respect he so dearly desires.
  • Two time Oscar winning Director Michael Curtiz, focusing on Elvis acting capacities in King Creole, which he directed, as published in the Daily notes, on April 9, 1958

• "Younger Now", my new album, was inspired by my love of Elvis Presley and the fantasies I had about him. I used to rewind one of his movies, Blue Hawaii, just to hear him say my name. I would do this over and over and over again because he would say 'I love you, Miley' and I would fantasize HIM telling ME that he loved ME.
  • Miley Cyrus, revealing for the Daily Mail the source for inspiration for her latest album, Younger now, in an article published on 28 September, 2017.

D

• My fans always remember and recognise me for "Disco Dancer", making the song and me inseparable. This song is also special because its various movements and dance steps are inspired by the great singer and performer Elvis Presley. I feel my pelvic thrust "Disco Dancer" was just a bad copy of Presley's signature move and for me, he will always be the King of dance.”
  • Mithum Da, real name Mithun Chakraborty, Indian actor, singer and former Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament, in an article published by the Bollywood news on February 5, 2018

• Elvis Presley's incendiary vocal performance of "Baby, let's play house"(1955), hails from rockabilly's formative era, when the rules hadn't yet been cast in stone, and Elvis was still experimenting in overdrive, searching for the compelling sound that would catapult him to icon status in little over a year. Presley's slapback, echo laden hiccuping – briefly rendered "a cappella" before the snarling low end guitar of Scotty Moore enters –, segues into an irresistibly lascivious declaration of lust, and a not-so-subtle hint of violence. Both of Scotty Moore's immaculately conceived, and executed solos were monstrously influential to the rockabilly idiom, copied by countless Southern axe-wielding teens. And Bill Black slaps his thundering upright bass so percussively, that no drummer was necessary.
  • Bill Dahl, reviewing Elvis' fourth release at the Sun Records label, for AllMusicGuide.com

• Millennials, those born in between 1980 and 2000, get blamed for ruining all kinds of things, from iconic brands, to the economy. That generation is portrayed by the media as being stubborn, lazy, entitled, whiny, and oh yeah, capable of wiping out entire industries with just the flick of a mason jar. But what the baby boomers seem to forget is that every older generation casts aspersions on the young folks, shaking their heads at how things change and reminiscing over the “good old days.” There was a time when Elvis Presley's gyrations were considered the height of vulgarity. Now we have HBO.
  • Amanda Harding, for the Daily Beast's The Cheat Sheet, in an article published on March 2, 2018.

• From a shy young boy to global superstar, the icon of the 20th century that was Elvis Presley is still as enigmatic today as when he was alive. One of the most celebrated and influential popular musicians of all time, his gift and talent, flaws and failings are as enchanting now as they were when he first snarled his lips
  • Beth Daley, Editor and General Manager of Australia's The Conversation, in an editorial published on August 14, 2017.

• Growing up with the Beatles, then Bowie, I used to think Elvis Presley was an old-fashioned crooner, someone your auntie liked, a hillbilly rocker with greasy hair who starred in cheesy films. I had no idea that before Elvis, blues music was played by black people, country by their white neighbours, and gospel by both, but never together. I was blind to the fact that, before Elvis, radio stations and record labels, like everything in the south, were divided by colour. It was Elvis who, as if by magic, merged the blues, country and gospel and created the soundtrack to the modern world. He didn't “steal” black music. He absorbed it from an early age, growing up in poor neighbourhoods in Tupelo, MS, then Memphis TN. He lived and breathed rhythm and blues. He had soul.
  • Susan Dalgety, Scottish Civil Rights writer, for the The Scotsman, as published in July 21, 2018 in an article entitled "Embrace legacy of Otis and Elvis in the name of freedom"

• You cut the hair of the greatest singer and now you can say you cut the moustache of the greatest artist. Incidentally he came to my place in 1972, in NYC, we had a great time and as we bid our goodbyes, I told him how I loved the shirt he was wearing. So he took it off, slowly, and handed it to me. When he left the building he was naked from the waist up. LOL. Anyways I then used it to paint that week, and for sentimental reasons, I never failed to put it on again, whenever I painted"
  • Salvador Dali's words to Larry Geller, Elvis hair stylist, after spending with him an entire week in Paris, during which he insisted he trimmed his animated and eccentric moustache, as published in Geller's Leaves of Elvis Garden.

• I eventually went to Woodstock, the Monterey Festival, Altamont and did the Manson story for Rolling Stone so to cover Elvis' first live show in many years was a must see for me. Elvis was still a huge idol. We saw him as a god. It was a quasi-religious experience. It was one of those wonderful symbiotic events where the audience and the star are both creating a combined energy field. Elvis was getting off on it. It was like some sort of a strange play starring this kid from Tupelo, Mississippi who was made King. That show was a really ecstatic event for me to witness. Much of the audience was the same age as him but Elvis seemed ageless, almost like a folk hero.
  • David Dalton, covering Elvis first show at the International Hotel in Las Vegas on 31 July 1969, for Rolling Stone the magazine whose editorship he had headed two years earlier when he was barely 22 years old.

• When I saw Elvis on Ed Sullivan, I knew he was having more fun than any other human being up there, actually he was having cosmic fun, and I wanted to do it, too. I didn't want to be no rock star, when I was young I didn't even know what that was. I just wanted his job, whatever it was.
  • Jim Dandy, lead singer and frontman for the American Southern rock band Black Oak Arkansas, in an interview published on September 7, 2016 at TEAMROCK.COM

• It was just before Christmas 1962 and as I was driving from El Paso to the East Coast, I began forming the idea that would become this song; not very long afterwards my long-time friend Bob Johnston invited me to Nashville, and we finished this one together; Bob did a demo on it and when Elvis came to town, he picked it up and held it for almost a year in what was then called his portfolio; so, anyway, he recorded it and it was by far the biggest thing that had ever happened to me in my life.
  • Charlie Daniels, explaining how the power ballad "It hurts me" came into being, and what it meant to him, as published in SONGFACTS.com

• I just loved Elvis. We had a couple of pictures together from 1969, so I put the first near the bar, at my club. But they kept stealing it, in fact it and the other, as well as numerous copies, disappeared twice a week for a period of thirty years. They had to be replaced hundreds of times. Anyways, one day, a cute girl walked up to me, and then asked me whether she could take a picture, so I got all excited and just as she got real next to me to have our picture taken, she just took the Elvis picture, left the club and said "Thanks Rodney, you're as doll". What was also hilarious was when my wife discovered that Elvis had a handkerchief that was apparently stained with his sweat and it went for a lot of money. So I had a 'eureka' moment. I sweat more than anybody, so my sweat has to be as good as Elvis' sweat, right? So my wife went right to work, ordering hundreds of perfume-sample bottles and setting about farming my perspiration. She was the 'sweat collector, taking a sponge and spoon and collect my sweat -- about an inch at a time.. She thought we could water it down but I said, 'No, that wouldn't be right.' " Ultimately, the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, where I performed a lot in my later years, put the brakes on the operation: "They said, no, we couldn't offer that sweat. An insurance issue. I was crestfallen." My wife still keeps the cloudy fluid in a Tupperware container, which she'll transfer to a crystal decanter for special occasions. "It means a lot to her, she knows how hard I worked to make people laugh."
  • Rodney Dangerfield, from his autobiography Its not easy being me.

• Rock 'n' Roll was not my cup of tea, so you could understand why I was not crazy about Elvis Presley. Before I met him, one day driving along Sunset Blvd, I heard on the radio a singer, unknown to me, singing beautifully an English version of "O Sole Mio". To my great surprise, the announcer said that the singer was Elvis. When we worked together in "Viva Las Vegas" we became very good friends and I found out what a wonderful person, gentleman, performer and dear friend he really was. I also had an opportunity to work with Elvis off camera. He asked me to help him with the Italian lyrics of "Santa Lucia" I did it with great pleasure and that confirmed what I already knew was another facet of his great talent. He learned the song in no time whatsoever and, as you well know, performed it beautifully. If I had a chance to talk to him. I would tell him how much I miss him.
  • Cesare Danova, Italian American Actor, in a letter to Sue Weigerat, who invited him to appear as a guest in an event focusing on the life and death of Elvis Presley

• He always wore his affinity for Elvis Presley like a batch, covered "Trouble" on his eponymous band's Thrall-Demonsweatlive EP in 1993 and most recently, filmed a Danzig Legacy concert video that stylistically recalled Presley's '68 comeback special, playing in the round with guitarists from throughout his career and singing in front of his name lit up in red. Although he credits director Mark Brooks with the theme for the film, he said he loved the idea himself and is even in the midst of recording an LP of Elvis covers. "Elvis is actually how I got into music, since I was a kid, I was cutting school pretending I was sick and I would lie at home watching old movies, and "Jailhouse Rock" came on and I was like, 'I want to do this. This is great.' And that's how I veered to music. But the thing that has connected all of his sessions is his desire to record new versions of Elvis songs for the upcoming Danzig Sings Elvis LP. "I'm stripping some of the stuff down to the bare bones, very old-school Fifties echoey slap-back vocals," he says. Every time I go back into the studio to work on a new Danzig record, if we have time, I'm like, 'Let's do another Elvis song.' So I keep adding and we'll see what ends up on the record." Some of the songs he has recorded, he says, include "Home Is Where the Heart Is" and the Faron Young–composed "Is It So Strange?" It's a connection that has been a part of him for years. "We have been stopping by Graceland and Elvis' grave since my days in [goth-punk group] Samhain," Danzig says. "Just, you know, hanging out."
  • Glenn Danzig during a visit to Rolling Stone, recalling how Elvis Presley influenced him and how, coincidentally, he went on to write songs for Presley's one time Sun Records label-mates Johnny Cash ("Thirteen") and Roy Orbison ("Life Fades Away"), as published in the magazine's online edition on July 1, 2015.

• He adjusted the music and the lyrics to his own particular presentation. Elvis has the most terrific ear of anyone I have ever met. He does not read music, but he does not need to. All I had to do was play the song for him once, and he made it his own. He has perfect judgment of what is right for him. He exercised that judgment when he chose ‘Love Me Tender’ as the film's theme song.
  • Ken Darby, on Elvis' treatment of a song whose rights he had given to his wife, Vera Matson to share with Elvis, in spite of neither of the three writing a single line of it, and as noted in an article entitled "5 Best Elvis Presley Ballads" and published on Cheatsheet's April 17, 2023 online edition.

• Screw them all, you can't go on like this.
  • Bobby Darin's reaction when told by Elvis that he was having a horrible time with bad scripts, pills and diets, as told by his wife Sandra Dee in an interview published at wwwelvispresleymusiccomau.

• I loved Elvis and his music. My grandmother Mary had an Elvis jumpsuit custom made for me and I’d do Elvis tunes around the house. One day my dad came to pick me up from my mom’s for a visit. He said to me “I hear you’re an Elvis fan; you're a traitor like all the rest!” and he laughed. He said "go put on your jumpsuit and let me see your moves!” Now it was one thing to do my Elvis act for my mom and grandmother but my dad was another story. I just froze and felt really uncomfortable. He said again "show me some moves!” I knew he was joking and that it was all in good fun. Years later, I was supposed to meet Elvis with my dad at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1973. Sadly, that meeting never took place. Sometime a year or so after my dad died my mom and grandmother took me to the Hilton to see Elvis live. I will never forget the excitement of seeing him walk onto that stage to the theme of “2001 A Space Odyssey.” The room was electric and quite honestly I've never experienced anything quite like it to this day. Elvis was a musical treasure/phenomenon and a kind and generous human being Because my mom was so painfully shy, she didn’t let Elvis know we were in the audience and so, again, I never got to meet him.
  • Dodd Darin, Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee's son, on why he never met Elvis, as published in wwwelvispresleymusiccomau.

• Elvis Presley was not just an enormous personality, but also a huge comic book fan. Reportedly, a fan of Captain Marvel Jr., he modeled his looks on him, including the hair with a spit curl, high collars, a short cape, and a lightning belt buckle. Notably, Elvis also appeared in DC comics.
  • Shuvrajit Das Biswas, Editor of Newsbytes, in an article entitled "At ComicBytes, five celebrities crazy about comics", published on October 27, 2018

• Melding a range of disparate influences, along with his energetic jiving, to create a new musical form that still sways listeners -- and in its time, helped break race barriers in the US -- he became a best-selling and influential solo musician of his generation and a significant cultural icon. That explains Elvis Presley's depictions across all media, save literature, where his appearances rarely match his status. His fictional forays -- which span cosmic comedy, high fantasy, science fiction, horror and more, by authors from Douglas Adams to Sir Terry Pratchett (along with Neil Gaiman), from Stephen King to Rick Riordan and Robert Rankin to John Grisham -- see him appear in various guises and forms but rarely in the way we know him. And that is rather unfortunate, for his life has all the makings of a captivating story. From a humble background in the first two decades of his life, he rose to global fame which he retained in his remaining life -- despite his visible physical decline in the final years of his short but eventful life.He had good relations with his parents, was courteous to all, respected fellow singers and acknowledged many as better, and hated the title "King of Rock 'n' Roll". His untimely death left many people shocked, and others suspicious. This is behind the most familiar Elvis trope -- "Elvis Lives". It works on the supposition that Elvis is not dead, and that, either by conspiracy, alien abduction (and later return), or retirement, he is still among us.
  • Vikas Datta in a survey of novels that feature Elvis (March 25, 2018).

• Elvis was never short of any stage performance. There is still a lot to be learned there. It gives you an idea of how to work a stage. He drew people in, you know, defiantly. He had that look; he looked like a star. At any rate, I can't compare myself to Elvis, not even a little bit. People put you on a pedestal; it almost feels like you're being worshiped sometimes which is not normal for a human being to deal with, not even a little."
  • Chris Daughtry,as published in www.graceland.com

• When I photographed him in 1960, right after he got back from the Army, I had direct access to him, rode with him in the train all the way from Fort Dix in New Jersey to Graceland. It was so interesting to see all the girls running by and screaming and crying at every stop. And I was right there with him, eating sandwiches and laughing. At that time, there was no wall between the photographer and the star. But then, after I finished that shoot, it was as if a kind of curtain came down. This was the start of publicists getting involved. You didn't have direct access to celebrities anymore.
  • Henri Dauman, one of Life magazine's top photographers and the father of Philippe Dauman, discussing how stars and newsmen started to see the value of publicity,in an article published at the Hollywood Reporter on April 27, 2018.

• One night at about 1 in the morning I got a call for me to get the aircraft ready to fly from Memphis to Denver, a 2 and a half hour flight. En route, I asked one of the people in his staff, what was the reason we were flying there. He told me it was to get some peanut butter sandwiches. Right, I said. But when we landed, a limo pulled next to the plane, and a man got out with silver trays and there they were, peanut butter sandwiches for all of us. It was the best I have ever had...
  • Elwood David, pilot for the Lisa Marie aircraft, recalling a 1976 trip to Denver, in a 1984 television documentary entitled Graceland.

• The first time I heard Elvis he was singing a song that my brother, Mack, wrote, called "I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine" and he blew me away. Elvis was no accident, a great singer. He was very distinctive in the way that he interpreted lyrics. His rhythmic patterns and the way that he pronounced words was so distinctive that it was not like anybody else It probably came naturally for him. He did any kind of song an could be real and believable with any kind of song. He didn't restrict himself to any one style, never did.
  • Hal David, commenting is work with Elvis during the making of Kid Galahad and the songs he worked in for the soundtrack, in an 2006 interview with Elvis100percentdotcom

• He loved all of the well-known performers, but the one that really brought him out of his shell was Elvis Presley.
  • Ronald C. Davidson's son, describing the musical taste of his namesake father, a pioneer of fusion power and Professor Emeritus of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.

• i) While writing a song in 1977, I learnt that Elvis had died, which influenced its lyric. Staying in New York at the time, I looked out my window late at night, saw a single light on in one of the buildings, then imagined that light being the apartment of an ardent Elvis fan, which became the character Dan the Fan in the song. In fact, the line, "The King is dead, rock is done," is a reference to Elvis. ii) In fact, Elvis turned up one night during our 1969 gig at the Whiskey a GoGo. He sat in the corner with his wife. I didn't know until after. I wouldn't have been able to cope...
  • Ray Davies, leader of the Kinks, on the writing of ROCK 'N' ROLL FANTASY, which he called a "Method acting songwriting job", as published in SONGFACTS.com and ii) in an interview with actor Mark Hamill and published on April 20, 2016

• i) I think Elvis took a huge chance in doing "In the Ghetto". It was a big risk. ii) The first time I saw Elvis in person I knew he was special. Number one he was the prettiest man you ever saw in your life, he was really beyond handsome. There was something electric about him. Coming along when he did, moving the way he did, jumping around the way he did, plus the fact that every woman was totally mesmerized by him. Everything came to standstill when you saw Elvis. This was when he was 19 and again when he was 30. I saw him at both instances and there was the same reaction both times. You couldn't have wiped the smiles off their faces with a hand grenade. He knew what he could do and what he had and he played on it. He came along at a time in the Fifties, him and James Dean, it was the two of them. They were everything.
  • Mac Davis, i) in an interview to EIN, published on July 31, 2013. ii) idem, in 2006

• I have a respect for Elvis and my friendship. It ain't my business what he did in private. The only thing I want to know is, 'Was he my friend?', 'Did I enjoy him as a performer?', 'Did he give the world of entertainment something?' – and the answer is YES on all accounts. The other jazz just don't matter'. 'Early on somebody told me that Elvis was black. And I said 'No, he's white but he's down-home'. And that is what it's all about. Not being black or white it's being 'down-home' and which part of down-home you come from. On a 1 to 10, I would rate him an 11
  • Sammy Davis Jr, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html, published in the magazine's online edition on July 1,2015.

• After I'd seen through Christianity, I was still influenced by the elegance of the living world, what appeared to be intelligent design. And that was reinforced when I discovered that my great hero, Elvis Presley, had done a religious album, called Peace in the Valley. Elvis was kind of a minor God to me and my companions, so when I discovered that he was religious, it felt like a call from heaven. This is Elvis, personally calling me.
  • Richard Dawkins, English author and scientist, on how his world was changed by Elvis Presley, as published on MPR news, on October 7, 2013.

• After a day on set we were talking about how youngsters have to save every penny to buy a car after their graduation. In the US, most youngsters were given a car, not so in the UK.I was 17, but soon after Elvis took me outside and told me to close my eyes, at that moment I knew he had a surprise waiting for me, but never in my wildest dreams could I have thought of a sports car. It was a white 1967 Ford Mustang convertible. Elvis handed me the keys and said 'It's yours.' I couldn't believe it, but I think if he was able to help somebody, he liked to do that.
  • Annette Day, whose only acting role was as a rich heiress in MGM's 1967 "Double Trouble", as told in an interview quoted for the Express's August 31, 2021 edition by Stefan Kiryazis.

• Many say that the his passing was akin to the assassination of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy, in that they remember precisely where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Like them, I, too, remember. I was on the air at WSRW, filling in for one of the guys on vacation and going to the AP teletype machine when I saw a bulletin in bold print, much as a national emergency bulletin would appear, announcing that earlier in the afternoon he had been found dead in Graceland. I also remember waiting to announce it to make certain it was real and not a hoax. Unfortunately, it wasn't....
  • Herb Day, writing for The Times-Gazette on October 29, 2018, in an article entitled "So you think you're Elvis?

• I say emotional because you don’t just drive a Corvette. It drives you—and not in a chauffeur kind of way, either. I’m talking about the nameplate and everything that it stands for. The impact it had on pop culture, car culture, and the entire American culture. I struggle to think of a car that has had more songs written about it, nor can I think of one that has shaped so many dreams. To say the Corvette is just a great car is like saying Elvis was just a great singer. They are far more than that. They are the original American Idols.
  • James Deakin, automotive journalist and TV host at CNN Philippines, in an article entitled "The Corvette, Like Elvis Presley, Is The Original American Idol" and published at the Philippine Tatler on October 18, 2018

• We had a really brilliant Elvis double. And he certainly moved like him. They even did a little CG work on his face to make him a little more like him. [laughs] Originally, his song played much longer through the scene, but Director Denis Villeneuve said that when they were cutting it they just had little echoes of the song and it was much eerier because of that. Isn't that interesting?
  • Cinematographer Roger Deakins, answering the question of why the Elvis "malfunctioning hologram" scene worked so well in the 2017 movie "Blade Runner 2049", as published in the LA Times on 20 November 2017

• That is really amazing
  • James Dean's reaction after hearing a minute's worth of “That's alright Mama” being played by actress Steffi Sidney at a record player she had in her dressing room during the 1955 shoot of the Warner Brothers' production of "Rebel without a cause", as noted by Quora.

• At the time (circa 2016), I was just listening a LOT to Elvis Presley. It was my ring phone, and the ring tones and it was all about Elvis.
  • Ana de Armas's reply to Jimmy Fallon as to why she had named her dog Elvis, as broadcast on his show's 18 April of 2023 edition

• I think he’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen since Elvis. I love him
  • Luann de Lesseps's laud of “Delicious” Joe Bradley before singing in his podcast on November 16., 2024)

• It just fired him up to be in front of people again. He had a charisma where he and the audience became one thing. Not just the little girls, but also women and everybody got caught up in it.
  • Guitarist Mike Deasy, telling Rolling Stone what it felt to play guitar for Elvis in the 1968 NBC special, and in an article published on August 16, 2017.

• Although most of the other boys wore white tuxedos, Elvis chose a relatively conservative dark blue suit. Shyly, he pinned a pink carnation corsage on Regis' dress and as they entered the Continental Ballroom at the Peabody, the band was playing, and couples were already out on the dance floor. But Elvis steered her to a seat and offered her a Coke. "I can't dance," Elvis apologized. She took it that he didn't dance because he was so religious and sweetly replied, "That's all right." And so they sat out the entire night, talking and sipping on soda pop while watching the other couples. Finally, they all lined up for the grand march, stepping through a mammoth heart as their names were called and their picture was taken. A few weeks after the prom, Elvis dropped by Regis' house to see her and found that she and her family had simply vanished. Regis's mother, financially strapped, had decided to move the family to Florida to live with her relatives. Regis said she was "embarrassed" to tell Elvis how bad their financial situation was, so she never said goodbye. In the family's move to Florida, she lost her photo but Elvis always kept his, and a few years later Gladys gave a copy to a fan magazine. By then, Elvis was a sensation, with very specific dance moves all his own.
  • Actor Eddie Deezen, who was filming the prom scene on the set of "Grease" when Elvis died, recalling Elvis' own prom night with his date Regis Wilson in an article for Mental Floss entitled "The Sad Story of Elvis Presley's Senior Prom and published on May 5, 2018

• Before becoming an artist, Peret was a youngster who was not happy selling textiles with his dad, adored Elvis, rock and even R&B but one day decided to do it the rhumba way. Then suddenly, after a show in Madrid, he received a little piece of paper with a time, a room number and a hotel so that they could meet, alone. Then a few days later, he received a similar one, but from the man's wife.
  • About Alain Delon and his wife Natalie's proposals to sleep with the gipsy Elvis, but without either one knowing it, as stated by Peret in the 2018 documantary "Peret, I am the rhumba" by Camila Zapata, published in a Vanity Fair article dated March 22, 2019 end entitled "Peret, the gypsy Elvis who Alain Delon tried to seduce".

• Only I know if there was romance or not
  • Delia Beatriz de la Cruz Delgado, Mexican actress and producer better known as Macaria, who has kept the nature of her relationship with Elvis secret for almost 60 years, as published in the Goaspotlight's January 10, 2022 edition.

• Al Pacino was saying "Hoffa's like the Beatles, you know – so famous, like Elvis Presley". Well, 'size' was important for this ( 40 year old) story, told in such a small, intimate way...
  • Robert De Niro, telling Tom Nicholson why were the Elvis and the Beatles non-scripted references inserted in a scene of Netflix's 2019 production of "The Irishman", about the "disappearance" of Jimmy Hoffa, and as published in Esquire's August 11, 2019 edition.

• "Happy Xmas" by John Lennon "A Marshmallow World" by Dean Martin and "White Christmas" by Elvis Presley.
  • Inès de La Fressange, French model, fashion designer and perfumer as told to Vogue Paris, whose unnamed interviewer asked her to name her three favourite Christmas songs and as published on December 13, 2018.

• i) My young black panther, he is a fine young man. He has the look of a Latin, dark and lithe, moves like a cat, is a good actor and I even like his singing. I would like him for a son ii) In 1960 Dolores del Río finally returned to Hollywood. She starred with Elvis Presley in "Flaming Star" directed by Don Siegel. Having been out of Hollywood for eighteen years at this point Presley nevertheless received her with a bouquet of flowers and said: "Lady, I know exactly who you are. It's an honor to work with one of the biggest and most respected legends of Hollywood. As you will be my mother in the film, I want to ask permission for my ophthalmologist to make contact lenses that mimic the color of your eyes". Del Río immediately took maternal affection to the young Presley.
  • i) From and ii) about legendary Mexican star of the stage and screen Dolores del Rio and her instant affection for Elvis, as noted in her biography by Linda Hall, Beauty in Light and Shade, and published in 2013.

• But then there's Elvis. I love Elvis Presley, in a totally non-ironic way.
  • Benicio del Toro, in an interview for Earnoize, in April of 2014.

• Elvis Presley had a world-shaking transformative talent, and his genious, joy, soul, sadness and danger were admirable, especially when seen through the brilliant lens of director Baz Luhrmann, whose take on Presley's life, as played by Austin Butler, I consider the best movie of 2022.
  • Guillermo del Toro in an interview with Variety, on June 12, 2023

• Well, I guess could use the extra income because I've waited a long time for my present Elvis Presley hit. The money from the juke boxes would help me and my family a lot. Why shouldn't I be paid? I wrote the lyrics for the song.
  • Claude Demetrius, complaining about his not getting the royalties for the lyrics to Elvis' 1958 #1 hit "Hard Headed Woman", which hit the top of the Billboard charts as Elvis was already in Ft. Hood, TX, and as as reported by the New York Daily News on its December 1, 1958 edition, by which time Elvis was already serving in Germany.

• Elvis Presley`s talent as a musical artist was double barrelled and more; his voice, on the one hand, was extraordinary for its quality, range and power, as well as being a unique stage performer with instinctive natural abilities in both areas; he was the master of a wide and diverse range of vocal stylings and ventriloquist effects, from the clear tenor of his C&W heroes, to the vibrato of the Gospel singers he loved, his voice invariably possessing an aching sincerity and an indefinable quality of yearning virtually impossible to pigeonhole.
  • From the U.S Department of the Interior`s paper on criteria for greatness as a vocalist, which, together with all aspects of his life and legacy, led to the inclusion of his home, Graceland, in the National Register of Historic Places, in 2006.

• He was wearing black and looked like ten Greek Gods as he tore through "Love me Tender, "Don't be cruel, and "Jailhouse Rock". He was sweating, in the flesh, alive, inhaling and exhaling. And there I was, breathing the same air, sitting with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, completely and entirely beside myself. Some sideburned greased monkey appeared after the show, asking Jimmy if he would like to meet Elvis. He said "No, thank you," and I never quite got over it....
  • Pamela Des Barres, rock and roll groupie extraordinaire, actor, author and magazine writer, blaming her then love interest Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin for declining to meet Presley after his midnight show at the International Hotel (now the Westgate, Las Vegas) on August 12, 1969, ostensibly in reference to the fact Page knew she was a huge Elvis fan but because of his jealously-derived decision, never got to meet him (as noted in page 139 of her biography. "I am with the band").

• Sam Phillips originally drafted Elvis to replace an absent ballad singer but, after pairing him with ambitious guitarist Scotty Moore and his upright bass-playing friend Bill Black, the music quickly veered in another direction entirely; the SUN Sessions began as an impromptu jam, the absence of drums being purely incidental given it was a small studio, but the light echo the producer used to compensate, inadvertently had an effect on Presley's own voice which was far more interesting; Elvis himself was a raw talent, but his singing prowess was immediately apparent, with a vocal range of roughly three octaves, perfect control and ability to jump between bass, baritone and tenor with the greatest of ease; over fifty years after the fact, we can see that what teenagers saw in him, was a genuinely brilliant vocalist that could just as easily convey a soft ballad, as it could a wild rock song; as a rule, the importance of an album is completely separate from its actual quality but, invariably, albums this influential are influential because they're genuinely great recordings, and "The Sun Sessions", though not formally compiled until 1976, were certainly great, great classic recordings.
  • Dave De Sylvia reviewing "The Sun Sessions", and Elvis' vocal abilities, for SPUTNIK Music, on June 1, 2006

• The voice of Elvis Presley is perhaps the most contested acoustical phenomenon in modern culture. I can understand why some listeners may prefer the original versions (of R&B artists) to Presley's covers, but it is more difficult to claim that these were immoral or unethical. In terms of vocal style and instrumental arrangement, Presley actually borrows relatively little, his appropriations (being) more straightforward, taking from the materials already protected by copyright: lyrics and melody. So, unless he can be criticized for not imitating an original R&B artist's rendition, we have to reevaluate Elvis' transgressions.
  • Joanna Demers, in her book “Musical appreciation, musical meaning and the Law”, published in 2007.

• Anyways, after his midnight show, I spent about fifteen minutes with him, in the hope to take him to bed, but there is a limit to what a woman can say to arouse a man, even for a French woman. I have yet to see, to this day, a more strikingly beautiful man..
  • Catherine Deneuve, in her 2005 autobiography "Close up and personal" recalling the time she met Elvis on August 8, 1969.

• In terms of being a groundbreaker, Elvis is at the forefront, breaking ground before groundbreaking was invented. What comes before groundbreaking, anyway? Whatever it is, that's Elvis. Elvis's career took off with the torque equivalent to that of ""Space Shuttle Atlantis[, and rarely slowed. Elvis had entered the building with an uncompromising style that began with black pants within which his famous hips tortured everyone from young women to fathers. Summing it up, slicked back, jet-black hair in a subtle pompadour with modest sideburns, black button-down shirt tucked into black straight-leg jeans with pair of slender, 50s-style Gucci boots will forever be a cool look...
  • Alicia Dennis, defining why Elvis was ranked #8 by Zimbio, in the all time list of the most influential people in the field of fashion in the 20th Century, as published in Zimbio's December 15, 2008 edition.

• Once the vaccine is available to the early majority, it is important to employ word-of-mouth “seeding” techniques. That means enlisting mega-influencers—celebrities, prominent clergy, and social leaders—and everyday people who serve as micro-influencers to endorse the vaccine and encourage people to seek it. In the 1950s, when polio was rampant, Elvis Presley extolled the benefits of his own widely publicized vaccination, generating buzz about the shot.
  • US noted economist Rohit Deshpande, writing on the COVID pandemia for the Harvard Business School in an article entitled "How Influencers, Celebrities, and FOMO Can Win Over Vaccine Skeptics" and as published in the HBS journal's January 29, 2021 edition.

• A 262-year-old rare artifact stolen in 1952 from the Dearborn Historical Museum was returned Tuesday — just in time for the city's 90th birthday. The artifact, a powder horn on loan from the Detroit Historical Society which originally went missing just before the opening of an exhibit entitled "Saga of a Settler.", was recovered by the FBI's Art Crime Division team in Philadelphia, from an auction in Pennsylvania. That Division, created in 2004, has recovered since more than 14,850 items valued at more than $165 million in art-related investigations worldwide, diving into cases such as the theft of Elvis Presley's memorabilia to pre-Colombian South American artifacts.
  • The Detroit Free Press's account of the extraordinary find, by the FBI, of a powder horn used both in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and as published on their January 15, 2019 edition.

• Elvis Presley is ready to help pedestrians rock'n'roll across the street in the German town of Friedberg near Frankfurt. Three traffic lights featuring his image have been placed around the town's Elvis Presley Square to commemorate the singer. While people are waiting to cross, he appears in the red light striking a pose at a microphone. When the lights go green he is shown swinging his hips in a famous dance move. Transforming traffic lights has become something of a trend in Germany, with the most famous being the Ampelmännchen in East Berlin now installed throughout the united city followed by the Kasperl character in a pointed hat in the city of Ausberg, the Mainzelmännchen in Mainz, the Beethoven traffic lights in Bonn and even the Karl Marx figures in Trier.
  • The Deutsche Welle's official announcement that the German Police authorities in Friedburg have now installed Elvis-themed traffic lights to commemorate his having been posted there for 8 months with the US Army, and as published on their December 6, 2018 online edition.

• David Karns and John Grabish, since a very early age, were influenced by three kings: Jesus Christ, Elvis Presley and King Coal. They grew up, as Elvis fans, in two small Schuylkill County towns shaped by King Coal and graduated from Nativity BVM Catholic High School in the 1960s. As priests at Catholic parishes in Berks, Lehigh and Schuylkill counties, they devoted their adult lives to preaching the word of Christ the King. But Father Grabish is a solo act now. Father Karns, who last served as pastor of St. Stephen's in Port Carbon, Schuylkill County, died a year ago of cancer at age 69. Not surprisingly, he left his collection of Elvis memorabilia to Father Grabish, pastor of St. Paul and St. Joseph parishes in Reading. On Nov. 10, 2018 from 7 to 11 p.m., Father Karns' Elvis collection and other 1950s and '60s memorabilia will be auctioned during a gala in the Inn at Reading, Wyomissing whose proceeds will go to the St. Paul and St. Joseph maintenance funds. In his homily at Father Karns' funeral at St. Ambrose Church on Oct. 12, 2017, Father Grabish recalled their visits to Normandy Beach on Memorial Day in 1994, the 50th anniversary of D-Day. and, of course, to Graceland, the Sun Studio and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Both priests had been celebrants in the annual Mass in observance of Elvis' death, which is held on Aug. 16 at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Memphis. Though his homily quoted the Book of Job and the Gospel of John, Grabish's most poignant tribute to his friend came as he quoted Elvis : "Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind. Memories, sweetened through the ages just like wine".
  • Ron Devlin, writing for the Reading Eagle in an article entitled "Elvis was part of tie that bound priests as friends for decades", as published on November 3, 2018

• When in 1955 Chuck Berry arrived in New York for the Alan Freed Big Rock and Roll Show, he checked into the Alvin Hotel and soon after, went over to Manhattan to meet Freed. It was from Freed that Berry heard some gossip about Elvis, but Barry told Freed that he was already aware of him. Not only had Elvis played St Louis, his hometown, but he had heard about him all over the South. The crossover popularity of Berry's music was further demonstrated when ̊"Maybelline" was covered by white jazz artists and established orchestra leaders looking to rock music for new material. Berry was surprised at the number of jazz and big band artists that liked his song. He had realized during those shows that his music and that of Elvis were in fact creating a new sound...
  • Howard DeWitt, in his book, ElvisːThe Sun years.

• I started watching a lot of videos of Elvis Presley. The way he held the crowd in the palm of his hand. He also said in one of his interviews that the crowd is like sheep. They will go as directed. You have to actually own that moment so I imagined myself being Elvis Presley the next time he was on stage and it worked.
  • Varun Dhawan, Indian actor, explaining to Zoom, how watching Elvis helped him to overcome stage fright, in an interview published on Mar 22, 2018 |

• I have never made no secret of my affinity for Elvis Presley. My favorite song is "Suspicious Minds. I first got into Elvis after discovering a longtime associate provost, who was an avid Elvis collector, was retiring. So, one night I dressed up as Elvis and sang at her retirement party. Here's the interesting thing: I put on the Elvis outfit and parents flock to me and want to take a picture, but their kids didn't recognized me
  • Todd Diacon, President of Kent State University, in an article published at the www.wksu.org's July 1,2019 edition

• I went down to Vegas, had never met him, I was awed, amazing live performer, electric, and halfway through the show he introduced me and it was like, worshiping a God, and then that God says, hey stand up, take a bow, so I stood up and the audience started to cheer, and some telling me to get on the stage with him. Over the years, I thought of it, but I am glad I didn't, it wouldn't have been a good idea. He was warm, very generous to me and I think it was best left at that.
  • Neil Diamond in an interview with Andrew Denton on "Enough Rope"

• That is going to be my Elvis dress, Catherine
  • Diana Princess of Wales, as told to her designer, Catherine Walker upon seeing her first sketches of the dress she had expressedly ordered in late 1989.

• Two uniquely American art forms spawned in the 20th century were comic books and rock n' roll. But before that, in the early 1940s, the Captain Marvel comics became so popular that he even outsold those of Superman for several years. So, the character's publisher decided to create a spin-off hero and one of the new Captain Marvel Jr. comics' most ardent fans was a young boy named Elvis Aaron Presley. So when did he exactly come across it? No one is sure but a copy of 1947's Captain Marvel Jr. #51 is placed on the desk in the recreation of his childhood room at Memphis' Lauderdale Courts housing complex. There are the other clues: Elvis' early haircut seems very much based on that of Freddie Freeman from his late '40s period. Elvis' signature "half capes" worn on stage also seem very inspired by those worn by the teenage hero. And the insignia for Elvis' core rhythm section, the TCB band? It's a very Shazam-esque lightning logo. These all point to direct homages to the superhero he grew up loving the most. And in turn, ever since it was revealed how much Elvis loved Captain Marvel Jr., the comics themselves have returned that inspiration. In the 2000s era Teen Titans series, Captain Marvel Jr. was described as a big Elvis fan. Another famous homage took place in DC's seminal graphic novel Kingdom Come, where we get a glimpse of a future version of Captain Marvel, Jr., whom artist Alex Ross specifically designed to look just like '70s-era Elvis. He even named the character "King Shazam," as a tribute to him. So, will Jack Dylan Grazer pay homage to Elvis in Shazamǃǃ, the movie? Unknown, but if it were to happen, it would sure be in keeping with tradition.
  • Eric Diaz, for Nerdist, in an article entitled ̊"How A SHAZAM! Character Inspired Elvis Presley" as published in their 26 March 2019 edition.

• I was 11 when he died and that's when I saw King Creoleǃǃ What a guyǃǃ The moment I got to school I spent the whole day imitating him. It was like a rocking pneumonia.
  • Gabino Diego, Spanish actor, as noted in an article entitled "The movie that changed my life" as published in Fotogramas's 27/06/2014 edition

• He arrived on the scene when the young needed a romantic image. He filled the bill and on top of that, he can sing.
  • Marlene Dietrich, on page 27 of the 1999 book The Last Word.

• Tonight, I want to introduce the greatest entertainer of all time. Mr. Elvis Presley. He was Las Vegas and if it wasn't for him, so many performers like myself would not have the chance to do what we do in this town. He really was the king.”
  • Celine Dion, in introduction to a "duet" with recordings of Presley

• That ran its course and rock ’n roll came round, Elvis Presley happened and that changed the whole thing. So that was the advent of proper rock ’n roll...
  • Davey Ditchburn,left handed guitar player and lead singer for several Glam Rock bands, explaining how he switched from skiffle to rock and roll in 1956, in an article entitled "How guitar present led to a life of music", as published on the Shields Gazette 22 January 2017 edition.

• I feel like I'm not the only rapper here, Elvis was like a rapper, wore fancy clothes, he drove a Cadillac!!"
  • DJ Paul, youngest member of the Oscar winning rap group Three 6 Mafia, in accepting their inclusion as members of the first class of inductees to the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, as reported by the Jackson Free Press, on November 30, 2012.

• I fell in love with this song, mostly because of Elvis' superior voice, not really thinking about the true meaning behind the lyrics, but rather how the title relates to the music genre I play as DJ house music.
  • Progressive Italian DJ Spankox, on his re-mix of Elvis' classic "Baby Let’s Play House"(1955), as published on an UPI wire relayed worldwide on the day of the song's release, June 3, 2008

• Some people I cannot even imagine with a beard. Elvis Presley comes to mind. I thought Elvis with a beard would be very strange, then I did an Internet search and by golly there they were, a plethora of young Elvis Presley images in photographs with beards and mustaches. How does a child of the sixties like me not remember Elvis with a beard? Shoot, somedays I can't remember what I ate for breakfast. or my last bowel movement. As usual when I speak of Elvis Presley's physical appearance I throw out a kind of disclaimer. Look, I am a flaming heterosexual male but that Elvis was one handsome dude..
  • Lindon Dodd, columnist for Indiana's News and Tribune, in an article entitled "The art of growing a beard" as published on September 28, 2018.

• Oh God, help!!!! it has to be exquisite
  • Doja Cat's reaction to her song "Vegas" being chosen to lead the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's 2022 biopic.

• I grаvitаted towаrd good old rock ‘n’ roll, аnd I still do to this dаy. Some of Elvis Presley’s songs chаnged my life аnd helped ne become the musiciаn I am now. Thаt wаs the kind of stuff thаt mаde me wаnt to sing
  • Mickey Dolenz, as noted in TechnoTrrnz' April 12, 2022 edition.

• It was amazing when the assistant director knocks on the door of my dressing room trailer and he comes in, and right there, behind him in the doorway stands Elvis Presley. It was unbelievable. So Elvis gets into the trailer and he introduces himself first to my Mom, the gentleman that he was, and then he introduces himself to me and I'm telling you the man was totally gracious as can be and again that's pretty much the essence of Elvis, he was gracious, understated, humble genuine, he was a true gentleman from the old school, in fact so understated that he really listened to you. He was the genuine article. I tell you towards the end of the production, I had turned nine years old and they had a little surprise birthday for me on the set and Elvis was there. My nephew who was about the same age and was my stand was there also, so Elvis bought me gifts for my birthday and GAVE my nephew gifts too so that HE wouldn't feel left out. And I thought that was awesome...
  • Larry Domasin, US child actor who starred with Elvis in Fun In Acapulco, in an interview with the Elvis podcast in 2015.

• His was the one voice I wish to have had, of all those emanating from singers in the popular music field.
  • Placido Domingo, in an interview given to "Hola" magazine (Spanish version), as published in June of 1994.

• i) When I was playing at the Flamingo Hotel, in 1969, I went to his room and played for him. I remember him telling me, “You know, Fats, I’m opening up tomorrow but when I first came here I flopped!" But when he got back there it was all gold and every night it was sold out. Boy, he could sing. He could sing spirituals, country and western, everything he sang I liked. Elvis Presley did a lot before he passed. He made movies, he was traveling, everything. I don't see how he did it; you'd have to stay up day and night. ii) Elvis came to see me before he got a record deal. I liked him. I liked to hear him sing. He was just starting out, almost. He wasn't dressing up. Matter of fact, he had plain boots on. He wasn't wearing all those fancy clothes. He told me he flopped the first time he came to Las Vegas. I loved his music. He could sing anything. And he was a nice fellow, shy. His face was so pretty, so soft. I'm glad we took this picture.
  • Fats Domino, recalling his relationship with Elvis in an interview with Michael Hurtt for the magazine Backtalk and published on June 1,2004 ii) referring to the picture they had of each other, it was taken minutes after Elvis himself called Fats “the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.” in a 1969 press conference when he diverted the attention of members of the press from calling him "King" and directed attention to Fats, who was also at the press conference. Rewinding to 1956, it was a time when musicians borrowed from each other in creating this new sound, leading to a bridge over the nation's racial divide being constructed from the rockabilly crafted in Memphis by Bill, Scotty and Elvis.

• One day, I got a phone call and the guy said "Hey look what Elvis Presley has done, he's covered your masterpiece". I was all shook up, first because I was his fan, and also because I would do covers of his songs, albeit in my terrible English. Years later, I went to Graceland and saw the RIAA Award for "You don't have to say you love me" and naturally, I again felt so honoured.
  • Pino Donaggio, Italian singer-songwriter, in an interview with quelliche...ilcinema, dated 26 May 2016

• And we do what we like to call “crockers”, whenever Elvis Presley dies or congressman so and so die, a statement of accomplishments, condolences, regrets, and whatnot. I did the one on Elvis Presley. Rex Granum said they were getting a lot of calls in the press office, and they wanted one, so I leaned heavily on his being a humble young man from obscure beginnings who nevertheless went off to serve his country without complaint at the very height of his fame and fortune, as a truck driver in the German motor pool. Anyway, that didn’t work as I had planned. Rex still insisted on doing a crocker so Rick Hertzburg finally did one.
  • Jerome Doolittle, Pres. Carter's speech and joke writer, from an interview he had with Marie Allen, of the Presidential Papers Staff, on December 1978, a year and a half after Elvis died.

• When they celebrated the 10th anniversary of his death, it was more like a canonization, people lining up to visit Graceland, both women and men, with tears in their eyes...
  • Kirk Douglas,in page 79 of the book The last word, 1999.

• Elvis, what he had was this unique quality, remember I described the sensation of people in that geographic location of the United States at that particular time being a mixed culture artistically? They were playing country, gospel, jazz and the blues and you did not know whether they were black or white, or who's playing what, because you're not looking at a tube, all you're doing is listening to a radio, and they are so good at emulating each other's styles that you don't know what's happening. Elvis blotted up as close as any white man could, the black culture. And he was sensitive to the black culture. If he heard something that he fancied doing and it was white, he didn't make it sound black. If it was black, he didn't make it sound white. He kept it in its tradition. That was one of Elvis' unique facilities.
  • Tom Dowd, record producer for Atlantic, credited with being amongst those who shaped the very sound of popular music through his studio work with the likes of Ray Charles, Otis Redding, the Drifters, the Coasters, Ruth Brown and even Bobby Darin, whose cover of "Mack the Knife" he captured marvellously, as was the case with John Coltrane Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker compositions.

• What he actually did was take 'black' and 'white' music and transform them into this third thing; (in the final analysis), no one sang so many different kinds of music – rock, gospel, country, standards –, as well as Presley sang them, at such a high level, and for such a long time.
  • Greg Drew, world famous voice coach whose clients include Lenny Kravitz, Avril Lavigne, and Corey Glover, as quoted in Mike Brewster`s "The Great Innovators: Birth of a Rock star", published by Business Week in its September 24, 2004 issue.

• Radio Head, Harry Styles, and Elvis Presley— that is the wide range of genres likely responsible for my sound and style of writing.
  • Trevor Drury, model and musician, in an interview with Backstage, as published on November 8, 2017

• Is music fandom a realm of spiritual practice? Do fans use their connections with heroes to adopt practices like veneration, sanctification or idolatry? While appearing to be magical and important social figures, stars are not necessarily deified. In the two decades since I started researching Elvis fandom, I have never met anyone who was “saved” or redeemed by Elvis Presley. On the other hand, I have met many fans that have been seduced, fascinated, empowered and inspired by his music. They all say that he has changed their lives for the better, but none expect heavenly rewards because of their fandom. Elvis loved gospel and used it to enter the mainstream. Despite his own intentions, he did not, however, practice “worship” music. His fans respected his values, some saying that Elvis used his music as a God-given gift, in part because the reading aligns Elvis’ values with his talents.......
  • Mark Duffett, in his article "Elvis’ Gospel Music: Between the Secular and the Spiritual? and as published on RELIGIONS' March 9, 2015 edition.

• I take offence at being accused of being Bono or Prince — I would have thought Elvis was more appropriate.
  • Craig Duffy, Australian Gold Coast entrepreneur and such a huge Elvis Presley fan that his Ferrari number plate is a well-known Presley acronym TCB (Taking Care of Business), as published on the Gold Coast Bulletin on November 23, 2017

• I just love Elvis
  • Adrian Dunbar, after delighting his fans with a rendition of the 1954 Elvis Presley classic "That's All right " at a music venue in London and as reported on the Edinburgh News' January 21, 2023 edition.

• In a survey taken in 1996, a sampling of Chinese people were asked to name three famous Westerners. They chose Jesus, Nixon and Elvis. The Chinese, the most closed society over the last half century knew about Elvis? Oh yes, they knew. In fact, that same year, a NYT reporter attending a Chinese US summit, spoke of the time when the Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, then visiting the Philippines, proceeded to do a duet, in perfect English, of "Love me tender" his partner being his host, President Fidel Ramos.
  • King Duncan, in his 2001 book The Amazing Law of influence

• Elvis wore a halo. Otis Redding did, too. You knew you were playing with a star when you played with them.
  • Bassman Donald "Duck" Dunn, as noted in brainyquote

• Kim Jong-il was obsessed with Elvis Presley, his mansion crammed with his idol's records and his collection of 20,000 Hollywood movies included Presley's titles. He even copied the King's Vegas-era look of giant shades, jumpsuits and bouffant hairstyle.
  • Tom Newton Dunn, as published in Jong Il' obituary in the Sun, on 20 December 2011.

• Well, you might have known trouble was coming if you were here in 1957. That was the year Elvis Presley paid us a visit. I think we might have made him famous, too."
  • Sam Durham, from "A Ghost Tour of Jerome, America's Largest Ghost Town" 1989, Creative Video Productions, Sedona AZ.

• i) When I first heard Elvis' voice, I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. ii) Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun didn't think much of my songs. He produced some great records, no question about it, like Ray Charles, Ray Brown, just to name a few. But Sam Phillips, he recorded Elvis and Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Radical eyes that shook the very essence of humanity. Revolution in style and scope. Heavy shape and color. Radical to the bone. Songs that cut you to the bone. Renegades in all degrees, doing songs that would never decay, and still resound to this day. Oh, yeah, I'd rather have Sam Phillips' blessing any day. iii) You feel like an impostor, when someone says something you know you're not, like you're a prophet, or a saviour. Elvis, yes, I could easily want to become him. iv) I went over my whole life. I went over my whole childhood. I didn't talk to anyone for a week after Elvis died. If it wasn't for Elvis and Hank Williams, I couldn't be doing what I do today. v) When I first heard Elvis's voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. He is the deity supreme of rock and roll religion as it exists in today's form. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. I think for a long time that freedom to me was Elvis singing 'Blue Moon of Kentucky.' I thank God for Elvis. vi) I liked Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley recorded a song of mine. That's the one recording I treasure the most ... it was called "Tomorrow Is a Long Time." I wrote it but never recorded it.
  • 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature Bob Dylan i) speaking about those who influenced his life and music, as part of his acceptance speech after being named the 2015 MusiCares's Person of the Year and as delivered at the Gala organized by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences at the Los Angeles Convention Center on 6 February, 2015. iii) in response to a question from CBS correspondent Ed Bradley, who asked him how he saw himself in his early years, as told in a one hour special retrospective on his life, entitled "Dylan looks back" and broadcast in the December 5, 2004 edition of "60 Minutes" iv) as published in www.graceland.com v) US magazine, 24 August 1987 vi) Rolling Stone magazine interview November 29, 1969

E

• I remember him working on the next stage, always with an entourage of about 15 guys. And I also recall that everybody was doing fast draw – that was the gimmick then. Who was the fastest gun? I was particularly good at it and I can remember taking on Elvis. He was a good guy. And we knew each other and, at that time, we both felt were on the brink of really going somewhere. I get a kick out of my wife, who is quite a few years younger. She’ll say, ‘Did you know Elvis Presley?’ I’ll say, ‘Sure’ She’ll look at some old picture of me and say, ‘What a babe!’ (Laughs) We were all hanging around at the same time, in the 1950s. We were all here in town, and all struggling in various things. I was doing Rawhide. There was a camaraderie among the younger group.
  • Clint Eastwood, recalling his early friendship with Elvis, in an interview with Marty Palmer for the Mail, on Sunday 17 January 2011 and reprinted from USA Today on Samachar Central April 21, 2023 edition.

• He's one of the three greatest of all-time along with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.
  • Michael Eavis, founder and organiser of the annual Glastonbury Festival, in reference to David Bowie, whom he hosted at his festival in 1971, as told to his daughter Emily Eavis, and reported in an article published on October 2, 2018 at Radio X's online page.

• In 1971, at a hotel, he treated me like a peer, just a great guy. So cool, great manners. I had seen him first in Phoenix in 1956, and we sat at the Grand Stand at the Fairgrounds, so girls are climbing on top of the fence. And then a car enters through the race track, stops, girls are going crazy, Then nothing, until the door pops open and he gets out and on to the stage, starts singing, man that was exciting., What a great way to come in a show. I was country, but seeing this, I turned into rock, because Elvis was the one who defined and made it huge.
  • Guitarrist Duane Eddy in a YouTube video entitled Hangin' with Elvis. How Duane Eddy turned from COUNTRY to ROCK N' ROLL

• He was a lovely, lovely human being, gentle, kind, and I loved his music.
  • Barbara Eden, one of Elvis' co-stars in ̊"Flaming Star", as published in Starsat60's March 21, 2019 edition.

• A musician who also felt the power of Presley's Madison Square Garden shows was Paul Stanley, the rhythm guitarist and primary lead vocalist of the rock band Kiss who, as a struggling musician and part-time cab driver at night took numerous customers to, and from the Garden during the three days of Presley's NYC engagement. Hearing about and feeling the excitement directly from those who shared his numerous rides made him think very seriously about his future career, promising himself to one day fill the Garden, something which he accomplished with his band in early February 1977, some 5 months before Presley's death.
  • Bruce Eder, as noted in Wikipedia's page on the 1972 album Elvis as recorded at Madison Square Garde

• I was talking with Elvis' manager, and he said, ‘Come on up to my room, and you can meet him.’ I've had people up to my room when I've been on the road who have turned out to be boors, and I didn't want to do that to him. So I said, ‘No, but thank you.’ I figured since we also had the same promoter that I'd be bound to run into him — but then, of course, he died three or four months later so I never did get to meet him.
  • Graeme Edge, drummer for the Moody Blues, in an interview published on Palm Springs Live on May 30, 2017

• He could sing good. Good singer. Am enormous talent, he had an ability to stir people{s
  • Delta Blues singer and guitarist David "Honeyboy" Edwards, a friend and contemporary of bluesman extraordinaire Robert Johnson, speaking about the white boy that came out of Mississippi and went on to become famous, at a concert the Hale House, in Matunuck, RI on Oct 7, 2010.

• He was a very happy, joyous kid, great to be around. He had an ability to stir people's souls, an enormous talent. Needless for me to say that he was very dear to my heart
  • Richard Egan in an interview published by you tube, explaining how different Elvis was to what was normally written about him.

• The myth makes it bigger but when you go in there, you know where you are. I've been in many places bigger than that and it ain't the same"
  • Photographer William Eggleston, telling Richard Harrington of the Washington Post on December 10, 1983 how he felt about Graceland after photographing it in 1982, as part of the publication of a paperback entitled “Elvis at Graceland”, the visual images of which having been commissioned to him, on the recommendation of Andy Warhol, by the Elvis Presley Estate. On April 7, 2021, almost 4 decades after that assignment, a set made up of just 11 of those prints was auctioned at Phillips in New York, hammering at US$226,000

• I ask him what it's like to know that he's now part of a franchise that will outlive him. It's an impossible question for him to answer, and when he does it, he endears himself to me forever by quoting Lester Bangs’s 1977 obituary for Elvis Presley, which doubled as a eulogy for the community bred by shared reverence. “At the end of it, Bangs is like, ‘We’re not gonna ever have this again, so instead of saying goodbye to Elvis, I’ll say goodbye to you,’ ”
  • About Alden Ehrenreich, lead actor in "Solo: A Star Wars Story", which focuses on the character's early years, in an interview for Esquire's April 24, 2018 edition.

• I can remember sitting in front of my television set at age 25 and watching the Elvis special. I already knew that I could never do what he did as an artist, but seeing that show had a great deal to do with my dreams of having a career in television production.
  • Kenneth Ehrlich, television producer for the 2019 NBC special honouring the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Elvis special, in an article published by Variety on December 3, 2018.

• When I was seven years old, I saw Elvis Presley on TV. That hit me as to why I wanted to play music. Through a succession of different instruments, I ended up with the guitar. Then when I was 24, I heard my first mandolin player, Jethro Burns, at a bluegrass festival in Indiana. Those two and Bill Monroe, of course, were my main, early influences.
  • Eight of January's Bob Knysz, lead singer and mandolin player, recalling his influences for the Marietta Daily Journal' s January 2, 2019 edition, in an article entitled "The Boys of Bluegrass: Georgia band gets set to pull some strings"

• My girlfriends and I are writing all the way from Montana. We think it's bad enough to send Elvis Presley to the army, but if you cut his sideburns off, we will just die. You don't know how we feel about him, I really don't see why you have to send him in the Army at all, but we beg you please please don't give him a G.I. hair cut, oh please please don't! If you do, we will just about die!
  • Letter, one of thousands, sent to US Pres. Dwight Eisenhower after Elvis was drafted and signed by then 8th graders Linda Kelly, Sherry Bane and Micky Mattson. Original now at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC

• Some of the mossbacks of our city, who haven't had a youthful thought since the Civil War, say that rock and roll music is the theme song of juvenile delinquency and that Elvis Presley is making ‘dead end kids’ out of the whole generation. Nothing could be more idiotic. It is supposed to be perfectly all right for every bald-headed man in American to drool as Marilyn Monroe goes slithering across the pages of our time on the arm of husband number three. But the very moment that youth dance and Elvis shakes his left leg a bit, it's supposed to be juvenile delinquency of the worst sort.
  • Reverend James H. Elder of Mullins' Methodist Church in Memphis, in an interview with the Toronto Star on July 7, 1956.

• Rock n' roll won't last. Labels don't make money on long play albums. No single artist is worth $35,000. That's what the majority believed when Elvis Presley signed on RCA's dotted line and released his debut self-titled album in March of 1956. The bulk of RCA ’s rock n’ roll gamble was recorded in Nashville and augmented with a few previously unreleased SUN selections to round out the platter. I could argue that the chemistry between Elvis, guitarist Scotty Moore, and bassist Bill Black was put through the washin' machine once the Blue Moon Boys went to RCA– but I'd probably lose the debate. Even for hardcore rockabilly enthusiasts who consider SUN the alpha and omega, it's hard to fault the version of “Money Honey” or lambast the album's cover of Ray Charles' iconic (if misogynistic) “I Got A Woman”. The crown jewel of the album is the lead track, “Blue Suede Shoes”. In fact, Elvis Presley became the first rock n' roll album to sell a million copies, shattering industry notions, establishing Elvis as the genre's first megastar, and for good or ill, changed popular music forever after.
  • The 11th Hour's laud of Elvis first album, released in 1956, as published on their ̊̊"Do This" column dated January 21, 2019.

• Now tell me all about Elvis Presley? Will he come to England?'"
  • Queen Elizabeth II's question to UK actress Suzzanna Leigh, whom she knew had recently co-starred with Elvis, who in turn she admired tremendously, as Her Majesty greeted guests on the line-up to the Royal Film Variety Performance Gala in 1966. Almost thirty years after Elvis died, she confided to UK TV and radio personality Terry Wogan her favourite Presley song was the laughing version of "Are you Lonesome Tonight", as told in an interview held at the HQ of the BBC's Broadcasting House on April 20, 2006.

• And here this entity was standing in the doorway, this black suit on, and there was absolutely a dead silence in the room, just like somebody had sucked all of the air out of it. And he came in and stood behind a chair, and Dad got up and walked around and shook hands with him, and he sat down at the end of the table. And then the sergeant-at-arms from the legislature, they were meeting in a joint session, which meant that the Senate and the House of Representatives all came together there. And the galleries were filled with people screaming. And when the sergeant-of-arms came down and said it was time for Dad and Elvis to go on upstairs to the legislature, that was when Elvis came up and sat down next to me, the sergeant-of-arms said, 'Okay, time to go,' Elvis says, 'You're going, aren't you?' And I said, 'No, I'm not gonna be a part of this'. And he says, 'Yeah, I need for you to go'. And I said, 'I don't think I'm supposed to go. There's not seats arranged up there for me, and seats were a premium, believe me'. And he said, 'Yeah, you've got to go'. He grabs my hand, and Dad gives the nod, it's okay, go ahead, you know. And here we go, out through the crowd, down the hallway, up the steps, and then into the opening, and the Speaker of the House, Mr. James Bomar announced that Elvis Presley would be presented to the House of Representatives. At first I was somewhat nervous around him. I mean the persona was so immense, you know. And then it didn't take long though, when he became comfortable with you, that all of that just dissipated. And it was just like you had known him forever...
  • Ann Ellington, daughter of Tennessee Gov. Buford Ellington, describing her delight after being asked by Elvis to accompany him during his address at the TN State Legislature on March 8, 1961.

• Having those voices surround me as I sang was the most indescribable feeling I had ever experienced. Now I understand why this means so much to you.
  • Cass Elliot, of the Mamas and the Papas, after having asked Elvis why did he sing Gospel music, over and over after his shows, and Elvis challenging her to do so herself, with the backing of his gospel quartet, which they did.

• In January 1971, I was attending a conference on the 10 Outstanding Young Men of America, which that year was held in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis Presley was one of the ten being honored and then-congressman George H.W. Bush was the guest speaker. At the end of the program, Bush ran up to Presley and shook his hand. I was able to photograph the encounter. So years later I said, "Oh my gosh. I was right up there on Elvis but I didn’t realize how important Bush was going to be. I met Presley later at the conference and hoped to get a photo with him, but I got his autograph instead. The truth is I wimped at the last moment when I met him that night in the receiving line...
  • Gordon Elliot, who took the photograph of George H. W. Bush with Elvis, on the day the future US President was the guest speaker who read the citation naming Elvis one of America's 10 outstanding young men, as published by the Springsfield Newsleader on the day the former President was laid to rest, December 5, 2018

• I was fourteen when I met him and took photos of him. One morning, I persuaded my mother to drive before daylight to where I believed Elvis was filming on location. A pink Cadillac with Tennessee plates, parked outside of an unassuming house told me my hunch was right. Elvis suddenly strolled out and up to me and began nonchalantly chatting. He had an amazing aura as he almost seemed to float, not walk towards me. I then told him about how neighborhood kids had made fun of my adulation for him. The blood rushed to my head and I could feel myself blushing as my mother blurted out to Elvis, "Oh, you have no idea how many days he would come home from school having been in fights to defend you!" "I'll teach you something to take care of that," Elvis grinned. "Karate?" I asked. "Yeah. "Well, I had no idea what karate really was. I only knew the term because I had read so much about Elvis' fascination with the sport. I had some idea that it had to do with judo. He never mentioned the offer when I saw him over the next month or so. As we sat around and chatted Elvis' moods seemed to roller coaster regularly. Oh, he was always friendly, always sweet but you could see lonely wash up regularly. All these years later, I am still starry-eyed as I fondly remember the softly spoken and seemingly shy Elvis behaving like a comforting big brother.
  • Ronny Elliot, country singer/songwriter and Tampa native, recalling the time he spent a few days with Elvis during the filming of Follow that dream, as noted in WMNF̪s 10 January 2019 edition.

• As a teenager in England, the first record I ever owned was a 78rpm copy of Elvis' Tutti Frutti/Blue Suede Shoes. I became a huge fan and was always first in line at my local record store to buy his new singles. To me he was the absolute epitome of a star. He never toured in the UK, so in 1969, when I was on the road with Jethro Tull, we made the pilgrimage from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to see his performance at the International Hotel. That evening stands out as a milestone event in my life.
  • Terry Ellis, English record producer and co-founder of music publishing company Chrysalis Music, in his company's Facebook page.

• To quote Elvis Presley my favorite artist, "Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can’t help falling in love with you."
  • Christina El Moussa, US real estate investor and TV personality, in reference to her boyfriend, UK TV personality Ant Anstead, as reported by Today, on October 29, 2018.

• After his midnight show on August 24, 1974, tired of the racist implications inherent in the white angels mounted on the huge walls of the Hilton Showroom, Elvis used a ladder and with the help of Jerry Schilling, proceeded to paint them all black, save for one, who he said represented Jerry, then in a serious relationship with one of his backing singers, Myrna Smith of the African American group the Sweet Inspirations. He then also painted one of the decorative eighteenth century, court-of-Louis-XIV ladies also hanging on the showroom wall black, to represent Myrna. On the next day and in nearly all of the succeeding shows, he jokingly compared himself to Michelangelo, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Hilton management, which had nothing to do with the placing of the angels and or the ladies, this being done by the art designers hired by the previous management under Kirk Kerkorian, could only listen...
  • Elvis Presley Pedia, published on August 24, 2004.

• I think because he’s kind of this godlike figure and he’s larger than life, the most interesting thing to me was finding this little boy in him - because he’s kind of stunted, because he became so massive, sort of so quickly.
  • Jacob Elordi, in an interview with the AP, on how he prepared to play the role of Elvis on the 2023, A24 produced, Sofia Coppola's film "Priscilla"

• For Mrs. Clinton to suggest I was telling Barbara Bush personal stories about the Clintons is extreme paranoia. First, I would never ever do such a thing, and second, anyone who knows Barbara Bush knows she would never tolerate or listen to such nonsense. What was interesting was Bill Clinton's allergies to Christmas trees, George H.W. Bush calling himself “Mr. Smooth," and the large collection of Elvis Presley CDs stored in the East Wing.
  • Christopher Emery, Chief Enterprise Architect for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a former White House Usher, as told in his book "White House Usher: Stories from the Inside"

• I'll tell you one thing. One respect I do have for that guy was that, well, obviously he was a great artist. When I was trying to learn "Jailhouse Rock" for the "Without me" video, I was like "Man, this guy could dance!!"
  • Eminem, in an interview for the Detroit Metro Times, and published on May 13, 2009.

• The first time I laid eyes on him was a couple of years before I met and worked with him. He got out of a white Cadillac, on his way to the theatre he had rented on Memphis, he was on the sidewalk and I was at a distance of three feet from him, and I kept walking and remember thinking that I had never seen a better looking person in my life, like if he wasn't real. He was cute...
  • Bobby Emmons keyboard player and member of the American studio staff who produced the Memphis Sessions in 1969, in an interview for YouTube.

• So his mother Julia took him to services at the St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Pittsburgh every weekend, several masses back-to-back on Sunday. I filmed in that church where you see the iconostasis that includes several images of saints with gold leaf paint, in very static poses with a gesture. Those look very similar to Andy’s portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor, and even “Triple Elvis.” Many art historians believe that Andy internalized and absorbed the formal look of those icons and also the almost-glamor that they projected within his world growing up....
  • Joshua Encinias of the Brooklyn Magazine, talking about how Andy Warhol’s Catholic Byzantine faith influenced the iconography of his portraits, as published in their March 10, 2022 online edition

• When it was announced in early 1958 that Presley had been drafted and would enter the U.S. Army, there was that rarest of all pop culture events, a moment of true grief. More important, he served as the great cultural catalyst of his period, projecting a mixed vision of humility and self-confidence, of intense commitment and comic disbelief in his ability to inspire frenzy. He inspired literally thousands of musicians—initially those more or less like-minded Southerners, from Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins on down, who were the first generation of rockabillies, and, later, people who had far different combinations of musical and cultural influences and ambitions. From John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan to Prince, it was impossible to think of a rock star of any importance who did not owe an explicit debt to Presley.
  • Encyclopædia Britannica's laud on the influence of Elvis Presley (2018 online edition).

• He personified a new form of American popular music in the mid-1950s. Rock and roll was a guitar-based sound with a strong (if loose) beat that drew equally on African American and white traditions from the southern United States, on blues, church music, and country music. Presley’s rapid rise to national stardom revealed the new cultural and economic power of both teenagers and teen-aimed media—records, radio, television, and motion pictures.
  • Encyclopædia Britannica's reference to Elvis as one of the crucial performers in the rock idiom.

• Elvis Presley is the supreme socio-culture icon in the history of pop culture...
  • Dr. Gary Enders, in his paper, Elvis: Coming Back from the Dark Age", one presented in the 2003-04 Online Symposium on Elvis Presleys entitled 'Elvis: Cultural Influence, Intolerance and Political Correctnes'

• On the sunny side, there was that moment, during Pres. Trump's 2019 State of the Union address, when the place erupted with a gusty/lusty HAPPY BIRTHDAY. This was to honor a man in the audience Trump saluted for valor in surviving first the Holocaust and then the Pittsburgh “Tree of Life” massacre – and now his 81st birthday. There was nearly breakdancing and moonwalking in the balconies of Congress. Decorum be damned. We are Americans. Freedom is our bequest. Frivolity is our nature. I saw the same gusto at the Navy base in Haifa; also for an impromptu birthday. They are Israelis. Their love of life and country runs so deep they can't sit still and prefer to party, as it was that day in America. For where else but in America and Israel would a solemn occasion turn spontaneously to rock and roll? Try that in the parliaments of other countries while the leader speaks, and see who comes out alive. Instead, we insist on joy. We celebrate our freedoms through acts of whimsy. Long ago we traded in their Richard Wagner for our Elvis Presley.
  • Writer Jack Engelhard, in an article entitled "Dear Dems – bitterness is no way to run a country" and published on the Israel National News February 8, 2019 edition

• I do not think they should meet Elvis through the efforts of any newspaper representative. In my view, the meeting can only be arranged as entirely private and unpublished. It is absolutely inadvisable to allow any pressman or photographer to interview, or take pictures whilst they are in his house.
  • Beatles manager Brian Epstein's scrawled notes to the Beatles' road manager Mal Evans on how to organize the meeting between them at Elvis' rented house at 625 Perugia way, Bel Air, CA, an event he attended and which took place on August 27, 1965, exactly a year before his untimely death. A transcript of the note can be read on "LA Observed"'s August 24, 2015 edition in an article by Ivor Davis, the Beatles' tour reporter.

• The idea of Elvis Presley cherishing the Book of Mormon had captured the popular imagination of Latter-day Saints. The story of this book has been told by fireside speakers, classroom teachers, newspaper columnists, and an independent filmmaker. And the story continues to circulate throughout the market for “uplifting” books and social media. However, after carefully analyzing the historical opportunities for Presley to have read this volume and the handwriting throughout its pages, I affirm that Elvis Presley did not write in this Book of Mormon. A detailed presentation of the analysis with photographic evidence will be published in a forthcoming issue of BYU Studies, but my findings about the book's history, its forged signature, and its forged annotations are as of this moment, final
  • Keith A. Erekson, Director of the Church History Library in an article published on the deseret News on November 14, 2018.

• The so called “self-lecture” series meets during one day of the month, allowing anyone to give a lecture in one of our halls on any topic to do with culture — ranging from Peter the Great's insistence on exhibiting fleas at the oldest museum in Russia, the Kunstkamera all the way to arguing about the finer points of Elvis Presley's music. This is a chance not just for the audience-attendance being always free-to-learn something new and interesting but also for the orator to practice public speaking and get even more immersed in a topic of interest.
  • The Erarta Museum in Saint Petersburg's explanation of one of their most effective education projects.

• Yes, life has taught me not to leave anything for tomorrow. I've made a list, some are personal, intimate, others are places I have to visit before I die, like going to Japan, which I did two weeks ago. And, it all actually started when I was at the intensive care unit, and all I kept thinking was that I wasn't going to make it to see Elvis' house.
  • Mikel Erentxun Spanish/French songwriter and singer, after successfully undergoing bypass heart surgery and as published in the Spanish daily "La Razon" on 18 March, 2015 in an article entitled " I thought I would die without seeing Elvis' house"

• In keeping with the spirit of the week, Senator Ernst introduced the "Cost Openness and Spending Transparency Act (COST Act) after a report released this week from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified several government projects which did not follow the guidelines, incluiding a $90,000 NIH study focused on a sour cream and onion flavored potato chip resembling Elvis Presley.
  • About Iowa Senator Mikel Erentxun's 2019 new legislation which requires every project supported with federal funds to include a price tag with its cost that is transparent and easily available for taxpayers, as reported by the KIOW station's March 19,2019 online edition.

• I would occasionally miss the bus that took me from my post back to my living quarters. When that happened, a fellow soldier in my battalion, the most celebrated soldier in the Army, Elvis Presley, who lived a few doors away would offer me a ride. And despite all the hoopla surrounding his military service, he remained remarkably humble and grounded. I'd first met him at Fort Hood in Texas and saw each other every day while we finished training in a M48 tank battalion. After six months, our company was then shipped off to Germany. There Elvis lived a few doors from me. In fact, throngs of German girls camped out in front of his residence. If he revealed in all the attention, he didn’t show it, was kind of on the shy side and wasn’t one to shout out, ‘I’m Elvis Presley the superstar.’ He just kind of kept to himself. But keeping to himself also didn't mean he was aloof. Out in the field, he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty and never shied away from the work that was expected of him, and the rest of the tank company. After our two-year enlistment ended we parted ways and wouldn't see each other again until 1972, a short time before he was to play a concert at the old Chicago Stadium. I knew a Chicago police watch commander who was working security that night and although the police tried to stop us, my wife and I, from getting backstage at first, Elvis saw them and talked with them for a few minutes. It was the last time we would see or talk to him.
  • Bob Errant, who served in Elvis' Army tank battalion in Germany

• In 1982, we went to Washington DC, and did the tour of the FBI Building, visited Pres. Kennedy's grave at Arlington Memorial and had our pictures taken outside the White House. From there we went to Graceland. Pablo loved Elvis. While we were there he bought his entire record collection. From that moment on, he played his tapes all the time, even danced like him. In 1991, when we first surrendered to the Colombian Army authorities, that collection was one of the few things he took to prison with him. When we escaped from prison a year later, we could not take it with us even if we had wanted to. The reason? It had been just stolen by a jail mate, something Pablo deeply regretted...
  • Roberto de Jesús Escobar Gaviria, older brother of Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar, in his book "The Accountant's Story: Inside the Violent World of the Medellín Cartel"

• i) And as a human being? As long as I live, I know I will never see anyone have such a profound effect on people. He could make anyone feel like he was the most important person in the world just by talking with him. He had charisma and charm that is just indescribable and he didn't even have to sing. When Elvis entered a room, you could feel the energy of his presence tingle at your nerves because the power of his magnetism was that intense and Elvis was just as perplexed by this phenomenon as you or I. He was a humble man but keenly aware of his unique gifts and spent most of his life searching the spirituality, over and over throughout his life asking himself, Why me? Since his death I have asked myself the same question, “why me?” and why, of all the people Elvis met in the service, did he pay special attention to me? In fact, why was I even in the Army? Did destiny lead me into the Army for the sole purpose of meeting Elvis Presley? Why was I selected to become “right hand man to the most celebrated entertainer in history, and to be chosen by Elvis Presley as a best man at his wedding? ii) When you worked for Elvis it wasn’t eight hours a day or 10 hours a day. It was 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because we did everything together. went on vacations together, traveled together. Everything we ever did we all did it together.
  • Joe Esposito, right hand man to Elvis since their return from the Army, in 1960, until Elvis' death in 1977 ii) New York Times obituary, November 27, 2916.

• "I was in Washington studying music and wanted to meet the perfect boyfriend, get married, etc. But for some reason I also wanted to visit a convent in Nashville but had no money to finance the trip, so a friend who was going to Graceland to pay her respects offered me a ride and, as a result and thank God for Elvis, I became a nun!!
  • Sister Rose Mary Esseff, of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, as published in elmundocatlicos- 13 February 2012 edition.

• Alemayehu Eshete is one of the most popular singers to emerge from the golden age of music in the capital Addis Ababa. His “rock n roll funk” stylings and Elvis manner of dress and way of acting has given him “dint of rampant Americanism,” as well as the nickname of The Ethiopian Elvis,
  • About Ethiopian Jazz musician Alemayehu Eshete, as noted by his producer Francis Falceto, in an article entitled "Alemayehu Eshete says he is not retiring" and as published on the Ethiopian Observer's December 2, 2018 edition.

• Well, Jesus and I are Capricorns, and Elvis Presley was born on the same day as me. I read an article the other day about only children and about they being more successful because they never have to compete for love,
  • Bob Eubanks, disc jockey, television personality and game show host also known for bringing and producing the Beatles' two tours of California, replying to a question on what was the best and worst thing about being an only child...and a Capricorn, as published on the USA Today's Ventura County Star on August 7, 2018.

• By virtue of Elvis Presley being Mississippi's most beloved son.
  • Katie Eubanks of the Clarion-Ledger, explaining why The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond lent one of the only two known copies of Andy Warhol's "Triple Elvis" for a show at the Mississippi Museum of Art entitled “Picturing Mississippi.”, which in turn heralds the state 's bicentennial. The other known copy was sold at Christie's in NYC in November of 2014, to the San Francisco MOMA, for US$82 million. (The Ledger, December 1, 2017)

• It had been expected for a half a million dollars to be raised from the music festival which included appearances by Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson, the Staple Singers, the Dells and others, including the Rolling Stones. With the money raised, plans had been made to use part of it for some work to be done on the Robert F. Kennedy Park and Playground in Fayette. More than 47 years later, the then Mayor Charles Evers finally revealed that Presley, who along with the Stones did not participate in the festival, had wanted to come and perform there, especially because of his being a huge follower of B.B. King. Evers said he and his brother, Medgar, fought for change because they knew Mississippi would be the greatest state in the nation if that change took place. With the nomination of Evelyn Gandy, James Hardy, Aaron Henry, Ida B. Wells and Elvis he now believes Mississippi is one of the greatest states to live in...
  • About civil rights activist Charles Evers's decision to tell the press about a secret report written in 1969 by the segregationist Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission which had Elvis Presley helping the integrationist cause, the latter after Presley's nomination for the Mississippi Hall of Fame, as detailed in an article entitled "47 years after spy report, Mississippi welcomes Elvis into Hall", published on the Clarion Ledger on December 12, 2016.

• I guess I should have set a price before I set foot in the boat, but I felt pretty ritzy later that day as we stepped into our gondola. "How much to sing "O Sole Mio?" I asked. I had been taken with the song and Venice since seeing it in movies. If there was one piece of music associated with Venice and its canals, it was this. I knew that Pavarotti had recorded it. So had Caruso. And Mario Lanza. And Elvis Presley, recently released from the Army, had a version written for him called "It's Now Or Never." Without missing a beat the gondolieri told me, "Sixty dollars, U.S." He put his oar in the water and we splashed off. He was a pretty good singer, actually, and I imagined that we were in an old MGM Technicolor musical. My wife Roz was smiling and I was thinking, Yeah, this is a magical moment. I thought about imagining this moment from the time I was growing up in Brooklyn, and that I probably never would have wanted anything better. When we had gotten married all those years before, taking a gondola on a Venice canal, listening to "O Sole Mio" and "It's now or never", it wasn't something I even dared consider. It would have been a fantasy. Now, I was living that fantasy as we held hands and he wound up with a full-throated last note. When the sail ended, I peeled off three twenty-dollar bills, and thanked him. We walked away, humming.
  • Gerald Eskenazi, former sports writer for the NYT and current Forbes contributor, recounting his most recent visit to Venice, as published in an article entitled "Enjoying A Gondola Ride in Venice--With Pavarotti And Presley", published on March 5 2018

• I really am a big Elvis fan – at six foot three I’m one of the biggest. In all the excitement about accompanying the Beatles to their meeting with Elvis, I sent my suit to the cleaners to prepare for the big meeting. However, the cleaners had sewn up my pockets where I kept a bunch of guitar picks that I always had on hand for the boys. So, inevitably when Elvis asked for a guitar pick that night, I went into a panic. I couldn’t access the picks in my sewn-up pockets, so I frantically ran into the kitchen and smashed up a bunch of plastic spoons to create makeshift picks. I’d have loved to have given Elvis a pick, have him play it, then got it back and had it framed.
  • Mal Evans, the Beatles' road manager recounting his time with Elvis and the Beatles on the night of August 27, 1965, when they met at Elvis' 525 Perugia Way home in Bel Air, CA. It helps understand why on his first visit to Graceland, in 2013, Paul McCartney took a pick, engraved with his initials and placed it alongside his grave, with a tweet that said "So you can play guitar in heaven". Evans' story was published in an article entitled "When The Beatles met Elvis, who was Presley’s biggest fan?", on August 26, 2016.

• In 1956, Darryl F. Zanuck cast me as a bullfighter in the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", with most of the cast as well as Hemingway himself opposing me. But when Zanuck saw me learning the trade in Mexico, he said “The kid stays in the picture. And anybody who doesn’t like it can quit.” By 1957, when the film opened, I was receiving more mail than anyone else at Twentieth Century Fox, apart from Elvis Presley.
  • Robert Evans, as stated in his unsigned obitiuary by the Daily Telegraph and published in their 29 October 2019 edtion.

• I remember when I first saw Elvis, I had been playing guitar since I was 8, so then I saw him I said, WOW, finally people are gonna know what a guitar is. (After him) it was cool to have a guitar around your neck, when before, it wasn't"
  • Don Everly,from an interview with VIP in 1996.

F

• The moment I first saw him, the presence he had, wow, he was so beautiful, and had such a charisma that no one could even utter a word. Anyways, a couple of days later, at the MGM Commissary, which was a gigantic place, you know, full of stars, directors, I was seated in a table, my back was facing the door, and then everybody started to get up, and they were all rushing outside, so I turned around and you know, when you are trying to look through a glass, with the sun behind you, so you kind of cover your face, and it was Elvis, outside, looking for me, inside, so there he was, at one of the lowest times in his career, and all 700 people, many celebrities themselves, rush and try to meet him. He almost didn't have a chance to survive THAT kind of celebrity...
  • Shelley Fabares, telling interviewers at MGM how, even in 1965, when they were filming "Girl Happy", Elvis would cause a riot...

• Then candidate Joe Biden, didn't even run for President in 2020. The press ran for him against Donald Trump. In fact, there were more Elvis sightings in the summer of 2020 than Biden's sightings
  • Jimmy Failla, a panelist on Fox News's Outnumbered, when discussing Pres. Biden's 2020 campaign, as broadcast in its April 15, 2022 edition.

• Had he not kissed, he'd be our Jesus.
  • Adam Faith, interviewed by the BBC for the 2002 special "Why there's only one Elvis"

• Elvis Presley would probably have to be my biggest musical influence. After all, he was from the same region as I am and it inspired me to continue my music career into college, even though my major is architecture.
  • Famous Maroon Band's Brittany Roberts, who is 18, commenting for 58Nation on the musician who had the biggest influence on her, as published on their online page on 27 July 2017.

• I was fortunate enough to auction Elvis Presley's jet, which was kind of cool
  • Jeffrey Farber, the 2018 Iowa Champion Auctioneer, as told to O.K. Henderson, of Radio Iowa, on August 14, 2018

• Elvis Presley shared the soul of black music's best performers. He was a reflection of our life experience".
  • Louis Farrakhan, in a 1993 statement on the subject Elvis' contribution to the acceptance of black music.

• Teenagers dominated the mid-20th century, the term being invented only in the 1930s, and no one gave them more visibility than Elvis Presley, who began his own career at 18, embodying the teen desire for liberation from their parents' culture and mirroring their more open sexuality, as he gave youth everywhere in the world music to call their own.
  • Paula Fass History Professor at the University of California, at Berkeley, answering "The Atlantic" magazine's Big Question, on who was the most influential teenager of all time, as published in their April, 2015 edition.

• John and Paul hit it off very quickly. There was something both of them had that just locked together. Perhaps it was a crazy kind of attitude towards life, a contemptuous mockery that later became the trademark of the four Beatles, or perhaps it was just a teenage friendship that stuck. As far as John was concerned, Paul was not only a good guitarist – as good as John himself – but he also resembled their mutual idol, Elvis.”
  • Julius Fast in his 1968 book, "The Beatles, the Real Story".

• Well I did a couple of movies with Elvis, he was really fun to work with, a really nice guy
  • Actor Edward Faulkner's laud of Elvis, in a filmed interview on YouTube

• I have enjoyed a lot of songs of various genres in my life but Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and John Denver are my favorite American male singers.
  • Feedback's Labu Rahman, singer and guitarist for Bangladesh's top rock band, in an interview with the Daily Star and as published on February 2, 2018.

• It's been more than five decades, but there's still such freshness to the recording, such unexpectedness bursting through the familiarity. Scotty Moore and Bill Black, on guitar and upright bass, hang on for all they're worth, trying to keep up with this crazy kid as Elvis's voice – urgent, insinuating – floats out over the beat, a croon that joins joy and nerves and arrogance (already you can hear his sneer), and that voice turns almost spectral as it slides into its upper register whenever it comes to allll ri-iiiiii-ght. (Forget “E pluribus unum’’ or “In God we trust.’’ The words that should appear on our currency are “That’s all right. What I was hearing transcended beauty...
  • Mark Feeney, in his article, "Elvis at 75: Can we ever again see the performer, not the punch line?", as published on January 3, 2010 at BOSTONCOM

• At that moment, Ali seemed to me to be not so much a measuring stick against other great heavyweights such as Louis, Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano, as of Elvis Presley. Elvis was the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, The Greatest in his own sphere, a man who was both drawn to and repelled by the limelight he so easily attracted. And I wondered if the golden cage of fame, sought by many, attained by few, was all it was cracked up to be when Muhammad Ali embarked on his quest to put himself on a pedestal unknown to any boxer. In 1993, the United States Postal Service conducted a nationwide poll to determine which version of Elvis Presley should appear on a commemorative stamp. One version was of the 1956 lean and hip-swiveling Elvis; the other was the 1970s sequin-jump-suited and noticeably plumper Las Vegas model. The vote was, of course, a landslide for the young Elvis. Were a similar vote be put to the American public for an Ali stamp, one being the young, sleek and impossibly gifted boxer who did things no heavyweight had done before or since, or the older, retired Ali who was cited for his humanitarian and philanthropic contributions to society, the outcome would be as preordained as had been the one for Elvis. That class of humanitarians and philanthropists might be in short supply, but they still are more plentiful than individuals who can perform feats of athletic excellence that can make mere mortals gasp in amazement.
  • Bernard Fernandez, in an article entitled BEING AROUND THE GREATEST, MUHAMMAD ALI REMEMBERED,

• Priscilla was a bride in a sort of fallow land. Elvis took her to Graceland when still a teenager, put her in "pause", then married her once she became a woman..
  • Carlos Fidalgo Calvo, Spanish journalist and writer, winner of the Tristana Prize on Fantastic Literature, in his 2024 book "The Devil's fingers",

• It's like people saying Elvis Presley was only famous because he was white. He had, y'know, the rhythm of James Brown but he had his own thing. He was Elvis, he wasn't just a white man. Things like that are going to be picked up between black people and white people and anybody, it doesn't mean a person is or isn't great because they're influenced by something associated with another race. It doesn't matter. Anyway, that period was different, like when he was there, they were stopping everything, and he had the moment for real. While I'm here, its not all about 50 Cent, but it was all about Elvis.”
  • Rapper 50 Cent, in an interview with Noisey to talk about his upcoming album, Animal Ambition, as published at Noisey.vice.com on March 19, 2014

• People say “If Elvis had been a more astute businessman or taken more interest in the workings of his career, he would have been a much bigger star.” But God Almighty, he made more money than anybody I know of. And next to Jesus and Coca-Cola, nothing’s any better known than Elvis Presley...
  • Lamar Fike, as excerpted from Alana Nash's book “Elvis and the Memphis Mafia”

• Not wanting to spoil anyone's party, but in the context of the Grand Bear market of that time, and it certainly was a Very Grand Global Bear Market, the demise of Lehman Brothers was by no means the most important event, and it happened quite late on the timeline as well. Today, books have been written and the event features in a number of documentaries, while the question "Where were you when Lehman went bankrupt?" sits right up there with 9/11, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of Elvis Presley.
  • Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, founder and Editor of FNArena, a major supplier of supplier of financial, business and economic news, analysis and data services for small and large investors dealing with the Australian Stock market, in an article entitled Ten Years On, The World Is Still Turning, published in LiveWire's October 3 2018's online edition.

• I want him to have an earring hanging from his tongue. He is the REAL love of my life. When I am with him, and I walk with him, is like being with Elvis Presley.
  • Carrie Fisher, speaking about the love of his life, her dog Gary, in an interview with Vulture.com, published three months before her death.

• Nobody ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and all I wanted to be was Elvis Presley. But listening to Elvis was not allowed.
  • Dudu Fisher, top Israeli tenor and cantor as told to the audience at the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe, LA, and as reported by The Cranbury Press on September 29, 2011.

• After Elvis goes through basic training, he should do entertaining. That's what I did did five years ago — and it was the greatest experience of my life. I don't know what he's got. Certainly, he's no singer; even he must admit that. Maybe it's the beat. All the rock 'n' roll singers have it, and the beat seems to be important in today's market. And frankly, I don't think Elvis is right in the way he plays on the emotions of the young girls.
  • Eddie Fisher, doing an analogy of his having been drafted in 1953 to Elvis' call of duty in 1958, and recommending for him to take the easy way out, as he had, and as reported by the Corsicana Daily Sun's February 4, 1958 edition

• Elvis....Elvis Presley.............. Im all shook up
  • Ella Fitzgerald, ad libbed during her July 56, 1957 rendition of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" at the Newport Jazz Festival and as recoded live for the 1958 released Verve Records LP entitled "Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday at Newport"

• No, because Vince is Elvis Presley. Elvis never did Johnny Carson even once. I get asked more about what kind of guy Vince McMahon is than anybody else in the wrestling business.
  • Ric Flair on why Vince McMahon should not do interviews, as published in Ringside News´ March 16, 2022 edition.

• I learned music listening to Elvis' records. His measurable effect on culture and music was even greater in England than in the States."
  • Mick Fleetwood, as published in www.graceland.com

• As a youngster I discovered what I could do almost by accident. I grew up in Lima, where my father was a folk singer and my mother managed a pub that presented live music. So, as a teenager, I would sometimes sing a variety of popular songs from Elvis Presley onwards. I was drawn to music from the start so I started guitar lessons at 11 and began to learn music theory at about 14. Then I started to write my own songs but always this was pop-oriented. It was only when I entered the National Music Conservatory at age 17, that I started to discover classical music. In fact, I came late to classical music, preferring instead pop music and Elvis Presley.
  • Juan Diego Florez, Peruvian tenor, thought of being the successor of Luciano Pavarotti, in an article published on the Independent on May 7, 2010 and entitled Opera's superstar: Why Juan Diego Flórez is the heir to Pavarotti

• From his eerie 1954 reading of “Blue Moon” up to 1976's “Hurt,” Elvis established himself as a pre-eminent ballad singer, something a lot of people forget in the flurry to hail his anarchic rock material. “It Hurts Me” from 1963 isn't the first great ballad of his career, but it's one of the finest. Recorded in Nashville at the same session which yielded his supple version of Chuck Berry's “Memphis, Tennessee,” “It Hurts Me” fuses Elvis' love for gospel melisma with the heartache of a lover forced to stand on the sidelines of a romance. He approaches the song — a forbearer of the Four Seasons' “Silence Is Golden” — at first delicately, as if he's afraid any force would snap the song's tension. By the second bar, the song is all tension, with the pain of watching the right woman with the wrong man becoming too much to bear. When the roaring finale comes sweeping through, its two minutes and some-odd seconds seem to have encompassed a lifetime of anguish.
  • John Floyd, for MEMPHIS, THE CITY MAGAZINE, reviewing the subject of Elvis the balladeer, in an article entitled Did Elvis saved the best for last_ and re/published on August 26, 2018.

• Mickey Mantle's mystique is unquantifiable. He's like Clint Eastwood and Elvis Presley. There's something there. An aura. The manliness of all three of them. Each of them is a classic in their field.
  • Marshall Fogel, the world's top collector of baseball memorabilia, commenting for Forbes magazine, on June 24, 2018, the arrival at the Colorado Center Museum of a US$10m 1952 Mickey Mantle Card and not just in an armored car, but after its having been insured for $12m.

• I remembers watching the Elvis special when it aired in December 1968, just as my band was beginning to erupt as a major force in rock & roll. In fact, we released our first Top 40 hit, “Suzie Q,” that same year. Many people my age, especially after the Beatles, had kind of pushed Elvis aside a little bit. And that was the neat thing about the special — there was Elvis, your long lost friend, looking really good and sounding good. It was great to have him back.
  • John Fogerty, front man of the Creedence Clearwater Revival, on how he reacted to the 1968 Special at the beginning of his career, in an interview with Rolling Stone and published in their February 13,2019 edition.

• Alas, no paths crossed with Elvis. Shucks
  • Jane Fonda' reply to her mega fan Leonard Quintana's question on whether she had ever crossed paths with Elvis, as recorded in her official blog on February 22, 2010

• The public's imagination was caught by Elvis through two things: his unique ability to synthesize all American music styles and his fantastic interpretive qualities as a vocalist; that he managed to keep the public's attention after the music began to suffer, is due to his remarkable charisma, an unparalleled force that was stronger than any ten other men in his peer group; (while) it's the charisma that allowed him to get away with covering substandard songs like "A Little Less Conversation," (1968), it's his musical ability alone that elevated it to a status it didn't deserve, creating something so endearing that the simplest of remix jobs could make it sound contemporary, a quarter-century after his death; he may always be a punchline to some people, but the continuing evolution of our fascination with the King has to do with his ability to reinvent himself every time he's heard; even, apparently, from beyond.
  • Robert Fontenot, music historian and critic at www.about.com, commenting on JXL's re-mix of "A little less conversation", which topped the world's charts in 2002.

• He was a cultural icon and his legacy spilled over into the culinary world.
  • Addie Gundry, one of the The Food Network Star's thirteenth season contestants, explaining some of Elvis' favourite recipes in an article entitled "Retro recipes from a 'Food Network Star' published on the Herald Palladium on February 14, 2014

• It’s big, full of color and pattern and imbued with the outsized personality of its most famous owner. Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, is the second-most visited house museum in the U.S., with over 600,000 visitors a year. Only the White House sees more tourists.
  • Forbes magazine's real estate contributor Regina Cole, in her article entitled ̊"The Dichotomy Of Elvis' Graceland, America's True House Museum"", as published on their August 9, 2018, online edition.

• After the Second World War's boosts, top tax rates wouldn’t dip below 90% until 1964, when they plunged to 77%, remaining in that range until 1982, when they dropped to 50%. In comparison, for the tax 2013, the top tax bracket is 39.6%, kicking in at $400,000. Elvis remained in the spotlight since 1956 until his death, and he continued to tour despite health problems related to his lifestyle. Even when he didn’t tour, he made money, as was the case in the early 60′s, when despite having no personal appearances, he earned $5 million a year ($40,000,000 in today’s dollars). By 1973, he was still raking in money and, as if to give credit to his manager's assertion ("I consider it my patriotic duty to keep Elvis up in the 90 percent tax bracket", was Col. Parker's motto), he was allegedly the top taxpayer in the country.
  • Forbes magazine's Senior Editor Kelly Phillips Erb, in her article "Elvis Presley Topped Charts And Tax Brackets" as published in their Aug 16, 2013 edition

• Elvis Presley was a masterful vocal artist. I really do appreciate what Elvis was able to do.
  • Harrison Ford, on whether or not Elvis Presley is his favorite singer, for GMA News, as published on October 1, 2017.

• During this trip, Dean Nichopoulos was injured on the slopes, requiring a visit to the local hospital. Upon realizing, from a look at his insurance card, that he must have been related to Elvis Presley's doctor, the nurse mockingly asked, “So where is Elvis?” without realizing that the ski mask-clad who was standing right in front of her was precisely Elvis. When she pointedly asked of him, “And who are you?” he calmly replied, “The Lone Ranger.” The nurse, having none of what she thought were just shenanigans, simply went about her business. Because of safety reasons, Elvis appeared on the slopes only in the evenings and in a rented skimobile, with his nighttime adventures prompting a then 19 year old college student by the name of Susan Ford to complain to the US Secret Service and the local police of local violations by Elvis.
  • About the reaction of Susan Ford̪, only daughter of the then sitting President of the United States, Gerald Ford to Elvis night skying during one of her visits to Vail, and which prompted the National Enquirier to report it in an article entitled “It’s Elvis, the Nightstalker.” as published on their January 11, 1976 edition.
• On Wednesday August 22 1956, Colonel Parker called me to report to the bungalow where Elvis was rehearsing 'Love Me Tender' with Ken Darby, the film's music director. They also had to choose some hoedown numbers to be featured in the picture. As we were ready to leave, there was a change in tempo and Elvis sang, "We're gonna move" a lively spiritual. As he stood standing next to the grand piano with Mr. Darby playing – with his head back and thick dark hair tumbling over his eyes, Elvis was oblivious to those around him. When we all left the bungalow, (I noticed) he walked in front.
  • Trude Forsher personal secretary to Elvis and his manager, in her 2006 book entitled "The Love Me Tender Years Diary"

• It was scientist Isaac Newton who told us in his "Three Laws Of Motion" that each action has an equal and opposite reaction. One could say the same about the behaviour of human societies. Glance at history and you will see what I mean. The Regency period, with an example of a randy slob who later became George IV, was a time of loose morals and widespread immorality. Then came the Victorian era. This we are told was a time of rigid prudishness. That lasted for more than a hundred years. I recall it as a provincial shopkeeper's son in the 1940s. Back then, respectability was all. When did British society revert to its natural preference for randiness? There were three impulses. One was the arrival of The Pill. ­Another was the arrival of marijuana. And yet another was the arrival in the mid-1950s of pop music. I recall the utter horror of the older generation and the forecasts of the end of civilisation and teenage girls swooning at the wildly gyrating hips of Elvis Presley. The pop fraternity was king and the pop stars “screwed around”. In short I wish the sudden legion of moralists (where have they been all these years of Playboy and Penthouse?) would put two short words on their bucket list of chores to accomplish before they drop off the perch. A simple resolution: Grow Up.
  • Author and CBE Frederick Forsyth, in an article entitled "We need grown-up thinking on morality", as published in The Express on February 10, 2018.

• I felt like I was meeting Elvis Presley or the president.
  • Leeann Fortenberry, in reference to how she felt meeting Dr Adrian R. Krainer, a Uruguayan-American Biochemist who chairs the Cancer and Molecular Biology Department at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and who is currently treating her daughter Faith, a sixth grader, with Spinraza, the first and only US- FDA approved medication to treat a form of muscular dystrophy she lives with called SMA Type 2, in an interview aired by Channel 10, KWT on November 8, 2018.

• Art didn't quite hear what all the fuss was about (he even asked, “What kind of a name is that?”), but he went with an offer for the contract. He then called me a few days later saying there's no way he's pay what Sam Phillips wanted — $50,000. His highest offer was $35,000, so I said, ‘Art, you can give him $500,000, it won’t matter, you’ll make it back on the first record" Then “He said, ‘You’re insane.’ I said, ‘Possibly, never had to debate that, but I know what I’m telling you.'” Art never went above $35,000, Elvis' contract went to RCA for $40,000, and the rest is history.
  • Fred Foster, record producer and founder of Monument Records, commenting on his unsuccessfully trying to convince Mercury Records marketing director Art Talmadge to sign Elvis in November of 1955, as published on Wide Open Country, on 28 November 2016.

• I started singing in 1967. My brother had a song book which contained songs of Elvis Presley so we used to share the songs and I would imitate a lot of English songs. This helped me when I went to Victoria Falls Casino Hotel where I would sing and entertain whites in the early 1970s. I joined The Four Brothers in 1983 and that is when we recorded ‘Zvinonaka Zvinodhura’ and the following year, we did the ‘Tosangana Ikoko’ album which had eight tracks.
  • Patrick Mukwamba from the Four Brothers, Zimbabwe's most successful music band. as reported by the Mail, on 27 October 2017

• It was the best thing that ever happened ... to me I mean.
  • Comedian Redd Foxx, on being one of the few who attended Presley's wedding, as noted in his biography, Black & Blue: The Redd Foxx Story.

• I remember seeing David playing in a local band before I even went to the school since my dad was David's art teacher. I remember seeing this band play on the school steps and this thing with hair sticking straight up and playing the saxophone doing Elvis Presley songs. I looked at my dad and said, “Dad, who is that?” He said, “Oh, that’s Jones.” I said, “I want to be him"
  • Peter Frampton,in a Rolling Stone interview, recalling how he first got really hooked into rock music by seeing a very young David Bowie play Elvis, as published in their 23 February 2019 edition.

• A few months after I released my version of "Crying in the Chapel", RCA released Elvis' version and sales of mine crushed. By sheer chance, I had a encounter with him in California, a few years later. so I confronted him over the issue and told him his version had cost me a lot of money. After explaining that he had not been aware that his song was going to be released, he just quietly got out his checkbook and wrote me a check. I was still upset so I didn't look at it until several months later when Christmas was approaching and money in my family was tight. Worse, my mother had already scraped together what little money she had so she could buy presents for our family at that time. Except she didn't really buy the presents because she only had enough money to put them away in layaway. Anyways, I unfolded the check and let me tell you, I had never seen that many zeros on a check before. It was for US$10,000 (the equivalent of US$80,000 in 2017 dollars). I then took just US$50 dollars for myself, and sent the rest to my mother. And they never had a better Christmas.
  • Carol Fran, soul blues singer, pianist and songwriter, as noted by Roy Black in an article entitled HOW ROOTS MUSIC MADE ME BECOME A FASHION WRITER, and ´published on Awaiting the Flood on September 26, 2013.

• When Elvis heard me sing this song in Las Vegas in late August of 1958, he became so emotional that he had to leave the show. The next day, he sent me two dozen yellow roses with a note explaining that he had just lost his mother and hearing me sing 'Mama' was more that he could bear
  • Connie Francis,in an interview for Newsmax as published on 30 September, 2017.

• While His Holiness' collection is mostly made up of Classical music, it also includes an old album of Édith Piaf’s greatest hits; Argentine tango tunes, especially by Astor Piazzolla and a 25-disc collection of Elvis Presley’s Gospel songs-
  • Pope Francis' music taste and record collection, as noted by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, in America's January 13, 2022 edition. ,

• My mom was a huge Elvis fan, she's always, ever since I can remember, always had small Elvis dolls and random Elvis memorabilia around the house. Growing up, I finally asked her why she decided to name me Elvis, and originally, she was going to name me Gregory. But she had a dream two weeks before I was born that she was at an Elvis concert and her newborn baby was at the concert as well. So instead of Gregory, she decided to call me Elvis. Yeah, she was about as big of an Elvis fan as possible.
  • Dr. Elvis Francois, an orthopedic surgeon resident at the Mayo Clinic, telling reporter Ann Halliwell of the Post Bulletin the reason he was named Elvis as published on the paper's 30 December 2018 edition in an article entitled. "Why a Mayo surgery resident is always singing on the job"

• If you're ever in Japan, consider a trip to "Chineskikan",two hours outside Tokyo in the city of Chichibu. The museum is the only one of its kind ion the world, dedicated entirely to rocks that look like human faces. Owned and operated by Yoshiko Hayama, "Chineskikan" is home to some of the most spectacular stones nature has to offer, with rocks that resemble everyone from Elvis Presley to E.T.
  • Mark Fraunfelder, in a film entitled "Enter Japan’s Museum of Rocks With Faces", as published on "Boeing Boeing" on February 1, 2018.

• I was just really getting started good when he came out. I loved his work. He was one of a kind. People talk about somebody being big, and people will compare them to Elvis, but there's never been another Elvis. I never got to meet him, but I talked to him on the phone one time. He was looking for a song, and he told me he loved 'Chain of Fools' and he asked me if I could write a similar song for him. I tried, but all I could think about was the other song and I never could write it. That's the closest I got to meeting him."
  • Dallas Frazier,telling the Boot about the day he almost met Elvis, as published on their August 16, 2012 edtion.

• We are still considering names, but since the twins were born on Elvis' birthday, I guess that for now we can call the little boy Prince Elvis.
  • HRH Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, in jokingly speaking to the press on the day his wife HRH, Crown Princess Mary gave birth to twins. Moments later, the press asked Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II (who incidentally had met Presley at the Paramount Studio in 1960) if she, as the grandmother, alas, as the Queen, could confirm what her son had just said. She was noncommittal, but it was later learnt that no Prince or Princess in line to be King or Queen of Denmark can be given any name which is not that of another King or Queen, respectively.}, and as reported on January 8, 2011, in Hola magazine.

• He's really the only white man who can sing the blues. He's got a real feeling to it, which comes from the contact he had as a child with negroes
  • Alan Freed, disc jockey and radio personality credited with launching the term "rock and roll", circa 1950, as excerpted from an interview with Anita Behrnam in an article entitled “What Alan Freed really thinks about Rock and Roll", published on the October 1958 issue of the "People Weekly" magazine, (p.22), and in response to Ms. Behrnam's question on how he felt about Presley, then serving in the US Army in Germany.

• I was discharged today and I'm doing very well, feel real good. I just would like thank the staff at Elvis Presley Trauma Center and many, many thanks to all the well-wishers. It's great to know people care about you.
  • Morgan Freeman in an interview to E Entertainment News, just after his release from treatment and full recovery at the EP Trauma Center in Memphis, TN, on August 5, following a car accident three days earlier.

• Freddy had two people in a pedestal, Elvis Presley and John Lennon. Those were the people he thought made a difference in music and he would never had dreamed he would be put in the same pedestal alongside them. I think he got his wish...
  • Peter Freestone, personal assistant to Freddy Mercury, in an interview with El Nuevo Dia and published on September 4, 2016

• As far as I'm concerned, I hope this rage passes as quickly as it has spring up. Elvis strides on stage, takes a wide-legged stance, grabs up a guitar, gives it a couple of whangs, opens his mouth and starts gyrating. He shivers and shakes, he quivers and quakes. The faster Presley moves, the more agitated the crowd becomes. An announcer implored the crowd, “If you want to see Elvis Presley in the pictures, write Paramount Pictures. As far as I can learn from Paramount’s local office, there is no deal cooking on Presley.
  • Terry Frei, for the Denver Post, recalling a review of the Rocky Mountain News from April of 1956, in an article published on March 8, 2017 and informing readers that thousands upon thousands did write, with eventually being Paramount's rival 20th Century Fox who released Elvis’ first movie, “Love Me Tender,” on Nov. 15.

• When I was 20 years old and TWISTED SISTER began, I don't think I would have ever asked someone who was 60 where the music industry was going. I think that I would look around at my peers and see where the scene is at, rather than go to, let's say, Elvis Presley's producers and go, 'Hey, man, give me some advice as to how I can move forward because I don't think that they're seeing things the way I'm seeing things. When they were 20, they were seeing things in their way. So when I talk to 20-year-olds, I say to them, number one, I didn't have a mentor — I never had a mentor. And number two, I was smart and I just looked around me. I think it was impossible to think that before Elvis came, nobody thought Elvis was gonna come. And it should never be predictable.
  • Jay Jay French, TWISTED SISTER guitarist's reply when requested to offer some advice to up-and-coming artists, as seen in a clip from Daniel Sarkissian's film "What Is Classic Rock?

• He has sung for years about murder and biblical torment and characters who hurt one another just for the philosophical kick. It's a nasty congruence that his lyrics set him up to sing about a death he knew nothing of, until it was time to record, something of a ham — possibly down to thinking Elvis Presley is as biblical as anything else.
  • Sasha Frere-Jones, speaking about Nick Cave in an article for the Village Voice and entitled "Navigating the Darkness with David Bowie, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen" as published on November 9, 2016.

• In the Sun Studio in Memphis it hit me like a blow. What a musician, what an upheaval. It is still there, the old microphone, the silver Shure 5-5 with the lateral grooves, by means of which a certain Elvis Aaron Presley in July 1953, just 18 years of age, made his first recording. This man has shaped pop culture like no other, in fact influenced all music after him.
  • Bänz Friedli, Swiss linguist, in an interview with kxan, as published on their February 16,2019 edition.

• He touched their lives....
  • David Frost, English television and media personality which hosted, in 1980, a Yorkshire Television special focusing on 300 Elvis UK fans going with him, to Memphis, TN, on the third anniversary of Elvis death.

• At Sun Studio in Memphis Elvis Presley called to life what would soon be known as rock and roll with a voice that bore strains of the Grand Ole Opry and Beale Street, of country and the blues. At that moment, he ensured — instinctively, unknowingly — that pop music would never again be as simple as black and white.
  • David Fricke in Rolling Stone (1986)

• He is more like an Elvis Presley or a Marilyn Monroe, who died early and left their impression on the world.
  • Lesley Frowick, top designer Halston's niece, commenting on the 2021 Netflix mini series ‘Halston’ and which according to her and the entire family, does not reflect the real Halston, as published in WWD's May 11, 2021 edition.

• To the extent that the cultural-appropriation police are urging their targets to respect others who are different, they are saying something that everyone needs to hear. But beyond that, they can plunge into doomed tangles. American popular culture is a mishmash of influences: British Isles, Eastern European, West African, and who knows what else. Cole Porter committed no wrong by borrowing from Jewish music and Elvis Presley enriched the world when he fused country-and-western with rhythm-and-blues.
  • David Frum, writing for the Atlantic in an article entitled "Every Culture Appropriates[, published oh May 8, 2018.

• Sakuraba is just magic, proving to the world that the Gracies could be beat. He walked into that arena like if he was Elvis and he was the man who did it.
  • Don Frye, in reference to Kazushi Sakuraba being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame, as published on 5 June, 2017 at SB Nation.

• Fifty-six years ago last April, in a studio on Fifth Av in Nashville, a 25-year-old Elvis Presley spit out another platinum-selling record. “It’s Now or Never” hit the airwaves one day after the 4th of July, and topped the charts for weeks. It sold over 20 million records worldwide and became one of his most successful releases. Studios up and down Nashville's famed “Music Row” have cradled the genius of America's music masters for generations. For Elvis Presley and many others, that six-block span has been a place where dreams really can come true. But today, in a global internet economy rife with piracy and wanton copyright violations, the future of America's music industry is threatened. For many musicians, songwriters, and the more than 56,000 Nashville workers whose jobs depend on the resilience of America's music industry, the time to fight back against those threats truly is “Now or Never.”
  • U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Michael Froman, talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and how it affects Tennessee, as published in the Tennessean, on November 4, 2016.

• At one point, Elvis used to have football games in his front yard in LA. Glen Campbell and I were on Rick Nelson's team and we would play against his. At first, it was supposed to be flag football but people wound up with black eyes and things like that. It got pretty rough, but I think that's where Glen might have hooked up early with Elvis. Then, it was when Glen and I played "The Crossbow", that Elvis would visit whenever he was in Albuquerque. They even had a little balcony to keep Elvis' group out of the crowd down below...
  • Jerry Fuller, songwriter, singer and record producer, on the matter of when and where Glen Campbell might have become close to Elvis, in an article entitled “He Could Do Anything”: "Glen Campbell Remembered By His Closest Friends", written in connection with his 2018 album consisting of songs written for Elvis to sing and which Glen recorded as demos before he became nationally known.

• They mention me and they mention Elvis, not the same... RELAX. Not more slaps than Presley..Elvis super legendary.
  • Fulture 's Instagram messages on May 30, 2020, after being told he had surpassed Elvis in the number of Billboard Top 100 hits.

G

• Was Elvis up to the challenge? He was. The resulting Elvis special, which aired on December 3, 1968 on NBC, became the top rated show of the season and NBC's biggest success of the year. But the key moment came on the night of June 4, when Elvis was at the Binder/Howe offices. A television set broadcasting Senator Robert Kennedy’s speech at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel played in the background; the presidential hopeful had just won California’s state primary. Minutes later, Kennedy was shot (he died 26 hours later on June 6) and the assassination provoked a cathartic reaction in Elvis. From the moment that was on, for the rest of the night, we sat in that room and Elvis started to tell us his life story...
  • Gillian G. Gaar, discussing how the narrative of the 1968 special came into being, as published in Goldmine magazine's 9 January 2019 edition.

• After Trump-Clinton, the Vice-Presidential Debate Isn’t Exactly ‘the Return of Elvis’
  • Trip Gabriel's headline to his New York Times article of October 1, 2016

• Decades ago, during the polio epidemic, people were hesitant to get the vaccine, which became available in 1955. Public sentiment turned in 1956, after the biggest influencer of that era, Elvis Presley, got the shot backstage before he made an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Immunization levels among teens at the time rose from 0.6% to 80%.
  • Dr. Terry Gaff, in an article entitled "Vaccinated people are discovering benefits of VIP treatment", as published in the KPC Media Group's News online edition of May 16, 2021

• Yuri was a celebrity, a hero of the USSR, the first man in space. For the Kremlin, he defined the Soviet spirit. Born poor, then becoming one of the world's most celebrated. He was the Elvis of the Soviet Union.
  • About Yuri Gagarin stature, as noted by Andrew L. Jenks, author of the 2015 biography entitled "The Cosmonaut who couldn’t stop smiling: The life and legend of Yuri Gagarin", and abridged from Pravada's 25th anniversary eulogy, originally published in March 27, 1993.

• I identify myself with Elvis, especially the last ten or fifteen years of his career. He never wrote a song in his life but if he hadn't sung them, they would mean nothing.
  • Dave Gahan, in a Rolling Stone interview published on January 3, 2022.

• In the early going at the Charlotte Coliseum, there were scattered notes here and there that made you wonder if finally he was gonna do it but, always, he would pull up short, rely on the grins, the charisma and the legend, until finally a little before 10:45, he came to the gospel classic, "How Great Thou Art"-. And that was it. As he came to the part where he belts out the title, he sounded like Mario Lanza with soul, cutting loose a series of high notes that would tingle the spine of even the diehard skeptic; but crescendo came on a song called "Hurt"; it's an old song that Elvis didn't record until a couple of years ago, and the key ingredient is its range, an awesome collection of notes that could leave a normal set of vocal chords in shreds; he finished in what seemed his most potent style, but wasn't satisfied, and mumbled to the band, "Let's do that last part again."; he did, and if there was anyone among the packed-house crowd who had thought Elvis was a fluke, they no doubt came away converted.
  • Frye Gaillard, reviewing his February 20, 1977 show at the Coliseum, for the "The Charlotte Observer"

• My father had very specific tastes, and that's what we listened to, namely Chopin, Bach, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and David Bowie. I think that's it.
  • Charlotte Gainsbourg, British-French actress and singer, the daughter of English actress Jane Birkin and French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, the latter of whose musical tastes she detailed in an interview published by NOISEY on December 4, 2017.

• I jumped out of my 1975 Firebird and rushed to get photos of him. So, that's when he turned to me and said "Who are you with cat?
  • Photographer Ron Galella in his book Shooting Stars

• There is only Elvis and me, and I couldn't say which one of us is the best.
  • Liam Gallagher, Oasis frontman, as published at Emol.com -

• Only through his very early stuff, I liked the rawness of Mystery Train and the recordings at SUN. His power as a performer, was incredible. .
  • Jerry Garcia on whether he was influenced by Elvis, in an interview at bshaledown295.

• In May of 1959, at the Midnight premiere of "King Creole", in Mexico City, more than 500 teenager broke into the cinema, overtook various side balconies and threw seats and even burning papers to those in attendance at the floor below. A huge fight erupted. As many girls tried to leave the cinema, they were stripped of their clothings and harrassed by the rioters. Police arrived at about 1 am in the morning but incredibly, there were many injured but no arrests.
  • Parménides García Saldaña, recounting the incident he was a witness of, on his book "El Rey Criollo", which led to Elvis' being banned from all Mexican record stores, a follow up to his 1957 ban. (See Pompeyo, Hebre)

• Elvis Presley brought down the house and all the attendance records of the Houston Live Stock Show and Rodeo came tumbling down on the shoulders of his white shirt Saturday night at the Astrodome. The largest crowd ever to attend a rodeo performance to Houston – 43,614 screaming fans – were present Saturday night for the rodeo and Elvis' fourth of six performances. Hours earlier, he had drawn the largest matinee crowd – 34,443 Saturday and his two performance total exceeded by former records by the two-performance total attracted by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans two years ago. In fact, the four performances in which Presley, his band and vocal group have have appeared thus have drawn a total of 131,064 people to the Astrodome. It is by far the greatest start that the Houston event has made since it moved to the Dome in 1966. Presley who has never been known as a talker on stage, probably expressed it perfectly Saturday night when he commented: "You have been a fantastic audience," he said prior to introducing his associate in the 45-minute show. Police are stationed around the arena to keep the audience away from Elvis but Saturday afternoon, a fan sneaked in through the rodeo chutes and was within a few feet of the star when he was apprehended by police...
  • Charles Garder for the Houston Post, in reviewing the first four of Elvis's six back to back performances at the Houston Astrodome, as published on their March 1, 1970 edition.

• Oh thank you Sir, you've made my day...
  • Judy Garland's answer to Elvis when he told her she was the greatest entertainer in the world, Elvis being unaware that she had just lost her home and car, both foreclosed, as told by Pack Paar, on his 1986 TV Special, present as he was as her properties were taken, as well as riding with her in his convertible car as Elvis limo and Paar's car coincided at a red light on Sunset Blvd.

• I have a great respect for him and I have to say that "Viva Las Vegas" was the very first job I ever had, so he was the first person I worked with in a movie. It really was a big influence on me. Maybe it was me that made it up, but I thought, he's a person, I'm a person. If he can do it, I can do it. And he made you feel like that, too. You know, he made you be an equal. And, of course, it wasn't true, but as I said I lived in a big fantasy world and still do, but he made you feel like you were the same. And I think that really was an incredible catalyst for me. I mean, you're working with Elvis Presley and he thinks that you guys are alike so maybe, if he can do it, you can do it. So then something like that, it's a subliminal subconscious incredible influence he had on me.
  • Teri Garr, on working with Elvis, particularly in Viva Las Vegas.

• I was appearing at the Sands and a friend of mine, a fellow comedian working with Elvis, told him I'm a black belt. So I got a call from one of Elvis' buddies. He traveled with this massive entourage. So this pal tells me, "Would you be interested in doing Elvis Presley the honor of sparring with him?" I said, "Sure, I’ll give the kid a break." *Laughs*. He rented a hall and arrived with this huge group of people. We looked at each other and he calls me "sensei," which means "teacher." I said, "Oh Elvis, you don’t have to call me that because we’re of equal rank." And he says, "OK, sensei." Then he goes, "Do me a favor, please. Don’t hit me in the face because I have a show to do tonight." And I said, "Well, don’t hit me in my face because I, too, have a show tonight." He responds, "Sensei, if I hit you in the face, it would be an improvement." I said, "I’m going to kill you. You know that, right?" Then we spar. But he was wonderful. He was very, very good in fact. I've sparred with a lot of people and not many were as good as he was. But when we weren't sparring, he was a gentleman at all times.
  • Hank Garrett, in an article entitled "Hollywood tough guy Hank Garrett recalls breaking Robert Redford’s nose during brutal fight scene in memoir", as published on Fox News January 11, 2021 online edition.

• I am an angry man, so angry I burn myself and I heat up the air around me. This is the nuclear fuel I use to make my music. In a world so full of pain and madness we need to be better than ever, to evolve not devolve, to become masters of our fate and stop listening to the snake talkers who would steal our last breath. It's time to go Elvis and shoot the cursed TV.
  • Duke Garwood, UK multi-instrumentalist, in an interview with Live4Ever, published on November 3, 2016.

• Elvis let you know that he cared about you, that he noticed you. He made you feel good. No other entertainment stars ever took the same effort Elvis did, to be honest. They didn't. He took that extra step. Elvis took good care of us, man, I swear to God. Bonuses at the end of tours, also (on top of the regular paycheck). I mean nobody treats musicians and the people that were with him the way Elvis did. Nobody."
  • Greg Gaskins, 1960's -'70's Soul, R&B guitarist who played with the Manhattans, Otis Redding, Al Green, Jackie Wilson and Sweet Inspirations, as told in August 2017 to Jay Vivian, the latter in connection with Gaskins' having been so quoted in the book "Reflections on race.Myna and Desert Storm" by author Darrin Lee Memmer.

• Elvis, and that was it
  • Marc Gasol, Spanish basketball player, when asked what did he know about Memphis, on his arrival in 2008 to play for the Grizzlies, as noted in the Commercial Appeal's February 10, 2019 edition.

• The Elvis tattoo on my chest? I started listening to 'Jailhouse Rock' and loved it.
  • Rapper Kevin Gates as published on November 24, 2016, at ppcornon.

• I started my first job in 1977 at the age of 14 as a carhop at an A&W Root Beer restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. The day I was hired, I was promoted to lead carhop when a radio DJ interrupted the music and broke the news that Elvis had died. The lead carhop took off her money belt and announced ‘I must go to Memphis.’ She drove off in her Ford Pinto and was never heard from again. The money I saved that year definitely helped pay for tuition and college expenses and it was a super fun job and a great experience. I learned the value of a dollar and how to make a seriously delicious root beer float – all thanks to Elvis Presley.
  • Monica Gates, Mayor of Kingman, AR, as published in the Daily Miner, on September 2, 2017

• First of all, I admire Elvis, not just as a singer but as a creator of a style, a personality. What he has achieved is worth of respect. Regarding the rivalry between Rock ´n Roll and Bolero, there are enough fans for both styles.
  • Lucho Gatica, the King of Bolero, in an interview published in Ecran's January 27, 1957 edition.

• One time, Elvis was in town and invited folks to his suite for a party. His idea of a party? Eating food and having his backup singers belt out gospel songs...
  • Jack Gaughan, President of the Musicians Union of Las Vegas, in an interview with Jan Hogan of the Las Vegas Review Journal on December 2, 2016.

• The thing is, I've always wanted to be a star. I've always wanted to be an Elvis Presley or a Tupac – like, a huge icon.
  • G-Eazy, in Brainy Quote's Elvis section.

• The inspiration for my career came from Elvis Presley. I heard him singing ‘My Way" and that somehow gave me the strength to start a painting business. I knew it was time, as they say, to take the bull by the horns, create my own job. Almost fifty years later, I am still painting, still doing it my way.
  • Leo Geise, holder of the Guinness World Record for the oldest professional house painter, at 78 years and 198 days, as verified in Delphos, Ohio, on July 8, 2018 and as published in limaohiocom̪'s December 16, 2018 online edition.

• Well, it started when I saw him was as a little kid at a 1957 concert at LA's Pan Pacific Auditorium concert. 'Then, I became a hairdresser, so the first time I cut his hair, which was in 1964, it took about me 45 minutes to finish it and the whole time Elvis didn't say a word, but his eyes would follow every move I made. I was then already working with people like Warren Beatty & Paul Newman and the most handsome guys of the movies, but I can tell you Elvis eclipsed them all. He had the face, the voice, the career, the fans, the fame, the money and he had.... the hair, which was unbelievable to work on. He insisted that I trim his animated and eccentric moustache.
  • Larry Geller, Elvis ' hairdresser, as noted in his autobiography.

• Singer Lloyd "Lonzo" George (of the "Lonzo and Oscar" C&W duo), was visiting his relatives, so his teenage nephew, Jim, invited all his friends to his house to meet his famous uncle. But there was one quiet 15-year-old boy whom Jim's parents would not allow to come inside their house. He was poor so they called him “white trash” and treated as if he was from a lower class. When Jim told Uncle "Lonzo" that the boy outside had a guitar but didn't know how to tune it, he gladly offered to show him how. Since he not allowed inside the house, they arranged to meet outside. It was obvious to "Lonzo" that the boy was embarrassed and felt out of place in a rich neighborhood. The boy's guitar was old, cheap, and hung around his neck with just a piece of string. After "Lonzo" showed the shy teenager how to tune his guitar, he offered to teach him some songs. The boy was so surprised and happy that Lonzo spent two whole hours playing and singing with him that he started feeling confident in his own ability to play and sing. "Lonzo" never met that boy again, at least not face to face. That boy was Elvis Presley.
  • As told by Jim George, nephew of Gonzo, of the Lonzo and Oscar duet and published in the Samoa Observer in an article entitled "Recognizing royalty"., on December 28, 2016

• This looks to be a movie made for theaters, a major event.-
  • Nelson George's laud of Baz Luhrmann's direction in 2022 "Elvis" Warner Brothers biopic, as shown in a Mojo Media interview of Luhrmann and Austin Butler, who plays Elvis in the flick.

• Friday's article about the contribution of minority groups throughout American history brought some fascinating reactions. First, quite a few folks who aren't usually fans of me or of National Review actually reached out and said, “Thank you for writing this.” No doubt a lot of people hunger for the message, “Your ancestors helped build this country, too” and perhaps with it an alternative to a well-established and not-all-that-accurate narrative that minority groups' role in America was almost entirely that of the helpless victims. But it was perhaps even more amazing to see the (admittedly mostly anonymous, possibly bot-like) responses on Twitter — who appeared deeply upset by a list of how minority groups shaped America from the beginning. The goal was to repeat it enough to make people think whites barely had a hand in building the nation, Really? You think people are going to forget or overlook the first 43 presidents, the Pilgrims, John Smith, Paul Revere, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Henry Knox, Thomas Edison, Lewis and Clark, Buffalo Bill, Butch Cassidy, Wild Bill Hickock^[sic], Wild Bill Donovan, Wyatt Earp, Eliot Ness, General George S. Patton, Neil Armstrong, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Elvis Presley, the Wright Brothers, Chuck Yeager, Will Rogers, Douglas MacArthur, Charles Lindbergh, J. Edgar Hoover, Ernest Hemingway, John D. Rockefeller, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, Billy Graham, Henry Ford, T. S. Eliot, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Upton Sinclair, General John J. Pershing, Robert F. Kennedy, Earl Warren, Andy Warhol, Allen Dulles, Frank Lloyd Wright, Norman Rockwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, the Minutemen, the Green Mountain Boys, the Texas Rangers, Is there anyone who's even remotely historically literate who believes that “whites barely had a hand in building the nation”?
  • Jim Geraghty, in an article entitled "Why Are Some People So Insistent that Certain Chapters of History Not Be Discussed?", as published in the National Review's December 17, 2018 edition

• Some years ago, while in Memphis to officiate a wedding, I took some time to visit the home of Elvis Presley. I was reminded of his complicated life. He was certainly not a perfect person but, in the rooms of Graceland, there was memorabilia showing how he gave enormously to charities in Memphis, and how he loved his mother more than anything. Not perfect, but there WAS a lot of good in him...
  • Ronald Gerson, Rabbi Emeritus of the Shabbat's Congregation Children of Israel in Athens, GA, in an article entitled "Perfection is elusive, so it’s best to accept faults and accentuate the positive" as published in the Augusta Chronicle on July 14, 2018

• Elvis Presley's spirit is another that keeps coming forward, but seemingly, is not at rest. He wants to communicate, he’s there...
  • Barri Ghai, UK born paranormal investigator, creator of the television series "Help My House is Haunted" and recent contributor to Ghost Hunt, in an article published in the Daily Star online, on August 6, 2018.

• What intrigues me is how memory colors history, what remains in the end is collective memory. Elvis in that sense was an excellent way to study the period after the Second World War, for epitomizing those times. It was the beginning of the cold war, but also the start of a firm and optimistic belief in the future.
  • Adrian Ghenie, Rumanian painter whose "Elvis", measuring 40 x 31 cm sold at a Phillips auction in Geneva for US$510,000 in May 17, 2018, explaining to the auctioneers what was that moved him to paint him, as noted in Phillips' catalogue essay of that same date.

• Presley of course was not only a pioneer in music, but also a cultural icon whose influence has endured over generations. One of the earliest musicians to make rockabilly – an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music, rhythm and blues – popular, Presley was also a consummate showman. And he had a huge influence on Bollywood as well, most obviously on Shammi Kapoor, who was inspired by him all the way from his looks to his moves, and to his movies as well.
  • Suktara Ghosh for the BloombergQuint an Indian news organization associated to Bloomberg, in an article published on January 8, 2018.

• Wearing a black outfit with a classical cut, a white shirt with a stiff collar and a pearl gray tie, it was the non-casual nature of Elvis’ clothing which was was the first surprise of seeing him. Based on photographic documents in our possession, we were expecting a more audacious and more casual look. Rather than slouching in an armchair and spreading out like a warmed-up marshmallow, he sat behind a small table covered with a green rug, a classic at press conferences. It was hard to imagine that, not so long before, this young man was turning upside down the nervous, sympathetic, lymphatic, digestive and other systems of American teenagers.”
  • Paul Gianolli, biographer and reporter, after witnessing Elvis' press conference at the Prince des Galles on June 17, 1959 and as published by Paris Match in their July 3, 1959 issue.

• i) Religion in and of itself and spirituality are the absolute pure tools of a songwriter. For instance, if you listen to mountain music or immigrant music or bluegrass music, religion was the only subject. So when you listen to that kind of music, you realize they didn't have anything else but religion. So religion over the years and through rock ‘n’ roll and through people like Elvis Presley, hey, just listen to him singing gospel music, c'mon.... It never went away, it never will and the idea of true faith is behind every artist that ever gets to the place they want to be ii) I remember the time I stopped in at Graceland to say hello to Elvis after he had performed in Las Vegas a version of a song I wrote, "Words". I was allowed to go up the driveway – the yellow brick road if you like – and I got to the front door and there was a limousine there. His uncle told me I could go up and knock on the door and I might get to meet him. So I knocked. But for some reason he didn't come out. But that’s ok, because I looked inside the limo and saw the first television in a car I’d ever seen and that was all a thrill anyway.
  • Barry Gibb, in a 2016 interview for New Zealand's Roxborogh Report ii) from an interview with METRO, as published on their January 8, 2021 edition.,

• Know thyself means that you need to know what you want out of life. What are your strengths your weakness, your values, your morals, your beliefs. Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, Abraham Lincoln and Harry S. Truman are listening to this class from the walls of this classroom where their photos hang. Hopefully, you, my students are, too, because if you are one to be happy, you need to love yourself for who you are, always striving to improve. My fear is that too many people judge themselves on who they are NOT and what they don't possess physically and materially. I think life is too short to focus on the negative.”
  • Teacher Drew Gibb, addressing his students at Hickory High, in an article published in the Herald, on February 4, 2018.

• In the collective memory of his fans, he reigns as the sleek musical genius who soaked up the multiple influences of America's vernacular music -gospel, country swing, rhythm 'n' blues—, and made them his own; Bob Dylan, one of pop's favorite poets, put it best: Elvis, he said, was "the incendiary atomic musical firebrand loner who conquered the western world.
  • Gwen Gibson, in an article "The Top 10 Pop Stars, Ever", published in the AARP's May 2003 edition

• I’m all shook up by the glowing reviews. One (I am most proud of) was from a guy who is a self-confessed Elvis nerd. And He said he was looking for errors and facts that were not right but they were all spot on, so I was really excited about that. I’m truly holding my breath and hoping readers love it as much as I’ve loved writing it.
  • Lorraine Gibson, award winning writer from Bournemouth, UK,discussing her book "Elvis: The King of Fashion", in an interview published in the Dorset Biz News' September 2, 2024 edition.

• The Museum of the Bible is without a doubt the newest, most intriguing and most talked-about attraction in DC. Since opening in December 2017, more than 200,000 people have visited it. The second floor of the building, called “The Impact of the Bible.” clearly deals with the bringing of the book to the United States and its impact on the nation. There, its most popular item is Elvis Presley's Bible. It's not exactly archaeology, but people had their pictures taken next to its glass display case with way greater excitement than any other item, including what was observed next to a stone brought from Jerusalem.
  • Moshe Gilad, Israeli reporter and the Washington DC correspondent for Haaretz, as published on its February 9 2018 edition.

• i) I don't really think Elvis' voice was significantly lower than those of any other baritones. The color of the voice and the sense of warmth and richness of tone gave the sense that the voice was much deeper. Elvis, in fact, did not force his lower register, comfortable as he was with it, which in turn gave the impression that it was lower than those of other baritones. ii) People will often say that opera singers sound too stiff and operatic when singing contemporary music. This is because the vowels in an operatic style tend to be more open, whereas in a rock style singers tend to thin out the vowel. There is nothing wrong, and everything right, in opening the vowel in the higher register so that the higher notes can be sustained. Elvis Presley was very open in his singing style even though he was 'the' rock and roller.
  • i) and ii) Brian Gilbertson, world-famous voice teacher, explaining the deepness of Elvis' lower registry.

• The likelihood is that the last movie (Pres. John F. ) Kennedy saw was "From Russia With Love", but he isn’t the only Bond fan in the book. Elvis Presley hired out a Memphis cinema to screen "The Spy Who Loved Me" in the weeks before the end credits rolled in his own life. From this starting point, the Presley chapter spirals off into a playlist of songs, including one from the movie "Roustabout" which featured a small role for Richard Kiel, who went on to play the metal-toothed baddie in … yes, "The Spy Who Loved Me".
  • Ryan Gilbey, reviewing Stanley Schtinter's book, "Last Movies" in an article entitled "From Kurt to Elvis, JFK and more, what movies did stars see just before they died?" as published in the Guardian's November 28, 2023 edition.

• He was very good, great, nice, sweet and a gentleman.
  • Actress Sandra Giles who appeared in It happened at the World's Fair, in an interview with Enews.

• Along with the rest of "Deep Purple", I once had the chance to meet Elvis. For a young singer like me, he was an absolute inspiration. I soaked up what he did like blotting paper. It's the same as being in school — you learn by copying the maestro. His personality was also extremely endearing, his interviews were very self-effacing (and), he came over as gentle and was generous in his praise of others. He had a natural, technical ability, but there was something in the humanity of his voice, and his delivery. Those early records at the Sun Records label are still incredible and the reason is simple: he was the greatest singer that ever lived.
  • Ian Gillan, lead singer and frontman of the UK hard rock band "Deep Purple", interviewed by Classic Rock magazine, explaining why Presley belongs in the list of rock icons ( as published in blabbermouth.net, on 3rd January, 2007)

• I wasn’t really known as a country music performer. I was trying to be more like Elvis and those people at the time. I didn’t consider myself a country act.
  • Mickey Gilley, as quoted by Variety, in an opinion published two days after his death, on May 7, 2022

• It was Elvis' Jailhouse Rock that made me first pick up a guitar and say, ‘I’ve got to do a bit of that. He was absolutely brilliant. Elvis, in his very early years, was staggering
  • David Gilmour, guitarist and singer for Pink Floyd, speaking at the launch of his new DVD Remember That Night – Live At The Royal Albert Hall, as noted in cobtactmusiccom on May 17, 2019

• When I was about 10, my dad took me to an Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash concert in Lubbock. That had a profound effect on me. As a result, I completely fell in love with that New Orleans (sound) that I liked on the radio, with Little Richard and Fats Domino. That music is really in a sense still my very favorite.
  • Jimmie Dale Gilmore, member of the Flatlanders and now in his 70's and still touring, in an interview for the Sacramento Bee, published on September 25, 2017.

• I was living in France about five years ago, and that's when I discovered the Elvis Sun Sessions recordings. To me, most people know the later Elvis stuff, you know, "Blue Suede Shoes" and what he later recorded at RCA. But this stuff just has the energy and modesty and integrity of where he came from. It's his start and it was really the start of rock and roll, holding on to the roots of American music in every way, the blues, rockabilly. I think these recordings represent really the discovery of one of the greatest singers and performers of all time. It's the beginning".
  • Katie Glassman, singer and fiddler, explaining to Nathalia Velez, of Westword, her interest in Elvis' earliest recordings and as published by www.westword.com on 17 January, 2013.

• We"ll survive Elvis. He can't last, I tell you flatly, he can’t last
  • Jackie Gleason, as told to an UPI reporter a month after he had produced his first six appearance at the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey Shows at CBS, live broadcasts which, when combined drew only some 36m viewers in a two month period.

• Fred Maddox came back from a Louisiana Hayride Show and told me I should listen to this kid singing. On April 2, 1956 Fred called me and asked me to come to San Diego if I was interested in meeting Elvis. On the trip down I thought that since I'd seen other acts play at the Arena, I doubted he'd fill it. It was packed, Presley went wild, the girls never stopped and you could hardly hear him over the noise. I had never heard such a reaction to an artist, even being on shows with some of the biggest country singers of the day, so that's when I decided, that this is what I had to do
  • Glen Glenn, in a an interview with Johnny Vallis recalling the moment he decided to leave country music for a life in rockabilly, as published in Elvis Australia's June 18, 2004 edition.

• As far as I know, Presley and Gould never crossed paths. A media-mediated symbiotic relationship existed between the two of them, however, which extended beyond their dependencies, night-crawling work habits, and inner circles of hard-core loyal friends. Like Gould, Presley had the hermit's need for sanctuary in the studio, where his genius, every bit the equal of the pianist's, harnessed the full potential of playbacks and editing to sharpen and refine even the most thrown-off sounding uh-huh. The degree their sexuality was groomed for media consumption was another shared attribute.
  • Peter Goddard, on page 94 of his biography of Glenn Gould, a Canadian musician widely recognized as one of the greatest classical music pianists of the 20th Century. (The bio, published in 2017, is entitled The Great Gould)

• The same mystic power Michelangelo held in his hands Elvis held in his windpipe, a power nobody should have been allowed to put a price on, but for the love of the ‘ching!’, they did.
  • Simon Goddard, speaking about the money making effect the voice of Elvis had, in his book The Comeback: Elvis And The Story Of The 68 Special

• He became nationally known in April 1945 when, as CBS's morning-radio man in Washington, he took the microphone for a live, firsthand account of President Roosevelt's funeral procession. The entire CBS network picked up the broadcast, later preserved in the Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly record series, I Can Hear it Now. Later, through his Talent Scout television show, he significantly assisted the careers of Pat Boone, Tony Bennett, Eddie Fisher, Connie Francis, Leslie Uggams, Lenny Bruce, Steve Lawrence, Connie Francis, Roy Clark, and Patsy Cline. Yet he proved fallible. In April of 1955, he turned down Elvis Presley.
  • About Arthur Godfrey, whose talent scout TV show was the highest rated during the 1951–1952 season, while remaining a highly popular show through the decade, as noted by WIKIPEDIA.

• Our bomb shelter generation revolted against the stiff, straight old ways. They threw away their traditional leather shorts for blue jeans and started standing and walking like cowboys. They were bored with '0 Tannenbaum!' and skipped 'Ach du lieber Augustin' to hear rock n' roll. Elvis Presley was just what they were looking for -- an American Pied Piper to lead them to excitement."
  • Werner Goetze, West Germaby's top DJ, in an article published at the Baltimore Sun "This Week" magazine on Sunday, July 19, 1959.

• "Elvis" “Tupac,” “Obama”
  • La Rams Quarterback Jared Goff's favourite line-of-scrimmage calls, as reported by Sam farmer of the Observer on January 2,2018

• The day that Elvis died, Aug. 16, 1977 was a pretty big deal. Not as well remembered was Oct. 28, 1956, the day that he got a polio shot. The event, staged at CBS studios by the New York City health department, made the national television evening news and the New York Times. Photos suggest that he was having a blast. The New York City health department arranged for the public inoculation in order to encourage adolescents — the group most susceptible to polio after young children — to get their shots. Only a very low percent of the city's teenagers had received the newly licensed Salk vaccine. I'd like to think that if Elvis were still with us he'd be getting an HPV shot — vaccination rates for the cancer-causing human papilloma virus are among the lowest of recommended vaccines — and tweeting about it. But he has left the stage. Instead of Elvis posing for a shot we have celebrities caught up in the trap of unscientific thinking promoting vaccine refusal last year. This is not a red-blue issue: Green Party candidate Jill Stein is a vaccine skeptic as well. If that irrational fear-based movement continues to gain ground and data-driven medical science and advances that can save lives are ignored, we'll watching people get sick or even die from preventable diseases. Luckily, the movement has a way to go in the United States.. August is National Immunization Awareness Month, a good time to check that you and your family are up to date on vaccine coverage/ According to a survey conducted in 2014, and published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 87.6% to teenagers were up-to-date with the Tdap (tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis) vaccine and 60% had meningitis vaccine coverage. The rate for HPV vaccine, which requires 3 doses, was lower, perhaps because of its cost or opposition to the inoculations on the grounds that the way to avoid a sexually transmitted disease is to abstain from sex. HPV is transmitted sexually and the vaccine can prevent most genital warts and most cases of cervical cancer, which is projected to kill 4,120 women in 2016. Young men and women who get the vaccine also can dramatically lower their risk of some anal and oral cancers, which are on the rise. I miss Elvis, the King of Vaccines.
  • Janet Golden, PhD, for the Philadelphia Inquirer in an article published on their August 16, 2016 edition and entitled "Let's honor Elvis and the lives he saved by supporting vaccines.

• Gorgeous ! - or same equally effusive effeminate word – is the only way to describe Elvis Presley's latest epiphany at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Not since Marlene Dietrich stunned the ringside with the sight of those legs encased from hip to ankles in a transparent gown has any performer so electrified this jaded town with a personal appearance. Without twanging a string, burbling a note or offering a hint of hip. Elvis transfixed a tough opening night audience of flacks and entertainers simply by striding on-stage in the costume of the Year. Not quite the erotic politician that Jim Morrison proved to be when he disrobed on stage. Elvis manages very well his constituency by occasionally grabbing a lady at ringside and kissing her firmly on the mouth. Grander than the "Fountainblue," the International has found itself an attraction magnetic enough to pull the shut-in generation over 30 out of their ranch houses onto nonstop jets and down in to the Valley of Loose Gold where the King presides over his people, with eternal youth and joy and jamboree.
  • Excerpted from Albert Goldman's review of the opening night of Elvis second engagement at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. It was published in Life magazine's March 20, 1970 edition thus a few years before he wrote the controversial biographies of Lenny Bruce, Elvis, John Lennon and Jim Morrison, the last of which he left unfinished as he died of a heart attack on March 28, 1994, while flying from Miami to London.

• He is to the US National Football League what Elvis Presley is to rock-and-roll. He’s the king.”
  • NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's laud of John Madden, on the day after his death, and as published in the AP News' December 29, 2021 edition

• They had me convinced that no teenage girl was safe around him. They wanted to have him watched at the theater and they wanted his hotel room watched. They had him pictured as a real villain. In my chambers, I warned him and his manager that I would be present at the first of six shows and that I had prepared warrants charging him with "impairing the morality of minors". As if for proof, deputies would be stationed in wings of the theater, I added. Once on the stage, he opened with "Heartbreak Hotel", threw his hips out once and so I immediately told the lawyer on the theater, in a whisper that I was going to put him in jail, sure as anything. But then, miraculously, Elvis caught himself. "Wait a minute. I can't do this. They won't let me do this here," I heard Elvis say. To everyone's amazement, instead of shaking, wiggling, and jumping around, Elvis stood perfectly still, wiggled his little finger suggestively in place of his usual movements, which thrilled the crowd, who I guess found "the finger" both hilarious and deeply erotic. So in the end, my wife, my three daughters and their girlfriends all watched as Elvis wiggled his finger suggestively throughout the show. And they roared when Elvis dedicated "Hound Dog" to me. Everybody in the audience got the biggest charge out of that. I was later told that Elvis continued the finger twitching movements throughout the other five Jacksonville shows. But he had made some new fans, including my grandson, Tony, who would grow up to idolize him by plastering his posters all over his bedroom walls.
  • Judge Marion W. Gooding, recalling how, in early August of 1956, he had warned Elvis (whom he later described as a sweet, gentle kid with the sort of good manners that we associate with southern politeness), to avoid moving during any of his 6 shows at the famed Florida Theater, in Jacksonville Florida, as published in Mental Floss, on March 21, 2012

• I had never seen him in person. I could hardly speak when I saw him...
  • Diana Goodman, former Miss Georgia, in her book Welcome to my world.

• I was told a couple of pieces of advice, one was ̊"just remember that whatever you do, try your best, because they aren't going to choose your best scene with Elvis, but Elvis' best with you". When I met him, he was utterly flattering. I then felt like an older sister for him, even taught him to twist. There was something about his wholesomeness, his courtesy, and that is why he is still as big as he is.
  • Laurel Goodwin, sharing her memories from the movie set of "Girls, Girls, Girls" with Tom Brown, in an episode of the Gates of Graceland, aired on October 10, 2018

• Until recently, Western research on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union all but ignored the role of rock music in those societies. There have been a few academic articles on rock in socialist countries, but no serious book-length studies. Last November, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies held its first session ever on the subject. However, the recent collapse of the Iron Curtain has revealed societies not only aware of, but also significantly involved in, Western-style rock culture. In fact, none other than Raisa Gorbachev has publicly declared herself a fan of Elvis Presley
  • About Raisa Gorbachev's love of Elvis, in an article entitled "Raisa Gorbachev Is an Elvis Fan, and Other Reasons Why Scholars Should Study the Role of Rock in Eastern Europe" and published in The Chronicle' s June 6, 1990 edition.

• It's real gold, it cost $2500, some sort of impregnated unborn calf skin. It's very dramatic and almost unbelievable when you see an artist walk out on a stage and receive an ovation like the one we have witnessed tonight
  • Australian promotor Lee Gordon, commenting on Elvis' appearance in St Louis, in 1957.

• Mississippi is also about people helping people. We lead the nation in charitable donations per-capita. When disaster strikes, our people respond with immediate relief for their neighbors, as they did after the Mississippi River flood of 1927 and following devastating hurricanes like Camille and Katrina of recent times and dozens of tornadoes and fires. Elvis Presley helped to rebuild McComb after a January 1975 tornado nearly leveled the place by giving a concert to aid storm victims. Today, Presley's birthplace in Tupelo is among the state's leading travel destinations, rivaling the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River-area casinos that annually pour millions of badly-needed dollars into the state treasure. There are more musicians, singers and other artisans of note per square foot here than anywhere else in America. Presley and Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner presided over our creative class, but they have been surrounded by a skyful of bright lights in the artistic constellation.
  • Writer Mac Gordon, in an article published by the Clarion Ledger on December 8, 2017.

• I remember having a conversation with some of the older artists at STAX about when Elvis was breaking in the mid 1950's like the Reverend Bishop Dwight Arnold “Gatemouth” Moore, a disc jockey who had been a huge blues singer in the 1920´s and 1930's and became a gospel singer thereafter. In fact, it was he who said, 'Elvis gave us a second career'. That's what some people thought, but it's like you hear, some thought he was doing great things for African-Americans, bringing a respect to that music. I've read the newspaper articles of the time and the sense of fear and anger that Elvis instilled and the way he was despised was a real jolt, and it remains an amazing representation of America at the time. At the same time, the fact it was a white guy doing it made it different and I think a lot of people did get a new life.
  • Writer and film director Robert Gordon, interviewed by Graham Reid for the Elsewhere magazine and published on November 7, 2013

• In the music world, there had always been a distinction between black and white music, the assumption being that black was R&B and white was pop. But with the explosion of Elvis and rock and roll those clear distinctions began to disappear. In fact, Elvis Presley was the first white artist to blur the lines of color among artists.
  • TAMLA and MOTOWN's founder Barry Gordy's description of what Presley meant to the blurring of the colour lines, as mentioned in autobiography entitled "To be loved"" (pp 180-81)

• It’s always been my dream to come to Madison Square Garden and be the warm-up act for Elvis.
  • Then Senator Gore, accepting the nomination for vice president at the 1992 Democratic Convention & prior to Bill Clinton's (aka "Elvis" by his security staff) acceptance of the presidential nomination, as published in www.graceland.com

• My uncle Perry came in, when I was six and started to create this character in the mirror. Because he was putting on this show, all my family were in the act so I was head of security, wearing this little official gold jacket, and suddenly there are all these screaming people, and my uncle – who has a moustache, a birthmark on his face and no hair – becomes Elvis and he's amazing. When the show was over, it felt like this weird emotional storm had taken over our house and sometimes when I try to figure out why I'm acting, I figure that had to be it.
  • Actor Ryan Gosling, crediting Elvis and his uncle Perry, who was an Elvis impersonator, with starting his acting career, as published on January 8, 2013 at the Belfast Telegraph.

• I had always wanted to meet Elvis. I was deeply involved in musical comedy. I was a chorus boy on Broadway — I was brought up and trained that way. So I asked if we could arrange for me to come and meet Elvis… and I got it. I brought Joey [Walsh], the guy who wrote ‘California Split’ with me, to see Elvis. Joey and I went into the dressing room and Elvis opened the door. He had a gold-gilded .45 pistol in his belt. His father, Vernon, and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker were there and then left. I told him to be a free spirit. He said, ‘Hey, man, you’re crazy,’ and then I said, ‘I ain’t crazy, Elvis. I’m scared just like you. Your daddy and the Colonel aren’t going to let us be alone for too long. You’re a cash cow to these people. Why don’t you come out (with us) and just be free, just be a free spirit? Leave Elvis here and come out and be free.'
  • Elliot Gould, unable to grasp, even at age 85, the "punishments" of a truly HUGE mega stardom, as published in Fox News' October 24, 2023 edition.

• That the prime exponent of this new style of music should be a singer who possessed no prior professional experience was an anomaly; (in fact), not only were most of the mannerisms that would define his vocal style present at the creation — from the sudden swoops in register to the habit, derived from gospel singing, of starting his lines with a throat-clearing "well" that gave whatever followed the feeling of a retort, but what was even more impressive was the extent to which his first professional recording was marked by the trait that has characterized every great popular singer: the absolute assertion of his personality over the song; from this, it might be concluded that Presley was simply a "natural.", but the truth, as ever, was more complex than that.
  • Jonathan Gould, on his Beatles-inspired book, "Can't Buy Me Love", referring to Presley's early SUN Records label recordings and their influence on the Liverpool rock and roll scene" (2007)

• When he shot the television set? He also shot at 50 other people. LOL. What I do remember was when we sat together backstage for two hours. And he was a charming, delightful man. And at one point I said, "That's a beautiful ring you have there." He said "You like it?" I said, "It's beautiful!" He took it off his hand and put it on mine. He gave me his ring. And years later all the jewelry I had in my house – I trust everybody. I was brought up to believe that you cannot steal, cheat or lie and I've been stolen from, cheated or lied to all of my life. And so jewelry – who needs it? But this one was something special to me and it's gone.
  • Robert Goulet in an interview with Christopher Blank, as published on The Commercial Appeal's August 14, 2004 edition.

• On May 3, 1957, at Hollywood̺'s Radio Recorders Studios, Elvis and his band were working on a soundtrack session for “Jailhouse Rock". Bill Black had a difficult time laying down the bass line for (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care on his new electric bass, and he eventually gave up, frustrated. Elvis surprised everyone by picking up the bass and playing the part – so perfect that Jerry Lieber performed a scratch vocal, and the two recorded the perfect instrumental master for Elvis to sing a new vocal track over, which he did less than a week later.
  • As posted by Graceland on Dec 3, 2015 in an article entitled Elvis Presley, the Musician.

• I never met him but I believe I will see him in heaven because he was very deeply religious, especially in the last two or three years of his life.
  • Billy Graham, as reported by San Francisco Chronicle for October 8, 1977.

• We were shooting a musical number on a merry-go-round where he's taken this little girl to the park and she's riding around and Elvis is singing to her. Well, she was a very young girl and she could only work for a few hours a day with us getting into all kinds of penalties and overtime. So when it came time to do Elvis' close up the little girl wasn't available to do the offstage. So Elvis said to me, 'I always feel better if I can sing to somebody'. He says, 'I wonder if you would mind standing beside the camera and let me sing to you when I do my close ups'. So I had Elvis Presley sing a song directly to me in a movie, and that was quite a thrill. (In fact), of all the people I've ever worked with in my entire life, and I've been a director for 47 years, Elvis was wonderful, the politest and nicest actor I ever worked with. A great guy."
  • Director William Graham, in an interview with AMC magazine.

• But that doesn't mean I view systematically scrubbing Alex Jones from the internet, as Apple, Facebook, and YouTube have tried to do, as a victory. Why? Because I enjoy hip-hop, Elvis Presley, and "The Catcher in the Rye" -- and at some point in our country's history, all three were in the sights of people who didn't approve of its content (or in Elvis' case, hips). Again, I don't like what Jones has to say but I do like the fact I can call him an idiot. That's America, baby.
  • LZ Granderson, African American journalist and political analyst for ESPN's SportsNation, in an interview broadcast on August 6, 2018.

• I was in a Hollywood restaurant having lunch and he bounded up and said he'd seen me in "King Solomon’s Mines" more than 60 times. I told him I was flattered. Elvis then shook his head sadly and added: ‘I didn’t have any choice in the matter, Mr Granger. You see, at the time I was working as an usher in a cinema where the godawful film was playing. LOL.
  • Stewart Granger, as noted in an article entitled Star Turns: How Elvis Presley couldn’t stop watching actor Stewart Granger and published in the July 30, 2020 edition of The New European.

• I have a crush on Elvis Presley.
  • Cary Grant as intimated to his then co-star in "Walk dont run" Jim Hutton, during the Tokyo locale shoot of what turned out to be Grant's last film, a fact which was then noted by his close fried and historian Bill Royce in "Cary Grant: The Wizard of Beverly Grove",published in 2006.

• Every day, there are new stories about deepfakes and Artificial Intelligence-cloned voices and images that manipulates someone’s likeness without their consent. This is not just a problem that effects celebrities, this is a human problem that affects us all. As a mother of three daughters, I am terrified by how this technology has been used to exploit teenagers. It’s fitting that this bill is named the ELVIS Act, because Elvis Presley performed so many different types of songs–from love songs to the blues, from pop songs to gospel music–but he infused them with his distinct voice, likeness, and personal qualities to create something new. Every individual should have the right to control their unique God-given qualities.
  • Songwriter Natalie Grant's words when highlighting the importance of the passing of the Tennessee ELVIS (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security) Act, in an article published in the Music Row's February 27, 2024 edition.,

• As sound leaves the body, it needs to resonate against something specific. There are options – you can direct that flow of sound to the nose, the throat, the jaw or to the sinus cavities in the face-, but I think what Elvis did – as evidenced by his lip curl – was to aim the vibration stream right at his teeth.
  • Renee Grant-Williams, voice coach, and author of "Voice Power: Using Your Voice to Captivate, Persuade, and Command Attention", explaining where some of the power to please the ear, in Elvis' voice, may have come from, as published in Newsreleasewire.com, on December 12, 2006

• I believe in moments that change everything, are powerful, mostly unplanned, and define lives. I remember the exact moment I met Toni. We were both at Batson Children's Hospital, she as a patient with her mother, and I was the visitor. I was with a team of people whose entire purpose in being there was to treat the soul while the physicians treated the body. We were responsible for giving children moments of relief from months of pain. Toni needed a moment. She had not felt like coming out of her room in a while. Leukemia will do that. This was our first moment. Our next was Hallowing also at Batson. Toni's mother and I exchanged numbers, and I stayed in touch regularly. She told me Toni's whites were very low and she was in isolation. No visitors. Our final moment was at the end of 2016, when Toni introduced me to a song I'd never heard before, in a church of all places. I sat in the back by myself until Toni's Childlife workers from Batson came to show their respects and maybe have one more moment and then we listened to Elvis Presley sing that "There must be peace and understanding sometime, strong winds of promise that will blow away, the doubt and fear" What a moment! I wish I could say I planned all of my life-changing moments, but I can't. Proverbs 16:9 says, “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” I planned to be at Batson, but I didn't plan the moment. That was all God and a little girl named Toni. Now, I'm so thankful for unplanned moments. Those little bits of peace and understanding from God and someone else who had no idea they were shaping my life. If we can be anything for anyone, why not a moment? Why not live Elvis' song and be a strong wind of promise that blows away someone's doubt and fear.......if only for a moment?
  • Justin Graves, Director of Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Mississippi College, in an article published by the Clarion Ledger on 29 December 2017.

• Some details just get lost to history. There were many people involved in the effort. Elvis was certainly the most high-profile, but without his help it would have taken much longer for the Arizona Memorial project to come to fruition. He was very patriotic, which I think is lost sometimes too. Just one of those stories that needs to be told in the larger picture of December 7, 1941 and all those who gave so much effort to see the men of Arizona memorialized properly.
  • Tim Gray, CEO and founder of the WWII Foundation, when asked why Elvis had not gotten the recognition he deserved for his role in raising funds to build the USS Arizona memorial, as noted in a march 25, 2021 review by the EPNews Examiner on the subject of the PBS documentary released on December 7, 2021.

• I don't think it is an exaggeration to say he remains is the most influential person to ever come from Mississippi. And we've had a lot Mississippians who have left their mark on the world. But Elvis changed the world.
  • Walt Grayson's laud of Elvis Presley, on the eve of businesses opening in the US after the first three months of the Coronavirus pandemic, as noted in his article entitled "Mississippi Moment: Elvis Presley’s impact on music" ,as published in WJTV's May 20,2020 online edition.

• i) I loved Mahalia Jackson, all the great gospel singers, but the most important music to me was those hip-shakin' boys, like Wilson Pickett and Elvis Presley. I just loved Elvis Presley. Whatever he got, I went out and bought. But I liked “Love Me Tender” the most. In fact, Elvis had an influence on everybody with his musical approach. He broke the ice for all of us ii) Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, you know, I liked them all. See, we were used to the Motown era and the Stax era. And I really had an Elvis Presley collection of records, myself. I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I liked all the Elvis records, had no idea I would move to Memphis, Tennessee, and (in fact) I didn't know Elvis lived in Memphis.
  • Al Green's answer as to what music did he listen to as a 13 year old kid, growing up, as published in Al Green's Wikipedia page ii) his reply as to which singers influenced him the most, from interview with Wax Poetics

• Elvis manages to pull off exponential, seismic shifts in energy, unleashing hoards of it through his voice whilst, within the space of a second, racing up the highest, most absolute vocal intensity; it's almost voyeuristic to see a single performer put so much energy; you look around to see if it's really possible; the voice just becomes a big tank panzering through the screen, punching in chorus after driving chorus and it is insanely, inexplicably thrilling seismic TV, bigger than the moon landing, a one-man volcano of energy; he makes it seem so damn effortless and, despite all the waiting and expected attention during the solo numbers, he always puts in an on-performance, the three unflagging takes of "If I can Dream" all intense, committed; and he does this through vocal performance alone, not moves; this is probably one of the few times where the vocals mattered most to him, and it shows; after days of intense singing, he hardly even loses his voice; I challenge any current pop singer to match this three-day heavy intensity, this sheer rock and roll energy.
  • Francis K. Green, as excerpted from his review of Elvis' TV Special, shot at the NBC Burbank Studios over three days in the summer of 1968, and as published at SLOWREVIEW.COM

• His flip-flops in 1988 on abortion and other issues so important to Deep Blue State voters was so legendary that Dick Gephardt became a running joke in Berkeley Breathed's "Bloom County" comic strip. After being abducted by aliens, 30-something permanent frat boy and womanizer Steve Dallas underwent a process of "Gephardtization"ː On board their spaceship, the aliens had originally planned to transplant Elvis Presley's brain into Steve's head. However, after Steve threatened the aliens with a lawsuit, they decided to perform the "Gephardtization" process on him instead, which was the same procedure used previously on Dick Gephardt to completely reverse opinions and attitudes. After being presumed dead by the residents of Bloom County, Steve was zapped back to earth a few days later. To the whole county's amazement, he was now a sensitive, caring liberal and feminist. He also stopped wearing his trademark sunglasses, quit smoking, and got a perm.
  • Stephen Greene, quoting a Berkeley Breathed comic strip, in an article quite critical on Dick Gephardt entitled ̊̊"Democrats Can Kiss Ohio Goodbye̊", as published in PJ Media's April 22,2019 edition.

• I was making for the door when he opened his eyes, blinked, as if he wasn't sure for a moment what I was doing there. He twitched a shoulder toward the phone and said ‘Would you mind calling room service and ordering me a fried-egg sandwich?. At that moment, it might have been clear I was born to be a restaurant critic. I just didn’t know it yet...
  • Writer and restaurant critic Gael Greene, recalling the last words Elvis said after she, inter-ália, interviewed him at the 24th floor penthouse suite atop Detroit's Book-Cadillac Hotel (now Westiin) immediately after the second of two shows he performed on 31 March, 1957 at the city's Olympia Stadium, as noted in her biography "Insatiable"

• It's easy to buy his pitch; after all who knows better than Vladimir Putin what the threat of foreign interference can mean for an unstable government? But the truth of the matter is that his “wall” will serve only to isolate the people of Russia from the world. Putin will have an “off” switch if an election doesn't go his way or a foreign press publishes some dirt he doesn't like. He'll have the power to disrupt his people's communication and keep open-source idea exchanges at arm's length. Sure, data finds a way. Just like Levi's blue jeans and Elvis Presley records took up residence in the basements and attics of rebellious Russians in the 1950s and 1960s, the people of Russia will find a way to circumvent the censors and access the world-wide-web. But not all of them. Many will embrace the change.
  • Tristan Greene, qwriting for The Next Web, as published in their December 3, 2019 edition in an article entitled "Vladimir Putin is extricating Russia from the world-wide-web",

• Well, what strikes me about it is there may be a lesson here in how the great wheel turns, that is, in 1956, when Presley hit the national scene and some of us rock 'n' roll aficionados found him entertaining it's safe to say, I would guess the art section of the "National Review" didn't greet him at the time with hosannas. And now, by the time he died, he becomes Middle America's favorite guy, the guy who was nice to his mother, emblematic of the values that people thought 20 years earlier he was challenging?
  • Jeff Greenfield, in a rhetorical question to the National Review's William Buckley Jr. who surprised him with his deep appreciation for Elvis' voice, in an interview aired at CNN on September 3, 2001

• Returning to my car after buying the tickets, four huge guys came toward me down the alley. One looked familiar, then I remembered the picture my girlfriend had shown me. ‘Are you Elvis Presley?’ I asked. ‘I surely am,’ he replied. I asked for his autograph and got it. When I gave it to my girlfriend, she fainted.
  • John Grier, for MYAJC, recalling his attending one of Elvis' 4 back to back performances at Atlanta's Paramount Theatre on June 23, 1956, as published on 9 January 2016.

• Ok, so I think Elvis would've dug Bruce, because he not only sings from his gut and heart, he paints really deep canvases with his words. Even if you can't stand his voice, no one, but no one, can take away his incredible talent of writing. Man to get Elvis singing a Bruce song, WOW!! Anyways, so I was in Hollywood shooting an escape from a straitjacket hanging upside down on the Hollywood sign, and my photographer said let's eat at George Santo Pietro's Restaurant. We got there and it was sparsely occupied a few tables, very private and next to me and just behind me sat Bruce Springsteen eating with someone else (I was told later it was a guitarist from the Stones) I got nervous and my date said go up and say hey. I waited for the guitarist to leave while others in the restaurant left. Here's my chance, should I? should I? Oh shit. So I said "Hi I'm Michael Griffin. I'm in town shooting a show and I love Elvis music and yours". Holy crap Bruce said sit down. We were talking and ordered another pizza, US$34 for that pizza and stuff. We kept going on and on about Elvis and the feel of music in the gut and how when I was given a Bruce record (the River) I finally found that OTHER guy who sings from the gut and writes it perfectly too. Bruce was incredibly nice, just down to earth cool guy no airs about him. Dinner ended and I thoroughly enjoyed my expensive pizza with The Boss at Santo Pietro's...
  • Michael Griffin, escape artist, as published in LinkedIn.

• Elvis is Dead And I Don't Feel So Good Myself
  • Lewis Grizzard, from his 1984 book of the same title.

• So we made plans to go to a local football game, and a Greyhound bus pulled up in Graceland so we all got in, wives, girlfriends, everyone. We watched the game, had a great time. Before the end of it, Elvis wanted to leave, so the bus was now en route to Graceland when suddenly there was a railroad crossing, and a train stopped there, so we couldn't advance. Elvis opens the door of the bus, there is no one outside, very dark, ghetto territory, so Elvis keeps walking alone, goes through between two train cars, so I followed him, and we finally see a liquor store, with eight African American middle aged men seated on the curb drinking. He walks up to each one, introduces himself as Elvis Presley and then asks, "Does any one of you have a car"? One guy says that he does, he stands up and says, "Yes, I do", so now Elvis asks him if he can take us to Graceland. It was a very old Olds, with no windows. Elvis gets in, and off we go, me, Elvis, and three of the eight guys, to Graceland. En route, he said he would give them 100 bucks, but he had no money, and neither did I, or so I thought. Once we got to Graceland, they honked, but the guard does not recognize the car, so he goes back into the gate. Elvis stick his head out the window frame, orders the guy to open the gates. And then, what does Elvis do next? He takes the three African American guys he just met through a personal, midnight tour of Graceland. After that, he gives each a hundred dollars, the three bills I had in my pocket, all along, but didn't remember having. That was Elvis Presley...
  • Dick Grob, Elvis head of Security, in an interview filmed in Memphis, in January of 2018, and as verified in a book by Shirley Connelly, a friend of the Presley family who was a witness on their arriving at Graceland together in the car that night.

• Before him I had never met what I would call a true rock 'n' roll hero. Screw Elvis and Keith Richards, Lemmy is the king of rock 'n' roll. A living, breathing, drinking legend. No one else comes close.
  • Dave Grohl's laud of Lemmy Kilmiste, as noted in a comic book entitled “No Remorse: The Illustrated True Stories Of Lemmy Kilmister And Motörhead”

• The Writers Institute's intimate dinner gatherings – typically 10 or 12 seated at a round table with a modest buffet from our University at Albany campus food service – are a reminder that wonderful things happen when we turn off our mobile devices, make eye contact and actually engage in the give-and-take of dialogue. At a recent dinner, the conversation swung around a couple of otherworldly experiences. One story revolved around a "possessed" Elvis Presley clock, actually a detour into paranormal activity. The Lady who spoke and her husband, explained that they were both fans of Elvis so they made a pilgrimage years ago to Graceland, where they purchased a kitschy clock that featured Elvis swiveling his hips in sync to the movement of the clock's tick-tock. The batteries had long died, but they left the clock on the wall for sentimental reasons. A decade later, the Lady described that while she watched a recent documentary on Priscilla Presley, the clock surged back to life and Elvis began swiveling his hips once more after years of stoppage. I was the dubious journalist again, arguing that so-called dead batteries retain a small amount of voltage even though they stop powering a device. Sometimes, they mysteriously recharge, but she refused to yield to the notion that the clock's unsettling movement could be explained by natural laws...
  • Writer and journalist Paul Grondahl, in an article entitled "Dinner conversation returns one Elvis clock..." as published on the Times Union on March 6, 2018

• In western art song and opera, voices like those of Kathleen Ferrier, Luciano Pavarotti or Maria Callas have the capacity to leap out from the score to touch anyone who has ever heard their unique sound. There have always been certain singing voices that seem to reach out and speak to something beyond most of the others. Some great voices do this, in part, because their distinctiveness is intimately associated with some large moral cause: Paul Robeson with racial justice or Joan Baez with civil rights, for example. Others achieve their connection by representing the zenith of a particular cultural tradition: Umm Kulthum in Egypt, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in Pakistan or Youssou N'Dour in Senegal. Still others uniquely embody a time and place in their art: John McCormack with early 20th-century Ireland, perhaps, or Édith Piaf with postwar Paris. In 20th-century pop music, the voice of Elvis Presley is as iconic and identifiable in the west as that of Teresa Teng – whose voice was memorably described as “seven parts sweetness, three parts tears” – is in the east. No list of examples will be exhaustive. There are, it goes without saying, many others. Yet when Rolling Stone selected Aretha Franklin as the greatest popular singer of all time, we all understood why.
  • The Guardian's laud of Aretha Franklin, in an editorial published on the day after her death and entitled "The Guardian view on the secret of singing: whatever it is, Aretha knew it!"

• An evening auction of "Post-War and Contemporary Art" held by Christie’s of New York (USA) on 12 November 2014 raised a record art auction total of $852,887,000 (£598,244,000). It featured works by artists including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichenstein, Willem de Kooning and Jeff Koons. Two silkscreen-on-linen prints by Warhol – "Triple Elvis (Ferus Type)" and "Four Marlons" – alone made $81.9 m (£57.5 m) and $69.6 m (£48.8 m), respectively.
  • The Guinness World Book of Records's entry for the highest total to have ever been sold in a single art auction, the Triple Elvis being the top seller of the two-and-a-half-hour auction.

• Everybody has an Elvis — an artist they value above all others, whose songs speak to them in a way they cannot fully describe. In other words, music that feels like it was written specifically for them.Tom Waits is my Elvis.
  • Reporter and writer Travis Gulbrandson's laud of Tom Waits as noted in an opinion bi-weekly column publidhed in the March 20, 2024 edition of the Minnesota Echo Press

• Elvis got that number and made it famous, but I didn't get a chance to shake his hand
  • Arthur Gunter bluesman who wrote "Baby let's play house" in 1954, a song covered by Elvis at SUN, in 1955 with the latter being on the one hand, the main inspiration for Jimmy Page's decision, at age 12, to take up a life in music, as well as the source of one of the verses of a Beatles's composition, namely "Run for your life", on the other.

• But the core of the album, and perhaps the core of Elvis' music itself, are the soulful gospel-flavored ballads. Well, it's often seemed as if Elvis bore more than a passing resemblance to soul singer Salomon Burke. The way in which he uses his voice, his dramatic exploitation of vocal contrast, the alternate intensity and effortless nonchalance of his approach, all put one in mind of a singer who passed this way before, only going the other way. And here he uses these qualities to create a music which, while undeniable country, puts him in touch more directly with the soul singer than with traditional country music. It was his dramatic extravagance, in fact, which set him apart from the beginning, and it is to this perhaps, as much as anything else -- to the very theatrics which Elvis brought to hillbilly music --, that we can trace the emergence of rock & roll.
  • Peter Guralnick, who wrote major biographies on Robert Johnson, Sam Cooke and Elvis Presley, reviewing the album Elvis Country (1970), for Rolling Stone magazine in 1971.

• When one studies the properties of atoms one found that the reality is far stranger than anybody would have invented in the form of fiction. Particles really do have the possibility of, in some sense, being in more than one place at one time. Thus, and essentially, anything that can happen does happen in one of the alternatives which means that superimposed on top of the Universe that we know of, is an alternative universe where Elvis Presley is still alive. This idea was so uncomfortable that for decades scientists dismissed it, but in time parallel universes would make a spectacular comeback. This time they'd be different, they'd be even stranger than Elvis being alive. There's an old proverb that says: be careful what you wish for in case your wish comes true. The most fervent wish of physics has long been that it could find a single elegant theory which would sum up everything in our Universe. It was this dream which would lead unwittingly to the rediscovery of parallel universes. It's a dream which has driven the work of almost every physicist.
  • Alan Guth, physicist at MIT, and narrator Dilly Barlow, as extracted from the BBC-TWO documentary "Parallel Universes" originally shown Thursday 14 February 2002

• So there we all were, Pete Seeger, Too Rodriguez and I, in Denmark, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, playing at a Folk Festival with thirty thousand screaming, drinking, laughing, singing people. And we were all singing an old Elvis tune! It was then that I suddenly realized how proud I was to come from a country where our songs are known and loved all over the world, by all kinds of people. I also learnt a little bit about what folk songs are, or are not, in fact sometimes they are not even about anything. Again, there we were, singing an old Elvis tune that did not say anything about the state of the world, but boy, more was being said about who was singing it and about how they were feeling, than we trying to sing a lot of songs that try to say a lot of stuff...
  • Arlo Guthrie's inter-play with the audience as he sang "Cant help falling in love" with Pete Seeger on banjo, and Too Rodriguez on backing vocals as a tribute to Elvis, on August 8, 1993.

• I'm not much of an Elvis Presley fan, but when I found an "Elvis 24 Karat Hits!" LP a few years ago I played it once or twice and filed it away. In the midst of writing this review, I by chance played that LP again. This time Elvis spoke to me, his phrasing and power, and his band's rockin' rhythms got my juices flowing. The mmf-1.5 brought me closer to Elvis' music, something I had not ever noticed before...
  • Steve Guttenberg, former projectionist and, in 2018, a CNET contributor, reviewing the Music Hall mmf-1.5 turntable for CNET on February 3, 2018

H

• I had visited him several times back in April. No name marked the thick metal door that sheltered his loft from the neighborhood derelicts and crack vendors, and the ground-floor studio/kitchen/dining room looked both busy and cozy. The floor would always be covered with unstretched canvases in various stages of completion, and he would trot messily across them to fetch me a beer or tend to the spaghetti. The place looked lighthearted, with dark-side-of-Pop touches—portraits of Elvis and James Dean—and a giant birdcage adorned with a rubber bat and containing the bird's nest that he sometimes wore to parties. The only visible artwork not by him was a portrait of him by his one-time mentor Andy Warhol.
  • Art critic Anthony Haden-Guest, describing the ambiance of Jean Michael Basquiat's loft in New York City, a few months before his untimely death on August 12, 1988, as published in Vanity Fair's November 1988 edition.

• I think and my roots are blues, country, soul and rock. Rock is fourth believe it or not. I did not start out playing rock; I started out playing blues and R&B. When I was going back – my first musical experience with my father was listening to Hank Williams. And then Elvis Presley came along and my big sisters went with that, so that's really country/rockabilly/blues. So those are my roots and they are really starting to come out even deeper...
  • Sammy Hagar, frontman and guitarist for bands Montrose and Van Halen, the latter when replacing David Lee Roth.

• I once had a personal visit with Elvis Presley following his 1972 concert here in San Antonio. He had a deep sensitivity for the Lord, received Grammy's for his religious recordings, "How great thou art", and "He touched me", sang about heaven with a real passion and touched the lives of people even through a record. I know some of you are going to start writing me nasty letters for saying such nice things about Elvis Presley... Please... when you get to be perfect... then send me the letter.
  • Sermon by John Hague, Pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas and also CEO of the non-profit corporation, Global Evangelism Television (GETV).

• Elvis touched the life of every ear that heard him, and you could not help to LISTEN while he sang.
  • Merle Haggard, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• I believe the three most important events of the 1950's were the Brown vs Board of Education decision, the building of Levitttown and the emergence of Elvis Presley.
  • Writer and journalist David Halberstam, as noted in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• I was asked who would be my dream opponent in the ultimate game of truth or dare, anyone, living or dead, and I picked Elvis Presley who I love so much that I named my dog after him.
  • Actress and singer Lucy Hale, in an interview with the Inquisitor, as published on 12 April, 2018.

• Ị've always been obsessed with Elvis Presley.
  • Alex Hall, Canadian country music artist, as published in the Digital Journal's December 15 2018 online edition.

• He was already assured of his ability as a performer since he had been perfecting his style on the road for more than a year. If you look at that first appearance on Stage Show, you'll witness a young confident singer with his own unique style. He would enhance his popularity with five more appearances on Stage Show (February 4, 11, 18; March 17, 24) and would become a superstar by the end of that year. On that historic television debut of January 28, 1956, the spotlight was first shown on the two people who had made it happen – the promoter and the performer – disc jockey Bill Randle and the new singing sensation, Electric Elvis.
  • Roger Hall, music preservationist and songwriter, in his essay "Shake, Rattle and Roll: Bill Randle and Electric Elvis", Elvis Symposium (2003)

• I adored all that period in the history of cinema — everything that spilled forth from the Actors Studio. I actually wanted to be an actor before I became a singer. But when I was 12, I discovered rock ’n’ roll through Elvis Presley. He became a part of my life, had a great voice and was the first rock star I saw in the cinema. His voice, the way he moved, everything was sexy. The first time I saw him, I was paralysed." In fact, the day he died, my entire youth went with him.
  • Johnny Hallyday French rocker, in a an interview for Canadian television in 2002 and with Fort Lauderdale's Sun-Sentinel in 2003.

• In 1957, I missed out on booking Elvis Presley by just $3,000 dollars, and Elvis unfortunately never played The Steel Pier or anywhere else in Atlantic City, ever. It was an unfortunate miss, to say the least. I had negotiated feverishly with Colonel Tom Parker to book him. It all came down to just a few thousand dollars. but I refused to budge on paying Parker’s demand. This major loss taught me a valuable lesson. By 1958 I was determined to never again repeat that mistake which led me to the most iconic booking in Steel Pier history, which became better known as the day Ricky Nelson “Rocked The Steel Pier, with 44,000 fans breaking the all-time attendance record and physically moving the pier, leaving many to believe (Ricky Nelson included) that the pier would collapse into the sea
  • George A. Hamid Sr., recalling the lesson he learned by not booking Elvis in 1957, as told in an article entotled "$3,000 More & Elvis Presley Would Have Played Atlantic City’s Steel Pier" and published in WPG Talk's 10 January 2022 edition.

• The point of Elvis Presley was that, after a dismal eight years on the screen, he returned to the stage where he always belonged and to the grinding treadmill of being on the road, which has killed so many of America's artists; he may not have pushed the boundaries of music farther but when he opened his mouth to release that baritone – the only white voice that could ever match the blues-, all you could feel was his longing and your own stirrings.
  • Adrian Hamilton, writing for "The Independent", on August 14, 2002

• The most affecting part of the book is a series of emails exchanged between mother and daughter when Carrie took a road trip in 2001 to visit Elvis Presley's home, Graceland, as well as her mother's childhood home in San Antonio, Texas, and the Belleville, Ark., home of her great-grandmother, Mae Jones, who raised Burnett. Carrie's emails are full of lively intelligence, sharply observed detail and a warm sense of humor, as well as her growing desire to learn more about her family's past.
  • About Carrie Hamilton, daughter of Carol Burnett, who had met Elvis on October 28, 1956, as noted in Colette Bancroft's review of Burnett's biography, and as published in the Tampa Bay Tomes May 7, 2013 edition

• I went to Alana and told her that if she wanted to get married we'd have to get married right there and then. So we got married in Elvis's suite at the Las Vegas Hilton. Elvis was smart, would come over and sing gospel music and we'd have dinner. And I was at his funeral some years later. I flew in on his airplane "Lisa Marie" with the Sweet Inspirations. That was a freaky day when we took him out of Graceland to the cemetery and we were all in the white limousines. A very, very freaky day. Things happened that I'll never forget. The stewardess on the plane told me that his milkshake mug broke that day on landing. And when they picked me up they said the blanket in back, in his bed. had caught fire. And I saw for myself, when they brought his body out of Graceland this huge branch of a tree just cracked. Not some little willow. There was a weird energy happening there and you could feel it.
  • Actor George Hamilton on his marriage to Alana Stewart.

• In the 1956s to 1957s, I began to think about why artists were concerned with things that had nothing at all to do with their everyday lives. We all went to the movies at least three times a week in those days. But most of them returned to their studios and painted monochrome or abstract pictures. That's why I drew up a program in which I wrote down everything that seemed important to me for contemporary art. A kind of manifesto that I hoped would also interest my colleagues — but it didn'. My first artistic realization of this manifesto was the installation "Fun House," which I designed for the London exhibition "This is Tomorrow" in 1956. In fact, visitors had to squeeze through a narrow corridor past pin-up pictures, hundreds of advertisements, movie posters and spinning color discs, while songs by Elvis Presley and Little Richard alternately blared from a jukebox. With the things I exhibited in the "Fun house", I tried to reflect the young people's attitude to life. Music, science fiction movies, objects. I was pretty much alone in the exhibition with that. Everyone else was looking back rather than into the future. But it was my contribution that caused a sensation.
  • Richard Hamilton, in an article entitled "Richard Hamilton: Father of pop art" and published in DW-Top stories' 22 February 2022 edition.

• In 1969, Elvis gave my father the chance to record a song called "Angelica", a ballad which was originally meant for Elvis to record. Dad recorded it, but Elvis was very distraught when my dad fell ill then died from a massive stroke shortly after, so he not just sent my mother a rose each day dad was in the hospital but then when he passed away, flowers for the next six months...
  • Roy Hamilton Jr, speaking to the BBC about the time his father, R&B singer extraordinaire Roy Hamilton, who had been Elvis' greatest musical hero for over 22 years, passed away, and as broadcast in a BBC 4 television special on 29 December 2017

• I've heard some musicians say, ‘That man ain’t sayin’ nothing.’ It’s just a matter of rival performers trying to detract from those who are doing business. As far as I’m concerned, a man that sells that many records must be saying something to somebody.
  • Jazz pianist and bandleader Lionel Hampton's laud of Elvis Presley, as noted in a December 19, 1957 article in Variety.

• When healthy and serious, he was flat-out the world's greatest singer. In his voice, he possessed the most beautiful musical instrument, and the genius to play that instrument perfectly; he could jump from octave to countless other octaves with such agility without voice crack, simultaneously sing a duet with his own overtones, rein in an always-lurking atomic explosion to so effortlessly fondle, and release, the most delicate chimes of pathos. Yet, those who haven't been open (or had the chance) to explore some of Presley's most brilliant work – the almost esoteric ballads and semi-classical recordings –, have cheated themselves out of one of the most beautiful gifts to fall out of the sky in a lifetime. Fortunately, this magnificent musical instrument reached its perfection around 1960, the same time the recording industry finally achieved sound reproduction rivaling that of today. So, it's never too late to explore and cherish a well-preserved miracle, as a simple trip to the record store will truly produce unparalleled chills and thrills, for the rest of your life; and then you'll finally understand the best reason this guy never goes away.
  • Mike Handley, narrator and TV/radio spokesman, in the 'The Jim Bohannon Show', airing on 600+ radio stations on the Westwood One Network.

• You lucky bastard...
  • Albert Hammond's zany comment to his close friend songwriter Phil Coulter, as stated during a phone call in middle of the night, because as he put it, he had just heard Elvis Presley singing "My boy", a Coulter composition, on stage at the Las Vegas Hilton.

• If His Holiness Pope Francis has 1,728 CDs in his music library, I suspect that Elvis Presley' “How Great Thou Art” may be one of his favorite. Not only is it ranked as one of the most popular hymns of all time, but Presley’s version even won a Grammy Award for Best Sacred Performance in 1967. If Mozart “lifts” Pope Francis to God, Presley's “How Great Thou Art” is sure to at least make his soul sing.
  • Keara Hanlon, writing for America in an article entitled "The Unofficial Pope Francis playlist", as published on their January 14, 2022 edition.

• At auction, there are many names with a stellar multiplication factor beyond the obvious entertainers, people who have influenced history as leaders, politicians, captains of industry, artists, musicians, sportsmen, people with personal qualities that resonate with a very large marketplace. Therefore, items with a connection to Princesses Diana and Grace, as well as to Audrey Hepburn, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Elvis Presley, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali and Yves St Laurent all command big prices at auction.
  • Mike Hanlon, auction expert, in an article entitled "The world's most valuable scientific books and manuscripts – an overview of the marketplace" and published in the New Atlas, which he founded, in its edition of October 7, 2016.

• A style and panache that come close to pure magic. Lithe, raunchy, the sweat pouring down his face, he now moves with the precision of an athlete, the grace of a dancer, flamboyant and flashy, sexy and self-mocking, he works with the instincts of a genius to give poetry to the basic rock performance.
  • W.A. Harbinson, from his 1975 book "The Illustrated Elvis" in a passage reflecting upon Elvis' 1969 Vegas engagement

• Elvis Presley was an important influence to my generation and we all loved him very much. I wrote a song called “All Over the World,” influenced so much by his ballad "Where do you come from" that the British musician I was working with, Charles Blackwell, put backing singers behind me who sounded exactly like the Jordanaires. I think that had something to do with the success that song had in England. Back in the ’60s, when Elvis wasn’t performing, I always said, “The day he comes back to the stage, I will go to see his show.” When it happened, at the beginning of the ’70s, I made the trip to Las Vegas. I was not disappointed at all. I was amazed.
  • Françoise Hardy, France's top female singer-songwriter of the 1960's, in an interview with Pitchfork and published on May 9, 2018.

• As it is, polls show the public’s trust in the Knesset is devastatingly low. So, if you oppose the death penalty, the fact that the coalition is legitimizing it is a problem. And if you support the death penalty, the fact that this bill will probably change nothing is a problem. The same goes for any of the other bills. What the Knesset needs now is what Elvis Presley once called a little less conversation, a little more action – if only the coalition partners will let that happen.
  • Lahav Harkov, in a Jerusalem Post article entitled IN NETANYAHU’S COALITION, PARTIES JOCKEY FOR HEADLINE-GRABBING LEGISLATION, as published on January 4, 2017.

• During the course of their mili­tary action, they became the largest manufacturer of bikes in the world, and through their popularity their reputation and bold image be­came instant staples of the brand. Surprisingly, it was 46 years after the company’s founding that the black leather jacket famous with Harley riders emerged. The outlaw image of riders rocking their jackets on-top of their Harley’s transcended culture with movie actors, legendary singers and superstars, such as Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley.
  • About Harley Davidson's transition from its original US military mission to that of an iconic, culturally significant and globally accepted bike manufacturer, in an article entitled "Harley-Davidson: The greatest story on two wheels" and as published in the Times of Malta's February 24, 2019 edition.

• I pretty much started acting out of the womb, all kidding aside, it started when I was at Lebanon High school, actually at the library. It was not long after Elvis died when I had actually started listening to all of his records, so one of my buddies at the football team asked me to do my Elvis imitation, right there so I said I no, and then they said to just do it quietly, and I said that if I did it, it had to be loud, so I went into "Teddy Bear", and they all liked it, and then they all started to move closer to where I was seated, so then I stood up and it was kind of festive, because it was around Xmas. And then I got on top of a table, and the response was so great that I sort of became a performer, without knowing it. What happened next is that Robin Rogers, a beautiful girl at the school, who knew me as "the best football player" and was there, came up to me and said that she was involved with the school theatre, and that I should join her there, and be an actor. So I did become one, and it was all thanks to Elvis and Robin...
  • Emmy Award actor and activist Woody Harrelson, describing how he got into acting, in an interview with Jesse Wente, Head of Film Programmes at the Toronto International Film Festival.

• Some horses enjoy greater popularity after they've won the Derby. Silver Charm who won the 1997 Kentucky Derby, today lives out his retirement at Old Friends Farm in Georgetown, Kentucky. The owners of the farm say that tours of Old Friends Farm have doubled since Silver Charm retired there, likening his appeal to that of Elvis Presley's.
  • John Harrington, in an article entitled Most Iconic Horses to Race in the Kentucky Derby and published at WallStreetcom on may 1, 2019

• Atheism is not a philosophy, not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, 'atheism' is a term that should not even exist. No one needs to identify himself as a 'non-astrologer' or a 'non-alchemist.' We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.”
  • Sam Harris, author, philosopher, and neuroscientist, in A Letter to a Christian Nation

• Many people have been giving him trouble for swinging his hips. I swing mine and have no trouble. He’s got publicity I could not buy
  • Wynonie Harris from a 1956 interview quoted in 1956 in an article entitled, "Harlem’s Wynonie Harris, the Blues Shouter, Rhythm-And-Blues Singer, Who Inspired Elvis Presley", as published in Harlem World's January 9, 2022 edition.

• If ever there were a human equivalent to liver and onions—hated or loved, but no in-between—it was the late E. Hunter Harrison, personally synonymous with the term “Precision Scheduled Railroading,” and whose mention invokes often disquieting debate on theories of management and how best to deliver shareholder value in the short-and long-term. Say “Hunter,” and contemporary railroaders know precisely of whom you speak, a most complex disrupter of the status quo, equally identifiable in his bold pinstriped suits and excessive displays of rock-star-like bling conceivably masking an extension of his childhood infatuation with Elvis Presley.
  • About E. Hunter Harrison, Chief Executive of four major North American railroads, in an article by Frank N. Wilner, entitled "The Unfiltred genious of Hunter Harrison", as published in Railroad's 8 August 2018' edition..

• Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" comes out in the summer, and I play B.B. King. That’s really cool, I’m really excited for people to see it. It’s going to be epic,”
  • Kelvin Harrison Jr., in an interview published in the NME's 14 March 2022 edition

• I met him later at Madison Square Garden. And at that time, I had my uniform, the worn-out denim jacket and jeans—looked like a rag-man and I had a big beard and moustache and long hair down to my waist. They took me to meet him and I'm sitting there, thinking "Well, where’s Elvis, then?" And finally he came out of the back and he was immaculate. I felt like a real grubby little slug and he looked like Lord Siva or something, seemed to be about eight feet tall and his hair was black and his tan was perfect and he had this big white suit, a gold belt about four feet wide and he was towering above me so I just put a hand out and said "Hello, Elvis, how are you?"—just cowering like this little rag-man. (In fact) we all loved him and he's still there in his spirit and in his music...ii) Jesus Christ said "Put your own house in order"' and Elvis said "Clean up your own backyard" so if everybody tries to fix themselves up, rather than trying to fix everybody else up, there won't be a problem.
  • George Harrison's account i) of talking to Elvis, backstage on June 10, 1972, from a Creem magazine interview in 1987 and ii) from Paul Simpson's The Rough Guide To Elvis p. 215

• If it once was assumed that Elvis fans defined themselves by class, and were predominantly from the lowers stratas, this is an assumption that has long been confounded. His fans are also Presidents, Prime Minister and royals. In May 2014, Prince William and his brother Prince Harry and their cousins went to Memphis for a friend's wedding. In spite they were born after Elvis death, the power of Elvis mystique made them pay their respects just like millions have...
  • Ted Harrison in his book the Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley.

• Red, maybe, but Reed was no Elvis
  • David Harsanyi writing for the Denver Post on May 8, 2016, on the life of singer Dean Reed and the 1989 documentary about his life and entitled “American Rebel”

• He is visionary in the spirit of the savior of the venerable New York Times, Adolph Ochs or, better yet, Elvis....
  • Harvard University's laud of Ted Turner, in a speech welcoming him back after his not being accepted to attend the college 10 years earlier, as noted by Lisa Napoli of wbur's on her review of the book entitled 'Up All Night' and dated 12 May 2020.

• Presley's long-time manager admitted it to me, over tea, that the real reason why my attempts to bring Elvis to London had failed, was his own uncertain immigration status. Parker was an illegal and didn't want to risk leaving the US – so it was him, not Elvis,”
  • Top world rock concert promoter and entrepreneur Goldsmith Harvey, laying to rest the long-running rock’n’roll mystery of why Elvis never performed outside North America, as published by the Guardian on 31 May,2015

• There are so many layers there. I think his voice is otherworldly. It has a soulfulness that I find very, very moving. And his beauty, his exquisite beauty. That voice, that beauty, it feels like such a gift to the world. He’ll always be a huge figure in my life. I was fascinated with Elvis as a child. You hear it in the voice, you know. Me, as a singer, I think we don’t talk enough about what artists are actually doing. We talk about their lives, and find out more about their history. But when you actually just listen to his voice, it’s incredible. It’s unlike anything else, so moving. It’s beyond my comprehension. I can’t even describe in words how magnificent his voice is.
  • PJ Harvey, in an article entitled Feeling the Sting of Time with PJ Harvey, as published in the New Yorker on June 23,2023.

• Elvis, they say, died in 1977, the very same year Orrin began serving in the United States Senate. At the White House, they had just a single medal for the two of them...
  • About Senator Orrin Hatch, who his colleague Ted Cruz hinted (at a jesting dinner held at The Gridiron Club) might actually be Elvis Presley in disguise, in connection with their having been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 16, 2018, by Pres. Donald Trump, and as reported by the Mail on December 3, 2018.

• Elvis Presley, the quintessential American singer. One of the most celebrated and influential musicians of the 20th century. Forty-one years after his death, he still commands a large and loyal following. His Memphis home Graceland has recorded over 20 million visitors since it opened to the public in 1982.
  • Frank Hawkins, for American Thinker, naming Elvis amongst the top forty Americans in an article entitled "The greatest Americans of my 8 decades" as published on September 14, 2018.

• I met him at the NBC set of "Laugh in" in June of 1968 because he used to rehearse in the studio for his NBC special that year. Anyways, in walks this guy, and he was soooo beautiful, that it just took my breath away, everybody's breath away. And he walked up to me, and he tussled my hair, and he said 'You look like a chicken that's just been hatched'. 'And I didn't know what to think, I thought it was a compliment. But my god, I've never met a guy with so much charisma in my life'
  • Goldie Hawn, in an interview with UK show-host Jonathan Ross

• Elvis was a giant and influenced everyone in the business.
  • Isaac Hayes, as published in www.graceland.com

• This guy didn’t have to give me the time of day. But somehow he had that charm, or maybe it was a knack, of making me feel important at a time when it was important for me personally to be made to feel important. Perhaps, now, I see it clearer, but there is no getting away from it. I had never met — before or since — never read of, nor heard of, any man who could so totally disarm you with charm, generosity and what appeared to be spontaneous love, as could Elvis Presley. Today they use the word charisma. Well, Presley had it to spare in truckloads.”
  • Dave Hebler, in the book he co-authored "Elvis what happened".

• I just loved him!!!
  • Hugh Hefner's laud of Elvis on the day after he introduced Hefner to the audience at the Las Vegas Hilton, on January 29, 1974.

• I've been fascinated with that guy Elvis all my life because I know there is an extraordinary human being underneath that two dimensiuonal facade we see culturally. In fact, I've always been captivated by stories that humanize iconic figures, and Elvis may be the most iconic of all. He was a cultural lightning rod in the 1950s, but by the mid-60s he was culturally irrelevant. As a fan I've always wondered why he didn't do more to satisfy his musical ambitions, and as a filmmaker I've always wondered how much it hurt Elvis the human to see Elvis the icon fade into obscurity. I originally pitched this film as a sports movie: this is an aging superstar with one final chance to throw a Hail Mary and prolong his dying career. If he fails, he's finished. If he succeeds, he continues on. Not only did he succeed, he delivered one of the most indelible performances in music history. This is the story of a stunning triumph amidst overwhelming adversity
  • Jason Hehir, on his forthcoming 2025 Elvis documentary for the NETFLIX network as stated in a podcast dated July 6, 2024.

• I remember the revelation it was to me when I realized I'd rather be smart in the way Elvis Presley was than in the way, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein was. The thing was, you could imagine you could be smart like Wittgenstein by just thinking hard enough, but Elvis just had it. It was almost spiritual. A kind of grace.
  • Richard Hell, singer, songwriter, bass guitarist, and writer, as noted ingoodreads.com

• We were on location in Crystal River, FL (Weeki Wachee Mermaid Show), where I had him all to myself when what seemed like thousands of people showed up to see him there. They were standing behind a wire fence meant to keep them away from him and I was really overwhelmed by it, because I'd never seen such madness for someone. He then sent me back to the place we were all staying and remained there signing autographs for about three or four hours. And I was so touched by that. He really revered his fans. He was lovely with them. I was very impressed and it was really one more thing to love Elvis for.
  • Anne Helm, telling film critic John Beifuss about the time she co-starred with Elvis in "Follow that dream", as published by EIN on their webpage on June 19, 2010.

• I got to see him twice. The first time he played the Catholic Club, which was like a gymnasium at the local Catholic high school. He and Scotty Moore and Bill Black — a three piece. He was hot. He wasn't famous yet but he was hot. I think he had put out, like, three records that I had heard. The girls were there, too and you couldn't really hear because they were starting to act up.
  • Levon Helm, drummer for The Band, remembering a 1955 Elvis show in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

• One of his favourite musicians to watch was Elvis Presley. In fact, Jimi specially idolized him, loved his music but more than that he liked the passion he showed on stage ii) He'd play for me all the time when I was a kid. After our mother was gone it was hard on me, and I had a hard time sleeping some nights. Jimi would hear me crying sometimes and come sit on the bed next to me and play me songs on the guitar to help me relax until I could fall asleep. He played a lot of Elvis songs to me, especially "Love me tender" and Heartbreak Hotel." iii) My uncle Al at the time was having financial difficulties so Jimi came to live with us, for about a year, and he would play the guitar on a broomstick, so at that time we are all listening to Elvis Presley. iv) In 1969, I was sitting next to Jimi when Elvis Presley's new Soulful recording of 'Suspicious Minds' had just came out and the DJ started playing it. Jimi reached for the radio, turned up the volume and started singing along. 'Great song'. He was excited Elvis was coming back with new music and live performing. v) Back at the BBC, he chose a bluesie list that included his tribute to Elvis Presley, with Hound Dog, a crowd pleaser which would start to creep into many of his later live shows.
  • Elvis' huge influence on the 15-year-old Jimi Hendrix, in particular after seeing him live on 1 September 1957 at Seattle's old Sick's stadium, as published in Hendrix's biography by Lora Green ii) Leon Hendrix, recalling his older brother Jimi putting him to sleep, in 1957. iii) Hendrix's first cousin, from an interview included in 'The Jimi Hendrix Story episode 1'. iv) as told by Sharon Lawrence in his book Jimi Hendrix: The Intimate Story Of A Betrayed Legend.

• You`ve got to be progressive. Take Elvis. He's still got plenty of fans and just look at the progress he´s made on his bank statements...
  • Jimi Hendrix, ostensibly a reference to his having seen the 1968 TV Special a month and a half earlier and as noted by Tony Palmer in Jimi's Royal Albert Hall February 8, 1969 concert.

• I met Elvis in 1968 when he went to the clinic for treatment of saddle sores from riding horses. We treated him after hours. That night, I was in the room assessing Elvis, and he was sitting in the corner talking to me with his head down. I walked over, lifted his chin and said, "Elvis, if you talk to me, you look at me" I thought I was in trouble when my boss, Dr. Nichopoulos called me to his office and, with a solemn look on his face, asked me what I'd said to Presley. I told him and that is when he grinned and said "He liked you..."
  • Letetia "Tish" Henley Kirk, Elvis' private nurse from 1968 until his death, telling how she ended up being his personal nurse, from her book 'Taking Care of Elvis – Memories with Elvis as His Private Nurse and Friend', a collection of short stories.

• He was so above the normal person, so intelligent and humble. But look at his voice, its tremendous range, his musical abilities. And he, I mean some men are good looking, some have great personalities but he had it all. And then, I was very surprised, because he used to love to recite the Lord's Prayer. And I was a Christian in my early childhood days, Mom even saying that we had a Bible on our dining room table. But I didn't really know, and I think Elvis was one of the little budding seeds in when we would have our spiritual talks. But I had no clue that an actor would have a love for God or even want to talk about the Bible. That was a surprise, a very pleasant surprise, and he had a part in turning my life around
  • Susan Henning, who appeared in an Elvis movie, and in a scene in the 1968 NBC special, recalling Elvis and his love of God in an interview with Elvis Australia, published on January 1, 2015.

• The day Elvis Presley died, which is her birthday, I remember her saying that she felt his spirit pass through her. It struck me as an arrogant statement. Now I'd be hard pressed to disprove it.
  • Singer songwriter Joe Henry, speaking about his sister in law Madonna's reaction to the death of Elvis, as published in the New Yorker, on 10 December, 2017.

• Think too of the impact on the U.S. of earlier immigrant groups that came in search of liberty. Without the scientists who escaped Nazism and fascism in the 1930s and 1940s—such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard and Edward Teller—there would have been no atomic bomb, and World War II would have likely ended with a slow, brutal invasion of Japan at a cost of many more lives. A particularly good parallel with the current plight of Afghans is the evacuation of 38,000 Hungarian refugees to America after the Soviet crackdown on the 1956 revolution, thanks to the Eisenhower administration’s Operation Safe Haven. Giving those victims of communism a home in the U.S. became a national crusade. Among those who broadcast the appeal was Elvis Presley on “The Ed Sullivan Show”; in 2011 Presley was posthumously named an honorary citizen of Budapest.
  • Arthur Herman of the Hudson Institute, writing an opinion for the Wall Street Journal's August 24, 2021 edition and entitled. "Help Afghan Refugees and They’ll Help America"

• At first it was funny, but then just sad. That's pretty much how many Indonesians felt when they saw pictures of politicians Fadli Zon and Setya Novanto at a 2015 press conference held by American presidential hopeful Donald Trump. It was hilarious because it was so unreal. First, how did they get there, and why? Of all the places to visit in New York, why choose Trump's campaign headquarters? Second, what's with the star-struck faces? Couldn't they play it a little cooler? It's Donald Trump, for heaven's sake, not Elvis Presley!
  • Ary Hermawan, in an article dated September 8, 2015, for the Jakarta Post.

• Elvis was both a now underrecognized figure of individual artistic genius and an acknowledged but increasingly underconsidered figure of cultural revolution. The democratic impulse behind rock 'n' roll – the union of black and white, urban and rural, sophisticated and rough – had had been a kind of subterranean reality, especially in the South, for years, but became a marketplace reality across the country at the moment of Elvis' mid-'50s emergence. It was driven by a post-war youth culture whose surfeit of discretionary income had the buying power to turn a pre-existing subculture into mass and Elvis into a star. Before, it may have seemed unlikely in a nation so divided that the many tributaries of American music, and the cultures they represented, could come together in one music and one man, though Elvis was only the brightest star in a broad constellation. Elvis was a figure of great disruption who became a figure of great unity, if only for a little while. Maybe this moment needs that reminder, if we can look far enough to Young Elvis to see it.
  • Chris Herrington, writing for the Commercial Appeal on the decision by President Donald Trump to honour him with the 2018 Presidential Medal of Freedom, as published in an article dated November 12, 2018 and entitled '̊What do Nixon, Clinton and Trump have in common? For now, it's Elvis̊̊".

• Wearing a red Make America Great Again baseball cap, the former president became the night's DJ and selected songs from opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley, and James Brown, anonymous sources told the New York Times
  • Miles J. Herszenhorn, in USA Today 's edition pf June 9, 2023, on Donald Trump's reaction to his seconnd indictement, in this case brought about by federal charges on the use of classified documents.

• While others might have voices the equal of Presley's, he had that certain something that everyone searches for all during their lifetime...
  • Singer Jake Hess, interviewed by Peter Guralnick, as noted in page 232 of his book "The unmaking of Elvis Presley"

• We would send him tapes of our games. Jim Brown was his hero.
  • Gene Hickerson, Offensive guard for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) in a 209 film entitled NFL presents Elvis,

• One scene in Houston was illustrative of the feeling about Presley. While he performed from a portable stage in the center of the Astrodome, some 40 policemen and security guards lined the wall that separates the field from the audience. At one point, a youth in his early 20s walked through a gate and began strolling toward the middle of the field. When a policeman called to him, the young man began running deliberately toward the stage and Presley. Normally, this type of scene will cause an audience to applaud the runner or boo the police, but there was a clear feeling of tension in the Astrodome. What was the intruder up to? All too often, charismatic figures attract the unbalanced. There was an obvious, audible sigh of relief when a policeman tackled the young man a few feet from the stage. The concert resumed but it took a few moments for the audience's attention to return fully to the music. Perhaps more than any other scene in Las Vegas or Houston, the tension shown when Presley was threatened (even the vague possibility of a threat) demonstrates the unique bond between him and his audience. More than a performer, Presley is a phenomenon. It is his exceptional talent as a singer and showman that enabled him to attract his original audience and to attract a new one today. But talent is only one reason he wears a crown. The other reason centers around the special relationship with his audience
  • Rock critic and biographer Robert Hilburn, for the Los Angeles Times in an article published on Sunday, March 15, 1970.

• There's also a special Elvis section, featuring vintage photos and artifacts such as a midcentury-era leather couch that provided a comfy seat for the crooner, some of which courtesy of late radio icon Tom Perryman, who helped a young Elvis get a foothold in the music industry, seeking out gigs in a variety of venues, from beer joints to the backs of flatbed trucks. Thousands of visitors stop by the exhibit annually to glimpse memorabilia linked to the “King of Rock and Roll.”
  • Jacque Hilburn-Simmons, writing about the Elvis exhibit now permanently housed at the Gladewater Museum, in Texas, as published by the Tyler Morning Telegraph on January 13, 2018.

• I visited eleven countries with Pres. Eisenhower during a massive 1959 peace-building campaign, took a helicopter tour of Washington with Pres. Johnson to see the devastation from the riots after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and stood on the South Lawn as a disgraced Pres. Nixon boarded Marine One for the last time and left the White House. I met Arnold Palmer when Eisenhower played golf with him at Augusta National, got the word that Elvis Presley had showed up unannounced at the White House’s northwest gate to talk to Nixon and was at Cape Canaveral to watch the Apollo 11 launch, which first put men on the moon.
  • Clint Hill, from his autobiography Adventures of a Secret Service agent who served under five presidents.

• It’s insane the charisma he had. I’ve never seen anything like it to this day. When I saw Elvis on television, I just fell in love with him completely. As a singer, I want to be able to relate to an audience like this man did. Of course, nobody can – he was the best there ever was.”
  • Faith Hill, as published in www.graceland.com

• I wear glasses anyway but I wear slightly different ones, and when I'm not working, I tend to grow a bit of a beard or stubble. I very rarely get spotted, but if I'm shaved and I've got a suit on, then I do. But there are ways of not being recognised, just by not catching people's eye and walking fast," he explains. But I'm not Elvis Presley, I'm just some comic and I haven't been on TV for a while.
  • Harry Hill, Irish comedian in an interview for the Irish Times published on 10 October 2016

• I don’t know about you, but when I see Bill Clinton I think of Elvis Presley. Tonight, the former president tried to ease the suspicious minds of Bernie Sanders’ supporters and make them feel burning love for Hillary Clinton. It was a complicated challenge: Improving the public perception of his wife, who is–in a word–unliked, while he's liked much more. Recounting how they met in college, he was charming. He credited her with inspiring his interest in public service. He made her sound committed, and tireless, while making himself sound like the second banana in their marriage. He called her the best mother in the world, his best friend, a change maker. But Bill Clinton has lost some of his Elvis: This wasn't his best speech; and I don't know if it will change a single vote. If Hillary Clinton wins, then Bill will also be moving back into the White House. So both are applying for jobs. In 1992, when he was a candidate, he told voters they'd “get two for the price of one” if he were elected. In 2016, that will be true again, if she is.
  • Andy Hiller as published by 2016 Sunbeam Television

• Even in his laziest moments, Presley was a master of intonation and phrasing, delivering his rich baritone with a disarming naturalness. And when he caught a spark from his great T.C.B. Band, Presley could still out-sing anyone in American pop. You can hear it here on inspired versions of Muddy Waters' "Got My Mojo Working"(1971), Wayne Carson's "Always on My Mind"(1972), Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" (1975), McCartney's "Lady Madonna"(1970), Percy Mayfield's "Stranger in My Own Hometown"(1969), Dennis Linde's "Burning Love"(1972) and Joe South's "Walk a Mile in My Shoes" (1970).
  • Geoffrey Himes, reviewing the "Essential 70's masters" box-set, for amazon.com

• Elvis Presley had an 8 year exclusive run at the Hilton, entertaining some 2.5 million people, enough to fill the Rose Bowl 25 times over, the city's all time most successful performer.
  • Hotelier Barron Hilton's words, as displayed at a plaque affixed to Presley's statue, now located at the Westgate Las Vegas Hotel.

• I am indebted to Scott W. Johnson, my fellow at the Claremont Institute, for many things over the years, but not many rate higher than his "introducing" me to Elvis Presley. I came of age (i.e., reached the 9th grade), just in time for the "British Invasion" and, despite my childhood memories, soon came to think of him as the ultimate in passe; so, I was astonished when Scott told me, a year or two ago, that in his opinion Elvis Presley was the greatest male vocalist of the 20th Century; I had never thought of him in that light, to put it mildly, but that conversation caused me to realize that I had never actually 'listened'; starting then, I did – with the aid of Scott's encyclopedic music collection –, so if you have never gotten past a cartoon image of Elvis, do yourself a favor and 'listen'.
  • John H. Hinderaker, of the Claremont Institute, a Harvard Law School Graduate and expert on public policy issues, including income and race, as published in Power.Line, on January 09, 2007

• Even in those conformist years, though, rebels were tinkering at the edges. In 1939, Philly barber Joe Cirello, after experimenting on a blind boy who hung out in his Society Hill shop, invented the duck's-ass cut and rode it all the way to Hollywood. Elvis Presley raised a ruckus with his pompadour. In retrospect, it didn't take much to get hair's cultural watchdogs agitated. There's a famous photo of Elvis getting his hair cut in 1958 as he enters the Army. The barber took a whole inch off the sides. Still, girls wailed...
  • Sandy Hingston, writing in the magazine Philadelphia, in an article published on 12 October, 2018.

• I just had to make my own version of one of my favourite songs from Elvis! The idea was to respect the original whilst adding my own “twist”. I had a hard time coming up with a cover art that would be “kitsch” enough for this one. Then I looked over at my cats and there they were – sleeping in an almost-heart-shaped position! Click! Anyway, here is a song to get you in to the right mood while preparing for your Valentine’s Day’s date, or to send to your loved ones to tell them how important they are!“
  • Sami Hinkka, Finnish heavy metal bass player, dedication of Elvis' Can't Help

Falling in Love on Valentine's Day, 2022 and as published on that date by Australia's Heavy Mag edition of February 14, 2022-.

• It begins and ends in Sept. 1956 when he returned to his hometown to perform before an adoring, screaming crowd at the state fair. The documentary spends most the time delving into his childhood days in Tupelo, which included sneaking peeks into late-night blues joints and singing at black g̈ospel tent revivals. It's clear that Elvis Presley lived the music before he became a recording sensation.
  • Mark Hinson, Democrat senior writer of the Tallahassee Democrat reviewing what he calls the nothing-fancy documentary “Elvis: Return to Tupelo” (2008), as published on 6 October 2016

• In the spring of 1957, if his life had taken a different path, it might have been possible to see Elvis filling out law school applications, or interviewing for his first job as college graduation approached. But the hardworking son of Gladys and Vernon Presley was already his family's sole breadwinner and already looking, at the age of 22, to purchase them a new home. He found that home on the outskirts of Memphis—a southern Colonial mansion on a 13.8-acre wooded estate. With a $1,000 cash deposit against a sale price of $102,500, he agreed to purchase the home called Graceland on March 19, 1957. He had already bought one house for his parents on Audubon Drive, in East Memphis, but that residential neighborhood had become overrun with gawkers and worshipers as Elvis became a megastar. There was also the matter of the growing entourage of extended family and friends around Elvis driving the need for a larger home base. Officially, Graceland was where Elvis, his parents and his grandmother Minnie Mae lived, but unofficially, it was also the home of the ever-changing cast of childhood friends who surrounded and often drew salaries from Elvis. Many girlfriends and one wife also came and went at Graceland during its 20 years as Elvis's base of operations. Today it is preserved precisely as he left it when he passed away, in his upstairs bathroom, on August 16, 1977. In the years since then, it has become one of the nation's most popular tourist attractions —the second-most-visited house in America after the big white one on Pennsylvania Avenue.
  • The Editors of History in an article entitled " March 13, 1957, Elvis Presley puts a down payment on Graceland", as published in their online page on November 16, 2009.

• The opening flips between a fired up Elvis Presley and a leather-clad Blake Shelton trading verses on “Guitar Man” against a multi-level backdrop of silhouetted guitarists,then it closes with Shelton looking up as Elvis' image fades into the famous red lights spelling out his first name, basking in the glow of perhaps the greatest marriage of rock & roll and television in history.
  • The Hits Daily Double's laud of the 2 hour NBC Elvis All-Star Tribute to their 1968 Elvis Special,as published in its February 16, 2019 edition.

• When I met him, I had a very small role in his movie, “Live A Little, Love A Little,” but he was very kind to me. He didn't mind when I had to do 5 or 6 takes of a very simple scene. I guess I had expected him to be kind of wild and boisterous, but that was not the case. He ran lines with me, worked out a realistic way I was to knock him down in one scene, was friendly every day, liked jokes and told some good ones. I was smoking a Dutch cigar one day and, when he asked about them, I gave a few to Elvis. The next day, there was a whole pack of those cigars on my chair on the set. We talked about karate and he showed me some moves – even had the prop man set up a brick for him to break. He liked my square-toed boots and asked me where I got them – I heard he bought a half-dozen pair like them in all available colors. We also talked about things we did back home in Mississippi, like squirrel hunting. His boys were around him all the time – I talked a lot with Charlie Hodge. It was a memorable time. I never had any contact with him after that. I could not help but be impressed with how down-to-earth and laid back he was.
  • Singer and actor Eddie Hodges, recalling the time he met Elvis at the MGM set in Los Angeles.

• And now, his revolutionary approach to period sets, his signature life’s-a-party filmmaking, his bold visual style and his ability to create a cutting-edge soundtrack seamlessly blending old and new, all converge in a 2022 release we didn't realise how much we needed: ELVIS
  • Alisdair Hodgson, on the forthcoming Elvis biopic by Baz Luhrmann, as noted in an article posted in WhatCulture's March 24, 2022 edition and entitled "Cannes 2022: 10 Films We Expect To See"

• Elvis shifted our universe culturally like no one has before and he deserves to be treated like an historical figure, like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, but instead he gets weighed down by sensationalism, and that keep us from the truth. In fact, his story is looked on as one of destruction, but it is a futile struggle to survive, through poverty and then through health issues. It was hard to be Elvis, no one had done fame like that before, and no one else could do it for him. He was trying to function within his reality.
  • Sally Hoedel in her 2021 book "Elvis; Destined to die young"

• He's not more than 20 feet away, bigger than life. A face worthy of Adonis, with that innocent lock of hair hanging over his forehead and those bedroom blue eyes. The audience is deathly still, as if Pagliacci, the high priest in the white Superman suit up there was praying a collective prayer for all the shattered rebels of bygone eras. I think I see tears in his eyes, but can't tell for sure, seeing as how I am crying myself...
  • Social activist Abbie Hoffman, writing about his experience of seeing Elvis at Madison Square Garden in June of 1972, in an article entitled “Too Soon the Hero.” and published in Crawdaddy in connection with Elvis death.

• Being around longer than other people, you can’t help but have a certain amount of wisdom that you wouldn’t have had otherwise, and it’s inescapable. I don’t know how you write this, but when I started out, if there had been something released even once a photograph of somebody giving somebody else a blow job, end of career. And now, it makes someone a star. That’s extraordinary. Elvis Presley was on the Ed Sullivan Show and they did not photograph him below the belly button, not his gyrations. I remember women, when I first went to New York to study, every once in a while you’d see a woman crossing the street without a bra, just in a t-shirt, and it was an event, it was extraordinary.
  • Dustin Hoffman speaking about how the woerld has changed, in an interview published in "That shelf"'s March 26, 2015 edition.

• Sometimes I feel my life is very surreal (like when) I looked back the time we wanted to have a tour of Graceland and once there got what we were told was a special tour that was only given to rock bands. So we got to see things that everybody didn't get to see and had our own tour guide dedicated to us. The eternal flame at Elvis' tomb was out that day, so we stood around and sang “Heartbreak Hotel” ala Spinal Tap. Later on I recounted the story to Billy Steinberg and he said, wait-wait, stop-stop, it's a great story but why don't we write a song called “Eternal Flame”? And I said okay. So that's how it started. And along with "Walk like an Egyptian" they both songs went to #1 which was pretty amazing.
  • Susanna Hoffs, singer, guitarist and founder of the US all-women rock band The Bangles, explaining to Classic Rock Music Reporter Ray Shasho how their biggest worldwide hit, "Eternal Flame", which in early 1989 topped the charts in 9 countries in three continents, came into being and as published in their online page on June 28, 2014

• After we did the pool scene I went back to my dressing room and when I pulled the chord by the door, all of a sudden this huge flame fired at me, it was pouring out of the socket. I was so scared that I shouted for Elvis and so he came running back and pushed the door open, took me out of there and then he invited me to dinner. We talked a lot about the problems he was having, deeply concerned as he was about what was going to happen to him with the Army thing. That night I told him that he'd never have anything to worry about and that his big concern should be that nobody was ever going to say no to him. Now, during the shoot, we were in love and that is what made those scenes great because it was totally believable. It was so intense when we did it, and when we were on film that I even made things up so it was so off-the-wall. I mean, when we kissed and I said that I was coming "all unglued" , that was all an ad-lib.
  • Jennifer Holden, one of his co-stars in Jailhouse Rock,in an interview with EIN in 1999.

• Riding a streamlined rock-and-roll beat, the singer's vocal swoops, slurs, hiccups, moans and growls added up to a new pop singing vocabulary that was instantly memorized by scores of imitators. The antithesis of a relaxed conversational crooning, Presley's style was fraught with tension and animated by an attitude of self-conscious melodrama, woving the whole unwieldy spectrum of pop singing – country-blues, Italianate crooning, Gospel, soul shouting, and honky-tonk yodeling – into an integral personal style. His crowning touch was to accentuate the spontaneously exuberant humor that had always been an ingredient of country, and the blues, but singing it in a way that seemed to poke fun at his own accomplishment.
  • Stephen Holding, in the article "A Hillbilly who wove a rock and roll spell", published by the New York Times on Sunday, July 19, 1987.

• It was the summer of 1977. I was fresh out of high school, living on my own, generally disinterested in the church but not yet an atheist. Once a month I attended the church I grew up in, and sat with my parents. They'd be happy to see me in church, and afterwards I could score a good Sunday dinner and use the washing machine.Elvis Presley had died a few days earlier, and to my surprise the pastor mentioned it as he began his sermon.Except he didn't eulogize Elvis; he ripped the dear departed icon a new one. “He called himself The King. Well, he was the King of nothing. There is only one King, and that is Jesus.” he said. After about five minutes of Elvis-bashing and equating rock and roll to blasphemy,a Danny Wiggins stood up and said “You're just wrong. Elvis was a good man. He sang Christian music when he wasn't singing rock and roll and he never set himself up as a competitor to Christ. Everything you're saying about him is just not true.” And with that, Danny walked out of the sanctuary and out of the building, while the pastor and a few church elders called out after him. From a different section of the sanctuary, an older woman and her husband took their toddler and wordlessly followed Wiggins out, while the pastor stood and sputtered at the pulpit. After a minute, he looked at his notes and resumed his sermon from the point he'd left off but the modern Exodus continued: two young men I didn't know walked out, followed a few minutes later by the only black guy in the congregation, and after that by a couple in their 40s. By the time the sermon ended, eleven people had left. Several of the church's younger members who hadn't stormed out gave the pastor a piece of their mind afterwards. That's my happiest memory of attending church. That minister had always been a mean old man, and he gave his congregation a choice — believe in God or believe in music. Several of them made a choice he hadn't expected. It was a Sunday that really rocked the church, pun intended.
  • Doug Holland,in an article entitled "Eulogizing Elvis", as published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser's August 19, 2020 edition.

• So what happened to the gifted scholar who spent his years in Rhodesian jail to acquire a long list of degrees and whose only frivolity was his passion for Elvis Presley?
  • Heidi Holland, South African journalist and writer, in reference to Robert Mugabe's love for Elvis, as noted in her bestselling book "Dinner with Mugabe, the untold Story of a freedom fighter who became a tyrant (page xiv)"

• They sent us all the songs they had clearance for and I wanted to do something that had not been done before, so that's why I chose Elvis' version of The Wonder of you. Not only I had already sang the others, but they would be much of a challenge. I wanted to "jenifferize" that tune and put my own stamp on it.
  • Jennifer Holliday, African American Grammy and Tony Winner, in an interview with "Jet" magazine, published on 23 June, 2006.

• None of us could have made it without Elvis
  • Buddy Holly, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayf

• He' just like Elvis, there will never be another like him
  • About John Holmes, as noted by Don Fernando in Jill C. Nelson and Jennifer Sugar's 2008 book entitled. "John Holmes, a life measured in inches

• This song I'm dedicating to a really good friend of mine who has passed on. One of the greatest ever entertainers. The song 'Tupelo', it was his favorite song of mine, and it's where he was born. Dedicating this to Mr. Elvis Presley. And I hope wherever he is, he's resting at ease."
  • Blues Legend John Lee Hooker's intro to his touching tribute to Elvis, in September of 1977, from his live album Cream

• He not only ate in Waco during his years at Fort Hood, but he slept here, too, and the house where he did is now open for others to do the same. The children of Eddie Fadal, a local DJ and businessman who befriended him when the rock 'n' roll star was in Central Texas, have repurposed their family's three-bedroom red-brick home at 2807 Lasker Ave. into a vacation rental with a '50s and '60s flavor and decorated with Elvis memorabilia. It's called, naturally, The Elvis House.
  • Carl Hoover, writing for the Waco Tribune-Herald, on 13 January, 2018 in an article entitled "Elvis slept here: Waco house frequented by Presley to find new life as vacation rental"

• I regret that it was not possible for me to see you during your visit to our HQ's. However, I do hope you enjoyed the tour of our facilities. Your generous comments regarding this Bureau and me are appreciated and you may be sure that we will keep in mind your offer to be of assistance.
  • FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover's letter to Elvis, dated January 4, 1971 as noted in page 4 of the declassified FBI Presley file which contains 663 pages.

• Elvis is just a young, clean-cut American boy who does in public what everybody else does in private. He has more hair on his sideburns than Bing Crosby does on his head.
  • Bob Hope's thoughts on Elvis, as published on Scomedcom and on the book Bob Hope on TV.

• I spent my 71 birthday at his Graceland home, my wife decided it would have to be in his car museum and I even played on his last piano. In fact, President Clinton, who is also a great Elvis fan, recommended on the last time I saw him, to read "Last Train to Memphis", and I have. I Love Elvis...
  • Anthony Hopkins, in an interview at Jay Leno Tonight Show, broadcast on November 4, 2013.

• It was on a Sunday, on September 15, 1967, when a yardman who had worked at Graceland, went to Vernon Presley's nearby home to see about getting his job back at Graceland. Vernon told him the job was not available anymore as it had been a temporary one only, while the regular man, an African American was sick. The yardman complained that it was pretty raw to give his job to "a negro", then left Vernon's home, after threatening both Vernon and Elvis. A half hour later, according to police reports, he appeared at the Graceland Gates, drunk, arrogant, cursing, then taking a shot at Elvis. He missed his target, and Elvis then knocked him to the ground with one punch.
  • Jerry Hopkins, in his book, "Elvis", detailing the story of yardsman Troy Ivy

• I can close my eyes and remember the day my friend died. It was a hot summer day. He was someone I had never met, who never even knew that I existed. But he was someone who touched my life in a profound way, possibly even saved it in those lonely wee hours of the silent mornings when the demons made their play for my soul. My mom died in February of 1976, when I was 15. I felt lost, depressed, unwanted. I felt my mom was the only person that loved me, and that I would never know love again. And it got worse.I had never gotten along particularly well with my father, and that relationship withered and died in the years that followed. He told me he wished I had died instead of my mom, told me when I fell asleep that he was going to kill me. I spent many nights sleeping under my bed, or trying to surround myself with boxes as I slept sitting up in a corner of my bedroom. The time he stuck a shotgun in my mouth and said he was going to blow my head off, I no longer cared. I just closed my eyes and waited for the gun to go off. The truth is I wanted to die. I used to sleep with a loaded pistol pointed at my head, hoping that I would accidentally shoot myself in my sleep. I thought that I would never know sunshine again. But, through it all, when my thoughts darkened and I'd cry and wish I was dead, there was always one ray of happiness that winked through the storm. It was that friend, Elvis. When I was depressed—and that was often—it was usually the sound of Elvis's voice that brought me back from the edge of the abyss. Yeah, we never met, but he was my friend all the same. He helped walk me through a difficult time in my life and he's been there ever since. Elvis may have left the building, but he'll never leave my heart. I love you, Elvis; and thanks for being a friend.
  • John Christian Hopkins, member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island, author of Carlomagno, and currently living on the Navajo Reservation as published on indiancountrytodaymedianetwork, and published on August 31, 2014

• Elvis invited me out to the 20th Century Fox recording studio. I was standing about five yards away from him, and he was singing into a mike and I couldn't hear him. I thought how strange it was. And then he asked for a playback and his voice came out and I thought 'Wow!' I knew so little about music, it was a different world to me, that he could be actually recording something that would come out that clearly, and yet I was like in touching distance off him and I couldn't hear his voice. I showed him around Hollywood and we got to know each other pretty well for the two weeks. He was a very sweet and innocent naive kind of guy
  • Dennis Hopper, on being present during the recording sessions of "Love me tender", as told to Trudie Forsher, engineer at the sessions, who kept it in her diary and as confirmed by top Variety magazine writer Army Archerd in a document entitled "Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1956)" as digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Media History Digital Library

• When Elvis Presley first hove into sight like a Kansas tornado on Milton Berle's show, I decided to have none of him. I've neither seen nor met him. l've been appalled by the whole Presley disease. But when I learned he was appearing at our Pan-Pacific, I asked Col. Tom Parker for a couple of tickets and' went; it was a shattering experience. Now I understand why 9000 people lost their minds over him. He's a split personality, young, likable, wanting to please; but when he went into his act, it was very like a neighbor of mine in Altoona who had fits, fell down and writhed on the sidewalk.Elvis rolled over and over on the floor still clutching the mike, but his performance isn't sickness, (in fact), whole families were there, nice people. Dozens of policemen surrounded the stage but turned their backs on Elvis to watch the audience and see that no one moved. They were told if they got up or walked down the aisle toward Elvis the show would be over. In former days police would have been looking at the performance. I've seen performers dragged off to jail for less. But Elvis' audience got the emotional workout of their lives and screamed their undying love for the greatest phenomenon I've seen in this century.
  • Hedda Hopper, America's top gossip columnist, reviewing the first of Elvis' two Pan Pacific performance for the Los Angeles Times and as vpublished in their October 31, 1957 edition.-

• We lived at Faxon and Stonewall. Elvis Presley and I were good friends and he liked to come over to my house because my mother would make him toasted cheese sandwiches and his beloved peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Three years after graduation, I received a phone call from Miss Ginny Allensworth asking me to come over to Humes and help Elvis with his English because he had been invited to sing on the Ed Sullivan Show. I laughed and said, "Miss Ginny, Elvis wouldn't listen to me when we were in school and I doubt if he would listen to me now." I did meet Elvis at Humes and he agreed to let me coach him. After talking for a while, he said, "Well, if you are so intent on helping me, why don't you come to New York, too, to be sure I do it right." I ended up backstage at the Ed Sullivan Show and got to see Elvis perform....
  • Bobbie Horne, Elvis' classmate at Humes High School, telling how she ended up accompannying him to his 2nd appearance at the Ed Sullivan Show, as noted in the Class of 1953 werbsite page.

• I would like to make this like Elvis Street, Elvis Presley. Aretha Street. Aretha Franklin. Her museum and whatever else we can do around here
  • Vera House, owner of the home in Memphis, at 406 Lucy Avenue, where Aretha Franklin was born on March 25, 1942, as told in an interview with WALB Channel 10, immediately after it became known that donations paid off all taxes owned by her, thus making it easier for the city to include the home as a tourist attraction.

• Elvis loved gospel music, he was raised on it, and he really did know what he was talking about; we would jam with him for an hour, and he had a feel for it and was "tickled" to have four "church sisters" backing him up; he was singing Gospel all the time, (in fact), almost anything he did had that flavour. You can't get away from what your roots are.
  • Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney Houston, and a founding member of the "Sweet Inspirations", one of the Gospel Groups who backed Presley in his live performances, from 1969 until his death, as told to Jerry Helligar in an interview published in "True Believer", at classicwhitney.com (10 August 1998)

• We were all in a room with my mom and the Sweet Inspirations and this man walks in, with a mink coat, glasses and it wasn't like you say "Nice to meet you, Elvis". In fact, you don't really JUST meet Elvis, you LOOK at Elvis. Amazingly beautiful
  • Whitney Houston, recalling his meeting Elvis as a 6 year old for Access Hollywood, on November 10,2011.

• Elvis' early vocals, was a witches' brew of gospel swoops, falsetto shrieks, growls, howls, and scat...an anthem to human cockiness, to the healing, transcendent powers of the life-force...
  • Edwin Howard, of the "Memphis Press Scimitar", on Elvis' first recordings at the Sun Records label, as published in "Q" magazine

• Afer Elvis Presley, nothing was the same. Rock ’n’ roll might have emerged in the international consciousness 10 months earlier with "Rock Around the Clock", but nobody wanted to be Bill Haley. Everybody wanted to be Elvis. If you didn't want to be Elvis, you wanted to be with him. With a series of now legendary — and at the time risque — TV appearances on Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey's Stage Show and the Milton Berle Show, "Heartbreak Hotel" rose quickly to No 1 by April 21, 1956. It stayed there eight weeks. Presley, with his first million-seller, had rearranged the musical and social landscapes of a changed America. He was just 21 years and 137 days old. He had 21 years and 30 days to live.
  • Alan Howe, writing for The Australian on 3 January 2018 in an article entitled "Heartbreak Hotel:Epochal moment in popular culture"

• So what it boils down to was Elvis produced his own records. He came to the session, picked the songs, and if something in the arrangement was changed, he was the one to change it. Everything was worked out spontaneously. Nothing was really rehearsed. Many of the important decisions normally made previous to a recording session were made during the session. What it was was a look to the future. Today everybody makes records this way. Back then Elvis was the only one. He was the forerunner of everything that's record production these days. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone imitated him. People started doing what Elvis did.
  • Bones Howe. recording engineer, as quoted in Elvis, A Biography (1971) by Jerry Hopkins.

• I am over the f.....g moon, I can't wait, so proud of my honey
  • Actress Vanessa Hudgens, upon learning her 7 year companion Austin Butler was being cast to play the role of Elvis Presley in Australian director Baz Luhrman's 2020 biopic and as published in Billboard's July 16, 2019 edition.

• 'Baby, if I made you mad/Something that I might have said?/Please forget the past/The future looks bright ahead/Don't Be Cruel', As Elvis said, it's tempting to forget the past, and look ahead to a brighter future. I suppose that's especially common in the halls of government...
  • Bill Hudson, writing for the Pagosa Daily Post, which he founded in 2004, in an article entitled The Limits of a Recreation Economy, as published on their December 26, 2018 edition.

• His presence, the star power, the voice, the dance moves, I mean that's what you call a superstar and his gospel roots were transcending
  • Jennifer Hudson's laud of Elvis as broadcast on the NBC TV's 29 November 2023 telecast of the special entitled Chrstimas at Geaceland

• Walter Anderson, B.B. King, Jim Henson and Elvis Presley, these are artists who have had a lasting impact on Mississippi culture. That is why the “Mississippi to THE MAX” project is being put in place for elementary school students throughout Meridian Public schools. We contracted with a local teaching artist who wrote four lesson plans integrating social studies, math, science and reading, along with the arts,” In February after all these lessons are taught, our fourth grade students will go to the MAX museum and they will get to see our exhibits there. And in addition to the usual exhibits, they’ll get to see the brand new Jim Henson exhibit. Only fourth grade students are a part of this project since Mississippi history is a topic in their social studies curriculum. And it’s so important I believe for our students to understand that Mississippi has produced some of the greatest, most well-known artists of our time. And the impact that those artists have had on our culture, as well as the nation’s culture, and the world.
  • Clair Huff, Art coordinator for the Meridian Public Schools for ABC Channel 10's Mississippi to THE MAX, as broadcast on January 11, 2019.

• Now, to skip a half century, somebody is going to rise up and tell me Rock and Roll isn’t jazz. First, two or three years ago, there were all these songs about too young to know—but. The songs are right. You’re never too young to know how bad it is to love and not have love come back to you. That’s as basic as the Blues. And that’s what Rock and Roll is— teenage Heartbreak Hotel—the old songs reduced to the lowest common denominator. The music goes way back to Blind Lemon and Leadbelly—Georgia Tom merging into the Gospel Songs—­Ma Rainey, and the most primitive of the Blues.(2) It borrows their gut-bucket heartache. It goes back to the jubilees and stepped-up Spiri­tuals—Sister Tharpe—and borrows their I’m-gonna-be-happy-anyhow-in-spite-of-this-world kind of hope. It goes back further and borrows the steady beat of the drums of Congo Square—that going-on beat­—and the Marching Bands’ loud and blatant yes!! Rock and Roll puts them all together and makes a music so basic it's like the meat cleaver the butcher uses—before the cook uses the knife—before you use the sterling silver at the table on the meat that by then has been rolled up into a commercial filet mignon. A few more years and Rock and Roll will no doubt be washed back half forgotten into the sea of jazz. Jazz is a great big sea. It washes up all kinds of fish and shells and spume and waves with a steady old beat, or off-beat. And Louis must be getting old if he thinks J. J. and Kai—and even Elvis—didn't come out of the same sea he came out of, too. Some water has chlorine in it and some doesn't. There're all kinds of water.
  • Langston Hughes, African American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright and columnist, from Jazz and Communication: Poetry Foundation.

• Interest on Elvis has helped generate $3.2 billion in tourism and create 35,000 jobs in our city. In fact, it was the opening of Graceland that was the beginning of tourism as we know it today, in Memphis...
  • Jeff Hulett, director of public relations for the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, as published on the Star Tribune, on August 31, 2016

• I have been praying for you for many years, you are my bellsheep, I said to him. He didn't know what that meant, so I explained, that in a Holy Land there is one sheep with a bell, so when he moves, the bell makes noise, and they all go his way. So I then told him that I will be praying so that he will have the spiritual experience to lead million of people to our Lord. And it was at this time that he was so moved that he began to weep and his body began to tremble, and I had a prayer with him, asking the Lord to give him strength and peace, through the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, his daughter Lisa Marie came in, and she asked me, "Why is my dad crying", and then he gently touched her head, asked her to wait outside, and closed the door. I told him that there were many people outside waiting for him, and he said. "No, not now, I want us to stay here, please don't leave me.
  • The Reverend Rex Humbard's recollection of the first time he and Elvis prayed together.

• When Elvis first started at Humes, he was really poor. The office sent a letter home about a classmate who couldn't come to school when the weather was bad because he had holes in his shoes, had no warm coat and needed a haircut. It didn't name him, but we all knew who it was. My mom gave me some money and a jacket she had bought for my brother Bill. I was so proud to take the jacket and the money to the office. My parents had hearts of gold. Now, whenever he walked by any one of us, we would look at each other and laugh and giggle. One day he asked one of our classmates why we laughed when he walked by. She was so dumbfounded that she blurted out "It's because we think you are so good-looking." I guess he was surprised also,so he just broke into a grin and walked away.
  • Betty Jean Moore, Liliane Jenne and Rose Howell, three of Elvis' classmates at Humes High School, recalling some of their feelings about Elvis during their high school days at Humes.

• The show I will never forget and that influenced my soul as a performer was in Las Vegas. As soon as the signature intro began, it was like being transported to another world. The anticipation of him walking onstage was electric. Last-minute big shots and their girlfriends handed maître d's thick tips to get closer. His show was so polished and took you on a journey that made you laugh and cry. He was filled with humility and charisma and tongue-in-cheek humor. It was a total roller coaster. The audience was just as exhausted as he was by the end of the show. Backstage, Roy Orbison and I — both quiet and shy — waited with our own guests for Elvis' second entrance, this time to greet us. He bumped his head and said, “I never could figure out how to get out of that door." That was a pretty good icebreaker. Elvis was concerned as he sat down to chat. “Did I introduce you OK?" Ha! I was in awe and he was worried about my intro. I wish I'd had an iPhone! About 4 years earlier, when I first met him, he didn't shake my hand, he embraced me. And I thought "My god, I couldn't believe it. We became friends. He was one of the greatest, most affectionate people I have ever met.
  • Engelbert Humperdinck, in an interview for The Record.com, as published on 4 October, 2016 and from an article published at LA Weekly on February 14, 2019 and entitled "The best gig I ever saw", recalling the evening show of December 4,1976, which he attended in the company of Roy Orbison and a few of their friends.

• In the end, though, it is his voice above all, that lives on; from the very beginning as a bright and eager youngster capering around the SUN studios, excitedly hammering together two musical styles to create an unforgettable allow, all of his own, right up until the later years, spent booming out ballads in the massive auditoria that were his domain during the seventies – even during the frequently written-off Hollywood years-, his voice never let him down; it is impossible from this perspective to imagine a world without Elvis, his voice booming out from radios and computers, from spaceships circling the further reaches of the galaxy, his voice echoing back; (in fact), it is almost inconceivable that any single individual could have made such a mark.
  • Patrick Humphries discussing Elvis' voice, in his introduction to his book The Secret History of the Classics

• We spent the day together, singing 'I Almost Lost My Mind' and other songs. He is very spiritually minded, showed me every courtesy, and I think he's one of the greatest'
  • Ivory Joe Hunter rhythm-and-blues singer, songwriter, and pianist, recalling the time Elvis invited him to Graceland, in 1957, as published in Elvis Presley photos com

• The Democratic majority has gone angling for headlines and air-time. On the other side, the Republicans are sycophants who conjured up every conspiracy theory short of blaming the Russian probe on Elvis Presley.
  • Al Hunt, commenting on Pres.Trump impeachment efforts in an article published in The Hill' 6 August 2019 edition

• It is a daunting task to unveil a sculpture of a man who is still one of the most recognised figures in the world, 40 years after his death, but I am honoured to be given the chance.
  • New South Wales Governor Gral. David Hurley, after removing the cover of a bronze statue of Elvis in Parkes, Australia, in an interview with Mark Rayner for the South Parkes Post, and as published on January 14, 2018.

• I was always struck by the idea that when John Lennon was singing back in Germany, he was trying to be Elvis Presley, but it was nothing like Elvis Presley. That's very exciting to me that you can be inspired by something so much that it drives you to this point, but nobody outside of yourself can see that that is where it's coming from.
  • Ted Hutt, UK Grammy Award winning music producer, musician and song writer, one of the founding members for the bands Promise, Great Unwashed, Gods Hotel, Reacharound, and Flogging Molly, in an interview with Musicradar published on July 22, 2018.

• One thing Cary did admit when we worked together in 1966, – the two of us, sitting and talking between scenes, was that he had a crush on Elvis Presley.
  • Jim Hutton, as quoted by historian Bill Royce in his 2006 biography pf Cary Grant.

• As long as I can continue doing what I love, I don't care how I'm described. Maybe I should be flattered – after all Elvis was a kind of revolutionary. Actually, if he had trained he might have been a great opera singer."
  • Dmitri Hvorostovsky's answer to Peter Culshaw's question on how he feels to have been labeled the "Elvis of Opera", in an article published by the Telegraph on April 9, 2002

I

• Elvis or Elvis Presley
  • Definition of the word Icon, or Pop icon, as exemplified by the i) Urban, ii) Free, iii) Merriam Webster, iv) Vocabulary, v) Thesaurus vi) Babylon and vii) Wikipedia dictionaries.
• Early in Eric Idle's "sortabiography", "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", the comedy legend describes how, in the brutal, abusive environment of the Royal Wolverhampton School, it was Elvis Presley who saved his life. The curative power of rock'n'roll kept the spark alive in boys who might otherwise have lost all hope in a cold world. How does it feel, then, a good six decades later, for Idle himself to know that for someone like me, he IS Elvis?
  • Ben Pobjie' s laud of UK comedian Eric Idle, who he interviewed for an article published at WAToday, on November 14, 2018

• My only idol is Elvis Presley, I have all his songs and a number of his films at my Miami apartment.
  • Pop singer Enrique Iglesias, son of Julio Iglesias in an article published in Colombia's El Tiempo' s Septiembre 1, 1997 edition.

• Sinatra and Elvis were geniuses, I am not. In fact, I analyzed the singing of Sinatra, Elvis, Nat King Cole, and Marvin Gaye, and they all sang from the gut. They are my favorite singers. In fact, I haven't bought an album in thirty years but you can always catch me listening to Elvis and Marvin Gaye. Of all of them, Elvis is the biggest phenomenon that popular music has experienced in the last 50 years.
  • Julio Iglesias Spanish biggest music superstar in an interview with El Periodico, published on August 1, 2016 and in interview for Chilean television in 1981.

• As far as famous people go, once you're known by a single name, you're on a whole different level. Madonna. Bono. And of course, the biggest celebrity of all: Elvis. And if you think of an Elvis recipe, likely only one dish comes to mind, which makes Elvis' Grilled Peanut Butter And Banana Bacon sandwich the greatest celebrity recipe of all time.
  • Gwen Ihnat, Deputy Managing editor of "The Takeout" and a staff writer for The A.V. Club, in an article published on August 14, 2018

• There was something every bdecade since Elvis and his hips
  • Ihsahn on Black Metal's shock value, in an article published in Braveword's February 27, 2024 edition.

• Our route home from the library took us east on Main Street. As we passed city hall, I happened to glance over, and there on the grassy field, perhaps the most prominent spot in the town, was a statue of Elvis mimicking the pose from the iconic 1956 photograph of him performing at the Mississippi-Alabama Fairgrounds in Tupelo. Somehow -- and I'm not sure how to put it into words -- my feelings about the man had changed from what they had been two hours earlier. No longer did I see Elvis as the one-dimensional character whose on-stage flamboyance spawned hundreds of impersonators, but rather a shy, ambitious country boy intoxicated by the richness of the music all around him, who absorbed that music and made it uniquely his own.
  • Birney Imes, former publisher of The Dispatch, after attending a presentation at the Tupelo, MS, Public Library by Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick, in an article entitled ̊"Partial to Home: Elvis reconsidered", as published in their April 13,2019 edition.

• Results were calculated using a song's beats per minute (BPM) and energy to determine how fast, loud and noisy a track feels. To ensure safer driving, the music you listen to should mimic the human heartbeat, with a BPM that falls in-between 60 and 100. The Vehicle Finance Provider Moneybarn, after analyzing almost one hundred of the most popular Christmas songs, ranked Elvis "O Little Town of Bethlehem" as the fifth safest, with "Carol of the Bells" by John Williams being the safest, and ̊"Underneath The Tree" by Kelly Clarkson, the least safe.
  • Study published by inews in an article entitled ̊"The most dangerous and safest Christmas songs to drive to̊", as published on December 18, 2018.

• Who would have thought, as a young kid walking along the streets of Birmingham, that I would one day be mentioned in the same breath as Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley.
  • Tony Iommi, English songwriter, lead guitarist and one of the founding members of Black Sabbath, commenting on his being recognized with a Grammy Lifetime Award in 2018, as noted by Birminghamlive on December 23, 2018.

• We've played this song for a couple of years now and we really wanted to capture it live so we recorded it acoustically for the 7 inch... it's a well travelled song – not just for Elvis, and one that means so much to us and our journey so to say we're proud of it coming out on vinyl is a massive understatement
  • Taylor Jones, of Into the Ark, the Australian duo which participated, went to the finals and ended up as the runners up in the 2017 season of The Voice, speaking about their video, a cover of Elvis' "Burning Love" as published in Entertainment Focus on January 4, 2018.

• At a certain point, the absurdities pile one on top of the other to such a height, that any form of denial of history is legitimated by the UNESCO approach. If there are no Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, one might as well say that Elvis Presley signed the American Declaration of Independence, such is the level and the type of discourse UNESCO is engaging in.
  • Abridged from an editorial by the Intermountain Jewish News, strongly remonstrating how UNESCO is now handling the affairs of the Jewish state, as published on their online page on October 20, 2016.

• While in Italy, my brother Ira got a guitar and visited a teacher for an introductory lesson. He saw the teacher's long nails on his right hand and was told that he would have to practice classical music. Absolutely not, said Ira, I want to be Elvis Presley. So then I volunteered to take his place and had an instrument custom-made, just to know that it was something personal, that I wasn't sharing it with other kids, like a piano, and that impressed me. It was something I could cradle and caress. When you hold a guitar, it becomes part of you. You can feel the vibration. I was a shy kid. So being able to play something that wasn't loud and bombastic, it expressed my own feelings.
  • Sharon Isbin classical music guitarist and founder of the Juillard School's Guitar Department, explaining to reporter Michael Anthony of the Minnesota Post how she came to love the guitar, during her early years in Italy, as published in the 21 November 2014 online edition of the MINNPOST

• Elvis' initial hopes for a music career involved singing in a gospel male quartet. His favourite part was bass baritone, and he himself had an almost 3-octave vocal range... Yet to posterity's surprise, such a superlative and magnetic natural talent always remained humble --perhaps too humble to keep performing forever.
  • IMDb's review of his appearance in Frank Sinatra's 1960's "Welcome Home Party for Elvis Presley" TV special.

• A lot of people are knocking this Elvis Presley guy, but I think he's all right.
  • Burl Ives in the book The Last word, page 27,

• Elvis Presley, the first and greatest American rock-and-roll star, whose throaty baritone and blatant sexuality redefined popular music, was found dead at Graceland, his home in Memphis, yesterday at 2:30 PM. He was once the object of such adulation that teen-age girls screamed and fainted at the sight of him, but was also denounced for sexually suggestive conduct on stage. Preachers inveighed against him in sermons and parents forbade their children to watch him on television. In his third television appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, his act was considered to be so scandalous that the cameras showed him only from the waist up. He was more than a singer--he was a phenomenon and a show-business legend before he was 25 years old as well as the highest-paid performer in the history of the business by the time he reached 30 years of age. In the spring of 1958, he was drafted into the US Army as a private, an event that caused as much stir as an average Super Bowl. "The Pelvis," as he was known, was stationed in West Germany for two years and was given an ecstatic welcome home by his fans. In 1967, Mr. Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu, the daughter of an Air Force colonel he had met during his military service, and had a daughter named Lisa Marie. Although concrete details of their private life remained sketchy through his deliberate design, the fan magazines were full of reports of marital difficulties, and the couple separated then divorced in 1973. He was a generous and often sentimental man who gave Cadillacs away with startling frequency, from time to time seeing some stranger, nose pressed against a car-showroom window, and inviting the person to go inside and pick out the color he or she liked best after which he would then pay the entire cost of purchase, on the spot. Mr. Presley's movie career ended a year after he had triumphally returned to television, with critics remarking on how little he had aged. He kept in shape for years with karate, in which he had a black belt, but his penchant for peanut butter and banana sandwiches washed down with soda finally caught up. After his death became known yesterday, radio stations around the country began playing nothing but Presley records. At his death, he had been an indelible part of the nation's musical consciousness for 20 years. He is survived by his 9-year-old daughter Lisa Marie, his father and grandmother, all of whom happened to have been at Graceland on the day of his death,.
  • Molly Ivins' abridged laud of Elvis, as noted in his New York Times' obituary, as published on its August 17, 1977 edition

J

• As one watches the first movie, my hair changes a lot because about three weeks into shooting, a crew member said, `Elvis is leaving the building.’. The director, Bryan Singer, then shut down shooting and said, `You’re right, he looks like Elvis. LOL.
  • Hugh Jackman, discussing his hairstyle in the original "X Men" movie, released in the year 2000 and which will be making a sort of a comeback, after almost a quarter of a century, via " Deadpool 3", to be released in the silver screen in 2024, as published in the Animated Times' September 19, 2023 edition.

• At one point during our downtime while in Lake Tahoe, my brothers Jackie and Michael must have wandered off, as they found themselves in one of those wide service type elevators. There they were, watching their feet when the elevator stopped, opened and then.. Elvis entered. "You're those Jackson boys? he asked. They nodded, dumbstruck. You would think that having met Smokey Robinson, Sammy Davis and Jackie Wilson, that nothing could faze you, but the randomness of that shared elevator ride was the biggest unexpected thrill for them. Not that it lasted long. After a few seconds, and with a "Good luck fellas", he was gone. But that was the day Michael would meet the future father in law he would never know.
  • Jermaine Jackson, recalling, in his biography, how mad that made him feel, the fact he was not at that elevator.

• I consider Elvis an unacknowledged pioneer in the black rights movement. Elvis had to fight with racism too, at the beginning of his career, with the major radio networks refusing to play his music because it was black music. Elvis broke the barriers and ever since, black musicians had a door open.
  • Jesse Jackson's laud of Elvis, as broadcast in a video made by the Civil Rights.History.com channel.

• He had been invited by Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers to perform with Mahalia at an event in Mississippi but had to decline due to previous scheduled engagements. But being a fan of Mahalia's since he was a child, he found out she was visiting in town not far from where he was filming his movie at the time and he sent for a car to bring Mahalia to visit him on his movie set. Witnesses said it was one of the few times he appeared legitimately starstruck, to the point of emotional. When Mahalia arrived on the set and he first saw her he ran across the room pulling a chair over next to his chair to have her sit and relax where he could spend time visiting with her between filming scenes. Elvis spent a lot of time just looking at her adoringly and started to say something to her about growing up hearing her music but also telling her she reminded him of someone. Then she said Elvis's voice trailed off as he seemed lost in thought, but they presumed he was about to tell her she reminded him of his own mother. At one point he did in fact look at her and said softly "Mahalia, you're just like my Momma...". Mahalia was moved by his comment and found out later that when Elvis was young and lived in Tupelo he used to listen to gospel singing and went to Pentecostal Church. Mahalia said that explained why he could sing Gospel as good as he could.
  • About Gospel Queen Mahalia Jackson's encounter with Elvis during the filming of "Change of Habit", as told by Richard Yancey in page 480 of the Mahalia Jackson biography "Just Mahalia, Baby"

• Your dad was always an inspiration to me. And I bet you I am going to end up like him, a dead but glorious King""
  • Michael Jackson, as told to his then wife, Lisa Marie Presley

• I’d done my show (in 1955), and I was back in a room. My daddy was in there with me, and we’re hearing screaming, and it was kind of scary. Daddy said, ‘Well, heck, there might be a fire or something. I’ll go check. You get your purse and stuff gathered up. So I did, and daddy left. And in a few minutes, he came back, stood there in the doorway and said, ‘Wanda, you’re not going to believe this. You’ve got to come see it for yourself.He took me to the wings of the stage, and I look out and here’s Elvis doing all these gyrations and all these girls around the stage screaming and reaching for him and crying, and I thought ‘What in the world?’ That was a first for me.
  • Rockabilly Queen Wanda Jackson, remembering her touring with Elvis and the moment she realized music had changed forever, as published in CMT´s online edition of November 21, 2014.

• As a free speech near-absolutist, I unreservedly defend the right of anyone to trumpet political views. But more than ever I admire those celebrities who steadfastly resist the temptation (or the hectoring) to talk politics. There are still some of them, following the footsteps of one of the greatest entertainers in American history. At the peak of his long career, Elvis Presley's influence on popular culture was unparalleled, but about politics he would say nothing. A classic illustration occurred during a pre-concert press conference at Madison Square Garden in 1972. It was at the height of the antiwar movement, and Presley, an Army veteran, was asked for his thoughts on the Vietnam War protests. “Honey, I’d just as soon keep my own personal views about that to myself,” he answered modestly. “I’m just an entertainer and I’d rather not say.” Faced with the pressure to get political, Elvis knew how to shake it off. Would that could still be said about Taylor Swift?
  • Jeff Jacoby, discussing Country singer̪ Taylor Swift's decision to endorse the campaigns of two Democrat candidates in the 2018 Tennessee mid-term elections, as published in the Patriot Post on October 15, 2018.

• The move from Tupelo to Clarksdale was mainly a change in soundtrack. In Tupelo, the radio was dominated by Elvis Presley. I remember my grandmother telling stories about Elvis. They knew him in the Black part of town — that’s how poor he was-. When Elvis was a kid, he would sit on the porch of a nearby house and play guitar. I was never a fan of his...
  • Arthur Jafa, in an interview for the New Yorker, on how he came to know about Elvis, with whom he shared a birthplace, in Tupelo MS, in an article published in the magazine's December 21, 2020 issue and properly entitled "Arthur Jafa’s Radical Alienation. The story of the filmmaker who left an art world he found too white (years later, making a triumphant return with “Love Is the Message, the Message is Death.”

• Charles Manson in his prime or Richard Ramirez? Who was more popular with women? You are kiddin' me. Ramirez drives fems crazier than Manson ever did. Had to unplug the phones from outside the holding tank after they nabbed him. Unplugged the fax. Disarmed the email, Plus they had a cordon of fat-ass deputies cheek-by-jowl in riot gear. It was like the offensive line of the Oakland Raiders, just to protect Ramirez from his female admirers. It was like Elvis in his prime.
  • Harold Jaffe, in his book "15 Serial Killers", published by Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2003.

• After months of neglect, the U.S.S. Potomac was in poor condition and had to be cleaned up for the ceremony. A few days before the event, in early February of 1964, Presley's people contacted the Long Beach Port authorities asking how much it would cost to have the boat cleaned up and painted for the dedication, the answer being that it would take at least three days and $18,000 to make it presentable. There wasn't that much time, so then it became a question of how much it would take to just paint the side that faced the dock and the international press waiting therein? It was $8,000 so they did it"
  • Excerpted from Walter Jaffe's book, "The Presidential Yacht Potomac", detailing the last moments prior to the ship's dedication at Long Beach Harbor, the result of Presley's decision to gift the former FDR's Presidential Yatch, to St Jude's Children's Research Hospital, in Memphis, TN, for its eventual sale to raise funds for the construction of a new wing in the hospital, an endeavour to which Presley had already committed his time, back in 1957 when he drew 11,000 contributors to Memphis' Russwood Park for that year's Danny Thomas organized fundraiser and benefit gala. The Yatch is currently anchored at Oakland Harbor, and can boarded and toured daily for a trip up to the Golden Gate bridge, and back.

• He was a unique artist – an original in an area of imitators.
  • Mick Jagger, lead singer of Rolling Stones.[3]

• When Elvis came on the studio, and heard my song, he wanted it to be played again and again...
  • Mark James, recalling how Elvis felt about "Suspicious Minds", as told in the BBC program, The Elvis Presley Rebirth aired first in 2017

• In a big club just outside of Memphis, I once shared a bill with a very young Elvis Presley. I didn't know what to expect and he actually turned out to be supercool and extra-respectful, with his 'pleased to meet you, ma'am' gentlemanly manners. He also touched my heart, many years later when my good friend Jackie Wilson was down and out, vegetating in some funky convalescent home. Elvis moved Jackie to a decent hospital – and paid for everything."
  • Etta James, from her autobiography Rage To Survive: The Etta James Story Unquote

• I have to respect Elvis accomplishments. He took R&B and made it respectable to white people. Plus it was B.B King, who knew Elvis personally, explained to me Elvis was quick to respect and acknowledge the black artists who influenced him.
  • Funk, soul and R&B composer, musician and actor Rick James, from his autobiography "Glow", quoting BB King as the person who set him straight about Presley's true love and respect for the blues.

• And so Elvis was going to come over and take the whole bunch of us out to have ribeye steaks, and so I was so excited. I'm in doing a "vogue," I can't believe Elvis is going to walk into the studio and he's gonna see me singing. I couldn't believe it, I was just flipped out. So anyway, the phone rings and Scotty Moore answers the phone, and he looks out. He says "Come on in" and I went in. It was Elvis on the phone and he couldn't make it over. And Elvis was "I'm sorry man, why don't you guys come over to Graceland when you can" and "We'll be in town for awhile, come on over to Graceland," and I was so disappointed, I really was, but it was great meeting, him on the phone, I never met him in person. I only had a couple of days left in Nashville and we had to finish up the album so I never made it over to Memphis. And I always regretted that...
  • Tommy James, on the day in Nashville, in 1971, when he almost met Elvis, as published in a March 2020 youtube interview with Steve Ludwig. .

• It is a weakness of the mind to preconceive a judgment of your thought, before the act is done. Despite the acid hemlock stirred by "The Las Vegas Sun" , Mr. Presley will survive and live to sing some more. Perhaps this cat should have studied grand opera, or the fiddle (but), I don't join that school of thought. You see, he's a natural and any dope knows what a natural is. His vocal is real and has a hep to the motion of sound, with a retort that is tremendous. Squares who like to detract their imagined misvalues can only size a note creeping upstairs after dark; this cat can throw them downstairs, or even out the window, with a depth of tone that can sink deeper than a well. He can wilt into a whisper faster than a gossipmonger can throw down a free drink and he really makes them cry. Presley's voice is that of American youth looking at the moon and wondering how long it will take to get there, something new coming over the horizon, all by himself, and he deserves his ever-growing audience. Yep, this boy's sails are set and he's got wind. Good luck and the best of everything. I hope they hold you over! After all, ten million cats can't be wrong.
  • Ed Jameson, President and CEO of Bancorp, Las Vegas, writing a letter to the Editor, as a then teenager, and as published in the "Las Vegas SUN", on May 12, 1956

• We loved Elvis & Elvis loved us"
  • Reverend Robert Jamison, an African American preacher who met Elvis in Tupelo, MS, when they were children, as told in his obituary published on April 27, 2019.

• All the members of Dextress come together in the common affinity for hard rock. While each individual loves this genre, we all also bring some diversity outside the Dextress sound. Our bassist Reece Runco finds inspiration from Jesse Cook, Roy Khan, Beck, and the performance style of Mötley Crüe, while being very influenced as a bassist by Steve Harris, Michael League, and Geddy Lee. Our animal behind the kit Keith Runco is very much into death metal. He's very passionate about Behemoth and Benighted. His biggest influences as a drummer are Inferno, Jojo Mayer, and Tommy Aldridge. And Our lead vocalist Eric Paulin is strongly influenced by Sebastian Bach, of Skid Row and Ray Gillen of Badlands and finds Elvis Presley an overall inspiration.
  • Mark Janz, lead guitarist for Canadian hard rock band Dextress, in an interview with Beatroute, published on September 30, 2017.

• I was crying of happiness so much that I wouldn't have even been able to recognize Elvis...
  • Therra Gwyn Jaramillo, telling CNN, on August 4, 2018, about her encounter with rapper and actor Ludacris, whom she failed to recognize at a check out counter, even after he went ahead and paid her total bill.

• Bruce Johnston and I met Elvis in the late ‘60s. He was working in the studio across the hall from us so Bruce and I went over and introduced ourselves and he was very delighted to see us. He was trim and great looking, just like his album covers. He hadn’t gone back out on the road yet. We encouraged him to get back to work and he took us up on it.
  • Al Jardine, of the Beach Boys, recalling when he and his bandmate Bruce met Elvis, as published in the book, Elvis from those who knew him best.

• Without any question, it would be Elvis Presley’s "It's Now or Never", because that was number one when I was born. I have always said that I came into this world with Elvis singing it, and I’m going out to Elvis singing it..
  • Edinburg MP Christine Jardine, when asked a song she wished do be played at her funeral, as published in Holyrod's December 1, 2023 edition

• When he hit the world, this is one of the most beautiful people anybody had ever looked at, and he's also coinciding with the explosion of the mass media invention in America. We are unleashing levels of power through cinema and television and radio that the world has never really experienced before, and we're combining that with the fire power of such a truly beautiful, majestic, authentic creature — this Elvis Presley. So what is an Elvis Presley? It's a funny name with this amazing figure who's part black, part white, looks like a Greek statue one second, looks vaguely like a woman the next second. I think Elvis even stands for something much deeper, something akin to Lincoln or Herman Melville or Emily Dickenson or Franklin Roosevelt, or even Teddy Roosevelt. I think he stands for something about how America became what it is, in the best sense. What he symbolized, in the best sense, was to say to so many people, if he could make it, they could make it. That’s the majesty of Elvis Presley.
  • Eugene Jarecki, director of the documentary **The King, in trying to describe the person he was looking to find, in his own movie, as published by WBUR on July 9, 2018.

• "Bob King's", the nightclub, was packed and it was filled with anticipation. Even a seasoned musician like Sonny Burgess knew the vibe in the club was different that night. As Elvis Presley stepped onto the stage and the band started to play, his hips began to move and as sang "Good Rocking Tonight" the crowd was whirled into a frenzy. Burgess has witnessed hundreds of musicians and bands and played before millions of fans throughout the United States and Europe during his long career that has spanned more than 50 years, but the guitarist has never experienced the energy and emotion he felt the night he heard Elvis play that tune, back in 1955. "Boy, he was different," Burgess told The Jonesboro Sun. "As soon as he walked into the building you could feel his energy. He had the looks, the songs and the charisma. Whatever a star has, he had it — more than anyone else."
  • Excerpted from an interview by seasoned columnist George Jared with rockabilly musician Albert "Sonny" Burgess, and posted on The "Jonesboro Sun" on Sep. 2, 2014.

• I listened to Elvis Presley become, I watched Chuck Berry become, I listen to Little Richard and all that music was part of my upbringing
  • Al Jarreau, as published on Jarreauquotes

• It's like Elvis, you don't remember how he passed away, you remember his 50 number-one hits and how he revolutionized rock and roll music, Taker knows how to do it, Shawn knows how to do it; they have done it for years, and now they have done it [in] multiple generations. So nostalgia is really, really hard to top, but it's every now and then; you can't do it every week.
  • Jeff Jarrett, in an interview with "Inside The Ropes", stating that, although years have passed, and like Elvis' music, the Deadman and HBK's showdown in 2009 has forever etched in fans' memories, as published in Sportskeedus' April 16, 2023 edition.

• If his gyrating stage moves were performed by a Negro, he would be put in jail. He has been a bad influence as far as other performers....
  • Los Angeles DJ Al Jarvis, in an interview for KFWB, Los Angeles, CA, in 1956.

• Elvis was of the last generation to experience the magic of Hollywood's golden age, a time when options for mass entertainment were few. Mmovies brought people out of their homes and into public spaces and the cinema was his special arena
  • Glen Jeansonne, Presidential historian, in his book "Elvis Presley, Reluctant Rebel: His Life And Our Times"

• The transformation is quite impressive and is something that not many people realize is doable. The doctor implants eyelashes, hair, I never knew you could do that until I went to see Doctor Kahen. I'm really happy with how I look now, everyone talks to me about it, even my bank teller commented on how good my hair looks.
  • Justin Jedlica, who garnered attention as the Human Ken Doll for undergoing over 190 cosmetic procedures and a US$$15,000 hair transplant in a bid to look like Elvis, in an interview with the Daily Maul published on February 20, 2018.

• It is when Guralnick shows how young Elvis made his way through this cultural briar patch, that we get what we need. He got voluptuous phrasing and ecstatic self-confidence from gospel, wit and menace from the blues, homespun sincerity from country and, from what we can now call gay theatrics, he got glamour and self-parody. He played the outlaw and the good son. How he flirts with his audiences, first being casual, fervent, sneering, then inviting us to laugh at, or with him. ¨As you desire me¨, he is saying, ¨so shall I be¨. Was he a great performer? Yes and yes again. He galvanized rock-and-roll and made you feel the fun and the risk and all the contradictions. That's self-invention, and that's entertainment.
  • Margo Jefferson, reviewing Peter Guralnick's biography of Elvis Last Train to Memphis, The Rise of Elvis Presley for The New York Times (26 October 1996)

• I remember one night we were talking in his room. He told me, ‘Mary you know we moved here from Tupelo when I was thirteen. Most of the stories that people read about the move say that we moved because times were so hard in Tupelo. Well, Mary, that is true; however, a few months before we moved here there was a couple that lived by us there in Tupelo. He was a cab driver. One night he came home in a rage and murdered his wife. In fact, he butchered her and cut her throat. The wound was so deep it almost severed her head. All of the neighbors were looking around and I saw that woman, too. I’ll never forget what she looked like. I began to have nightmares about it and cold sweats. So Daddy and Momma decided to go ahead and move to Memphis then. We did move here so Daddy could find work, but I don’t know if we would have moved, when we did, if that hadn’t happened.
  • Mary Jenkins, African American cook who worked for Elvis for 14 years, as noted in her 1984 biography "Beyond the Graceland Gates".

• When Elvis first started at Humes, he was really poor. One day the office sent a letter home about a classmate who couldn't come to school when the weather was bad because he had holes in his shoes, had no warm coat and needed a haircut. It didn't name him, but we all knew who it was. My mom gave me a whole dollar and a jacket she had bought for my brother Bill. I was so proud to take the jacket and the money to the office.
  • Lillian Jenne, Humes High School Class of 1953, on how impoverished Elvis was when he arrived at Humes.

• His departure for the Army and Hollywood made his last appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957, as young America's unofficial leader, his crowning moment. He had brought youth to a prominence it had never known in American culture
  • Peter Jennings, Canadian-American journalist who anchored the ABC World News Tonight for almost a quarter of a century, discussing the impact Elvis had on the world, in a sub-segment of ABC's series "The Century" entitled "Memphis dreams", the Reverend MLK Jr being the subject of the 2nd half, as broadcast on ABC on April 5, 1999.

• Elvis was singing "That's All Right" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky". The sound went straight up your spine. The way he sang, the singer sounded black, but something about the songs was really country". I was crazy about Elvis, loved that churning rhythm on the bottom. He didn't have drums yet, but the rock and roll part was unmistakable.
  • Waylon Jennings; Kaye, Lenny (1996). Waylon: An Autobiography. Warner Books. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-446-51865-9. 

• Presley brought rock'n'roll into the mainstream of popular culture, as he set the artistic pace, other artists followed. He, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture.
  • Author and historian Marty Jezer in his book, The Dark Ages: Life in the United States 1945–1960. South End Press; 1982. ISBN 978-0-89608-127-7.

• At the close of his state visit to the Philippines, he showed a taste for American songs during a two-hour pleasure cruise around Manila Bay, as the guest of Philippine President Fidel Ramos. The trip on Ramos's presidential yacht was the highlight of the second day of his three-day state visit to the Philippines. Apparently aware of the Chinese leader penchant for songs, Ramos brought with him a string quartet, so after a breakfast of porridge and fruit, the 68-year-old Ramos invited him to sing, so the two leaders then ended up performing a duet of Elvis Presley's hit "Love Me Tender" which prompted Ramos into remarking: "That's the favourite song of Bill Clinton, so you have to prepare. When he visits you, you will surprise him.
  • About Chinese President Jiang Zemin, as quoted in an [ITN Source]], dated 26 November 1996

• Presley brought rock'n'roll into the mainstream of popular culture, as he set the artistic pace, other artists followed. Presley, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture.[
  • Author and historian Martin Jezer in his book, The Dark Ages: Life in the United States 1945–1960. South End Press; 1982. ISBN 978-0-89608-127-7.

• In his book "Elvis’s Army", Brian Linn argues that after years of bad press, the U.S. Army was eager to market itself as a new and improved force: an egalitarian, racially integrated institution through which men from all walks of life could build character, gain valuable professional skills, and become good citizens. Conscripting celebrities, even those as famous as Elvis, allowed the Army to promote its reforms while also pushing back against criticism that privileged men might be able to dodge the draft, supposedly a universal call of duty. Prior to his service, Elvis often starred in films as the laidback rebel. He was an icon for youthful disobedience, as well as a target for conservative criticism. But after a two-year stint in the Army, most of which he spent in Germany, As a result, the Army boosted its reputation, and Elvis relaunched himself as a mainstream star through films, like "G.I.Blues", which offered a light-hearted, patriotic message that military service could be fun and personally transformative.
• Syrus Jin, in a Foreign Policy article entitled "When Pop Stars Make for Secret Weapons" as published in their March 5, 2023 edition.

• He is the Elvis of the computer world
  • About Steve Jobs, as noted by U2 frontman Bono, in an interview with the Irish Times" and published on their October 7, 2011 edition

• When I was in third grade, I got up on the stage and I did my Elvis impression and I sang ‘Hound Dog'. And the girls in the fourth grade started screaming, and I said to myself, ‘There’s something going on here. This is kinda cool if the girls in the fourth grade are screaming for a kid in the third grade. One day, my mentor told me that I should consider becoming a professional musician. And for a teacher, an adult, to tell me that was very important, that was an epiphany. It was a real eye-opener. Elvis was great.
  • Billy Joel, in a New Online Video Series, with Joel recalling the first time he made girls Scream, as recorded by ABC News Radio, on November 2, 2016

• I've got the habit of listening to Elvis Presley from my mother. In fact she married my father because he promised to take her for an Elvis Presley show, which he did on their honeymoon.
  • Hindi filmaker Karan Johar, son of acclaimed producer Yash Johar, explaining how he got the love for music, in an article published in India Catch news on 28 March, 2017.

• No other white artist but Elvis was the greatest Ambassador for black artists. Not only was he legitimate and came from the same background as many of us, but he had an integrity and class that most whites at that time did not. For that matter, many whites today don't have it. He publicly and privately treated us as equals. And his actions ultimately set a public example for many others to follow. This is the only place on Earth you will get the most truth about that. Everywhere else around this country folks got it twisted. It's a disrespect to not only Elvis, but to us. Anyone wants to discredit that man send them on down here to me! Myself and some friends will be glad to set them straight."
  • Bluesman Big John, commenting on Beale Street.

• Elvis Presley changed everyone's life. I mean there would be no Beatles, Hendrix or Dylan. I mean, he just was the man who changed music without question. When they had a Rolling Stone poll about who was the most influential people in rock n roll, I think The Beatles were number one and I just said, you know, “What? No, Elvis was number one. I know he drew his influence from Gospel and Blues and Country Music and Black Soul music whatever, but he was the one that started it all. I was looking at an old Life magazine and there was a picture of him and I thought he was from Mars or something. And then that weekend my mother came home with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and that changed my life. Years later, I saw him in Las Vegas and I mean he was fantastic at the Hilton. But the only time I met him was very briefly before he went on stage in Washington DC, a year before he died. And it was very sad but even though it was very sad, even on stage and my mother, who was with me, said, “Well he’s not going to be alive much longer, is he?” She was really sad. And I was too, he was my idol too. But even though he went through the motions and was not really there at the scene at the end of that concert, there was still flashes of brilliance, in spite of being hugely overweight, but when he actually sung a couple of lines it was magical. You don't lose that magic, no matter how fucked up you are, you know, you just. If you're brilliant, snatches of that brilliance will come through. And later in my life I end up a recluse in my own bedroom, you know, taking cocaine, so I'd kind of did become HIM. But what happened to him, you forget he died when he was only 42, for Christ's sake. I mean he was only 42. And it's one of the great tragedies. I don't think anybody actually said “Elvis, you can’t do that, you mustn’t do that”. Rewinding back, I played piano at a very early age, it got me attention and I liked it, but music wasn't my dream until I discovered him in 1957. I was sitting in the little barbershop in our village, waiting to have my hair cut, and I saw this picture of Elvis. He looked like an alien — really weird but amazing. And after I saw Elvis and heard his music, there was no going back.
  • Elton John, addressing the NYT's Philip Galanes's question on what was his first dream, as published in the New York Times on November 28, 2014, as well as from in an interview with Andrew Denton's Enough Rope, dated July 9 2007, when asked to explain how he felt about his biggest idol's death in 1977, shortly after meeting him in 1976.

• These days the bright London boy who passed his 11-plus and left school without any exams is touring the country with a talk show. In the likes of Southampton, ­Workington, ­Peterborough and Coventry he'll focus on the social significance of his life's soundtracks, from Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the rest. Music is his passion, politics always an interest. In the 1960s he was in a couple of rock bands as a rhythm guitarist and backing singer but when it became apparent that he wasn't going to become an overnight rock star, he got a job as a postman instead. However his love of music has never faded. Johnson adds "I was was a huge fan of Elvis and The Beatles so when Radio 1 celebrated its 50th anniversary recently it made me feel nostalgic as I remember when it first started broadcasting and what an incredible treat it was to be able to listen to pop music all day. I still play the guitar but I don’t think I’m going to be back on the stage any time soon".
  • About Alan Johnson, former Education, Health and Home Secretary for the Labour Party in Britain, in interviews given to the SUN and the Express, and published in their February 24,2019 edition

• Honestly, the first one was Elvis Presley. When I listened to Elvis when I was a kid and heard “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog" — you want to talk about an 8-year-old kid losing his mind? “Jailhouse Rock,” songs like that, made him kind of an American hero. But he also came across as kind of taboo, kind of a little bit rowdy, and a little bit too much for some people. That really stuck with me. Yeah, I was born ten years after he died, but everybody loves Elvis. Hell, my grandma loves Elvis. But when he came out, man, he was a little bit of a bad boy, too. He had that edge. Something about Elvis made you think if you smarted off, he might slap you. I heard that in his music. I heard that “I don’t really care what y’all think,” that whole “I’m going to boogie-woogie if I want to boogie-woogie” attitude.
  • Cody Johnson, describing his first influences,in an interview for Cowboys and Indians, as published on their March 11, 2019 edition

• Elvis Presley was born to a death. His twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered first, didn't live at all, and everything that happened next was a swaggering wobble between those two poles. Denis Johnson, who passed away from liver cancer at 67 in May 2017, references Elvis glancingly in several of his works — "Train Dreams" (2011), "Tree of Smoke" (2007), "Jesus’ Son" (1992), and in both the final pages of his first novel, "Angels" (1983) — and the last of five stories in his posthumous collection "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden", where the author makes liberal use of the legendary performer.
  • About author Denis Johnson, as published by the Village Voice on January 12, 2018, in an article entitled "Denis Johnson and the Ghost of Elvis Presley" by Hanna Gold

• i) I've been asked to write down who I am most grateful for in this holiday season. And the answer is Elvis Presley. We are a very musical family and he sings my favorite Christmas song, which "Why cant everyday be like Christmas". So now it's turned out that I've sang it to all my daughters when they were babies and they all fell asleep on me. ii) Woman wanted him, men wanted to BE him, or just hang out with him.”
  • Dwayne Johnson, i) answering a question for Humankind Stories on the occasion of his finding out he will be a father again soon and ii) as published in wwwgracelandcom

• Hendrix and Elvis were the ones who sparked my interest in music. When I saw Elvis play the acoustic guitar back in the day with 'Jailhouse Rock,' that's when I wanted to play. I think I was 6. All I could think of back then, was that would be a great job...
  • George Johnson of the Brothers Johnsons, a Soul/Funk/R&B band itself associated with, inter alia, Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, The Supremes, and Billy Preston, from an interview found in an article written by Wes Wood for the Daily Bulletin and published on August 30th 2016..

• The Bee Gees for their harmonies, the Beatles because they were so ahead of their time and Elvis, who was indeed, an amazing swagger, had incredible moves and his voice is so iconic.
  • Joe Jonas, member of the band DNCE, in an interview with CelebMix, and in answer to a request from the interviewer to name a Hall of Fame of three artists throughout the decades who inspired him.

• He's started the whole thing. I liked his early records.
  • Brian Jones's 1965 interview, on youtube

• I think Elvis and BB King both did as much for the world of music coming through Memphis as anyone.
  • Booker T. Jones, Stax records Legend, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, record producer and arranger, best known as the frontman of the band Booker T. & the M.G.'s being interviewed by Virgin Magazine 2015

• Years later I met him, by chance in Hollywood where I was living. He was riding in a limousine and I was out walking my dog. He spotted me and pulled over. We went over to my home and sat out front talking about old times. After a while he grew melancholy and confided in me, “Carolyn, I’ve lost my way home.” It was heartbreaking as he had grown weary and disillusioned...
  • Carolyn Jones, Golden Globe winner actress who starred with Elvis in Paramount's 1958 production of "King Creole"

• Now and then in a magazine, you will come across one of those features about your dream dinner party guests, encouraging you to wonder whether, inter alia, you could sit Elvis Presley next to Mother Teresa. I saw one in a mid-market woman's magazine the other day. Well, all I can say is that I'll be at the top table, after scrubbing John Lennon from the list, and certainly leaving Elvis, Mother Teresa, Ian Dury, Orson Welles and Peter Sellers. Incidentally, I wouldn't want to sit down with Karl Marx unless he was genuinely interested in what I'd been doing at work all day...
  • Dylan Jones, editor of Gentlemen's Quarterly, choosing his ideal dinner guests, as published in the Mail online, on 17 January 2009

• I guess everybody in the world tried to be a little like Elvis at the time, but there was no way you could compete with him if you just were doing country.
  • George Jones in the book the Last word, by Sandra Chorn and Bob Oskam (p.16) .

• Elvis was great. I loved him. When we worked on "Love Me Tender", everyone to a person, was determined to detest him. They couldn't believe he could just show up and be a movie star. They were prepared to hate him. By the time the shoot was over, everyone adored him. I'll tell you a story about him that probably nobody else knows. We were doing "Stay Away Joe" and were the only two actors working that day. And I just happened to look across the highway, and there was an old battered pickup truck, patched up and with the tires gone. And there was a rocking chair in the back of it with a lady tied to it.It turned out the lady was in her eighties and she was a true Elvis fan, had no money and her family had driven 300 miles with her tied in the rocking chair because she was crippled up and couldn't get in the cab. Me being blabbermouth, I went over and told Elvis. He stopped everything. He had them back the truck over and put it right up next to the camera. He got her situated, and he always had his band with him, so they broke out their instruments and they gave her a thirty-minute performance. She stayed with us the rest of the day. He took her to lunch, and just took her everywhere he went. That's Elvis Presley.
  • L.Q. Jones,in an interview with Cinema Retro published on February 28,2019.

• i) So we left that CREATIVE era of jazz, bebop, bigband and went into the '50s. It was like coming from modern jazz to poop tunes like "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window," and so on. It was unbelievable. But then Elvis Presley changed that whole thing because he opened the way for black music to come in ii) Even from 30 feet, as I sat in the front of the CBS orquestra section, and with his back to me, as we all faced the camera, I knew right and then that he would be a huge star
  • Quincy Jones, i) as noted in the Zan Stewart interview, November 2013 and ii) recalling the three times he played 2nd trumpet for Elvis in the winter of 1956, as noted in a filmed interview for the television special entitled "The History of Rock and Roll".

• Blues, country, pop, rock and roll, gospel, and beyond, this man could sing anything. From the rockabilly of the Sun Sessions, to the MOR of "Wooden Heart"(1960), to the later day "Burnin' Love"(1972), Elvis proved that he had the skills as a vocalist that few have, or will ever have.
  • Rob Jones, Canadian musicologist, writing in "Helium: Where knowledge rules".

• Not any big ones, but I had a picture taken that haunts me to this day. I'd just come off stage at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to be greeted by Elvis Presley, Merv Griffin and Norm Crosby. Elvis knew how to work himself up for pictures and he ended up looking like, well, Elvis, any doubling of the chin magically concealed. So naive, grinning me, however, clearly had an extra chin, later to be surgically eliminated. It was something to do with the singing. I had it cut out, now I've got the mark of Zorro under my chin, that's why I grew this beard. Never have your photo taken with Elvis Presley.
  • Tom Jones's zany answer to Bryan Appleyard, who interviewed him and asked he tell the readers of The Times of London what he regretted the most in his career, as published in the said newspaper on October 3, 2015.

• I feel good. It was kind of nail-biting all day yesterday. It'd be nice to have $3,300 in my pocket and still have the cup, and I hate to see it go. In fact, it's really going to be weird putting something that has that kind of value in an envelope and sending it off to the people who bid the most in auction, the owners of the "Icon Hotel" in Luton, U.K
  • Wade Jones, in an interview with The Gaston Gazette published on January 20, 2018, after auctioning a 61 year old flattened Dixie cup he owned and which had been used by Elvis after a concert in Tulsa Oklahoma on April 19, 1956.

• Elvis is my man.
  • Janis Joplin, as published in the Elvis Express.

• The Presley, Beatles and Castro appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show have one thing in common: at the conclusion of the appearances, Sullivan stands at center stage and declares them all to be outstanding citizens of their countries...
  • Chris Jordan, for Arbury Park Press, on the day after of Castro's passing away, November 26, 2016.

• I think it’s a little bit too much and kind of overwhelming. I mean, it puts a real big strain on me personally in my life. It’s always great to be respected and admired, but to a point where it exceeds certain living situations, and it’s not that much fun to me. I think it was fun to a certain degree, but it really was kind of embarrassing the way people treated as if I was an Elvis Presley or a God, and that’s a very uncomfortable feeling for me.”
  • Michael Jordan, in a 1995 interview with Craig Sager, given immediately after his first game back from retirement that year versus the Pacers, and as reported in Sportscasting's June 1, 2021 edition.

• He would appear twice a night at the Hilton in Las Vegas so after the second show one night, I asked the guard behind the stage if I could meet him. As I was then playing with Cowboys, I was let in. So there he was with a towel around his head exhausted after performing two shows, but was very friendly. He was also a huge fan of Coach (Paul W. 'Bear') Bryant, my coach at the University of Alabama, so we got along extremely well. I think the key was that we came from similar backgrounds, just country boys who remained the same even after hitting the big stage.
  • Linebacker Lee Roy Jordan, in his autobiography “Lee Roy: My Story of Faith, Family and Football.”

• Your CD is wonderful, and you have a great sounding voice. Reminds me of an Elvis jazz sound. I just I always loved Elvis's sound, but you're definitely an original and certainly are my taste. You have a jazz sound. Just great!!
  • Sheila Jordan, NEA Jazz Master and vocalist speaking to baritone E.J Decker, as published on wwwejdeckercom

• Pharaohː Male, a Baritone with a registry from a Low B to High G#. He is the most powerful man in Egypt living in a strange psychological place and is desperately searching for the truth in his dreams. The character is in style an homage to Elvis Presley.
  • One of three characters as meant to be played in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

• I watched the audience as he walked out on stage, and so many had their faces in their hands. They'd sit there and cry. It was almost Biblical, as if the clouds had parted and down a shaft of light came the Angels.
  • Bill Jost, Assistant Maitre d' of Showroom Internationale of International Hotel, Las Vegas (Now the Westgate), as noted in the bootlegzone's review of Elvis opening show at the International Hotel, in the summer of 1969.

• Of the millions of cars that have ever been built, only a handful of individual vehicles are truly legendary. James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder. Ingrid Bergman’s Ferrari 375 MM. Frank Sinatra’s Dual Ghia. The Lincoln Continental in which John F. Kennedy was assassinated. There are others, of course, but it’s a short list in any case. And no matter what the criteria, only two BMWs truly deserve to be on it. One is the Touring-bodied 328 coupe that won the Gran Premio di Brescia in 1940; the other is the 507 owned by Elvis Presley while stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army.
  • Jackie Jouret, for Bimmer, magazine, in an article entitled "Elvis' 507: The real story" as published in their Jul 28, 2014 edition

• The memory that stands out most in my mind is the first time I saw that face, the face that was soon to be the most recognized face in the world: the deep-set eyes that would make girls scream and cry; the full, pouting lips that would make them swoon. I'll never forget the first time I saw the flawless face of Elvis Presley.”
  • June Juanico, Elvis girlfriend in 1956, in her book, Elvis and the Twilight of Memory.

• I wanted to look at Elvis the non-saint, as well as the nature of songs from the ‘50’s, all that postwar optimism; he’s iconic, a wonderful singer with an amazing body of work, but he’s a bit like Billie Holiday, you’re not ‘allowed’ to be critical.
  • Barb Jungr, UK-based singer, composer and writer of Czech and German parentage, explaining why she fell in love with the voice of Elvis Presley, went searching for the essence of a dozen of her Presley favourites, as well as her particular predicament in choosing the right ones for her album "Love me tender", as published in the Herald, Glasgow, on August 5, and on the April 13-20, 2005 issue of "Time Out, London".

• I was working in the early 2000s with Wieden & Kennedy, an exclusive, high-brow ad agency based in Amsterdam, and they were literally on the same street where my studio was. We knew each other really well, had worked together and, at a certain point, somebody knocks on my door, walks inside, and says, "Tom, I've got something, but we don't know what to do with the music." He plays me this world championship soccer commercial for NIKE directed by Terry Gilliam, a five-minute movie where you see all the star soccer players play games with one another in the belly of a ship. The commercial was called, "The Secret Tournament" , they were looking for music and had tried a few different things, like Elvis' A Little Less Conversation,' and I said, 'Oh, I know that song.'" But they said, " Problem is that it's too short and we need five minutes." I said, "I can make this work. Give me a couple of days or a week and I'll come back to you." He said, "You don't have a couple of days or a week, I need this in five hours." And I said, "Well, just give me five hours (laughs)." So he left, and at that point in time, I was producing the first record of a UK-based DJ by the name of Sasha, the biggest thing on the planet. So he came in and he said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I've gotta spend four or five hours on this Elvis thing." So he said, "I'm gonna go get a massage and get some food, I'll be back in five hours and we can continue working." So he goes to get a massage, comes back at 8:00 pm. And when I played it for him, he smiled and looked at me and said, "This is a number one hit." I said, "Ah, you're kidding, this is just for a commercial," but he said, "No. You don't understand what I'm saying: this is a number one hit." Famous last words! So I sent it out to NIKE, and they loved it, and they started talking to the Elvis estate. They were talking with the lawyer of the Elvis estate, and he says, "We just played the track for Priscilla Presley, and she really loved it. Tell me, who is the producer on this track?" And then the guy on the NIKE side says, "His name is Junkie XL." And it goes quiet. After half a minute, he says, "You have to be kidding me, right?" So we shortened it to JXL and it went into the commercial, which ran worldwide and did really well. And then the track started having a life of its own and eventually, we decided to release it as a single. So I spent a little bit more time on it to produce it as a proper release, and that's the track most people know today, yes, the one that became a number one hit in many countries.
  • Junkie XL, real name Tom Holkenborg Dutch composer, multi-instrumentalist, DJ, producer, and engineer, recalling how the # 1 hit during the 2002 Soccer World Cup came into being. in an article published at SceenRant on December 13, 2018.

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• From the darkest of backgrounds, Elvis' voice emerges with such realism that you could take singing lessons, his vocals so irresistible and smooth, and with such startling definition, that the clearest and most concise way I can describe the experience, is that I never felt as though I was listening to a recording.
  • Danny Kaey, a top audio and music writer, reviewing the Duke loudspeakers, as he listened to "Fever", a track found on the Elvis is back album, and as published in POSITIVE FEEDBACK, ONLINE.

• During his rendition of "Hurt", (1976), he was in even better voice, singing in a register that gave more impact to his phrasing, and even hitting notes that could cause a mild hernia. And, after they drew a good crowd reaction, he offered them in a reprise that was tantamount to masochism.
  • Mike Kalina, reviewing Elvis' 1976 New Year's concert for the "Pittsburgh Post Gazette", January 1, 1977.

• He was electrifying in his white jumpsuit, with his cape on, quite humble but he had an aura. There are very few people who have triple-X charisma, and Elvis was one.
  • George Kalinsky, official MSG photographer, as noted in The Daily Telegraph's 11 April 2008 edition.

• I want to produce music that is timeless, music that lasts for decades and centuries, like Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, The Temptations and Prince's songs. One-hit wonders are for lucky people, not talented people,
  • Lischen Khachas, Namibian music producer, in an article entitled "Surviving as female music producers in Namibia" as published on the New Era's April 5,2019 edition.

• The young Elvis Presley, without any doubt.
  • Kiri Te Kanawa, New Zealand operatic soprano to UK show-host Michael Parkinson when asked whose was the greatest voice she had ever heard (as published in Blabbermouth.net, 3 January 2007)

• Elvis Presley was known for his kind and generous heart. Every Christmas he would donate $100,000 to local charitable organizations. He personally delivered a wheelchair to a disabled woman and gave a necklace to a sick child in a hospital unable to see him perform. Moreover, it is hard to explain an admiration for one particular individual such as Elvis. I admired this man not only for his contribution to the music industry, but also for his love for all of his fans,
  • George Karnaze, from Rotary International in an article published in the Miami Republic's January 18, 2022 edition.

• To go out Albemarle Rd, to the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round, and seeing Elvis at the Carolina Theater.
  • Jan Karon American novelist and author of the Mitford novels, when asked no name a few of the most exciting things she witnessed since her arrival in Charlotte, as a 12-year-old child from Lenoir, where she was born, and as published on March 28, 2017, in the Charlotte Observer.

• Elvis is the one man that stands alone in the history of Rock-N-Roll. He was the first and the best, shook the world by its very foundation. Over the years I've seen stars come and go, but never have I seen a star match the impact of Elvis Presley. Elvis may be gone, but the echo will never die.
  • DJ Kasey Kasem, from American Top 40.

• He was criticized for turning down the role of Sundance in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", after insisting unsuccessfully on doing the film with Elvis Presley as Butch.
  • Sam Kashner, in reference to actor Warren Beatty, who he interviewed for Vanity Fair's November 2016 edition.

• It shows that anything's possible because I wasn't the president of the student body. It was certainly a very fateful and important meeting in the course of my life. Too bad I hadn't been there the day before — I would have met Elvis.
  • John Kasich’s thoughts on his 1970 meeting, as an Ohio State University freshman, with President Richard Nixon, after sending a letter to Nixon requesting a meeting. They met on December 22, 1970, a day after the famous Oval Office meeting between Nixon and Elvis, as told by the now Ohio Governor in an interview for the Palm Beach Post and published on May 24, 2017

• In 1969, I hitched from New England to Nevada to see him, to meet him, so I showed at the Las Vegas International Hotel's delivery room, I hid in a closet, until Elvis and his entourage passed by, so that is when I jumped out and told him I was one of his biggest fans, and wanted to be a star to which Elvis replied, "I believe that will happen, son". I got his blessing...
  • DJ Andy Kaufman, speaking through his alter ego, Jimmy Clifton.

• He was out for fun, he never rehearsed. He was 19 and he had a motorcycle and he liked to ride the streets, looking for excitement. So often I'd see him zipping along Union Street, a new girl on the back of that motorcycle, or walking with two or three girls at once. Later he'd tell me, 'I'm sorry I didn't introduce you, Marion. I didn't know their names'."
  • Marion Keisker, the radio show host, station manager, U.S. Air Force officer, and assistant to Sam Phillips at Sun Records best remembered as the first person to record Elvis Presley on July 18, 1953.

• Presley's early days represent a kind of liberation in his fans own lives, which to that point were painted in black and white and dominated by their parents' conservative views. His music gave them an art form, and to a degree, an identity all their own. More than anything else though, it's the uniqueness of Presley's voice and talent that shall prevail. There's never been anyone like him and likely won't be.
  • Bob Kealing, in his book “Elvis Ignited: The Rise of an Icon in Florida,” as published in Florida Today, on March 28, 2017

• What's happened to the ­alliance is that the great relationship we have had with the Americans in wartime, and the cultural affinity with the jazz period of the 1920s, the swing era in the 1940s, Elvis Presley and rock and roll, Hollywood, the sitcoms, and the relationship between the citizens of Australia and the citizens of America, society to society, has been suborned by this now sacramental and foolish tone we are ­encouraged to have about the ­alliance.
  • Paul Keating, 24th Prime Minister of Australia and the Leader of his country's Labor Party from 1991 to 1996, explaining how his country's alliance with the US has now been supplanted by the relationship itself, in an interview published on the Australian, on September 23, 2017. and entitled "Keating blasts Australia for adopting US foreign policy"

• A hard drinker with an ever-present cigarette in his mouth, he liked to dress like Elvis at company meetings and maintain a level of fun in the workplace.
  • About billionaire Herb Kelleher, co-founder and CEO of Southwest Airlines, as noted in his obituary by the NYT, on his death on January 3, 2019.

• That Elvis boy can sure dance but he's not as good as me though (LOL)
  • Gene Kelly, present at the filming of the title song to "Jailhouse Rock", as jokingly told to Lizabeth Scott, Elvis' co-star and as published in Watpad's 31 December 2021 edition,.

• Elvis Presley was rock & roll's first real star, not to mention one of the most important cultural forces in history, a hip-shaking symbol of liberation for the staid America of the 1950s. A white Southerner singing blues laced with country, and country laced with gospel, he brought together American music from both sides of the color line and performed it with a natural sexuality that made him a role model for generations of cool rebels. He was repeatedly dismissed as vulgar, incompetent, and a bad influence, but the force of his music and his image was no mere merchandising feat. Presley signaled to mainstream culture that it was time to let go. Four decades after his death, Presley's image and influence remain undiminished.
  • Mark Kemp, US music journalist, in his introduction to Elvis' biography section in Rolling Stone's Magazine's Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll-

• My first of ten fantasy dinner guests is Elvis, someone I first fell in love with when I was a kid but I wasn’t quite sure what it was I fell in love with. It wasn’t as much his music as his charisma – and I don’t think I really understood charisma until I saw him. I remember one Christmas as a kid I watched "Jailhouse Rock" and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was so charismatic that even in the scenes where he was in the background, it was him I paid attention to. For me, he was the one who always set the pace, so I would want him at my party.
  • Martin Kemp, as told by Murray Scougall in an article entitled "Elvis gets to meet Winston Churchill as former Spandau Ballet star Martin Kemp picks his 10 fantasy dinner guests", and published in the Sunday Post's October 8, 2017 edition.

• Someone I knew invited me into the house. At the far end of the room was the gleaming copper coffin that contained his body. A couple in their late twenties stood beside the casket, she was sobbing and he had his arm around her. Behind the coffin, an arch led to another room where a glass statue stood high off the floor, twirling slowly, adorned by glass beads that leaked like water. Potted plastic palms surrounded the coffin and on the wall was a painting of a skyline on black velveteen. When Priscilla entered she offered me a Coke then introduced me to his father, Vernon Presley, who was watching the 10 o'clock news in a nearby bedroom. Nobody in the group around him spoke. Later, at the front door, I interviewed Charlie Hodge “It’s really hard to believe,” he said. “I went to the dentist with him on Monday night around 9:30. We were getting ready for the tour and we talked about the songs we’d use. But we never did rehearse" Outside the front door were hundreds of wreaths, some spelled ‘Elvis’ in flowers, others were shaped like crowns, broken hearts, hound dogs and blue suede shoes....
  • Excerpts of Caroline Kennedy's Sept. 22, 1977 article for Rollingstone, which sent her, the only daughter of JFK, and then just a Radcliffe coed, on a special assignment to Memphis to cover the aftermath of the death of Elvis, which coincided with his Estate actually in the process of been sealed off by cops and private guards as 75,000 people gathered outside the Graceland gates waiting in line to pay their respects.

• I was a 13 year old kid sitting on the front row on Hank Williams' last performance at the Municipal Auditorium. It changed my life. A couple of years later, during one of Elvis ̪Presley's appearances with the Louisiana Hayride, I was also in attendance there, with a friend, and we got real mad at all of the girls screaming when Elvis was doing his shaking. It upset us that we couldn't hear anything
  • Jerry Kennedy, record producer, songwriter and guitar player and a native of Shreveport, LA, recalling his attending one of Elvis' almost four dozen shows at Municipal Auditorium in the period from October 1954 to December of 1956, as reported in radio station 710keel on December 28, 2018.

• I often wondered if Elvis mania will ever truly die. I'm too young to remember the apex of his career, but I vividly remember the deep mourning that followed his death. For years — maybe, still? — his birthday and death day were marked by vigils in Memphis. The other day, I was charmed by a TV commercial that features Elvis impersonators from around the world using FaceTime to sing the Elvis ballad "There's Always Me." Anyone under 30 probably wonders who these strangely dressed guys are. To me, the commercial was literally music to my ears.
  • Mark Kennedy, writing for the Chattanooga Times Free Press in an article entitled "20th century 'survivors' provide comfort" and published in their 9 December 2018 edition.

• Elvis was almost pure style, his clothes, hair, the way he sang, the way he moved on stage, his half-kidding sneer. The first superstar...
  • Pamela Keogh, as published in Larry Geller's E. Crowning glory

• My mom had me at 21, and hers had her at 21, so I think 25 is too old. Marriage is just something I wanted to experience in my lifetime, to be honest. As to being the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, it did help me in the business. I'm very privileged, like the normal story of moving to LA and it takes you three years to find an agent? I got one in a week
  • Riley Keough, for the Mail Online, in an article entitled "Riley bravely touches upon her battle with anxiety and depression in a candid Twitter post", published on 10 January 2019..

• He was a nice guy, a perfect soldier who didn’t do anything wrong in his two years. It was awesome to meet him, especially for a little old farm boy like me. It was like, ‘How did this happen?’ It was pretty neat, there’s no question about it. When he died, that was so sad because he still had so many good years ahead of him, It was shocking that would happen. He was the best entertainer in the country ever.”
  • William Kerber, who served with Elvis, in an article entitled, "So Minnesota: Man meets Elvis in the Army" as published on the September 11, 2023 online edition of TV station KSTP

• When he bought the first Stutz Blackhawk ever made, it had been ordered for Frank Sinatra but they sold it to Elvis, so Frank vowed he would never buy one because in the pecking order, nobody could compare with Elvis and even to this day, nobody ever has,,,
  • Bob Kerekes, car collector commenting on Elvis 1971 Stutz Blackhawk being at the centerpiece of the New York 2024 automobile show, as broadcast on ABC News March 31 2024 edition.

• Don't worry, Elvis, Cary cries at everything that is beautiful. Ballet. Paintings. Sculptures. Poetry. You."
  • Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's zany answer to Elvis' puzzling look when told actor Cary Grant had wept during his performance, as told by Charlie Hodge in his book “Me'n Elvis” ;

• I always argued that Elvis was arguably, potentially a very good actor. Barbra Streisand wanted him to play opposite her, but Col Parker stopped it. That would have been something to dream about.
  • Mark Kermode, English film critic and musician, reviewing the 2018 version of "A star is born" for his blog Kermod Uncut.

• They are some of the most iconic and unique displays of architecture, each home with a distinct style reflecting its location, history, or previous owner. Ahead, find out which are the most photographed, starting with Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley.
  • Mandy Kerr's introduction to her article on the most photographed homes in the United States, as published in the Culture Cheatsheet, on February 1, 2018.

• Just the sight of seeing that music being played live and this feeling that was just so different from anything prior to that. That had a hell of an impact on me. I didn’t know what I was gonna do or how I was gonna do it, but I knew that I had to be a part of this somehow.”
  • Bobby Keys, sax player for amongst others, the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, on seeing Elvis at a 1955 show in his native Texas, at the Fair Park, as published on the May 2, 2019 edition of the Lubbock Avalanche Journal.

• In Memphis, we listened to Blind Mississippi Morris belt out BB King's classic in a bar on Beale Street. But it was another King, he with an affinity for Kahlil Gibran, who was beckoning me. I expected Elvis Presley's Graceland to be a temple of tacky brimming with shag rugs and frequented by zealous impersonators in blinged-out one-pieces. We scoffed when the woman selling tickets said the tour could take three hours. We ended up needing four. Sobia and I found many nationalities. "So many people try to copy him, but he was the ultimate,” said Rishi Khanna, a fan since his youth in India, “Elvis’s music is from the divine.”
  • Sarah Khan, Muslim American Award-winning travel writer, in an article for the NYT to be published October 1, 2017, and entitled "Making Myself at Home"

• The most popular thing in American culture is Elvis Presley
  • Kid Rockl, singer, rapper, songwriter, musician, record producer, and actor, in an interview for ABC's Elvis lives in 2002.

• “How would I describe it? Elvis Presley. Michael Jackson
  • Jason Kidd, US basketball team captain during the 2008 Olympics in reference to Kobe Bryant's worldwide popularity as the tournament ensued, and as noted by themediatimes on the day following Bryan't death, at age 41 on January 26, 2020.

• Elvis was great, and it took me so long to realize it. As I got older, I figured this man was the real deal.
  • Anthony Kiedis, in a filmed interview with Joe Rogan in 2023.

• Elvis had risen to fame in the 1950s under the guidance of manager Colonel Tom Parker – real name Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk – an illegal immigrant from Holland who was terrified of leaving the United States lest he be deported, so Elvis never went on the lucrative international tours that are the lifeblood of most musical acts. Colour television in Australia was still more than half a decade away, but even in black and white, Elvis was mesmerising, marching triumphantly on to the stage for what was billed as the biggest benefit satellite television entertainment event of all time. And, in Brisbane, barely a television screen had anything else".
  • Grantlee Kieza, for Brisbane's The Courier-Mail, in an article published on January 13, 2018, in conjunction with the 45th anniversary of Elvis's hour-long concert "Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite", beamed by INTELSAT to 40 countries including Australia, with global estimates that more than a billion people had tuned in.

• Ali was at an Elvis show in Las Vegas and asked to meet him. He was taken to the dressing room and Elvis did his karate motions while Ali did his shadow boxing, facing one another. It was Unreal
  • Gene Kilroy, Ali’s business manager, on the day Ali met Elvis, in an article entitled Muhammad Ali Talks About His Relationship With Elvis" and published on the April 21, 2023 edition of Boxing News 24

• It was a revelation in a lot of ways. You could really only compare it to music, bands like The Beatles and Elvis, where things actually changed.
  • Jimmy Kimmel's laud of Dave Letterman, as told to WBUR, in a piece entitled "David Letterman Is Properly Medicated", published on Apruil 5, 2018

• Yes, he is.
  • Nepalese King Mahendra's reply to a LA Times journalist who asked him whether Elvis, who was standing next to him, was one of his favorites, as reported by the LA Times on May 11, 1960.

• i) While they were civil, they never really had much to say and I might feel a chill between them and me. But Elvis was different. I remember him distinctly because (inter-alia) he was friendly, polite to a fault, spoke with this thick molasses southern accent and always called me 'sir'. I liked that. When he appeared at the Goodwill Revue, a yearly benefit for needy black kids sponsored by WDIA, he did himself proud. Remember this was the fifties so for a young white boy, by then a big, big star to show up in an all-black function in 1957 took "guts". I believe he was showing his roots and he seemed proud of those roots. ii) I hold no grudges. Elvis didn't steal any music from anyone. He just had his own interpretation of the music he'd grown up on, same was true for me, the same true for everyone. I think Elvis had integrity (In fact), more than anyone, he was the guy who kicked the revolution into high gear. (Moreover) what most people don't know is that this boy was serious about what he was doing, he was carried away by it. When I was in Memphis with my band, he used to stand in the wings and watch us perform. As for fading away, rock and roll is here to stay and so, I believe, is Elvis. He's been a shot in the arm to the business and all I can say is ‘that’s my man’. iii) In the 1970's, I decided to try my luck in Vegas and Frank Sinatra helped get me into the lounge at Caesar's Palace. That was my first venture into big-time Vegas. But my second involved Elvis. It was Elvis who encouraged the Hilton to book me in the lounge while he was playing in the showroom. My band and our lounge act was strong and if it had been any other entertainer other than Elvis, we might have even drained business away from that showroom. But it was Elvis.. iv) to me they didn't make a mistake when they called him the King.
  • From BB King i) 'autobiography "Blues all around me", where the King of the Blues manages to make a distinction between those white males he was acquainted with, at SUN Records, namely Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis on the one hand, and Elvis on the other, thus giving Presley extra /p2credit for both his personal and musical integrity (pp 141,185), ii) explaining how people in the modern era mistakenly assumed Las Vegas was the place great artists went to die, but with the reality being the opposite iii) and iv) Interview for Elvis lives, an ABC TV 2002 production.

• I altered my stage name to King because of my love for horse racing, but also after my favourite singer, Elvis Presley.
  • Claire King, an English actress. As noted by IMDB.

• As you know I'm trying to be one of the best and hopefully it can happen. Elvis is down in the books as a great one and I'm really happy to actually be here, around his surroundings, around his homeland.
  • Afro Caribbean tennis ace Darian King, a national of Barbados, during his visit to Graceland, on January 21, 2017.

• My dad penned an as-yet unpublished volume which he titled "Rock 'n Roll: Triumph Over Chaos", There's an enormous amount of unspoken-of history of my dad and Elvis' relationship. Actually, his relationship with my entire family. A lot of people think he was a prejudiced kind of human being but that's not true. He spent a lot of his life with my father and my uncle, at my grandmother's home. They were very close."
  • Jadene King, daughter of Jazzman and bluesman **Calvin Newborn in an article entitled In Seve̪nth Heaven, about the life and times of Calvin Newborn, and as published in the Memphis Flyer December 20, 2018 edition.

• Elvis performed twice at the Miami Beach Convention Center in 1970, arriving in Miami International Airport, where a helicopter brought him over to Miami Beach at the helipad. A limo picked him up there and drove him 10 blocks to the Convention Center. Just before leaving Miami, he got back in the limo to go back to the helicopter and on the way there he said to the limo driver, "Do you own this limo, or do you work for the company?" And the driver said, "I work for the company." And he said, "Now, you own it." The limo driver's tip was the limo.
  • Larry King, who admittedly regretted never having met Elvis, recalling an Elvis story showing his immense generosity, as originally told to him by Col. Parker (story broadcast by King himself on January 14, 2005, on CNN's Larry King Live).

• I may be the King in Los Angeles but there's only one King.
  • Ross King, in an article entitled |Elvis Presley lives on...and that's the gospel truth", published in the Sunday Post on August 23, 2018

• Elvis Presley's talent brightened millions of lives. He widened the horizons of my world certainly. The first record I ever owned was a 78 rpm of "Hound Dog" backed by "Don't Be Cruel" and when I listened to those tunes I felt about ten feet tall and I grinned so hard that I felt like the corners of my mouth would meet in the back and the tip of my head would simply topple off. All I know about R&R is that it makes people feel good. Elvis Presley more than made me feel good, he enriched my life and made it better.
  • Stephen King, as noted in theelvisexpress

• In 1970, once Ray had seen Elvis in Las Vegas, now that was what you could call flash, he would say, that was the start of a huge rift between him and the rest of Kinks. Now it was going to be Ray's dressing room, his bottle of champagne, his limo. He obviously had got it in his mind that he was going to be like Elvis and that the rest of us were HIS band.
  • The Kinks's keyboardist John Gosling, in the book "Ray Davies, not like everyone else". pp 153

• I was ushering here in Los Angeles at the "Vogue Theater", that's how I supported myself before I started acting, and about ten o'clock one night a Mercedes Benz 600 Limo bigger than this room, with Elvis in it, pulled up. And I guess at one point in his life Elvis must have made a deal with God, that God would let him be Elvis if Elvis promised he never let anyone forget seeing him. And I say this because when he got out of the Mercedes he was decked out in such a way that, you know, Priscilla Presley is a beautiful woman, right? And she was standing next to him, right? Well, I never saw her. I didn't see anybody and there were 24 people with him. As I was telling you earlier, I was in show business since I was a kid and I was never thrown by any celebrity, but when I saw him walking towards me, I went limp. I froze. And all I could say was "It's the King, It's the King, It's the King, the King's here". And he said, "Thank you very much..."
  • Actor and comedian Bruno Kirby when asked by a caller watching Tom Snyder's "Late Late Night New year's Show, on 31 December 1995, to recall the time he met Elvis Presley, in 1968.

• Elvis Presley is my favorite singer and my favorite film is "Elvis On Tour".
  • Philipp Kirkorov Bulgarian-Russian singer, as reported in the Elvis in Russia webpáge. Josh Kiszka

• I always have to go back to the way Elvis Presley or James Brown would have held themselves. And Elvis could just sort of stand there and just be very casual and very cool. And James Brown was so acrobatic. And such a showman. Of course, Elvis’ influence on the band extends beyond our live performances. I wanted to outdo my bandmate’s outfits, so I decided to draw inspiration from Elvis' 1970s wardrobe, as well as Elizabeth Taylor’s looks in the film Cleopatra. I would would draw outfits with colored pencils and work with fashion designer Amber Doyle to bring them to life. Some of my outfits are pretty similar to the white jumpsuits Elvis wore during the last leg of his career. In addition, our band has covered the classic early rock ‘n’ roll tune “That’s All Right.” Countless rock ‘n’ roll bands wouldn’t be the same without Elvis’ influence and our band is no exception.
  • Josh Kiszka, on how his band Greta Van Fleet was influenced, inter alia, by Elvis Presley, as mentioned in a Forbes interview in 2021.

• This mission, or the extension of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) will let implement such provisions of the Minsk agreement as the disarmament of illegal armed groups, the formation, monitoring and verification of the withdrawal of Russian troops and military hardware, ensure distribution of humanitarian aid, ensure proper conditions for local elections under the OSCE standards. I urge the Security Council once again to take the lead in establishing such a mission. Just two weeks ago, we exchanged a Russian major for one of our hostages. Of course, the Russian side can also claim that Elvis is alive, but no amount of lies will change the facts."
  • Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine's Foreign Minister, in his speech at the UN Security Council on the the Russian/Ukraine question, as delivered on December 12, 2015

• My favorite aspect of Presley's career was whatever day it was when he recorded “Suspicious Minds".
  • Essayist Chuck Klosterman, from a 2009 interview with Clayton Trutor of SB Nation, and re-published there on February 1, 2018.

• My first association is Elvis. I was so shocked when I read that he was 42 when he died. That's so young. How can I be older than Elvis when he died? He was the only American that everyone knew in our culture. My father loved him, and it's what we grew up with. He was this godlike creature. The day he died, I was nine. I remember taking the bus to school and someone said ‘Elvis is dead’. And everyone kept saying it: ‘Elvis is dead, Elvis is dead, Elvis is dead’. We didn't cry, because we were too young, but it made such an impression. I can't think of anyone with that kind of influence now.
  • Karl Ove Knausgaard, (b. 1968), Norway's best selling novelist, in an article published by the Irish Times on September 2, 2017.

• There’s no doubt that Elvis Presley is going places, but will he get there in one piece?
  • Fletcher Knebel, taken from his 1956 “Potomac Fever” column and as noted in Pantagraph's March 5, 2022 edition.

• I'm in awe of people who've accomplished wonderful things and succeed. It was really something when I met Walter Payton. He was just the most humble person that I had ever met and I just met Beyoncé and I really have a lot of respect and admiration for her and the success that she's had. And when I ran across Elvis Presley"
  • Gladys Knight, when asked to name people she had had the desire to meet, then got her wish and absolutely loved it, as twitted to New York Jets' Coach Todd Bowles, in an article published by the New York Post on September 25, 2015.

• i) Watching Elvis perform on the Ed Sullivan Show with my father, I saw how he looked at me, with real horror, that I liked it. Elvis Presley was a beautiful young person whose recordings were just colossally great. But basically the best stuff he ever did was on the Sun record label. ii) In many respects, thinking about it, the movies were a bigger draw to American rockers when they were kids because Elvis wanted to be James Dean and Marlon Brando. I remember being surprised when I heard that Elvis wanted to be a movie star, and that was kind of disappointing because, to me, he was the total rockstar.”
  • Mark Knopfler, singer and guitarist for the band Dire Straits, for i) elvisblog and ii) in an aricle entotled "Mark Knopfler hails Elvis Presley as the “total rockstar”, as pubkished in the April 20, 2024 issue of Far Out magazine.

• I'm working with a studio in the US from January. So maybe mid-year there might be something.
  • Nick Knowles, English television personality, in connection with his having turned down movie roles in the past, but hoping that his dream of one day making a film retracing Elvis's steps may come true, as published in the December 12, 2018 online edition of the Mirror.

• Last night, at the House of Commons, there was no quorum. Out of our 259 members only 37 were present. The missing ones went with their kids to see Elvis.
  • Stanley Knowles, Canadian parliamentarian, in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, as reported on April 4, 1957, the day after Elvis concert in Ottawa.

• In 1955 I saw Elvis in Amarillo, TX and he told me "Man, if you've got a band and some good songs, get into a recording studio cause something is fixing to happen.
  • Buddy Knox, as told to Spencer Leigh in an interview published shortly after his death on The Independent's Feb 19, 1999 edition.

• It's not that President Trump can't win a “war” with Steve Bannon. He can, but if the president is Elvis to Bannon's Ozzy Osborne, well, Ozzy still has his fans.
  • Keith Koffler, writing for Politico on the future of the Republican Party after the split between Pres. Trump and former WH adviser Bannon, in an article entitled "Steve Bannon is not done yet", as published on 3 January, 2018-

• i) Yes, I really love Elvis He is the best and a class by himself when he sings rock or ballads or any type of songs. I never get tired of listening no matter how many times I hear him over more than 40 years in my life. Above all, I like his songs, say, ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’ and ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song’. I almost forgot to say this: my birthday is January 8, the same day of Elvis. ii) Love me tender, love me true...
  • Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi's letter to the EP Fan Club of Japan ii) his response to the members of the international press, who asked him to sing a few lines of any Elvis song to President and Mrs. George Bush during their visit to Graceland and which, by virtue of their meeting there, became the only private home in America other than the White House and any of the Presidential retreats to host an official meeting between a sitting President of the United States and the head of a foreign Government.

• At a time when men of color and white men could not drink out of the same water fountain, my great friend the late Otis Blackwell and Elvis were rocking the world. Now, I'm trying to bring us some new music from Otis, made today in today's feel, but sort of "old school meets new". It's gonna be another 'All Shook Up,' another 'Return To Sender,' I am thanking anyone and everyone right now, because we are going to be a team and do this, and do this together. It was never about color, it wasn't about status, it was about the music.
  • Earl Toon, of Kool & the Gang, speaking in an article for CW33, published on December 16, 2016.

• Do what you can to ensure your baby enters the world in the month of January. That's apparently when the brightest and best are most likely to surface, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Social Sciences. Luminaries like Jeff Bezos, legendary physicist Stephen Hawking, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, NHL great Wayne Gretzky, and such celebrities as David Bowie, Oprah Winfrey and Elvis Presley were all born in January.
  • Gene Kosowan, for Babygaga' s Jan 16, 2019 edition, in an article entitled "Babies Born In January Have Better Chances At Prosperous Careers",

• Elmer nodded hello — we were the only ones at the cemetery — and he took that as an invitation to shuffle over, his generous smile emphasizing how glad he was to meet me. After some small talk, I was anxious to be alone so I could have a silent conversation with my grandmother and he obliged, walking away. This second encounter at the cemetery seemed uncanny. Sorry that I'd brushed him off the first time, I engaged the conversation, learning about his wife, who had passed in 1985. When he jumped to describing how he liked making cheesecake topped with strawberries, his blue eyes brightened. I found him charming. As I left, I told him I'd look forward to running into him again sometime. On my next visit to the cemetery, I was startled: on my grandmother's headstone hung a clear plastic baggie, attached with duct tape, holding a note. In sloppy cursive, above a phone number, it read: “I’m getting things to make cheesecake for you. Call me. Elmer.” Although I had never met an elderly man in the cemetery to receive a homemade cheesecake, I didn't hesitate. His generosity toward my family and me quickly progressed. He volunteered to plant flowers at my grandmother's grave to replace my artificial flowers. He started leaving surprise deliveries on our front porch every week: pumpkins for the kids, treats for our dog, birdseed and Elvis Presley commemorative coins. Gradually, he scaled back on both deliveries and expectations. Some people we pull into our orbit and others, like Elmer, make a surprise landing with flares. For five years, he and I remained friends. A year ago, at 87, he passed away...
  • Larissa Kosmos in an essay for Cleveland Magazine as published on their December 24, 2018, edition and entitled "A Mourning Man Makes Room For A Friend"

• In a sudden gesture of respect in Las Vegas, Elvis Presley had taken the robe off his back and given it to Ali...
  • Mark Kram, writing about Ali and Elvis in Ghosts of Manila, his searing reexamination of the Ali legend.

• When I turned 14, in 1989, I moved to Moscow and discovered the life of underground bohemia, it was the Perestroika years and I became involved with a counterculture circle of Soviet hipsters. We called ourselves “Stilyagi", were all (finally) allowed to listen to Elvis Presley and went to Viktor Tsoi’s concerts.
  • Anton Krasovsky Russian politician, the first open LGBTQ member to ever run for office, in his case in the September 2018 elections and for the post of Mayor of Moscow, on how he became an Elvis fan in spite of his having been banned there even beyond his death in 1977, as published by the Daily Beast on June 27, 2018.

• Beyond the ambiance, it really is all about the wine, the so-called "one-off" reds, whites and rosés all bottled with artistic labels sold at the winery, online, and as part of Tank Garage's wine club. The production facility doesn't host customers but they do have a special guest in there: Elvis!! They have installed a 40-foot mural of Elvis Presley overlooking the cellar and they often ask themselves while putting together the blends, 'What would Elvis do?
  • Melissa Kravitz, focussing on the Tank Garage, a hidden winery inside a California gas station, as published on December 6, 2016

• On October 28th, 1956. Elvis Presley, who, just a month earlier, had set the world record for most viewed telecast in TV history, takes the stage of the Ed Sullivan Show for the second time. He gyrates through “Don’t Be Cruel,” shakes out “Hound Dog” thus cementing himself in the collective memory of an entire generation one shake, rattle and roll at a time. On October 29th, 1956 the L.A Times columnist Dick Williams writes, “Sexhibitionist Elvis Presley has come at last in person to a visibly palpitating, adolescent female Los Angeles to give all the little girls’ libidos the jolt of their lives.” And while Elvis’ three performances on Ed Sullivan are all well-situated in the pantheon of American music history, Williams thought little of it, concluding, “If any further proof were needed that what Elvis offers is not basically music but a sex show, it was provided last night.” Presley, sober and Christian, saw his act as art. To Williams it was pornography. Elvis was dancing to his own music, consumed with passion. Williams wasn't even listening.
  • Eric Krebs, a sophomore at Yale in 2019, and the Valedictorian at NY's Xavier in 2017, in an article entitled "With your eyes closed", and as published in the Yale Daily Newsʼ February 25, 2019 edition.

• Love songs are like a fairy tale, but a musical form. Any love songs that are old school, but have a nostalgic feeling to them, I love. My favorite is Elvis ' Can't Help Falling in Love. It's such a romantic song, Whenever you listen to it, it gives you that warm feeling inside, very comforting, that you could find somebody that loves you that much one day.
  • Country singer Maddison Krebs, for Western Wheel, as published on February 14, 2018, in an article entitled Musicians share their favourite love songs

• It's almost like seeing Elvis.
  • Kristen Krikorian, on meeting Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as told to Kathleen E. Carey, of the Delaware County Daily Times on September 24, 2016.

• When I was first becoming a songwriter, I never would have dreamed that Elvis would sing not just one of my songs but three of them and with so much soul. I feel a lot of gratitude for that.
  • Kris Kristofferson as noted in www.IHeartElvis.net

• It was King Creole, the title of an Elvis movie from 1958, morphing with a south London accent into “King Krule".
  • English rapper King Krule, at age 23, explaining how he came up with his stage name, as published by the Ringer on 12 October 2017.

• Thanks to Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley, Aug. 16 forever will be known, to quote a song from my youth, as the day the music died. We don't agree about much as a country and a people now. We find some of the silliest reasons imaginable to turn disagreements into arguments, arguments into fights, fights into brawls and brawls into wars. But most of us did agree about Elvis. And Aretha. More important, we agreed that we wanted to live in a country where stories like theirs were possible. We wanted an America in which the son of an ex-convict Southern sharecropper and day laborer could vault from working as a truck driver to becoming a king. And we wanted a land in which a black, teenage, unwed mother could leap from being in the choir in her father's church to becoming a queen. Elvis and Aretha became royalty the same way – through hard work, by breaking down barriers and by being talented. So talented. Perhaps it was a coincidence that they both died on Aug. 16. Maybe it was a quirk of fate. Possibly a message from the universe. All I know is that, for a lot of us, that date will be the day the music died, the anniversary of when the King and the Queen left us. Long may they reign.
  • John Krull, Director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, in an article entitled "A farewell to the Queen" , on the day after the passing away of Aretha Franklin, as noted on an NBC's WTHR Editorial

• I was born in the fifties so it's part of my fabric. These were some of the things I had in common with Lemmy, from Motörhead although Lemmy was ten years older and I think he was quite shocked to hear about some of the the music that I listened to because he was going, “How did you know about that?” And the reason that I knew is because I had an older brother and sister. So by the time I was two or three years old, I'm hearing this stuff on their record player and on the radio. My first conscious song that I can remember is “All Shook Up,” by Elvis Presley. I loved that song, really loved that song, and that's my first recollection of music and I just don't know why. It was like I was just attracted to it and I can recall that.
  • Steve "Lips" Kudlow founder of the Canadian band Anvil, explaining how he was first influenced by rock music in an interview with Leslie Michele, as published by Glide Magazine on January 15, 2018 and entitled "ANVIL GOES 41 YEARS STRONG WITH ‘POUNDING THE PAVEMENT.

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• I started my DJ career nearly 75 years ago in San Francisco, and am still playing the oldies but goodies. In fact I’ve loved radio all my life and I still do, even if things have changed radically since I lured Elvis and Natalie Wood to Scrivner’s drive-in at the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga.
  • DJ Art Laboe, who coined the phrase "oldies but goodies", as told to columnist Patt Morrison for the LA Times, and published there on December 27, 2017

• He was as poor, or more poor than we were and lived around the corner from me. He had an old beat-up guitar and was pretty good with it, even back then. We also played sandlot football and he played with us Negroes all the time. In fact, I clearly recall seeing Elvis and BB King on a street corner playing together during their hungry days. And (all of ) that was before the world knew there was an Elvis Presley.
  • Fred Lackland, African American student at Booker T Washington High School in Memphis, TN, in an article published by the Jackson Advocate on July 27th, 1957 and entitled "Elvis Presley's start with negroes in Memphis told"

• Do you think I'm at that level? It's within sight. Well, then, that's more terrifying that you think that."
  • Singer, songwriter Lady Gaga's exchange with Brian Hiatt, who had interviewed her in Nashville, TN, where they had discussed the twin fates of Michael Jackson and Elvis, in an article published on RollingStone on June 9, 2011

• My childhood hero was Elvis Presley and I wanted to emulate his look
  • Bappi Lahiri, Indian music composer, director, actor and record producer, in an interview with The Indian Express published on July 01, 2018

• Number one for me and no one else comes close; ignore for a second that Presley was the most beautiful human being of all time and that he was easily the most electric performer ever; in his prime, he could sing anything (rock, opera, metal, soul, blues, country – no problem); all the wonks will tell you he did his best work at Sun Records, but for me his immense '50s RCA output is so explosive that it puts everyone else to shame; it’s not just that Elvis had an amazing instrument, no one ever had so much fun putting it to use; whirling back and forth from low to high, from raspy to angelically pretty, the only singer ever that could take any song and transform it into something that sounded like it came from somewhere else, a galaxy or two away.
  • Brad Laidman, music writer for BLOGCRITICS, reviewing Rolling Stone magazine's listing of the 100 "Greatest Singers of all time", as published on 17 November, 2008

• Elvis was a shy likeable youngster who told me he'd be happy to do half as well for himself as I had done in my career.
  • Frankie Laine, recalling the day he met Elvis, at the New Frontier Hotel, in Las Vegas NV, in mid April of 1956, as published in his autobiography "That lucky old sun"-

• Perhaps the only other voice to touch me (Luciano Pavarotti's voice being the first), was the voice of Elvis Presley; to watch him perform as I did along with Carl (Palmer), and Keith (Emerson), both in 1971 and again later in 1976 was an absolutely awesome and breathtaking experience; like Pavarotti, Presley had the power to reduce most people to tears very quickly and indeed to move them to think very carefully about their inner spiritual beliefs; as far as singing is concerned, the human voice is a matter of the expression of passion in the understanding of the human condition and, upon seeing both of them perform, I very quickly came to realise that they were each capable of expressing more feeling, with their voices, than I had ever thought possible.
  • Greg Lake, lead singer and bass player for the UK progressive rock super-group "Emerson, Lake and Palmer", as published on www.greglake.com, on September 7, 2007.

• They come here because they want and if they're still shopping at closing time, we don't make them leave. We accommodate our guests. They have driven so many miles and they want to see where it all began. Through the long years, I have learned it's usually best to treat celebrities visiting as regular people. When Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were here, they were in ball caps and we just let them look around. Albert II, Prince of Monaco was happy to have his photograph taken, while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg preferred no photos. Dolly Parton was practically unrecognizable in a cap and blue jeans.
  • Rhonda Lamb, Assistant Director of the Elvis Presley Birthplace, in Tupelo, MS, in an article published on the Daily Journal on September 25, 2017.

• Elvis had an impact on everyone. Elvis and The Beatles. Both of those artists are the reason most of us are musicians, those of us that come along in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I can’t remember if I heard him first, or if I saw his performance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” first. But I had all of his 45s as a kid in the 1950s — “Hound Dog,” Heartbreak Hotel" — all of them.
  • Robert Lamm, keyboardist, singer and songwriter a founding member of the pop rock band Chicago Transit Authority, as published at the Chicago Sun Herald on 30 October, 2017.

• My wife and I passed him in the hallway and were impressed by how good he looked, the handsomest guy we ever saw. Minutes later, he went into Barbra Streisand's dressing room. Years later she revealed in an unpublished interview the extraordinary scene that followed. She was alone, sitting at her dressing table when Elvis, whom she had never met, entered. After Elvis closed the door behind him, he said simply, "Hi," and an awkward silence followed. Suddenly he reached over and picked up a bottle of red nail polish from the vanity table. Without a word, he fell to one knee, took Barbra's hand in his and began, slowly and painstakingly, to apply the bright crimson varnish to Barbra's tapering fingernails. The intimacy of the gesture, the supplication of it, stunned Barbra, who stared in fascination as Elvis worked, and when he finished, she mumbled "Thank you."
  • Don Lamond, as told to James Spada (pp 244-245 of Spada's bio, "Streisand: Her Life" 1995, Crown Publishing.

• Elvis really bestowed himself on his fans, thus making himself worthy of a Nobel Prize as well.
  • Larry Kassirer Lancaster, in a letter to the Editor of the Buffalo News, dated 17 December 2016, in response to an article entitled Dylan was richly deserving of the Nobel Prize for Literature

• There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home... He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect from rock 'n' roll singers. While he sings in a lower voice than ever -and what I liked about the early records was that beautifully vulnerable high voice-, he opened his Boston concert (1971) with "That's Alright Mama" (1954), singing it with enough verve to scare the unsuspecting. It was his very first record, and although it doesn't sound quite the same as when he did it 17 years ago at the Sun studios in Memphis, I was moved by the fact that he was doing it at all. It was a tour de force of theatrics, professionalism, and, happily, music. (In fact), he sings so well, the audience hesitates to press him for more, his purpose being to please himself by pleasing them, never to please them by pleasing himself.
  • Jon Landau, for "Rolling Stone" magazine, reviewing his November 10, 1971, concert at the Boston Garden.

• The music of Elvis inspired me and my son Imanol from a very early age and he is so good at interpreting his songs that the public doesnt really know whether they are going to applaud him or Elvis
  • Manuel Landeta, on his, and his oldest son's participation in a concert homaging Elvis on August 16 2024, as noted in the Baja California based Uniradio's August 15, 2024 online edition.

• My roots are deep regardless. I was truly blessed because it's such a rich area for music — a lot of the traditional music, of course, with both Cajun and zydeco, but all the generations that have come up, especially the younger groups, have one foot in the past and one very much in future, and they're doing their own thing with it. In fact, all music was special to me. It was just magical. I was very much hooked by music from Day 1. Elvis Presley was the reigning king coming up when I was still living in Jackson, MS. And then moving here to LA, in addition to whatever was on the radio, there was always, like, a new business opening up, and they'd have Cajun bands play. They also had their own TV shows on Saturdays, and I'd watch those. I was definitely snakebit. Especially with the guitar, obviously.
  • Sonny Landreth, describing his early blues influences, in an interview with Roger Catlin of the Washington Post published on December 29, 2016.

• His chest and his heart were OK, and he had a fever caused by a significant ear infection, but it never entered my mind that he would shortly die. He was very, very cordial, that is what I remember the most about him.
  • Dr Hypolite Landry, recalling the time, in the afternoon of March 31, 1977, when he was called by the Mayor of Baton Rouge to confirm that Elvis, then staying at the Baton Rouge Hilton, was too sick to perform that night at LSU, as was the case, and as explained in an interview beamed on December 9, 2018 with radio personality Jim Engster's WRKF "Talk Louisiana" show.

• He was a wonderful person, and a lovely man to kiss. During the movie shoot, we did it (kiss) in the morning, in the afternoon and at night. He is a wonderful person, you can't define him in one line
  • Actress Jocelyn Lane, Austria born, UK national who co-starred with Elvis on "Tickle me" and later became a Princess after marrying Prince Alfonso zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the Holy Roman Emperor descendant known throughout the world for the promotion of the Spanish resorts of Marbella and the Costa del Sol, in an interview in 1965, with Dick Clark for American bandstand

• He had total love in his eyes when he performed. He was the total androgynous beauty. I would practice Elvis in front of the mirror when I was twelve or thirteen years old."
  • k.d. lang, as published in www.graceland.com

• I walked up to him, and I just stared at him, on a train, bound to New Jersey, from Texas, as we were on our way to Germany.
• Author Johnny Lang, recalling the first time he reall talked to Elvis.as resported on Fox News' August 15, 2023 edition

• We were out to dinner one night, with my husband and brother in law, and someone at the bar said he had just passed away, and it really, really, really ruined my night, everything. He was the biggest star that has ever been in the world.
  • Sue Ane Langdon, who co-starred in two films with Elvis, in a 1992 interview with Joan Rivers.

• In 1956, I bought my Elvis records at Duvan Music in downtown Sioux City. They had a booth there where you could sit and listen to the record before you bought it. I had 'em all. So did every kid at Central High. So my friend and I bought tickets for the May 23 Elvis concert, the cheapest ones. It was a mob. It took a half-hour for us to squeeze and wedge our way to the stage. It may have been warm in there, I don't know but all I remember is the electricity. He came out there with a saunter like he knew what he was doing, singing 'Mystery Train' first and all you could hear was the first words 'Train a ride'. After that, it was just bedlam, and screaming, along with Elvis and his two musicians. And he was so cool, rebellion in the flesh. I mean who grows his hair long like that? And shakes his butt? We loved him. I played harmonica at the time, was almost 17 and he was only 21, not much difference. I just stood there with my mouth open thinking, my God, this guy has picked up on something. He had charisma, the crowd in the palm of his hand. His musical ability had a lot to do with it, he wasn't just a pretty face. I used to listen to the blues on black radio stations at night and I said, 'This guy's a black musician in a white man's body. Elvis had a real strong sense of gospel and was just fascinated with gospel groups.
  • Jack Langley, a Central High School student in 1956 who took up music as a way of life after attending Elvis' May 23, 1956 concert, as published in the Sioux City Journal on August 18, 2002

• I was walking through a narrow hallway past Elvis’ dressing room, right after a show when I saw a movie star type a bit further up the hallway. He turned around and it was Cary Grant. He loved Elvis. Anyways he looked up at me, and with that English accent he says: “Here’s the drummer! Is it ‘Bob’? Oh boy, I loved your drumming so much. It was a pleasure to meet you, Bob!”. I remember calling my brother, who’s also an actor, and saying: “You are NOT going to believe this!. Anyways, of all the other artists that I have worked for, he was so professional and at the same time so loving. Elvis was such a good guy, a really good person. I think it was easy for him to be that way, because he was so talented, very confident, and perhaps that gave him a generosity of spirit. Usually it’s the lesser talents that have certain ugly character traits, probably because they are not as confident. But Elvis was just wonderful.
  • Drummer Bob Lanning, on how well he was treated by celebrities he met during the time he played drums for Elvis, and on how Elvis exuded confidence and love, in an interview with Rock Legend, as published on the FECC webpage-

• I was awed by "the presence" and was a wonderful caring person and he was fit, slender and couldn't be nicer to me. It was really wonderful...
  • Angela Lansbury, detailing her relationship with Elvis during the filming of Blue Hawaii.

• I'll tell you something, last Christmas I saw Elvis do something. The Salvation Army kettle at Main and Beale Streets wasn't getting any money. Elvis watched the people passing by for a while not putting money in, then he went over and put a bill in, then he began to cut up and told the people 'Let's help the poor folks out so they can at least have a Christmas dinner'. He got complete strangers to smile and then the money started dropping. So, give the boy a break. Memphis will be proud of him. He's a grand boy. I'm 53 and I grew up in the Jazz Age, so we never thought much about the Charleston or the Black Bottom crazes. I don't like rock and roll, but Elvis is different. They talk about juvenile delinquency and here is a boy who didn't have much except what was inside himself. He just has Rhythm in him and it has to come out. I think he has done a pretty good job of lifting himself. He's full of life and already I can see the rough edges being smoothed out. That dance he does, nobody said anything when Marguerite Piazza did the 'St. Louis Blues'.
  • Joyce Lansky, wife of Bernard Lansky of Lansky Brothers, Memphis Beales Street- clothiers for numerous celebrities, most notably Isaac Hayes and Elvis Presley, talking to Memphis reporter Robert Johnson in an article published in 1956.

• It may surprise you, but I am a Presley fan. Elvis recently saw my folks in California and told them he was a fan of mine, that I had been an inspiration to him.... What that boy has done is phenomenal. He has busted many of the disc sales records I held, in little over a year.
  • Mario Lanza, to an UPI reporter, in 1957.

• I have everything ever done by Elvis, I have all his master recordings. And if you go to my home,it's like a museum there...
  • Sergio Lapegüe, Argentinean television host and music personality whose only son was named after Presley, in an interview with Martha Legrand, shown on November 19, 2019.

• All we ever heard about back in the fifties was the space race and how we were lagging behind the Russians. That and Elvis
  • Stephen Lapekas, the subject of a cover of LIFE magazine on the status of Education in both the US and the USSR published on March 24 1958, on the exact day Elvis entered the US Army.

• Steve Allen's ethics were questionable from the start. He fouled Presley, a fair-minded judge would say, by dressing him in white tie and tails. This is a costume often seen on star performers at funerals, but only when the deceased has specifically requested it in his will. Elvis made no such request—or for that matter, no will. He was framed. It was a gag from which no ordinary twitching vocalist ... could be expected to recover. Elvis recovered. As he left the hall, more dead than alive, he found the street hip-deep in bobby-soxers. And he bloomed like a rose, they tell me, and writhed again as of old.
  • John Lardner, writing about Elvis' strange appearance, on July 1, 1956, at the Steve Allen Show, for his Newsweek column's July 6, 1956 edition.

• He is one of the great American icons. Rock'n'roll just kind of formed around him. Even Elvis called him the King.
  • Joe Lauro, Director of the documentary "The Big Beat, Fats Domino and the birth of Rock and Roll"' laud of Fats Domino, in an article published by The Guardian, on December 16, 2017.

• When I came on the sound stage and met him for the first time, he was like a mannequin, sitting there, so still and I thought, “Wow they have a mannequin that looks just like Elvis!” He got up, shook hands with me, and said “Nice to know you, Sir.” He was just as polite and nice as he could be. We talked about a lot of different things. He was interested in karate, which I had studied with Chuck Norris many years before. He was also interested in many of the books and writings I was involved in. He told me about his reading of Gibran's The Prophet, as well as certain things I had no idea I was going to use later, years after he passed away. I did a lot of the things that he told me in the Kurt Russell TV biography, where I had to write in an annotated script, which meant you had to take note of where each thing came from in the margins (almost like a bibliography). The legal department didn't know how much could be done without being sued, so they wanted to have every part of it locked down. It was a lot of Elvis...
  • Producer Tony Lawrence, who met Elvis in Roustabout and again in Paradise Hawaiian Style,as published in Quora on July 14, 2014

• The year was 1956 and I was in grade 6. Elvis Presley made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on TV and the music world was changed forever. Our school music appreciation teacher, Mr. Francis, was visibly upset, trying to teach us to love Brahms and Beethoven — but at recess, the girls would bring out a little record player and we'd hear Elvis. Mr. Francis responded by bringing an Elvis record to class, and using a hammer to smash it in front of us. He told us the music of the masters would live forever, but by next year at this time, this flash in the pan — Elvis Presley — would never be heard of again. Now, fast forward to yesterday where a paper cup Elvis drank from back in a 1956 outdoor performance just sold for more than $3,300. Maybe fittingly, it was bought by the owner of the "Icon Hotel" near London, England. What do I learn from this? I doubt some of today's entertainment will stand the test of time, but I keep watching for paper cups. Let me know what you think.
  • Bob Layton, Top Canadian newscaster and News Director at 630CHED in an editorial entitled "Don’t be cruel", and published on January 21, 2018.

• I was starting in the movies, had no money then, he knew it, so after liking a few of the stunts we did in "Blue Hawaii" he gave me a US$100 bill which I used to have a great meal, a filet mignon, and pay the rent. Had I saved it, and asked him to autograph it, I would have made US$100,000 on that US$100 note. He was a great guy.
  • Gene LeBell martial artist, instructor, stunt performer, and professional wrestler who appeared in two of Elvis' films, for an "MMA's One on One" interview.

• It seems almost inexplicable that the human race, with its ravenous appetite for entertainment, should have failed over so many decades to produce another Callas and Elvis. Neither Pavarotti nor Madonna come close, nor ever will. The desperate efforts of a universal music industry have yielded nothing more enduring than Cecilia Bartoli, the mini-voiced mezzo who tops the opera charts, and the high-kicking, faintly archaic Kylie Minogue, who belongs more to the smiley era of the Andrews Sisters than to the grim virtual reality of Bill Gates. In fact, when we commemorate the Presley and Callas anniversaries, one month apart, we confirm a catastrophic failure of cultural renewal.
  • Norman Lebrecht, for the Evening Standard

• Despite the name and best-known (striped t-shirt) scenes, Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" is not really a “prison flick.” His character does go to jail, where he discovers his musical prowess and pursues it once he gets out, but his journey to stardom proves even more challenging than his time behind bars. His James Dean-ish “bad boy” character makes bad choices, and it all leads to an obvious journey of redemption. But this one ain't about the story; it's about the exhilarating music and its star, whose charisma was so off the charts that it was quite fittingly criminal.
  • Lina Lecaro, US radio host, in an article for the Consequence of Sound and entitled "The 50 greatest rock and roll movies", published on September 26, 2018.

• I once certified the authenticity of an Elvis Presley soundtrack album, kept and played by Bruce Lee for over a decade. He had put his personal Chinese chop on it, as was customary in all his albums. This one we listened to endlessly, huge admirers of Elvis as we both were.
  • About Bruce Lee' love of Elvis music, as told by his friend and student Taky Kimura, a Japanese national who was Lee's best man at his wedding and one of six pallbearers at his funeral. The album, from the 1961 movie "Blue Hawaii" sold at an auction in 2012 for a little over 4,500 Euros.

• He never lost that Southern, genteel, gentlemanly persona. Of course, that came from his mother. I loved that about him. He was that way to the end
  • Singer Brenda Lee, whose 1st appearance at the Grand Ole Opry had Presley, then the world's biggest star, in the audience as reported by the Tennessean on December 16, 2015

• What was once a tiny town of considerable character is now 6 times it size. Guess what: They are trying to turn me into a tourist attraction like Graceland and Elvis Presley."
  • Pulitzer Prize laureate Harper Lee, speaking about her home town, Monroeville, Alabama, in an article published posthumously on the SF Gate's Aug. 20, 2007 edition.

• I remember the first time I saw him on TV, when he burst upon the music scene like a blazing comet and the indescribably powerful impact he had on the youth of the nation -and the world."
  • Stan Lee, in an interview for the 35th anniversary of Elvis'passing

• The spirit of Elvis is way bigger than the music. I don't know how many Elvis records I actually bought. It wasn't my generation, but the spirit, the attitude, the vibe, the cool of Elvis? Elvis had many phases, many stages. Depending on who you are and how old — are you military Elvis with the perfect complexion? Were you beginning Elvis when he upset everybody with [imitates Presley's voice]? Or were you end-stage Elvis, which frankly, I enjoy that as much.
  • David Lee Roth, frontman for the band Van Halen, in an interview with blabbermouth and published on 8 August 2015 and entitled DAVID LEE ROTH On VAN HALEN's Future: 'I Wouldn't Hold My Breath'

• Backstage at Washington DC's Shakespeare Theatre Company’s two locations — the Lansburgh Theatre and Sidney Harman Hall — actors and crew members maintain elaborate shrines to a creative icon. Not the Bard, but Elvis Presley. The tradition started one night in 1989. During a performance of “The Beggar’s Opera,” stage manager James Latus heard a loud sound during the show and asked his assistant, Audrey Brown, if she knew who was responsible. “Uh, um, uh…Elvis!” (In fact) Brown, a Memphis native, refused to rat out the real culprit, which led Latus to take the joke to its natural conclusion and create a full-blown shrine, consisting of a tasteful Elvis postcard and candle. Actors and crew people started donating items for good luck. When the company moved to the Lansburgh Theatre in the 1990s, the Elvis shrine came, too. Around this time, the theater received a letter from then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s press secretary. They were planning to come see a show, but they wouldn’t have time to visit the shrine. The letter was promptly framed and added to the shrine. But when the Clintons showed up, Hillary insisted on making a pilgrimage. The shrine now holds a photo of her pointing at the copy of her press secretary’s letter. Latus said he’d like to see an Elvis-inspired Shakespeare adaptation one day. His vote is for “King Lear,” while Cox would like to see an Elvis “Macbeth”. Both, of course, are tragedies. The Shakespeare Theatre doesn't have any Elvis-themed projects in the works right now, but maybe, with enough prayers at the shrine, some day it will happen.
  • Mikaela Lefrak, in an article appearing at American University's radio website page ̽(WAMU 98.5 FM), in which she explains the Washington, DC Shakespeare Theatre Company's unique decision to maintain an Elvis shrine in both of their locations, as published on November 6, 2018.

• I wanted to channel my inner Elvis...
  • John Legend, R&B singer, in an interview about the 50th Anniversary of the 1968 NBC Special, in which he will sing, inter-alia, "A little less conversation"

• He had an incredible, attractive instrument that worked in many registers; he could falsetto like Little Richard, his equipment was outstanding, his ear uncanny, and his sense of timing second to none; (in short) he could sing. And when it came to the blues, Elvis knew his stuff, his knowledge being almost encyclopedic. Mike (Stoller) and I were blown away. In fact, the conversation got so enthusiastic at the studio that Mike and Elvis sat down at the piano and started playing four-handed blues. He definitely felt our passion for the real roots material and shared that passion with all his heart. Just like that, we fell in love with the guy. ‘Let’s get started,’ Elvis said. ‘Let’s cut some records.’ And then we jumped right into ‘Jailhouse Rock"
  • Jerry Leiber, who with Mike Stoller, co-wrote some of the greatest R&R and Pop hits of the 50's and early 60's, speaking about the recording session which yielded, inter alia, the title song for the movie "Jailhouse Rock" in their autobiography "Hound Dog".

• Elvis's music is the one true gift he's left behind, and it is continually being shared with the world. The music will never die, but apart from that, it's the other intangible things that keep him alive- his love, his laughter, his films, all the photos that we see and have access to will keep him alive, for generations to come. The last time I saw him, In 1974, he did put in a great show.
  • Actress Barbara Leigh, from her autobiography "The King, McQueen and the Love Machine"

• He looked, sounded like anyone on the planet in 1956
  • Spencer Leigh, BBC presenter and author, in an interview with the BBC on July 9, 2018.

• i) Elvis was the thing. Whatever people say, he was it. I was not competing against Elvis, Rock happened to be the media I was born into. He was the one, that's all. Those people who picked paint brushes like Van Gogh, probably wanted to be Renoir, or whoever went before him. I wanted to be Elvis.
  • John Lennon's words of appreciation, as read posthumously by his son Julian on his own behalf and that of his younger brother Sean, both of whom were chosen by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to induct Presley in 1986. SOURCE: YOU TUBE 206. Julian and Sean Lennon Inducting Elvis Presley Into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame"

• I would show people and it felt like bragging rights. The public was like fascinated when they saw all the presidential cars: Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower. Now, we have a large collection of Abraham Lincoln cars that I am proud of because we are in the Land of Lincoln. Then I got into stuff like Elvis Presley....
  • Wayne Lensing, founder and curator of the Historic Auto Attraction Museum, in Roscoe, KY, telling station WREX how he expanded from owning Presidential limos, to Elvis' 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV, as detailed on their August 27, 2021 edition,

• Ali was my idol, Bruce Lee was my idol, Sugar Ray Robinson was my idol and Elvis Presley was my idol, so I combined those 4 to make Sugar Ray Leonard.
  • Ray Leonard, explaining how the making of his persona was influenced by two boxers, a martial artist and one Elvis Presley.

• In any case, there's something beautifully uncomfortable at the root of the vocal style that defines the pop era, the simplest example coming at the moment of the style's inception, i.e. Elvis Presley: at first, listeners thought that the white guy was a black guy and it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that when Ed Sullivan's television show tossed this disjunction into everyone's living rooms, American culture was thrilled by it, but also a little deranged, in ways that we haven't gotten over yet; ultimately, the nature of the vocals in post-Elvis popular music is the same as the role of the instrumental soloist in jazz; that's to say, if it isn't pushing against the boundaries of its form, at least slightly, it isn't doing anything at all; so, we judge popular vocals since 1956 by what the singer unearths that the song itself could never quite, and (this) explains why Elvis is always rock, even when singing "Blue Moon"
  • Excerpted from the lead article by Jonathan Lethem, as published on Rolling Stone's magazine's December 2008 issue, honoring the 100 greatest singers in the Rock era, in an article entitled "What Makes a Great Singer"

• Top Ten Things Elvis Would Say if He Came Back Today. 10. I’ve been dead 38 years, and I still look better than Keith Richards 9. What do you know? The Jets still suck 8. I’m hungry — is there are any food stuck in my sideburns ? 7. I can’t believe I missed the McRib Sandwich!6. Who’s this ‘Richard Simmons,’ and why’s he keep trying to hug me?5. I’ve been dead 38 years, – of course I want fries with that! 4. Heaven was great until that freaky bastard Tiny Tim showed up 3. That Letterman punk’s on the TV — where’s my revolver? 2. I haven’t been dead — I’ve been starring in a series on CBS 1. Lisa Marie married who? Top Ten Things Elvis Would Say if He Came Back Today Top Ten Things Elvis Would Say if He Came Back Today II 10. Maybe I should get me one of them Wonderbras 9. Sonny, Red, help me brush the dirt out of my sideburns 8. This new President and I disagree on a lot of things, but french fries ain’t one of them 7. Is there something I just don’t get about Pauly Shore? 6. What happened to Ed Sullivan, and who’s that dork using his theater? 5. Can I get that Miata in pink? 4. What’s my old smokin’ buddy Suzie Molinari doin’ these days? 3. All you people who thought I was alive this whole time — you morons! 2. I’d heard Lisa Marie married Michael Jackson, but this guy in the wedding photos is white 1. Bob Dole? Didn’t I meet him back when I was dead?
  • David Letterman as featured in his show in 2009 and 2015

• I got a portable radio that I put under my pillow at night and played quietly: listening to the Platters sing “Only You” and “The Great Pretender” (with its alternating high A flats and B flats at the start of the reprise, which was way out of my capabilities) or the Five Satins singing “In the Still of the Night” or even Johnnie & Joe singing the wonderful

“Over the Mountain, Across the Sea” was a spectacular antidote to Perry Como’s eight-note range that my parents were riveted to on the television. Somehow, the wider range, both vocal and emotional— they sang high, they sang low; they whispered, they wailed— made their music more personal, more full of feeling, more exciting than Perry Como’s, Vic Damone’s, Eddie Fisher’s,or Andy Williams’s. One might think it was a black-versus white thing at the time— what with black singers being far more exotic and therefore more interesting. Elvis Presley had, at the time, nothing to do with singing; he had to do with rebellion, making people’s parents unhappy, and..... being Elvis.

• • Robert Levine, in the author's notes inckuded in his book "Weep, Shudder, Die: A Guide to Loving Opera"

• I started looking around for new acts—like some country-and-western people. I tracked Presley down in New Orleans and spoke to his manager Tom Parker. I told him we'd like to use Elvis on several shows. He was thrilled to death. I booked Elvis for the following Saturday. I bought him for four shows for a total of five thousand dollars. Presley's national debut on Stage Show was like nothing that anyone had ever seen before on national television. It was the raw against the cooked, postwar prosperity versus prewar propriety, an atomic burst of sexual vitality obliterating the palled remnants of Depression-era glamour. The sloe-eyed Presley had a leering smile while his body gyrated with unabashed sexuality. A strong country blues sense emanated from the handsome young singer ... whose forelock drooped over his face, added to his allure. Elvis Presley was rock ’n’ roll, which was suddenly embraced by the emerging generation as its own music. Its sound shattered the complacency of the 1950s and broke the ground for the anti-establishment culture coming in the following decades And with its visual impact, television would suddenly cause the look of a musical artist to become almost as important as the content of his or her music. His arsenal of bumps and grinds again alternately shocked, terrified, and delighted the television audience. He had nothing to learn from Tommy Dorsey musically.
  • Peter Levinson, as told to Tino Barzie, Tommy Dorsey's band manager and published in elvis-history on September 12, 2011.

• As our Chief Investment Officer opined on the morning after the Brexit vote, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that uninspiring economic outcomes lead to unexpected political outcomes— or at least those considered outside the mainstream... So, with apologies to Elvis Presley, 59 million Donald Trump voters and 13 million Bernie Sanders supporters can't be wrong.
  • Brian Levitt, Senior Investment Strategist and Paul Blease, Director of CEO Advisor Institute, as published on Forbes' edition of 12 November, 2016

• It sounds trite,contrived, but that was like the Holy Grail. The light went off. This spark led me on a musical journey that took me from running around my house as a boy wearing Elvis-inspired cardboard sideburns glued to my face, to receiving a birthday kiss from Elvis' wife, Priscilla Presley, at the Box Tops' induction ceremony into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in November of 2018.
  • Rick Levy, guitarist for the Box Tops, a Memphis,TN band, recalling his first moment as a rock enthusiast, as noted in the Island Now's February 22,2019 edition.

• Well, I don't know. I had a really good role model. When I was thinking about getting out of the Draft, I thought of Elvis going into the service at the height of his career and doing what he had to do for his country without complaining. So, thinking of how Elvis did that, I thought to myself, I'm going to do the same thing and I'm going to be proud the rest of my life for it, and I am. It's just amazing how many Vietnam vets come up to me at these shows and thank me for doing what I was supposed to do. So, I wouldn't change that for anything.
  • Gary Lewis, answering a question on whether he could have gotten out of the draft, as published in the Los Angeles Time' 14 June 1985 edition and entitled "Lewis: He's Not in the Army Now"

• Well, I don't know. But they had Katharine Kersten and me and two liberals in rotation. Now they don't. Although I will have a column on Elvis in there pretty soon. It's called, “Why Elvis Still Matters.” I love Elvis. But, in fairness to the Star Tribune, they have been exceedingly open-­minded. And so has the Pioneer Press for that matter.
  • Jason Lewis, in an interview with the Minnesota Post and in reference to the Star Tribune, where Lewis worked for many years, as published in the Minnesota Post on September 2, 2015.

• I said, ‘Elvis, I’m going to ask you one thing before we part company here. If you die, do you think you’d go to heaven or hell?’ And he got real red in the face, and then he got real white in the face, and he said, ‘Jerry Lee, don’t you ever say that to me again.
  • Jerry Lee Lewis, in an interview with Simon Hattenstone, for the Guardian, and published on 8 August 2015.

• I knew him when we were both making movies at Paramount, where he made his presence quite well known at the studio. He was a really nice kid, one of the nicest people I have met in show business. We had our own projects to work on, of course, so we didn't see each other a lot, but when we did it was always good. Elvis seemed very humble, and he had great respect for other actors.
  • Jerry Lewis in an interview with James L. Neibaur on February 26, 2014 -
• A lot has been written and said about why he was so great, but I think the best way to appreciate his greatness is just to go back and play some of the old records. Time has a way of being very unkind to old records, but Elvis' keep getting better and better.”
  • Rocker Huey Lewis, as published in www.graceland.com

• You need more glitz in your act
  • Liberace's advise to Elvis when they first met in las Vegas in 1956, as reported by Fox News on December 19, 2021.

• In the beginning, Elvis was like a tornado skipping erratically across the musical landscape, his talents raw, wild, and unfocused but within a short time he was able to rein in his vocals and become a master of both seductive nuance and mesmerizing bursts of energy. Scotty Moore was the perfectionist who worked to find musical counterpoint to Elvis's energetic vocals, setting a new standard for lead guitarists with his precise musical licks. Bassman Bill Black was the person who entertained Elvis and first showed him how to relate to the public. Finally, working in sync with Bill, drummer D.J. Fontana provided the rhythm that transformed high-energy, country-blues selections into rock 'n' roll. Whether the magic that occurred during the Sun Sessions was an accident or a logical amalgam of diverse musical talents, will be debated for years. What will not is the immense impact those sessions had not just on the genesis of rock 'n' roll, but on American culture itself, setting in motion social and political changes that ultimately redefined America in the eyes of the world.
  • The US Library of Congress's laud of Elvis's Sun recordings, on their 2002 inclusion into the National Registry and as written by James L. Dickerson

• My wey, Blueberry Hill, Love me tender, The times they are changing and For all the girls I loved before.
  • Joe Lieberman citing his all time five songs in an interview with Don Imus on 18 Nov. 2011

• I really got interested when I got into high school, about grade nine. I heard "Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis Presley and I went and bought a guitar and so did a friend of mine. We both bought guitars and we practiced Elvis impersonations, way back when we were 15-years-old. And that was how I learned how to play the guitar. Elvis Presley has a great recording of my song "Early Morning Rain". He did such a good job on it too, and it was probably the most important recording that I have by another artist.
  • Gordon Lightfoot, answering interviewer Matt Wake on what got him interested in music,as published on the February 17, 2015 edition at Advanced Digital.

• Growing up during the pre-rock ‘n’ roll era, I fell on the ground when I heard “Heartbreak Hotel" in 1956. I thought, ‘Man this is happening. Years later I met him while rehearsing for his ’68 Comeback Special. Our road manager was Jerry Williams, a promoter who knew Elvis so one June evening Jerry asked us to go down and see him. When we arrived between 9:30 and 10 o’clock that night, Elvis decided to take a break. He came out right on Sunset Boulevard, standing on the sidewalk leaning against the building. Jerry exclaimed, “You can’t stay out there!” And this is Elvis Presley, right? He looks like Elvis Presley. Elvis replied, “Look, nobody is gonna believe it’s really me”. It was the truth. We're just rapping back and forth. People came by, and they'd do a double take—‘Nah it can’t be Elvis’—and they'd walk on. Nobody will ever be like him. I would have given anything to have seen him at the Overton Park Shell [renamed the Levitt Shell] in Memphis when he was about 20 years old. Elvis rocked harder than almost anybody. If he's in heaven right now—and I'm sure he is—he's probably smiling as he looks down and says, “Look how many people are trying to do what I did”.
  • Singer Mark Lindsay formerly the leader of the 1960's group Paul Revere & the Raiders, as excerpted from in an interview given to the Examiner, and published on their online edition on 26 January, 2015.

• Here is a nonchalant phenomenon whom, as yet, no one has accurately described, a young man who has an inherent ability to arouse mass hysteria (or should I say ecstasy?) wherever he goes, yet is unassuming and completely untouched by the fabulous success he has achieved almost overnight.
  • Bud Lilly Publicity director for the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, in a letter to the Las Vegas SUN, which had requested the hotel management to provide the paper with more information on Presley, as published on April 26, 1956.

• He's Elvis and the Beatles combined
  • About Rush Limbaugh's tremendous popularity, as quoted by Michael Harrison of Talkers Magazine in Ze'ev Chafet's book "An Army of One".

• Two of Elvis Presley's favourite hobbies were watching TV and firing guns from his extensive collection. And occasionally he'd combine them to explosive effect. Whereas most viewers reach for the remote, the King of Rock and Roll had his own way of dealing with shows he didn't like, and the result was a graveyard of bullet-riddled TV sets behind his Graceland mansion. This particular set had originally sat in his daughter Lisa Marie's bedroom, until one night when Elvis was struggling to get a signal. Instead of getting it fixed, he shot a hole in it with a nearby handgun, and gave it to his nurse Letetia Henley to toss on the pile. However, she decided to test it first and found it had incredibly survived Elvis' wrath, so she gave it to her daughter instead. And more than 40 years later in August 2018, the set was offered for auction at Graceland – still in working order, and complete with the original bullet hole – where it sold for $4,000.
  • Simon Lindley for Collecting, in an article entitled "Ten Weirdest Auctions Stories of 2018" and as published on their December 12, 2018 online edition.

• One illustration of this is a man named Elvis Presley. His voice is recognized the world over. What you may not know about him is that as a child, he was baptized in Jesus' name and received the Holy Ghost in an Apostolic church. He could have been a saint in the church and a music minister, and be an old man in a Pentecostal church in the south. His name and voice are still immediately recognized, even by those who were not yet born when he died. But the price he paid was all wrong. The peace and security of a solid walk with God, for fame.
  • Tad Lindley for the Delta Discovery in a religious article entitled The Price is Right, published on October 10, 2018
• He was a big part of my musical education.
  • Actress Laura Linney, in an interview with CBS TV.

• I saw him a couple of times at the Hilton, and the first time I went backstage, I talked to him for about an hour. He was a very shy, wonderful person. He asked me if I got recognized in public, and I said I did, but not like him. He said he couldnt go anywhere, so I told him to do what Bing Crosby does, wear an old sweater, grow a beard, whatever. And then he said, "Well, Mr. Little I couldnt do that.......... people wouldnt get any autographs LOL
  • Rich Little, in a Mesquite by Youtube published on 15 July, 2017

• I had idolized him growing up, to me he was the sacred monster of rock'n' roll. And Elvis was equally intrigued by my performance in The Mod Squad, so he invited me to his show in Nevada. He once left me a poem scrawled on a torn-off scrap of paper on top of my pillow and gave me a ring with jewels shaped in the letter P....
  • Peggy Lipton, as noted in the book All the King̪s women

• i) Elvis? Thank God for the goodness and the glory! I knew Elvis could do today what he's doing cos he's real. He's a champion who's has lived and kept the title, he's for real. Elvis is a southern child that is down to earth, he's beautiful just beautiful. I saw him, not too long ago, when I was singing I can't stop loving you on the stage, and I heard someone yelling and clapping, and I looked and I saw Elvis waving to me. He is true, a real pioneer ii) Like, see, when Elvis came out a lot of black groups would say, "Elvis cannot do so and so and so, shoo shoo shoo" And I'd say, "Shut up, shut up." Let me tell you this—when I came out they wasn't playing no black artists on no Top 40 stations, I was the first to get played on the Top 40 stations—but it took people like Elvis to open the door for this kind of music, and I thank God for Elvis Presley. I thank the Lord for sending Elvis to open that door so I could walk down the road, you understand?. iii) he was God given, an integrator, a blessing, they would not let black music through, a Messiah comes every thousand years and he was it this time. iv) Elvis was a good friend. One of the sweetest gentleman, and a good singer, ESPECIALLY with gospel.
  • Little Richard, i) NME 10-13 June 1969, referring to his engagement at the Aladdin in Las Vegas ii) in an interview with RollingStone's David Dalton, published in that magazine on May 28, 1970 iii) as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html iiv) a nod from one gospel and soul singer to another, particularly as many rock and roll, R&B and soul singers from that era came from the church, from a 2010 jazz wax interview.

• I was 10 years old and riding my bicycle at the Paramount studios during the early years of "My three sons", when suddently I came over a huge Cadillac. I was looking at it in awe, and Elvis came from behind me and offered me to take a ride inside the lot. My dad had told me to never take a ride with strangers but Elvis was no stranger to 60, even 100 million people in America, so I agreed. Anyways, I was amazed that he had a TV in a car. It was awesome to watch Popeye cartoons with him...
  • Barry Livingston, in the Archives of Television clip

• He closes with a song called "If I Can Dream," a late contribution from vocal arranger Walter Earl Brown -- a plea for peace and understanding that in the murderous year of 1968 had a timely urgency --; dressed all in white, planted before his name in lights forty feet high, he folds his body into the song as if in pain, a pain he means to kill with hope; it is as raw and real as any performance I've ever seen, the beginning of the last phase of Presley's career and, if much of what followed look like decline, it was also an apotheosis; he had only nine years to live.
  • Robert Lloyd, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times in his article entitled "The night Elvis reclaimed his crown", published on March 11, 2008, on the eve of the 40th Anniversary of his 1968 TV Special, and its special screening at Los Angeles' high Cinerama Dome.

• Elvis Presley. He was just the complete package. It's sort of the original.
  • Josh Lloyd-Watson, founder of the UK band Jungle, answering, on October 1, 2018, the question posed by Steve Baltin of Forbes magazine, as to who is the greatest lead singer ever.

• Elvis performed one of my songs but sadly he recorded it and that was the last thing he did. Therefore I killed him.”
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber, in reference to "It's easy for you" being the last song recorded by Elvis, in an interview on the Graham Norton Show

• It's what Elvis Presley used to tell his fans every night. We might have played this song 2,000 times but there's a bunch of people out there who have never heard it played live.
  • Dennis Locorriere, former lead vocalist and guitarist of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, explaining why he always plays his hits during concerts, in an article published by the Warrington Guardian on 25 September 2017.

• He was the Neil Armstrong, the Edmund Hillary, the Elvis Presley of his sport. Sir Roger Bannister transcended athletics. He did...
  • Gabby Logan, the BBCTV Sports presenter and former Welsh_gymnast's laud of Sir Roger Bannister,the first athlete to ever run the mile in under 4 minutes, as discussed during the BBC's coverage of the World Indoor Championships on the day of his death, March 3, 2018

• All right, all right, Elvis has left the building. I've told you absolutely straight up to this point. You know that. He has left the building. He left the stage and went out the back with the policemen and he is now gone from the building.
  • Music promoter Horace Logan, after Elvis's performance in Shreveport, Louisiana on December 15, 1956

• I had two big brothers. One was into rockabilly and the other into R&B. And the latter was the one who turned me onto everything from James Brown and Little Richard on through Aretha. And so I had this, what I call two ‘cradle’ languages and they somehow — I've spent my whole career trying to find that middle ground where I could blend the two. Now, being the first kid in my family to arrive home after school, I found myself in the position to raid my rockabilly brother's record collection, so I would always play ‘Hound Dog’, over and over and over again. And I had no visual to put with that. At age 8, I didn't know who Elvis Presley was, but the music was amazing. And it was all about fun, you know?
  • Kenny Loggins, discussing his early influences, in an interview with Parade published on August 30, 2018.

• I've had offers to write a book about Elvis, but you know, they really didn't want to publish the stories I had to tell. They only wanted the dirt – the scandal. I never saw him use drugs and I never saw him being mean to people. He had problems, everybody does, but he was a sweet guy – real religious, and he was patriotic, he really loved America. The publishers said nobody wants to read about that stuff. I just couldn't be a part of another book trashing him, he was a real good guy and he was always nice to me.—
  • Drummer Larrie Londin, who played drums for Elvis several times during 1975 and 1976, as well as in his last 2 concerts. After Elvis' death, he also played in the Guitar Man 1981 sessions, from an interview by James Byron Fox, in 1991.

• He's a multi-genre artist. You can't put him in one bracket. And, why should you? He plays guitar. He also does hip-hop music by rapping and singing. Why should we have to put his music in a box? We all want something different. We all want something new. He is, to me, the all-around artist of today. We're looking at the modern-day Elvis.
  • Dre London, manager of, and speaking about Post Malone, in an interview with Billboard, published on 8 December 2007.

• I'd had it in my head to be a pop star for some years before the loose idea of forming a band first bubbled up inside me. The trigger was going to see Jailhouse Rock at The Scotia cinema in 1958. I was 10-years-old and Elvis knocked me sideways and awakened all sorts of feelings inside.
  • Alan Lomgmuir Scottish musician and founding member of the band "Bay City Rollers", in his autobiography I Ran With The Gang: My Life In and Out of The Bay City Rollers

• I taught him some lyrics in Spanish and he learned them. I wrote it for him the way it was sung (phonetically). He was very talented. It was very difficult Mexican music.
  • Manny Lopez, RCA vibraphone recording artist known as the "King of the Cha Cha", explaining how, under his tutelage, Elvis sang the Mexican standard, "Guadalajara", (1963) in Spanish, like an authentic Mariachi, as published in Las Vegas' "The Desert Sun", on March 16, 2007

• Elvis Presley this rare, talented, magnificent, generous and yet lonely man.A generosity that no celebrity could have. Giving for him was natural, but for those who received it was too much. Alone as few reach such dizzying heights. A prisoner of fame and fortune and a self-taught legend that surrounds him, but during those few brief years – especially during the times when Elvis, me and Marie were together – where we were able to share the special space reserved for the popular . Inside, together, none of us were alone.
  • Actor Jack Lord, as noted in JL talks about Elvis, by Naomal de Si8lva

• I bet you wish they would stop screaming...
  • Actress Sophia Loren telling Elvis she understood what fame brought in terms of fan's reactions, as recounted by photographer Bob Willoughby, present during their adhoc meeting at the Paramount Pictures Commissary and as published in the London newspaper 'The People' in 1994.

• Since the awards are all about history, I put together a few facts from the past that range from visits from famous political people such as President Kennedy and Winston Churchill to the following story about Elvis Presley staying in the hotel. He had ordered a hamburger cooked well-done and loved it so so much he went to the kitchen, found the cook and announced with a broad grin: “I just wanted to thank the person that made the best burger I have ever had.
  • Bob Louis, Director of sales and marketing at Cincinnati Netherland Plaza Hotel, a finalist for the elite hotel national award, in an article by Brent Coleman, a WCPO contributor and published on November 2, 2016.

• i) The other recording session I always think of was Elvis. Not in my wildest dreams — I mean, it was like how is this little girl singing background for Elvis Presley? How do things like that happen? The stars lined up, everything was in order, and Elvis fell in love with me because of my gospel background. Whenever he would get a chance he would go to me, 'Do you know this song? Come on, let’s go sing it.' Gospel music was the closeness that we had. "If I Can Dream" is my all-time favorite Elvis song. It was a big record, but not as big as it could have been. It was one of those records where you'd think it sold 10 billion copies, but it didn't. I did that song in my show a couple of times, but it's a really hard song to sing, it really is, the meter is really difficult. You have to really study hard to learn how to sing that song. That's why I don't sing it anymore ii) He did interact with the Blossoms, but it had a lot to do with our gospel. I came from a gospel background and my father was a minister, so I knew a lot of old hymns of the church, and that's what Elvis sang. That's how he interacted with us. Actually, when he got ready to do his 1968 comeback special, we didn't know we were actually going to be in the special because we were just singing in the background. But because of us talking to him all the time, and talking to him about gospel and everything, he told the producers, "No, I want the girls in this. I want them to be singing. He was a gentle giant.
  • Actress and singer Darlene Love, i) in an interview for "Vulture", published in the magazine's online edition on September 23, 2015 in an article entitled "9 Behind-the-Scenes Stories from the Greatest Backup Singer Ever ii) in an interview with the Washington Post, and published on December 16, 2016 iii) Yahoo interview July 19, 2021

• He was in the big room at Western Recorders, and had his cape on at the time (laughs). He was preparing to go back out on tour and he was asking us, “Well, what’s it like?” He was a really kind gentleman, couldn't have been nicer and definitely knew who The Beach Boys were. We saw him play live in Vegas at The Hilton and he was darn good. I mean, what a voice...
  • Singer Mike Love, of the Beach Boys, recalling the day he met Elvis, as published in the book, Elvis from those who knew him best.

• i) Rather than a biopic, I see it as a canvas, hugely ambitious, but I want to cover his whole life, many aspects of which will be truly surprising. I am now listening to a lot of Elvis and his range astounds me, from Country and Western to rock, to soul and pop. That's probably the most misunderstood thing about him as a vocal artist. There was nothing he couldn't sing.ii) When I look at musical biography, it’s not really about the life, I’m not about lionising Elvis. I just saw him as the best canvas on which to explore America in the modern age, the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.” The engine of that drama, he says, is the relationship between an artist who spanned genres, eras and races, and the P.T. Barnum character of Colonel Tom Parker, the former circus carny who made and then ruined him.I saw this story of the Colonel and Elvis as a really great prism through which to explore the latter part of the 20th century. Elvis represents what happens when a kid lives in one of four designated white houses in a black community. Something new comes about, a fusion between country and African-American music, gospel and country-and-western music.
  • Director Baz Luhrmann, i) commenting in his screen biography of Elvis, as noted in VM Magazine's September 1, 2019, edition and in a USA Today interview published on december 24, 2019.ii) from an article entitled "How Baz Luhrmann aims to make Australia the new Hollywood", as published on the Finantial re4view's Auhust 19, 2021 edition.

• As an artist, he always personified total unrestrain..
  • Singer Luis Miguel, Mexican singing superstar, a huge Elvis fan, as noted in page 195 of the book "The rituals of chaos".

• This cat came out in red pants and a green coat and a pink shirt and socks, and he had this sneer on his face. He stood behind the mic for five minutes, I'll bet, before he made a move. Then he hit his guitar, a lick, and he broke two strings.So there he was, these two strings dangling, and he hasn't done anything except break the strings yet, and these high school girls were screaming and fainting and running up to the stage. Then he started to move his hips real slow, like he had a thing for his guitar.For the next nine days, he played one-nighters around Kilgore, and after school every day, me and my girl would get in the car and go wherever he was playing that night, in Gladewater, Alpine, Gonzales, and Lubbock, were other country singers witnessed the spectacle and heeded his call – Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings. That was the last time I tried to sing like Webb Pierce or Lefty Frizzell.
  • Singer Bob Luman as told to journalist Paul Hemphill in 1969

• There's a speech in the play about a mythical bird that has no legs and can, therefore, never come to rest and just hovers in the sky until it does because there is no place to land. It evoked such a memory of what I felt when I watched Presley at work: something otherworldly, inhuman (not unhuman), a kind of restless spirit that could never rest anywhere. And I thought how extraordinary it might have been to hear that speech from someone exactly like that but totally unaware of his own separation from the rest of us'.
  • Director Sidney Lumet as told to Elaine Dundy, author of "Elvis And Gladys" and in reference to his wish to have cast Elvis (whom he saw perform live in 1955) and not Marlon Brando in the lead role of "The Fugitive Kind", his adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending"

• During my long career in broadcasting, I've had the chance to interview lots of famous people; it was late summer in 1976 when I was sent out to the Arena to cover some sort of special announcement from manager Bob Kunkel, whose look, as soon as we entered the room, told us that this was no hunting and fishing extravaganza he was promoting but an Elvis Presley concert; before leaving, I cornered him to ask about helping arrange an exclusive interview; he laughed and said, 'Good luck with that'; so, instead, I managed to get six tickets, at 15 dollars each, with each of our daughters having to come up with five bucks each, on their own, to help cover the cost; the show itself was memorable for the music, and his voice was strong but he looked tired and not well. A few months later, Elvis was back; this time, his voice was even stronger but he looked worse; two months later, he was dead and that's when my family and I went to see him, one last time, in a memorable trip where we and thousands of others, walked slowly through those gates to view his grave. That 'show' was for free...
  • Doug Lund, Director of KELO/TV, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, recalling his sad, albeit memorable experience of not being able to interview Elvis twice, and his attending his funeral, all in a period of less than nine months, as published on 23 March, 2007 in KELOLAND.COM

• It felt like we were watching Elvis
  • Henrik Lundqvist, fondly reflecting on his experience taking his kids to a Harry Styles concert at Madison Square Garden, as told during an appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon in 2022.

• Whereas, Elvis Aaron Presley was born on this day in 1935 to Gladys Love and Vernon Elvis Presley in Tupelo, Mississippi and whereas Elvis' unparalleled style and song craft continues to thrill audiences, create fans and inspire new generations of musicians around the world every year we do hereby proclaim Jan. 8, 2018, as the day to celebrate the life, the work and the 83rd birthday of Elvis Aaron Presley. Thus we urge all citizens of the world to recognize the contributions of our own King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Aaron Presley, to music, this community and the world,”
  • Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell's proclamation, as delivered at the grounds of Graceland on January 8, 2018.

• I’ve always hated Elvis Presley from an early age. A really boring Irish cousin of mine used to be in the Irish Army. He was an Elvis fan, and he came over to my family’s house and brought all these Elvis records and sat down in my room because I had the record player. He played them for eight solid hours. Over and over. I’ve never forgotten that nonstop sound, which left me with a solid hateful impression for THAT Elvis Presley. If anyone who plays in a band digs Elvis, then it’s clearly not for me. I absolutely did not visit Elvis’s Graceland (during the Pistols' last tour), and I think Paul and Steve might have. I know I didn’t, even though we drove past it on the way to the gig. I deliberately turned my head away. I didn’t even want to see it...
  • John Lydon, known also by his stage name with the Sex Pistols (Johny Rotten) explaining in Far Out's August 2, 2024 edition why perhaps without the efforts of a cousin of his, as well as his obvious inferiority complex vis-a.vis Presley, he might have held at least some appreciation for him.

• Elvis did the Comeback Special in '68. He was falling in the ratings and it brought him right back onto the throne and, when you watch him sing – and "Baby, what do you want me to do" in particular, which is a cover of an R&B song by Jimmy Reed, Elvis makes it his own – you see this music is HIM, he's got every inflection, every feeling 100 per cent out there for all to see, it's so thrilling to watch, it's infectious. With singers and musicians, there's the surface of something and then real deep levels of being IT, and nobody gets close to Elvis because he gets that thing at the deepest level and it comes alive with him and everybody feels it, and it's like magic. He looked so great in his black leather, but even if he looked weird he'd still be King. Elvis is the total package, he was born for it."
  • Director David Lynch, who voted the 1968 Comeback Special as his number one musical performance of all time, as published in EIN´WWW page.

• As elusive as his book is, what is perceived as truth has remarkable staying power. Lynch uses an epigraph by Elvis Presley from whence comes the title of the book: “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.” The Janus-faced nature of the book is put into relief by setting it against the journalist's craft, a juxtaposition that permeates the story. At the end, even we the readers don't know the whole truth about the main character, Roger, but we also have learned that it is perceptions and innuendos that matter more anyway.
  • About writer Jim Lynch's novel ̊Truth like the Sun̠"̊, as reviewed in rhapsodyinbookswordpresscom, on 15 April 2012

• After playing the ukulele I told my mother I wanted a solid body guitar, because I would then be able to sing Elvis. I really liked his songs, was determined to play guitar, and ended up recording “Don’t Be Cruel”, In fact, in grade schools they started calling me Elvis Presley, the black Elvis, - they said I was trying to wear my hair like Elvis. Then I formed an all an all girls band, Bobby Lynn and the Idols.
  • Barbara Lynn, R&B singer songwriter and left handed guitar player, in an interview for New Orleans public Radio, as published on November 11, 2016.

• Certainly the most recognisable and ubiquitous semiotic marker in American cultural history, he embodies the quintessence of the postmodern condition.
  • Jean-Francois Lyotard, French philosopher, as noted in the Journal of Literary Studies Volume 26, 2010 – Issue 2.

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• I used to mime music-making to records before I started formal piano lessons around age nine, but it was seeing Elvis Presley perform on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957 that really got me excited about playing music. I was totally in love with both Elvis and Bo Diddley, but that wasn't allowed in my house. I wanted to be a guitar player, but they wouldn't allow a guitar in the house. I had to play classical music on the piano, so it took a long time to get somewhere. Eventually, my dad bought me an alto saxophone and I fell into playing sax but before long, rock ‘n’ roll struck as part of the British Invasion, and I reverted to the keyboard.
  • Willie Macalder, Canadian musician, in an article on his induction in the Edmonton Blues Hall of Fame, as published by the Edmonton Journal on May 24, 2018

• I don't know where that story came from. The other day, my niece begged me to tell her, so I had to swear to her, on my life, that Elvis and I had never met. And we did not.
  • Macaria, on the story which circulated for 50 years about she and Elvis having met in the US, and the affair which had supposedly followed, as published in TVNOTAS' February 26, 2023 edition.

• It might seem strange to write the phrase “a nobody” in the same sentence as Elvis Presley. But really, in rock ’n’ roll icon terms these days you're nobody until you have had a major multimedia museum exhibition in London. The Presley estate’s 1.5 million artefacts have been curated down into about 450 pieces on display here. No musical artist – or probably any human being ever – is surrounded by as many out-there stories. And as much as the music or the clothes, it is the myths that make Elvis ELVIS. There’s the police light he used to place on top of his car so he could pull people over and give out his autograph instead of tickets. LOL. The cheque for $3,000 he carried around with him until he found the perfect golden palomino horse to buy (he finally handed it over to someone, folds and all, in January 1967). A secure Mark 900 briefcase and phone with handwritten instructions, the pad with the notes for his proposed kung-fu film and the tiny white faux fur coat he had made for Lisa-Marie when she was a toddler. And on and on it goes, serving as a reminder that however weird and wild The Beatles or Bowie or Michael Jackson or Prince or Madonna or Kanye or anyone else may have got, Elvis Presley was weirder and wilder before them all. He invented the idea of the megastar eccentric and looked and sounded fabulous while doing it. This great exhibition is fitting testament
  • The Evening Standard's Hamish Macbain's review of the 2023 Elvis Show at Arches London Bridge as published on its October 20, 2023 edition,

• Others get a kick out of Elvis, a passing phase so I recommend the Government feed the souls of men with the music of Beethoven and Dvorak. I never realized that I was so far out of date until I saw this artist on a CBC television production. Heaven help us if that is the way our generation is going...
  • William Ross Macdonald, Senator and the then Leader of the Government in the Senate, commenting, on the record and in January 23 of 1957, about Elvis popularity.

• But it is Presley's singing, halfway between a western and a rock 'n' roll style, that has sent teenagers into a trance; they like his wailing in a popular song like "Blue Moon" or such western tunes as "I'll Never Let You Go", but they go crazy over the earthy, lusty mood of such rock 'n' roll numbers as "Money Honey"; and the reason is simple enough: Presley sings with a beat; and you can be certain that there'll always be music with a beat and that, whether you like it or not, there will always be an Elvis Presley.
  • Helen MacNamara, Canadian Music writer and book author, writing on Presley's future impact, as published on the June 9, 1956 issue of "Saturday Night Magazine"

• France's Elvis brought a part of America into our national pantheon. And all of us in France have something of Johnny Hallyday in us.
  • Emmanuel Macron, President of France, on the death of Johnny Hallyday, as published in the Evening Standard on 6 December, 2017.

• He is probably more famous than anyome who has ever been famous
  • Michael Madsen in the Truth about Elvis trailer.

• Oh, they can kiss my ass,” she says of critics who might accuse her of borrowing other cultures’ fixtures. It's a topic she seems interested to discuss. “I’m not appropriating anything. I’m inspired and I’m referencing other cultures. That is my right as an artist. They said Elvis Presley stole African-American culture. That’s our job as artists, to turn the world upside down and make everyone feel bewildered and have to rethink everything.”
  • Madonna, in an article by Michael Jacobs entitled "To hell and back, Madonna lives to tell", as published by the Huffington Post on 13 March, 2015.

• It was Elvis’ 1957 film Jailhouse Rock which first inspired my brother and I to pursue a life in pop music. To this day, the track ‘(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care’, from the movie, remains my favourite. We saw the film when we were really young. Even if you divorce it from that scene in the movie, for me, it’s musically kind of the essence of everything that pop music should be. That track awoke something in me, beckoning me to the world of pop stardom. Upon watching the movie, my younger self couldn’t help but think, “Oh God, someday, I want to be that guy at that swimming pool, being as cool as I can possibly be, standing there singing in front of all these women at the pool party.“ With this song, there’s something so basic about it, and it’s really, really short. I think it’s just around two minutes long, but it also shows you don’t need to overstay your welcome in a pop song. You can say it all in around two minutes, and if you’ve got the goods, like he did, there’s no problem. It just makes you go and want to replay it that much quicker. There was the Elvis in his pre-army days, and he was the absolute coolest person there was.
  • Russell Mael, frontman for the band Sparks, on the Elvis song that inspired he and his brother Ron, as published on the March 13, 2024 March 2024 edition of the UK's FAROUT magazine

• I came home from school one day in the fall of 1857 and my mother said she read in the newspaper that Elvis Presley was going to play the arena right near my high school. She didn't want me to go see Elvis. But years later, when the Electric Factory Concerts I then headed booked Elvis at the Spectrum, in 1971, she was the first to ask me for tickets...
  • Larry Magid, founder of Electric Factory Concerts in an interview with Amplify, published in their online edition of October 12, 2017.

• When Ed made his weekly call to the Trendex ratings service, he confirmed what he had suspected: Allen's show with Elvis had soundly beaten his, garnering a 20.2 rating with a 55.3% share (about 40 million viewers), compared with his own show's 14.8 rating and 39.7 % share (roughly 19 million). Within the week, he called Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It was time to make a deal. Colonel Parker, knowing he had Ed where he wanted him, extracted a whopping $50,000 for three appearances, far more than any previous Sullivan guest. On September 9, 1956, the camera would pull up at times to show only his upper torso. Yet the limited camera angle didn't dampen the effect —if anything, his facial expression, the abandon on his face, was more potent than even his gyrating hips. This was untamed beatific energy, the definition of charisma, a bolt of white-hot energy. The all-girl cheering section sounded like it was on the verge of storming the stage. Never before had so much female sexual desire been broadcast into so many American living rooms. The evening was a decisive ratings triumph, garnering a 43.7 Trendex rating, an 82.6% share, translating to some sixty million people, or about a third of the country— the largest television audience to date. Indeed, Elvis' performance of “Hound Dog” that night would be one of a small handful of moments that defined the decade.
  • James Maguire, in Chapter 12 of his book "Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan, published by Billboard in 2006.

• In his Grammy-winning 1986 song "Graceland," Paul Simon reveals his thoughts during a road trip to the home of Elvis Presley in Memphis. In the lyrics, Simon states, “For reasons I cannot explain there’s some part of me wants to see Graceland.” Even though I can't list myself as a dedicated fan, I have always appreciated his tremendous talent and the major impact he had on the world of entertainment. Not only his musical talent crossed many genres, but there's no question that he is one of the cultural icons of the 20th century. So once there, we were impressed by the mansion itself, which continues to have the feel of the 1960s-style residence Elvis developed and loved so much. The original 10,266-square-foot Colonial Revival style mansion was built in 1939 for a Memphis socialite and her husband. The expansive surrounding property includes the “Meditation Garden,” containing the graves of the singer, his parents Vernon and Gladys and his grandmother Minnie Presley. So, do we recommend the Graceland experience? The answer is yes, as the house, property and family cemetery are all definitely worth seeing.
  • Jeff Maguire, writing for Inside Ottawa Walley, in an article entitled "Graceland pilgrimage fulfilled longtime wish", as published in their March 27, 2019 edition.

• Yes, I've known him for his music and films, and indeed he is one of my favourites
  • King Mahendra of Nepal's answer on whether Elvis was one of his favourites, as told after meeting him on the set of "G.I. Blues" and as reported in a May 11, 1960 story by the Los Angeles Times writer Walter Ames.

• Performing a few more classics like "Crossroads" and "Vincent" from his "American Pie" album, he takes a break between songs to talk about setting off from his hometown for the first time to pursue his music in California and witnessing the the MGM Studio auctions in the late 60's. Moving on, he took a step back in time to "And I Love You So", from his debut album, Tapestry, released in 1970. The song became an instant classic at its release, and was covered by many of the greats including "my favorite", McLean revealed, "Elvis Presley", who recorded it and used it in 125 of his live performances from 1975 until his death in 1977.
  • Shawn Costa, reviewing for Mass Live a performance by singer songwriter Don McLean in Hartfort, CT on October 15, 2016

• My next book is about how the U.S. Army tried to ‘transform’ itself to meet the challenges of the atomic bomb, as well as the American experiment with a large peacetime, short-service citizen-soldier force and conscription. The idea that someone as famous and controversial as Elvis Presley could be drafted and become a symbol of the U.S. military and the nation's commitment to the defense of the free world fascinates me. His exemplary military service was well chosen, for that young man quietly accepted the call to duty, raised his hand and took the oath, wore the uniform and performed soldierly tasks as well as he had cavorted on the stage before adoring teenyboppers. Thus, after years of unremitting effort, the all-volunteer force that many call “the best Army this or any other nation has ever fielded” has come to face new enemies, new challenges with, if not sublime confidence, at least sturdy resolution. In considering the long hard period of transformation, one ponders the profound commentary of Elvis Presley's first sergeant: “By submitting to the draft and entering the Army as an ordinary private, Elvis accepted the discipline of an institution that had come to play a vital role in transforming men from assorted backgrounds into soldiers and Americans. A condensed version of those lines might stand as a pretty good inscription on the Pelvis’ tombstone.
  • Review of Military historian Brian McAllister Linn book, "Elvis Army, Cold War GIs and the atomic battlefield" (Harvard University Press), as published in the Roanoke Times, on 23 September 2016.

• In "Clambake", Elvis was going to do a scene in a bar with Shelley Fabares, and in the back these waiters were wearing —you know, the tasseled cup hats and also wearing vests with gold trim and stuff, so I went and put one of those on, as a joke, and then they put a moustache on me. So I'm cleaning up a table, and Elvis is about 5 or 10 feet away from where I'm cleaning, and as he's talking to her, I'm knocking over glasses and finally they said, “Cut!” And he didn't look around —he just kind of shrugged— but I did it purposely three times in a row, and on the third time he turned around and said, ““What the hell are you doing over there? Well, anyways, I did the next take right, and you can spot me back there. He used to called me “Double Trouble,” actually because they did a movie where he was playing cousins and he had to play a blonde, so his Memphis Mafia kept teasing him: “You look like that guy on The Big Valley! So we used to play tricks on each other all the time. He’d be on stage at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, and I’d come off the other side from where he’s leaning down and singing, and I’d get some scarves and bring ’em out, and he’d hear this roaring over there from the other side of the stage, and he’d see me and go, “What the hell are you doing over there?” We'd do stuff like that all the time. We had a good time and yeah, well, Elvis and I were friends. It's too bad he died so young.
  • Lee Majors, in an interview with A.V. Club on Nov 28, 2016

• Elvis took risks by being a pioneer in his adaptation of black culture. He received huge stick for perpetuating what some of his Southern brethren were referring to as “degenerate nigger music” and the threat it posed to the social order by the fact that blacks and whites were digging his music whether listening to it on the radio or live at (segregated) venues. Much has been made of the way in which he conducted his private life, but this had a lot to do with his living within a kind of fame that few humans could comprehend. So many people often remember how well mannered and humble he appeared to be in his interactions. He may not be ‘The King’ to all but his impact on the course of music history cannot be denied and should not be denigrated.
  • Deyinka Makinde, UK writer, in an article entitled Elvis: Ruminations on Elvis Presley and Black America and published in Acadmia.edu in August of 2004.

• I always thought that singers have what I call the Elvis Presley syndrome — they think they're Elvis Presley. But they're not Elvis Presley.
  • Yngwie Malmsteen, Swedish guitar player extraordinaire, citing one of the reasons he finally got tired of playing lead guitar for numerous other singers and, thus, in his latest album, decided to sing himself, as published by Blabbermouth on October 18, 2018.

• Ever since I was a kid, I was just glued to the record player. I would save allowances to buy Elvis records every week and still remember when I first heard "It's Now or Never". I thought that was the greatest rock 'n' roll record I ever heard. It just blew my mind. But it blew my mind even more when my mom showed me it was actually an Italian aria. O Sole Mio, remains a part of my performance repertoire to this day. It was like, 'There you go. There is a connection with all of this music.' It all started from there."
  • Raul Malo, US singer and songwriter of Cuban extraction explaining to Walter Tunis how he became a music aficionado, as published on November 27 at Lex.go.co

• Other than Sinatra, there are only a handful of people who meant as much to the world of film as they did to the world of music, Bing Crosby, Doris Day and Elvis Presley
  • Leonard Maltin, US film critic and historian, as noted in the preface to the book included with the "Frank Sinatra in Hollywood box set".

• Since emerging in 2003, Chen has become China's highest-profile fashion photographers. Her work regularly appears on the covers of the Chinese editions of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle. She is known for her bold, vibrant style that merges Chinese tradition with high fashion; Gender reversal is a central theme in Chen's work, as seen in a series of portraits, where Chen cast the Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, as various pop culture icons, namely Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Superman, Bruce Lee, and Elvis Presley.
  • About Chen Man, China's top visual artist, as published on February 21, 2018 in Broad Tones in an article entitled "China, Captured: How Chen Man Redefined Fashion"

• The audience listened attentively as Eric Meola told about the one that got away – a sore spot for every professional photographer. It was catching up with Bruce Springsteen in an airport the day Elvis Presley died. Meola recounted how as he approached, he saw Bruce sitting on some luggage reading a newspaper with the headline proclaiming the end of Elvis. Bruce put the paper down and noticed Meola coming and at that point the moment was gone. "I wasn't about to ask him to recreate it", he said.
  • Michael Mancuso, for True NJ, reporting on how Meola and several other photographers recalled their working for Bruce Springsteen, following a panel discussion held at Princeton University's McCosh Hall, on March 3, 2017.

• Be like Elvis, go man go
  • Princess Zenani Mandela-Dlamini's words of encouragement to her father, written in an envelope containing a letter sent by her to her father during his time in solitary confinement at Robben Island Prison, as published in the 2018 book entitled 'The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela'

• The music of Elvis Presley is very lively and popular, and I am glad to know that you are as fond of his music as I am, too.
  • Nelson Mandela's comment in a handwritten letter dated March 1971, sent to his oldest daughter the now Princess Zenani Mandela-Dlamini from Robben Island Prison and as published in the 2018 book entitled 'The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela'

• It was a little painful for me to get involved in the 1968 Special. There were two choreographers already hired by NBC, Claude Thompson and Jaime Rogers and although I had danced for Elvis, I wasn't one of their dancers, nor they knew who I was. But either Elvis, director Steve Binder or Joe Esposito suggested I be allowed to dance, so they assigned me to Jaime's dancers. After an embarrasing start, after all, each choreographer prefers to use their own dancers, things were better for me. I was in a scene which Jaime directed but the NBC censors cut, the bordello scene. Now, on the side Lance Legault and I worked with Elvis on some the dancing sequences and we would sometimes give him advice. He was an amazing listener, and one of the best natural dance movers that I ever worked with. He could do everything, an ability to just feel it from the inside out. But the one thing that stood out in my mind on the set was when I was called over to where the guys all hung out, taking a break. And he was talking, seated while giving a donation to a group of nuns that were on the set. And I am thinking to myself, OK, this man makes a very good living, I would assume but he was taking his five minute break to talk to each one of these nuns, and find out where they were all from. And I was just standing there listening. And that meant so much to me. It was unbelievable experience to watch him give like that. To give money is one thing, but to give of his time, and to give of his soul and to care about where all of these nuns came from, that was just such a highlight and memory for me.
  • Anita Mann Five time Emmy Award recipient, choreographer, dancer and actress, speaking for the Television Academy Foundation on her contribution to Elvis feeling more relaxed on the dancing sequences during the shooting of the 1968 TV special

• It wag a lead pipe cinch that at the first masquerade party around these parts, some guests were sure to come as Dodger baseball players. Sure enough Harry James, Betty Grable and Mrs. Monte Proser did it first at the "howling" Halloween shindig hosted by Sy Devore and Sol Meadows. Debbie Reynolds was a clown and Eddie Fisher a "teenage" werewolf. Marie McDonald, had no trouble looking like a gorgeous princess on the arm of Harry Karl, her private life prince. Joanne Bradshaw came as "backless" Vikki Dougan. Nat "King" Cole showed up as Elvis Presley, although the original was present. No people in the world love getting dressed up in costume more than actors who spend their lives getting dressed up in a costume for a living, so a large time was had by all.
  • Dorothy Manners, assistant to Louella Parsons, and writing on her behalf about the scene at Sy Davore's Hallowing Party, and published by the King syndication newspapers on November 4, 1957,

• This was the plan: we would take a holy and sacred picture of Elvis Presley, to the very summit of the earth; once there, we would place it with sincere reverence amongst the chimerical shimmering palaces of ice and snow and then, accompanied by some weird Zen magic, we would light joss sticks, dance about making screechy kung-fu noises, get off our faces, and that would be it: Planet Earth saved. Simple.”
  • Graphic artist Mark Manning, in his book Bad Wisdom, published in 1996.

• Elvis Presley swam under musical waters where country ballads, New Orleans trumpets and urban and rural blues converged. In the US South, music was not a passtime, rather a way of life, a contradiction which fascinated and transcended the day to day hardships, congregation and the devil's music. Elvis' genious was to absorb it all, then propell the so called rock and roll amalgam into open space, while simultaneouly becoming its only true King
  • Diego A. Manrique, Spanish Music historian, as excerpted from in his book, ‘Mitología, ritos y leyendas del rock’ as published in Alanytics, on 24 November 2021

• It is difficult to imagine two more dissimilar personalities than Elvis Presley and Mahatma Gandhi. And yet the words of Elvis Presley are strangely close to Gandhi's thinking when he said that he dreamt of an India where he would be able to wipe the last tears of the last child, words reminiscent to what Elvis once said and I quote "I figure all any kid needs is hope and the feeling that he or she belongs. If I could do or say anything that would give some kid that feeling, I would believe I had contributed something to the world"
  • Lalit Mansingh, Indian Ambassador to the US and former Foreign Minister, in his speech as a special guest at the Gandhi Exhibit Inaugural Gala presented by the Indian Community Fund for Greater Memphis, which followed an inauguration ceremony for the exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum installed for the 35th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's death, as published at the Commercial Appeal on August 5, 2003.

• Actually I wouldn't be here in jail if not for those people you call family. They are the ones who put me here. I didn̪'t want to be seen, just be left alone in the desert. But they said, he is our star. I would have gone ahead and let you bleed an Elvis Presley, you could have HIM for your little dreams, not me. I lived in Elvis Presley’s house, man. He ran me out of the yard. I got mad at him, I was going to throw some rocks at him. I never liked him even a little bit, but everybody else always kow-towed to him because he was rich and everything. To me, I don’t give a fuck how rich you are, I’ll just bust you up anyway.
  • Charles Manson, in CharlesMansonssamples, at YouTube

• I never met him, although I saw his show in Las Vegas, and the great feeling I had after listening to his version of "Somos Novios" ("Its impossible") was always so well known in music circles that the other day I received the main master, in acetate form, from a friend who just passed away. It's without a doubt my most valuable treasure.
  • Armando Manzanero, Mexican singer songwriter's opinion on Elvis and of his having recorded one of his songs "Its impossible", as related in NP25TV 2015

• One of the 17 objectives of sustainable development is the reduction of inequality. A listen to Elvis Presley's "In the guetto", about poverty in Chicago, can help focus this strategy, which has no bounds, in view of globalization, of race, color or creed.
  • Marta Marañón Medina, grandaughter of Gregorio Marañon, in an article entotled "Las recomendaciones ODS de Marta Marañón: de ‘Wall-E’ al ‘In the Ghetto’ de Elvis Presley, published in El Español's May 14, 2023 edition.

• William and Harry remembered Diana listening to Elvis and them all singing "Hound Dog.”
  • Graceland Archivist Angie Marchese who guided Princes William and Harry around Elvis’s Memphis home in May of 2014, during a pre tour of an exhibit containing the 10 most valuable items on show at the Arches London Bridge.

• While Archbishop Justin Welby has denied statements about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s secret wedding that took place three days before their publicized royal wedding in 2018, pictures have proven otherwise, showing Welby dressed as Elvis in the secret ceremony, with a quiff that represented the famous rock singer’s hair, sideburns, and shades. Archbishop Welby also held and strummed a red guitar in tribute of Meghan’s love for the late Elvis Presley.
  • About Meghan Markle's secret wedding to Prince Harry, as reported by film daily on April 1, 2021.

• He was ahead of his time because he had such deep feelings and had the privilege of deep feelings because he was deeply loved by his mother, Gladys. He was able to appreciate profound beauty in sounds and he started a musical revolution. In fact, they say all revolutions start from love.
  • Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines, as published in www.graceland.com

• If any individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis Presley is the one. In his wake more than music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness, but of our own potential. As to his comeback in 1968, it was the finest music of his life. If ever there was music that bleeds, this was it.The second edition of my book came out after Elvis died, and I was asked to put the whole Elvis chapter in the past tense, and I said no. The reason was that Elvis' presence was so powerful, I felt he's always in the present tense. When you listen to anything that says Elvis Presley to you, whoever you are, whether it's "Long Black Limousine" or "Jailhouse Rock" or "Milkcow Blues Boogie" or "Any Day Now" — I could go on forever — but the physical presence is so strong that death walks away. There's an obscene Elvis outtake of "Stranger in My Hometown". Elvis is singing and suddenly it becomes completely autobiographical, and he explodes — he says "I'm gonna start driving my motherfucking truck again. All them cocksuckers stopped being friendly, but you can't keep a hard prick down." He just goes off, yet it's completely musical, not just breaking down and screaming. He's right there. Every one of his greatest performances is in a way unfinished, because the emotion in them is so rich and so strained, in the best way, trying so hard to say what you mean emotionally, though you can never say everything, so as you listen, you add to that, you're engaged, you're taking part in the dialogue. So that will always be the present tense.
  • Greil Marcus, discussing the 40th anniversary of his book "Mystery Train" in a retrospective interview with Rob Sheffield of RollingStone published in the magazine's online edition on October 19, 2015.

• Elvis made more girls cry than anyone so the reference ( to flip the script there with a song about making boys cry), was irresistible. It was important that the song could represent empowerment without being divisive, because that's how Elvis was. In fact, I didn't know a lot about him until I visited Graceland recently. Beyond his music, I'm moved by how much he cared for people. I've been telling my friends and fans some of the things I learned about it, and I'm excited that some of them are discovering him for the first time because of my video for ‘Boy Cry.’””
  • Country artist Tegan Marie, in an article published by Forbes on June 29, 2018.

• Critiques of the Ed Sullivan program assumed that the Presley appeal was strictly telegenic—not vocal. His vocal style, in fact, was every bit as mobile as his hips. Since most of the journalists on the Elvis beat denied him any artistry, his two-and-a-third-octave range was never mentioned and the music itself was rarely analyzed.
  • Author Karal Ann Marling, as noted in her 1996 book, "As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Harvard University Press).

• i) The biggest thing Elvis had was the command he had on stage, how he could control the crowd and the band. There’s a performance where he does ‘Hound Dog" and at the end he slows it down, and – to me – it looked like an improv moment, not like something they rehearsed. It was like Presley saw girls in the audience freaking out and said to himself: ‘Watch me slow it down – and then really go nuts.’ And he slows it down at the end and then starts his little dance.....ii) impersonating Elvis at the age of four is when I first realized I wanted to become a performer.
  • Bruno Mars, speaking to reporters on his love of Elvis Presley's music, as reported by the AP ii) realitytvworld.com/news/bruno-mars-talks-fashion-e

• Many artists are taking pictures of Elvis Presley, for example, and flipping them to create various iterations of color or texture. A lot of what Pop-Art has become is solely based on the familiar image and very little behind it. With my work, I want to talk about why Elvis or Audrey Hepburn will live on forever. Icons of mid century American history are still so prevalent today because they had interesting stories and immense talent, not just great marketing skills. Warhol said it best, that everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. The important aspect is having something positive to say.
  • Pop artist Robert Mars, as published on the Huffington Post on January 12, 2018, in an article entitled "Innovation Over Inundation: The 21st Century's Stand Out Pop-Artist.

• Elvis Presley was an explorer of vast new landscapes of dream and illusion. He was a man who refused to be told that the best of his dreams would not come true, who refused to be defined by anyone else's perceptions. This is the goal of democracy, the journey on which every American hero sets out. That Elvis made so much of the journey on his own is reason enough to remember him with the honor and love we reserve for the bravest among us. Such men made the only maps we can trust.

• I don’t know what President Trump’s future holds, but I think Elvis rock ’n’ roll music’s still playing
  • Senator Roger Marshall (R), drawing a comparison between Elvis and former US Pres. Donald Trump, as noted in the Wall Street Journal' s March 4, 2022 edition

• There are some things — football, particle physics, heavy metal, and constitutional law among them — that I love, but don't love nearly as much as I love the way people love them. Give me a choice between watching the Super Bowl and watching people talk about the Super Bowl for two hours, and I'll always pick the latter: Listen to someone explain their passion, and eventually, they'll show you their soul. But at the very top of this list of loves, there can only be one man, Elvis Presley. I love him, I think to myself as I leave Graceland, as much as I can love a human being I have never truly known. But, maybe more than anything else about him, I love him for the fact that both his presence and his absence created a space for people to come together and try to comprehend the capacity for destruction and redemption, the sheer power, of their love. I love the potential for intimacy and revelation such a space allows. I love that it has lingered long enough for me to find it....
  • Writer Sarah Marshall, contributing for The Week, on 23 August, 2013

• I think many hugely successful people have slight imposter syndrome or a great deal of imposter syndrome. When you think of Elvis’ background, he came really from very simple, impoverished origins. He was the first person to graduate from high school in his family. So you have this guy who has a vision for himself, who meets this extraordinary merchandiser, entrepreneur, manager. And in the space of a couple of years, Elvis becomes one of the most famous people on the planet. I think that there was some kind of marriage made in that alchemy, where Elvis would’ve thought to himself, would I be Elvis without the Colonel? And the Colonel certainly believed that he was 50% of that Elvis-Colonel alchemy, because that’s how much of Elvis’ money that he took.
  • Catherine Martin, 4 time Oscar winner fashion and set designer, as noted in an article published in Deadine's February 28, 2023 edition and entitled " The Oscar-Nominated Women Behind ‘Elvis’: Gail Berman, Catherine Martin & Mandy Walker Speak On The Man, The Myth, The Movie

• I remembered meeting Elvis and he was the one who told me my dad was the king of cool. I'll never forget that.
  • Singer Deana Martin, reflecting on her father Dean's music legacy, encounters and rumors, as published by Fox News on September 23, 2017.

• I never sang to people. I sang for them, so in 1956, I told that to Elvis Presley. After that he sang not to but for the audience. A subtle difference.
  • Singer Tony Martin as noted in rainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/elvis_presley_2.html

• After Ann Margret's show, which I had opened for, Elvis came up to see her, they were friends, so there were in a suite and I see this beautiful woman, Priscilla, his wife, coming in, and then I see Elvis, he looks wow, lean, great, so he walks by me, sees me, and says.... "Son you have an oblique sense of humor....
  • Comedian Steve Martin, at the Dave Letterman Show. Years later he wrote a play where Presley, along with Einstein and Picasso, are the main characters, called "Picasso at the Lapin Agile":

• I idolized Elvis. I sent him so many songs and I never heard word one. Then one day in 1976 I was pitching songs and this famous publisher sat down next to me and says, ‘Layng, do you have a song for Elvis?” There were three I thought might work. Interestingly, the one I was least excited about, the one I almost didn't bother to send in, was the one Elvis chose. The song was "Way Down." Someone in the music industry called me i 1977 to tell me "Way Down" was climbing the charts. I was so excited. Two days later, I got another call, this time from my attorney. She said, "Layng, are you near a television? Elvis Presley is dead. How did this happen?. He listened to my demo of me singing It was just the most impossible thing I've ever heard of. And it still is, that my song would be the last he released as a single.
  • Songwriter Layng Martine Jr., for Forbes and as published on their August 19, 2019 edition.

• He came in, and they I.D. him. LOL. And he actually left his license at the front while he went in and hung out for a while. I think Rodney still has it.
  • Columnist and producer Alison Martino, daughter of singer Al Martino, recalling the time Elvis went to Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco at the Sunset Strip, in LA, in an article published in the LA Curb's 21 March 2019 edition.

• I seldom do, unless I stub my toe.
  • Groucho Marx's zany answer to Roberta Rene, the President of the San Diego Elvis Presley Fan Club, on why Groucho, while debating the merits of Rock & Roll, had yet to mention Elvis, in an episode of "You bet your life" broadcast on Dec 12, 1957

• Elvis was sort of the first impact on me – his charisma, his performing prowess...
  • Singer and songwriter Richard Marx in an interview with Jim Radenhausen, of Pocono Record, as published on April 29, 2016.

• If there is one small glimmer of good news, it is that decent, thoughtful and sane voters slightly outnumber the bigots and lunatics. I want to live in an America where that victory is not only mathematical, but political — the America of Walt Whitman's imagination, Elvis Presley's voice and Martin Luther King's oratory.
  • David Masciotra, for Salon, in an article entitled White Flight From Reality: Inside the Racist Panic that Fueled Donald Trump's Victory and published on November 12, 2016.

• Two months ago scarcely anyone but economists had even heard of mechanism design. Suddenly, it has notoriety worthy of an Elvis Presley ( a man who) somehow manages to attract a huge public following without even trying. Indeed, he can't very well try since he's been dead for 30 years. Yet, isn't it remarkable that, for one week a year, that kind of attention is focused not just on economics, but on physics, chemistry, medicine, and literature. And for that astounding accomplishment, I'd like to express my warmest appreciation to the Nobel Foundation and the Nobel awarding bodies.
  • Eric Maskin, US economist and one of three 2007 Nobel laureate in Economics as stated in his acceptance speech at the Nobel Foundation, in Sweden and as published by nobelprize.org

• He was an instinctive actor, quite bright, very intelligent, not a punk. In fact, he was very elegant, sedate, refined, and sophisticated.
  • Actor Walter Matthau who co-starred with Elvis in "King Creole," from a 1987 interview

• Presley's vocal range was exceptional – amazingly so for an untrained singer. It ranged from Low F in the bass register to top B Flat and B in the tenor range. This is over two octaves, when most singers can only manage just over one octave. Quite apart from the range of Presley's voice (and this range remained with him throughout his life, a fact proved by his recordings) the equally surprising thing was that its quality and distinctive timbre remained constant throughout this range. This is also exceptional and quite the most conclusive proof – if any were needed – that Elvis Presley possessed a natural gift for singing which was completely and utterly rare. For if it were not – where are all the other Elvis Presleys?
  • Robert Matthew-Walker, UK classical music writer and composer, describing Elvis' vocal qualities in his book "Heartbreak Hotel: The Life And Music Of Elvis Presley"

• Throughout the hearing, Mattis was treated to bipartisan praise with Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain announcing at the start that he couldn't be happier that Mattis had been nominated. "I think you're going going to be an extraordinary defense secretary,", Senator Ted Cruz then told Mattis, including a story about how excited his chief of staff, a former Marine, had been when Mattis visited Cruz's office. "If Elvis Presley had walked into the office, he wouldn't have been more thrilled than to see you walk in, General."
  • About General Jim Mattis's confirmation hearings to become Secretary of Defense in 2017, as published in Standard, on January 13, 2017.

• I wasn't a big fan of him as I only knew him from the Dorsey and Sullivan Shows. But then he won me over when I spent the entire day of the concerts with him, in his dressing room, where he took a lot of his time talking to me and asking me questions about Jazz music and my musical influences. From his part, he said he loved gospel music and the blues the most. I found him to be an earthy kid, a first class gentleman and an exceptional family person.
  • Arni May, Canadian Jazz musician who, at age 20, played drums for the then 22 year old Elvis during his two back to back shows in Ottawa, on April 3, 1957, the latter the result of Canadian union laws obliging foreign entertainers to play with local bands, as told in the Province's August 31, 2015 edition.

• I found that I could do Elvis's "Jailhouse Rock", and that's the great thing, you could pick it up and in a few hours, you could get to something that make you feel good. (Years later), Freddy wrote "Crazy little thing called love" as a tribute to Elvis, of whom he was very fond of.
  • Brian May, Queen's lead guitarist, detailing some of the riffs that influenced him the most, for the Irish Examiner on November 18, 2016

• The record industry is fully aware that premature death sells records. After Chester Bennington, the 41-year-old lead singer of the group Linkin Park took his own life, there was a 7,000% surge in the group's music plays. When rock 'n' roll legend Chuck Berry died aged 90, his music sales went through the roof, even though he hadn't released a new album in nearly 40 years. Prince was the top-selling artist of 2016, according to Billboard, outselling every other artist, living or dead, with a total of 7.7 million that year. While in even more notable moments of music history, John Lennon's musical comeback album went on to sell seven million copies in the following six months. But it was Elvis Presley who eclipsed them all. If there was Elvis product in stores following his death, they all got picked clean". In fact, Presley catalogue sales reportedly totalled 200 million copies worldwide in the four months after his passing.
  • Geoff Mayfield, US Billboard's director of charts as published by the Irish Independent on January 20, 2018.

• Toyota, the Japanese automaker, said yesterday that it would invest $1.3 billion to build its eighth North American assembly plant just outside Tupelo, in northeastern Mississippi. The plant will build the Toyota Highlander, a crossover vehicle, and will employ 2,000 workers. Production is expected to begin in 2010, and reach 150,000 vehicles each year. The decision brings Toyota to an area best known for being the birthplace of Elvis Presley.
  • Micheline Maynard, in an article for the New York Times, entitled "Toyota to Build $1.3 Billion Plant in the Land of Elvis" published a few months after US Pres. George Bush took Prime Minister Junishiro Koizumi (a huge Elvis fan who was also born on a January 8) to Graceland, in Memphis, and on Air Force One, a gesture which may have influenced the Japanese car maker to choose Tupelo as the site of the plant.

• A rise in the number of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases has highlighted the growing trend for parents not to have their child vaccinated. Could the activities of a group of teenagers against polio in 1950s America inspire a fresh look at the effectiveness of pro-vaccine public health information campaigns? Well, today, thanks to a 50 year global effort to eradicate polio, only two countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan) remain polio-endemic. It was a very different situation when the Salk vaccine was licensed in 1955. Even in 1957, as many as 30% of people still had no inoculations, and a third of all new cases were in teens, its use threatened in the USA by ‘vaccine hesitancy" And then young people themselves – and Elvis Presley – became the answer to the problem, in what might be the first, largest and most successful case of teen health activism of the time. The fight waged against vaccine noncompliance in 1950s America, he suggests, could provide important lessons for the world today.
  • University of Cambridge historian Dr Stephen Mawdsley, in a film entitled "Teens Against Polio, (released in World Immunization Week, 24-30 April 2016), describing how the activities of a group of teenagers against polio in 1950s America, spearheaded by Presley, if studied carefully, may 60 years later inspire a fresh look at the effectiveness of pro-vaccine public health information campaigns.

• Best wishes
  • Willie Mays's dedication to Elvis, in an autographed baseball from 1963, the artifact being amomgst the 1.4 million kept at the Graceland archives.

• In our survey the option that most people liked was 'Well-known popular music from any period'. This was closely followed by 'Well-known classical music' and 'Well-known music from the last year'. What do these categories actually mean when it comes to artists? Maybe think of the top 3 as Elvis Presley, Luciano Pavarotti and Katy Perry.
  • Maʐaru̪ rankings, as regards music most liked by waiting telephone callers, as published in an article on December 15, 2018, following a 2018 study by ICM Research

• I remember him being tall, slender and so beautiful. I mean, what a beautiful man. And he had this beautiful voice. He was a spiritual guy, and he loved to read anything about being spiritual. He wasn’t so much religious, but spiritual. And I, too, was fascinated by those things. So we bonded over that. We used to exchange books on the set, and it was great fun. We would have conversations all the time about being spiritual. It was a good relationship, very solid. I knew he really wanted to be taken seriously as an actor. He was almost too beautiful to be thought of as serious. It must be very awful to be at the very top like that because nobody could possibly relate to what it’s like to be there and expect you to stay there. He of course embraced it beautifully. But I think he was also pretty lonely and wanted more for himself. He was, of course, very special. But I don’t think he saw himself that way. There was a sadness about him. It just makes you wonder what could have been. I loved Elvis.
  • Diane McBain's laud of Elvis, in an interview with Fox News and published on their May 10, 2022 online edition. .

• Music, like marketing, is one of those areas of film making that often get overlooked by producer/directors. I know of one who had a budget of USD $1,000,000 and never thought about spending any of that money on music. While this would be problematic for any type of movie, it was particularly bad in that the movie was a biopic about Elvis Presley. After three years, he moved on to other failed projects, but his investor, knowing that he'd poured a lot of money into a movie that can't even be released, eventually broke down and paid Presley's estate significant more money to acquire at least some music royalties for the movie. Since he didn't want to overspend, he ended up purchasing the rights to just one hit song and one “deep cut.” And the producer's brother ended up composing most of the Elvis-esque music for the film...
  • John McCabe, in an article entitled "How to get hold of the perfect music score, legally", as published by Red Shark News on October 19, 2018.

• As a jazz educated singer I had reservations about entering the Elvis world. There can be a lot of judgement about his music and the image that has been created of him over many years. But I found myself completely falling in love with his songs. Each night on stage I would discover another lyric, another chord change, another nuance that thrilled and moved me all at once. Studying the Elvis songbook, I found breathtaking recordings of the same songs by other artists. I was literally stopped in my tracks. These musical masterpieces were being revealed to me and I had Elvis to thank for it
  • Australian singer and cabaret artist Mel McCaig, explaining the reasoning behind her first solo Adelaide show, "Gifts from the King", in an interview with Broadway World, as published on 25 September 2018.

• John Lennon said that before Elvis there was nothing. After Elvis, nothing was the same. Perry Como is said to have said that Elvis was a threat to the moral health of the nation. What brighter endorsement could you wish for? Dial him up singing ‘Lonesome Tonight’ and marvel at the shambling majesty even as you ache for what's lost. Another thing about Elvis was that he was the most beautiful man in the world. To be as beautiful as that and also as bad was an alluring combination, love potion and lethal poison. When Pope Paul VI died within a year of Elvis, many of us shrugged. There'd be another Pope along in a minute. But there'd never ever be another Elvis. Dissing the dead Pope while singing hosannas to Elvis's immortality was the pitch-perfect response...-
  • Eamonn McCann in an article for Hotpress entitled "On Elvis, The Undertones and 1,000 issues of Hot Press" , as published on their 1,000 edition, that of October 22, 2019 edition.

• I am working on several, actually. I've just delivered scripts on George Washington, John Lennon and Yoko Ono and I am also looking at making something on Elvis Presley.
  • Film maker Anthony McCarten's answer as to which historic figures he would wish to next make a biopic of, in an interview published in Telegraph of India's March 15 edition.

• I'd been to Graceland (twice) but never to his birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, until today
  • Andrew McCarthy on his instagram after touring Elvis' birthplace on December 10, 2023

• My earliest memory of music was Elvis Presley when I was four and a half years old. I then reached into my parents album collection, which is very extensive, and pulled out a record of his. From that moment on, in 1992, I really took to the music industry,
  • Jesse McCartney, in an interview with the Setonian published on 19 March,2018

• i) Elvis was too important and too far above the rest even to mention, so we didn't put him on the list because he was more than merely an artist, he was Elvis. ii). I'm primitive on music. I don't want to learn it, it's too serious, too like homework. And nothing about my childhood inspired me with a love of classical music. My dad was a bit of a jazzer so if a symphony came on the radio he would immediately turn it off. School was no better, you would have just had to play one Elvis record and we would have been hooked. We'd have turned up in droves to that lesson. (In fact) I've got so many vivid memories of being a kid in Liverpool. Like everyone I suppose, I have millions of memories of those days. I remember John and I going up to the airport on our bikes to watch the planes. It makes me smile to think that they named the airport after him. So then I think back to getting the bus with George, going to school. And then the memories go beyond that, to getting the bus to "The Cavern" or the "Grosvenor Ballroom". And then the memories go beyond that and beyond that, and I have to remember that I was one of the guys that all that was happening to. You have to pinch yourself and say ‘did that REALLY happen?’. Did I REALLY meet Elvis?”
  • Paul McCartney, i) In answer to why Elvis Presley was not included on the Sgt Peppers album cover and ii) reminiscing about his early years with the Beatles, as published on the Liverpool Echo's online edition of 24 May, 2015 and as extracted from the book "Conversations with McCartney" by Paul DuNoyer.

• When I took him to my Frankfurt home for lunch, my wife offered to make him a hamburger, but he wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then asked for another one..
  • Harold “Gene” McCloskey, a veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam wars who in 2018, was presented with eight medals for his military service that he actually should have received 50 years before, recalling the moment he met Elvis while they were posted in Germany with the 3rd Armored Division,in an article published at the Wellsboro Gazette on November 15, 2018

• He was a precious gift from God we cherished and loved dearly. He had a God-given talent that he shared with the world and without a doubt, he became most widely acclaimed, capturing the hearts of young and old alike. He was admired not only as an entertainer, but as the great humanitarian that he was for his generosity, and his kind feelings for his fellow man. He revolutionized the field of music and received its highest awards and became a living legend in his own time, earning the respect and love of millions. God saw that he needed some rest and called him home to be with HIM. We miss you, son and daddy. I thank GOD that HE gave us you as our son. Elvis Aaron Presley January 8, 1935-August 16, 1977. Son of Vernon Elvis Presley and Gladys Love Presley and father of Lisa Marie Presley
  • Elvis epitaph as seen on his tombstone, written by *Janelle McComb, and commissioned and directed by Vernon Presley in 1977.

• He is such a big Elvis Presley fan that he has been known to dress up as Elvis, complete with white silk jumpsuit and black puffed-up wig. At the Parkes Elvis Festival, he had no qualms about being photographed with fellow Elvis fans and then Labor opponent Sam Dastyari
  • About Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, as reported by The Australian on February 27, 2018.

• Elvis Presley. It's a big, all-American icon with a sense of duty...
  • David McCowen, describing what the Grand Cherokee would be, if it were a celebrity, for Drive, as published on 23 October 2016

• In 1954, R&B̪ writer Charles Singleton and I wrote "Trying to Get to You," which was first recorded by The Eagles, a black vocal group. Elvis Presley heard their version in a store in Memphis, and he decided to record the song. Elvis did it like The Eagles. Amazing how he did that. He wasn't a big star at that point, and we thought that he couldn't sing. We just didn't understand, yet, were grateful to him. Thank God for Elvis.
  • Rose Marie McCoy's laud of Elvis, who recorded a couple of songs she co-wrote with Charles Singleton, and included one of them in his first album, which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts, as published in NPR̺'s "Lady Writes the bluesː The Life Of Rose McCoy", on February 27, 2009

• Dylan heard the news while he was at his farm in Minnesota, with his children. I was playing with the kids and planning a birthday party for Samuel Dylan's 9th birthday. Dylan was writing songs for his next album, which turned out to be Street Legal. When Dylan told me that Presley had died, and I said I was not a fan, he didn't talk to me for a week. He really took it bad, was really grieving and said that if it wasn't for Elvis he never would have gotten started. He opened the door, Dylan told me, then went over his whole life, his whole childhood and didn't talk to anyone for a week.
  • Faridi McFree, art teacher for Nobel laureate Bob Dylan's children, on the day and week after Elvis' death, in an interview with NSF, Music Station.

• Growing up, I could sing every Elvis song. In first or second grade, I'd wrap a scarf around my neck, put a big hibiscus flower in my shirt pocket, and perform Live From Hawaii. He came through Monroe, Louisiana, on one of his last tours, and my mom was going to take me, but I got mumps. When she was getting ready for the show, I was lying on the floor kicking and screaming because I couldn't go. In fact, every artist puts a bit of the King into every performance. We're all just trying to be Elvis, aren't we?
  • Tim McGraw, on his first influence, as published in CMT News online page on July 14, 2016.

• Swipe to see me attempting a classic Elvis move after the film, and my beautiful, most elegant lady, my number 1 supporter from day 1, screaming like Elvis’ fans in the movie! Wow! What a great movie about a great man and a great crew and story! Thank you and God bless Elvis Presley and his entire family and team ❤️ this is a must watch!
  • Conor McGregor' s laud of Baz Luhrmann's biopic, in an instagram sent on May 25, 2022, from the 2022 Cannes Festival.

• No, we all started with rock ’n’ roll, Elvis Presley and the whole Sun Records gang. In my case, while riding my bike in '56, I heard “Heartbreak Hotel" and Ii was then that I wanted to play the guitar.
  • Roger McGuinn's answer to the question of whether folk music had been his and the Byrds' first influence, in an interview with Variety, and published on November 6, 2016. He later added more details on the Wall Sreet Journal's edition of September 25, 2018.

• The headline news of "Platinum", which can be appreciated by fans, scholars, critics and religious fanatics alike, is the inclusion of a newly discovered 1954 demo of the unsigned Elvis singing a lilting wisp of a pop song called "I'll Never Stand in Your Way". His unsophisticated performance is mesmerizing; clearly indebted to the style of the "Ink Spots", Elvis' airy tenor floats delicately above his own guitar accompaniment, aching and somewhat pinched in its feeling; you sense the singer itching to cut loose, to really swing the lyric, open it up; it is in those moments, when the pentimento of the blues vocalist reveals itself, that the melding of styles that soon would change the course of popular music is on fleeting display; it's rare when a single song can be said to make a pricey box-set worthwhile, but this particular "Rosetta stone" of a rare cut, does precisely that. Big time.
  • David McGee, reviewing the platinum box-set for Rolling Stone magazine

• Man, he was a bada—! Love Elvis, I remember the day he died, riding go-carts at my grandmothers house in west Monroe Louisiana 42 years ago."
  • Tim McGraw, on his instagram, on the occasion of the 42nd anniversary of Elvis' death.

• Surely there has not been such a pelvis since Elvis Presley was in his prime.
  • Hugh McIlvanney Scottish award-winning sports writer, recalling Diego Maradona's prowess during the 1986 World Cup, which his team won, in an article published in the mail Online's edition of October 1, 2017.

• When Elvis died 40 years ago next Wednesday, it was like the death of John F. Kennedy 14 years earlier; both men had been such a part of American lives that—for those alive today who remember the events— where they were when they heard the news became almost as important as the news itself. In a way, it made each a part of the story. O was never in the same room with JFK, but I was with the early Elvis. I spent one long Elvis afternoon, during which I watched him perform, then conversed with him and, finally, interacted with him as a part of a group. During much of it, I observed a sweet, unsophisticated young man at close hand. He was exactly what I had expected and yet not at all so.As a writer in the New York bureau of TV Guide magazine, I was invited to attend a press conference, before which I could talk with Elvis and observe him rehearse for his second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show as well as receive his first polio shot. The afternoon rehearsal was in progress when I took my seat, but the theater was black and strangely silent. Suddenly—shockingly—the stage exploded into red light, dark music and that singular, riveting presence. I don’t even remember the song, though I think it was “Hound Dog.” What I do remember—vividly–is the power of this young performer, the charisma of the man—the mouth, alternatingly pouting, leering, grinning, the sensual modeling of the facial contours and the eyes—those erotic eyes with their kohl-like shadows, promising, threatening. And, of course, the notorious pelvic thrusts. After the rehearsal's end, I joined numerous members of the press to watch the administering of the polio shot, memorable primarily because at the time, and as he later confided to me, Elvis hasd a wholesome fear of needles. It was a scary experience for Elvis, but, as always, he managed a smile for the camera...
  • Author Megan McKinney, recalling her TV Guide assignment on October 28, 1956. She was the only reporter present at the press conference to have personally interviewed him and as a result, been able to acknowledge the immense fear which totally overtook Elvis on that day but that, at the moment of the inoculation, he totally kept to himself and as published in Chicago Classic Magazine on August 16, 2017, in an article entitled My Afternoon with ElvisYoung, Sweet and Oh, So Polite

• What made the young Elvis an agent provocateur? The leading lunatic theory is that he was a space alien. The more prevailing opinion is that he was a product of the magic medium of his place and time: radio. So let us now praise that great, subversive force in American culture. Radio helped Elvis develop his interest in and affection for the music of black culture. In that pre–rock ’n’ roll era, America was an apartheid nation and in much of the country, black and white didn’t mix. They attended separate schools (with the approval of the U.S. Supreme Court) and they didn’t shop together, worship together or live in the same neighborhoods. Segregation was relatively easy to enforce. It was the law. Elvis was the visible embodiment of a musical revolution. He was an interpretive, not a creative artist. Many musical innovators experimented with blending musical styles, but they all lacked the charisma, the charm, the look…the everything that Elvis had and that he represented. He was a catalyst; his was the face that launched a thousand hips.
  • William McKeen, in an article entitled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Elvis", as published on the History Net's 16 August 2007 edition.

• Honestly, the most unique thing I may have found was the Elvis Presley cardboard cutout that we now have....
  • Kirk McKinney, co-creator of "Junk Teens", a door to door junk removal service in the state of Massachusetts, as to the craziest thing they ever encountered, in an interview with CBS TV Boston, as broadcast on July 10,2023.

• I would kiss them both on the mouth.
  • Artist Randall McKissick, known for a decade as the mystery tenant in South Carolina's so-called ‘nightmare’ house, taking about his two idols, Elvis Presley and James Brown in an article published on The State on 17 November 2017.

• For me, it all started with Elvis. I must've been six, maybe seven years old when I saw him on the Ed Sullivan show, wasn't supposed to be watching, raised as I was in a strict Catholic family, and Elvis the Pelvis was sin. But like most Catholic parents, they watched to see just how sinful Elvis was. He was shot from the waist up, I could see that from my hiding place behind the couch. But Elvis' music and energy ignited my first desire to rock 'n roll. My father was a professional magician with a love of movies, and that's where my childhood creative energies were directed. In fact, through my entire teen life my dream was to be a rock and roll rebel.
  • DirectorTom McLoughlin, former lead singer of the garage band "The Sloths", explaining what first turned into rock music, in an article published in BoeigBoeing's online page, on 17 March 2015

• Was that the guitar hick?
  • Steve McQueen's frequent phone interjections to Barbara Leigh, who had dated Elvis before he did, as told by Leigh to Marshall Terrill in his book, "The King, McQueen and the love machine"

• For Presley's evening concert, only 37 of the 259 MPs showed up for the night session in the House of Commons. The rest had gone to see him perform.
  • Earl McRae' explaining why the House of Commons had to cancel their nightly session, in an article for the Ottawa Citizen entiled "Best of Earl: Elvis' birthday" and published on January 07, 2012

• I decided if I was going to China, I was going to go to Shanghai, I just love that word. What Madrid was for Hemingway and Paris was for Dorothy Parker, I want Shanghai to be my Paris. Next thing I know, I'm in China and the people there are so sweet and they'll do anything for you. At one school, in preparing the students who would be attending Columbia University and due to my association with “The Catcher in the Rye,” I assigned it as reading for students and said the idioms in the story would cause confusion. Another assignment to write about a famous person led to a humorous exchange with a student who asked me to write about “Cat King, King of Cats.” Following some research together, I finally learned who was being referenced. He was talking about Elvis Presley. In China they know him as the Cat King, King of Cats.”
  • Tyson Meade, in an article by Scott Rains entitled "Tyson Meade's journey from Kittens to China to, finally, a home" as published in the Lawton's Constitution June 5, 2020 edition.

• i) Hanging out with the British Royal Family didn't faze me —I called them all by their first names. In fact the only time I ever got that way was when I met Elvis. He checked out the pre-movie stage version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where I played the motorcycle-riding Eddie. I felt like, Oh my god, I can't believe where I am!So Elvis comes up to me and tells me "Well, I hear everyone wants to do an Elvis impersonation [for Eddie] but you didn’t", so the one thing I managed to say to him was, 'No, because there's only one you and only one me...
  • Meatloaf, on being impressed by anyone, as noted in ii) FMTV.ii) Fuse TV.

• I used to do Elvis at my shows at the Sands, in 1968, before he returned to the stage in 1969, so this guy tells me in a little piece of paper that "He is here" , so when the lights were put on him, it took me about a half hour to catch up with my audience. Later, he would walk in my shows, and the next day, there were lines to see me, because they thought Elvis could do it again, and he did, every night.
  • Bill Medley,for nmuscistartshere

• I'm a very non-religious person. I think everybody has the right to believe in any religion they want. Whatever makes you happy is absolutely fantastic. That's a perfect question to say 'no comment' to, because I don't really wanna hear anybody else's opinion, and I don't think anybody should wanna hear my opinion, because it's very, very personal. And nobody knows anything anyway. So it's, like... If I had to choose a religion, it would be the Elvis Presley religion.
  • Megadeth's lead guitarist Marty Friedman, expressing his views on religion in an interview with the Impact Metal Channel and as published by Blabbermoputh on January 26, 2014.

• I was lucky enough to see Elvis Presley's opening concert at Madison Square Garden on June 9, 1972. Usually, you are not allowed to bring a camera to a concert. But the audience and the entire event were so wild that no one paid any attention to me. Over the years I watched the footage again and again. Then the Viennale called and I immediately thought of my Elvis material. The only problem was that I didn't know what kind of musical soundtrack to use. I tried everything and was close to giving up when I happened to hear a Viennese waltz on the radio. That was it! What could be better than Elvis and Strauss?
  • Jonas Mekas, Lithuanian artist and filmmaker, on filming Elvis at Madison Square Garden with his Bolex 16 mm movie camera, as told at the Vienna International Film Festival on October 19, 2001.

• The Biden administration is also doing its vaccine push. The Pentagon is also reportedly looking at plans to mandate that all 1.3 million active- duty troops have vaccine mandates, that they be required to get the shot, just as they already do for actually more than a dozen other diseases and precautions.And the most famous draftee in American history, Elvis Presley, take a look at what we might learn from history. He bared his arm for a vaccine. That was part of helping reassure the public about that over 60 years ago.This is important stuff.We can keep learning together. We can do this togeher
  • Ari Melber, as transcribed from his MSNBC's TV program "The Beat with Ari Melber" when discussing the US Army's mandates vis a vis the 2021 Covid 19 Pandemia, as shown on August 5, 2021

• He certainly was inspired by black music, but I don't get why people are going after Elvis. If you are going to take the stick out on him, you better take it out on the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, everybody. If you are going to villify Elvis then why don't you just tear down the whole United States?
  • John Mellencamp, discussing cultural appropriation in an article published by Salon on 19 May, 2018.

• It was one of just 254 built between 1955 and 1959. The original owner was the German race car driver Hans Stuck, who piloted it to win several hill-climb races in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 1957. During his ownership, it also won an award at a well-known "automotive beauty" competition and was used in the feature film "Hula-Hopp Conny." In 1959, Elvis bought it from a dealer in Frankfurt, then was given a registration from the U.S. military, which changed every year, resulting in the car getting "lost." After extensive research by both BMW Group Classic and American journalist Jackie Jouret,the car's history started to being verified. Presley had used the 507 between his home in Bad Nauheim to the U.S. Army Base in Friedberg, but when he returned to the US in 1960 he traded it at a Chrysler dealer in New York, which, in turn, sold it to radio moderator Tommy Charles. After outfitting the car with a Chevrolet engine, Charles launched a successful racing career with it, winning a major race in Daytona Beach before selling the car in 1963. The car eventually ended up with space engineer and car collector, Jack Castor. He drove it occasionally before storing it in a pumpkin warehouse with plans to restore it. Though he had collected numerous parts for the car's restoration, it was still in storage when he happened upon a magazine article by Jouret, about Elvis' lost BMW 507! Castor realized that the car he owned had the same chassis number Jouret had uncovered and the pair met at the warehouse to look at the car. Very quickly, Jouret became certain that this car was, indeed, the car owned by Elvis. After further investigation, the car's full history was traced and BMW Group Classic embarked on a 2-year project to restore the BMW 507 to its original condition, you sing many of the parts that Castor had gathered, as well as building a complete 3.2-liter V-8 engine from spare parts to the specifications of the original engine. Today, the 150 horsepower, all-aluminum engine sits under the bonnet of the Feather White BMW 507, and is the star of the Show at the BMW Museum in Munich.
  • Tara Baukus Mello, for Cars Blog, published on 24 September 2016.

• He was drop dead handsome, a major flirt, and a naturally charming man who was a master of the sexual smile
  • UK Critic George Melly in his book Great Lovers (1981)

• Not only Jane Russell looked lovely in a red dress, but she sang "Ain´t Misbehavin´" and "I´ve Got a Crush on You" quite adequately at St. Jude Hospital benefit show at Russwood Park last night. Danny Thomas master of ceremonies and Elvis Presley, got along well. Backstage it was "Doll Face" that Danny called Elvis, and Elvis called him "Mr. Thomas." Danny went out to Presley´s 18-room manor and personally invited him to appear on the program when he was unable to obtain Presley´s top secret telephone number. The two big hits at the so called Shower of Stars Show were the then reigning Academy Award best actress winner for 1956, Susan Hayward and Elvis who didn´t sing, but pleased the crowd with a nice talk.
  • From the Memphis Press-Scimitar's June 29, 1957 edition, heralding Elvis participation in a Danny Thomas charity show which, thanks to Elvis, attracted 14,000 donors from TN, MS and AR to Russwook Park Stadium on the night of June 28, 1957 in an article entitled "Crowd Goes Wild When Elvis Steps Into Spotlight" By December, sizeable contributions allowed Thomas to seriously undertake the early steps towards St Jude's eventual construction.

• Elvis Presley remembered a pledge to Memphis charities he made in 1961 after his discharge from the Army and has thus sent checks totaling $105,000 to charities in Memphis, Mississippi, California, Kansas and Nebraska. Thirty-nine charities received checks during ceremonies held at the auditorium of the publisher of both The Commercial Appeal and the Memphis Press-Scimitar. Elvis, who once received aid from The Commercial Appeal-American Legion Christmas Basket Fund, has never forgotten he once was hungry and needy.
  • From the Memphis Press-Scimitar's edition of December 14, 1966. The above mentioned contribution is equivalent after adjustments made for inflation toUS$$783,530.23 in 2016 dollars.

• I would love to do an Elvis movie one day. That would be amazing znd already got Elvis' iconic hairstyle.
  • Shawn Mendes Canadian singer and songwriter, in an interview with 95-106 Capital FM radio on October 21, 2018

• The Melado barbershop has a novelty. A few days ago, Jesús Méndez Lastrucci, the biógrapher of sculptor Antonio Susillo gifted Melado with a Roman-like bust of him. So now Melado can boast of sharnig the same iconic status as the world famous "Los Seises Marriott Hotel" in Seville, and Elvis Presley, two of the sculptors' most notable subjects.,
  • About Jesús Méndez Lastrucci's bust of spanish barber extraordinaire Melado, as noted in an article entitled "Melado is now just like Elvis and Los Seises", as published in the Diario de Sevilla's June 12, 2018 edtion

• i) I'm going to be like him one day............ ii) I like to live life. I certainly work hard for it, and I want to have a good time. Don't deny me that. It might not come again and I want to enjoy myself a little. I liked to sing, I don't know, call it natural gift or whatever, you know, I'm not afraid to say it. It's just I like to sing and then I suddenly realized that I could actually write songs and then make my own music rather than before I would, you know, sort of copy Elvis Presley. iv) Why people like David Bowie and Elvis Presley have been so successful? Because they give their audiences champagne for breakfast? No, because they're what the people want.
  • Freddy Mercury, i) telling his mother what he felt about his future, as he watched Elvis and as recounted by Mrs. Bursara herself, at age 94, for an article published by to Mid Day, on November 21, 2016 ...ii)http://m.imdb.com/name/nm0006198/quotes from Freddy Mercury

• As I left Princess Diana's funeral service, I was so suddenly struck by the extent of it all that I bottled up all the way home. I was so upset because I really did like Diana, having met with her numerous times. And I always had a laugh with her and really admired her. Most of all, I thought she was so great not to be consumed by everything that had happened to her and to keep giving and giving and giving. I thought she was a really great person – the Elvis of compassion-
  • George Michael, in the second part of an interview with The Mirror's Tony Parsons, in an article published a few months after the death of the former Princess of Wales.

• He never understood the artistic claims that were made for him, probably thought very little of the nature of his appeal, or his music; yet, as author Greil Marcus points out in "Mystery Train", it is possible to see (all that) as a positive factor; Presley viewed "rock and roll" as for the body, not the mind, so he recorded and performed accordingly; and, if much of his rock music sounds superficial, it was thanks to his undoubted vocal talent and extraordinary charisma that, at least, it was all gloriously superficial and celebratory; he knew better than to take it seriously and, in doing so, he became the consummate rock figure, one that defined its spirit by delighting in its very limitations.
  • Richard Middleton, in his book "Popular Music, Volume I: Folk or Popular?

• I wrestled in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, South Africa, North America and Mexico. My name, it was like Elvis...
  • Mario Milano, in a 2009 interview, as published in an article entitled "Pro wrestling great Mario Milano - ‘Australia’s Elvis’ - dies at 81" by the Post and Courier's edition of December 17, 2016.

• Enchanted as I was by the story my mother, an aspiring singer, telling me of meeting Elvis in the early days of his career after witnessing him bring down the house at a live broadcast of "Louisiana Hayride", it became apparent that Elvis was polite, courteous and unassuming, addressed her as "ma'am," shook her hand and thanked her for enjoying the show. I am elated as his now regained role as an unparalleled musician and cultural innovator.
  • Ben Miles, in a letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times published on 18 April, 2018 in connection with the newspaper's very positive review of the HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher.

• People usually mention Freddy Mercury as a lyric singer, but among the baritones, Elvis was the only singer who had the talennt and registry to do that. I own all of his records, he wass terrific.
  • Javier Milei, in a youtube interview with Yuyito González, published on November 4, 2024.

• But it was on the gospel numbers, such as the stunning "How great thou art", (1977) that Presley showed the awesome power of his voice. The fact that he has one of the greatest voices in popular music has been obscured by the mystique that has surrounded him.
  • Steve Millburgh, writing for the "Omaha World Herald", on one of Presley`s last concerts, on 19 June 1977.

• Elvis was coming down on the left side of the driveway and I jumped out of our jeep. His uncle Vester saw me and said, "Where you going? I was determined to meet Elvis, so he drove me over to him and introduced me. And Elvis said: “How you doing, son?”. Elvis called me son and I’ll never forget it
  • Dennis Miller in a Quora series of statements from people who met Elvis.

• After about an hour a few of the guys walked out of the huge room and the others kept talking to me. And I'm assuming now when I think back that the ones that left went to Elvis and probably told him that I was OK. So as I was talking to the other guys, literally without turning my head or looking to any side, that was when I felt this huge, huge presence. It's completely unexplainable and I felt this energy and I turned to my right and I looked and there standing in the doorway was Elvis Presley. And he was not the Elvis that you would imagine. He had on a simple blue sweatsuit with white stripes down the side of the arms and a little white tennis hat on. He just looked like a guy that was lounging in his house, relaxing with his buddies. And that's the Elvis that I met, no jeans, no T-shirt, no sweater, not one of his big blouse shirts or anything like that- just very normal. I stayed that night until 7 o'clock the next morning. He put on a karate exhibit for me with Sonny and Red West and he had the guys call The Bodhi Tree -and they got me all the spiritual books and brought them over in the middle of the night from the store because he realized I was very spiritual and that we would have that in common.
  • Mindi Miller, actress and stuntwoman, recalling the moment she finally met Elvis at his Monovale Drive home, in Bel-Air, CA, in early 1975, as told to EIN's online page on 12 April, 2017.

• My dad was riding down Sunset Boulevard on his motorcycle when suddenly, a limo pulled up next to him. The driver rolls down his window and says, 'Sir, I have Elvis Presley in the car and he'd like to meet you. After they had spent some time together, dad began to exit the limo when Presley stopped him with a surprise request: his autograph!!!
  • Roger Miller's son Dean, as told in a Children of Song podcast, on 28 January, 2018

• Our culture includes Elvis Presley, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Johnny Cash, Jackie Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Douglas Macarthur, Milton Friedman, Edgar Allen Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Edison and again, for emphasis, Elvis Presley.....
  • Stephen Miller, at a political rally on May 25, 2016 at Anaheim, CA, on the subject of how best to define and defend American culture.

• In the eleventh grade Elvis and I were in Miss Thompson's Civics class. He was a class clown and in the middle of our mid-term exams with everyone concentrating on the test, he called from the back of the room in a loud voice “Miss Thompson, Miss Thompson,” “What Elvis?” she answered. Then he asked “Why did the chicken cross the road?” The whole class broke up laughing except, of course, Miss Thompson. She quickly replied “See me after class, Elvis"
  • Robert Wayne Millican, who net Elvis in 1948 as a freshman at Humes.

• And I got cast in "Sun Records" when I was 17, still in high school, and through an open call audition, me and my mum drove up and I had to kind of fight my way in there. I was too young to really audition but fought my way still. And then I got a call two weeks later that I had the part. And since I had applied to college, I kind of just said, 'Hey, I'm going to treat this as my college experience'. And I went and did that movie.It definitely changed my life.
  • Drake Milligan, recalling for SMOOTH Radio how playing Elvis Presley on a TV movie changed his life, as noted in the station's March 21, 2024 online edition.

• My sister could sing opera if she wanted, and we used to sing duets together like the Ponselle Sisters, and I also enjoy classic Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Judy Garland. Of today's voices, Madonna, Mary J. Blige -- people who know how to communicate--. And I love Elvis Presley. Quite a nice mix!".
  • Top US soprano Aprile Millo, when asked by the Playbill staff to name her favourite female and male non-classical singers, as published in Playbill, on 17 November, 2009.

• But she got her own back because when she got a little bit older, she dated Elvis Presley, who I was madly in love with, of course, as was everybody at the time. So I think that kind of compensated for it being the "back of a head" in the film.
  • Hayley Mills, discussing her time with Susan Henning who was 14 years old, as she was, and her body double in Disney's 1961 blockbuster "The Parent Trap", as noted in an article published in the August 27, 2021 edition of the Showbiz Cheat Sheet.

• Rock and roll is that center place between country and blues and R&B and gospel. When I think of rock and roll, the first person I think of is Elvis Presley. And yeah, he did ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ but he also did those crazy tender ballads. To me, that's still rock and roll.”
  • Parker Millsap, singer-songwriter in an article entitled "When the spirit moves Parker Millsap, anything can happen", as published on the Boston Globe on May 18, 2018

• And he came from East Tupelo, jumping at all of us, a carnal, metallic hero shamelessly imitated, a glorious founder. Even today it seems like I remember everything about him, especially how he defined the myth and monument of the culture of contemporary expressionism. He invented everything and led a ship which we could all board, and led many to sing everything when all we would have done without him is sing boleros. He was rock and roll, is today and shall always be tomorrow. God bless Elvis Presley.
  • Mina, legendary Italian singer as inscribed in Presley's italian Fan Club online page.

• Elvis loved karate and his moves on stage, in the 70s, were karate inspired. One day in 1971 he went to see my show, then invited me to go see his at the International, so on the way there, at the elevator, I found myself in the company of Alice Cooper, Chubby Checker and the most popular porn star at that time, Linda Lovelace, all of whom were also invited by Elvis. So there we were in the biggest suite in Las Vegas, waiting for him to greet us when he finally came out, but dressed in a karate gi. He did a couple of moves until, out of nowhere, another man jumped in front of us, like the butler in the Pink Panther movie who comes our of the closet and attacks his master and I said.. Gee, that's great!!!
  • Liza Minelli, telling Graham Norton how and when and with whom she met Elvis.

• At his big New Year's Eve party, I got to sit and talk with him and it was just great. He was the voice of my generation and I had a million questions to ask him, but all he wanted was to talk about that session of 'Kentucky Rain,'. "More thunder on the piano, Milsap,' he had said when we recorded it. I then asked him if he would like to get up and sing and added that we knew all his songs. 'No, I want to sit here with my friends and not have to worry about singing". He knew we did know how to play his songs, and all, but he didn't want to get up and sing and that was fine with me. It was his party.
  • Ronnie Mislap C&W musician, blind since birth, who played píano on Presley's "Kentucky Rain", as told to Rolling Stone Country, and published on www.theboot.com on December 8, 2014.

• Lesson #1 is that rock music is in the fighting spirit, not in the amperage of the guitars; indeed, some of the toughest rocking has come from all, or mostly acoustic bands; Elvis presented a primer lesson from the famous Sun sessions, with a simple blues song through the most famous faux false start in rock history; he and the boys start out all slow and bluesy, before stopping the band cold and calling it out like the hippest beat poet: 'Hold it fellas. That don't... move me. Let's get real, real gone for a change'. Then they did, let it loose, turned every bit of intensity in their beings into a jumping arrangement, much faster and more rhythmically nuanced a performance than the opening. Much of the intensity is in the fast and furious, but precisely laid out detail work; there is a strong sense of spontaneity and discovery, but what ultimately makes this a hall-of-fame performance is the vocal performance; Elvis doing tricks, making sudden octave wide jumps. "If you see my milkcow..." There is a charismatic determination of spirit that Nietzsche would no doubt have recognized as the will to power; when the King got through with it, it was no longer anything to do with a high calcium drink, but about the singer's assertion of his place in the universe.
  • Review of "Milkcow Blues" (1954), Elvis third single for the Sun Records Label, by MoreThings.com

• My parents brought home Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" and I would sit there, on my stomach, with my face right at this little record player, playing that song over and over and over. I didn't know what Elvis looked like, what any of this was about, all I knew was there was some kind of groove and energy coming off it. That is when I lost interest in playing Kick the Can or Red Rover with the neighbourhood kids and with a gift of his first guitar, I became a bit of a withdrawn kid who loved being at home strumming my guitar.”
  • Canadian rocker Kim Mitchell, as published in the Intelligencer, on November 4, 2017.

• Actually my dad saw Elvis before he was well known. In mid November of 1954, he and mom were down in New Orleans staying with Frank and Isabell Monteleone, who owned the Monteleone Hotel in the French Quarter in New Orleans. On the weekend, they went to their place in Pass Christian, Mississippi. The Monteleones said, “There’s a little club about a half hour from here. They’ve got this singer there, and we ought to go up and see him.” Then, after seeing him and when my dad was preparing his original written story of "Thunder Road", he wanted Elvis to play his younger brother Robin Doolin. In 1957, my parents as usual had a Christmas party, and they invited Elvis to discuss the matter. My mom served us some delicious roast beef and I remember at the end of the party and after everybody had left, my dad and Elvis were at the piano taking turns playing and singing songs. My dad loved jazz and knew a lot of Southern jazz songs. Dad would be like, “Do you know this one?” I sat there half the night listening to them. At 13 years old, I knew who Elvis Presley was. It was something. Elvis wanted to play the part, but his manager Colonel Parker claimed that Elvis had too many obligations to fulfill and too many film contracts already pending to take on my dad's project. But I think the real problem was that Parker was unhappy that someone had gotten straight to Elvis without going through him...
  • Chris Mitchum, in an interview with Medium Corporation dealing with his father, actor and producer Robert Mitchum's wishes to give Elvis the role of his younger brother in the 1958 classic "Thunder Road"

• I never saw him off the set, but twice, and yet I considered him one of the best friends. A real southern gentleman he was. One of the nicest persons I have ever met in my entire life.
  • Mary Ann Mobley, who co-starred with Elvis in two films, in an interview with Joan Rivers, in 1992

• Elvis had an open time period, and I think Colonel Parker remembered all the fan mail that kids wrote from Hawaii. So to fill that one date that they needed, they decided to come, and that's why he came to in November of 1957
  • Tom Moffatt, Hawaii's foremost concert promoter, recalling the root of Elvis' first performance there, which took place 17 months before it became the 50th state.

• I never met him until I was in a rehearsal, in 1969, and he just walked up one time – I'd worked with him with the Sweets for 6 months I think – and he said, "Hey Stump – how you doin?" and shook my hand. I was shocked, because I didn't know that the man knew my name & stuff. You know, Rick Nelson was really good looking but he couldn't touch EP. I mean that man Elvis was something else! When I first saw him – I'm not gay at all – I thought man – this man is really cool neat cat, man! Anyways, i was with him in August of 1974 when he, Jerry and Red painted a female figure drawn into a mural located in the west wall of the Showroom Internationale, as if she was black. They waited until 3 am, got some ladders and black paint, and Elvis did the painting.
  • Jerome Stump Monroe, R&B drummer for the Sweet Inspirations, as told to Richard Crofts and Arjan Deelen in an interview for YouTube, dated 31 May 2018.

• He's all for love and who else can give you this? Elvis Presley for President!
  • Lou Monte's words heard in RCA's "Elvis Presley For President" single from the summer of 1956. In that year's otherwise inconsequential Presidential election, no less than 5000 people, by write-in, voted Elvis...

• Frankly speaking, I don't know much about rock and roll music and I enjoyed some when I was in high school and college. But I stopped listening after Elvis Presley...
  • Ban Ki-moon, eight Secretary General of the United Nations, a national of South Korea, as noted in brainy quote/quotes/keywords/elvis_presley.html

• To me Elvis Presley's best records came after he got out of the Army. I mean, just his delivery. “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” and “Surrender” and “Little Sister,” “His Latest Flame,” “She’s Not You,” even some of the early movie songs like “Follow That Dream” and “King Of The Whole Wide World” that I list among my all-time favorites. But, rock ‘n’ roll purists think that after 1957 there isn't anything any good. I think this is so far off base it's laughable.
  • Craig Moore, in an interview with singer Bobby Vee as published by Goldmine on May 14, 2009

• Elvis gave us a second career'.In his beginnings, he told us he had always enjoyed singing `Precious Lord Take My Hand." That was one of his favorite songs
  • Bluesman, the Reverend Bishop Dwight Arnold Gatemouth Moore, speaking about the impact of the early Elvis Presley on African American musicians, as quoted by Robert Gordon, for Elsewhere, on November 7, 2007.

• It hosted presidents and one king — Elvis Presley in 1955,”.
  • George Moore, the Mobile Alabama Battle House Hotel's historian, referring to celebrities which stayed there, including Elvis, who did so after a concert at Ladd Stadium, in an article by Marci DeWolf, entitled "Mardi Gras in Mobile a family affair", and published in January 29, 2018.

• He was pioneer of doing a little bit iof everything, a triple threat, so yes I am following on his footsteps.
  • MandyMoore, in an interview

• I thought anyone who had been the center of all that insanity for so long would have some of it rub off on him. But, after working in "Change of Habit" with him, I realized I'd never worked with a more gentlemanly, kinder man. He was gorgeous.
  • Mary Tyler Moore, as noted by instarsmeetstars

• Dot continued to travel between Britain and America when I was out there, in between her tours and engagements. In Los Angeles, she once appeared at the 'Moulin Rouge' club in Hollywood, one of her biggest fans being a young Elvis Presley, who attended most of her performances and repeatedly asked her to sing 'This Is My Mother's Day!' He came backstage and, being very nervous, introduced himself to me – as though I didn't know who he was.'Hello, I'm Roger,' I said.'How are you, sir?' he asked.'Lovely to meet you, sir.' He insisted on calling me 'sir' throughout our chat, and acted as though he was in awe of me. Him! In awe of me! Elvis then told Dot how much he admired her and hoped he might have just a little of the success she had achieved. If only he knew. If only I knew!
  • Roger Moore, recounting the time he and his first wife, entertainer Dorothy (Dot) Squires met Elvis (page 135 of his autobiography)

• Sam Phillips used what we call 'slapback' or 'tape delay', which lent an otherworldly patina to Presley's voice. And I don't know if Sam was really conscious of it at the time, but if you listen to old pop and country records back then, the voice was always so much farther out from the music; Sam kept Elvis' voice close to the music, so, in essence, Elvis' voice became another instrument.
  • Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley's lead guitarist from 1954 until 1968, as published in The "Virginia Pilot", in an article entitled "The rising of Sun Records cast music in new light", as written by Sue Smallwood, and published on December 15, 1994

• I want to be like Marlon Brando, dress like James Dean, and sing Like Elvis Presley,"
  • Trino Mora, Venezuelan rock artist, as noted in his Latin Times obituary, published on December 11, 2024

• i) My delight in dating Elvis hinged entirely on one fact. I knew that no one could possibly make Marlon Brando more jealous. I wanted to get even, Brando had done me wrong, so I went from one kind of king to another. I dated Elvis, who was absolutely gorgeous and had a perfect kind of face, but he was not interesting to me. When Brando saw a photo of us two, in the papers, he was furious, he threw chairs, It was wonderful. ii) When he took the polio vaccine, he was wonderful, a fabulous and important advocacy which should continue to work with today's celebrities vis a vis the COVID 19 pandemia.
  • Rita Moreno i) in her Memoirs ii) interview with Dr. Jon LaPook CBS this morning July 20, 2021 Note: Not a single photo of Elvis and Rita has ever been found, which points to her having told Brando about her affair with Elvis, which had indeed taken 2 years before, as if it was happening then and to make matters worse, on the day Brando told her he had just met Presley at the Paramount Commissary, and had found him very congenial....

• Elvis, yes! Elvis was my man. You know, I used to go up and view his shows.
  • Derrick Morgan, known as the precursor to Bob Marley, the first big reggae star in early 1960s in an interview reaggeavibes

• I never met a more polite kid in my life.
  • Actor Harry Morgan, who co-starred with Elvis, who was 31 years old,in United Artists' Frankie and Johnny", in an interview with EMMYTVLEGENDS

• Just pretend everyone in the audience is sitting there in their underwear.
  • Advice given to Elvis by Bobby Morris, the then brand new orchestra conductor of the Showroom Internationale at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, on the night of July 31, 1969, as Elvis became a little trepidatious minutes before the start of his first show in 9 years. As told by his son Daryl Morris in an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal published on May 5, 2018. Morris would remain his conductor for the next engagement only, replaced as he was in the summer of 1970 by Joe Guercio & his orchestra.

• It probably will require a hurricane to de-contaminate this area properly after hix appearance here. I know hundreds, and there must be thousands, who deplore the type of music that is being fed to the younger elements of our community. Let us hope that those who feel as do will make themselves heard so that something may be done to curb the mouthings of that avaricious maniac.
  • ̇ W.A. Morris, commentimg on Elvis' performance at The Citadel 's College Park, in Charleston, SC, on June 28, 1956 in a letter to the Editor of The News and Courier published on July 3, 1956.

• He is the best ever, the most original, started the ball rolling for us and deserves the recognition.
  • Jim Morrison, in 1970, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• As a musician, I was inspired by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Beethoven and Chopin and so I will always be the same Michele, but with different moods. We are going to have a lot of rough and strong things but a lot of emotion, too. As far as the lyrics are concerned, it will be more mature.
  • Michele Morrone, italian actor and singer in an article entitled "Racism should be dealt with seriously", as published in the hindustantimes' August 2, 2020 edition,

• We have a mutual friend who uses the phrase "That’s skinny Elvis", all day long when describing something cool
  • Sam Morrow, telling Rolling Stone how his duet with Jaime Wyatt on the song "Skinny Elvis" came about, as published on March 26,2018.

• They did a survey not too long ago about how many people believe Elvis is really dead. And if I remember correctly, it was around 20 percent thought it was some government plot, that Elvis was still alive somewhere, and the government was served well by promoting the idea that he died when he was still alive. And I like Elvis. But I’m pretty sure he’s dead
  • Mike Moser, a Nebraska Senator who got COVID-19 before vaccines were available, explaining to the Legislature how sometimes polls are not to be given much credibility, as noted in an article entitled "Vaccine Exemption Bill Advances; Income Tax Debate Starts", and which was in Nebraska's Public Media's February 16, 2022 edition

• The 2019 arrival of a new BMW 3 Series as an event that resets the parameters of the executive car class, because every time a new one comes along, it usually succeeds in smashing its key rivals and becoming the car to beat. It is as momentous in the motoring world as the Apollo moon landings or the death of Elvis.
  • Darren Moss, reviewing the new BMW Series 3, as published in What Car?' May 23 2109 edition.

• Representing Elvis is something only dreams are made of...
  • Super model Kate Moss, speaking about her appearing in a video filmed at the Abbey Road Studios in London, in connection with the re-release of the song "The Wonder of you", which had topped the UK singles charts for 6 weeks in 1970, and again hit the Top Five, at #4, in 2007, as reported by the Sun on 29 November 2016.

• I have to say I had some very good scenes with him in "Loving you", but I found myself going to every shot, every scene in which he sang because I was completely taken by listening to him sing. I could not believe the charisma. Incidentally, my uncle was the opera star Mario Lanza (married to my dad´s sister Betty) and I knew what it was like to encounter not just an actor or a singer, but somebody that you knew was going to be a legend. Mario was going to be the next Caruso and Elvis, I thought, ´he is in that class´. This man is going to live forever because that voice is not just for us, but for the people of God.
  • Rev. Mother Dolores, formerly actress Dolores Hart, speaking about Presley´s voice, in an interview to Sirius Radio, in Memphis, TN, on the 36th anniversary of Presley´s death (August 16, 2013).

• I've been an Elvis fan all my life. It started in 1957, but regrettably, I never met him.
  • Nana Mouskouri, Greece's leading music star, in an interview with Telescoup, as published on their online page on September 30, 2018.

• I can still remember when you visited me in my humble home at Beatrice Cottages and we listened to Elvis and sang along and laughed together, then you revealed your soul to me, your dreams, your hopes – and I wrote your first biography...
  • Will Mbanga, in a personal letter asking for the resignation of his former friend and comrade, President Robert Mugabe, a huge Elvis fan whose home in Harare is filled with Elvis memorabilia, and as published in Open Democracy on 25 February 2008.

• I don't admire nobody, but Elvis Presley was the sweetest, most humble and nicest man you'd want to know. Singing ability, he a had everything and he was pretty, I know. And when it comes to boxing nobody has the class, the style, the wit, the speed and beauty of Ali. When it comes to singing nobody had everything like Elvis. And the last thing, he did lot for poor people, he cared for people, he had a good heart, he just wasn't a person who was great with talent but great in spirit and with God in his heart, and this is great too. I realise how good I am in my profession, I don't praise nobody if he don't deserve it, cos I am the greatest of all time in boxing, in boxing. I said boxing! I'm telling you, not just you all, the Elvis fans, so naturally you praise Elvis, he's of European race as you are, but I'm black, I'm a Islamic, I'm 100% different from you. And I tell the world Elvis was the greatest of all time. I'm a Muslim who's black who stands up for what he believes. I don't have to say what I don't feel, I'm not false I don't have to say this. I'm free. He to me is one of the greatest singers, actors and all round men of all time. With all the brothers together, none are better than Elvis Presley
  • Muhammad Ali, as published in numerous magazines and biographies, including Saladin Ahmens's online page, as well as from a speech in Memphis, TN, honouring Elvis life on the 8th anniversary of his passing (August 16th 1985, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

• A day for people to reflect about the things that were most important to my father, like self-love and self-respecy. My father loved children, so in some way, developing around them through the school curriculum. I think the "Ali Center" is just terrific to always mention and something called "ighters Heaven in Deer Lake", Pennsylvania, where my father trained for all of his big fights, and where he lived in between his fights. The Beatles photograph, the famous Michael Jackson photograph, the Elvis Presley photographs were all taken there. It’s been totally reconditioned into its original state; so along with preserving my father’s legacy through Muhammad Ali Day, I know from my own family how important it is to create these centers to connect with the community to house all the core values of my father and what was important to him.
  • Khaliah Ali, Muhammad Ali's fifth daughter, on how she would want "Ali Day" to be celebrated and his legacy to live on, as noted in an interview published in the Chicago Tribune's January 17, 2022 edition

• So, I think it started with "Lilo & Stitch" but one day when my then 2 year old son and I were listening to this podcast called "A History of Rock 'n' Roll in 500 Songs", he heard Elvis' 'Mystery Train'and he goes, "Dad, I like that song". Then we started listening to more Elvis and, as were sitting at home one day, I said, 'Do you want to see what Elvis looks like? Do you want to watch him sing?' He goes, 'Yeah," I turned on the Elvis 1968 comeback special, and my son, 2 years old, was riveted, more than "Inside Out", "Moana"... anything. He was staring at Elvis in a leather suit, seating down and singing and he could not look away. And then he got his own guitar, and he played it in his chair, as Elvis did, so he now he thinks you only play guitar while sitting. He's never gonna stand up. LOL
  • John Mulaney's description of how now 3-year-old son Malcolm Hiệp Mulaney became an Elvis fan, as told in an intreview with Jimmy Fallon on December 11, 2024.

• The board meets every Wednesday at the old courthouse in Inverness. Last week I walked into the old courthouse and there was a portrait of Elvis Presley on the wall, greeting me. “Good morning,” I said to Elvis as I entered the building. I did a double take because he appeared to wink at me. Later in the meeting we had a visit from Paul Perregaux, a Citrus Hills resident who has qualified to run for the Citrus County Community Charitable Foundation board, the nonprofit organization that will decide how the proceeds from the lease of Citrus Memorial Hospital will be used. I asked Paul to give us some background on his life experience so we could let residents know why he was running for the office. The longtime banker pointed out that he had an Army career before he worked for the financial industry in New England and noted he was once assigned a driver by the name of Elvis Presley. And yes, it was that Elvis Presley. “He was a very nice young man” said Paul. Later that same day, back at the Chronicle office in Meadowcrest, we had a very extraordinary visit from April Royal, the widow of Phil Royal I sat for a few minutes with April and as we sat there talking, April Royal explained to me that her recently deceased friend Dorothy Jean's absolute favorite musician was Elvis Presley. Her residence at the Key Center was adorned with photos and paintings of Elvis. In July of this year, April and Phil attended the Key Center's annual auction. Phil had been on the Key Center board for 20 years and had a special relationship with Dorothy Jean Cole. At the July charity event, what comes up for auction but a large velvet portrait of Elvis Presley? According to April, Phil took one look at Elvis and said he needed to purchase the velvet masterpiece for Dorothy Jean. “I don’t care what it costs,” Phil told April. “We need to buy Elvis.” The Royals were the top bidders. Phil wanted to wait until after the Run for the Money to give the present to Dorothy, but fate got in the way. Phil died during the run at a very young 47 years old. His family and our entire community have been rocked by the tragedy. April Royal has been an incredibly strong woman during the aftermath of the tragic events. Just last week she saw the Elvis portrait at her home and decided she had to go visit Dorothy Jean. So she loaded Brelyn and Elvis into the car and went to the Key. She presented the Elvis portrait to Dorothy as a last gift from Phil. Dorothy was delighted to spend time holding Brelyn and she had a big smile on her face. And now, just a few days after that visit, Dorothy Jean Cole has passed away. The irony was almost too much to comprehend. In a very strange way, the velvet King helped me better understand what courage looks like.
  • Gerry Mulligan. Publisher of the Citrus County Chronicle, published on October 1, 2016 at 11:45 pm

• I used to babysit for a Sergeant Phelps at the US airbase and was at work one day when he turned up at my house and told my mum that Elvis would be at the airbase that night and I should go if I wanted to see him. My mum ran to a phone box to call me at work. I couldn't believe it – I loved Elvis, I had all his records. I changed into my American jeans, lumberjacket, bobby socks and blue suede shoes and cycled the three miles to the airport base. I dropped in at my friend Muriel's and she said she would come too but I couldn't manage to give her a ‘backie’ so we skipped and ran all the way. When we got to the base there was a small group of people already there, standing at the barrier in front of two huge Cadillac cars. Muriel and I were right at the barrier, were so excited and suddenly the plane was in front of us. The door opened and there was Elvis. He was so handsome in his uniform. He waved and we started screaming. He shouted: ‘Where am I?’ and people shouted back: ‘Prestwick’. Elvis came down the stairs and looked fantastic with that beautiful smile. We could nearly touch him. Then Muriel did an amazing thing. She jumped over the barrier and threw herself on him – a couple of huge military policemen scraped her off and put her back over the barrier. The next thing we knew, he was away. We went to the café where the young folk hung out and told people we had seen Elvis. They were all laughing at us but the papers the next day proved it.”
  • Ann Murphy, on the night she and her friend saw Elvis on his only hour in Scotland, March 3, 1960, travelling as he was en route to New York, on the day of his final discharge from the US Army, as published on the Scotsman, on 3 March 2006.

• That’s my idol, Elvis Presley. If you went to my house, you’d see pictures all over of Elvis. He’s just the greatest entertainer that ever lived. And I think it’s because he had such presence. When Elvis walked into a room, Elvis Presley was in the f***ing room. I don’t give a f*** who was in the room with him, Bogart, Marilyn Monroe.”
  • Eddie Murphy, as published in www.graceland.com

• In fact, the overwhelming influx of white rappers has become so pervasive that hip-hop queen Nicki Minaj offered a tongue-in-cheek Instagram observation on the trend: “It’s a great time to be a white rapper in America huh?” Nicki also came with receipts — a screenshot of the iTunes Top 10 Rap/Hip-Hop songs displaying six slots filled with Caucasian spitters: the aforementioned Malone and G-Eazy as well as NF, Macklemore, Machine Gun Kelly and a certain gifted-yet-weary rhyme legend (Eminem), who is most responsible for flipping hip-hop's racial course as Elvis Presley once did with the Black musical art form known as rock and roll.
  • Keith Murphy, as published on the BET network online page on December 19,2017 in an article entitled "Now Is A Good Time To Be A White Rapper for everyone except Eminem". The statement is reminiscent of Chuck D's reconsidered opinion on Elvis when in an interview with ABC-TV, in 2002, he stated: "As a musicologist — and I consider myself one — there was always a great deal of respect for Elvis, especially during his Sun sessions. As a black people, we all knew that. In fact, Eminem is the new Elvis because, number one, he had the respect for black music that Elvis had"

• I named this huge dinosaur Elvis inter'alia, because of its uniqueness and Pristine Pelvis.
  • Nate Murphy, the Curator of Paleontology at the Phillips County Museum in Malta Montana, on the reason he named the 32-foot Brachylophosaurusn, Elvis, as noted in the June 27, 2005 issue of Newsweek

• But things began to change in late October 1957, thanks to Elvis announcing the impending arrival of “a rock ’n’ roll Christmas.” The setting was a San Francisco press conference and the reference pertained to the imminent release of Elvis’ Christmas Album. Unsurprisingly, the media took the bait, waxing indignantly about the desecration of Christmas music. Even Time magazine got into the act. At the height of its influence, the magazine did one of its trademark putdowns, warning of the “most serious menace to Christmas since I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
  • Pat Murphy, for Troy Media, in an article dated December 19, 2018 and entitled "The first rock ’n’ roll Christmas", his reference to TIME dovetailing nicely (LOL) with the not so well known fact that TIME, in part thanks to the Luce Family, remains to this day the only major US based magazine to have never had Elvis Presley grace its cover.

• It's now or never, as Elvis Presley used to say.
  • NJ's Governor Phil Murphy's answer to a question by a reporter on when should the vote be held for the legalization of marijuana, as published by CBS Philly's March 21, 2019 online edition.

• I was the twenty-seventh person on standby, on the last flight out of New York City to Memphis the night before the funeral. Miraculously, I got to Memphis and took a cab to Graceland- They'd stopped letting people into the house at that point but everybody was trying to get a photograph of Elvis in the casket, and there was a $50,000 bounty on it.. But the actual funeral was a spectacular thing. I still have incredibly powerful impressions of it, to drive the route and see all the hundreds of thousands of people waiting for him to roll by. It was incredible—very powerful and was about 90 degrees. Waiting in the shade, and all the signs said "God bless you, Elvis. When the hearse rolled out on the street, and it reached the speed it was going to go at, I burst into tears. It was like the long, slow walk And it was just so poignant, then all the helicopters converged on the cemetery, overhead, and there was a riot at the other gate, you know, at the back gate—people were trying to storm into the cemetery. The hearse was arriving, and I started racing, running from where we were. We started running towards where I thought the riot was coming from. On the way I encountered the hearse being led by 24 motorcycle cops. It was one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen, because these cops they were guarding Elvis. And all of the sudden there was one man standing in the cemetery right where they were passing by, and there was not supposed to be anybody there. There's one guy, and it's me. And this cop gave me a look that said, "If you move, I will shoot you right through the heart." I mean, I just froze—you know, like when your hair stands on end. Anyway, as they tried to carry it up the steps, they almost dropped it—it fell like sideways. But then there was a very strange moment when Priscilla actually left. Because you could feel Elvis. You could absolutely feel his presence everywhere. And when she left, it was almost like you could feel his real love went with her, as she rode out of the cemetery. It's was an amazing feeling. I'll never forget it. Well, you gotta have role models. He was an extraordinary guy.
  • Comedian and actor Bill Murray' full interview on his attending Elvis' funeral, published on August 9, 2004 at Permalink

• Wise men say, only fools fall in love
  • Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy's laud to his wife Sudha, a great Elvis fan, as he sang in its entirety "Cant help falling in love" during the course of the latest CNBC’s Global Leadership Summit held on November 14, 2024 at the Jio World Centre, in Mumbai, India

• Some people adore goats, some people believe the earth is flat, some even believe Elvis Presley is still alive. Simon Busuttil can believe whatever he wants but when the rest of the country hears these things, they laugh.
  • Joseph Muscat, Prime Minister of Malta, addressing a political gathering in Gozo, as reported by the Times of Malta on October 14, 2018.

• Just above the lobby, the “Impact of the Bible” floor highlights how Scriptures have influenced cultures across the globe — from education and literature and art and architecture to a King James Bible owned by Elvis Presley which is just steps away from mannequins adorned with dresses by fashion designers such as Dolce and Gabbana, who have featured icons of the Virgin Mary in their brand.
  • Adelle M. Banks, reviewing the Museum of the Bible, which opened in Washington DC in late 2017, as published in the Deseret News on November 13, 2017

• In 1959 (during his time in the Army), he came under the weather and military doctors diagnosed tonsillitis and suggested that the vocalist, then the biggest performer in the universe, have his tonsils removed. Presley, already more trustworthy than most modern performers in his pleasant acceptance of military duty, agreed. The problem was that no doctor nearby wanted to risk operating on the star, fearing that malpractice would leave him without his golden voice and either a lawsuit or an an angry fan could ruin any medical career and/or life. They gave him penicillin instead and fortunately everything worked out.
  • Published on the December 1, 2014 online edition of "Music Times", in an article aptly entitled "Tonsillitis and musicians, it aint no joke"

• Love me tender. love me true....
  • Elon Musk, channelling Elvis with a ‘Love Me Tender’ tweet, baffling investors amid his Twitter row, in an article published by the South China Morning Post's April 19, 2022 edition.

• Few people in my village have the slightest clue about life in America. To them we might as well be the center of the universe. I'm one of few lucky or unlucky ones (depending on how you look at it) who happened to, miraculously, have had the opportunity to live in both worlds. It goes without saying that I can also speak with confidence that my level of confusion is unparalleled. Once, I had confused Elvis Presley for Yuri Gagarin. In fact, there are people in Kokoland who still believe so. What difference will that make, anyway, when folks still believe that the Earth is flat?
  • Gony Mustafa, in his Book 20118 "iVillager", sharing his purposeful journey from a mythical Kokoland, actually a village in Western Sudan, to America and his discovery of enlightenment about the world

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• The Postal Service is being wasteful in spending nearly US$300,000 to promote its Elvis Presley stamp. To break even, they would have to sell more than one million stamps to collectors who do not then use them.
  • Ralph Nader, a few months before the USPS's announcement that it had netted US$36 million in profits, its highest ever, as a result of some 124 million stamps being purchased and kept by collectors, more than a third of those 500 million originally issued and sold.

• The first time he was booked at the International, in July of 1969, some of us had our doubts. I mean, we opened July Fourth with Barbra Streisand, who'd just won an Oscar, had three pictures going. She was one of the hottest entertainment properties in the world. We knew we had something. Elvis [who was the second performer at the new hotel] was an unknown stage property who hadn't appeared live anywhere in eight years. We knew he'd be something of a draw, but my God! Elvis was a blockbuster, turning out to be an even bigger draw in subsequent runs at the International. I'm not sure how this figure was verified, but it has been reported the Maitre d' and head waiters split $10,000 in tips per night when he performed the following February.
  • Nick Naff, executive at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, for elvisdblñog.

• When a polio vaccine became available in the United States in the 1950s, the March of Dimes, an organization that had been affiliated with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, made a major advertising push, with posters featuring young children who were most at risk of being infected. To boost public interest in the vaccine, Elvis Presley got vaccinated backstage at “The Ed Sullivan Show and it was seen as a patriotic thing,
  • René Najera, editor of the "History of Vaccines" at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, as published in the New York Times' May, 16 2021 edition.

• My biggest musical influences are Elvis Presley and Led Zeppelin
  • Musician Anna Nalick, as published by SomethingElse, on 23 November, 2017.

• Basically, I tried to mimic my big brothers in a sense. It was the days of peg pants, like today. Usually, when you inherit clothes from your bigger brother, the pants were longer anyway, so there was plenty of room to roll them up. So, yeah, I mimicked Elvis Presley, with his collar up and his slicked-back hair. He was cool, so we dressed as kids similar to what our big brothers did and the stars that we had seen. And I started (dressing) as Elvis (did) because, of course, he was special. My dad was with me one time in Vegas and we were allowed to go backstage where I introduced Elvis to my father. He took my dad and sat down on the couch and they sat there for about 30 minutes just talking and that. Boy, I tell you what, that was something. I'm standing there and Elvis is spending time with my dad. That day, I didn't tell him I dressed like him. He was wonderful. What a gentleman. He was close to the height of his career — one of the heights. I mean, he was always the smart one and the only person I was really thrilled by, and always appreciated his taking time out to talk to my dad, and I do to this day. .
  • Joe Namath, in an interview with ESPN in 2005 and in an article published by the Tuscaloosa News, on November 2, 2017.

• I used to work in a record shop and one afternoon I heard them playing "Blue Moon" through the speakers. I'll always remember it coming through the fog. Later, I used to stand in the front room with a plywood guitar shaking my ass like Elvis. He was a genius.
  • Graham Nash, founder member of The Hollies and part of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, as interviewed by Caroline Rees for an article entitled, "My best six albums", wherein he included Elvis 30#1 hits and published in the Express, on Apr 22, 2016

• There was something about Presley's voice. He had a wide vocal range: he could go up and down and stay in-between, with equal ease. There was also a powerful sensuality to his voice. You would know that if you had listened to ‘It’s Now Or Never.’ Besides he had great musicians backing him up.
  • Richard Nathan, lead singer for the Funkagenda, in an article published on 22 June, 2018 at The Hindu

• I love Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, even Marilyn Monroe. They had an iconic sense of style. I hope we don't lose that.
  • Shaleena Nathani, Indian film superstar Deepika Padukone's main dress designer, when asked to match one person, dead or alive, to style, and as published in Filmfare.com's June 21, 2020 ediiton in an article entitled "!In conversation with the creative mind behind superstar wardrobes, Shaleena Nathani"

• In the aftermath of Elvis Presley Estate litigation flurry, the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the Personal Rights Protection Act of 1984, providing clear statutory language ensuring personality rights are not extinguished at death and their descendibility to others. Additionally, the Tennessee Court of Appeals confirmed the descendibility of personality rights under common law in another case brought by the state against the “Elvis Presley International Memorial Foundation” for their unlicensed use of Elvis's name. The foundation argued there was “no descendible right of publicity in Tennessee and that Elvis Presley's name and image entered into the public domain when he died. The court made a clear distinction between the right to privacy and right to publicity, highlighting the economic value of a celebrity’s image, and in reviewing the Sixth Circuit's previous opinion on the matter, found their prior decision was made “without considering Tennessee law. Instead, the court recognized Tennessee has an “expansive view of property” and concluded a celebrity's right of publicity is a “species of intangible personal property” protected in Tennessee. Specifically, the court found descendability of personality rights promotes "an expectation that the investment in valuable capital assets will benefit one's heirs after death, the protection of contract rights, the discouragement of consumer deception, and the policy against unfair competition.Thus, the court held "Elvis Presley's right of publicity survived his death and remains enforceable by his estate and those holding licenses from the estate.
  • National Law Review, as published on October 10, 2016, in an article entitled 'Elvis and Prince: Personality Rights Guidance for Dead Celebrities and the Lawyers and Legislatures Who Protect Them by Peter Colin, Jr, the Review's 2016 Law Student Writing Competition Winner.

• Elvis Presley once said that a man is one thing and an image is another. I didn't really know what Elvis meant by saying that until I was invited to visit the Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital. As I approached it, I saw this statue of Joe DiMaggio in his Yankee uniform with his arm around a little boy. It was the most sensitive looking work of art that I have ever seen.
  • Children's books writer and author Ray Negron, in an article entitled Joe DiMaggio, Oh How I Wish I Knew You and as published by NY's Sports Day on March 14, 2017

• Imagine Elvis Presley watching our show. He repeated episodes I'd even forgotten about, even remembering them word for word. And he gave me some great tips about things to do on my tour. You'll never know how much tonight has meant to me..I touched his Gold jacket...
  • Rick Nelson, as told to Photoplay editor Maria Borie the night he and Elvis met after Nelson attended Presley's second Pan Pacific Auditorium concert on October 28 1957.

• In his heyday, when he was really hot, there was an explosion of energy between Elvis and his audience. I wasn't a wild fan of Elvis's, but put the man onstage doing his music, and you got something more powerful than the sum of its parts. You got magnetism in action. Maybe it was sexual, I don't know, but if ever a performer could get up onstage and turn a crowd into crashing waves of energy, it was Elvis. Yet Elvis couldn't really whip up a Las Vegas dinner-show crowd on a regular basis. I went to see Elvis one night on the Strip and I slipped in at the back of the room and listened a minute and thought: what is going on here? There was Elvis up there working his ass off, and the crowd was just kind of politely exhausted. They clapped and whistled, but you couldn't feel them giving anything back. I felt like jumping on top of a table and yelling, "Hey everybody, that's Elvis Presley up there! You should be jumping and screaming"
  • Willie Nelson (Nelson, Willie; Bud Shrake; Edwin Shrake (2000). Willie: An Autobiography. Cooper Square Press. p. 277. )

• Of course, the Elvis connection is not lost on me. Nevertheless, I was a little young to appreciate Elvis. He was a bit beyond me.”
  • Michael Nesmith's reply to a reporter from Medium, as to his many connection to Elvis Presley, namely his having played with James Burton, Glen D. Harding, Ronnie Tutt, Jerry Scheff in both a few of the Monkees records and in his solo material with The First National Band, one of whose members Paul Leim, who drummed once for Elvis. Finally, it was Felton Jarvis, Elvis producer, who signed Nesmith to RCA Victor, Presley’s record label. Within a year of The First National Band’s dissolution, Nesmith, augmented by several members of Elvis’ touring band and Jose Feliciano, returned with The Second National Band. The above notwithstanding, he never saw let alone met Elvis, despite being in the music industry during the same period, as noted and published by the Sheet Cheat's April 15, 2023 edition

• Around 3,000 years ago, David became King of Israel, and he named Jerusalem the capital. Now your father echoes his great deed by again recognizing that Jerusalem is our capital, for now and forever. Your father and I are so much alike, we both love Israel, have Jewish grandchildren and similar futures ahead of us. In fact, the great King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley, could have been speaking about Donald and I when he sang ‘Let’s rock, everybody, let’s rock. Everybody in the whole cell block. We’ll be dancin’ to the Jailhouse Rock'.
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, speaking at the opening of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem, on May 14, 2018, with the President's daughter, Ivanka Trump in the audience.

• It was an ordeal of sorts for many of us —the compulsory monthly haircut at our boarding school in Tiruchy in the 1950s-. Few liked to have their painstakingly grown locks trimmed, let alone sheared off—and for a good reason. Elvis Presley was our much-loved idol then and most of us tried to emulate his puffed hairstyle— something the spoilsport warden frowned upon. He opined that a crew-cut suited us, and Tiruchy's sultry weather, better. So, fearing that we might be ‘scalped’, we drew upon all our reserves of charm to persuade Dasan, the surly school barber, to minimise his snipping and shearing so that we didn't look like skinheads! He grudgingly obliged us. We boys used to fervently hope that he wouldn't turn up to trim down our nicely burgeoning Elvis hairdos, but he always did, clad in a white shirt and dhoti carrying a rexine bag containing the tools of his trade...
  • George Netto, for the New Indian Express, in an article entitled "Rooting for Elvis Presley in school" and as published on 29th August 2018.

• About 125 persons were lined up at the showroom reservation counter early Monday, normally a slow day. Last Saturday some 500 persons were there at 10 am in hopes of getting reservations during the busy weekend. Many were turned away. Officials at the International Hotel said weekends were sold out and that bookings during the week were "tight" for Presley's first appearance before a live audience in eight years. Some Presley fans came all the way from Europe to see the show. The hotel received a letter from a woman in France with a 100 franc note enclosed as a deposit for 10 shows. The woman wanted reservations for both the dinner and midnight shows for five straight days. So far we have yet to have an empty seat in the house. He is the hottest thing that has hit Las Vegas," said Bruce Banke, an executive of the hotel. It was his first stage appearance in eight years and his only return engagement to Las Vegas in 13 years. Presley in the flesh has lost nothing. It was still all there. Gyrating legs, wide stance, a bobbing head with tossed black hair, rotating guitar, knee bends and the pounding rhythm of such tunes as "Blue Suede Shoes", "Hound Dog", "Jailhouse Rock," "Heartbreak Hotel" and one of his newest recordings "In The Ghetto" He was contracted to appear here for an undisclosed salary. Reportedly, Presley is being paid as much as Barbra Streisand who opened the resort in early July for a reported $1 million during a three-year period. Actor George Hamilton was among the first nighters along with businessmen of the Howard Hughes organization. A plane load of admirers flew in from Atlanta, and members of the news media converged here from the East Coast and Europe. Temperatures outside the International Hotel neared 110 degrees the night Presley opened inside the 2,200 seat showroom – after viewing an hour of Presley's gyrations – blood pressure were on the rise. Presley received a long standing ovation. It was one of the the rare occasions when a Las Vegas standing salute was sincere rather than rigged with a few cronies of an entertainer planted down front to stamp and scream approval.
  • Myram Borders for the Nevada State Journal in an article entitled Presley Breaks Attendance Records in Vegas as published on their August 8, 1969 edition.

• At first I would see a kid who used to come over to the Plantation Inn Club when we were over there. That kid was Elvis Presley. He would show up every Wednesday and Friday night to see me do Calvin's Boogie and Junior's Jive. I feel that Elvis' later success actually broke the ice for civil rights, because that was the issue during that time, the fact he sent the black idiom all over the world in his music.
  • Calvin Newborn African American Jazz guitarist, whose gigs at the Plantation Inn Club, as well as his home, Elvis frequented, in an interview for the documentary "Why Elvis"

• i) I played a rock and roll star in the fifties... Who was that big guy then, Elvis, yeah, Elvis, well we did a movie in England at that same time ii) I knew I could never sing like him, but just did my best.
  • Anthony Newley, i) telling Joan Rivers in a 1985 interview, about his playing a character in the English film Idle on Parade, based on the 1958 novel by William Camp which in turn was inspired by Elvis Presley's conscription into the US Army and ii) in a 1959 interview with the Guardian.

• The recent news about robocalls takes me back to last November. I was coming in the back door loaded down with stuff for Thanksgiving. The phone was ringing, but I told myself, “Let it ring, don’t answer it. Don’t do it — you are going to drop something, you know it." “Ignore the phone call,” I said aloud to no one, yet I knew I wouldn't ignore the call. So I put down the bags — really dropped the bags — and rushed to the phone. As I put away bags of squashed lettuce and more — thank goodness, no eggs that day. “Return to Sender.” an old Elvis Presley song came to my head. In my mind's eye I saw a tall, handsome man standing in front of me singing that song. I picked up the phone to look at it — and like a light bulb, an idea came to me. A button. That's what we need: a button, I said in my head. When the calls come in and you know it's not for you — it's not for anyone human — you could press the "star" button twice, maybe, and the call goes back. Every single time. So here's my question for the technicians and scientists out there: Why can't we return robocalls to the people who send them? We should be able to. In fact, we would all be so thankful to the technicians and scientists of the world for developing such a technology. And they don't even need a new name for it. “Return to Sender” would do. I'm sure Elvis wouldn't mind.
  • Newsday's Regina Phelps, in an article entitled "My Turn: Elvis has the answer to the modern dilemma of robocalls̊" as published on their 21 March, 2019 edition.

• Dressed in a chic black tunic and bell bottoms, Elvis Presley stepped onstage last week at the International Hotel in Las Vegas and launched into the driving beat of "Blue Suede Shoes." The audience of 2,200, most of them over 30, roared and squealed in nostalgic appreciation. In spite of his updated look, Elvis hadn't changed at all in the nearly nine years since his last personal appearance. Oozing the sullen sexuality that threw the America into a state of shock in the 50's, he groaned and swiveled through a medley of "Jailhouse Rock," "Don't Be Cruel," "Heartbreak Hotel," "All Shook Up" and "Hound Dog". It was hard to believe he was 34 and no longer 19 years old. In fact, there are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars, Presley shot to the top in 1956 with "Heartbreak Hotel" and has stayed in the uppermost tax bracket ever since. When, during a news conference after the opening, a British entrepreneur offered Elvis a million pounds sterling for one appearance in London, it was Parker who answered: "Bring me a deposit tomorrow. Elvis arrived in Las Vegas a week before the show and immediately began rehearsing five hours a day-losing 10 pounds in the process. Only celebrities and big spenders were there opening night to hear Presley sing a lot of oldies and one new song, with a new message aimed at the black rock market. "In The Ghetto" chronicles the evils of poverty in a Chicago slum and could signal the birth of a social conscience for Presley. Another recent record release, "If I Can Dream," proclaims brotherhood according to the gospel of Martin Luther King, but did not appear on the Vegas program. When asked if these songs marked a new direction he might take, Elvis answered, "I go by the material. When I got 'In The Ghetto,' I couldn't turn it down.
  • Portions of Newsweek magazine̪'s review of his July 31, 1969, opening show at the International Hotel, in Las Vegas, published in their August 11, 1969, edition

• I have seen spectacular performers, Buffalo Bill, Enrico Caruso, John Philip Souza, Billy Sunday, Al Jolson, the Marx Brothers, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne and Liberace but I have never witnessed a storm of excitement like the one generated by Elvis Presley.
  • Dwight Newton's laud of Elvis, after reviewing his October 26,1957 concert at the Oakland Civic Centre for the San Francisco Examiner. Newton, who started his journalistic career in 1927, passed away in 2000, at age 98.

• It was huge. I was terrified, I remember that I had my little white lace dress. It was very scary, invited as I was to see Elvis's show and to meet him afterwards and even more intimidating, if incredibly flattering, as he was covering one of my early country hits – If You Love Me, Let Me Know. I went with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber backstage and Elvis was supposed to come and meet us. But something happened, he had an emergency and he had to leave. It was one of those 'Almost!' moments...
  • Olivia Newton-John in an interview with the Brisbane Times, published on October 22, 2016.

• From the first quavering notes of the song, it was obvious that there was something different about him -- you could detect his influences, but he didn't sound like anyone else. There is a quality of unutterable plaintiveness as Elvis, in 1953, sings "My Happiness", a pop hit, in 1948, for Jon and Sandra Steele, and a sentimental ballad that couldn't have been further from anyone's imaginings of rock-and-roll. It is just a pure, yearning, almost desperately pleading solo voice reaching for effect. The guitar, Elvis said, "sounded like somebody beating on a bucket lid," with an added factor of nervousness that Elvis must surely have felt. But even that is not particularly detectable -- there is a strange sense of calm, an almost unsettling stillness in the midst of great drama. When he finished, the boy looked up expectantly at the man in the control booth. Mr. Phillips nodded and said politely that he was an "interesting" singer. "We might give you a call sometime."
  • Description of the-then 18-year-old Elvis paying $4 to make a personal record at Sam Phillips's Memphis Recording Service in 1953, as published by the New York Times on October 9, 1994, in an article entitled "The stirrings of a King"

• Recently, someone asked the question of who had been the one individual who'd helped save the most money in the US healthcare industry in the last century. The answer – surprisingly – is Elvis Presley. On October 28, 1956, Elvis got a polio vaccination before his appearance on national TV. That event was responsible for raising immunization levels in the US from 0.6% to over 80% in just 6 months. No other single individual has had that kind of impact on healthcare in the US.
  • NEXUS, a former Dimension Data now Nippon Telegraph and Telephone owned company's laud of Elvis' influence on the eradication of polio, as published in their online page in an article entitled "U.S. Healthcare Needs Another Elvis" on February 6, 2015.

• These last three years he's been so used to people tearing at him wherever he goes that he's drawn-into as hell. He's so used to being alone with a few close friends and going for drives and playing records that you can't get him out
  • Anne Neyland, who dated Elvis during the shoot of Jailhouse Rock, as told to Photoplay in 1960.

• A toss-up between seeing Elvis live in Las Vegas in the 1970s and taking a dip in the thermal waters of Iceland’s Blue Lagoon ...
  • Paul Nicholas's most memorable travel experience, as published in the Daily Mail's January 8, 2022 edtion.

• While vastly different individuals, Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King Jr. were all brave Americans who firmly stood for what they believed.
  • Kevin Nicholson, former President of the College Democrats and a speaker at the 2000 Democratic National Convention, during a dinner for Lincoln Day at the Kosh­konong Mounds Country Club at Jefferson County, Wisconsin, as published in the daily Journal's edition of 13 February, 2017.

• We were first called the Grim Reapers and we recorded at this place in Janesville (Wisconsin). It was in a barn and this guy [had] a four-track machine. We recorded a song called ‘Cruisin’ for Burgers' and we did Elvis' ‘Hound Dog, When the people at Epic Records heard it, and they decided they liked us well enough where they gave us a record deal, they asked us to change our name to Fuse which eventually became Cheap Trick in 1973. Ad then we lived through a series of highs and lows before encountering a particularly difficult era in the mid-‘80s. That changed with the release of our 1988 comeback album Lap of Luxury, which contained another Elvis track, in fact it was the only version of an Elvis song that went to the Top 5 – ‘Don’t Be Cruel. So there’s two references to Elvis Presley in our career.”
  • Rick Nielsen, lead guitarist for Cheap Trick, in an interview for Ultimate Classic Rock and focusing on how Elvis impacted twice in their career, as published on their December 9, 2018 edition

• A group of teenage girls stood at the driveway eager to see a glimpse of him. Then, as someone inside ruffled a curtain, the girls all screamed, totally convinced that they had seen Elvis. Was that Elvis at the window? we would all scream. And, of course, it never was but just another exciting Saturday night at Audubon Drive...
  • Elizabeth Nielson, recalling for the Tennessean her time in 1956, when she was 15 and a resident at the Williamson neighborhood where Elvis first Memphis home at Audubon Drive was located. Such was the excitement outside the home, and the neighbors' complaints, that the Presleys had to move, after a year, to Graceland.

• I wasn't even born when Elvis passed away, but I am hugely grateful for the musical doors knocked down by him. It was good to have people like that who weren't scared to take chances back then. You don't take chances to do it in vain; you take chances musically because you care, or you want to be different, or you want to see what would happen if you mix this with that. It takes an open mind, but Elvis was one of those people that whatever he did, it was right. I love the fact that Elvis was a country boy.
  • Jerrod Niemann's laud of Elvis on the 35th Anniversary of His Death, as published by The Boot's August 16, 2012 edition.

• I knew little of him before we met at the White House. But, as I talked to him, I felt he was basically a very shy man. People say that because he had trouble at the end of his life, that he could not have been a good example, but they overlooked the fact he always used medication prescribed by his physician, so I think that he was always a very sincere and decent man.
  • Former US President Richard Nixon, as detailed in the PBS program "We were there when Elvis and Nixon met".

• Elvis Presley is my spiritual father and, as you may know, Maria Callas is my spiritual mother.
  • Klaus Nomi, German countertenor noted for his wide vocal range and an unusual, otherworldly stage persona, as noted in azquotes.

• Eminem is a King in his own right, a genius. He's our Elvis and I think we should claim that."
  • N.O.R.E, American hip hop and reggaeton recording artist, of Puerto Rican extraction, in an interview with vladrv

• I came to Hollywood as a teen because I was in love with Elvis Presley and I wanted to meet him. And one day, on a movie set, I did, and he gave me the opportunity to work as a hair specialist in a film he was then making. I want to thank all those who have made this possible and last but not least, Elvis Presley without whose kind help I wouldn't be here today. And you should see what it was to see him...
  • Josee Normand's words as she accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award for her work as a Hair Stylist during the gala heralding the 10th Anniversary of the Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild Awards held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 11, 2023.

• Like myself, Elvis was introduced to the world of self defense while in the military. He would study many styles under many different ethnic instructors throughout his life. In 1959 he started as a student under German Jürgen Seydel, (a Shokotan sensei), then was mentored under Japanese Teugio Murakami (a Shokotan master), Korean Kang Rhee (Sa-Ryu TaeKwon Do Grandmaster), Americans Hank Slemansky (a Chito Ryu stylist) and Ed Parker (the founder of American Kenpo – who would remain his lifelong teacher), and Filipino Dan Inosanto (later Bruce Lee’s student). Elvis’ love for martial arts permeated his career in music and movies, where he'd often demonstrate his self-defense moves. I'll never forget seeing him perform, sitting in the front booth with Bob Wall as the special guests of his wife Priscilla at a dinner show at the Las Vegas Hilton and being captivated by his charisma and showmanship. That was the day Bob and I first met him, when, after the show Elvis invited all of us up to his suite, where we talked until 4:00 in the morning. At first I thought, “What are we going to talk about?” I knew nothing about music, but I knew I could talk about martial arts all night long! And we did! I was impressed with his self defense insight and devotion. Even after two shows earlier that evening, Elvis stayed to the early morning hours shooting the breeze with us. That was a special night for all of us, which I'll never forget. Elvis was a real nice, down-to-earth guy, who made you feel in a few hours like you had known him forever. I still enjoy his music and films.
  • Chuck Norris, in an article published on WND's August 13, 2007 edition.

• Before any of my debates, I listen to Elvis Presley's version of “My Way.”, just to get myself psyched up...
  • Physician Ralph Northam, 40th Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the 2017 Democratic candidate for Governor, as reported by the Washington Post, on October 24, 2017.

• He is arguably one of the most iconic figures in American culture, the boy from East Tupelo who wanted a gun for his 11th birthday, got a guitar instead and went on to change the world introducing a unique musical style that combined pop, country, gospel and rhythm and blues. Although he moved to Memphis at a young age, Presley's home was, and will always be Tupelo...
  • The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal's editorial laud of Elvis Presley after his having been inducted, in 2016, to the Mississippi Hall of Fame in an article entitled "Exceptional Mississippians deserve great recognition" and published on December 14, 2016.

• It didn't take Americans and the rest of the world long to discover Elvis and it is abundantly clear that they will never forget him. His popularity continues to thrive years after his passing, with each new generation connecting with him in a significant way. Elvis, known throughout the world by his first name, is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures of 20th century music and popular culture, and his status as a cultural icon appears ever stronger as time goes by. His extraordinary talents produced achievements that remain unparalleled in American and world history. The international superstar was an accomplished and influential artist in several genres of music - rock, pop, country, R&B and gospel - and he triumphed on television, the concert stage and the silver screen. American culture and music changed irreversibly because of Elvis. It would be difficult to tell the story of the 20th century without discussing the many contributions made by this legendary, iconic artist.
  • Gale Norton, US Interior Secretary, in announcing the designation of Graceland, as a National Historic Landmark on March 27, 2006.

• The entourage was assembled, and the caravan headed out so Puffy, Biggie and I got into my Ford Explorer. I had a six-disc player, and it automatically went to Elvis 'Suspicious Minds' and Puffy was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Biggie was in the back and he said, ‘Hey, man, chill out. Elvis was cool,’ I thought it was so awesome that Biggie was sticking up for me for listening to Elvis.” ~
  • About the Notorious B.I.G.'s reaction to his friend Michael Levine's listening to Elvis in his car, as told by Levine in 1997 and as published by The Guardian and The Undefeated.

• Nowadays, with the cult of celebrity so firmly ingrained in western society, it seems obvious that having a leading star flash their wrist at a large audience would see a brand's sales go through the roof. But when Elvis Presley wore the Hamilton Ventura in the 1961 film Blue Hawaii, the then American brand couldn't have imagined the enduring effect of Presley's contribution.
  • Rob Nudds's laud of Presley's selling power, even in 1961, when using the first electric watch to have ever been made, a truly unique piece then owned by Paramount and which sold, years later, to the Swiss watchmaker Swatch, for US $1million

• That was the one thing that they knew that could conquer the world. They had the greatest dancers. They had the greatest choreographers and teachers in the world. And so at the time of Nureyev's defection, they were going to the West, and it was just two months after Yuri Gagarin went into space, and it was an enormous embarrassment to them, as he was also one of those enormous stars that you probably won't get again. He and people like him, like Elvis, they were sort of larger than life, and they stood out more. ...
  • About Rudolph Nureyev's extraterrestrial, larger-than-life aspect to him as noted by film Director Robert Morris to Robin Young of "Here & Now's", and as reported on WUR.org's April 25, 2019

• Never has there been a more obsessed-over American pop icon than Elvis Presley
  • New York Film Festival's introduction to Sofia Coppola's biopic "Priscilla", said to open there on October 6, 2023.

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• So go ahead Bruce, and give me the Elvis take on cultural appropriation right now. I don’t want to get waylaid I should say, but I am a big Elvis fan. And I’m not a believer of narrowingly defining who gets to do what. I think we steal from everybody, from everywhere and that’s the nature of humanity, of culture, that is how ideas migrate. That’s how music gets created. That is how food gets created. I don’t want us to be thinking that there’s this way for that person and that way for the other person. I think what’s always been relevant about cultural appropriation is if the black person who writes the song and who performs it better can’t also perform it and can’t get the record deal. I’ve got no problem with white artists doing black music cause I don’t think there’s such a thing as simply, exclusively black music or white music, or Hispanic music. It’s the economics and the power dynamics underneath it which Elvis obviously was part of, but he didn’t create it.
  • US President Barack Obama, transcripted verbatim from the eight and last episode of a podcast ("Renegades: Born in the USA") entitled "Looking towards American Renewal" made in conjunction with Bruce Springsteen, and as published on Newsroom/Spotify's March 21, 2021 edition.

• In Michelle Obama's Netflix documentary "Becoming" her stylist, Meredith Koop, fingers a suit that awaits the first lady turned bestselling author backstage on her book tour. It's pale pink and pimped with diamanté. “She is not a minimalist,” Koop deadpans. “When I look at this suit I do see Elvis and I don’t have a problem with that.” That's nothing. It's followed up in short order in the TV show by Obama's now-infamous turn in gold-sequined Balenciaga thigh boots, and a dress slashed so high that you are left in no doubt that thigh boots are precisely what they are. This isn't mere Elvis style. This is Lady Gaga too.
  • About Michelle Obama, as noted by Anna Murphy, Fashion Director for the Times of London in an article entitled "Me and Michelle Obama? We take style tips from Elvis" as published in the paper's June 20th edition.

• "One good turn deserves another/Be my love, I'll be your lover/It's all part of nature's laws/If you'll scratch my back, then I'll scratch yours" That's not a poem; it's actually the first stanza of an Elvis Presley song, titled ‘Scratch my back". The phrase, ‘scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ was not coined by the writers of Presley's song, having been in existence way before Presley was even born but what it basically means is that a favour done will be returned, and that nothing goes for nothing.
  • Buchi Obichie, writing on Legit about Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's 2019 re-election bid, and the price he may have to pay to garner the support he needs, as published on November 2, 2018.

• When I was at Harvard, and it's the 80s, and I had sort-of come of age with 60s and 70s music, so Elvis wasn't a big interest of mine. And, then in 1983, I listened for the first time to The Sun Sessions, Elvis' earliest work that he did with Sam Phillips. It blew my mind. It was like a drug. I couldn't get enough. It made me go out and buy a guitar. It made me try and play that music. And, in a sense, I've never gotten past that music. I can't get past early Elvis. I appreciate other music, but I'm always drawn back. It's just this energy. What I've always noticed about Elvis is there's nobody more talented, or better looking. He's a rare example of the complete package and he is at the right time. He's got it all. I listen to Elvis nearly every night on Sirius. I love it. Yet, there's always part of me that's very sad that Elvis couldn't have lived to see how great his work was. He was someone who was revered. To see that whole generation come out and play with him and support. And let him know that his work meant something in the American tapestry, but he never got that chance.
  • Conan O'Brien, television host, comedian and producer, speaking with Elvis' foremost biographer, Peter Guralnick, as published on Elvisblog on May 31, 2013.

• As you know, I died in Chicago. I lost my life and I went to heaven because I was very good and sang very lyrical songs. And I got to talk to God and he said, 'Well, what do you want to do? You can go back and be anyone you want.' So I thought who do I want to be? And I thought, I wanted to be the guy who was the King of Pop, the king of show business, Elvis Presley If there's any hope for America, it lies in a revolution. If there's any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley into becoming Che Guevera. If you don't do that, you're just beating your head against the wall, or the cop down the street will beat your head against the wall. We have to discover where he is, he's the ultimate American artist."
  • Phil Ochs, addressing the audience, from his album "In Gunfight at Carnegie Hall", a concert recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York on March 27, 1970. He was making a reference to his being in Chicago, during the Convention demonstrations, in 1968.

• He wasn't quite human, looked angelic. Jailhouse Rock is my favourite of his songs because he could turn a really shitty life, in a prison, into something happy
  • Sinead O'Connor, in an interview with Joe Jackson broadcast on November 25, 2020.

• She has a taste in music that almost perfectly reflects her style, having been in politics for longer than a large portion of the electorate has been alive, and her musical tastes appear to be just mainstream, contemporary Top 40 radio music. Another large portion of her playlist features Jennifer Lopez, Marc Antony and Juanes. But like her opponent, Clinton also professes a love for the music of her youth, including her being a fan of Elvis Presley,
  • Waylon O'Day, in an article entitled Music and the 2016 Election: Trump and Clinton, published on November 3, 2016

• (In fact), Elvis Presley was a fan. I was thrilled by that; I really was. We never know how we affect the people we come in contact with. We cannot decide how it is we affect anybody. It makes me feel wonderful when I feel that it is something I have done that makes them go on.
  • Odetta, African American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and civil and human rights activist, speaking at the First Amendment Center on Presley's recording of Bob Dylan's Tomorrow is a long time", where she expressed pleasure in finding out Elvis was a fan of hers, as told on March 25th 1999.

• There is just too much difficulty for getting radio airplay for my new music. Most every song today is the same chords for maybe 300 bars. But I imagine they said the same thing about us when we were jumping around on Elvis Presley and Little Richard and Fats Domino and Sam Cooke and Otis Redding and James Brown. I guess it's all in what you call evolution...
  • The O'Jays's Eddie Levert, on his return to entertainment at age 75, as published in the Detroit News, on December 28, 2016.

• O'Keefe was deeply depressed by Elvis Presley's death. He was his idol and O'Keefe would keep telling friends that he would be next. Six days after appearing on the Seven Network Show Sounds (which was a little over a year after Presley's death), O'Keefe passed away from a heart attack.
  • About Johnny O’Keefe's lasting impact on Australian music, as noted in Stars at 60, on December 3, 2016.

• I think the best analogy for where we are right now is that America is Elvis Presley... the most beautiful, talented, rebellious nation in the history of Earth. And now, America is wheezing its way through ‘Love Me Tender". But America's still the King.”
  • British comedian John Oliver, as published on the CheatSheet's March 31, 2019 edition.

• When political leaders present war as the only solution, it is up to artists to remind people that finding peace is still possible. That is the starting point for a Kosovo-based theatre company, Qendra Multimedia, whose new play returns to the last war in Europe before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and explores how it was stopped.The lesson it draws, and the genre it chooses to present its findings, is unexpected: the diplomacy of peace as a farce, albeit a necessary one. Dramatising roundtable talks between the fictional warring countries of Banovia and Unmikistan, the play is a frenzied comedy in which vain generals can only be lured to the negotiating table by promises of Hollywood films celebrating their actions. Opposing parties get drunk while negotiating demilitarised zones, mix up drafts of ceasefire agreements and sign on the wrong dotted line. Maps of disputed territories are partitioned with paper scissors until holy lands turn into showers of confetti. And yet, at the end of the 90-minute performance, former enemies lock arms to sing Elvis Presley’s Peace in the Valley"
  • Philip Oltermann in reviewing Jeton Neziraj’s play "Negotiating Peace" as noted in an article entitled "Vain generals, mix-ups and Elvis: Kosovan play turns peace talks into farce", as puvblished in the Guardian's October 27, 2023 edition

• I don’t like to seem like I’m bragging, but I’m going to ask you a question. Who owns Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Forever 21? and JC Penney? Me!!! My real business is I own 50 brands, So, when I was retiring, I’m looking around, I’m like ‘How does Michael Jackson and all these guys live forever?’ So, one of the chapters in the book, joint venture-ship. So, I called the three companies, seemingly Authentic Brand Group, Simon Property Group, and Brookfield Property Partners and they bought my brand for a lot of money. So, I took half that money, put it back in the company, now I’m the number two guy in the company. I put money back in the company, and now I own all those other brands, so if I ever go away, we still got Elvis.
  • Shaquille O’Neal from an article entitled "Mic Drop: Shaquille O’Neal Shuts Down the Internet with His Financial Portfolio, Owns Forever 21, Elvis Presley, and Much More", as published in the Atlanta'a Black Star's July 9, 2021 edition.

• Of course, it was hard to get to Elvis because you had to go through Parker. But when I found myself in Las Vegas, in August of 1969 I had a way in and that was through my friend Tom Jones. Tom was friendly with Elvis so he fixed it with Parker that Tom and I could sit close enough to take some photos of him performing on stage. Afterwards I went backstage and met Elvis and he just struck as the best looking man I’d ever seen, even better than the pictures...
  • Terry O'Neill, UK celebrity photographer, in an interview for IconicImages as published on their 30th March 2017 edition.

• The first thing he did when he came out in 1955 in Texas, it seemed like he was spitting on the stage. It all affected me like the first time I saw that David Lynch film. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it too. In fact, he was the firstest with the mostest.
  • Roy Orbison, as published in www.graceland.com

• They wanted to kill rock ever since Elvis Presley went into the Army, but the rock chain kept on going, until today.
  • Juan Pablo Ordúñez, a.k.a "El Pirata", Spain's oldest rock DJ, in an article appearing in the February 24, 2024 edition of La Region.

• As Elvis noted, 'A little less conversation, a little more action, please.'
  • Hugh O'Reilly, President and CEO of Canada's OPTrust, telling attendees at a climate-change seminar that this is the moment for institutional investors to become the force behind incorporating climate risk into investing, as published in Pensions & Investments on 25 September, 2018.

• It's hard to pick one, because I love Celia Cruz’s depth, Elvis Presley’s vibrato, Ray Charles’ texture, and Amy Winehouse’ melancholy flow;
  • R&B singer Natalie Orfilia, citing her favourite singers, in an article published at Rollingout's October 25, 2018 edition.

• Pat, then 13 as I was, got the tickets through her mom’s boyfriend who was a captain or something with the St. Louis Police Department. After the show, he asked us if we wanted to go backstage and meet Elvis, Once there, I noticed everyone was trying to get his attention, wanting him to sign things and take his picture, and he would say ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘yes, sir’ to everyone. No matter how crazy it got, he was unfailingly polite. I like that he didn't at all act like a big shot. The photo with us, once it hit the papers, obviously, was a big hit at my school. People would bring it up to me all the time. When the picture was taken, I happened to have my eyes closed, so all my friends would tease me. They'd say, "You’re in love with Elvis, your eyes are closed" LOL. After graduating from Roosevelt High in 1960, I got a bachelor's degree from Mizzou in 1964, the same year I competed in the Miss Missouri pageant. Though neither of us, Pat and I, were able to follow his entire career, it was all really sad what happened to him. But I just remember how nice he was to us.
  • Kathy Orio, reminiscing about the night she and her friend Patricia (Pat) Vardell, met Elvis after his Kiel Auditorium concert on March 29, 1957 in an article published in the St Louis Dispatch's March 29, 2014 edition and entitled " 57 years later, former St. Louis resident recalls 'polite' Elvis

• I got a letter from Elvis in 1961, I was 16, and the letter said, “I just want you to know I put "Halfway to Paradise" in my jukebox.” When I finally met him in the ‘70s, I was headlining the Hilton in Las Vegas and was actually following him a week later. I sat with him in his dressing room and then I said, “Let me ask you a question. Do you remember writing a letter to me, saying that you liked "Halfway to Paradise?” And he calls Priscilla into the room, and he said, “Tell Tony what my favourite song is.” And sure enough, it was "Halfway to Paradise",
  • Tony Orlando,in an interview with Shawn Conner with the Vancouver Sun, published on April 6, 2016-

• In late 1956, at a Buenos Aires railway station where I ended up sleeping my first night after arriving from the provinces, that is when I heard his voice, which caused me shock, fear, but it also generated an artistic purpose on me. It changed my life. ii) Years later, I noticed Peter Rock was the best Latin American Elvis, until I saw Sandro
  • Palito Ortega, Elvis greatest fan amongst all Latin American singers, as stated in an interview in la Tercera's December 26, 2017 edition IIU) ii) CNN interview Aug 23, 2018

• I remember watching this guy walk through the door as a regular human being, and the night before he was a master of the stage. That magic that aura, that whatever, he left it on the stage, because when he was with you he was a someone you could talk to, in other words, a very, very nice person.
  • Donny Osmond,- for Biography and Life Story

• I’m telling you, he’s like Elvis. Everyone screams just getting a glimpse of him.
  • James Outman's laud of Shohei Ohtani, said to be the best hitter and pitcher since Babe Ruth, in an article entitled "Shohei Ohtani is like Elvis" - Dodgers OF James Outman waxes lyrical of $700 million Japanese phenom's 'crazy' fanfare" as published in thre March 16, 2024 edition of Sportskeeda.

• Me, as a fan of music, I wasn't real sure at first — I wanted to see how it is — but this is something groundbreaking. For me, I would love to see a David Bowie [hologram performance], or I would love to see... maybe not a whole night, but AC/DC with... four songs with Bon Scott. Especially, people I've never seen — Elvis, I'd love to see an Elvis one
  • Tim "Ripper" Owens, heavy metal singer, on the subject of the holograms he would like to see, as published in Blabbermouth on December 17, 2017.

• People talk of his range and power, his ability and ease in hitting the high notes. But the real difference between Elvis and other singers was that he could sing majestically in any style, be it rock, country, or R&B – because he had soul. He sang from the heart. And that is what made him the greatest singer in the history of popular music.
  • John Owen Williams, English A&R executive, record producer, photographer, manager, recording artist, and songwriter, speaking about the soul in Elvis'voice.

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• It was in Vegas in '73 and it was really something to see. They really didn't know what to do with each other. Obviously Elvis was enthralled to be in Ali's presence, but so was Ali, he loved Elvis. Elvis came in to Ali's hotel room with the robe, 'The People's Champ' written on the back in jewels. Ali sees Elvis coming in and says, 'Hey, that's Elvis, man. He looks pretty good!' And both of them looked at each other like good-looking women would look at each other to appraise how they look. At that time, Ali was at the height of his good looks, so this was probably the best-looking black guy and the best-looking white guy on the planet in that room, and they were looking at each other like roosters. 'You look good, Ali.' 'Yeah, you're looking good, Elvis'. So here they are and they really wanted to be friends with, and respected each other and the love was there, but they couldn't quite get as close as they would have liked. But the robe Elvis presented to Ali that night was the only one he ever kept..
  • Ferdie Pacheco, Muhammed Ali's personal physician and cornerman, on the day Ali and Elvis met, as published in the Sabotage Times, 8 January 2016 edition.

• i) I am doing probably what they were doing up there, which is try to emulate the music I heard coming from America in some shape or form. It's defining coming from America, rock 'n' roll, rockabilly if you like, like in the modes of what (Elvis) Presley was doing and inspiring so many people like Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, all of them. And then accessing the blues and wanting as much to be sort of B.B. King, do you know what I mean? It was this sort of growth, really, of this voracious appetite I had for all things six strings, really. I can see how it manifests across the board. ii) We got to meet Elvis on May 11, 1974. He'd been the one who'd done so much for so many, setting everyone alight and flighting right under the radar with all of this black music, doing numbers by country blues artists like Arthur Crudup and Sleepy John Estes. It was unbelievable. He was one of us. And think about it! He started in 1954 – that was more than ten years before we arrived. It's miraculous that he made it through! He had the hand of God over him, he really did. He was the one that brought it all together. He brought blues and race music to the white culture. Rewinding to 1974, we were invited to see him play and then invited back to a party afterward. We went up to his suite. There was just a few other people. I can tell you we were really nervous when he came in the door. He really moved as naturally cool in real life as he did on film. That wasn't an act, that's just how he really was! It was real cool to us. It was a little awkward at first because his music meant so much to us but then somebody said 'You know that hot rod you drove in the movie 'Loving You'? And that was that everybody just drove into the conversation relaxed and had fun. He was wonderful a fantastic man!!! On this day in 1998, I played at Tupelo, where Elvis was born and raised, when there were no local attractions apart from the cotton fields or getting to Memphis. When Elvis grew up it must have been pretty bleak but the white and black picked the cotton side by side and the local indigenous music provided the soundtrack to this tough environment and it took the visionary genius of Elvis to blend those musical sources and change the world.
  • Jimmy Page, lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin, telling reporter i) Gary Graff of 105.7 WROR, on 31 March 2017 about his US influences and ii)David Frickle on how it felt for a child a of post-war Britain, to meet Presley as published in RollingStone magazine's October 28, 2014 edition, as well as from the book "Light and Shade" published in 2012.

• There is perhaps no other person in human history who has been imitated and idolised as much as Elvis. In the face of his omnipresence, how can a performer who is met with the task of portraying Elvis make it feel real? After all, even footage of the actual man can feel uncanny, as if he, too, is yet another impersonator playing up the tropes.
  • Gabriela Paiella, writing in GQ's May 25, 2022 issue about the difficulty actor Austin Butler must have encountered when playing the role of Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 biopic.

• It was during filming that I remember a particularly special day. Elvis and the assistant directors gathered the whole cast & crew together on set for an important announcement. Elvis was beaming. I remember the anticipation of what he would say, and he stood up on a couple of apple boxes and shared with us all the news that his wife Priscilla was expecting. His famous smile and the glint in his eyes expressed such happiness! Everyone applauded and yelped ‘congratulations!’ Then, Elvis looked over at me among the crowd, pointed, and said, “And I want a little girl just like you!” It was an unbelievably happy moment – I ran over and hugged him...
  • Victoria Paige Meyerink, child actress and future motion picture director, recalling the time when, as a 7 year old, she co-starred with Elvis in "Speedway".

• I didn't think much of him when I first met him in Las Vegas in April of 1956 before he was a movie star. After working with him in Jailhouse Rock, I saw a complete different side to his character and then I enjoyed working with him.
  • Gloria Pall, as noted in her book entitled "I Danced Before the King (Elvis)", a reference to the known fact she played the showgirl whose legs are briefly seen in "Jailhouse Rock"

• Back in the early days of Storage Wars, Dave Hester happily filled the role of resident baddie, driving folks crazy with his belligerent swagger, always looking to pick a fight or drive up the price of a unit that someone else wanted, even if his only objective was to stick in their craw and get them to lose their cool. But in spite of the rascally overtones, Hester was still a savvy player who did well during his time on the program. The best example of his success came all the way back in the first season, when Hester bought a storage unit that was loaded with newspapers. At first it seemed that all Hester had done was purchase a load of outdated periodicals. But then he discovered that the stash was all from the same day: August 17, 1977. Sound familiar? That's the day after Elvis Presley died. The unit ended up being a gold mine, with the plethora of papers all sporting the King of Rock and Roll's face adding up to a staggering $90,000.
  • Jaron Pak, recalling for Looper, an extraordinary Elvis related find by Dave Hester, a participant during the first season of US TV reality show "Storage Wars", in an article published in their December 29, 2018 edition. its narrative dovetailing nicely with the notion that August 17, 1977 was the day when more newspapers were printed, and sold in America since November 23, 1963, the day after JFK's assassination

• But the last side, recorded during rehearsals for his 1968 television special, is another treat, as fine and tough and overflowing with heart and soul as any of his 50's recordings. Playing an electric guitar, rather than his customary acoustic model, he traded fluid rhythm and lead parts with Scotty Moore, their interplay almost telepathic. And with his original drummer, D. J. Fontana, stoking the fires, this music moved, from the ferocious version of Rufus Thomas's Sun Records label blues "Tiger Man" to Jimmy Reed blues shuffles, to smoldering New Orleans triplet-style blues-ballads like "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and "One Night". This is rock and roll as good as it gets.
  • Robert Palmer, reviewing Elvis' boxed set, ¨A Golden Celebration¨ , for the New York Times on Nov. 18, 1984.

• I remember that all my music listening had to be from the single family wireless receiver, which was built like a piece of furniture and took up an entire corner of the front room. It was from this Ekco set that I first heard Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel". It was a musical epiphany for me. His moody syncopated delivery was astonishing, daring, disrespectful. My father came in while I was listening and he asked, "Something wrong with the set?". He was going to check the valves at the back but I told him that it was Elvis Presley and that he was meant to sound like that.
  • UK Comedian and actor Michael Palin, of Monty Python fame, describing his early affinity with the arts, entertainment and music in an interview publshed by Australia's Sidney Morning Herald, on November 13, 2014

• Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Elvis Presley has received more than 43,551,804 page views. His biography is available in 160 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 154 in 2019). Elvis Presley is the most popular singer, the 13th most popular biography from United States (up from 15th in 2019) and the most popular American Singer.
  • Pantheon's laud of Elvis, as noted in their 2021 edited, 2.0 online program which maps the historical cultural production, or celebrity, of every person born after 3,500 BC

• Drinking with my mom, she wanted to know what my jump suits were so i showed her Elvis Pardi!
  • Jon Pardi, paying tribute to Elvis as he perfectly recreated an iconic look while having drinks with his mom, as noted in 106.3The Bear's July 24, 2023 online editiom

• When he turned it on, Elvis sang with the spiritual fervour of one who spoke in tongues, not so much communicating with the listener, as communing. Our continuing fascination with Elvis is a testament to both his charisma and his voice. The details are secondary. To paraphrase the literary critic and poet Al Alvarez, all that matters is that you hear the voice. When this happens, Elvis Presley doesn't just hold a mirror up to nature, he creates an eternal moment, leaving the sound of his voice on the airwaves as distinctly as Leonardo Da Vinci forever fixed the Mona Lisa smile in time.
  • Richard J Parfitt, Senior Lecturer in Music and the Performing Arts at Bath Spa University, as abridged from an article entitled "The Quasi religious significance of Elvis", published in the online edition of The Comversation, on December 11, 2014.

• JFK, Elvis, Ronald Reagan, John Candy and Donald Trump
  • Park Rapids, Minnesota residents revealing their dream celebrity dinner guests, as noted in the Bollynside's 21 October 2023 edition.

• I've had the luckiest and greatest life you can imagine, like when Elvis Presley turned to me and introduced me to Johnny Cash. Before I knew it, I was standing in between the two legends.
  • Arnold Parker, country musician, recalling for the Victoria Advocate the days when he toured with Elvis and Johnny Cash, in 1955, as members of the Louisiana Hayride

• Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were born two months apart in 1946 into a revolutionary culture that soon would embrace a hip-swiveling crooner named Elvis Presley and Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine. Basically, everything you need to know about them can be found in these two mid-century icons. A fellow Southerner, Clinton saw himself as Elvis. Even now, his face sometimes betrays Elvis's smoldering glance with the slightly curled lip. Trump, a New York City boy, was Hefner. He collected all the toys of the Playboy lifestyle — boats, planes, cars — the best of everything a guilt-mongering rich boy would seek to glam up his sex appeal. Mar-a-Lago was his Playboy Mansion. All three of his wives have been bunny quality, and Trump Tower isn't just a tall building.
  • Kathleen Parker, Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary in 2010, in an article for the Washington Post entitled Who is worse, Trump or Clinton, published on October 12, 2016

• Come to think of it, Elvis, having black females as background singers might be bad going into southern regional areas, such as Texas..
  • Colonel Tom Parker, advising his Elvis not to take the Sweet Inspirations to his six back to back shows which, as it turned out, drew 200,000 fans at the Houston Astrodome in late February and early March of 1970. Elvis response "Fine, then we won't do any more gigs in Texas or any other such places that don't accept them. In fact, if they don't accept them, they don't accept me" , with the latter quote coming from Cissy Houston, lead singer of the Sweet Inspirations and the mother of Whitney Houston, in an interview for YouTube.

• When I was in the Army, I had several buddies get tattoos but I never did. I always told myself if I ever got one it would have to be significant. Well this tattoo is very significant to me in a lot of ways.The “57″ represents my time serving as Missouri’s 57th Governor. Then, as a lifelong Chiefs fan, serving as the 57th Governor when the Chiefs won the 57th Super Bowl was a welcomed bonus, and the lightning bolt is a tribute to my love of Elvis Presley and his motto of “taking care of business in a flash.”
  • Governor Mike Parson, as to why did he finally got his first tattoo, as published on his Facebook page on August 10, 2023

• The news I could bring is that I met up with The King
  • Gram Parsons on meeting Elvis backstage after a concert in his hometown of Waycross, GA, on February 22, 1956 following which he decided to become a musician. He was 9 years old.

• I don't know of anybody that doesn't like Elvis or heard anybody say, ‘Oh, I don’t like his singing.’ Everybody loved Elvis, and I just think that's incredible. He was so different in every way — his voice, his style, the way he moved, the way he looked. He just had this charm and charisma and a lot of sex appeal. Elvis loved my song I Will Always Love You.'. In fact, I talked to Priscilla Presley not very long ago and she said to me, 'You know, Elvis sang that song to me when we walked down the courthouse steps when we got divorced. He was singing to me I Will Always Love You.'"
  • Dolly Parton who, along with a few others, voted Elvis as the top entertainer in CMT Top 40 artist countdown, as published in CMT's online edition of November 21, 2014, as well from an interview for theBBC in 2023.

• He was remembered as an ambassador who had a hand in the Redbirds moving from Louisville to Memphis, the building of AutoZone Park, and by extension, the Grizzlies' move from Vancouver to Memphis. He made Memphis sports what it is. He's the guy. What Elvis Presley did, that's what he did.
  • Josh Pastner, speaking about journalist and sports talk radio pioneer George Lapides, as published in Memphis Daily journal, on December 28, 2016.

• As with the first time we stepped into this amazing world — it is the extraordinary intimacy of Elvis's vocal performances that is truly breathtaking, the exquisite and effortless way he takes us on an emotional journey with him, through delicate sensitivity to power and grace all within a magical 3-minute song. You can't imagine how often we heard these songs during the course of this project but I can honestly tell you that every single time Don Reedman and I played each song it really did feel as if we were listening to a private performance held just for us in our own home. Our home is the Abbey Road studio and we were listening to the greatest artist that ever lived.
  • Nick Patrick, co-producer with Don Reedman for "If I can dream" "The Wonder Of You", and Christmas with Elvis" the three albums dovetailing the voice of Elvis Presley with live recording and playing by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

• I love Elvis, the whole Elvis story, who he is, where he came from. I mean, I've been to his (childhood) house in Tupelo, I've been to his teenage residence in Memphis, that (Lauderdale Courts) public housing apartment. I mean, he was so frickin' cool.
  • Actor Robert Patrick, who played an older Elvis (who goes by the name 'Mr. Aaron') in the comedy-drama film Lonely Street (2008). Patrick had previously portrayed Elvis's father Vernon Presley in the biographical mini-series Elvis (2005), and also portrayed Ray Cash, the father of Elvis's good friend and fellow musician Johnny Cash, in the film Walk the Line (also 2005).

• "Whether one is an Elvis fan or not there is no doubting that no church in Grimsby or any other town, possibly, has ever seen anything like it before, the most moving and joyful service I have ever officiated at. Some people used to think rock and roll was the devil's music but Elvis was a devout Christian."
  • The Reverend Ray Patston's tribute to Elvis' passing, as excerpted from an article entitled "Tributes to Vicar who famously mourned Elvis' death" and published at the Grimsby Telegraph on 19 March, 2015.

• Designer Peter Blake worked with The Beatles to stage the cover of the "Sgt. Pepper's" album, which was filled with life-size cardboard likenesses of famous figures including Mae West, Bob Dylan, Marlon Brando, Edgar Allen Poe, Fred Astaire, Sonny Liston, Dylan Thomas, Laurel and Hardy and Karl Marx. John Lennon even requested the inclusion of Hitler and Jesus in the artwork, but he was turned down. (As to) Elvis, he did not appear on the album cover because it was felt by the Beatles he was too big an icon to be included.
  • Calum Patum, discussing the auction sale, for 29,000 UK pounds, of the gnome which featured on The Beatles' iconic "Sergeant Pepper's" album cover, as published in the Mail's online edition of 21 April, 2015.

• I went in, in 1957, and was soon stationed in Germany with Elvis Presley and Gary Crosby – Bing Crosby's son. We were there so I said why don't we start a band, so we didn't have to do any hard work in the service. We tried to get Elvis to join us and I used to see him every day but he wanted to get away from music for a while, while he was in the service. So me and Gary Crosby, we started it and called ourselves the Jazz Blues Symphony Band. As to hearing people talk about Elvis having racial tendencies, that was a lie....
  • Billy Paul, on his time in the Army, as told in ourrockandrollhalloffame

• I love his voice
  • Luciano Pavarotti, to an UPI reporter who greeted him at Memphis Airport in the spring of 1972 and asked him what he thought about Elvis.

• Living with my parents in Rapid City, S.D, I was 14 or 15, and Elvis Presley coming to town. This was a month or two before he died. I witnessed women throwing everything onstage -- everything that goes with an Elvis show. It was fascinating."
  • Pat Paxton, President of Entercom's answer to the question of which was the most memorable concert he ever attended, in an interview with Billboard and as published on January 25, 2018.

• By the early 1960s, only half of the total goal of $500,000 had been raised, so journalists from Hawaii reached out to newspapers across the country for support. Elvis Presley was inspired, and decided to put on a show in remembrance of the men aboard the Arizona and veterans as a whole. There were 4000 available seats for the show, 100 VIP ringside seat tickets which sold for $100 apiece. Using values adjusted for inflation, a VIP ticket cost nearly $800, in 2016 dollars. All of the profits were to be used for the construction of the USS Arizona Memorial. Over 3000 people greeted Elvis upon his arrival at Honolulu International Airport. The concert alone raised $52,000, which was 17% of the total goal for the memorial. While it wasn't enough to completely fund the construction, the performance spread awareness about the fundraiser with an additional $10,000 being personally donated by Elvis and Colonel Parker. Today, people visiting the Arizona Memorial can see the plaque that thanks Elvis and his fans for their contributions to the monument, which was dedicated and built over the next year. The Arizona Memorial today is a symbol of the men aboard the USS Arizona who now stand eternal watch. Attracting over a million visitors annually, the Arizona Memorial makes for an exciting morning of activities....
  • Pearl Harbor Visitors Bureau's laud of Elvis Presley, as one of the largest personal contributors to the Memorial.

• I predict that Elvis Presley's star will fall as quickly as it rose...
  • Drew Pearson, columnist, discussing his impact on society in 1956 as noted in one of his early 1957 NBC TV Washington Merry Go round episodes.

• Our last Mississippi destination was a major reason for my trip South. I told Bob I wanted to see the boyhood home of Elvis Presley in the small town of Tupelo, the singer’s Bethlehem. The humble birthplace had been preserved. Then as now there stands a two-room shotgun shack without indoor plumbing or running water. Bob and I were told by our guide that Jackson Browne and actress Patricia Neal had been quite recently to Elvis’s Tupelo home. “We get people from Russia, China, Japan, Great Britain. Some are fans, some aren’t who are on a tour package. On an icy day we’ll still have 10 or 20 diehards who push through and make it. In summer 1987 I came out of the ladies’ room and I did a double-take,” said our guide. Elvis the Pelvis was standing in the gift shop. “Except for his Australian accent, I couldn’t tell the difference.” And another story. “We had a guy once who came in with black shoes covered with white polish and wearing lots of jewelry. He said, ‘I’m Elvis. Do you have any mail for me?. Anyways, Bob was, though much agonized, portraying a straight man. He never indicated otherwise during our trip through Mississippi. It was years later that, choking, he came out to me: “What would you think if I told you I was gay?” “I wouldn’t think anything,” I answered. “Who cares?” It took more years for him to totally believe me. My final visit with Bob was in Iowa where he’d taught, where he was dying of cancer but surrounded, happily, with cute young men. I well remember you, my fellow Mississippian.
  • Gerald Peary's laud of both Elvis and his friend Bob, excerpted from an article entitled "Arts Remembrance: Visiting the Birthplace of The King" as published in the April 17, 2023 edition of the Arts Fuse.

• Maybe you've heard or seen of him, a country star whose striking accessories -- not to mention his acrobatic voice, are evocative of Elvis.
  • About Orville Peck, a country mmusician who wears a fringed mask that obscures most of his face, in an article by Scottie Andrew and published at CNN's March 5, 2022 onñine edition.

• I played trombone for Elvis in 1972, on many of his tours that year. In a technical sense – air, attack, tone, key and rhythm, yes he was very very good. He had great gut instincts, tremendous talent and abilities and was not shy about saying what he wanted or when he thought that something was wrong or could be done better. But more important than that is the fact he was an entertainer. He understood his role and knew how to move an audience. His phrasing an expression showed talent that was natural
  • Randall Peede, retired engineering entrepreneur, pro musician and educator, answering a question on whether Elvis was as talented as most people portray him to be and as published on Quora on August 25, 2018.

• In America, Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King have wonderful memorial museums...
  • Pelé, in his autobiography, after whose release, the idea of a museum of his life was finally born, its opening a year later taking place in Santos, the city that first saw him play.

• Roald Dahl and Stephen King are my Elvis Presley and my Beatles'
  • PaulPen, Spanish author of literary fiction, thriller and suspense, answering who were his greatest influences, as noted in Papel en blanco̪s Jul 8, 2014 edition

• In the 1962 film "Kid Gallahad", Presley portrayed a young man just out of the Army, training to be a prizefighter. He was helped on set by boxing trainer Al Silvani and former welterweight champion “Mushy” Callahan. Since the film's release, the location has drawn Presley fans from around the globe. Real estate broker Robin Oates was one of 50 Idyllwild Elementary School students who were extras. He remembers meeting Presley at age 11 and recalls that it was a “big thrill, pulling three or four kids out of our school and have us for the day. We’d go into one of the local restaurants that the film crew rented. Elvis and others from the film crew would throw a football in the street nearby during breaks. One time, several of us were told to stand in a certain area. Then, he appeared out of nowhere and gave us each an autograph. At night, fans would hang out in front of the house where he was staying. In 2016, 54 years after the movie was shot there, visitors continue to come on tour say, from the UK, to see the lodge. Bob Smith, volunteer archivist with Idyllwild Area Historical Society, escorted them. “It was a pilgrimage,” says Smith, with a smile.
  • Julie Pendray, published on November 13, 2016 at Palm Springs life.

• The moment the MC mentioned that Elvis had left the building, Ann Marie Royer, my then girlfriend who was a nurse from St Vincent's Hospital in Worcester, MA, insisted that we stay, as it occurred to her that Elvis, who she had not been a fan of before the concert, had to come back for an encore. He had to, she said. It didn't matter how many times I told her he wasn't coming back, but since I was actually driving her car, I reluctantly, albeit diplomatically, agreed we stay until she finally gave in and that was the moment she realized we were the last two people still in the building, out of the 16,200 who had seen Elvis' show at the Boston Garden on the night of November 10, 1971. She had become a fan, at least for a wwhile...
  • Guillermo F. Perez Arguello, a UN and Nicaraguan diplomat, as well as Peruvian national who in his teenage years had been one of the lead singers for the Peruvian garage rock band Los Hang Ten's, telling Ricardo Bolaños Iraola, the President of the Forever Elvis Presley Fan Club of Lima Peru how someone could turn into an Elvis fan after just seeing him once, and as told in a note dated April 17, 2023.

• Although I played no role in those sessions, I was called on for another service. Chips said, ‘Dan, bring your camera down.’ So I took shots of Elvis and the musicians. People are amazed I didn’t say anything to him but what would I have said? ‘Hey, you’re as pilled up as me?
  • Dan Penn, who wrote hits for Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Dolly Parton, on the day he, then 28 years old, assumed wrongly that the Elvis Presley he was nmeeting at the American Recording Studio in Memphis was as pilled up as he was, and as published by the Guardian in an interview dated March 4, 2024

• It was precisely the creation of my chocolat Eiffel Tower, when I was 21, that led me first to Paris, then to Frankfort, in Germany. There I met Catalina Liz, a Spaniard in whose cafeteria I worked, and which was visited several times by Elvis Presley, then with the US Army. He loved my pastries, really.
  • World renown Spanish pastry chef and baker Santiago Perez in an interview for his hometown's Diario de Leon, published on 31 October, 2016

• This boy had everything. He had the looks, the moves, the manager, and the talent. And he didn't look like Mr. Ed like a lot of the rest of us did. In the way he looked, way he talked, way he acted – he really was different. We have sadly lost the most popular man to have ever walked on this earth since Christ. But even back then, when people would laugh at his sideburns and his pink coat and call him 'sissy' -- he had a pretty hard road to go. In some areas motorcycle gangs would come to the shows. They would come to get Elvis, but he never worried about it. He went right out and did his thing and before the show was over, they were standing in line to get his autograph too. God intended for Elvis Presley to do what he allowed him to do. That's why he made him so good looking. I used to get close to him, tried to find a fault so I could go out and tell the world that he had a big mole back here, but, nah, he had no mole back there. Rock and roll is where it is today because the front door of this studio was opened and that kid walked in here and moved an awesome mountain that sat in the way for people like me who might never have gotten anywhere. And he was my friend..
  • Carl Perkins, as published in www.graceland.com and about education.com

• I felt there was a man there who truly cared about people. But his life was on a level that my life was not on. I felt like Phillip Dunne [director] fawned all over Elvis. Elvis' attitude was – I saw Elvis looking around that set and summing up people faster than anyone else could have, and I felt that after a short period of time he was disappointed in Phillip Dunne, but he was too polite and well behaved to say anything. He tried very hard to make this film better than his other movies, and you saw him trying and asking questions. And I just believe the sad thing is that [the director] did not have the ability to help Elvis through it. I remember one scene; we were sitting in the truck, and we were supposed to be driving home from a dance or going to a dance, and in the script he was supposed to break into song, turn on the radio and start singing. And to me it was like "yuk," I was very young and I thought, " my sisters are going to tease me, this is so embarrassing and tasteless." You see, I was a snob, too. But – and this was the nicest thing – while we were rehearsing, finally the director walked away, and Elvis looks at me and says, "God, this is so embarrassing. Nobody would ever do this in real life. Why are they making me do this? He never used his star power – never. Maybe he should have. Maybe he did it on some level, but he sure didn't do it on the set. I felt like he was younger than me, this very humble person who would make statements that he believed in. All I know is that there was a person there with a refined heart and soul, and I say refined on any level you want to look at it. When you meet someone like that, you know they're there,The essence of Elvis was a fine person as I've ever met.
  • Actress Millie Perkins, Elvis 'co star in the 1961 film Wild in the Country and who played the role of Gladys Presley in the 1990 TV Miniseries "Elvis".

• Elvis Presley released hundreds of records throughout a career that spanned slightly more than two decades. He also starred in thirty-one feature films and two documentaries. He was photographed throughout his career, and images of him on film are part of the American visual experience. However, he only sat for one portrait painter, Ralph Wolfe Cowan
  • Warren Perry, Curator at the the National Portrait Gallery, as published at the Smithsonian-s January 8, 2010 edition.

• I don't like that. I mean, I could understand if I was Elvis Presley.
  • Luke Perry telling RollingStone magazine, in 1992, how he disliked the cult-like following he had gained as one of the lead actors in ̊"Beverly Hills, 90210", mobbed as he was with young girls chasing him wherever he would go and as published in his March 4,2019 Yahoo obituary,

• You couldn't take your eyes off of him."
  • Joe Perry, lead guitarist for Aerosmith, as published in www.graceland.com

I had my head over in it and he came out of the back parking lot and asked if I liked it. I was still standing there with my mouth open but managed to compliment him on his choice. He said that the one which he had just picked was his, but that he will buy me one. So, he caught me by the arm and carried me back to the parking lot where he had come from and told me to pick one out. So I picked a gold and white model that listed for about $11,500 ($81,689.66 in 2019 money). Apparently, he had learned that my birthday was the next Tuesday, so he wished me a Happy Birthday, gave me a check, and the car keys and this inspite of me telling him that my husband Troy and I already owned a Cadillac, a 1974 model. But that didn't bother him, as he then just told me to keep the check, or give it to my husband or whatever we wanted to do with it.

• • Mennie L. Person, an African American bank teller in the Memphis metropolitan area to whom Elvis gave a Caddy, as reported by the Los Angeles Times on July 30,1975

• The day I met him is permanently etched in my brain for several reasons. You see, it was November 19, 1970 - my birthday. So I was feeling in a jovial, festive mood and I told my wife I was going to give myself a present that day. I was going to goof off for the entire day..I left her in charge of the limo I used, and my parting words to her were "Unless it's a dire emergency I don't want to hear from anyone.." A few hours later the beeper sounded ..'You're working tonight for someone you won't turn down....Elvis Presley." I rushed back to town, put on my chauffeur's uniform and headed for LAX. He came off the plane and my instantaneous thought was that he was the most charming and gracious person. We hadn't travelled many miles on my limo when Elvis, with his marvellous sense of humour, hearing my British accent decided to call me Sir Gerald. And from that moment on, for all the years I drove two pf his Mercedes 600 and his last Rolls Royce, I was always Sir Gerald to him
  • UK actor Gerald Peters, on the day he met his future boss, as noted in the book TCB by Grandlkund, English, Granlun and Richardon.

• He phoned me and asked me if I would mind if he recorded 'The Wonder of You.' I said, 'You don't have to ask permission; you're Elvis Presley.' He said, 'Yes, I do. You're Ray Peterson.
  • Ray Peterson, as published by David Neal in the Originals

• I'd never thought much about rock 'n' roll until that moment, when I both caught the Elvis fever and kicked off my love of music. And I never got rid of it. There was a huge crowd, the biggest crowd I've ever seen in the streets of Ocala and then, I swear to God, a line of white Cadillacs pulled in, and I was standing up on a box to see over everyone's head, because a big roar started up when the cars pulled in. Guys in mohair suits began bounding out of each car. Is that Elvis?, I muttered every time. He finally stepped out radiant as an angel. He seemed to glow and walk above the ground. It was like nothing I'd ever seen in my life. At 50 yards, we were stunned by what this guy looked like, and then he came walking right towards uncle Earl, aunt Ellen and little old me!!! I still don't know, to this day, what he said to us, because I was just too dumbfounded. And then he went into his trailer. The day after, I learned all of those early Elvis songs and having that kind of background in rock 'n' roll, of where it had come from, has served me to this day. It became an invaluable thing to have. So for that, I thank him.
  • Tom Petty, recalling how at age 10, he met face to face with Elvis during the filming of "Follow that dream", in Ocala, Florida, in July of 1961.

• Fany was his country's most famous and finest guitarist. In 1946, he moved to the Republic of South Africa as a migrant miner, recorded with Miriam Makeba, his guitar work not matched there either. Known as the Elvis Presley of the Marrabenta style he is credited with expanding on it with modern influences from Johannesburg.
  • About Fany Pfumo, Mozambican-born singer mainly active in South Africa, considered one of the founders of the Marrabenta music style and scene, as reported in Zambia's Business Day on February 20, 2018

• His face darkened into a frown, but he managed to finish 'All Shook Up'. Then with his eyes flashing, he pointed to Scotty Moore and addressed the crowd. "He got egg on his guitar, Whoever threw that will never make the Yankeesǃǃ" After a moment's pause, which did not cool his ire, he again faced the crowd 'Most of you people came here to enjoy the show, the guy who threw the egg will never make it. I mean it, Jack, we're just trying to put on a nice show'. The guilty were William Quinn 20, from New York,William B Oates, 21 of Brooklyn, James Stark, 20 of Greenport, New York and John Eidt, 20 of New York City, and they spent the night in jail.
  • The Philadelphia Sunday Bulletins account of the incident involving four Vilanova students during the second of his Philly show in the spring of 1957,as printed on their April 7, 1957 edition.

• So often in the careers of great men and women of history, there came a point in time where they were told their talents were not sufficient to realize their dreams. In the case of Elvis Presley, these words came early and often. But by the end of the 1950'a he was a musical phenomenon who electrified millions of attendees at his live performances. Until his untimely death in 1977, Elvis had an indisputable role in creating the modern American musical landscape and the development of a unique youth culture. Elvis' importance to the inception of rock and roll, and contemporary music as a whole, cannot be overstated, his image transcending the categories of the music he played and the movies he starred in to become a cornerstone of modern pop culture. Depicted in every material form imaginable, his estate at Graceland remains a pilgrimage site for fans of his music. In February of 1961, at a charity luncheon and concert arranged by the record company with the Governor of Tennessee present, RCA Records presented him with a plaque commemorating the 75 million records he had sold worldwide, the first artist in history to reach this impressive milestone. Accompanying this plaque, RCA Records also gifted Elvis with an 18-karat white gold and diamond Omega wristwatch, purchased by them at Tiffany & Co. The concert itself was an immense success, raising $51,612 (close to a half a million in 2018 dollars) for various charities. Sometime in 1962, the watch was exchanged by Presley to the current owner's uncle after the latter had expressed his admiration for the timepiece during a chance meeting inside a lounge at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. We are proud and thrilled to present, for auction, what once belonged to the man who simply said, in response to questions regarding his popularity, "All I do is sing and dance a little." It is, without a doubt, a superb vintage timepiece with one of the most fascinating provenances to ever appear on the world auction market.
  • Auction house Phillips's laud of Elvis Presley on the eve of the sale, at their Geneva branch, of an historic watch given to Elvis in March of 1961 by RCA after selling the first 75 million records of his career. The auction itself took place on May 12, 2018, the watch selling for US$1.8 million, the largest sum ever paid for an Omega wristwatch.

• Get yasself a wheelbarrow load of mad hogs, run ’em through the front door, and tell ’em Phillips sentcha. This is Red Hot and Blue comin’ atcha from the magazine floor of the Hotel Chisca. And now we got somethin' new gonna cut lost, DEE-GAWWWW! cut LOOSE! Good people, this is Elvis Presley
  • WHBQ DJ **Dewey Phillips, introducing for the first time the music of the 19-year-old Elvis to the listeners of his "Red, Hot & Blue" show in July of 1954, as recounted in Colin Escott's book, “Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

• Elvis? He was great, a real natural guy...
  • John Phillips's describing Elvis, his neighbor in Palm Springs, CA,to Bob Costas in a February 21, 1990 interview on youtube.

• Society, Lord Byron predicted, will eventually narrow into two tribes, “the Bores and Bored.” If so, maybe Elvis should shoulder some blame. The illusion of consensus found in the title of his 1959 collection “50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong” — a “customer is always right” moment for pop music — suggests a broad democratic crowd, immune to second-guessing. But not even Elvis would have believed that. Today, the title has been parodied so much — self-deprecatingly (Blues Traveler's “1,000,000 People Can’t Be Wrong”), hubristically (“100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong”) — that whatever truth it once contained in Elvis- case is buried beneath geological layers of cynicism.
  • Michael Phillips reviewing the movie "Phantom Thread" for the Chicago Tribune in an article in which he demonizes today's nitpicking audiences and entitled ‘Star Wars‘ nitpickers, Picasso naysayers: When audiences fail artists" as published by the Kaplan Herald on 20 January 2018.

• But what struck me most was his quality of genuine humility – humility mixed with intense determination. He was, innately, one of the most introverted people who had ever come into the studio, but for that reason one of the bravest, too. He reminded me of many of the great early blues singers who had come to SUN, in fact his insecurity was so markedly like that of a black person. On July 5, 1954, he sang everything he knew – pop stuff, spirituals, just a few words of [anything] he remembered. He watched me intently through the glass of the control room window – I was no longer taping, and in almost every respect this session had to be accounted a dismal failure, but still there was something. Every so often he looked up at me, as if for approval: was he doing all right? I just nodded and said "You're doing just fine. Now just relax. Let me hear something that really means something to you now." Soothing, crooning, my gaze locked into his. Finally they decided to take a break. It was late, he was clearly discouraged, and everybody had to work the next day. Maybe, I thought, they ought to just give it up for the night, come back on Tuesday and try again. Scotty and Bill were sipping Cokes, not saying much of anything. I was doing something in the control room and, as Elvis explained it afterwards, "this song popped into my mind that I had heard years ago, and I started kidding around with [it]. It was an up-tempo song called "That's All Right, Mama", an old blues number by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. "All of a sudden," said Scotty, "Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. I think I had the door to the control booth open so I stuck my head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And they said, 'We don't know'. 'Well, back up,' I said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'
  • Producer Sam Phillips, on what took place at the SUN studios on July 5, 1954, the day the unusual and timeless musical talent of one Elvis Aaron Presley was discovered, as detailed by writer and Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick in an article on the Independent, published on October 30, 2015.

• I just love Elvis' singing. And I am his biggest fan
  • US soprano Marguerite Piazza, in an interview with the AP, after meeting Elvis on October 1, 1957

• Forty years ago, I had the privilege of studying for a doctorate, at this same university, where you and your wife studied law and I still feel nostalgic about Harvard, about Elvis Presley, about Edgar Allan Poe, and about Martin Luther King. So I toast to you, Mr. President.
  • Chile's President Sebastian Piñera, toasting US President Barack Obama, at the VIP state dinner he offered his opposite number, held at their alma mater in March of 2011, and as recounted and published by Josh Gerstein of POLITICO 44, also present at the dinner.

• I would go on a minute's notice. I love Elvis Presley,
  • Jeanine Pirro's reply to a Fox's panelist asking her if she would go see Elvis as a hologram.

• I had successfully shoved all those fantastic automob iles to the back of my mind and had curtailed ‘‘if only’s’ to a passing moment of idle retrospection until I was looking at the autographs on the Autographs Ink stand at the Memorabilia show and realised that if I had kept the cars and had the foresight to have an autograph book handy throughout my career I would be heading into the sunset with my future assured. For instance Elvis Presley. His moniker changes hands at a cool couple of grand and upwards. In 1960 and 1961 was in a karate dojo with him in LA and even got to do a kata or two with him at his home in Perugia Way. And I had a morale advantage over him. He kicked me on the chest once and was terribly apologetic. That was the time when I should have moved in on him and demanded a couple of dozen signatures. In fact, why didn't I whack a load of 10" X 8" in front of him and say “Sign”. LOL
  • Ingrid Pitt,Polish-British actress, author, and writer best known for her work in horror films of the 1960s and 1970s, in her own online page,

• Once upon a time, all we knew about Elvis was that he sang like a motherfucker; and that was all that mattered; you know, when you gas up and you go to pay inside the gas station and you hear Elvis singing Surrender, (1961), you know that the mystery of that guy, was everything; the voice, and the mystery, and the not knowing; and I think the great thing about anything that you hear over the waves is, you don't want to know too much, you know?
  • Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin, explaining to critic Rub Trucks why he loves the mystery of the southern United States, and his debt to Elvis, whose music influenced him the most, as published on the Village Voice, on June 3, 2008

• After I won my first Masters in 1961, I received an invitation telegram from Elvis. A telegram, not as easy as a text is today. We were playing in Los Angeles and I went to the set of ‘Blue Hawaii’ where Elvis was finalizing the filming. He saw me walk in the room and yelled ‘CUT!’ The gentleman he was, Elvis went and put a jacket before he came to shake my hand. Elvis was just starting to play golf and asked for a few swing tips. He gave me a practice swing, and I swear, it was like a cow giving birth to a roll of barbwire. So, I adjusted his grip and told him he really had to use his hips during the downswing. He said, ‘Baby, you’re talking to the right man.’ And gave us all a little shake. Memories are the cushions on life, but what a gentleman he was. He was my age, yet died so young, a tragedy, a man who could give EVEN so much MORE to society.
  • Gary Player, a national of South Africa widely regarded as one of the best player in the history of golf, as reported by Forbes on December 4, 2018 and kansascity.com/sports/golf/article104157116.html#storylink=cpy

• A grade schooler in western Kentucky when Elvis came on the scene, I had grown up with his music and movies. When his tragic death occurred in August of 1977, I was a young pastor in middle Tennessee. The following Sunday, my sermon was titled “Heartbreak Hotel.” That morning I shared my grief with many others. Elvis was the type of person such that many who had never seen him in person felt they knew him — personally. Some folks will declare with deep conviction that Elvis led many people astray and that he is burning in hell. Others are just as strongly convinced that, by God's grace and a faith he sang and spoke of, he is in heaven. Daring not to judge or speculate, I can simply hope that he is in heaven. I have no answer to whether there will be concerts in heaven, but the Bible makes it clear that there will be plenty of singing.
  • Steve Playl, a chaplain, columnist, college instructor and former pastor writing for the Bristol Herald Courier, on the 43rd anniversary of Elvis death, in an article entitled "A Sunday afternoon eating at Boonies and remembering Elvis", as published in the said paper's August 22, 2020 edition.

• Elvis Presley has been described variously as a baritone and a tenor. An extraordinary compass- the so-called register-, and a very wide range of vocal color have something to do with this divergence of opinion. The voice covers two octaves and a third, from the baritone low-G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension in falsetto to at least a D flat. Presley's best octave is in the middle, D-flat to D-flat, granting an extra full step up or down. Call him a high baritone. In "It's'now or never", (1960), he ends it in a full voice cadence (A, G, F), that has nothing to do with the vocal devices of R&B and Country. That A-note is hit right on the nose, and it is rendered less astonishing only by the number of tracks where he lands easy and accurate B-flats. Moreover, he has not been confined to one type of vocal production. In ballads and country songs he belts out full-voiced high G's and A's that an opera baritone might envy. He is a naturally assimilative stylist with a multiplicity of voices – in fact, Elvis' is an extraordinary voice, or many voices.
  • Henry Pleasants, in his book "The Great American Popular Singers" (1974)

• Growing up, Elvis Presley's quasi-gospel ballad "Crying in the Chapel" was the first secular recording allowed inside their strict "Church of God in Christ" home in West Oakland, California. Ruth, Anita, Bonnie, and June were only allowed to listen to the radio on Sundays and on top of that, it had to be gospel stations. Years later, Anita, reflected on the fact that it was "so unbelievable that someone like Elvis Presley could relate to the story in their song 'Fairytale' and want to record it". She thought Elvis "did it beautifully and was very pleased with his version, capturing the emotion in the song", as he did. Ruth "also spoke positively of Elvis's final album 'Moody Blue' and defended him against charges of any cultural appropriation"
  • About the Pointer Sisters and their love for Elvis music, ever since they heard "Crying in the chapel", a gospel song whose Elvis version their mother liked very much, following an interview with Ken Sharp, for his book "Writing for Elvis".

• One of Elliott's properties is the Rail Haven Inn/Best Western. at 203 S. Glenstone Ave., which has a unique room — one that attracts travelers from out-of-state as well as locals. It's the Elvis Room — where a 21-year-old Elvis Presley stayed in 1956 after a performance at Springsfield's Shrine Mosque. As far as anyone knows, the room suffered no damage.
  • Steve Pokim writing for the Springfield News Leader, in an article published on 13 January 2008 and entitled @Why's it so difficult for Springfield residents to book at Springfield. MO hotels?"

• Think of Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland- It was once just a house, now it’s a shrine.
  • Joshua Pollard, British archaeologist's explanation for why since the neolythic times people have commemorated homes with stone monuments, as is the case in the Avebury henge containing the world’s largest stone circle, in an article published in the New Scientist̪s 10 April 2019 edition

• When I was a kid, we moved from Canada to the US, first to Pasadena, then to Palm Springs. This guy who lived across the street was the PS's airport manager and he really liked us, so he’d tip us off when famous people were flying in. One day, he told us Elvis Presley was flying in at 3 p.m. and if we showed up we could meet him. He let us ride with our bikes on the tarmac and then, this private plane landed, the steps came down and... there was Elvis. We ran towards him and he picked me up and swung me around, hugged my sister, signed autographs, and talked to us. Finally, one of his guys told him they had to go, but as they drove off, he rolled down his window and waved goodbye to us all the way down the road. He was so nice, really cool and it was so great to meet him and shake his hand..
  • Singer Steve Poltz, reflecting on his younger days and on songwriting, in an interview with Tom Lounges for 2ONE9, as published on November 10, 2016.

• The emergent cultural wars between Mexico and the US over rock 'n' roll, however, took a dramatic turn on 19 February 1957 when a comment gleaned from an alleged border interview with Elvis Presley appeared in Mexico's largest newspaper, "Excelsior", in which the rock 'n' roll star was quoted as saying, "I'd rather kiss three black girls than a Mexican." Two days later, a Mexican woman was quoted in the same column as saying, "I'd rather kiss three dogs than one Elvis Presley." At first unnoticed by the public at large, this exchange soon unleashed a torrent of anti-Presley criticism, his records were burnt at the Zocalo, and he was denied radio airplay, all of which while sustaining a powerful backlash against Presley and the mass media itself. Most people now dismiss the remark as completely false, some even attributing it to an act of political vengeance against him. In fact, it had been started by a high-up Mexican tycoon who wanted to contract Presley for a private birthday party, for which he sent him a blank check to fill in as he wished. Presley, according to the story, returned the blank check, so the tycoon, extremely offended, and with the help of a top politician, invented the storyline about Elvis not liking Mexican women.
  • Herbe Pompeyo, of PolyGram Records' Mexican branch, explaining how the first of eventually four Elvis bans (airplay in 1957, stores in 1959, theatres in 1961 and finally entrance into the country, in late 1962), came into being and as referenced in page 42 of the book "Elvis Refried" by Eric Zolev. The tycoon's identity has yet to be disclosed but the politician was thought to have been the 3 term Mayor of Mexico City, Ernesto P Uruchurtu, "The Iron Regent", as he was called, who was in turn the nephew of Senator Manuel Uruchurtu Ramírez, who later gained international notoriety for being Mexico's only passenger at the RMS Titanic.

• Once a year Parkes, a sleepy mining town in rural Australia, explodes into colour and song hosting a five-day festival and extravaganza to celebrate Elvis Presley, now billed as the southern hemisphere’s biggest tribute to the superstar. The town’s transformation extends beyond this year’s Parkes Elvis Festival generating A$13 million (US$9.3 million) for the local economy as more than 27,000 people visited to attend some 200 themed events. "It’s helped the whole economy", noted Parkes Motel owner Andrew Porter of the frenzied growth in tourists. The New South Wales state government is projecting an injection of Aus $43 million (US̩30.6 million) into the wider region surrounding Parkes this year due to the festival, a much-needed source of income amid a severe drought as the event has helped develop Parkes' service economy – and its numbers. This extends to the sporting field with another regular fixture – a rugby game – featuring teams with players wearing copies of his trademark white jumpsuit. The population has increased by four percent to around 12,000 in the past decade, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in sharp contrast to the declining or static trend in other regional and rural towns. Inspired by the Parked Elvis Festival huge success, other small towns have started their own events such as the ABBAFestival in nearby Trundle and the Bob Marley Festival in Kandos, said University of Wollongong Human Geography expert Chris Gibson, who has compiled a database of some 2,800 festivals across the country...
  • Andy Porter and Chris Gibson, as interviewed for the Free Malaysia Today, on the impact of the Elvis Parkes, Australia yearly Festival, as noted on their January 24, 2019 edition in an article entitled ̊"All shook up: How Elvis keeps Aussie outback town alive"

• Steve Sholes, who produced the session, said, “Roll the tape.” And I said, “But I haven't heard the song yet!” And he said, “Roll the tape, Bill!” and I look and the studio is totally black out there. I can't see a thing. I said, “You're kidding!” He said, “No, roll the tape!”. So, I roll the tape and I don't know what's going to happen. And a guitar starts off, and then a bass comes in, and Elvis starts singing. And I still can't see a thing in the studio. And I'm afraid to turn any mikes off because somebody may come in and start playing. All of a sudden, Elvis stops singing and just starts talking. And I say to myself, “This is awful!” because you don't normally put a lot of echo on dialogue. And I thought, next take I'll just turn it down, so we just did the take all the way through. If you listen to the dialogue, the echo matches the effect, because he says, “And the stage is bare, and I'm standing there…”. Later, I said, “How about that echo?”. Sholes said, “Screw the echo, that's a hit!”. And it was done in one take...
  • Bill Porter, RCA`s foremost recording engineer and one of the creators of "The Nashville Sound", explaining to Michael Fermer how "Are you lonesome tonight" (1960) came into being, with the lights totally turned off, at Elvis´ insistence so as to create the best atmosphere possible, but without Porter knowing about it. (Published in MusicAngle.com)

• This was a white kid in the 1950s going on Beale Street, learning from masters of black music like Roy Hamilton, Jackie Wilson and others. He was different, interesting, but not something you felt the magnitude of at first – not until you heard Dewey Phillips playing 'That's All Right' on [his radio show] 'Red, Hot & Blue'. Hearing what he was doing, singing black music with a confidence and a uniqueness, made me and other African-American talents say, 'This guy has something'. And he did! We felt that maybe he was opening up a market that had been not fully opening up to black music, breaking down barriers to a greater appreciation of what black music truly was. That opened up more doors for artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Brook Benton and so many others. We felt that maybe he was opening up a market that had been not fully opening up to black music, breaking down barriers to a greater appreciation of what black music truly was. That opened up more doors for artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Brook Benton and so many others. He was soulfully expressing the songs with an r'n'b flair, showing what black music was through his perspective. What Elvis did for me was cement in my mind the great potential reach of r'n'b and soul music. The credibility that he bought to it, whether he viewed it that way or not, doesn't matter, because this was the net result. What Elvis did for me was cement in my mind the great potential reach of r'n'b and soul music. The credibility that he bought to it, whether he viewed it that way or not, doesn't matter, because this was the net result.This documentary gives the complete picture of the person, his greatness, some of his secrets, some of his ups, some of his downs and an abundance of his power. And people would love to see how much of a production role Elvis had in the music that he made. It was a real honor for us at Stax Records, for [Elvis] to record there. He was as soulful as anyone. He was amazing at whatever he chose to do.
  • David Porter, African American record producer, songwriter, singer, entrepreneur and philanthropist, speaking about the documentary "Elvis The Searcher", an HBO 2018 production.

• I think Elvis was just a beautiful singer He had the swag. He had the sauce.
  • Rapper Post MaloPost Malone, in an interview with Spin, published on 20 November 2017

• The 21st century is beginning to see (and hear) things differently, though, and many of us now take a broader view of Caruso's art and achievement (and thus) when Ben Watt compares the great tenor with Elvis Presley is a sign of more enlightened times. The digital age gives us unfettered access to the whole of music, unfiltered by snobbery and tradition, and perhaps Caruso can be released from the stale old classical ghetto. In his time, he was indeed as good as Elvis.
  • John Potter, UK tenor and academic, as published on Highbrow magazine on 26 August 2019 in an article entitled "As Hip as Elvis: Caruso the Pop Idol"

• I'm customized to do everything I shouldn't do, I've learned all that I know by stubbornness and (the) blue I got my schooling more or less on the street, My eyes have seen a thing or two. And though my heart has made me weary,I like everything about you, yes I do, yes I do, yes I do, yes. I like the way you look, the way that you talk I like the way that you move when you walk, My mind is set on you,My pelvis is on fire And I can't shake it off
  • Michael Poulsen's 2019 song dedicated to Elvis Presley, as noted in an article published on Loudwire's July 26, 2019 edition.

• Elvis was a (Gospel) singer par excellence. On "Milky White Way", (1960), he' got the strength of a bassman and the sweetness of a tenor. The heritage we have in Elvis' gospel music is a gift to the world.
  • Paul Poulton, as published in "Cross Rhythms" magazine ^{[specific citation needed]}

• There was a real threat of danger, a cold war with an iron curtain and there was a Soviet army stacked up on the other side, so those were serious times. He was just another soldier, he was Elvis Presley but at the same time they assigned him in accordance with the needs of the service and unlike others who have gone in the military from celebrity life and essentially used their talents to entertain troops, he was a scout. Despite living in a house "off post", when it came to the field Elvis Presley was not a celebrity and I think his fellow soldiers respected him for his dedication even though he was as famous as he was. When I met him, he was out in the field and he was recognized for his professional performance in the Third Division which I, interestingly, subsequently commanded 28 years later and it occupied the shallowest part of NATO battle front. Elvis' unit and my unit were in that division and we had the toughest job and it was a time of heightened tension. Anyway, we were in this wooded area and I was driving along in my jeep and somebody noted that, there he was. When I walked over to him he saluted and was very proper and what struck me was that he looked just like another GI. Other than the fact that he was REALLY Elvis Presley, he acted, and I saw him, as just another soldier, in the woods, kind of dirty, doing a job..."
  • General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff and Secretary of State, abridged from his autobiography My American Journey and a BBC interview, in 2005.

• The Denver Zoo hopes that 11-year-old polar bear, Cranbeary may be expecting. But to be sure, staff sent a sample of her poop to an expert at predicting polar bear pregnancies – Elvis, a beagle working with the Cincinnati Zoo. It is nearly impossible to determine if polar bears are pregnant through traditional tests, so zoos are trying this new approach. Denver Zoo is one of 17 zoos with possibly-pregnant polar bears that have gathered up samples for Elvis to examine. Elvis has a 97 percent success rate in determining polar bear pregnancy and we are anxiously waiting to find out if Cranbeary the polar bear might become a momma bear this year!
  • Erin Powell and Kyle Clark, reporting for NBC's Channel 9 News on the extraordinary power to confirm polar bears' pregnancies of a dog named after Elvis, as aired on October 26, 2018.

• As to Elvis, some experts believe that the release of music he did not approve in life can reward his fans, but at the same time could end up hurting his legacy over the long term. While alive, he almost always only released music he thought was great but after his death, many of the songs he thought were not, were released on new albums. This is one reason many artists prefer to keep their material under wraps forever.
  • PPCORN, in an article entitled "From Amy Winehouse to the Beatles: Six Controversies Over Posthumous Albums", as published on February 6, 2018.

• i) When you got the last name Presley everybody's gonna get the question, are you related to Elvis? Well, my granddaddy and Elvis' granddaddy were brothers. In fact mine carried Elvis and Gladys down to visit Vernon, his daddy, at the state penitentiary, when he did a little time for altering a check. ii) Mississippi is proud of Elvis. I think his story was a story of somebody that started off with nothing
  • Brandon Presley, Elvis second cousin, born on the same year of Elvis' death, Mayor of Nettleton, MS, and its Public Service Commissioner for Northern Mississippi, in i) an article published at the Washington Examiner on August 26, 2018 and later, ii) as a candidate for the Governship of MS, in an artice enmtitled "Will Brandon Presley — an Elvis cousin — be Mississippi’s next governor? as publishe on the EM tribune May 19th, 2023 edition.

• I would continue to do the Elvis Presley show because it is something that's been in my life for years and I won't let it down,
  • Elvis D. Presley, the Libertarian Party' candidate for Arkansas' 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House's 2018 elections, in an article published on The Daily Dot̪s November 3, 2018 edition.

• "Baby let's play house" and "Don't be cruel"
  • Gladys Presley's favorite songs by his son Elvis, as told to Good Housekeeping reporter Charlie Watts in an interview at the Miss Alabama Fair on September 26, 1956

• It hit home when I turned 42 as that was the age when my father died. I have moments when I wish he had lived to see my children, and I speak to my little ones about him. I tell them who he was and we all love his music.
  • Lisa Marie Presley, wishing her children Danielle, Benjamin, Harper and Finley had met her dad, in an interview with Leah Simpson of Digital Spy, and published on 17 October of 2012

• i) I still find myself captivated by many of Elvis's songs, his style of translating lyrics with music giving the listener the sense that even though he's singing, he's speaking his feelings and living them throughout the song. When I listen to “Don’t,” which he recorded when he was only 22-years-old, I can't imagine anyone else singing this heartfelt song with such an emotional connection to the words. ii)his taste was so diverse. Yes, country, rhythm and blues, black music, but he also loved opera and Bach and Brahms. By setting his vocals in a pop-classical context, I wanted to expose him in a way that he never had the opportunity to — wanted to, but never was able to...
  • Priscilla Presley, explaining her decision to produce the two albums which dovetail Elvis voice with the sound of Royal Philarmonica-

• After what seemed to be an eternity, a baby boy was born, dead. I was desolate at the loss of our child. But then my father put his hand on my wife’s stomach and announced, ‘Vernon, there’s another baby her. At the time Elvis was born, medicine hadn’t advanced far enough for a doctor to predict twins, so his arrival took us completely by surprise. Gladys and I were so proud of Elvis and enjoyed him so much that we immediately wanted more children. But, for reasons no doctor could understand, we had none after him.
  • Vernon Presley on the birth of his only son, Elvis Presley, in a 1978 interview with Good Housekeeping,

• Elvis laughed, cried, worried about people. He had a generous streak as long as the mighty Mississippi and delighted in being able to help people. He could be angry, funny, sad or happy, just like everyone else. He had all these little traits just like other people, but he was a lot more too. He became a part of our lives and even with his closely guarded privacy, he drew us into his life so willingly and lovingly that he was, in fact, a part of each and every one of us. He made us sing because of his songs, he made us cry at every pain, either mental or physical that he bore, he made us laugh at every little grin he gave, but most of all, he made us love because he gave us love. He gave us himself and asked us for nothing in return.
  • Vester Presley, Elvis' uncle, in his book "A Presley speaks".

• I was about 10 years old, the first time I heard Elvis Presley's voice, pouring from my father's car radio, in East St. Louis, Illinois; I can't recall the song, whether it was a ballad or a rocker (but), what I remember is how his voice, that smoldering rumble of a voice, made my skin tingle; I don't know why, but I just loved his voice, his sound just did something to me.
  • Ilva Price, an African American now living in West Memphis, TN, recalling how her father, angry about rumours (later found by "Jet" magazine to be fabricated), that Presley had stolen their music and was a racist, quickly turned off the radio when he noticed her daughter's reaction to his voice, then called him a "cracker", a racial epithet as disgusting as any other, as told in an interview with Boston Globe staffer Renee Graham, and published in that paper on August 11, 2002

• Elvis recorded “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” and, at every show, he played it. The Beatles, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Fats Domino, James Brown —all the big acts who have ever recorded rock ‘n’ roll at one time recorded it. It was the first rock ‘n’ roll song that made me a teenage idol with both blacks and whites. In 1952, it was called race music. What opened the gate here in America for race music was that generation of young white boys and girls, but when Elvis got in, he opened the door that much wider. In fact, all the chords are the same, they're not black and white, unless it's on paper. The music and melodies never change.
  • Lloyd Price, discussing Elvis in Sumdumhonky: Chatting With Lloyd Price, for tyhe Huffington Post on 08/26/2015.

• He was breathtaking, really, it was very difficult to focus..
  • Pat Priest's answer to the question of how hard it was to play a movie scene with Elvis, as told in a retrospective of his motion picture career, held at Graceland in August of 2017.

• i) I realize I'm part of a musical history and I revere the legacy of my predecessors, so, for instance, when playing live I'll do some of their bombs, or say, we play "Jailhouse Rock" as a tribute to Elvis. So why Elvis you ask? Well, I was brought up in a black and white world. I dig black and white; night and day, rich and poor, man and woman. I listen to all kinds of music and I want to be judged on the quality of my work, not on what I say, nor on what people claim I am, nor on the color of my skin. ii) I met Elvis Presley at the Dick Clark show at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, a place where a great musical extravaganza with some of the greatest artists of the day always would appear. We were sitting in the audience and Jackie Wilson had just finished his set and then Dick Clark came out, but before he introduced the next act he wanted to announce someone special had arrived, "Ladies and Gentlemen" The lights went down and all of a sudden spotlights went to the back of the room. I looked around and it was Elvis, He was looking cool and wearing shades. He snatched his shades off as if saying "Hello Everybody!, then came walking down the aisle to his table and he saw Louise, stopped said "Hi Louise. Hi Nikki" and they started talking. I stood up and he said "Hi." I said "Hi, I'm Pepe. It's nice to meet you." I shook his hand. He said something else to Louise, and then said "See you later" and went to his table. By the time I was in Las Vegas, I had already met tons of celebrities-- Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells, Dionne Warwick and Wayne Newton. I also met Ike and Tina Turner. I drank champagne with Adam Clayton Powell and I met Redd Foxx but, when I saw Elvis, I said, now that man's a star. It was a different kind of thing."
  • Prince, answering a reporter on why would he cite Elvis Presley as one of his influences, from an interview with "Guitar World", published in October of 1998.ii) about Prince's former mentor, Pepe Willie, talking in a phone interview on May 12, 2013

• The Prince de Galles has counted among its guests Winston Churchill, Marlene Dietrich Elvis Presley and Pele to name but a few of the long list. It is located in Avenue George V, and it's the eastern neighbour of the Hotel George V. – named after the King of England, who, as we all know, was the father of the Prince of Wales. The two hotels, however, bear no family relationship...
  • Hôtel Prince de Galles's description in the Library of Hospitalities' main publication, entitled the World̪s Greatest Hotels, in famoushotelsorg.

• ( That night) after eleven o'clock, Tony Prince took over on ( Radio) Luxembourg. Dazed, frequently in tears, just quietly playing Elvis records and reminiscing into the small hours, as long as it took him to negotiate his grief. The world stopped for a little while. Not long afterwards, it was time for me to return to school, for the start of my third year, when we were supposed to start taking this education thing seriously. There was some gentle mocking on the part of my classroom peers over Elvis' passing, and it struck me that, for nearly everyone my age (or so it seemed), Elvis didn't speak for them, or to them. It's fair to say that the girls in my class tended to like Abba, Boney M, ELO and David Soul, whereas the boys went for Genesis, Queen, AC/DC and Rush. Elvis was somebody your parents liked, regarded as something of a square. I am not sure whether any of these artists came close to sniffing Elvis shoes, never mind filling them, and in any case nor could they have done; as only Elvis could have unbolted the door, made the impact on life – not just on music – that he did. If the postwar generation wanted to burn, not just forget, “the war,” and not grow up as robotic replicas of their parents, Elvis was the active agent who forced newness through to that society." ii) When in 1972, I was made president of the Elvis Presley fan club, we took 200 fans to Vegas to see him. Parker invited 11 of us down to the dressing room and suddenly there he was, leaning against the wall. He had a black suit on, and the first thing that hit you was how handsome the guy was. He came over and was very polite, and I started to interview him for my show, The following year I went back, taking my programme director Ken Evans with me. Elvis was one of the few stars Ken had never met. To return the favour, when we arrived in LA, he took my wife Christine and I to spend an afternoon with Mae West. She gave us some carrot cake and tea. Elvis yesterday, Mae West today. We were buzzing! Tony Prince for the Guardian, published on 4 December 2016. Unquote
  • i) About Radio Luxemburg's Tony Prince' reaction to Elvis´ death ii) Tony Prince, for the Guardian, published on 4 December 2016.

• My Fellowship took me to the USA and UK looking at local history – my research problem was to ask where will the next generation of volunteers come from to manage our historical societies – what programs have been successfulin “firing up” a passion for local history? From there, it took me to historical societies scattered amongst the “knee high by the 4th of July” corn fields of Indiana, to Nashville where the American headquarters of local history sits between the Civil War and Elvis Presley, to Illinois, to Washington, to Troy in New York State, New York City, London and finally Norfolk. It was a brilliant mix of the “grass roots” to the more established; from country societies to more urban;from entirely volunteer run, to historical societies with eighty staff; from the “can do”culture in the USA, to well funded from the Heritage Lotter and , policy driven programs in the UK.
  • Kate Prinsley, from the Association of Victoria (CFAV),in Australia, recalling her time in the United States as the 2009 Churchill Fellow.

• He was good. I mean, all the girls liked him, and there is a film of that performance, somewhere.
  • David Pristash, author of "Diary of a Special Forces Trooper in Vietnam, 1967," recalling for Brian Albrecht of "The Plain Dealer" the time he saw the then relatively unknown Elvis perform at his alma mater, the Brooklyn High School, near Cleveland, in an article entitled "John Wayne, Elvis and ‘The Deer Hunter: A Green Beret’s Vietnam service was nothing like the movie" and as published in their January 20, 2019 edition.

• My biggest influence because of his charisma and sheer, pure talent was Elvis Presley. He still influences me today, actually, and with the help of the internet I can watch videos of him performing live anytime I want.
  • Canadian Country Music artist Aaron Pritchett, when asked who were his early musical heroes and what inspires him, currently, as published on the 15 January, 2015 online edition on 24Hrs, Vancouver,

• He was in Miss Scriverner's home room with me. She was always bragging about how he would make it big one day. When he won the talent show singing “Old Shep”, she went on and on about it for days. Little did we all know that what she predicted for Elvis would come true in such a huge way.
  • Mary Ann Props, Humes High School, Class of 1953, recalling their home teacher predictions.

• I dont think as far a screen image is concerned, there is no one like him
  • Juliet Prowse in an intervbiew in connexion with the 1993 Elvis stanp.

• Elvis had the biggest impact on me, he captured and embodied the whole thing. He had that rockabilly, rock and roll, pop and ballad thing. He was all wrapped up into one for me. I loved listening to “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” and I just looked forward to each and every new song that came out.”
  • Gary Puckett lead singer of the Union Gap, explaining to interviewer Rob Nagy, how Presley struck a musical chord for him, early in his career, as published by "The Mercury", on September 8, 2014

• He had gone through the divorce with Priscilla, but he was definitely there to work. And this guy could do anything vocally. He could croon with Sinatra or scream with Little Richard. And what (I) admired the most about Presley -- then and now -- was his intelligence. especially when it came to human emotions.
  • Norbert Putman, speaking to the Houston Press, on what it meant to play bass with Presley at his 1974 Stax Studous sessions, in Memphis, as published on August 1, 2013.

Q

• The greatest voice of all time.
  • "Q" magazine judging panel´s laud of Elvis Presley, from a poll published on their March 4, 2007 issue.

• My own musical ambitions were born when I was five, watching the Ed Sullivan Show on TV. When Elvis Presley burst on to the screen, singing 'Don't Be Cruel,' I felt my first sexual thrill, though I didn't know what it was at the time.
  • Suzi Quatro, as noted by brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/elvis_presley.html

R

• Based on our company's recent growth, his items have resonated with shoppers, with overall sales in the previous 52-week period ending January 22, 2017 advancing 26% as a result of sale of products bearing his name alone. His is one of the fastest-growing segments in the beauty industry.
  • David Raccuglia, founder and CEO of American Crew, a subsidiary of Revlon, the US top seller in the men's grooming business, explaining the effect Presley products are having in his company's successes and as told in a WWD article on March 31, 2017

• When I was riding the bus to school every morning, I would usually see Elvis sitting at the corner of Alabama and Poplar, listening to a black man in a chair playing a guitar. He wanted to play and sing like that man. He was a country boy with big dreams. After he became famous he did something to thank every person who ever helped him in any way.
  • Mattie Rainey, Humes High School Class of 1953, on Elvis interest for the blues.

• At age 25, Lennon wrote “Run For You Life,” a jealous, immature rant inspired by Elvis Presley's recording of Arthur Gunter's “Baby, Let’s Play House,” a song written from the perspective of a spurned lover who wants his former girlfriend with college aspirations to return to him. Elvis performed it live with hips a-thrusting, leaving little doubt as to what he had in mind by “house play.” In the last verse Elvis delivers this dire warning: “Now listen to me, baby, try to understand, I’d rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man.” Lennon's song picks up where “Baby, Let’s Play House” finishes, Most disturbingly, at the end of the song Lennon emphasizes his seriousness: “Let this be a sermon, I mean everything I’ve said; baby, I’m determined and I’d rather see you dead.
  • Joe Raiola, Senior Editor, MAD magazine, as published in The Huffington Post on 10 October 2016

• I was a kid of my own generation, so I loved Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Elvis before I was a teen...
  • Bonnie Raitt in an interview entitled "A lifetime in music", as published in the July 31st, 2017 issue of the Houston Chronicle.

• The 2018 Pohottuwa Party victory is a Mahinda Rajapaksa victory. At all election rallies, the former President was cheered like mad when he arrived on the platform. It reminded me of Elvis Presley, who was virulently hated and deeply loved in equal proportions throughout his career. But Elvis did not care, he continued singing.
  • About Mahinda Rajapaksa, former Sri Lankan President, in an article written by Kamalika Pieris and published at the Lankaweb on 30 March, 2018

• I grew up playing sports and listening to Elvis Presley, whose music I favored; in fact, when an opera singer came on the "Ed Sullivan Show", I'd think 'Turn this off,'"
  • Samuel Ramey, the world's top bass baritone, as told to "Opera News", and published in ENotes.Com

• My favourite artists have always been Elvis and The Beatles and they still are!
  • Johnny Ramone's preferences as far as rock music is concerned, as reported in Far Out's January 17, 2022 edition from an 2003 interview.

• Even as a child, I studied him. I watched videos, I read books, I found every song I could possibly find. One of my favorites was a collection of early Sun Records recordings that included outtakes, and I would just listen over and over to the sound of this young, uncertain, shy Elvis continually and frustratingly f*** up the same song over and over again. And Sam Phillips saying ‘don’t get so damn close to the mic, Elvis.’ Just getting to hear that, and getting to hear his voice crack, and something about the nervous laughter of the King himself — I don’t know, it just made me feel like it was OK for me to not be perfect. I loved Elvis so much that I convinced myself that I had a spiritual connection to him. I really thought that when leaned over to buckle my…second daughter into her car seat and I sang ‘Blue Moon’ …and she smiled at me for the very first time. Then I knew I did have a spiritual connection. Even a couple weeks before that, even being invited to this, my oldest daughter, completely unprompted, said ‘I think I have a spiritual connection to Elvis.’ I had never told her — or anyone — that I felt the same for much of my life. So, something about the Ramseys and the Presleys, we got a direct line!”
  • Matthew Ramsay in an article entitled "Matthew Ramsey shares why he feels a 'Spiritual Connection' to Elvis Prersley, as publsehed in iheart muccnews's April 22, 2024 edition

• I had done some soundtrack things earlier in the sixties with him. I never felt Elvis was a man out of time. What you have to understand is that his music never died. You know, at the time, a lot of people were saying he didn’t have a hit record for a couple of years; his career is over. I never thought that at all. It never would enter my mind. Because I know, from the first time I saw him on Ed Sullivan to the days I got to work with him, that this guy could go on forever. The only guy who will stop this guy from going on is himself. That night in 1968 I got the Elvis call. I remember one thing, it was on a Saturday and we all were making a fortune. Double scale. Golden time. Big time. I know this was a little different for Elvis working with us. Sometimes he sang live with us and sometimes he overdubbed. As a matter of fact he sat down at the piano with me a few times for me to straighten out the part he had to sing on ‘Jailhouse Rock.’ We were on the incidental and interstitial music that was all over the soundtrack. What’s more important than hearing Elvis in headphones is that I got to hear him as a human being, having chats, going back and forth. He had a musicality to him. Look, Elvis has innate musical skills. I guess we were all taking Elvis into a different world. It was a completely different thing for him from the A band, or the Memphis band. Just having the Blossoms on the sessions. Elvis loved the Blossoms. He knew Darlene Love and he was now playing with the Wrecking Crew. Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Mike Deasy, Tommy Morgan, Chuck Berghoffer, Frank De Vito, vocal contractor BJ Baker and yoursutruly.
  • Studio pianist Don Randi, on working with Elvis diring the filming and recording of the 1968 TV Special, as told to his Baked Potato club venue in Studio City, in 2008.

• A singer, at work, is usually thinking only about making it through the song without flubbing it. Look what's involved: breathing plausibly, remembering the lyrics, nailing the high notes, staying with your band or chorus, maintaining a soulful facial expression and looking good. You might also be whacking a guitar. And -- because Presley did -- you also have to move, oscillate, arm-wrestle with the microphone, throttle it, skid across the stage on your knees, fling your head back and spread your arms; and then you want to salt it with what you possess of art...he flings his voice up beyond the grip of gravity, and then surrenders, like a skater in a leap.
  • Catherine Rankovic, poet, essayist, instructor, as well as manuscript editor and music and writing coach, as excerpted from her review of Presley`s live performance of "I want you, I need you, I love you", in the "Steve Allen Show", (1956), and as published in "The Missouri Review", Volume XXIV, Number 2, 2001

• Musicians like Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston were strongly rooted in gospel music and in the same vein, many musicians of Christian faith begin their musical journey young. In fact, lessons and performances take place in and around the church.
  • Hindu writer Chatura Rao, discussing Gospel music being a gateway for young professional musicians in her country, over the years, in an article published by The Hindu on 21 December 2017.

• I would have loved to sing a duet with my childhood idols, Elvis and Piaf. And I will soon, thanks to new technology
  • Raphael in an interview with Europa Press, on 06/10/2014

• I've always said I wish my life could be like an Elvis movie, say "Roustabout and "King Creole. And that if "Cold Case" came back today, and we could could reunite, that we somehow were able to discover that Elvis is still alive.
  • Jeremy Ratchford in an interview with the Standard, answering what could be different if CBS's Cold Case,in which he starred, came back in 2018, as published on 27 July 2018.

• i) In the early 1950's I DJ'ed in a radio program called "Hillbilly Bandwagon". This was before country music was called country music. So, one day, a guy walks in by the name of Elvis Presley. This was before he was really famous, age 19, I guess. He had come to plug his records at our station, so I had a brief conversation with him. Of course, I was always very proud to have met him, but my wife when I told the story too often, she finally looked at me, smiled as only a wife can smile, and said "I can beat that, HOG...."", That is how she calls me when she is going to tell me something awesome, and that was when I found out my wife had dated Elvis when she was 16 years old. And now she never ceases to remind me, you know, that if things had gone differently, Elvis Presley would be alive today and anchoring the CBS News ii) Fidel Castro could have been Cuba's Elvis.
  • Dan Rather i) in an 1994 interview with David Letterman and ii) in Townhall, published on the day after Castro's passing.

• We don’t mail Elvis a Social Security check, no matter how many people think he is alive.
  • Jonathan Rauch, author and activist, in a 2017 essay for National Review entitled “The Constitution of Knowledge, as published in the News Tribune on October 14th, 2018

• When I think about my family, I listen to André Rieu, a violinist and conductor who is very popular in Europe ( but), when I think about living like it’s my last day on earth, I listen to Elvis Presley
  • Gabriele Rausse, Director of Gardens and Grounds at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s former home and experimental farm in Charlottesville, Va, in an interview to the New York Times and published in the paper's Sunday Review on March 14, 2015.

• I’m inclined to sympathize with Presley in the controversy he’s stirred up. He’s accused of inciting juvenile delinquents. That’s ridiculous. You can’t tie a delinquent kid to a hit record by Presley. Charges against him are unfounded, unfair, and bigoted. People resent his success. He’ll be around a lot longer than most of them think. And his records have stimulated a controversy that’s helped the whole record industry—we have Elvis to thank.”
  • Johnnie Ray, in an interview in Germany, later published by Variety on its August 21, 1957, issue.

• My mom ans her sisters sang in churches and in 1956 there was an Elvis tour in Arkansas and he asked them to sing back-up for him. Unreal.....
  • Collin Raye, recalling the time when her mother sang for Elvis in Arkansas, in 1956, as told in Center Stage with the stars, Episode 1, on youtube

• Historically famous as the birthplace of Elvis, the small northeastern Mississippi city of Tupelo is now also known as an amazing place to live. Forming a triangle with Memphis and Nashville, Tupelo shares a lot of similarities with the two booming cities – including an incredible musical scene, culinary hot spots, and rich history – but unlike its two unchecked growth neighbors to the north, Tupelo has retained all of its character, charm, and, happily, low prices.
  • Reader's Digest's laud of Tupelo, MS which the magazine listed as one of the “15 Best Places to Move to in the U.S. (Before They Get Too Crowded),” in an article penned by Melissa Klurman as part of its October 2018 US edition.

• He epitomized America and for that we shall eternally be grateful. There will never be anyone else like him, so lets just rejoice with his music.
  • Former California Governor Ronald Reagan, in a 1977 speech, as published in 'http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• One Friday night, Tapp and the "Hee Haw" honchos were flying to Hollywood, with the flight stopping in Memphis. So they were sitting in first class, taking up almost all the seats and on came Elvis Presley with his entourage including Col. Parker, with Tapp now sitting beside Presley. He sat across from them, kept looking and finally said, ‘Why do I know you? Is it from on a show?” Presley told Tapp. Yes, Tapp said, It is ""Hee Haw". “You hear that?? They’re from Hee Haw!!!!” the King told his court. “We stop our show everyday until Hee Haw’s over, then we proceed,” Presley said. “It was quite a compliment,” Tapp said, smiling.
  • James Reany, recalling Gordie Tapp's encounter with Elvis Presley. Tapp was a Canadian producer, entertainer, and better known as the writer of the television program "Hee Haw", as published in IFP Press, on 9 September 2016.

• Because in a team full of rock stars, he is Elvis Presley.
  • About Austin Reaves of Team USA and how he is being treated be treated at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 in Manila, in an aricle published in the Manila Standard's August 28, 2023, online edition.

• I'd already discovered black music with Big Jay McNeely at the Blue Sax in North Hollywood and made the blues-jazz connections, so I wanted to experience this Elvis thing. He was a support act to Freddy Martin at the Frontier, a fancy supper club that we couldn't afford. So I persuaded the guys to pool cash and we came up with $10, then charmed a waitress to let us dine on rolls while we watched the show. From the moment Presley started with “Hound Dog”, I was a convert. It was electrifying, a validation, to see these stuffed-shirt socialites who'd come to see Freddy Martin clamp up in reverence. I thought, Hey, a kid with nothing, from nowheresville, can do this!”
  • Robert Redford, as told to author Michael Feeney Callan in the 2020 bio entitled Robert Redfoird a biography"

• Channeling our inner Elvis with some help from the best in the business. What a night .
  • Jamie Redknapp's 13 April 2022 message to television viewers for an episode of UK's A league of our own.

• There's something a little unsettling, a little frightening, about the best and earliest music recorded by Elvis Presley. I'm thinking about the magical and mystical Sun Records recordings from 1954 and 1955, about the obviously haunting "Blue Moon" and about the lonely, lonely "Tomorrow Night", but I'm also thinking about the more upbeat "Mystery Train" whose haunted history reaches back to Junior Parker, the Carter Family, and deep into the haunted places of American music, both black and white. The music is spare, almost hollow. Elvis's voice is at once both youthful and ancient, exuberant and lost, its echo like a shadow cast upon the ages.
  • Gregory L.Reece, reviewing 'The Land of Grace' a novel by Mike Burrell for PopMatters, as published on September 12, 2018.

• In 1958 at the age of 17 Otis started his professional singing career, briefly touring with the “Pat Tea Cake” band before forming his own band, “The Pinetoppers” in 1959, with well known Macon guitarist Johnny Jenkins. The Pinetoppers performed Elvis songs and country music songs in the Macon area. They also toured on the “Chitlin’ circuit," a network of black nightclubs throughout the Southeast and the white frat house circuit across the Deep South.
  • From blackpastorg's biography of Otis Redding

• In 1968, he moved into Las Vegas quickly. He bought a piece of land across from the Flamingo Hotel. It was 80 acreHe was originally the landlord for that property, and he made millions on that deal. He then shortly thereafter bought an off-strip property, the first one that had ever been done.That’s where the International Hotel was built. It was a very, very expensive property at the time, it was off-strip. The first two people to appear in the show room there were Barbara Streisand and Elvis Presley and that was the beginning of Kirk Kerkorian’s ascension as the largest power broker in Las Vegas.
  • Nevada Senator Harry Reed, at the floor of the US Senate on the death of Las Vegas resident and mega resort builder Kirk Kerkorian, in an eulogy delivered on June 16, 2016

• The first time I met him I was blown away, I just looked at him and said, 'damn, you about the best looking thing I ever did see, kinda wish I was a girl right now, Elvis.
  • Jerry Reed, as noted in theelevisexpress

• He did have talent, that excitement. We knew the effect he had on future singers and players. I ran out and bought a guitar after I saw him.
  • Lou Reed, guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the rock band the Velvet Underground, as noted on elvis-express.com/ology_home.html

• A decision to get vaccinated isn’t made by each of us, individually, looking at available information and making a choice for ourselves. In other words, it’s not necessarily about the evidence. It’s about something bigger. People tend to respond to community norms. If we think about it, it’s somewhat logical. We tend to look to people who we think are either similar to us or who share our beliefs. There have been previous public health campaigns, for instance, that provided information from breast cancer to polio. In fact, in a more unified era, giving Elvis Presley his polio vaccine during a staged photo op attempted the same feat.
  • Jennifer Reich, Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado in Denver, commenting on why people refuse to take the COVID vaccine in an article entitled "Colorado is betting big on vaccine influencers. It’s unclear if people will “like” their message" as published in the Colorado Sun September 1, 2021 edition

• I am a big fan of Elvis music. He shaped the future of rock and roll and I would take my daughter and my mum who is 85 and lots more family and friends to Graceland. It would be a great trip
  • Peter Reid, English soccer coach and former player, in an interview with Jet Party-s Roadshow which included a question and answers session about his favourite places to travel to.

• Then, like Alice through the looking glass, I stepped through a door still bearing a desiccated Christmas wreath, and that's when everything got awesome. Graceland's formal rooms are all white carpet and gold trimmings and mirrors. With its hide-covered furniture and lamps hanging from chains and vines draping a stone wall, the Jungle Room did not disappoint, but downstairs was the real action: a room with three televisions embedded in the walls, a sectional sofa with sequin-bedecked pillows, a mirror-topped coffee table bearing a bizarre porcelain creature of indeterminate origin gazing toward the door, and a billiards room with walls and ceiling entirely upholstered in pleated floral fabric that might have been fashioned by a seamstress on mushrooms. Somehow it felt like more than checking off an item on a bucket list. Maybe it had something to do with a dawning sense that I was moving past the delayed gratifications of motherhood, past the time of putting off what I wanted to do. Or maybe it had something to do with coming full circle, of making a vow just as our marriage was beginning and finally seeing it through just as we were on the verge of being alone again. Mirror after mirror, there I was, right in the heart of Graceland: smiling and smiling and smiling. Unquote
  • Margaret Renkl, for the NYT, in an article published on January 6, 2018 and entitled, "Graceland at last" where the editor of Chapter 16, a publication of Humanities Tennessee. tells the story of the many times she missed going to Graceland even when she was in Memphis visiting her sons.

• In the mid-60s, when Elvis was making those godawful movies and my friends and I were buying albums by the Stones and the Yardbirds, a mate and I would always go to see Elvis on the big screen; we knew the formula and always used to laugh about them afterwards, but what I also remember is what used to happen in the cinema: not long after the opening credits the audience would start talking and laughing through the dialogue – but the second Elvis sang everyone would stop and listen; Elvis' voice had that effect, even when he was considered as a joke by a generation grown up on tougher music and rock musicians who seemed much more rebellious, dangerous and innovative; so, for me, it has always been about the music and even when he was all but lost to us, in those final years, you can still hear that raw passion flare up; and I defy anyone, knowing that he had just separated from his wife and was heartbroken, to listen to "Always on my Mind" and "Fool", and not be moved; you can hear a man whose heart is breaking; listening to the best of his music, whether it be raw rock'n'roll or those genuinely heart aching ballads, confirms for me that Elvis has never left the building.
  • New Zealand Herald's columnist and writer Graham Reid, on his recent visit to Graceland, as published at KIWIBOOMERS.COM

• Take a track like "One Sided Love Affair"(1956), and really examine every nuance of his voice, every caress, every tease and every growl that he lets loose for the song's duration, and you`ll you come to understand that the reason Presley's voice has been so often imitated is because it was unique and, furthermore, fuckin' great; no phony piano intro, not even a puerile lyric could have ever stopped him from turning this song into a real classic; imagine, then, how great it is when Elvis gets to sing material that is up to his standards — like on the Sun Records label song "Tryin' To Get You" (1955) - , probably the bluesiest song on this record, where Presley shows a sense of determination, not just a combination of nobleness and sex, but an expression of guts as well; quite simply, this is a guy who knows what he wants, and knows he's gonna get it, and his confidence – never arrogance –, is so contagious that by the end of the song, you believe it too.
  • Daniel Reifferscheid, reviewing Elvis' first album, for Toxic Universe

• Many of them had camped out overnight, and on the morning of June 7 they filed through the estate's famous iron gates. That day, 3,000 Elvis Presley fans paid $5 to be the first to visit Graceland, the mansion where he had lived and found dead in 1977 at the age of 42. Moving through the gaudy Southern mansion, as Reuters described it, fans saw the trophy building, with its gold records and costumes, the living room's stained-glass peacocks, and the meditation gardens, where Elvis was buried. Paul Simon made a pilgrimage to Graceland in song, and Bruce Springsteen actually leaped over the wall in 1976. But in 1957, it was just a nice, colonnaded mansion in the Memphis suburbs that Elvis, then 22, bought for his parents for $102,500. Today 600,000 people a year visit Graceland, and it lives on in dreams.
  • Elizabeth Renzetti, Canadian writer, for the Globe and Mail, on the 36th anniversary of the opening of Graceland, since November 7, 1991 listed in the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark on March 27, 2006 and as published on June 7, 2018.

• One day, when I was very very young, We ended up playing poker. During the game he casually asked one of his entourage about the new Chrysler car that was released that day and then handed him a wad of cash and said, ‘ Go get one.’ ‘ Any special colour?’ ‘ Nah, I don’t care’ he said ii) Had he done "A star is born" he would have been incredible, like Streisand wanted him to"
  • Burt Reynolds, as reported in the Daily Express 21 Nov 2015 edition ii) reminiscing with Ann Margret and Reba McIntire in her television program "Conversations", on their respective careers.

• I got to meet Elvis, an adorable, sweet Southern boy as charming as he could be. No wonder all the girls fell all over him.He was as wonderful in person as he was on the screen. He didn't want to make some of those films at all, but you know, you have to do what you have to do and now Elvis is gone, we're lucky we have what he did do.
  • Debbie Reynolds, in the 2008 TV documentary "Hollywood: Singing and Dancing".

• Elvis Presley was a legend, even in my homeland of Korea. When I received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Elvis Presley and told me that he was interested in continuing his studies in the martial arts under my direction, it occurred to me that this was most probably someone's idea of a joke; however, several hours later, I found myself seated behind my desk with him, seated across from me. Elvis then told me that it was at Master Ed Parker's suggestion that he contacted me. I was more than flattered, I was overwhelmed. He then insisted on training in regular classes with other students. He quickly realized that students were watching him rather than paying attention in the class so he asked me to arrange a demonstration which would allow the students to view his technique and see that he was attending class as a martial artist, not as an entertainer. I selected a day when a promotion (rank advancement) test was already scheduled and combined the two events. I selected this day because Elvis particularly enjoyed working with children and the student to be tested was a boy. Elvis was very humble. As a student of the martial arts, he was physically strong, his technique was excellent, one of the best. He was a master entertainer and a master showman, but he was also a Master human being. In many ways, Elvis taught me more than I taught him.
  • Sensey Master Kang Rhee describing his relationship with Elvis in www.kanghreecom.

• The 146.5 million cumulative RIAA Album Awards, spanning 101 separate Gold (or higher) albums, makes Elvis the earner of the most Gold and Platinum Album Awards of any artist in the history of the RIAA
  • The RIAA's laud of Elvis Presley as detailed in an article published on its official page and entitled "Gold & Platinum Turns 60, 1958-2018"

• When I was a child of 5 or 6, I loved my little record player, but, other than children's storytelling albums, I owned only two albums — both gospel: Johnny Cash's “The Holy Land" and Elvis Presley's Gospel.
  • Ronda Rich, best-selling Southern author and syndicated columnist in an interview with the Gainesville Times, as published on their December 10 2018 online edition.

• On board I sing a song that Andrew Lloyd Webber and I wrote for Elvis, “It’s Easy for You.” We have a little Elvis interlude. When I was a spotty 15-year-old, Elvis was my hero, and I never dreamt that many years later, he would sing a song that we wrote. When he was in Vegas, we met his music publisher, Freddy Bienstock, and he said, "Oh, Elvis’s always looking for good songs.” This was after Elvis had broken up with Priscilla Presley, and we wrote “It’s Easy for You,” about leaving a wife and child for another woman. In 1977 it came out: It was the last track on the last album he recorded before he died. It's the one song many people haven't heard, but one I think they enjoy very much in the shows.
  • Tim Rice, in an article entitled "When a Two-Time Oscar-Winning Composer Puts on a Show on Luxury Cruises as published on their 21 February 2019 edition.

• As far as rock, he was the boss...
  • Charlie Rich, in an interview with YouTube-

• I want to thank Jim Carrey, one of my biggest fans, then Will Smith, my Mama, Elvis Presley, J. Cruz, Cece, Power 106, my girl, my kids and Eddie Murphy."
  • Rapper Rich The Kid, thanking those sho influenced him, in an article for HotNewHipHop's March 20, 2019 edition

• I owe Elvis Presley my career and the entire music business owes him its lifeline...
  • Cliff Richard, as noted in iheartelvisnet

• Good records just get better with age. But the one that really turned me on, like an explosion one night, listening to Radio Luxembourg on my little radio when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, was “Heartbreak Hotel”. That was the stunner. I'd never heard it before, or anything like it. I'd never heard of Elvis before. It was almost as if I'd been waiting for it to happen. I'm supposed to be asleep; I'm supposed to be going to school in the morning Then, “Since my baby left me” – it was just the sound. It was the last trigger. That was the first rock and roll I heard. It was a totally different way of delivering a song, a totally different sound, stripped down, burnt, no bullshit, no violins and ladies' choruses and schmaltz, totally different. It was bare, right to the roots that you had a feeling were there but hadn't yet heard. I've got to take my hat off to Elvis for that. The silence is your canvas, that's your frame, that's what you work on; don't try and deafen it out. That's what “Heartbreak Hotel” did to me. It was the first time I'd heard something so stark. Then I had to go back to what this cat had done before. Luckily I caught his name. The Radio Luxembourg signal came back in. “That was Elvis Presley, with ‘Heartbreak Hotel.'” sh*t!
  • Keith Richards, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• As I tell my kids now, ‘No, I didn’t know Abraham Lincoln.’ But Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr, I had a chance to meet, and know. But I missed Elvis and I regret that. I was too young when he died.
  • Lionel Richie, in an interview with the Las Vegas Journal, published on February 7, 2018.

• Elvis was huge in the fifties, had his troubles in the sixties, but he came roaring back in the seventies, when he was huge all over again. He took over Vegas and made the town his own. When he was playing the Hilton, everyone was happy because business trickled down from this show to everywhere else. I'd only met him in passing, but people kept saying he was a big fan of mine. I was flattered but never really believed it. Then one night, when I'm on stage at the Sahara, there he is, with his girlfriend, Linda Thompson, and they are heading for the stage. The audience goes nuts, and all I can say is "Elvis it's great to see you. Looks like you got enough gold around your neck to sink the Titanic. "He laughs and his eyes tell me he's feeling no pain. "Mr. Rickles" he says, "I have a poem I'd like to read in your honor". And I said "Thank you, Elvis. I really appreciate it. Please do". The poem is flowery and no one knows what it's about, so when he's through I say: "Elvis, we love you. You're a genius and a gentleman for gracing my stage. Now, do me a favor, take your chain, belt and cape and go home."
  • Comedian Don Rickles in his autobiography "Rickles' Book" published in 2007.

• My orchestra shall always aim to create a vibrant atmosphere bringing Sostakovich, Ravel, Elvis and Sinatra together.
  • André Rieu, Dutch violinist and conductor best known for creating the waltz-playing Johann Strauss Orchestra, as noted in an interview with Cafebabel, published on June 7, 2016.

• Although many people have a hard time defining charisma, they believe they know it when they see it. Most will agree that certain historical leaders, say like Presidents Kennedy, FDR, Ronald Reagan and leaders of social movements, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, as well and celebrities like Elvis Presley all had charisma. But when it comes to the specific political leader that people support, charisma may be in the eye of the beholder. Charismatic leadership, as theorized by sociologist, Max Weber, was primarily in the relationship between leader and followers. According to Weber, certain followers are drawn to a particular leader and imbue that individual with charisma. An emotional bond forms between leaders and followers, and as long as the followers are happy with their chosen, charismatic leader, all is well. One thing is certain, however. In order to be considered charismatic an individual has to have the ability to connect with and “captivate” followers. So what is the common element that underlies charisma potential? It seems to be the ability to communicate emotionally to others – to be able to inspire them with emotions communicated nonverbally.
  • Ronald E Riggio Ph.D, for Psychology Today in an article entitled "Is charisma in the eye of the beholder?", and as published on their December 25, 2018 online edition.

• A Graceland expansion would mean economic growth. Representatives with Elvis Presley Enterprises told the council that this decision would be a big deal for the city, with local impact over the next 30 years expected to be $9.3 billion dollars.
  • Siobhan Riley for the Fox Broadcasting Company in an article dated December 18, 2018 and entitled Elvis Presley Enterprises proposes plan to expand Graceland

• On my radio show, I recall hearing Elvis Presley's “Heartbreak Hotel” playing on my Aunt Babe's radio. It was my most impactful musical memory. That happened when I was six and it just slayed me. Nothing would ever be the same.
  • Steve Ripley, founder of The Tractors, as quoted in his obituary published on Taste of Country-s January 6, 2018 edition, which also mentions he named his only son Elvis.

• For me, he was always "Saint Elvis", so when I had the chance to sing in Las Vegas at a luxury hotel and as back up to the Smothers' Brothers act, I immediately rushed to the Hilton, where he was appearing. Just his entrance was out of this world, indescribable and peerless, and, as singer he always pushed the envelop, an amazing performer all the way to the end".
  • Spanish rocker Miguel Rios, in his biography "Cosas que siempre quise contar" (2013)

• I never quite “got” Elvis until after his death, but now I fully understand people's fascination with him. That man could really sing. He reinvented himself more times than David Bowie and I remember dancing to this song with the most beautiful woman in the world.
  • BBC radio presenter Nick Risby, speaking about Elvis' singing in Can't Help Falling in Love, in his opinion one of the top 20 songs of all time.

• I thought Janet Leigh, who played my part in the movie, was beautiful and that Kay Medford should have done the mother. Maureen Stapleton is a brilliant actress, but she’s not funny and Kay was funny. Somebody else should have played the Elvis Presley part. That’s my opinion, but who the hell am I?
  • Chita Rivera telling a "Variety" reporter what she thought could have been better casting, as far as the "Bye Bye Birdie" film, which was in turn based on a Broadway play she hadf starred in, as publkiched in the November 2, 2020's edition of "Variety"

• i) It was the highest rated documentary ever, catchin a 43 % share, until Monica Lewinsky interview by Barbara Walters. ii) If I wanted to have someone come to my house to entertain my family for the Thankgiving holidays, I would choose Elvis.
  • Geraldo Rivera, i) speaking about his 20-20 show on Elvis0 last days and ii) during a segment of The Five, broadcast on Thanksgving Day, 2021, on the Fox network.

• He was a kind, very nice, honest and beautiful person. He had a lot of heart and that’s why he sang so nice.
  • Larry Rivera, singer-songwriter from the Wailuā Homesteads on the East Side of Hawaii's Kaua‘i island, who played the guitar in the wedding scene filmed near the Coco Palms Hotel, in the 1960 Paramount production of "Blue Hawaii" as noted in his obituary published at BIGISLANDCOM's February 1, 2023 edition.

• I went to the cinema to see "Loving You" and when I decided to pursue a career in rock, I changed my last name to that of the character played by Elvis.
  • Dick Rivers (born Hervé Forneri, French singer and actor, as noted by IMDB

• My goodness, we all loved him, I met him many times, our children went to school together, he was terrific, a true gentleman
  • Joan Rivers rapping up her 1992 commemorative show highlighting Elvis' movie career

• This friend of mine and I got tickets for a couple of bucks apiece. In fact, was just a kid when a country music show came to Baton Rouge, LA. In the middle of the show, they announced a special guest sensation from Memphis. So this guy comes out in a pink suit – he didn't even have a drummer – and starts jumping around while they're setting up the amp and a big acoustic bass. Then he started in with, “Well that’s all right, mama,” and we all went, “Hey, that’s the song we like on the radio,” because the station was playing it in Baton Rouge. There was Elvis. He did That's All Right and Blue Moon Of Kentucky, the B-side of his first record. We went to the back of the school afterwards, where he had this little Cadillac pulling a trailer, and they were loading the bass and stuff into it. He was talking to some of the country music guys about cars. He was probably 18 or 19, and I was 12 or 13. I'm just looking at him, thinking this guy is really cool and different. Little did we know...
  • Johnny Rivers on seeing Elvis Presley for the first time, in his hometown of Shreveport LA, speaking to Jim Clash, of Forbes on May 14, 2015

• Anywhere in the world, not before, during or after has there been a bigger music star than Elvis Presley. I always wanted to record one of his ballads, but in English, and I chose the title track for his second movie, "Loving you" ...
  • Roberto Carlos, Brazilian biggest music superstar, in an interview published on 26 December, 2014

• Sixty-two years ago Sunday, Elvis Presley took the stage at CBS studios in New York and smiled as a city health official stuck a needle in his left arm. The publicity stunt, broadcast nationwide before Presley's 2nd appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” was meant to convince the American public that the new polio vaccine was safe. It worked. And playing to Presley's demographic apparently helped. About 75 percent of Americans under 20 had received at least one polio shot by August 1957, when the first national survey was taken; this rose to nearly 90 percent by September 1961, according to a 1962 public health report.
  • Karin Roberts, writing for NBC News on the 62nd anniversary of Elvis' polio advocacy, as noted in an article entitled "When it comes to vaccines, celebrities often call the shots", and published on October 28, 2018.

• Here is what is was for me. Elvis came along and this soundwave came out that ran right through me
  • The Band's Robbie Robertson, as noted in Tom Zimny's "The Searcher".

• It's the birthday of the King, as Elvis Presley would have said."
  • Farmer David Robinson Roberto, on milking his farm's 140 cows on Christmas day, in spite of most people taking Christmas off, to be published on the Otago Dailyu Times on 27 December 2017.

• Robinson was a harbinger of an important shift in American life, one of the first of a burgeoning black culture, held in check by legal and social stricture that was about to burst forth and dominate the mainstream. He and Elvis Presley both played black, brought black style into the mainstream and were demonized as polluters before they were lionized as cultural heroes. Would Presley have been possible if not for Jackie Robinson? Perhaps, but it is probably more correct to see Robinson and Presley as historical inevitabilities, as the first cracks in the cultural dam.
  • About Jackie Robinson, who waved to the audience and took a bow on January 6, 1957, as requested by Ed Sullivan on Elvis third appearance at his show, and as noted by writer, ex-baseball player, musician, and journalist Phillip Martin for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and published on blooddirtandangels on April 15, 2011.

• Elvis was the best looking, nicest, most down to earth man I have ever met, funny to say that, but it's true, it was like a guy you went to school with, anyone who spend any time with him would tell you. He cared how he looked, but no conceit. The best gig I saw had to be his concert at Empire Stadium. There was nothing like it beforehand. He was the first guy to rent stadiums. I'd emceed shows, but standing in front of 26,000 people was nerve-racking.
  • Red Robinson, Canada's foremost disc jockey, known for his having introduced both Elvis and the Beatles at their Empire Stadium shows in Vancouver, BC, in 1957 and 1964, respectively, as told to David Wylie, in his program One on one, as broadcast on 16 November, 2016.

• Not only did blacks know Presley, he also knew blacks. “I always wanted to sing like Billy Kenny of the Ink Spots. I like that high, smooth style. I never sang like this in my life until I made that first record—That’s Alright, Mama. I remembered that song because I heard Arthur (Big Boy) Crudup sing it and I thought I would like to try it. Presley was making more money singing rhythm and blues than black performers of the day, with Elvis’s nearest competitor, Fats Domino, expecting to earn $700,000 in 1957. (In fact) Otis Blackwell, writer of two huge Presley hits “Don’t Be Cruel” and “All Shook Up.” confirmed, “I got a good deal. I made money and I am happy.-
  • Louis Robinson, African American reporter, after interviewing Presley for Jet magazine on the racist allegation.

• Elvis Presley had also one Grammmy (single), for a spiritual, Now if Elvis had one, what can I say...LOL
  • Smokey Robinson, on a youtube interview with DJVlad, as posted on February 3, 2023, on his having only won one Grammy as well.

• Elvis was technically fearless and instinctive in his use of technique. In his early material in particular it is as if his voice is finding and creating the lyrics as he is singing them.
  • Cathryn Robson, Senior lecturer in voice and music performance at the University of Westminster, in an article entitled Elvis voice, like Mario Lanza singing the blues, and published on the Conversation on August 17, 2017.

• In "T.R.O.U.B.L.E", (1975), his baritone was still as solid as ever, with its humorously cavernous bottom and its nasal vibrato on top. When he is putting out, reaching for the top notes and shaping phrases with the same easy individuality that has always marked his best work, he is still the King.
  • John Rockwell, reviewing one of his two 1975 concerts at the Nassau Coliseum for the "New York Times".

• It's like if you're playing Elvis Presley and you've only got whatever amount of scenes in the movie, you're not gonna work any less hard on the part because you've got less material. You're gonna be like, 'I'm playing Elvis Presley!
  • Oscar winner Sam Rockwell, on taking brief roles in an interview published by the Indie Wire on 29 June 2018.

• Well, here we go again. Like Elvis in 1968 we eagerly await for the Tiger Woods Comeback Special. We've been here before, of course. Only last month, the former world's No 1 who is now 898th, called off his return at the PGA Tour's Safeway Open just three days before the start of the event...
  • Nick Rodger, writing in the Herald Scotland (28-12-2016), in direct reference to the current decline experienced by Tiger Woods, the outstanding African American golfer who TIME magazine once, albeit too hurriedly, forecast to have the capacity to become a bigger icon than Elvis.

• Just about everywhere we played, it happened. Sometimes it would be more people than other times, depending on the size of the crowds, but after that first time, when there was a riot, Elvis did not invite the girls backstage anymore. I think he learned that it was not a good idea.
  • Jimmy Rodgers Snow, as told to Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick

• Looking at the last century of US history, no other individual can fairly be said to have changed US culture so much while receiving so little recognition for having done so: the gap between what Elvis actually accomplished and the degree to which we understood those accomplishments is far wider for him than it is for any other figure.
  • Author Gilbert Rodmam in his biography, Elvis after Elvis: the posthumous career of a living legend, published by Routledge, London in 1996, p 172.

• When things are happening you don't appreciate them as much as later, like when Elvis Presley made his comeback special, I was in the recording studio and this was an historical milestone. Photography takes you there.
  • George Rodriguez, noted Mexican American photographer as interviewed by Sara Rosen in an article published by Vice on 10 April, 2018 and entitled "Powerful Vintage Photos Contrast Hollywood Glitz with Civil Disobedience"

• I must confess that when Fidel spoke despectively about “elvispreslians”, I felt a conflict within me because since I was a kid, I loved both Elvis and his songs. I felt that more than the music itself, Fidel wanted to criticize the old youth in Cuba, those that did not think like he did. It was a truly awkward moment for me, but I was able to get over it, perhaps because my political hierarchies were always more mature than my musical ones...
  • Silvio Rodríguez, Cuban musician, widely considered his country's folk singer and arguably one of Latin America's greatest singer-songwriters, explaining why he chose, at age 15, to continue being a follower of Fidel Castro in spite of the latter's opinion of Elvis followers, like he was, and of rock music in general, as published in Cuba Debate on August 14, 2017.

• I'm not a singer, and I'm not from the United States. But I randomly listened to country music growing up in England. My dad would play old songs and I was obsessed with Elvis Presley to a point where my family, if it was Christmas or something like that, they'd always get me an Elvis LP. My auntie—who's a Scottish jazz singer— was massively supportive of me liking Elvis. So when this movie came up, I was like, ‘This is the closest I’ll ever get to playing Elvis Presley.’
  • Alex Roe, British actor, telling Coveteur magazine what led him to accept playing a US country singer in the 2018 movie "Forever my girl", in an article published on 19 January, 2018-

• The next frontier for immersive storytelling may be your headphones, thanks to a new spatial audio platform that Vrai Pictures is set to unveil at SXSW next month. Traverse, as the platform is called, allows users to map their surroundings with the help of mobile augmented reality (AR) technology, and then explore immersive audio experiences in their own living rooms. One of the first experiences to be powered by the new platform is called “From Elvis in Memphis.” It allows users to experience his music by walking through a physical space, with Traverse's app making it spatially sound like they're in the studio with Elvis himself. In the middle of a performance, you can walk right up to him. You can also walk up to any of the other band members. The music suddenly shows a dimensionality that was always there but couldn't be experienced. It just needed the creative insight, the right platform, the tools, and the technology to be realized.
  • Janko Roettgers, in an interview with Vrai Pictures founder Jessica Brillhart, as published by Variety, in an article entitled "Spatial Audio Application Traverse to Launch at SXSW With Immersive Elvis Experience", as published on their February 28, 2019 edition

• In 1991, Graceland gained a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, keeping Elvis Presley ahead of his time even in death. The National Park Service now honors the place Elvis called home from 1957 to 1977 when he died. It's very, very rare that a site is placed on the register when its the home of a famous person whose achievements are less than 50 years old, said George Berklacey, chief spokesman for the National Park Service. But the keeper of the national register, Jerry Rogers, felt Graceland and Presley were “an exceptional significance,” Berklacey said.
  • Laud on the importance of Elvis Presley and Graceland by Jerry Rogers, keeper of the US National Register of Historic Places as published by the Commercial Appeal on November 7, 1991.

• So I went to his show and he introduced me as his friend. I went for about eight nights in a row just to hear him introduce me that way. And I found a little way to get backstage before the normal people got backstage and I went back there and he always treated me with such respect. I loved that about him. I remember one night backstage when he said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m going to go play a little blackjack. Why don’t you come with me?’ And he said, ‘You know, I would give anything in the world to go out there with you’. But he thought he would get hurt, and the more I think about it, he couldn't have sat at the table like I did. I judge people by how well they treat me. That's what I loved about him. He made me feel so comfortable and I didn't really know him...
  • Kenny Rogers, in an teleconferenced interview with Jimmie Tramel for the Tulsa World, and as published on Friday, March 17, 2017

• About five or six years ago, I met the guys who bought the so called Graceland West in Palm Springs, CA. RCA Records had acoustically treated the residence and Elvis recorded a few records there. I asked the owners if we could record there, and they agreed to it. We came prepared with songs, set up shop and had most of the “Here to Eternity” record done that first week, but the finality was premature. As a kid, I always dreamed of doing a double-album and that just sort of happened. Stepping into Elvis’ one-time California escape, I felt his influence throughout the album-making process. Shawn Grove and I slept in the home for the majority of sessions. It was all very magical, because we all grew up on Elvis, being from the South and all, and he’s still all godlike down here. As far as I can tell, I’m the first man to sleep in his bedroom since Elvis himself. We recorded in the bathroom, the kitchen, out by the pool. Then Lisa Marie’s bedroom became the production control room. As fate would have it, our stay in Palm Springs coincided wih her own untimely death on January 12, 2023. The night she passed, the ceiling in her bedroom fell...
  • Ed Roland, recounting his band's Collective Soul's recording of their double album, "Here to Eternity" at Elvis' former home at 845 W Chino Canyon Rd, Palm Springs, in an article entitled "Collective Soul channel Elvis, 30 years of shining charm for tour with Hootie & Edwin McCain" and as published in Cleveland Com's August 12, 2024 online edition.

• Elvis Presley press-agented as a singer and entertainer, played to two groups of teenagers numbering several thousand at the city auditorium here, Monday, May 14. As newspaper man, parent, and former member of Army Intelligence Service, I feel an obligation to pass on to you my conviction that Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States.
  • First paragraph of the Roman Catholic Diocese of La Crosse-influenced letter, signed by the Editor in Chief of La Crosse Register's and addressed to the then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on May 16, 1956.

• Oh good, they didn’t send me the photograph of me and Elvis to sign.I get three or four fan letters a week and they all send me that picture of me and Elvis to autograph. I just hate that picture. I hate that dress I’m wearing and the bag I’m carrying. I just wish there were one other picture out there. It was taken in November of 1955, at the Country Music Comvention, in Nashville. He knew who I was, but I didn’t know who he was. I looked to get away from him and he kept following me.LOL. He had that charisma. Some people are just destined for fame. Later, while in NY, one of the movies we saw together was "Helen of Troy". I looked at Elvis, and I thought: he’s better looking than the guy on the screen. He had a magnificent profile, like a Roman coin. At the time, Elvis felt all the tumult about him was very amusing and in fact never really quite understood it, at that age. When I rode with him to Idlewild aiport after the Ed Sullivan Show, these girls were running after the limo and I realised that that was probably the last time I was going to see him. And it was. I once played Memphis and the phone number that he had given me was no longer in service. When he died, I remember just feeling so badly. Later, I realised that he was trapped.
  • Mimi Roman, about her meeting the young Elvis, in an interview with the Guardian, under the headline ‘Elvis kept following me!’ focussing on playing live again at 89, as published in the paper's Movember 29, 2023 edition

• Calistoga up the road was significantly affected by the fire along with other regions like Atlas Peak and Mt. Vreeder, but on the latter there were properties like the reservation-only "Outpost Wines" — known especially for its juicy Zinfandels — that survived. Thankfully the fire didn't affect the recent opening of "The Ink House" on the way to Rutherford, an 1800s house where Elvis Presley once slept and was reimagined as a hyper-luxurious B&B with butler-style service, not to mention plentiful Castellucci wine by the same family and a Bentley house car for dropoffs and pickups.
  • Kathryn Romeyn, in an article which focused on California wine country travel and everything one would need to know to plan a trip to the regions after the horrific 2017 fires, including the 18th century hotel Elvis stayed while filming "Wild in the Country",as published on the Jet Set magazine on February 22, 2018

• At some point on the night of October 22, 2018 the home fans at Old Trafford Stadium will probably sing a round of "Viva Ronaldo". From distant metro platforms to wind-raked terraces, it has been a Manchester United standard of the past decade, an Elvis-riff on those six years when he transformed himself from dazzling gadfly to the best footballer in the world. Until then, this still feels like a homecoming curiosity, a reminder of just how exhilarating that "Ronaldo-as-Elvis footballer" was; and a reminder too, whatever his ultimate destiny, of happier past associations for a player who was for at least three of those years, the best the league has ever seen.
• About Cristiano Ronaldo's first trip to Manchester to play his old team since he joined Juventus AC, as written by Barney Ronay in an article entitled "Ronaldo’s return to Old Trafford a reminder of how life used to be", published in the Guardian's October 21, 2018 edition

• i) Q magazine bravely attempted to name the best and worst singers ever. They did a good job, wisely going big with Elvis as the to choice. ii) There was no model for Elvis Presley's success; what Sun Records head Sam Phillips sensed was something in the wind, an inevitable outgrowth of all the country and blues he was recording at his Union Avenue studio; enter Presley in 1954, bringing with him a musical vocabulary rich in country, country blues, gospel, inspirational music, bluegrass, traditional country, and popular music -- as well as a host of emotional needs that found their most eloquent expression in song; his timing was impeccable, not only as a vocalist, but with regard to the cultural zeitgeist: emerging in the first blush of America's postwar ebullience, Presley captured the spirit of a country flexing its industrial muscle, of a generation unburdened by the concerns of war, younger, more mobile, more affluent, and better educated than any that had come before; (as such), the Sun recordings were the first salvos in an undeclared war on segregated radio stations nationwide. iii) At Sun Studio in Memphis Elvis Presley called to life what would soon be known as rock and roll with a voice that bore strains of the Grand Ole Opry and Beale Street, of country and the blues. At that moment, he ensured – instinctively, unknowingly – that pop music would never again be as simple as black and white.”
  • Rolling Stone magazine, focusing on the importance of Elvis' Sun Records label recordings ^{[specific citation needed]}, ii) published on 5 March, 2007 and iii) as published in 1986.

• Though Elvis seems nearly as much a function of time and place as of talent and personality, his rise was clearly no accident. Peter Guralnick presents Elvis as the vessel, Sam and Dewey Phillips as the catalysts, and rock 'n' roll as a historical inevitability. Now, "Why him?" is what other Memphis boys kept asking in the summer of 1954, when Sun issued his first single, "That's All Right Mama" backed with "Blue Moon of Kentucky". There were a hundred other kids in Memphis with talent and ambition, any one of them as accomplished as Elvis so, again, why him?. To Marion Keisker, Sam's assistant, "He was like a mirror in a way: whatever you were looking for, you were going to find in him. In short, he had all the intricacy of the very simple." This ability to mirror the dreams and yearnings of others is the hallmark of every great star, from Judy Garland to Marilyn Monroe to James Dean. Within two years, Elvis would be one of them.
  • Frank Rose, reviewing Peter Guralnick's "Last Train to Memphis" for Los Angeles Times Book Review̺'s October 2, 1994 edition in an essay entitled "Why Elvis".

• In December of 1968, while punching a heavy bag in a gym in L.A. I hear a voice sing out, 'Hey, Lionel! What's doin'?' And it was Elvis Presley himself. I was in awe of him, but he said he was in awe of me (LOL).
  • Lionel Rose, the first indigenous bantamweight world boxing champion from Australia,recalling, for EIN, the time when he met Elvis just before his LA title defense fight with Chucho Castillo.

• I was really impressed and surprised to learn a lot of things about him,
  • Shep Rose, lead actor in Southern Charm, recommending HBO's Elvis: The Searcher as one of the top documentaries of 2018.

• It had been a sensational interview and I knew I had everything I needed for an excellent story for Rolling Stone. I truly felt a real connection with Paul Rogers and his new band Band Company which gave me the courage to do what I did next: invite the singer to see Elvis Presley, who was performing on the night of May 11, 1974 at the Inglewood Forum. And I knew Rodgers was a huge fan, even trying to sneak into Graceland one time back when he was with his previous band Free. As we made the 45-minute drive to the Inglewood Forum —a huge 20,000-seat arena where the Los Angeles Lakers played— Paul couldn't stop talking about finally seeing Elvis. We parked and I handed Paul his ticket. He looked at it like it was the Holy Grail itself. We walked inside, found our seats and from the moment Presley took the stage, Rodgers could barely contain himself, screaming, shouting and jumping up and down like a kid, acting the way I did when I first saw his previous band, Free, so many years earlier when they opened for Blind Faith. Watching Paul while he watched a then-34-year old Elvis do his thing felt like an out-of-body experience. It was like some perfect circle. When the lights came up and as everybody was exiting the arena, Paul saw various members of Led Zeppelin along with Peter Grant, who by then managed both Bad Company and Led Zeppelin, going backstage. I knew I wouldn't be able to go there myself, but I didn't really care, all I wanted was for Paul to get to meet his hero. However, we were stopped by a pair of burly bodyguards guarding the backstage entrance. I tried to explain to them that this was Paul Rodgers, but they weren't bulging. Eventually, we had a message relayed backstage and when Peter finally came back out, he told Paul he couldn't get him in. If Paul was hurt by being treated so selfishly —it felt as if Led Zeppelin wanted an audience with the King all by themselves— he didn't show it. Paul was still jubilant so when we returned to the hotel, that's when Paul told me, “I’ll just tell my friends I talked to him anyway." He had purchased a souvenir booklet and would use that as evidence though Paul and I would always know the truth.
  • Excerpted from Steve Rosen's article entitled "Behind the curtain: Taking Paul Rogers, (then frontman for the UK supergroup Bad Company and formerly of the band Free) to an Elvis Presley concert in Los Angeles, as published in Rockcellar Magazine's March, 6 2015's edition.

• Few have probably heard of him unless you're a serious fan of Jewish cantorial music. But if you have, you know he's the equivalent of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Luciano Pavarotti -- a singer to be remembered forever.
  • About Yossele Rosenblatt, as written by Ina Jaffe for NPR in an article entitled "The Cantor With The Heavenly Voice" and published on their September 6, 2010 online version.

• Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland, is behind me. I just went on a tour throughout the crib. Very enlightening. Elvis was a legend, an icon. As we all can see, me and Elvis had a lot of things in common. His ranch is Graceland, mine is Promiseland. I love the planes. I love he was a hustler. He was a man amongst the people. I’m doing something different today.”
  • Rick Ross, after his visit to Graceland, in a podcast broadcast on Novenber 6, 2014.

• It was a nice shot of adrenaline for him..
  • Matt Ross-Spang, reviewing Elvis recording on American Studius, as released in the 5 LP set and box set "Memphis", whuch he helped mixed, as published in NPR's September 3, 2024 online edition.

• His 2019 election victory took him from popular buffoon to prime minister just like Elvis’ comeback TV special in 1968, which crowned him the undisputed king of rock ‘n’ roll. However, after a year, the name ‘Boris’ suddenly no longer sounded like a buddy, but now carried the same contemptuous undertone as ‘Maggie’ , the last person in office who was customarily referred to by her first name. Once the brand has become a dirty word, there is no turning back. The fact is Johnson is now in the ‘Fat Elvis’ stage of his career
  • Robert Rotifer's take on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson,as noted by the Express on its February 15, 2022 edition in an article entitled "Boris branded 'fat Elvis' in brutal German media take down"

• I was contacted, not all that long ago, by the son of a military officer who was at the time the military attache to Prime Minister Harold Holt. He told this story just before he died to his son who told me that his dad was in Harold Holt's office and Harold was struggling with popularity and the anti-war movement. The officer said to Harold Holt “what you need is an Elvis Presley. Get Normie Rowe called up”. If the Prime Minister says something is going to happen then there is a pretty good chance it is going to happen".
  • Normie Rowe, Australian singer, telling Noise11.com in 2015, about his being drafted as a political ruse to help the popularity of Harold Holt, the Australian Prime Minister whose death by drowning in December of 1967 was never confirmed.

• After Maria Callas, Elvis Presley is the #2 of the Holy Trinity for taking blues, gospel and spirituals, and sexing them together while also desexualizing the more rough-edged and raunchy root ingredients (ie: removing the black stigma) to make it into rock n' roll and music for the masses. Elvis had an undeniably great voice and incredible moves...
  • Drew Rowsome, writer, musician, editor and pop culture critic, in an article entitled Elvis Presley: the second of the Holy Trinity

• Even as a kid, I knew music was central to my personality. Like many of us, I recognized that it could also be my source of income after I saw Elvis Presley on The Tommy Dorsey Show. When he made it so big, all us Southern boys thought maybe we had a shot, too.
  • Billy Joe Royal, as noted in www.billyjoeroyal.com

• In Bedford there’s probably more chance of seeing Elvis than seeing your local GP.”
  • Charles Royden, Deputy Mayor of Bedford, speaking about the shortage of general practitioners in his locality, a market town in England and as published on Bradford Today's May 19, 2022 edition

• David Trimble was a huge fan of Elvis Presley and his favourite film was "King Creole", The song used during the tribute, "Trouble", is the most well known song from that film and was used to reflect his wide range of interests.
  • Radio & Television of Ireland,' rejecting the allegation of bias by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland on account of the song's inclusion in a tribute to the Ulster Unionist Party leader, Good Friday Agreement architect and joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize's passing in July of 2022, as reported in EXtRA.AI's February 18, 2023 edition.

• As he stepped back into the ring, singing as if his life depends on it, you can feel the visceral thrill as this underdog eagerly reclaims his title. It paid off in spades, rejuvenating his career and proving that, as pop culture spun on its axis, even its most stalwart participants could change gears and reinvent themselves. It wasn't quite Ali vs. Foreman, but as 1968's highest-rated television special, it was close.
  • Writer Joel Rubinoff, on the 50th Anniversary of NBC's Elvis special, which was broadcast on 3 December 1968, and as published on the Record, on January 7, 2018.

• He was a really, really, really good looking guy who could really sing, Elvis is the definition of IT. He is one of the people that I owe for choosing a life in music.
  • Darius Rucker, American R&B singer and songwriter who first gained fame as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of rock band Hootie & the Blowfish, in an interview with Gracelandcom.

• We three became four again when my sister Loree, who had entered a convent just a couple of years before me decided to return to the outside world. It was later transpired that it was the nuns who had decided Loree should return to the world. In fact, as a novice she had refused to surrender her Elvis Presley vinyls to Mother Superior. Later, (Our own) Mother became convinced that the Good Lord might have had a different vocation in mind for Loree.
  • Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013 speaking about his sister Loree' devotion for Elvis in an article he authored, published on October 20, 2017 in the Brisbane Courier, and entitled "Corporal punishment and humiliation were rife during Kevin Rudd’s time at a Catholic college"

• Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman's "Viva Las Vegas"(1963), was custom-written as the title song for Elvis Presley's 14th film, a rollicking tribute to the city of gambling given a spirited performance by Presley and his session musicians; strangely, it remained an underrated Presley song for a long time, finally beginning to gain some recognition from an unexpected quarter when the "Dead Kennedys" recorded it in 1980, their radical recontextualization of it helping the song to an independent life beyond its origins; on its own, it can now be appreciated as a tribute to Las Vegas that probably deserves to be the city's official anthem.
  • William Ruhlmann, reviewing "Viva Las Vegas" for AllMusicGuide.com, before the Office of the Mayor of Las Vegas requested Elvis Presley Enterprises to allow it to become the city's official song; the price demanded by EPE was too high, so Las Vegas remains, to this date, without an official song.

• After his show, Sammy Davis Jr said he would arrange for my wife Joyce and I to see the best entertainer in Las Vegas which, considering Sammy´s fame, was quite a compliment (Once at the show), the audience was enthralled as the singer sang songs of every genre. And that evening I became a fan of Elvis Presley. Even today, particularly on Sundays when we do not get to church, Joyce and I listen to Elvis singing gospel songs.
  • Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, as cited in his memoirs "Known and Unknown", published by the Penguin Group (pp 128-29)

• They decamped to Munich in June 1979, and he had just checked in at the glittering Bayerischer Hof Hotel and stepped into the bath to wash away the travel grime, when a melody came to him. It was a hiccup-y rockabilly number, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It had affectionate elements of the recently departed Elvis Presley, who had been a major vocal influence on him. Calling for assistant Peter Hince to fetch him an acoustic guitar, he wrapped a towel around his body and began to bash out the skeleton of what might be the most uncharacteristically simple song he ever wrote, which took him five or 10 minutes, doing it on the guitar as he did, and in one way it was quite a good thing because he was restricted, knowing so few chords.
  • Jordan Runtag, for RollingStone magazine, on how Freddy Mercury came about to writing Queen's #1 hit 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'

• Entertainment-wise Elvis Presley played a big part for me because I'm out kicking my foot across the stage, but Elvis Presley did the same thing I do. He can get away with it. (It) kind of opened the door for me, along with B.B. King and all the guys who have come before me (Chuck Berry, Little Richard) who set a trail for me to come through the door. Now I'm one of the top five who are left to do this and I thank God for putting me in this position. I never thought that I would be an icon as the leading role of the blues cats, man, especially the black blues cats. I never thought I'd be here.
  • Bluesman Bobby Rush, in an interview published by the Huff Post on 6 February 2015.

• In the '50s, listening to Elvis on the radio in Bombay – it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me. I suppose what's interesting about rock and roll is it was the first cultural phenomenon that was about, for, controlled by and made by young people. And your mother didn't like it. Certainly my mother didn't, though she got used to it, eventually. In fact, I think Elvis was the one who got to her.
  • Sir Salman Rushdie, UK/Indian novelist and essayist as published in branyquotes.com

• For me it goes back to Elvis. The reality is, my experience with Elvis and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ as a wonderful revelation is exactly the same experience that Paul McCartney had, that Keith Richards had, that Mick Jagger had, that they all had because they're all just sitting in England wondering what they're going to do. And Elvis comes over the airwaves and changes everybody's life.”
  • World renowned rock photographer Ethan Russell, describing his early years as an eleven year old kid in San Francisco, and as published on September 23, 2015 in the online edition of "The Townsman".

• It's funny – because we didn't talk a great deal about him. That was one thing we never got around to. When I played Elvis, in 1979, then in 2001, a lot of people said to me “Boy, you must be a great Elvis fan”. When you play a real person you have parameters. When you play a famous person that everyone knows, now the parameters become very finite. It's your job to go right up against the edges of those parameters. I said I worked with him, as a child, in 1962, but I did not know that much about his career or anything. I remember him distinctly, because I worked with him for two weeks on the movie and most of it was with him. I saw him off-camera a lot. But in 1979, I learned about him. And when I learned about him, I became a pretty decent Elvis fan. But nothing like Quentin, he probably knows everything about him. He knows about his music, he's probably seen all his movies. Yeah, so someday I'll say hey, tell me some of your feelings about Elvis.
  • Kurt Russell, from an interview with Sebastian Haselbeck, a writer for the Quentin Tarantino Archives' who asked him whether he and Tarantino had discussed Elvis during the shoot of "The Hateful Eight", as published in the QTA' online page in March of 2015.

• I'm a big Elvis fan, so I went to see him when he was playing in Las Vegas and, after the show, I was invited up to his room to meet him. I was very excited so I blurted out: "Why did you make all those stupid movies?" I couldn't believe I've said that and felt so embarrassed but Elvis just said, "Last thing I remember I was driving a truck" So now every time I say something stupid, I think of Elvis."
  • Rocker Leon Russell, talking about the time he met his idol, after starting off his concert in Denver, on April 26, 2015, with Presley's cover version of Ray Charles' "I got a woman"

• I had met him on a few occasions, but we hadn't spent any time together. One night in 1971 after a show at the International, I went backstage, where he was with a group of his buddies discussing where they were going to eat. He spotted me and called me over. 'Hey, man, you ever have a peanut butter and banana sandwich, on white bread?' "I thought he was putting me on, so I played along. 'Love 'em,' I said." 'Great, man! You're coming with us!'"'Where we going?' I asked. "'San Francisco, brother" So we flew out of McCarran Airport on Elvis's private jet, landing there about an hour later. There were eight of us, and he did the ordering. An initial round of sixteen sandwiches was sucked up in minutes, washed down by gallons of lemonade. I had one. After the meal, we got back on the plane and flew back to Vegas. Once we were in his suite, he decided he wanted to watch a Western movie. A projector was set up and a 1930s oater with Hoot Gibson began. As i saw it, Elvis and his crew were whooping it up like real cowboys, and I wondered what the hell I was doing there. Then the guns came out. Elvis packed a 1942 Beretta 9 mm pistol given to him by General Omar Bradley, with the others having revolvers. He fired the first shot into a wall, and everyone followed suit as if mimmickimg the action in the movie, where Gibson was chasing a bunch of bad guys and trading shots with them. I thought a couple of live rounds would've been it, but then Elvis started overturning furniture, and the guys divided up into two sides. I ducked behind a couch as everyone hid behind cover and traded shots. They aimed high, but bullets can travel through walls, and who knows where they could've wound up. Within a minute, the "Gunfight in Suite 3000" was over and every­one repaired to the bar to get loaded, pun intended. I stayed a while, but I couldn't hear a damn thing because I was temporarily deaf from the gunfire. But I love Elvis. He was unique for what he was, he was statuesque"
  • Actor Gianni Russo, in pages 117-118 of his autobiography entitled "Hollywood Godfather: My Life in the Movies and the Mob", published by St. Martin's Press. The Baretta being mentioned, a 1942 Model M1934 9 mm Corto Caliber Pistol (Known as .380 ACP in Modern Day) was later gifted by Elvis to his tehn girfriend Barbara Leigh and she auctioned it in 2018, for US$51,000, the buyer being the Graceland Museum where it can be now seen.

• It seems like since the early days of rock and roll, there's been a uniform that's consisted of jeans, T-shirt and black leather jacket," she says. Elvis Presley, though, served his version with a twist: He was very much influenced by African American style on Beale Street in Memphis and incorporated everything from shiny suits to the poet-sleeved shirts his mother made for him into his wardrobe. But Presley wasn't exactly one for playing by the rules
  • Meredith Rutledge-Borger, associate curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, tracing the origin of 2017's rock outfits in an article published on October 17 2017, on FASHIONISTA.

• To have two cycling riders of the calibre of Kelly and Roche emerge independently of one another within the space of four years, is akin to the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, producing a second Elvis Presley shortly after the first. It is a most astonishing accident of history.
  • Barry Ryan, a cycling journalist and author of the Ascent, referring to Irish superstars Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche, as reported in the Irish Independent on October 7, 2017.

• Elvis Presley summed it up perfectly when filming the musical "Roustabout". The director, John Rich, wasn't particularly impressed with his entourage hanging around and playing practical jokes on one another. When Rich approached him about his traveling companions clowning around and disrupting, he didn't back down from his director. He told Rich, "When these damn movies cease to be fun, I'll stop doing them." Cheers, Elvis. Couldn't have said it better myself.
  • Peggy Ryan complaining about the political madness arising out of the 2016 Presidential election in an article entitled ""It Finally Happened: Politics Has Ruined Everything Fun"", published in The American Thinker on October 3, 2016

• There were maybe thirty people in the room and he walks in and the first thing that happens is our eyes meet. He's probably fifteen feet away from me and then he flings a grape that hits me right between the eyes, in the forehead. I didn't talk to him that night other than when he came over and knelt down while apologizing. So he then joined the rest of the people in the room and so I took my cue and left. Elvis had qualities that no other human being has, had, will have. Some of them are so hard to describe because the charisma, the qualities that he had were almost not of this world, you know. They were, a lot of times, angelic. But it was his innocence that really impressed me. His biggest joy was in the giving...
  • Sheilla Ryan, recalling the day she met Elvis in Las Vegas in 1972, as told in an interview published in EIN's website page, on March 31, 2016.

S

• Although the beachside hotels on the bay supplemented most of the older hotels, El Mirador maintained its status, primarily because of the iconic cliff divers, or clavadistas, who dived from a platform outside the hotel more than forty meters into the water below. The classic image of cliff divers in Acapulco was immortalized in popular culture worldwide by the film "Fun in Acapulco" (1963), in which Elvis Presley plays a former acrobat, down on his luck and stranded there.
  • Andrew Sackett in his essay "The Politics of Development on the Mexican Riviera", as included in From Holiday in Mexico by Berger, Dina, Duke University Press Duke University Press, 2009.

• Every time he'd appeared on Letterman, he'd had to change his act. Written down, worked out, pre-approved by the production staff, his sweet improvisational melody was sliced and diced into a sampled, discordant riff. He just didn't come across. And he hadn't yet figured out what to do about it. At least not until that twelfth appearance. His ghost appearance, resonating forever in the memory of the Ed Sulli­van Theatre, there, center stage, near Elvis's swiveling hips. Another really big show, never to be seen.
  • Mike Sager, recalling the time comedian Bill Hicks's monologue at the David Letterman Show was removed from the broadcast until that point in October 1, 1993, the only occasion where a comedian's entire routine was cut after taping' in US television history —, as noted in an article entitled "The Gospel according to Bill Hicks" published on April 10, 2017 at the Stacks online page. Unbeknownst to Sager, that censure, on Hickñs 12th appearance at Letterman's show, coincided with what took place on precisely Elvis 12th appearance on national television, when he was filmed from the waist up only, the happening taking place, as the writer did notice, at the exact same place, the Ed Sullivan Theatre, then CBS Studio 50.

• Elvis Presley was more influential as a performer than any other musician in world history. In some respects he resembled other influential performers, including the famous Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) and the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886). Like them Elvis was exciting, charismatic, and enormously successful. Unlike Liszt and Paganini,however, Elvis did not compose any of his own music, yet the ways in which he performed the songs he sang transformed twentieth-century popular music worldwide. At his best, was most influential as a Southern White singer who introduced audiences throughout the United States and around the world to Black American music, especially to rock ‘n’ roll, a form of rhythm and blues. He was also influential because he combined in his performances elements from different American singing styles, including gospel, rockabilly, country-western and standard' pop numbers; he even employed bel canto singing in a few songs borrowed from Italian music. His stage persona was extremely influential as well, simultaneously glamorising, as he did, rock music and making it seem ‘dangerous’, thus even inspiring aspects of punk rock in the 1970s. Later, his performances as a touring artist and a Las Vegas entertainer contributed to the birth of glam rock.
  • Michael Saffle introduction in The Musical Characteristics of Elvis Presley, written in 2009 at the request of Government of the Hong Kong's Special Administrative Region.

• We finished a take and the phone rang and it was one of Elvis's associates, a guy I had met through Chet [Atkins] many times. And so this associate of Elvis says "Buffy? Elvis just recorded your song, "Until It's Time For You To Go." By this time I was pretty much over Elvis. When I was thirteen, Elvis was fresh. He was young. He was healthy and beautiful, and he was sexy and a natural musician. He was everything. He was just everything. But, it was just a total surprise as Elvis had by then already gone into kind of a different style. He no longer had that young rebel thing going for him. But when he recorded "Until It's Time For You To Go," it was just amazing. It was as if Santa Claus had said yes to coming to your birthday
  • Buffy Sainte-Marie as abridged from the 2018 book "Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography" by Andrea Warner.

• Bill was about 16 when he drove from Blanco, Texas, to see Elvis Presley play at the then Municipal Auditorium. And when he found out the show was sold out, he climbed a tree to try to get into a window. He saw Elvis there in the window so Elvis motioned to him and asked him, 'What are you doing up there in the tree?' And Bill Wittliff explained , and Elvis Presley tore out a paper towel and wrote to the ticket taker to let these three boys in. They're friends of mine. We have that piece of paper on display at the Wittliff Collection.
  • Hector Saldana, Texas State University's curator fornWilliam D. Wittliff's Collection in San Marcos, TX, as published in KERA NewsJune 11, 2019 edition.

• I was publishing a book with the title "The case against Muhammed", dealing with the founder of Islam, from a critical point of view, and many people were asking me "why do you do that? And my answer was always "because you are asking me". Because you wouldn't if the book had been called "The Case against Elvis Presley". You would accept any criticism of any historical figure, you will consider it as freedom of art, of research, of opinion, but in the case of Muhammed, you say "The Prophet is the Muslim's world last stone of identity, so why do you attack HIM, let him in peace". And I then always answer my Muslim friends, that maybe he became the last stone of their identity because they left him in peace, alone, for fourteen hundred years.
  • Egyptian writer Hamed Abdel Samad, in a speech at the Folkemode, on 17 June 2016, in the Danish town of Bornholm.

• Often overlooked, probably because of his immense popularity and mega-star status, Elvis was an extremely generous and compassionate human. I remember an appearance by Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show on a Sunday night while my grandmother was babysitting me. Sitting in a rocking chair and looking over the top of her glasses while she was knitting she uttered, “That boy is going places”. I was 7 or 8, she was 60 something and that moment is etched indelibly in my mind. Hey Nana, you were right.
  • Edward Samarak, in a letter to the Editor of the Mystic Stamp Company following the publication of an article dated 28 October 2017 and entitled "Elvis’ Polio Vaccine Raises Immunization Levels"

• Shortly after midnight, arriving at San Antonio International airport on Hugh Hefner ‘Playboy’ DC-9 and wearing a long coat with white fur trim, he was greeted by fans before his manager, Col. Tom Parker, took him away in a black limousine to an unknown hotel destination. Fans, when interviewed, felt that if he looked that good when he traveled, that they could only imagine what he will look like on stage. He didn't disappoint. During the concert, a lady who was bitten in a fight over a scarf he threw into the crowd was later taken to the hospital where she was given a tetanus shot from a physician who thought the whole thing was humorous, particularly as the lady said her attacker could be identified by a bald spot on her head, which she had, in turn inflicted, on her....
  • From the archives of the San Antonio News, as published on 9 October, 1974.

• I suppose you'd had to call him a lyric baritone, although with exceptional high notes and unexpectedly rich low ones. But what is more important about Elvis Presley is not his vocal range, nor how high or low it extends, but where its center of gravity is. By that measure, Elvis was all at once a tenor, a baritone and a bass, the most unusual voice I've ever heard.
  • Greg Sandow, Music professor at the Juilliard School, as published in "The Village Voice".

• I found him to be a gentleman. Elvis won everyone over. It’s true that Elvis was glowing. He also said that he wasn’t worried about the rest of his career, that he would like to focus on movies and that he was glad that he had his folks come over to Germany to be close to him. He seemed relaxed and his behavior seemed to surprise those who were covering his stay.
  • Micheline Sandrel, Frech TV annlouncer, reporter and screenwriter who was present at the June 17, 1959 press conference held at the Prince des Galles Hotel, as noted by tapatalkdotcom.

• And to think I only wanted to imitate Elvis
  • Sandro Argentinean singer and actor heavily influenced, since age 10, by Elvis, vocally, in the way he looked, as well as stage and movie wise. Unlike many of the entertainers Presley inspired in Latin America and because he did not tour during the 1960's, Sandro was one of the few who were able to actually witness Presley performing at his best, in his case, on November 10, 1971, at the Boston Garden. Sandro was also touring the Boston area, at a smaller venue.

• He was the greatest. In fact, he was the most charismatic individual I have ever seen both off and on the screen, he was the kind of person who could not walk into a room and not stop whatever was happening in that room. Every person, man or woman would turn to look at him, he was that magical, There are no words in the vocabulary, unless it is that he had magic.
  • Singer Tommy Sands in an interview published by youtube by Alan Eichner.

• At the start, I listened to my older brother's collection of Paul Anka and Elvis Presley records. When the Beatles arrived, at home it became a fight between my brother, who loved Elvis and I, who loved the Beatles.. but we both stayed the course....
  • Manuel Sanguinetti, lead singer of the Peruvian super-group Traffic Sound, and formerly a member of Los Hang Ten's, on how he acquired his taste for early rock, in an interview with Movistar Música's Marshall, taped on November 22, 2017.

• What Presley accomplished was a fusion of modes, not theft
  • UK journalist Kelefa Sanneh, as quoted by Glenn Kenny in a New York Times article entitled, "‘Reinventing Elvis: The ’68 Comeback’ Review: Fully in the Building", as published on their August 15, 2023 edition.

• I just wanted to be like my dad. He was absolutely charming, adorable and irresistible. I looked at him the way other people looked at him, like if he was Elvis. I was like: ‘Man I want what he’s got!’ I didn't realize I was born with it.
  • Carlos Santana, in reply to a question as to how he recalls growing up in Tijuana, as published by the San Diego Union Tribune on 22 September, 2016.

• He liked to do the bumps and grinds as I did them, and that was basically what he used in his routine from 1957. Eventually, he proposed to me, but I told him if anyone knew about us it would cost him his career.
  • Tura Santana's claim about Elvis picking up on her movies after seeing her at ba burlesque show, as noted on the book "All the King̪s women"

• On stage, any chance I get to put the teeth in and bite people, I will take. “Dance of the vampires" is great if only because it lets itself to be really, really silly. Any character I play has at least one if not three animal images that I use. And for the role of Count von Krolock, I said he's part panther, part eagle, and part Elvis Presley. And Elvis Presley — he's sexy as hell.”
  • Drew Sarich US Stage actor and singer, telling the Moscow Times, on February 4, 2018, how he is preparing for his upcoming lead role in the stage play version of "Dance of the Vampires" which opened in Moscow in early 2018.

• But my generation did not ONLY love America because she defended freedom. We also loved America because for us she embodied what was most audacious about the human enterprise, because America for us embodied the spirit of conquest. We loved America, because for us, America was a new frontier that was continuously being rolled back, a constantly renewed challenge to the inventiveness of the human spirit. My generation, without even coming to America, shared all of your dreams. In our imaginations, our imaginations were fueled by Hollywood, by the great conquest of the western territories, by Elvis Presley, and you probably haven't heard his name quoted often here -- but for my generation, he is universal.
  • French President Nicolai Sarkozy, during his speech at a Joint Session of Congress,delivered on November 8, 2007, explaining how Elvis and American values influenced all French people born in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Second World War, as was his case.

• There's more chance of Elvis Presley being Chancellor of the Exchequer than John McDonnell. I've never come across such financial illiteracy."
  • Savvas Savouri, the chief economist at Toscafund Asset Management making a point of the futility of backing John McDonald for the post of UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, as reported in the Financial News on January 8, 2018-

• While touring Memphis, I was in the dressing room and my knee went and I crawled into a ball and couldn’t get up. I was carried off by a big security guy called Michael who’d once played for the Miami Dolphins. I heard he had an important boss but he didn’t tell me who his boss was. But the next day his boss called me. It was Elvis Presley. He came on the phone singing "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing", down the line. ‘I love that song, man. I hear Michael has been looking after you and that you’re a great guy. And you need to come over to the house’. he said. I was stunned, and got ready to go to spend a few days with Elvis and his girlfriend Ginger. But the next morning I heard on the radio Elvis had been taken to hospital and died. Years later, I began to think I must have dreamt the whole thing. But I met Ginger at a dinner in London, and she said ‘Elvis had been so excited at the idea of spending a few days with you.’ I had tears in my eyes when she said that.”
  • Leo Sayer, on the day he almost met Elvis, in an article published at the Sunday Herald, on April 6, 2017.

• Very proud that my father will receive the Medal of Freedom. That he’s getting it with Elvis is icing on the cake.
  • Christopher J Scalia, upon learning his father will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously, in a twit written on November 10, 2018.

• i) I didn’t like Elvis before I went to work with him in the summer of 1969. I mean, I didn’t know him. I just didn’t like his music. I was into black music mostly and jazz so when I went to work for him on the first rehearsal I told my ex-wife, I don’t think I’m going to do this gig, but I’m going to go down and check it out, see what’s going on.’ I came home that night and said, you gotta come down and hear this guy tomorrow night.’ She said, you’re kidding.’I said, no, you got to come down and hear him.’ She came down the next night to the rehearsal and she walked away a fan. It was that immediate. When I walked in and I heard him I said, Oh, oh, I believe that I've been missing something. ii) In some ways Elvis was Conservative and in other ways he was very Liberal. He wasn't someone that was following some political line, you know he'd figure out for himself what he thought was right
  • Jerry Scheff, Elvis' bass guitarist from 1969 to 1977.

• It just murdered....
  • Rob Schneider's zxany description to fellow SNL alums David Spade and Dana Carvey on how well his old high school impersonations of Elvis had been appraised by those who saw him do them, teachers and stidents alike, as told in their August 28, 2024 "Fly on the Wall" podcast

• Iconic celebrities never die because they are, in fact, a booming licensing business. Albert Einstein t-shirts. Elvis Presley guitar straps. Marilyn Monroe finger puppets. (These are all real.) If Samuel Jackson can wisecrack his way through Captain Marvel, then a hologram Tom Petty could perform a concert on behalf of a spirits brands at thousands of bars – at the same time. Muhammad Ali could teach your Orange theory boxing class. Julia Child would be in your kitchen with you to co-cook a Thanksgiving turkey on behalf of Butterball. Gone are the days when a celebrity can only be in one place at one time.
  • David Schwab, writing for Forbes magazine in an article entitled "2030: The Future Of Influence" as published in their March 20, 2019 edition.

• Andy, you have to do me a favor. I have this crazy idea. You know, you always do the paintings of stars ( like Elvis and MM) ? Well, when Maria (Shriver Kennedy) marries me, she will be a star, so you’ll be painting a star.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger's request for Andy Warhol to create a painting of his then future wife, as noted in an article published in "Essentially Sports"' March 5, 2023 edition and entitled " Arnold Schwarzenegger Gave Ex-Wife Maria Shriver a 42-Inch Wedding Gift Made by Artist Who Painted Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley

• I' the King!
  • Patrick Shriver Schwarzenegger, to reporters as he attended, dressed as Elvis, Kendall Jenner's Halloween bash at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 29, 2023.

• The spirit of Elvis Presley, I feel it.”
  • Trapper Schoepp, after playing “Hound Dog” outside the Zippin Pippin on what was the 40th anniversary of Elvis Presley's last ride on the roller coaster, as published on the Green Bay Press Gazette on 19 December, 2017

• He once rode a freight elevator to avoid fans but just as the elevator doors opened, workers were wheeling a deceased guest out on a gurney. “I hope I don’t leave that way,” Elvis quipped.
  • Valerie Schremp Hahn for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in an article entitled Elvis in the elevator, Clydesdales in the lobby: New Chase tours tell historic hotel's secrets" and published on January 11, 2019.

• Our country faced a similar challenge in the 1950s, when there was widespread apprehension about the safety of the polio vaccine. But when Elvis Presley posed backstage being given the shot before an appearance on the highly rated Ed Sullivan Show, the photo ricocheted across the nation and the world and triggered a rapid increase in vaccination rates.
  • Dan Schnur of The San Francisco Chronicle, discussing President-elect Joe Biden having been vaccinated against COVID on live television, in an article entitled "Show me the vaccine: Steph Curry with the shot", as published in their December 26, 2020

• Elvis, to me, is a symbol of tremendous promise and that kind of American hopefulness, where you can come from nowhere and have nothing and build yourself up and chase that American dream.
  • Patti Sciaifa, member of the E Street band and Bruce Springsteen's wife.

• There comes a point when the voice starts to wash over you. You get inside of it, start to really hear what he's doing, and you realise his singing has this extraordinary, effortless quality to it. Sometimes it's like listening to a stream of honey. It's a very smooth ride, the voice of Elvis Presley. I don't think you focus on the words when he's singing. I think he's doing what bel canto singers do – you don't listen to the words, "just" to the beauty of his voice-. When I say "just", that makes it sound as if he's denying you something else but, actually, that's quite enough.
  • "The Scotsman", review of the album "Love", as published in its 25 June, 2005 edition

• He had a photographic mind, came prepared every day. I would have to say that if you, Carole, if you had ever have to do a scene with him, you be....... somewhat taken back, that's how his sex appeal hit you. His eyes, especially, so seductive...
  • Lizabeth Scott, in an interview by Carole Langer at Janet Leigh's home in 1996, recalling their scenes in the 1957 film "Loving you".

• We went backstage and he told me he used to play me on the jukebox when he was in the Army in Germany. He admired the high tenor male voice – he was a baritone. I was and remain a huge fan of his. He was a phenomenon.
  • Neil Sedaka in an interview for the Nottingham Post, on October 30, 2014

• Little Richard, he was the first one that really got to me. He and, of course, Elvis Presley.
  • Bob Seger as noted in the Seger file, an unofficial web site about the music of Bob Seger, dated June 1999

• Lou Reed, Elvis Presley and Kurt Cobain.
  • Emmanuelle Seigner, wife of Roman Polanski and mother of Elvis Polanski, whom they named after Elvis, in an interview with VOIR's Patrick Baillargeon and published on their 20 de septiembre 2007 edition

• So when the city of Albany came to the conclusion that the house two doors down from my house was structurally terminal after years of neglect, they had to dump a ramp of dirt to allow the excavator to make the climb. It was a thing to behold: The two-track beast would tear away a portion of the front of the house — first the porch, which had been replaced almost a decade ago after it had degraded to a dangerous sag — and then plant its claw deep in the wreckage and haul itself a few feet higher, like a mountaineer with a pickax. By the time it reached the summit, the house had been reduced to a cross-section: see the bedroom, see the attic, see the bathroom where for decades its former residents shaved and showered through the Depression, World War II, the entire life of Elvis Presley and the demise of Skylab.
  • Casey Seiler, for the Times Union, in an article entitled It didn't have to happen, as published in their Friday, June 14, 2019 edition

• He is the Elvis of Racing
  • About Ayrton Senna, as noted by Salon Magazine in 2010.

• Halfway through the show, he asked that the house lights be turned up. After that was done he stated that he had told them not to sell the seats to his back and, since they had, he turned around and did the last half facing those of us that had only seen his back for the first. He was a great singer and showman.
  • Carol Sellers, recalling in Facebook the time Elvis performed at the Assembly Hall, now the State Farm Center in Champaign, Illinois on October 22, 1976 and as referenced in a link contained in an article found at smileplitelicom's October 22, 2018 online edition.

• For any strategy to work, people first have to perceive vaccination as a normal part of life. That is why public health officials, nonprofit groups and major brands are collaborating on nationwide public service campaigns and partnering with celebrities to make vaccine more visible. The model for the celebrity shot dates to 1956, when few teenagers were getting the year-old polio vaccine. Two critical things happened that fall to reverse the trend. First, 21-year-old Elvis Presley got the shot in front of cameras before “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Second, the March of Dimes launched a wildly successful peer-to-peer campaign among teen social groups. In short, it leveraged the cool kids, but it may not have gotten the cool kids without the King"
  • Frances Stead Sellers, Deputy National Health Editor for the Washington Post, in a joint article with Bonnie Berkowitz and entitled " These are the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear as published in their April 22, 2021 edition.

• Elvis would quote Peter Sellers’ lines from "Pink Panther" movies on tour. Things would be going crazy, and he would look at somebody and go, ‘Do you have rhoom?’ " in Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau accent. Or, "Does your dog bite?". Sellers, in turn, was a fan of Elvis, even playing in an Elvis-singing role in his last movie. "The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu"
  • About actor Peter Sellers and Elvis fascination for each other, as told by Elvis' bodyguard, Sam Thmopson, in an article published in the Las Vegas Review Journal's May 10, 2011 edition.

• The book, by contrast to "White Rage", offers an extended view, spanning from pre-colonial plots to relocate Britain's human rubbish, to Thomas Jefferson's notion of “whiteness as an automatic badge of superiority,” to modern use of adjectives like “redneck,” “cracker” and “country boy,” such as in the specific case of Elvis Presley. Isenberg's greatest historical and sociological intervention is not just the idea that divide and stratification exist between races, or that such divisions habit within them, but that it has always been this way. American democracy has never accorded all the people a meaningful voice. The masses have been given symbols instead.
  • John Semley, reviewing for the Globe and Mail, writer Nancy Isenberg's book "White Trash", which according to the reviewer, undermines the myth of American exceptionalism and as published on November 29, 2016

• He valued his fans and he treated them with respect. If anybody had a reason to be arrogant it would be him, but it's a great lesson for other musicians and people in general and that is the better you get, the more humble you should be. His music resonated with everyone and that's what made him so special, like Elvis Presley or Mozart"
  • Jack Semple, Canadian blues musician, interviewed the day after the death of B.B. King, who influenced his career tremendously, and as published by The Leader Post, on May 15, 2015

• They have turned Soweto into a Disneyland for Nelson Mandela. They have tried to make him like Elvis Presley. Now with his death, so many foreigners will be going there, then they will say they have seen the real South Africa. Winnie will be there of course "showing off" how close she is to the poor of this country.....”
  • Writer Kim Sepgunta's, sarcastic recollection of a friend's reaction to the death of Nelson Mandela, as reported on the day after the passing away of his former wife Winnie, in an article published on the Independent on April 3, 2018, entitled "South Africans will pay their respects to Winnie Mandela despite her uneasy legacy"

• I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years – 1954–57 – can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool ii) That was the standard in my house, he's the only rock 'n' roll guy that dabbled in Christmas
  • Brian Setzer, as published in www.graceland.com ii) referring to "The Brian Setzer Orchestra's 13th Annual Christmas Rocks," a concert heavily influenced by Elvis 1957 Christmas Album, on 28 November 2016, as published by the Daily Press.

• It all started when an elderly American woman once asked me: "Do people in South Africa know Elvis?" "Of course we South Africans know Elvis!" I replied. Or do we, really? So, I went on to write a paper and, using a historiographic approach, I attempted to explore how his image was first imported into South Africa, especially during the Apartheid era when there was no television, and media censorship was a fact of daily life. Additionally, I tried to reflect on the impact of the media – then and now – in creating images, fantasies and illusions in constituting the subjectivity of the Elvis of real life and the Elvis of sound, stage and celluloid in the South African musical imaginary.
  • Harry Sewlall, describing the chapter he dedicated to the impact of Elvis Presley in the South African musical imaginary as published in Acta Academica-s Volume 47, Number 2, January 1, 2015-s edition (pp. 54-71)

• Oh yeah, big timeǃǃ
  • Shakira's reply to to New Delhi TV's Prannoy Roy who asked her if she was an Elvis fan, like her father, during an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 16, 2017.

• An economist called Elvis Presley, who's unfortunately deceased now but made a significant impact on economic thought, in one of his master treatises said: 'A little less conversation, a little more action, please. A little less fight and a little more spark...
  • Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister, wrapping up the seminar he had moderated before heads of the world's central banks gathered at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in Nusa Dua, Bali, on Oct 14,

• So Brian, who I was producing then, and I went up to Las Vegas, and we're sitting there watching him and Elvis sings "Runaway", then says that he liked to introduce me to the audience. So, the lights go all over trying to find me, and they can't, until Brian, who is a shy guy gets up and says, "Heeeeeeeeeee's over heeeeeeeeeeeere", and points to me, next to him, in front of the thousands there. So I took a bow. Later we went backstage with him, for two hours and let me tell you, I have never seen a better looking guy in my life.
  • Del Shannon, in a 1989 interview with sportscaster Bob Costas, recalling the midnight show of August 25, 1969 at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, when he and Brian Hyland caught Elvis' act, then met him backstage.

• I met him in New York during his 2nd appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1956. I was just out of the William Morris Agency´s mailroom and still a very junior agent. That night, they held a press conference right before he went on so I went up to him and said, “Elvis, they’re ready for you.”. He said, “Yes sir. I’ll be right there, sir.” I was 24 and he was 21, and I said, “Sir! I’m from the Bronx. You’re the first person in the world to call me sir.” He was the sweetest guy. To this day, I cherish the fact that Elvis Presley was the first person ever to call me sir.
  • George Shapiro, American talent manager and multiple Emmy and Golden Globe winning television producer, in an interview with Variety, as published on May 25, 2018.

• While many people assume it must have been a difficult slog for an Arab like me to gain acceptance in the Hollywood of the 1960s, I beg to differ. They treated me like a God. I had a beautiful house in Bel-Air, under me was this singer, what was his name, tall super nice guy, he was a very popular singer. I could see his swimming pool. Now I can't remember names of anybody, it's extraordinary. Wait, it was Elvis Presley! So I used to look and see if he had girls in the pool. LOL. And then he died young. I was in the Bel Air house when he died in Memphis, and suddenly the house under me was always empty....’
  • Omar Sharif, his memory failing some three years before his death at the age of 83, in an interview with TimeOut Bahrain and published on March 28, 2012.

• i) I spoke to over 140 songwriters whose work Presley recorded, and most remarked about his uncanny ability to capture the essence and make it his own; like a musical geneticist, he drew from every strand of DNA in a songwriter's work, which ultimately helped shape his own distinctive personal interpretation; just listen to the wide stylistic swath of genre-hopping material he recorded during his career – from Junior Parker's amphetamine-paced rockabilly classic "Mystery Train" and the poppin-perfect panache of Otis Blackwell's "All shook up", to the down and dirty blues swagger of "Reconsider baby" and the operatic grandeur of "It's now or never"-; and then there were more controversial and socially conscious anthems ("If I can dream" and "In the ghetto"), and introspective 70's fare like "Separate ways" and "Always on my my mind"; right away, you can hear the breath of a master stylist who breathed new life into every song he cut" ii) Growing up, Elvis Presley's quasi-gospel ballad "Crying in the Chapel" was the first secular recording allowed inside the Pointer Sisters' strict Church of God in Christ home in West Oakland, California. Ruth, Anita, Bonnie, and June were only allowed to listen to the radio on Sundays. On top of that, it had to be gospel stations. Thank God their mom fancied that song. In an extensive 2006 interview one of the sisters, Anita, reflected on the fact that it was so unbelievable that someone like Elvis could relate to the story in their song 'Fairytale' and want to record it. She thought Elvis did it beautifully and very pleased with his version, capturing the emotion in the song as he did. Ruth Pointer, also spoke positively of Elvis's final album 'Moody Blue' and defended him against charges of any cultural appropriation
  • Author Ken Sharp, in his book, "Writing for the King: The songs and writers behind them", as published in American Songwriter.com

• He is a huge fan of Elvis Presley, even naming his own thirty bedroom mansion "Graceland" after Elvis's Memphis home
  • Author Karl Shaw, in reference to Robert Mugabe, in his book "The Mammoth Book of Tasteless and Outrageous Lists"

• The Owensboro Police Department quickly responded to my accident in the Meijer parking lot on Sunday, where my dog Elvis, a purebred, had apparently put my truck into drive and hit another parked car. I posted a video on Facebook, explaining how Elvis had shifted the car into drive while trying to get to some bacon grease on the truck's dashboard. Alas, I had left the truck running and forgot to put the emergency brake on. which explained how the truck then rolled up at least four parking spaces, hitting a car parked nearby. Police said there were no charges, so Elvis and I got off scot-free.
  • Paul Shearn, in a filmed interview with the Owensboro, KY, Police Department, as published in Facebook, on September 3, 2018 and one of many examples showing why Elvis continues to be one of the 100 most common names for purebred dogs, according to the American Kennel Club

• I loved him. There were two icons who changed our life in the 1950's, James Dean and Elvis. He was the first singer who was loved by both girls and guys. He brought us together, boys and girls, a revolutionary, had a profound effect on all of us, culturally, musically emotionally, spiritually, still miss him...
  • Martin Sheen in an 2002 interview for Elvis Lives.

• I used to watch the way he treated so many people with kindness and respect, the way he used to be so grateful to his fans. He used to say, "Shari, when I wait backstage to go on and I hear all that screaming and I know it's for me, well, sometimes I feel as if my head is going to get real big with all that kind of fuss and stuff. Then I think that my dad drove a truck and that but for the grace of God I'd be drivin' one too. You have to have humility, Shari," he would tell me. "You can never forget who put you where you are and how many people would like to change places with you".
  • Sharon Sheeley, songwriter for Glen Campbell, Ricky Nelson, Brenda Lee and her own former fiancé, Eddie Cochran, with whom she rode in a taxi headed for London, on April 16, 1960 which crashed taking Cochrane's life and seriously injuring Gene Vincent and her, in article published in the June 1959 issue of Photoplay.

• I think when I came out of the womb – I've been saying this but I mean it, you're born knowing who Elvis is. The name Elvis is just part of the fabric of humanity. He just is this thing that exists in the air, and contributed obviously so much to music. But I think he is the definition of what's cool."
  • Blake Shelton, as noted by G. Thompson in Popculture.country's February 6, 2019 edition

• Elvis Presley connects Tupelo, MS to the whole world, the opportunities for cultural and educational exchanges abounding. When I went to Germany, I only talked to two types of people there, those that have been to Tupelo and those that want to come to Tupelo. After learning more about the area, a German tour company decided to turn a day-trip detour from Memphis into an overnighter in the All-America City. Looking to the future, I hope to see continued expansion of the Germany tourist market. City officials there have also agreed to pursue a municipal friendship. I think my there trip certainly will justify the financial costs and will pay dividends for years to come.
  • Jason Shelton, Mayor of Tupelo, Mississippi, interviewed both while preparing to leave for Germany, and upon his return, on the occasion of his negotiating the making of Bad Nauheim as a sister city to Tupelo, as published on the city's Daily Journal on July 18 and August 7, 2018, respectively.

• We never saw energy like that coming off a stage before and meeting Elvis afterwards I found him to be a friendly, happy guy. Nice to everyone".
  • Top producer and guitarist Louis Shelton, a member of the Musician's Hall of Fame known for his extraordinary recording session contributions to Ella Fitzgerald and Whitney Houston, amongst numerous others, answering a question on those who inspired him to become a musician, from an interview by John Reid on Jazz Radio.

• At the time, that was in 1972, I thought he was too old for me, but there was this chemistry between us. I felt a lot for him. I got to see him perform in Las Vegas — the greatest performer ever. I'm still really sad we lost him. I wish I could have been a closer friend to help save him. He was truly a kind and gentle man who never truly recovered from the death of his mother.
  • Cybill Shepherd, on her relationship with Elvis, as published in the Sedonas Red News on March 12, 2018

• He was the first person to truly believe in me as a musician and gifted me with my first tour bus. For the album I am doing “The Day Elvis Died” and “I Want to Live Like Elvis". He gave me words to live by as an artist and to this day, I haven't forgotten them. He told me that if anyone forgets where they came from they're never going to get to where they want to go. He also told me that it was the people who make you who you are, so if you stay true to them, they'll stay with you.
  • Country music's T.G. Sheppard, in an interview with the SC Times, as published on September 11, 2018.

• Graham never forgot his home state of North Carolina or the South, rivaling Coca-Cola and Elvis Presley as the region's top export.
  • Journalist Yonat Shimrom's laud of the Reverend Billy Graham, in his obituary and as published in the News and Observer's edition of 21 February, 2018.

• We went in to scout the Hadooshi farm. We were gathering intelligence; there were quite a lot of buildings and compounds across the whole farm. We could see they were antsy. We went up to the gate, breached it. We caught them off guard. This one woman, she was just mean. Every time we walked through the garden, she went nuts. We noticed the garden was freshly dug. We started moving the dirt around, and we pulled up a big square riveted container. When we came across birth certificates, marriage licenses, we knew it was significant. It was like looking for (and finding) Elvis.
  • Staff Sergeant Sean Shoffner, Scout platoon, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, 4th Infantry Division and one of the US Army soldiers who found the hiding place of Saddam Hussein. in reference to the fact the US Army's code name for Hussein was Elvis, as noted in an article entitled "Looking for Elvis" , as published in Esquire's December 13, 2018 edition,

• We all automatically wanted to dress like Elvis, look like Elvis, swagger, strut, and sneer like Elvis – and every snide remark from Aunt Mimi, our teachers, or the newspapers only served to reinforce our new idol's grip
  • Pete Shotton, UK enterprenuer and one of John Lennon's earliest friends in an article entitled The Kings: Elvis Presley and The Beatles as published on the Beatlestory's August 27, 2020 edition

• Many communities have a “this celebrity slept here” story. As a mountain resort, Idyllwild residents can share many but perhaps the most told is the time Elvis Presley spent three weeks there in 1961 to film “Kid Galahad. Visitors, starting in 2018, can now tour "The Hidden Lodge", built in 1947, one of five restored homes on the tour is one of many Idyllwild locations in “Kid Galahad. It’s the first time it’s been open to the public and it’s a lovely, lovely place. It was something the owners couldn’t pass up. The porch where Presley sang “This is Living” in the film is still intact. People will walk up, sit on the railing and strum their hand like they have a guitar. The home is an homage to Presley without going over the top. In fact, the tour is the Idyllwild Area Historical Society's lone fundraiser and usually draws hundreds of visitors..
  • Craig Shultz, speaking about the Idyllwild Area Historical Society's 18th Annual Home Tour, to be held on Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018 at Idyllwild-Pine Cove, California, as reported by the Press Enterprise on September 10, 2018.

• I found him sensitive and very good. He felt he could have done better things. His advisors were very much against doing this kind of straight role and they tried to get him to sing throughout the picture. Obviously, they didn't want him to get off the winning horse. But when I was able to calm him down, I thought he gave a beautiful performance...
  • Don Siegel, commenting on Rollingstone magazine his directing Elvis in Flaming Star.

• My uncle Bob was an Indiana hillbilly. He was the kind of guy who had a clear plastic suicide knob on the wheel of his two-tone Chevy, that featured a photo of a lady in a naughty cheesecake pose. Uncle Bob knew his Rock and Roll and all his nephews were all baptized in the church of Elvis. That early intervention saved me. Pat Boone may get to a higher place, but he should know before he goes that the Holy Ghost will have Elvis playing on heaven's record player
  • John Sieger, after discussing Elvis' powerful and majestic vocals in Crying in the Chapel, as published in Urban Milwaukee on May 17, 2017.

• He was the atomic bomb. Period.
  • Gene Simmons's laud of Elvis following the announcement made that KISS costumes are now being displayed in Graceland's "Influence of Elvis Presley" exhibit, as reported by Broadway World on May 16, 2017.

• This, I think, is as close to the "real" Elvis as we were ever permitted to glimpse during his lifetime, a funny, self-deprecatory star who loved to hack around with his guys, but who had no trouble reeling them back in when they started having a little too much fun. We, at home, watched and understood how lovable so many people thought he was. The show, when it aired, became one of the top-rated of 1968. Most of the TV critics of the time didn't get it, certainly not the way the show's producer and audience did, the critics being, frankly, rather bad stuck-in-the-mud old fogies and tired, bitter conscripts from elsewhere in the newsroom who were about to be superseded in the early '70's by a new generation of TV critics who had not only grown up with Elvis, but with TV itself
  • Jeff Simon, reviewing for the Buffalo News the 5 disc set commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the 1968 NBC TV Special "Elvis", in an article entitled "Maybe the greatest Elvis work has finally been released" and published on December 5, 2018.

• The first time I heard his music, back in ’54 or ’55, I was in a car and I heard the announcer say, “Here’s a guy who, when he appears on stage in the South, the girls scream and rush the stage”. Then he played ‘That’s all right, mama’. I thought his name was about the weirdest I'd ever heard. I thought for sure he was a Black guy. Later on I grew my hair like him, imitated his stage act – once I went all over New York looking for a lavender shirt like the one he wore on one of his albums. I felt wonderful when he sang ‘Bridge over troubled water’, even though it was a touch on the dramatic side – but so was the song. It was unbelievable,and I thought to myself, how the hell can I compete with that?
  • Paul Simon, whose all time favorite song is Elvis' Mystery Train, as published in wwwelvis.netwhattheysaytheysayframehtml

• But it wasn’t until 1958, when Elvis Presley teamed the item with brilliantine and attitude in the movie "King Creole" that the jacket crossed over to Main Street and became a much-copied American staple. Elvis always floated between Ivy League style and serious fashion and the Baeacuta G9 came in some great colors. When Elvis wore it was called the "Jivey Ivy" , which was Ivy League with a twist. After that almost every clothing company in the US copied it.
  • John Simons, UK men's wear retailer and stylemonger, explaining how the Baracuta G9 jacket, first launched in Britain, became famous in the US, then worldwide, as noted in an Yvy Style magazine article dated September 9, 2013.

• He is a huge Elvis fan, his favourite songs being ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Suspicious Minds, and he can move like Elvis
  • About Carter Simpson, alpine skier in the 2019 Ontario's Special Olympics, in an article published in sootodacom, on 29 November 2018 and entitled "Carter loves skiing (and Elvis)"

• By 1979, they were so prolific that Freddy was able to lounge in the bath in the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich, pick up a guitar – not his usual instrument – and bash out this globally successful tribute to Elvis Presley in 10 minutes. We are not worthy.
  • Dave Simpson, reviewing for the Guardian the song "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", which he ranked #17 in his list of the top 50 UK singles by Queen in an article published on 27 October 2018.

• He rarely over-sang when recording, delivering a vocal to suit the song. So, he can loudly accuse in "Hound Dog" (1956), rasp and rage for "Jailhouse Rock" (1957), bare his soul and beg on "Any Day Now"(1969) and sound quietly, sadly, worldly-wise on "Funny How Time Slips Away". (1970). This gift may explain why his music endures so powerfully and why his performances remain so easy to hear.
  • Paul Simpson, in his book "The Rough Guide to Elvis".

• Elvis' songs can be heard everywhere worldwide, which is perhaps why everyone is familiar with his voice. When you hear a deep tuneful voice with a Southern drawl in a rock 'n' roll song, it can't be anyone but Elvis (in spite of that voice actually being that of someone else "successfully" mimicking him).
  • Matthew Simpson, in his article "The Top 10 distinct voices in music", for ask.men (2007)

• Remembering the legend and the super energetic actor who carved an extraordinary niche for himself, especially for his grooving dancing style. He was ahead of his times in everything and was the first among contemporaries to have mastered the internet. He was truly deserving of the title 'Elvis Presley of India'
  • Shatrughan Sinha's laud of Indian superstar Shammi Kapooron the 87th anniversary of his birth in an interview with The Quint and published on October 21, 2018.

• At the risk of being sad for two seconds, I drink a toast to a wonderful fellow who left yesterday and did much for American Music. I knew him for maybe 12 or 14 years and we know, what he did in his career, but I knew him as a man, a gentle, good, fine man, gracious and generous in every sense of the word. Things which people never heard about him helping organizations, and children's hospitals but I knew all about that. He was some kind of cat and I hope God's good to him. ii) I am just a singer. Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture. Life just wouldn't have been the same without him. There have been many accolades uttered about his talent and performances through the years, all of which I agree with wholeheartedly. I shall miss him dearly as a friend.
  • Frank Sinatra i) Words spoken by Mr. Sinatra upon hearing of Presley's death, while on stage, courtesy of Mr. Sinatra's official fan page and ii) http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html and by Houston press

• My heart melted when I saw him in person but when he and my dad met for the taping, they were both nervous...
  • Nancy Sinatra, remembering the moments they shared with Elvis and his father, in Miami.

• You were either brought up on the Beatles or Elvis. I was raised on Elvis, and every song he sang, every film he was in and every move he made is part of my DNA.
  • Jason Singh Australian singer and musician formerly with the band Taxiride, explaining for noiseeleven why he became a singer, as published on their May 6, 2019 edition.

• During that last show in Indianapolis, he was on stage for an hour and a half. He included his own hits, pertinent covers and classic rock ’n’ roll, and there was a crescendo of gospel which was always a showstopper. It was a special show. He sang his heart out. Having only seen Elvis on stage in Las Vegas in previous years in front of an audience of 2,200 people the atmosphere was equally electrifying in front of 18,000, and the whole audience erupted when he announced that amongst them were 250 Brits.
  • Todd Slaughter, President of Elvis Presley Fan Club of Great Britain since August 1967, speaking about the last time he saw Elvis perform, which was also his last, in an interview with the Big Issue published on August 14, 2018

• Elvis Presley has a very definite form of dance rhythm and this may well be what creates the hysteria.
  • Mia Slavenska, Croatian-born prima ballerina and star performer for New York's Metropolitan Opera, in an interview for the Toronto Sun in April of 1957.

• After the show, we were headed out and about 20 feet in front of us, there were Elvis and his crew heading out also. Somebody right behind him yelled...faggot.. Elvis turned around and punched him in the face. Now that was funny..I was really glad I saw him do that. I would have probably done the same thing.
  • Foy Slayton, recalling the night he attended the then 21-year-old Elvis's show in San Diego, on April 5, 1956, as published in the Grants Pass Daily Courier on December 28, 2016.

• Most singers have their idols. I remember Elvis Presley when I was about sixteen, I always said I wanted to do 'Love Me Tender.'
  • Percy Sledge, as noted in brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/elvis_presley_2.html

• It's like Ron Howard trying to be the Fonz. It's hard for an English rap artist to have that kind of a cool "Fonzie" effect to Americans and a wide-variety audience. So either you have to go a comical route or something, a Pee Wee Herman-route. I don't know, something! You've got to come with something other than trying to be Elvis Presley.
  • Slick Rick, UK born rapper, on his struggle to connect the U.K. to America when it comes to hip-hop, in an article published by Billboard on May 20, 2018.

• Each singer (of the so-called folk variety), is recognized as much from its characteristic sound, as from what they actually sing or play, and they manipulate tone colour with a virtuosity that owes nothing to either the classical, or the Tin Pan Alley tradition; one thinks, for example, of the voice of Elvis Presley, an expressive vehicle, shifting from high to low tones, groaning, slurring, and producing breathless changes of rhythm; to many listeners, the voice may have seemed crude, but its folk immediately resided in its crudeness.
  • Christopher Small, in his book "Music, Society, and Education", published in 1996

• I was in Holland and our dressing room was next door to the one being used by the supergroup The Last Shadow Puppets. Anyways, I went to the toilet and who walks in but Alex Turner? He is a hero of mine and, to me, he looked like Elvis Presley...
  • Radio X's Gordon Smart, on the night he met Alex Turner, occasional member of the Last Shadow Puppets, and frontman for the Artic Monkeys

• What's better than Jaden Smith rapping about Elvis Presley and driving around with Harry Potter in the most surreal of ways? Well, Jaden Smith rapping about Elvis Presley and driving around with Harry Potter in the most surreal of ways and with only other voices as his accompaniment.
  • About Will Smith's son Jaden Smith's "U", a song included on his first album entitled "Syre", in an article by Hilary Hughes as published in MTV News on December 28, 2017.

• The medium of TV and the birth of Elvis came at exactly the same time. Before, it didn't matter as much what you looked like, with radio or records. With Elvis, it was the whole package.
  • John W. Smith Curator at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, describing the impact of Elvis during the first-time-ever exhibit of Warhol's "Elvis X 11", as part of a show entitled 'Where is Elvis? The Man and His Reflection' , as noted by Leslie Rubinkowski of wwwelviscomau on June 14, 2003

• I worked in a credit store and he came in to open an account. I asked his name and he wouldn't give it to me if I didn't give him mine first. LOLː Same with the phone, the address. LOL. Anyways, that's how I met him, and then he introduced me to his first cousin Gene, and it all started from there. Years later he and all his entourage were at a Cadillac dealership in downtown Memphis. It was Xmas. He gave each and every one of them a Caddy and, as he was waiting for a special Caddy he had ordered he saw an African American lady who was waiting for her husband to pick her up. So finally he shows up, with a cranky Concord. It was then that Elvis asked her how a lady of her age was s still working. And the lady said that was how all the bills would be paid, rent, etc. So, when his car finally arrived there, he gives her the car he had ordered. With all the commotion, everyone had left, the lady left, left the Concord there, and Elvis was standing in the middle of Beale Street, alone, in the middle of the night. He saw a light in a nearby store, so he asked the African American who was there cleaning to give him a ride home, as all his friends had left, and so had the African American lady, he explained. Willie, that was his name, who didn't know who Elvis was at first, told him that if he waited, he would take him to Graceland but warned him his car did not have seats in the back and that the one in the passenger side, up front, was broken, so Elvis told him he will sit anywhere to get home. Once there he asked him for his address and work number, as he didn't have a home phone. The next day Willie was invited to Graceland and when he came in, he drove there with a brand new car...
  • Louise Smith, the widow of Elvis' first cousin Gene Smith, recalling the time Elvis gave away two cars to two African Americas in less than 24 hours, as told in an interview on January,7 2019, in Memphis.

• A lot of Presley's good stuff was overlooked. Like the NME viewpoint that he died when he came out of the army. I think the opposite, his best stuff came after the army. Look, Elvis was the King right? To me, Elvis IS King 'cos he sustained it
  • Mark E. Smith, as excerpted from a NME 1989 conversation between him Nick Cave and Shane McGowan and dubbed as "The Pop Summit.

• i)The Houston Rodeo people didn't want us to come. There was a message sent to leave the black girls, they didn't need the black girls. And so Elvis responded with, 'Well if they don't come, I don't come'. But he was really upset about it. There was one person in particular who had sent the message. So when we got there, we were greeted by this little blonde in a convertible and she had to drive us around and she was his daughter. So Elvis always made sure he got even. I'm sure he said, 'And I want your daughter to drive them'. But, when it was happening we didn't know. We learned that later ii) When in true form, he was fabulous, his voice and vocal pitch a lot more remarkable than it ever came off on record; in fact, Elvis was a much better singer than could ever be captured; you know, some singers' voices are just too big, and Elvis' was like that.
  • Myrna Smith, singer of the gospel group "The Sweet Inspirations", who performed with Elvis for a number of years in the last phase of his career, as published in i) an interview with ElvisAustralia ii) an article entitled "Elvis, musical prodigy" in www.elvis.com.au, on 6 July 2000

• To me, Bob Dylan always represented rock'n'roll – I never thought of him as a folk singer or poet or nothing. I just thought he was the sexiest person since Elvis Presley
  • Patty Smith, in an interview in 1996 with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and as published on FarOut magazine's November 22, 2018 edition

• It was at age 13, in 1977, when I would discover my real passion while watching the live TV coverage of Elvis Presley's funeral. I liked the immediacy of it all, and I knew right then I wanted to do that someday...
  • Shepard Smith, Fox News principal breaking news anchor, detailing what made him decide to become a newsman, in an interview published a nikkiswiftcom on October 29, 2018.

• They've got signs of Elvis. They got billboards of Elvis and Graceland. There should be billboards of Ja Morant. Elvis is dead… It's over. God rest his soul.”
  • ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, arguing Grizzle's Ja Morant should replace Elvis Presley as the face of Memphis, as reported in Sports Illustrated's April 10, 2023 online edition.

• Elvis Presley came to Weeki Wachee. He could have gone anywhere, but he came here. He was so good looking and he was this total, ultimate Southern gentleman. He had each one of us come up and he presented to us his latest record. He signed mine 'Warmest wishes, to Vicki. Elvis Presley". I always tell the audience before each show that I did swim, as a mermaid, for Elvis Presley and that he was so cute! But so was I in 1961!"
  • Vickie Smith, in 2018, the oldest living performer at the Weeki Wachee Springs's Mermaid show, in an article published at NBC's News Channel 8 on July 31, 2018.

• Older than Red State versus Blue State, older than the Montagues versus the Capulets, humankind’s primal combat is the age-old conflict between the Early Birds and the Night Owls. Early Birds are those who for some reason think a sunrise is one of life’s great experiences. At their helm is Benjamin Franklin, who famously said, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”. Night Owls are those who believe the pleasure of staying up late is exceeded only by that of sleeping in the next morning—or the next afternoon, if it comes to that. Their hero is Elvis Presley, who famously said, “The sun’s down and the moon’s pretty; it’s time to ramble.”
  • Martin Snapp, writing for the University of California's California magazine, in an article entitled "What’s The Deal with Daylight Saving Time? as published on October 30, 2018.

• He was causing riots wherever he went. On May 5, 1955, he was chased at intermission and across the field by a pack of women at Ladd Stadium in Mobile, right after he finished singing, which had been set to start before intermission....
  • Jimmy Rodgers Snow, son of Hank Snow and as told to Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick

• Chris Richards should look up the accomplishments of Elvis Presley. Presley did more to further black music than any artist on the planet. He made it acceptable and paved the way. Almost all rock historians agree. Richard's article quoted an obscure obscenity from one racist musician but did not include even one of hundreds of positive quotes from his rivals of the day, who loved Presley and his uniting spirit.
  • Sonya Lynn Snyder, of Palm Coast, FL, in a letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, published on November 30, 2018, in which she issues a strong critique of the writer's narrative in an article entitled, “With Medal of Freedom for Elvis, Trump sends a message” and dated November 16, 2018.

• In some ways, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) can already be called a success due to its democratic accountability and the active involvement of civil society, but I would like to quote the famous philosopher Elvis Presley, in one of whose timeless hits he asked for “A little less conversation, a little more action -please”. So let's listen to Elvis – and act now!
  • Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, from her speech at the UN on how best to make the SDGs work, as published by Norway's mission to the UN on September 25 2015.

• If one goes to the Licensing Convention in Las Vegas, the three most iconic images of the 20th century are Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Muhammad Ali.
  • Michael W. Sonnenfeldt, US entrepreneur, philanthropist and political activist, as noted in a Bloomberg/Quint article published on their December 15 2018 online edition.

• Imagine growing up in post-war Britain. Ration coupons. Rain-slick streets. Bombed-out terraces of dingy brick. And then, shimmering on the horizon, the prospect of salvation: American popular culture. Who needs spirit-sapping austerity when Elvis Presley can cheer you up?
  • Alastair Sooke, English art critic and broadcaster, in reference to UK Pop Artist Peter Blake's 1959 painting "Girls with their hero", in his review for the Telegraph of the "Pop Art in a Changing Britain" exhibit, by the Pallant House, and as published on February 21, 2018.

• As with Marilyn, Liz and Marlon, Warhol instinctively understood the Elvis brand as an industrialized construct and radically revealed it as a precisely composed non-reality. Of course Elvis offered Warhol the biggest brand of all, and he accentuates this by choosing a manifestly contrived version of Elvis-the-film-star, rather than the raw genius of Elvis as performing Rock n' Roll pioneer.
  • Auction house Sotheby's laud of Elvis, as detailed in their catalogue prior to the sale of Andy Warhol's "Double Elvis" which went under the hammer for US37.5 million on May 9, 2012

• Don't get too hot and bothered. We have heard some expressions of annoyance among the older set over the current teenage rage, a young hillbilly entertainer named Elvis Presley. We were about to identify Mr. Presley more explicitly as a singer, but out of deference to sensitive feelings we chose the less controversial noun. Elvis puts on the most active act on TV, contorting his face and body as though in great pain, whomping the daylights out of his defenceless guitar, and uttering unintelligible shrieks and groans. The latter manifestations, preserved on phonograph records, are selling like mad. A good many parents seem fearful for the future of American youth if it can see merit in Mr. Presley's aggravated assaults on the musical idiom. We would remind such worriers of their own youth. Don't they recall their parents threatening to smash the loud speaker of the battery radio if Rudy Vallee megaphoned the 'Maine Stein Song' through it once again? Or fretting over juvenile appreciation for Cab Calloway's scat lyrics? But somehow the youngsters of yesterday grew up to be the sensible citizens of today, and now Rudy's crooning and Cab's hi-de-hi sound sort of pleasantly old-fashioned. So brace up, parents of '56. In another 20 years Elvis Presley really won't seem so bad, and your grown-up teenagers will be biting their nails over the entertainment sensation of '76."
  • Southwestersontario's 1956 take on the advent of Elvis Presley and predictions of his taming, as published on August 20, 2018.

• So you went into this movie really tuned...
  • Kevin Spacey, who played Pres. Nixon in "Elvis meets Nixon", answering a reporter who said she never liked Nixon or Elvis, as recorded on their press conference on May 6, 2016.

• I’m from the Southern Midwest. My mom was an Elvis memorabilia collector. We were raised on Elvis
  • Actress Cailee Spaeny,who played Priscilla in Sofia Coppola's biopic, as told in Empire magazine's September 23, 2023 edition,

• I think Elvis is the sexiest man to ever walk the earth. I love him.
  • Britney Spears, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• The budget is $269 million and Montpetit thinks it will finish under budget. We’re in the middle of a resurgence in the capital, and called the old train station part of a cultural landscape, a national landscape that once saw soldiers leave for war and return years later and one that welcomed Winston Churchill, the Emperor of Japan, and Elvis Presley.
  • Tom Spears, for the Ottawa Citizen, in an article its old conference centre slowly becoming the Canadian Senate

• He's a great singer. Gosh, Elvis is so great. You have no idea how great he is, really, you don't. You have absolutely no comprehension—it's absolutely impossible. I can't tell you why he's so great, but he is. He's sensational. He can do anything with his voice. Elvis can make some masterful records and can do anything. He can sing any way you want him to...
  • Phil Spector, record producer, the originator of the "Wall of Sound" technique in an interview with Rollingstone magazine in 1969.

• The “Hamilton” fiasco, with members of the hit Broadway show berating Vice President-elect Mike Pence from the stage, brought to mind another New York event from 44 years ago, when entertainers – at least some of them – had a vastly different idea of their place in American culture. On June 9, 1972, Elvis Presley, about to perform a series of sold-out concerts at Madison Square Garden, held a press conference. It being 1972, it was inevitable that he would be asked about what was then a new phenomenon: the politicization of the arts. One questioner asked him, “Mr. Presley, as you’ve mentioned your time in the service, what is your opinion of war protesters and would you today refuse to be drafted? ”Elvis answered: “Honey, I’d just sooner keep my own personal views about that to myself cause I’m just an entertainer and I’d rather not say. Asked next “Do you think other entertainers should also keep their personal views to themselves, he answered: “No, I can’t even say that!” Elvis was right. The cast of “Hamilton,” and the legions of their virtue-signaling followers are wrong. Elvis, unlike them, grasped that audiences might enjoy “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Suspicious Minds,” or “Hamilton” or any other work of art of any genre, without necessarily subscribing to, or caring about, or even knowing, the political views of the artist. . The performing arts are growing increasingly politicized, and that is why it is harder and harder to find apolitical entertainers like Elvis. It will take performers of courage to remember that no one own the culture, and to regain the spirit of Elvis and go back to being simply entertainers. Until those performers emerge, the stage and screen will find their audiences steadily diminishing, and fewer and fewer political enemies in the audience to lecture. If the “Hamilton” cast doesn't want them around, there are plenty of Elvis records to play to while away the evening.
  • Robert Spencer, for Canadian Free Press, published on 22 November, 2016

• It remains a camp and cult classic and was one of my favorite films during my formative years.
  • Multi-Oscar winning Director Steven Spielberg, referring to Elvis' 1963 MGM film "Viva Las Vegas", which he saw as a then 17 year old film student, and as published in neraroramacom

• Even as a young man, that's what Presley sounded, like a man. I wasn't of a culture nor a region that found Presley appealing, and I've never seen a Presley movie through but, a few years ago when in a tribute to him various modern singers covered some of his originals, followed, or enclosed by, his versions of the same songs, I was struck by how much fuller, deeper, and richer his were.
  • Al Spike, explaining to North Africans why Presley's manly baritone rang true, in the web`s "Chicago Boyz".

• I was sitting at a writing desk in a hotel lobby writing a letter, and he just came up to me and started talkin How could you not know who he was even then?. I was friendly and told him I loved his record, Heartbreak Hotel. Then he took me to the gift shop to show me a magazine. This says I'm a hillbilly. I'm not, am I?' he said, 'No, you're a singer.' And after that I was with him and the guys all the time. There wasn't a crowd then, just a few guys. Back then, Elvis was surrounded by the first wave of what would become known as the Memphis Mafia. I was the only woman in the group. Girls come and go but sisters stay forever. This sister lasted forever. We were friends till the day he died. We were like kids in 1956 In the afternoons in Las Vegas we would ride bumper cars at an amusement park and went out for adventures where we could escape the crowds. He loved the fact that I had a light blue Cadillac, and he bought the same car for his mother in pink. One day we drove my car out into the desert, and his cousin came with us. Elvis drove that car as fast as it could go, and I was in the front seat whooping and screaming and laughing. His cousin was on the floor in the back he was so scared. But I'd been a stunt player in the movies, and Elvis couldn't go fast enough to scare me. When they visited Graceland, we stayed up all night listening to Elvis singing and playing the piano. He liked to sing hymns. I didn't know any hymns, but I do now. He introduced me to Amazing Grace." in Los Angeles, where Elvis made movies, I remember going out on a Sunday with him and his friend, actor Nick Adams. Elvis decided to stop in a sports store and buy us bows and arrows. It was just whimsy. We went up to Mulholland Drive and were shooting bows and arrows, and nobody saw us. When his mother, Gladys, died in 1958, Judy came to the funeral. I've never seen anyone as sad as Elvis was. He grieved. He cried continuously. We were in the front hall at Graceland, and he stood there hugging me for a half-hour. He was crying and crying and crying. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. In later years, I attended his Las Vegas concerts, and he would stop the show to introduce me to the audience. I had married by then and so had he. By the time drugs invaded his life, I was less involved I never think of him as he was the last year or year and a half," I think of him as so vibrant and beautiful and funny. When he died, a whole part of my life changed, and I died a little."
  • Judy Spreckels, a close friend of Elvis, and the former wife of Hawaiian based Sugar Baron Adolph B. Spreckels Jr, in an interview with TIME, as published in its August 20, 1958 edition.Elvis' as wel as in aarticle n the Ag published on August 13, 2002

• I'd seen Elvis seated on first class as I entered the plane, so when he came to the coach section before the plane landed and went up and down the aisle signing autographs to all of us there I said “Hey, would you sign this for my girlfriend Allison, you know, Steve Binder manages me,” and he said, “Yes, Yes, I love Steve, Steve’s great,” It didn't then mean much to me (1972), but it was all pretty cool and he was a very sweet guy. In fact, I wasn't a big Elvis fan at the time, but I am now.
  • Australian singer and songwriter Rick Springfield, recalling his meeting Elvis, who he feels is one half of the most celebrated couple of individuals he ever met, the other being Paul McCartney. In Elvis' case, it was on a commercial airplane Springfield's had taken en route to his native Australia but with a layover in Hawaii where Elvis was headed for a vacation in May of 1972. Abridged from two interviews, one published by the AV Club's online page on April 2 of 2016, the other from the Chicago Tribune, dated December 01, 2011, where Springfield recounted how his girlfriend was later crushed, the autograph never reaching her, stolen as it was a bit afterwards along with a a recorder he always travelled with, during that long, long Springfield flight from Los Angeles.

• And nobody can bring it all back like Elvis did. And that is why there are sightings, and visits to his home, and why now there is even a stamp. Finally, Elvis can be licked but he can not ever be beaten
  • Jerry Springer opining on Elvis' legend shortly before the USA stamp was commissioned in his honor in 1993, during an editorial for WLWT5.

• i) FUN ... it is waiting for you, Mr. and Mrs. Everyday American, and guess what? It is your birthright,” writes Springsteen of that galvanic Elvis moment. Springsteen’s familiar stage voice, his corny carny barker way with action verbs, leaps from the page in assessing what Elvis promised: “The life-blessing, wall-destroying, heart-changing, mind-opening bliss of a freer, more liberated existence. ii) Somewhere in between the mundane variety acts on a routine Sunday night in the year of our Lord 1956, THE REVOLUTION HAS BEEN TELEVISED iii) There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king. iv)it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody’s ear, and somehow we all dreamed it. ii) When I heard it, it just shot straight through to my brain. And I realized, suddenly, that there was more to life than what I'd been living. I was then in pursuit of something and there'd been a vision laid out before me. You were dealing with the pure thrust, the pure energy of the music itself. I was so very young but it still hit me like a thunderbolt.
  • Bruce Springsteen, in his autobiography, "Born to Run" published in 2016 ii) explaining why Elvis' version of "Hound Dog" is one of the eight songs he would take ti a desert island, as revealed to the BBC4, in an article published in Rolling Stone magazine's edition of 17 December 2016.

• The way that I would entertain my family was via impersonations, and I had this very strange combination of who I would do: Yasser Arafat and Elvis Presley. That's just who I impersonated as a seven-year-old. My family was like, ‘Oh, these are good,’ and they would all laugh. I think it made them think I would be an actor.
  • Ariel Stachel, Israeli actor currently starring in the off Broadway hit musical The Band's Visit, as published in broadway com, on December 4, 2017.

• Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds and Cant help falling in love.........
  • Stacey of the Stacey & JSbu South African radio duo, focussing on her top two choices for Father's day, as noted in an article entitled " Stacey & JSbu share their Father's Day Playlists", as published on Zambia's East Coast Radio's June 21, 2020 edition.

• I asked him if he wanted me to pull up. He said, 'No.' I said, 'Are you sure? I could leave a welt.' He replied, 'That's OK.' So I belted him. That slap you hear in the film was not put in afterward – that was the slap."
  • Joan Staley, remembering the scene where she was called to slap Elvis across the face as noted in the 2001 book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema.

• Evis called and said that he liked to screen "Rocky", and that he was going to rent a theater in Memphis so that we could watch the film together. And I didn't go. I was shy, believe it or not. And I remember, when he died in 1977, I was doing "F.I.S.T". So now I try to instill in my children: Grab something when it's offered.
  • Sylvester Stallone, recalling the time he almost got to meet Elvis, in an interview with Michael Hainey as published in GQ's September 2010 edition

• Elvis Presley was my rock ’n’ roll favorite, bigger than life to me. No one had seen somebody that looked like that or moved like that, not in staid, suburban, white society
  • Musician Michael Stanley, as noted in Cleveland magazine's April 29, 2019 edition

• If Elvis were playing through a stack of amplifiers, he would be called a heavy metal singer today. The problem is some of the kids who grew up loving everything he stood for, are now journalists who have become what they feared most, parents. No one name says more than his, ELVIS. It roars while others whisper.
  • Paul Stanley, of the band Kiss, in an article published in People magazine's October 31, 1988 edition.

• It's because you reminded me so much of Robert. He was gorgeous, and so are you...
  • Actress Barbara Stanwyck, explaining to Elvis, on the set of "Roustabout", why she didn't like him at first, Elvis' physical appearance somewhat reminding her of her second failed marriage, namely with actor Robert Taylor, from an interview with Sonny West, who was present at the Paramount stage when the conversation took place.

• I credit my sister Cleedy and my father for the Staple Singers, because Pops would have her singing in a minor. Her soprano was different from anybody else's. And Pops had on his guitar a tremolo. He went to the music store one day, and he came back with this tremolo. I was too young to know who he was, but Elvis Presley told me one time, “I like the way your father plays guitar. He plays a nervous guitar.” I said, “Nervous?! That’s the first time I heard that.” But that was a good name for it. Nervous. Our sound was so unique. What helped Elvis was that when he did interviews, he would tell that he got it from blacks'
  • Mavis Staples, American rhythm and blues and gospel singer, actress, and civil rights activist, reminiscing about Elvis̪ roots, as published in elvisin australiacom

• My mom brought me home from the hospital after my birth with the radio off. This, she told me, was so when we got home and she danced me around to Elvis Presley's “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” it was the first musician I would ever hear.
  • Seth Stapleton, writing for the Huron Daily's Saturday, April 21, 2018 edition in the award winning article "A Pilgrimage to the King".

• Return to sender...
  • Words engraved in Freddie Starr's coffin, as noted by the BBC on June 13, 2019.,

• If I fly in, can you arrange seating arrangements at one of his shows?
  • Ringo Starr's request to Ken Mansfield, who had formerly been the US manager of Apple Records, to arrange for him to attend an Elvis show on the last week of January of 1970, at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Starr flew from Los Angeles, CA after Mansfield acted on his request, and they saw the show, but only Ringo was later allowed to meet with Presley personally, as told in the Beatles Bible, on June 20, 2017.

• I didn't know him personally, but I was a fan of his, loved his music, energy and his voice: he had that fast vibrato that was so nice. At that time you weren't allowed to express yourself in those ways, so they showed him from the waist up, not the waist down. I mean, he was a little sexy guy! I was a little kid, but I asked 'Why won't they show all of him?' He would wiggle all the way down, and the girls would be screaming, and when I saw him on TV, I would be screaming too! And I loved the way his hair would shake when he got so emotional, you know? So when I got the chance to do his music, I welcomed it. (The racist controversy) never troubled me, because he wrote me a note. it was at the time I was divorcing Clarence Carter, and my stuff ended up all over the place, so I don't know what happened to the note, Back then I didn't think anything of it – I thought he would live forever but he told me he really, really, really loved my version of 'In The Ghetto". I have no idea where it is after all this time. Back then I didn't think anything of it – I thought he would live forever.”
  • Soul singer Candi Staton commenting on their duet video in an interview with Simon Price, from Oct 16 2014

• I think the chances of that are roughly the same of Elvis Presley walking in here right now.
  • James Stavridis, Retired Navy Admiral and former NATO supreme allied commander. on the possibilities of nuclear war with North Korea actually taking place, in an interview for VOX on 28 September, 2017.

• Elvis was my first massive record obsession. I didn’t quite move like him, but I use to dress up as him sometimes as a kid
  • UK singer Stealth's answer to Eileen Shapiro on who was his first musical influence, in an interview for the Huffington Post published on 16 March 2017.

• Finally, he wove into ‘Hound Dog’ and bounced off the stage, carrying the mike with him. There, on the 50-yard-line, he sank to his knees, rose, wove, bumped, ground and sank again, time after time. The girls screamed themselves silly. If that may have been obscene, but it was in the same way the climax of a revival meeting is obscene. Elvis worked himself over to the grass alongside the stage, sank almost out of sight and suddenly slipped into the waiting Cadillac. A motorcycle cop roared out in front, the car drove off and quickly the bowl's overhead lights were turned on. The shrieks became groans of disappointment. But the ball was over, the spell was broken. Noisily, the fans began filing out of the stadium, spent.
  • William Steif, writer for the "San Francisco News", on assignment at the Dallas Cotton Bowl to find out, as he put it, "what makes Elvis tick" and as published in that newspaper on October 13, 1956.

• My father, Herbert Stein was at the time Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and worked at the White House, often took me for lunch there where top dogs were allowed to have delicious meals, served by Navy Mess NCOs. We saw many famous people there, but one day, roughly three years before I myself started working there, he leaned towards me confidentially and said, “If you saw Elvis Presley in person, would you recognize him?” “I think so,” said I. “Well, look behind you.” I swiveled my hairy head around, and to my total shock, there was Elvis Presley eating with President Richard Nixon's Chief of Staff, Bob Haldeman a much feared but extremely pleasant and smart man. I got up, made my excuses to Mr. Haldeman, and said to Elvis, “Sir, everyone in the world is your fan, but I am your biggest fan.” In a voice and with a phrase that is incredibly famous, he simply said, “Thank yew ver’ much.” I was dazed. But I did not forget. And if you were to ask me to cite a lesson from it, it would be a line from a great Joan Didion novel called "Play It As It Lays: “You can’t win if you’re not at the table.” “Connections are golden.” Well worth remembering.
  • Ben Stein, explaining how his telling that story, over the years, led to his playing the role of the professor in John Hughes's “Ferris Bueller’s Day off", as published in the American Spectator's March 16, 2015 edition in an article entitled "Love is strange, but so was the effect of meeting Elvis"

• Actually, he was an easy-going guy. No putting on airs, like he was some big star. An ordinary person, very polite, very obliging, a wonderful man, when I look back on it. It's a shame he had to go so soon.”
  • Karl-Heinz Stein, barber at Ray Barracks in Friedburg, who cut Elvis hair three times a month during his 17 month stay with the US Army in Germany, as published on the German way-s online page.

• Elvis is like a bull in the ring. He belongs to the crowd—and they refuse to let him go.
  • Shifra Stein, writing a review of one of Elvis̪ last concert as published on the Kansas City Times' June 20, 1977 edition,

• An oldies station was on the radio and it was playing that old Elvis song, 'I Want You, I Need you, I love you" so I just started singing my own song but it was 'I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.' I remember going home and I tried so hard but the best I could do was: 'I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you, don't be sad, 'cause two out of three ain't bad' So it was still a twist but it was my closest to a simple song, and one Elvis could have done.
  • Jim Steinman, on how he wrote Meat Loaf's "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad! as published on Smooth Radio's on the day after Meatloaf's passing ( 21 January 2022 edition),

• Certainly the most famous performer to be attached to a tongues-speaking fellowship was Elvis Presley; shortly after the Presleys arrived in Memphis, from Tupelo, a First Assembly of God bus swung through their rundown neighborhood, so they climbed aboard and became regulars of Pastor James Hamill's congregation; Hamill remembers Elvis attended Sunday school and was exposed there to the best in Pentecostal music; in 1957, after he achieved international acclaim, Presley said 'We used to go to these religious sing-ins all the time, and there were these perfectly fine singers nobody responded to, but there were also these other singers who cut up all over the place, jumping on the piano, moving every which way, and all of which the audience liked, so I guess I learned from them'; uninhibited Pentecostalism gave young Elvis ideas about music and performance and, from then on, he was sometimes called the "Evangelist" by his inner circle of friends.
  • Randall J. Stephens, American Religion historian, recounting how Elvis got attached to Gospel and Christian Music, years before he decided to take up a music career, albeit heavily influencing it, as excerpted from in his book "The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South", published in 2008

• When Elvis Presley rolled up his sleeve in October 1956 and was photographed receiving the new polio vaccine hours before his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, he became a massive force for the wonders of public health. Before Elvis got his shot, the number of teenagers to get the vaccine was 0.6%. After the show, the rates went up to 80%.
  • Dr. Anne Stephenson, professor at Deakin University, as noted in an opinion entitled COVID-19 vaccines: Why Elvis impersonators can change suspicious minds" and published on ausdoc.com.au's 18th February 2021 edition

• The Warriors had cut the lead to as little as two points in the third quarter, the inevitable onslaught stemming from a groin injury that took LeBron James out of the game for good. But then it was Stephenson of all people, former LeBron archival known for blowing in his ear as much as for his questionable shot selection, hitting a momentum-regaining 3-pointer as the third quarter buzzer sounded. True to form, he followed up the huge shot with his trademark guitar-playing celebration -- though this one had some extra hip gyration that would have made Elvis Presley stand up and applaud.
  • About Lance Stephenson, in an article published in CBS Sports 26 December 2018 edition.

• I'll never forget it. We were in the rehearsal hall, and all of a sudden, we heard this commotion coming down the hall and there was this entourage of people coming into the room, When Elvis walked into the room, my mouth dropped. I'm like, Wow, I now understand why this guy is the biggest star in the world. He had magnetism. He filled the room. He really did. And to be able to sing with him for about a year and a-half of my life was an amazing experience. He was just a great singer. When you listen to Elvis' records, back in the day when he recorded, everything was recorded analog. There were really no computers to tune your voice or anything. He just had a natural talent. And he recorded in a recording studio just like he sang on stage. He held a microphone in his hand. He walked around the recording studio, and it was like he was doing a live performance. And he hardly ever shaded a pitch. He was just so talented, he really was.”
  • Richard Sterban, bass singer for the Oak Ridge Boys, who, along with a few others, voted Elvis as the top entertainer in CMT Top 40 artist countdown, as published in CMT´s online edition of November 21, 2014.

• Elvis Presley, Hugh Hefner, Frank Sinatra – maybe not the kind of men you'd expect to embrace environmentally-friendly technology even if they were around to see it. However they were all diehard Cadillac guys, and we have to think that if anyone can convince its set-in-their-ways customers to go electric, it's Detroit's most famous luxury brand.
  • Jared Paul Stern writing in Maxim about Cadillac's first ever electric car, as published on their January 14, 2019 edition in an article entitled "An American icon enters the EV age"

• Back in 2002, Eminem rapped about “little hellions, kids feeling rebellious — embarrassed their parents still listen to Elvis.” Plenty of those little hellions rebelled against their parents (and the carefree ignorance of the pre-9/11 world) and grew up into today's hipsters.
  • DJ Stevens, in an article entitled "ASK A HIPSTER, Is Eminem Elvis' heir?", published in the San Diego Reader on 29 August, 2018.

• Elvis was big for me, even from a very young age; That was the music that was around my house; I love that stuff, great songs and, as a singer, he was 'The Great' rock and roll singer.
  • Rogers Stevens, guitarist for the rock band Blind Melon, answering Ben Bounds's question as to whose artist influenced him the most, and the earliest, as published in the Starkville Daily news (11 August, 2008)

• One word to describe him̜? Sexy
  • Stella Stevens, who starred with Elvis in Girls, Girls, Girls, in an interview with Joan Rivers in 1992

• Alas, this turned out to be his only time on UK soil...
  • Stewart Stevenson, Scotland's Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change, speaking to assembled guests and the media as Prestwick airport celebrated the unveiling of a plaque heralding Elvis Presley's visit on 3 March 1960, a brief refuelling stop as he flew home from Germany after finishing national service with the US Army.

• I believe we need to restore confidence in Illinois. We deserve a state government that you can trust. It has been my mission as your state representative to support, sponsor, and vote for common sense solutions that provide for balanced budgets, to resist tax increases without a commitment to responsible spending, and to secure jobs for working families. I believe doing so will help you have more faith in our state government. I agree with Elvis Presley. “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”
  • Brian W. Stewart, Illinois State representative, in an article entitled Restoring confidence in Illinois, and published on September 27, 2018, in rrstar.com

• As soon as we were done with the first shot, he said, ‘You wanna talk?’ I was shocked. He pulled up two chairs together, we sat down, he took my hand and then he began to tell me about his mother. He talked about how much he missed her, how when he was in the Army, they wouldn't let him go see her when she was dying. It wasn't like he was flirting, he was just being very sweet and could not have been nicer.
  • Actress Charlotte Stewart, best known after appearing in the first four seasons of NBC-TV's "Little House on the Prairie", talking to Fox News Entertainment, on April 26, 2017, about the friendship she struck with Elvis in early 1968 after performing with him a single unbilled scene in MGM's "Speedway"

• i) I mean, they treat me like I'm Elvis there, they really do. ii) Elvis was the king. No doubt about it. People like myself, Mick Jagger and all the others only followed in his footsteps. iii)Bloody Elvis, beating me to the top from the grave.
  • Rod Stewart i) tells ABC News Radio.[4] ii) as published in www.graceland.com iii) joking about the fact his 2015 album was stopped from topping the UK charts by Elvis' If I can dream

• The third day started with a biscuit breakfast on the bus as we headed set course toward Tupelo to visit Elvis Presley's birthplace. I had given our group a loose itinerary, but what the group didn't know is that I had arranged for an Elvis tribute artist to stand on the side of the road five miles out of Oxford with his thumb out, hitchhiking. We picked him up, Jack Curtis was his name, and he performed a concert of Elvis' classics, up and down the aisle of the bus, all of the way in to Tupelo. We got out to tour the Elvis Presley birthplace and my guests said, “I don’t know how you’re going to top this.”....
  • Restaurateur Robert St John, recounting the visit he and a large group of tourist made to Mississippi's best restaurants, and which included a stop at Elvis birthplace, as published in an article at the Meridian Star on October 16, 2018.

• More than 30 years ago, the Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) Fraternity joined the fight against childhood cancer when Danny Thomas, founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and fraternity member from the Gamma-Nu chapter at the University of Toledo, asked his fraternity to help him with his cause. Before Thomas could make his dream of building St. Jude a reality, he garnered the help of, inter-alia, Rock 'n' roll legend and fellow Tau Kappa Epsilon member Elvis Presley, who instantly became one of Danny's supporters by lending his talents to help raise funds for cancer-stricken children.
  • St. Jude Children's Research Hospital’s laud of Elvis’ commitment to St Jude's. as noted in the Hospital's online page.

• The most important entertainer in the 20th Century, certainly, and the only people that could even challenge him were the Beatles, but they weren̪'t single performers, so it̪s Elvis Presley.
  • Mike Stoller, agreeing with Jerry Lieber, that Elvis was indeed the most important individual artist of the 20th Century, as noted in a filmed interview for the 1987 BBC television special "Cut me and I bleeð".

• We played Anaheim, CA in 1973. I was told to fix a problem with an unauthorized limo trying to get in the back entrance, so I tapped on the chauffeur's window but he said I should talk to the lady in the back. I knock, and there she was, Elizabeth Taylor. I was 22 but I had to tell her to walk through the entrance. Same thing in 1974, this time in Philadelphia, PA, but for once the unauthorized limo was carrying someone Elvis already knew, so he got to stay. It was Muhammad Ali.
  • Charles Stone, Elvis head of security, in a video filmed on 10 January 2015 at E P Birthday Festival in Stockholm, Sweden

• I was always a fan of Elvis as I was growing up. When I saw him in Vegas, with Phil Spector and his wife, in 1971, he was just awesome, had tremendous energy, charisma, such a handsome man, and a great voice, so actually there was nothing not to like about him. And then, after meeting him backstage, you realize that you are in the presence of someone so gifted, and that it's humbling, really.
  • Mike Stone, in an interview in the Ultimate Elvis channel.

• Elvis Presley is a means of seduction, a tool of US imperialism, to make the Communist youth lose its values in the midst of a possible atomic war.
  • Willi Stoph, the then East Germany's Minister of Defense, in a communique signed in April of 1959, coinciding with the time Elvis was serving with the US Army in the then West Germany.

• It as a real hoot to meet him. After he toured the plane he introduced himself, like 'Well, Ron, I guess you know who I am.' I said 'Yes sir, Mr. Presley.' And then he said 'Oh no, it's not sir or mister. Just call me Elvis.
  • Ron Strauss, pilot for Elvis' four-engine Convair 800 jet, the Lisa Marie, in an interview published on the Journal Sentinel's May 30 2019 edition.

• I never understood his records at first, and then many years later, I thought, "God this guy is good". He had that wonderful sexuality about him, and energy, he was a star, you know, he was bigger than life. Anyways, because I'd met him a couple of times, singing with him was kind of easy, it felt like our spirits were kind of touching...
  • Barbra Streisand, on singing "Love me tender" with Elvis, thirty seven years after he had passed away, for her album "Partners", as explained on a clip published in her Facebook page, on 6 September, 2014

• For international visitors, Amtrak is a very common and comfortable means of transportation. To eliminate that, because we're such a strong destination, namely with Elvis Presley home Graceland, Beale Street and Memphis music history being such big draws for international tourists, would be a big, big loss, as lots of people have taken Amtrak train and it has given even more people the opportunity to visit and fall in love with our city.
  • Jim Strickland, Mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, commenting and raising concern about the possibility that 200 cities and towns across the entire US may lose access to Amtrak, as published on 31 March at the Commercial Appeal.

• Multiple scholars have probed the Elvis cult's Celtic, Gnostic, Hindi, and vodun derivations; have contemplated Graceland's status as "sacred space"; and considered how and why some insist that Elvis, like Jesus, defeated death. Less charitable writers cynically attribute the entire phenomenon to the highly successful mass-marketing techniques of his estate and to the susceptibility of an apparently passive public bent on real-world escapism through, especially, the "transformative" ideology of consumerism.
  • Jim Stromberg Jim Stromberg, of the Univ. of Tulsa in his article entitled ̊Is Elvis Alive?: The Ideology of American Consumerism̊ , as published on 19 March 2004 at the Journal for Popular Culture.

• I was with Elvis for a few months. He was so physically beautiful, I thought I couldn't breathe. So one night he said, do you want me to sing something to you? So he played his "Spanish Eyes" song and sang it to me, seven times, back to back, as I requested he did. He was kind to his friends, to his family, to strangers, talented, thoughtful, funny. This girl came to a party in his house and I noticed she had two prosthetic legs. So I asked who she was and he said it was someone he didn't know really, but invited to his parties every fortnight so that she could feel wanted, loved.....
  • Sally Struthers in a Gilbert Goddfries podcast published on January 17, 2022.

• The immediate feeling you have is of the entirety of his life. You feel a young man full of potential. On seeing this 13 acres, you realize that he was at a point in his life that because of creativity, he was able to buy it. You feel all the happy times and all the people that have come and gone, dignitaries and musicians. I just wished that the walls could have talked. But in actual fact, the real treat was the private tour of the mansion, which the good folks of Graceland gave to the General Hospital crew. One of the special features is Elvis' white piano and I wish I could have played it, but we weren't allowed on that side of the velvet ropes. It's a big, white Steinway with actual ivory keys. It certainly has a history and you could just imagine Elvis himself playing there.
  • James Patrick Stuart, Actor, voice talent, musician and the son of Chad Stuart, of the Chad & Jeremy British pop duo, reflecting on his visit to Graceland and as reported on the February 21, 2019 issue of Parade magazine.

• The general idea is that Mississippi claims to be the birthplace of America's music and can pretty well back it up. The spiritual home of rock in roll in our state to me is Elvis Presley's birthplace in Tupelo. The B.B. King Museum and Interpretive Center over in Indianola, up in the Delta, that's where the blues live. The Grammys put in a museum at Delta State University, so that's the north part of the state. And the central part, kind of in the land of Jimmie Rodgers, is going to be Marty Stuart's Congress of Country Music Hall. That's where my collection, that's where the spiritual home of country music will live, as far as I'm concerned.
  • Marty Stuart, country singer from Mississippi, as published in Scene, on Apr 10, 2017.

• The Melbourne General Cemetery has been operational since 1852 and houses prestigious monuments to Malcolm Fraser, Sir Robert Menzies and Burke and Wills. For 100 years, the 36-tonne Burke and Wills monument was the most visited spot in the cemetery – until 1970 when the Elvis Presley memorial was erected. It is located in such a prominent area of the cemetery that you would have to deliberately avoid it to miss it. During peak hour, as cyclists whiz by on the path, an elderly couple passes it while walking their fluffy dogs. It's a deeply unusual monument to find in the historic grounds, particularly when considering that Elvis never even visited Australia. But then, the 1970s were a strange time for the cemetery. For a while, it was the world's first memorial erected after his death and the only official monument outside the US. In fact, it came about in a whir of circumstances, including a mystery donor
  • Sinead Stubbins, in an article entitled "The enduring mystery of Australia's unique Elvis Presley memorial", published in the Guardian on August 18, 2018,

• Though he is widely considered one of the biggest cultural icons of the 20th century, many may not know that Elvis stuttered. In a 2007 interview, his Tupelo childhood friend Mary Magdalene Morgan recalled how Elvis would stutter in elementary school, always seeming nervous, never completely sitting still, stammering, but not to the point you couldn't understand him. When he was 13 years old, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he would listen to a variety of musicians and singers on the now famous Beale Street. Influenced by country, gospel, and blues among other styles, Elvis recorded his first songs with Sun Record but it took multiple recordings and several rejections before one of Elvis' songs hit the radio waves in mid July of 1954. In an interview in August of 1956, Elvis talked about his stuttering: ʽWhenever I get excited, I stutter a little bit. I have a hard time saying ‘when’ or ‘where’ or any words that start with ‘w’ or ‘i.’ In fact, evidence of his stuttering as an adult can be heard on recordings from the Louisiana Hayride at the start of his career. On one of these, he can be heard stuttering when he talks to the audience in between songs. After he stutters, he stops himself, pauses and then begins again, changing the words slightly. Today, almost forty after his death he is still the best-selling solo artist in the history of recorded music. He had a dream to become a successful performer and entertainer, and he didn't let his stuttering stand in his way. People struggling with stammering issues can find inspiration in knowing that they share something deeply personal with the most successful singer of all time.
  • The Stuttering Foundation of America's laud of Elvis Presley as published in their Aug. 14, 2015 online edition.

• Elvis was one of a kind. He bought me my first car and that's how I attended my first Hollywood premiere. Elvis said, 'Kid if you're going to go to something like your first Premiere you deserve to attend in the right Style'. And he made sure that I did"
  • Michael St John, African American writer and actor of Carmen Jones (film) fame in discussing Elvis on his own Facebook page in 2009.

• Growing up in Beverly Hills in the 1960s, there was no such thing as being star-struck — my neighbors were movie stars. Going shopping one day, after coffee crunch cake at Blum's, I found myself in front of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel staring at a man so beautiful and charismatic that I was magnetically drawn to him as if by a tractor beam. As I approached, he was swarmed by large burly men in Hawaiian shirts. ‘Let her through,’ he said. As if in a dream, I found myself in the magnificent presence of Elvis Presley! He signed my hand and a $5 bill. He spoke to me kindly and gently in soft Southern tones. The autographed bill? I spent it in my college tuition when I ran out of money
  • Rosa Sue, as published in the Newsletter section of the LA Times on October 11, 2016

• In 1956, even the youngest of his fans knew that the 21-year-old Elvis Presley was unquestionably the whole package; and, obviously, his great three octave tenor voice, with a lower register close to bass, seemed to vibrate on the inner scale of every teenager in America; they loved the high tenor, but when he "got down" with that lower register, fans exploded; Elvis translated this into his moves on stage, so it was a 10.0 assault on the senses.
  • Sugarpie Productions essay on Elvis Presley, as published in Clay´s.Daily.Double.com

• I wanted to say to Elvis Presley and the country that this is a real decent, fine boy, and wherever you go, Elvis, we want to say we've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you.
  • CBS TV personality Ed Sullivan, closing his show on the night of January 6, 1957.

• So who got covered on LIFE? Thirty-six covers from the first 64 years portrayed one or more of the Kennedy family. John F. Kennedy was on 25 covers, while Jackie edged him out to appear on 26 and earn the number one spot. Robert F. Kennedy appeared on five covers while Edward Kennedy was on nine. Rose Kennedy even made a solo appearance on one cover. Richard Nixon ranked third behind JFK and Jackie in number of appearances by a single individual with 15. Ronald Reagan had 11. But Marilyn Monroe beat him with 13 cover appearances, while Elizabeth Taylor was close behind at nine. Barbra Streisand made four cover appearances. Nikita Krushchev appeared on more covers (9) than Winston Churchill (7), Dwight D. Eisenhower (7), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (5) or Bill Clinton (4). The Reverends Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr. each made it onto two covers, while various popes appeared on eight covers between 1936–2000. (Those) never appearing on a LIFE cover included Elvis Presley, Monhandas K. Gandhi and Mother Teresa.
  • David E. Sumner, Professor Emeritus at BSU, in an 2001 article entitled "Sixty-Four Years of LIFE: What Did Its 2,128 Covers Cover? as published at the Journal of Magazine & New Media Research, Vol. 5, No. 1, Fall 2002 edition refers.

• It was a bit like the Elvis Presley excitement, something new, completely revolutionary,
  • Gordon Sumner, frontman for the Police, better known as Sting, in an article entitled. "Sting Resembles The Beatles’ Early Career To Elvis Presley as noted in rockcelebrities¿ January 4, 2022 edition.

• When Elvis' daddy had a heart attack, Elvis wanted him to have a private room. That was not the problem, but before getting there, rules made it impossible for him to have a private intensive care room, despite the unit was totally empty. So Elvis spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and booked the entire intensive care unit...
  • Bassman J.D. Sumner, of the Stamps Quartet, as noted in starsmeetthestars

• I approve of his moves last night at the Pan Pacific (October 29, 1957), and saw nothing wrong with them but unfortunately neither my wife nor I could hear a single word out of his mouth because of all the screaming. But he is everything he is reported to be.
  • Czech-born, UK conductor, teacher, and pianist Walter Susskind, in an interview with the LA Times as published on 30 October, 1957. He was the Conductor of the Toronto Symphonic Orchestra at the time of the interview.

• I may be the only person who knows Colin Powell and Elvis Presley...
  • Major General William K. Suter, then Clerk of the Supreme Court of the United States, as published on May 29, 2013 by the Harlan Institute. In all candor, Gen. Suter may have been unaware that, after meeting Presley in Ft. Hood, there WERE indeed hundreds of soldiers who knew both Powell and Presley, the former having led the latter's unit as a Lt. Col in Germany, during Presley's entire Army tour in that country.

• They listened to music all the way over. And one of them kind of likes Elvis Presley
  • Jeff Sween, Chairman of the National Turkey Federation telling WHSV, Channel 3, about "Peas" and "Carrots", two South Dakota turkeys travelling through sleet and snow some 1,400 miles to DC in the hope to be pardoned at the White House, as customary during the 2018 Thanksgiving celebration.

• We didn't care as much for Elvis and his music - but once we met him - our mouths completely dropped. We could not believe a man was allowed to be this beautiful. We almost lost our job with Elvis because we focused so much on what he looked like that we forgot the lyrics to our songs. He was without doubt the most beautiful man that ever lived. And what's more beautiful: he didn't know it. - Good Lord he was beautiful!
  • The Sweet Inspirations, in a shared post as published by the "Elvis Forget me never" Facebook page, on 14 March, 2022.

• It blew my brain apart. It was like Star Wars combined with Elvis Presley and these crazy, sped-up electro beats that I'd known since I was 11 years old.”
  • UK Producer Switch describing his first encounter with a baile funk compilation in an article entitled "This YouTube Channel Is Helping Brazilian Funk Go Global", published by Vulture on February 11, 2018.

• Some of Symms' most popular images came from a newspaper assignment covering the June 27, 1956 performance of a young Elvis Presley before 6,000 screaming fans jammed into Augusta's Bell Auditorium. When Presley arrived, he found Symms in an alley awaiting him with a 4X5 Crown Graphic camera. Most remember hearing Presley sing several hits including "Hound Dog", which he would record a month later, but it was Symms' photos which preserved their memories of the performance and continued to sell reprints over the next half-century.
  • About noted photographer Robert Symms, as published in the Augusta Chronicle on January 20, 2018.

• White teenagers embraced rock and roll, when the civil-rights struggle cultivated an awareness of African-American culture. Youths such as Elvis Presley listened to late night, rhythm-and-blues radio shows that challenged and broke down racial barriers. During the Sixties, white teens readily accepted African-American performers such as the Ronettes, the Temptations, and the Supremes who had been carefully groomed for success in a mainstream market. At the same time in Britain, teenagers such as the Rolling Stones became obsessed with Chicago blues and brought their version of the blues back to adoring fans in America. Later in the decade, white youth bought soul records and revered Jimi Hendrix as the ultimate guitar hero. By the Eighties, young white suburbanites wore baggy pants and chanted the lyrics of inner-city rappers. In the new century, American teens danced at massive festivals to the African-American sounds of house music and techno.
  • David Szatmary, in the introduction to his book Rocking in timeː A Social History of Rock and Roll

T

• He had it all going on: Punk, Algerian chaabi music, Rai, techno, and he drew inspiration from the music of North Africa, New Orleans jazz, The Clash, the delta blues and Elvis Presley.
  • Algerian singer and activist Rachid Taha's obituary, as published in Boing Boing, a few days after his death on September 12, 2018.

• In 1957, I worked with Elvis a bit on ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ and got to know him as well as anybody in Los Angeles at the time. Anyways, that same year I had a beach house that I sublet to him while I was doing ‘Peyton Place.’ He needed it as a getaway, and basically wrote me a check for that month's rent. I wish I had kept the check, that would be worth more than the money I got LOL.
  • Russ Tamblyn, dancer and acrobat extraordinaire who visited Elvis at his penthouse suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, on the night before the shoot of the Jailhouse Rock title sequence. Although they had never met before, the one week older Tamblyn and Elvis got along fine, immediately, then practiced a few moves and by the next morning, Presley had the complicated scene totally within his grasp, as noted in Elvis Express Radio's September 14, 2016 edition.

• Presley makes no secret of his respect for the negroes, nor of their influence on his singing. Furthermore, he does not shun them, either in public or private
  • Tan magazine, an entertainment spinoff by the publishers of Jet magazine, in an article published in April of 1957.

• No person should be allowed to be so great looking and with so much talent. LOL. He's standing on a stage all by himself, like a person in a boxing arena Now the swagger and the swooning are awesome, but the interesting thing about him is how he gets the emotion into the song. And it all sounds so authentic because he believes in what he sings.
  • Ken Tamplin, vocal coach, reviewing Elvis' "Cant help falling in love", the 1968 version, for his vocal academy, as published in YouTube on July 24, 2019.

• Warhol was in the process of shifting from commercial illustrator to artist, and I both witnessed and experienced firsthand his tactics, his method of incision into the art world He used contemporary icons (Elvis and MM),as motifs in his works
  • Keiichi Tanaami, reinforcing America’s dominant geo-political and cultural position, as noted in his "Good-By Elvis and USA" and in an article entitled "Legendary Japanese Pop Artist Created Some of the Strangest Animations You’ll Ever See" published in CBR's November 4, 2033 online edition.

• That's it for now from us, at the first ever Presidential summit in Graceland, so thank you, thank you very much.
  • Jake Tapper's closing words after covering the Graceland visit by Pres. G. W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister J. Koizumi for ABC TV News on June 30, 2006.

• i) To me this album is the purest expression of Elvis there was. In fact, when I was young, I used to think Elvis was the voice of truth. I don't know what that means, but his voice, shit man, it sounded so fucking pure. The hillbilly cat never let you down. ii) You’re either an Elvis man or a Beatles man, and I’m an Elvis man.
  • Quentin Tarantino's laud of "The SUN Sessions", a 1976 issued album comprising Elvis' 1954–55 recordings, as noted in the July 28, 2020 edition of Far Out, in an article entitled "From Bob Dylan to Elvis Presley: Quentin Tarantino created a list of his 10 favourite albums of all time" II) as noted in Far Out's September 30, 2024 edition.

• I walked into the lobby of the International Hotel in Las Vegas with Tom Jones, which was like walking in with the Good Lord himself, and next minute we were in Elvis Presley's dressing room. As I stared at him, stunned, one of Elvis's assistants said to me, ‘Sir, will you give this drink to Elvis?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ took the drink and stood there gaping, like a stagestruck schoolgirl. Couldn't move a muscle. Tom nudged me and said, ‘Give ’im the drink for God’s sake. I struggled to speak to Elvis because I was so overwhelmed and amazed to be in the presence of such a great singer. Next night, it was Elvis who came to Tom’s room. I was in heaven...
  • Jimmy Tarbuck, OBE, British comedian, a schoolmate of John Lennon and one of Tom Jones' long time personal closest friends, recalling the night in August of 1969 when he met Elvis, as told in the Express' August 7, 2020 edition

• The reasons for honouring Elvis are not sentimental but political. I don't own a single Elvis album but he was a champion for those amongst our people who turned against our country's Soviet-backed Government in October 1956. And although the revolution was quashed, Presley saluted the uprising in January 1957 during his last appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and performed "Peace in the Valley", a gospel standard, as a tribute to our plight. At his request, Sullivan solicited the TV audience to donate towards our relief efforts, raising US$6 million (the equivalent of US$ 49 million in 2012 dollars), or about 26 million Swiss francs.
  • Budapest Mayor István Tarlós, explaining to the press why Presley was named a citizen of Budapest and a Park facing the second oldest crossing in the city, the Margaret Bridge, named after him, following the International Red Cross' handling of some 26 million SFR sent by his fans, which they distributed to some 200,000 Hungarians affected by the Soviet invasion in both Vienna and London, where the refugees were allowed to settle for life, and as published in The Guardian's online edition of March 11, 2012.

• Before Elvis, white America was shackled by crippling conservatism. Then, four years into the 1950s, a singer from Tupelo, Mississippi, had what record producer Sam Phillips was looking for, a “white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel”, language that makes us cringe now — but at the time, Elvis' "sound" and "feel" did more to break down color barriers in popular music than any white singer ever had. Elvis' low, trembling transmission to teenage America was emancipation in the form of rockabilly, gospel, schlocky love songs, Christmas standards and muddy blues. In the ’60s, his voice was muted by forgettable films, but in 1968, wearing a leather jumpsuit, he reminded America that the suffering in his voice was sex in a sexless society — a pink Cadillac crashing into daddy’s station wagon. —
  • Art Tavana, for LA Weekly, in an article entitled the 20 best singers of all time.

• When I’m here, I’m not James Taylor the entertainer, I’m James Taylor the Elvis fan,’
  • Singer songwriter James Taylor, telling Rhonda Lamb, Assistant Director of the Elvis Presley Birthplace, in Tupelo, MS, how he felt when visiting Elvis birthplace, in an article published on the Daily Journal on September 25, 2017.

• I was in California, saw "Jailhouse Rock" and changed my name to Vince Taylor, the former from the first name of the character played by Elvis in "Jailhouse Rock".
  • Vince Taylor, English rock and roll singer, very popular in France and the brother in law of Joseph Barbera as noted in Wikipedia-.

• Elvis Presley. I don't do an impersonations, but Elvis is the most impersonated performer in the world. Just the more I've read about him, the more he's someone I've wanted to get into. I want to do the Walk the Line version of Elvis. Like Joaquin Phoenix doesn't look like Johnny Cash but I still felt like I was watching Johnny Cash in that movie.
  • Miles Teller's answer as to who he would like to play next, in an interview with Parade, published on October 24, 2017.

• I strongly believe he knew he was ill, but didn't know why. In retrospect, his was a classic case of cumulative head trauma, followed by an autoimmune inflammatory disorder. None of this was known or even recognized in his day and I'm confident he would have been pleased to know that the knowledge that now exists about his predicament will in future help others, as he was a kind and generous person
  • Dr. Forest Tennant's main conclusions in his study and essay entitled "Elvis Presley: Head Trauma, Autoimmunity, Pain, and Early Death" as published in Practical Pain Management's June 2013 edition.

• Presley was very classically orientated with his voice, and diction, and very sincere and wanting to get everything perfect.
  • Bryn Terfel bass baritone citing one of the reasons why Elvis is the only soloist whose music he listens in his iPod, as told to NYT's Classical Music critic Vivien Schweitzer, and published on that paper on November 10, 2007

• Elvis Presley transcended his being called the King of Rock and Roll, even the music he made famous, in favour of his later becoming one of the XX Century's greatest cultural icons. But it is his versatile voice and his unusual delivery of numerous musical idioms, as well as the attraction he held, physically, and sexually, that led him to his being the greatest solo artist in the history of popular music.
  • Terra, a Spanish online publication's views on the power of Presley's voice and it's being ranked as one of the ten most imposing in the history of recorded sound, the latter in conjunction with the celebration of the "Day of the Voice" and published in their online page, on April 15, 2015.-

• He performed at the auditorium in 1955 and 1956. For the first appearance, Elvis was paid $150. He grossed $9,000 when he returned a year later.
  • Steven Teske of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, on some of the history to surround the forthcoming exhibit on the Robinson Memorial Auditorium, in an article published on the Arkansas Democrat Gazzette on Novebver 4, 208.

• I couldnt believe I was singing with Elvis. My nerves were a wreck...
  • Thalia,in an interview for youtube published on January 3 2011, reacting to hos she felt when doing her duet on Love me Tender.

• At one point, the Chargers and Raiders planned to share a stadium in Carson. Instead, the Chargers got Los Angeles, and the Raiders are headed to Las Vegas in the next few years. So, prior to this Sunday's game between the Raiders and Chargers in Carson, the Chargers trolled their rivals by playing Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas" as the Raiders took the field at StubHub Center.
  • Ali Thanawalla, for Yahoo Sports, as reported on October 7, 2018.

• I love Elvis because he was my generation, but then again, he's everyone's generation and will always be
  • Margaret Thatcher as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• For some people, they are just cars from the past. But classic cars represent an important market segment for investors. With their rising by more than 500 per cent in the past decade, the 2016 Motorworld Classics Fair in Berlin is a good chance for anyone interested in that kind of investment. A perfect example is a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado showcased here. It is not a very rare car, nor is it in a good state, but it was once owned by Elvis Presley, which bumps up the price tag to about half a million euros.
  • The Euronews, 11 October, 2016.

• He didn't buy it for himself, he never used it, it was from the start an act of charity, and I certainly hope that once we auction it, it will one day be enshrined, as it has been the witness of history for almost two decades, especially during Pres. FDR's time.
  • Danny Thomas, founder of St Jude's in a co-sponsored radio and filmed press conference aboard the 50 meter long, FDR Presidential Yacht, the USS Potomac, which was requested from Elvis, as a gift, to St Jude' in February of 1964. St Jude's then sold it for US$75,000 (equiv. to a little over a half a million in 2018 dollars), on November of that same year, later disappearing for about twenty years, even capsizing, only to be recovered by the US Coast Guard and, as if to grant Mr. Thomas his wish, is currently enshrined as it takes tourists from Oakland to the Golden Gate and back.

• Just last month, nurse Lindsay readily agreed to the request of 9-year-old Desiree Mohammadi, daughter of a Queens pediatrician, and held her small hand as a pediatric nurse administered a Covid jab. Afterward, Desiree sent her idol a grateful thank-you letter. The photos and video of the nurse who was the first person in the US to be vaccinated for Covid-19 will be in textbooks soon, but she is already inspiring children to seek a better understanding of both science and nursing .But perhaps the most significant reason that Dr. Lindsay is our Nurse of the Year is this: as Elvis did with the polio vaccine, she set an example that is saving lives"
  • Koren Thomas, Associate Editor of the "Daily Nurse", in reference to the achievements of Sandra Lindsay, DHSc, MS, MBA, RN, CCRN-K, NE-BC, who became the first official recipient of a Covid jab in the US on December 14, 2020, in an article published in their December 29, 2021 edition,. which in turn named her "The Nurse of the Year"

• People think that we're crazy because we do six nights a week, and then you see how much Elvis put into every show, for which he created this larger than life style, and he pulled it off.
  • Rob Thomas, as published by www.graceland.com

• I remenber when I took Elvis by the hand and slowly pulled him on stage. And I said 'Ladies and gentlemen ..... Elvis Presley!! And he did that willow with that leg two or three times and it was over and the show was really over and the people, these were black people, they stormed that place trying to get to Elvis. And never, never in your life have you seen such a surge of black faces all converging upon a stage at the same time. I know of only two people that would have that type of magnetism that would just, they could just pull people to them, the kind of magnetism to just draw crowds in instantly effect them. [Elvis being one], the only other was Martin Luther King. The fact is people like music and if it's good it makes no difference who's doing it, black, blue, green even plaid if it's like that. And I love good music and Elvis was doing blues, rhythm and blues because that was his beginning.
  • Bluesman Rufus Thomas, recalling the night of December 7, 1956, when he introduced Elvis at an all black revue organized by WDIA, in Memphis, as published in http://www.elvis.net/theysayframe.html and in Elvis lives, a 2002 ABC TV documentary.

• Ladies and gentlemen, the McDonnell Douglas aircraft have left the air. Yeah, they were as iconic as Elvis Presley.
  • Rich Thomaselli, for Travel Pulse, in an article bidding good bye to the TMD-88 and McDonnell Douglas MD-90 planes holding a revered place in aviation history and which retired on June 2, 2020.

• There is nothing that could force Donald Trump to release his tax returns, but precedent and Hillary Clinton's willingness to release hers would have nudged most other presidential hopefuls into taking the action. All this reminds me of the fact that accountants for Elvis Presley begged him at times to take advantage of the legal loopholes available to him. It would have saved him millions. He demurred on the basis that the patriotic thing to do was to pay for the privilege of his success.
  • Dan Thomasson, columnist for Tribune News Service, commenting on the 2016 presidential election, as published in the Commercial Appeal on October 3, 2016.

• What makes USA the most aspirational destination to Indians is probably our own pop culture. Out of 1.3 billion Indians, there are 700 million young people who are under the age of 35. By 2020, the median age is going to be 29 years and when I think about a younger demographic, everything in the United States is appealing to them. Pop, short for popular music originated in neighborhoods across the US, when people of various ethnicities came together and merged their musical talents transcends geographical borders, races, and even traditional music styles. It is the music of today. Traditional guitars or electric ones, playing of pop music is not restricted to instruments either. Elvis Presley, in fact, is one of the first stars associated with the popularity of pop music. He fused country music with black rhythm and blues and came up with rock-and-roll.
  • Christopher Thompson, President and CEO of Brand USA, in an article entitled "Brand USA Plays the music card" published by India Media Group on November 22, 218

• My daughter, who is 11, saw the movie and then asked me "Mommy who is thaaaaat man",and hey, Elvis was spiritual and you juist nailed it.
  • Emma Thompson, on Austin Butler's interpretation of Elvis, as detailed in an interview between the two,in December of 2022.

• One day in the 70s, I talked Elvis into going with me to the local McDonald's restaurant near Graceland. I was sick and tired of us never going out together. So I made a bet with him — I said no one would recognize him and he could relax a little. Elvis said he not only would be recognized but mobbed as well. We walked in the McDonald's, approached the counter, and put in our orders. Elvis ate his meal in wonder at the situation but really enjoyed his quiet night out. So far, so good. Then a man walked up to our table, looked at Elvis, and said he hated how men tried to look like Elvis Presley. He said there was only one Elvis and the others should give up. Shocked at the man's assumption that he was as impersonator, Elvis informed the stranger that he was indeed Elvis. The man would not believe him, and said he pitied him for thinking he was. Elvis tried again but could not convince the man. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole situation and had an inspired idea. I turned to Elvis and said, “Okay, Bob, enough is enough. Stop playing". Elvis told me to confirm who he was and I replied, “Will you cut the crap, Bob.” My ruse worked. The man left their table. Elvis was totally dumbfounded by what had happened, but he and I had a good laugh. Anyways, I was always a fan, but I didn't think he would transcend time and space and become the iconic, almost religion he is now.
  • Linda Thompson, for Elvisblog

• As the lad himself might say, cut my legs off and call me Shorty! Elvis Presley can act. Acting is his assignment in this shrewdly upholstered showcase, and he does it.
  • Howard Thompson, reviewing "King Creole," for the New York Times, 1958

• Just as the producer's job is to achieve the best recording possible – the kind of perfection that so grabs listeners like Nick Coleman- so the editor should push the writer beyond the bounds of what he thinks he can achieve. It's hard to escape the feeling that there's a better book here waiting to get out. Essentially, this is a memoir consisting of 10 essays each of which attempting to examine a fairly arbitrary category of music. “Boys and Girls and Girl Groups”; “Vulnerability”; “The Spectacle of Anguish” etc. The opener looks at “The Horsemen in the Box” - Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley – who he feels would have represented the end of pop music history had the Cuban Missile Crisis not turned out so well.
  • Liz Thompson, writing for the The Arts Desk, in an article published on January 15, 2018. and entitled "Nick Coleman: Voices – How a Great Singer Can Change Your Life, highlighting Coleman's deafness then exploring the songs that linger in his memory.

• Elvis is inside of me
  • Richard Thomson, first UK born politician to become a Mayor of a city, that of Sant Jean, which is a part of a Municipality of the Spanish island of Mallorca, in an article entitled "The stellar singing appearance of Mallorca's Mayor as Elvis Presley", as published in the Diario de Mallorca's August 24, 2024 edition.

• I'm from Tupelo, where Elvis was born. When he would do a gospel album, he would always pick the great gospel quartets of the day to sing on his records. That's what I want to do."
  • Paul Thorn Southern rock, country, Americana, and blues singer-songwriter, in an article entitled "Paul Thorn revisits gospel roots before Blues & Roots Fest at Door Community Auditorium published" and published on the Green Bay Press-Gazette's Oct. 29, 2018 edition.

• They're talking ‘bout the hood, talkin’ ‘bout where we all come from. My mother always listened to Presley' song when I was young. It talk about the things she went through, you know. She had a bunch of kids, like 9 kids, you know what I’m sayin’. That's how you get somebody to listen to your song, you talk about what they know about and what they want to hear.”
  • Three 6 Mafia members, Paul Beaureguard and Jordan Houston, discussing their version of In the Gueto.

• To make things even harder, public-health communicators no longer have the benefit of public figures such as Elvis Presley, who once gave a lift to a national immunization campaign with a single photograph of a rolled-up sleeve. These days, even our most mass-appeal celebrities are not nearly as appealing. Each of them has done something to annoy some chunk of the population, and I’m even talking about Bruce Springsteen right now, and I’m even talking about Hilary Duff.
  • The Atlantic's Kaithlyn Tiffany, in an article on the COVID-19 pandemic entitled "America’s Health Will Soon Be in the Hands of Very Minor Internet Celebrities", as published in their February 19, 2021 edition

• Elvis spiritual crisis started in 1964, led him to meditate with Larry Geller, his then recent hairstylist. Elvis was always a dedicated Christian, with the book "The Prophet" being an inspiration as far as incarnation and following the death of his mother. His family and most of his friends rejected this spiritual quest. He was insulated form the world, so it must have been very frustrated that very few in his circle agreed with this part of his life. He was always very generous, from his infancy, but in time became more and more so, to the point of being extremely magnanimous. In 1965, he started becoming more involved with his spirituality, with yoga, and healing.
  • Gary Tillery, commenting on his spiritual-geared biography of Elvis Presley, "The Seeker King".

• I had taken my song "Dreamy Eyes" to George Klein, Memphis DJ and Elvis friend and said to George: "I can really hear Elvis singing this song," because I felt Priscilla had the prettiest eyes I'd ever seen. About eight months later I got a call that Elvis had recorded one of my songs, and I assumed that it was "Dreamy Eyes," but it turned out to be "It Keeps Right On a Hurtin." When Elvis was in Germany getting ready to work, he was listening to Country Music and heard my song, and he wanted to record it. That's the way Elvis picked his music, when he heard something that he liked, he recorded it. Elvis put his song in one of his albums "From Elvis In Memphis", and I couldn't have been more thrilled and proud, because Elvis was my idol.
  • Johnny Tillotson, as noted in whenstarsmeetstars.

• Are you kiddin̠g? I am not gonna do an Elvis song, not at the White House̜. No one can outsing the King.
  • Justin Timberlake's response to several entertainers, many from Memphis and some of whom had had important work at Stax. Thad gathered at the White House at the invitation of President Obama, who was heralding the Memphis sound, so he was asked to sing an Elvis song, as told by Justin's mother Lynn (Bomar) Harless, to George Klein on November 21, 2012

• i) A double voice that alternates between a high quaver, reminiscent of Johnnie Ray at his fiercest, and a rich basso that might be smooth if it were not for its spasmodic delivery. 'Heartbreak Hotel', yelps the high voice, is where he's going to get away from it all. Answers the basso: 'he'll be sorry ii) Without preamble, the three-piece band cuts loose. In the spotlight, the lanky singer flails furious rhythms on his guitar, every now and then breaking a string; in a pivoting stance, his hips swing sensuously from side to side and his entire body takes on a frantic quiver, as if he had swallowed a jackhammer; his loud baritone goes raw and whining in the high notes, but down low it is rich and round. As he throws himself into one of his specialties— "Blue Suede Shoes" or "Long Tall Sally", his throat seems full of desperate aspirates or hiccuping glottis strokes, but his movements suggest, in a word, sex.
  • i) Time magazine's review of an early 1956 concert and entitled "Teeners' hero", as published on its May 14,1956 ii) and April 02, 1956 issue.

• Elvis Presley, the 21-year-old bobby-soxers' delight, shot the Ed Sullivan Show's rating up to 43.7—highest in two years. Actor Charles Laughton, his glib tongue in his dumpling cheek, introduced Elvis with: "Ed insisted I give a high tone to the proceedings," then, to the frenzied shrieks of the teenagers, let Hillbilly Presley take over. Crooner Presley, sideburns dripping with sweat and goose grease, mumbled through three songs, gave his guitar a thorough clouting, contorted his mouth suggestively and his pelvis more so. When it was over, parents and critics, as usual, did a lot of futile grumbling at the vulgarity of this strange new phenomenon that must somehow be reckoned with.
  • Time magazine's review of Elvis first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, where they purposely fail to both register the ̈82.6 percentage share, the highest in history, as well as the 60,710,000 viewers, also the highest, let alone their mentioning that the 43.7 rating was not just the highest in two years, but the highest ever, as published in their September 24,1956 edition.

• Elvis Presley was also known for his work on the big screen. The “Heartbreak Hotel” singer made his debut in 1956's Civil War film “Love Me Tender“. It was a stunning one, and it helped propel him to the top ten of the box office for a decade in movies like "Jailhouse Rock“ and “King Creole" Eventually, he would return to music entirely after Hollywood stopped giving him challenging film roles but by then, he'd proven that he could tackle everything."
  • Aramide Tinubu, Chief Editor of the Hollywood Reporter naming her list of fifteen singers who best made the transition to the big screen, in an article published by the Cheat Sheet on July 2, 2018.

• I've got a cutout of Elvis Presley outside my door so people at the US Capitol can find my office. Right now, he's wearing a big pennant that says ‘Go Golden Knights,
  • US Congresswoman for Nevada (D), Dina Titus in an article published on June 5, 2018 by Channel 3, Las Vegas, and entitled "Connect to Congress: Titus looks past primary, gives Democrats a message

• What's the difference between Elvis and a smart politician? Elvis has been sighted.
  • Comedian Alan Todd, in an article containing numerous jests of a governmental and public nature and entitled "Dusting off the political jokes" and published on the Ouray County Plaindealer's January 18, 2019 edition.

• Elvis Presley. I'm not sure if he's "of the "moment" but now and then there is a new release of his music.
  • Actor Alex Toohey, answering who is his favourite musician at the moment in an interview with the Isle of Man Today's April 28, 2018 edition

• While Elvis was primarily perceived as a baritone and most of the tessitura of his songs was on that key, he was, in my opinion, a tenor. Technically, he never properly worked to smooth his passagio and bring more weight up to the top of his voice. However, one has only to look and listen to much of what Elvis sang, and recorded – especially from about 1974 onward – to realize that, had he gone in an entirely different direction musically, he could very well have sung opera. Although in bad physical condition toward the end of his life, the in concert recordings from his last tour reveal, rather hauntingly, what might have been. Listen especially to the way he sang the Timi Yuro classic "Hurt." Vocally, he was incredibly exciting.
  • The Top Ten lists, in an article entitled the Top male tenors.

• I was shocked to hear that a man of integrity like Hal Wallis had referred to Presley as a great dramatic actor. It just shows how far a man will go for the almighty dollar. —
  • Mel Torme, as published on the June 14, 1956 edition in The Arizona Republic.

• I think Elvis Presley will never be solved.
  • Writer and journalist Nick Toshes, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• Listening to these songs today, their most remarkable feature is Presley's voice itself. He takes the Platters' Tony Williams's techniques, and any other predecessor's, to new, uncharted pinnacles. For a singer who was only just encountering widespread popularity, his singing resonates with amazing fortitude and confidence, especially on "Heartbreak Hotel," (1956), where Presley alternately shouts words with full lungs, then gulps the following back, as if under water but without missing a beat. In "Loving you" (1957), Presley's baritone on this, the ultimate slow dance number, is almost too powerful, virtually rumbling the floor...
  • David N. Townsend, in his essay "Changing the World: Rock 'n' Roll's Culture and Ideology".

• i) Making their second appearance at Worthy Farm, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey delighted the crowds as the sun set on the final day of Glastonbury 2015 by performing a number of hits from across their career. They also referenced Kanye West's claim during his own headline slot the night before that he was "the greatest living rockstar on the planet", with Townsend and then Roger Daltrey saying, "We're gonna send you home now with a rebellious 'who's the biggest fucking rockstar in the world? 'It must be Elvis Presley. ii) We have to focus on his early work, and just one or two of his movies, and elements of his TV shows, to keep his memory pure. People now know that Elvis could play a mean rhythm guitar himself, and needed no other musicians to perform a great song. But Elvis was not just a rock star, he was an all-round entertainer.
  • i) Excerpted from an article quoting Pete Townsend, of The Who, as he and Roger Daltrey were quick to make light of Kanye's antics the previous night, reminding everyone that Elvis Presley was still the King of Rock – despite what Mr West may have said, and as published on Digital Spy on June 29, 2015. ii) as noted in theelevisexpress

• My first political act was to get kicked out of class for arguing with a teacher for criticizing Elvis
  • Carol Tracy, Executive Director of the Women's Law project since 1990, in an article published by the Daily Philadephian on October 16, 2017

• Before I made my first record, we had a three night tour of an Army base in Freidberg, Germany. I was told: “Jackie, there’s someone I’d like you to meet". So I walked in through the front door of a house in Bad Neuheim, off-base, to find Elvis himself smiling at me. I nearly fainted! We sang together, talked plenty, and I kinda fell in love with him...
  • Jackie Trent, English singer-songwriter and actress, in her autobiography, "Being me", published at the Sunday Express on 14 October, 2017

• I mean Elvis made us move, instead of standing mute he raised our voice. And when we heard ourselves something was changing, you know, like for the first time we made a collective decision about choices, America hurriedly made Pat Boone a general, in the army they wanted us to join, But most of us held fast to Elvis and the commandants around him Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent, you know, like a different Civil War all over again. Man, like he woke us up, and now they're trying to put us back to sleep. So we'll see how it goes, Anyway, look at the record, man, Rock ’n’ roll is based on revolutions, going way past 33⅓, you gotta understand, man, he was America's baby Boom Ché. I oughta know man, I was in his army
  • Native American author, poet, actor, musician, and political activist John Trudell's words of wisdom, as annotated in ‘Baby Boom Ché’, a song he dedicated to his idol Elvis.

• Well I am so glad to be in Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley. I shouldn't say this, because they are going to say I am conceited, but other than the blond hair when I was growing up they all said I looked like Elvis. I always felt that it was a great compliment. And we just gave him the Medal of Freedom in the White House. We love Elvis don̪'t we̞?
  • US President Donald Trump, in his speech at T̥upelo Regional Airport, on November 26, 2018

• It was the very first day on set and I was so nervous. Everyone was having lunch and I really didn't feel like eating because I was that nervous. So I decided to go take a nap and if I was needed on set, they would call me. I went to my trailer and the air conditioner wasn't working. I was just hysterical -- really hysterical. I thought, ‘Oh no, this isn’t happening.’ You could only imagine how hot it was. And there was no one around because everyone was having lunch. There must be an air conditioner there. I thought. All of a sudden, there was a hand stopping me. I immediately apologized without even looking up. And I was told, ‘That’s Elvis’ dressing room. You can't just go in. I'm going to have to ask if you're allowed." At that moment, I didn’t see Presley, but I was given the green light to hang out in his room. Upon entering, I immediately felt the relief of a running air conditioner and collapsed on a nearby couch. When I opened my eyes after a restful sleep, I saw Presley’s face closely staring right back at me. He was putting a cold compress on my face. He thought I must have passed out or something, He was absolutely beautiful. I mean, people with great voices are attractive to me, but this was something else. I didn’t even know what to say because I was so shocked. And then he went, ‘Don’t worry about it. I just want you to feel good. Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat? Are you thirsty?’ I couldn't even talk!” I was overwhelmed by everything I was experiencing. He smelled like baby powder and milk. But he just kept insisting if I needed or wanted anything. Elvis also had told me I could stay for as long as I liked and not to worry about it. After he left, I eventually got up and stepped outside where I saw Presley surrounded by his entourage. At the time, he was fascinated by martial arts and when I told him I knew Bruce Lee, then that was another reason we bonded easily. He was a Southern Baptist and my family was very Christian, so we had already connected from that alone. He was very spiritual. I remember the last time we spoke, we were hanging out in his trailer. He just looked at me and said, ‘Keep that light burning baby.’ And that was it. I guess he lost his light. Couldn't find his way home, you know? I truly feel he just worked himself to death. It was very tragic.”
  • Irene Tsu, Chinese American actress who co-starred with Elvis in Paradise Hawaiian Style, as noted in her autobiography, "A Water Color Dream: The Many Lives of Irene Tsu".

• It really puts perspective on things, though, doesn't it?
  • Words spoken by fictional character Nigel Tufnel to his bandmate, David St. Hubbins as they both face Elvis' grave in the 1984 movie "This is Spinal Tap"

• Even as we focus on perhaps the final election of the 2018 season in North Carolina's 9th District, pundits and scholars are already debating whether or not there was a “blue wave” during the 2018 election, or if it was an Elvis Presley-like “Blue Christmas” for the Democrats, a missed opportunity for the party.
  • John A. Tures for The Observer in an article entitled "Did a Blue Wave Become a Blue Christmas for Democrats?" as published on their 12/26/2018 edition.

• Well, this was during the time that Elvis Presley was driving a gravel truck and we were playing on 11th Street and they didn't allow whites there. It was a whole black street. And at that time I didn't know who Elvis was, whether he was a musician, he was just a guy that I liked. He liked music, so I liked him because he liked music. I'm assuming that was it and we had some form of rapport together. So I would slip him into the back of the club, the piano sitting like this and the back door was sitting there and I would sit him and have him behind the piano, because in those days I would stand up to play the piano, and I'd play the piano backwards and just clowning with the piano. But I never knew that this guy was even an entertainer. But meantime, I'm just assuming a year or so, I hear this "Blue Suede Shoes" but I never put this with this guy at all. I don't even connect the two. And many years later, in Las Vegas, I was playing the lounge room at the International Hotel, and Elvis was in the main room, but you know I never was interested in other acts, you know, I always was interested, like if I get to know you, OK, but for me to go over there, Red Foxx was in the lounge also at that time. And one night, I won some thousand dollars, and I was coming down through the back, had all this big old rack of chips and stuff and this white guy says, "Hey you don't remember me?" And I said no. So that's when he [Elvis] told me that he was the one that used to come to West Memphis and hide behind the piano, in this black club. You know, it was amazing, you know?
  • Ike Turner, in an interview with Open vault, from WGBH, trying to say that as far as the Las Vegas encounter is concerned, that this was the ice-breaker for him to become reacquainted as a friend with Elvis, after all those years.

• The pace could be brutal between touring and schedules, but Vegas was best. The Turners' annual stays at the International, later the Hilton, allowed them to bring the kids along, sometimes taking all four of them to the big room to catch Elvis' extravaganza and he would have the whole family stand for a round of applause.
  • Tina Turner, in her autobiography "I Tina: My life story Tina Turner", written with Kurt Loder

• So I picked up the two Guralnick biographies and started reading them, and as you do if you're reading books about music, you start listening to the tracks as you're going along. Before I'd finished the first book I became a diehard Elvis fan, and by the time I'd finished the second one I had an Elvis tattoo. He might not have written his own songs, but he was the master producer and engineer of his generation. It's also popular opinion to say that the original Hound Dog is better, but no it fucking isn't. That's just bollocks. Elvis' version of that song is lightyears ahead, and if you listen to the two of them back-to-back you can hear what he was doing. This was obviously the ‘50s so it was all cut live, and he’d stand in the middle of the room with all the musicians around him and they’d do 60 takes in a row. He’d be like, ‘Bar three, verse two; drop that F sharp to an E. Now let’s do it again.’ He was in full control of his vision. It's taken me until my mid-30s to realise it, and when I was younger I didn't really get it.
  • Frank Turner English folk singer-songwriter from Meonstoke, who began his career as the vocalist of post-hardcore band Million Dead, in an interview to Rock Icon-s Matt Stocks, and published in their online edition on 1 September 2016.

• You want me to describe Elvis? Wow!!
  • Shania Twain, in 2002 Elvis Lives ABC Special

• But even the power of organized religion paled beside the personal changes I felt come over me in the mid-1950s when I heard Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train" on the radio for the first time. Determined to get a berth of my own on the fast-moving train of rock 'n' roll, I quickly made my way up to Memphis and the legendary Sun Studios. There, I talked producer Sam Phillips into giving me a shot at making some records of his own.
  • Conway Twitty, in a book entitled Elvis the Last word, 1999.

• This is the best way to hear Elvis the Superstar, with "Hound Dog," (1956),"All Shook Up,(1957), "Are You Lonesome Tonight" (1960), and the ever zany "Suspicious Minds" (1969), still sounding fresh and immediate —impressive given how many times most the world has heard them —, and showing off the diversity of Elvis' singing, from the purity of his gospel falsetto to his rock and roll purr.
  • Josh Tyrangiel, reviewing "Elvis 30 Number One hits", for TIME magazine`s "The All Time best 100 albums", as published in its November 13, 2006 edition.

• I'd really love to bump Elvis
  • Bill Tyre, Executive Director and curator of Chicago's John J. Glessner House, expressing his wish for the Glessner House and Museum to displace Graceland from the top spot in the 2018's USA Annual Holiday Poll

• Blue laws began in Texas in 1863 and were still being passed in 1961. Many states prohibited the selling of alcoholic beverages on and off premises in one form or another on Sundays, or at restricted times. Also, blue laws of Texas did not prohibit most businesses being open on Sundays, but all of the restrictions made it impractical to open. Can anyone imagine when some Sunday shopping was a crime? If this blue law was still in effect today, we would all go to jail and cause a Jailhouse Rock with an 8.6 magnitude on the musical Richter scale like Elvis did back in his heyday.
  • African American columnist Chris Tyson, as published in an article entitled "Never on Sundays", and published in the Huntsville Item, on 24 September 2016.

• I was 11 when he died, but I remember that. He gave Ali that robe. Everybody loved him. He was a beautiful person in real life.
  • Mike Tyson, discussing Elvis with Bill Burr in a Hotboxing Podcast

U

• It has something for everyone, except perhaps Irving Berlin, who attempted to get Elvis's recording of "White Christmas" banned from radio play, deeming it "vulgar and disrespectful". And it was, which is part of the reason why the drastically rearranged tune is so memorable, as the then-young singer masticated the contemporary classic, adding his idiosyncratic dynamics and trills (the so-called educated yodels of one's vocal chords); equally irreverent and just as riveting is the King's gritty take on Leiber and Stoller's "Santa Claus Is Back in Town", one of the most sexually suggestive holiday tunes ever, and his rollicking "Here Comes Santa Claus". And who can forget the song that changed the hue of Yuletide, "Blue Christmas", or his wistful, definitive version of "I'll Be Home for Christmas", which cemented his reputation as pop's top dreamboat. Along with Phil Spector's "Christmas Gift for You", this is arguably the finest Rock & Roll Christmas album of all-time, a seasonal yet essential recording belonging under any Christmas tree.
  • Jaan Uhelszki and Bill Holdship, reviewing "Elvis Christmas Album (1957 version), for AMAZON.COM

• Elvis was one of the prime architects of rock and roll music. As such, he influenced several generations both musically and socially. The urgency in Presley's voice is just one part of the equation, and the ease with which he swings tells the rest of the story. Equal parts balladeer and rockabilly king, Elvis played both sides of the fence. He was both tender-love-man and hard-hitting rebel. As this collection proves, his genius was in the way he made it work.
  • UK Channel 4's review of "Elvis Golden Record, Volume II"

• It is not enough to reject the capitalist decadence with words, to speak out against the ecstatic singing of someone like Elvis Presley. We have to offer something better...
  • Walter Ulbricht, East German Communist Party leader, in a speech delivered at a cultural conference in April of 1959, and as published by EIN's online page on October 20, 2012.

• The course examines the history of rock music, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the days before rock (pre-1955), to the end of the 1960s. It covers the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. The course will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed.
  • The University of Rochester's description of Part I of their 2018 online course on the history of rock music, as noted in The Indian Express' December 26 2018 edition and in an article entitled ̊"From dog psychology to history of rock music, these offbeat online courses were a hit in 2018̊

• I was an officer in the Japanese Imperial Armny during WW II anfd I want to apologize to Mr. Presley for us fighting you guys. Because I am really sorry about that and given he studied karate under Ed Parker who was indeed a chanpion in my country, I want to gift this samurai sword to him, as a token of appreciatio. ** Imperial Japanese Army's recounting of the time he brought Elvis a samurai sword all the way from Japan, as handed to, and then told by Dick Grob, head of Security at Graceland. Elvis was getting ready to bed, then came down to meet hi, but the veteran had had already left.

• Elvis Presley, for example, became a key supporter of Father Don Mowery's work, having grown up in Lauderdale Courts, one of the many Memphis housing projects well served by Youth Service during this period. Interestingly, Elvis' donations always came with a catch, namely that they never be put into the general-operating fund, but instead set aside for “special projects.” By 1985, Memphis-style programs were operating in dozens of cities all across America, father Mowery's concept generally considered the most innovative social-service effort developed between the military and civilian sectors in the late-twentieth century. And although no one knew at that time how much of an impact Elvis' contributions would have on the future of the organization, much of the funding for this national expansion came precisely from that “special projects” fund that Elvis Presley had supported in the 1960s.
  • Excerpted from an article on the life and times of Father Don Mowery, the founder of Youth Service, USA, written by Darrell Userton, published on Memphis Magazine on May 1, 2015.

• Society is always on the lookout for a cultural target for finger pointing when the establishment has issues, especially generationally with its youth. In the '50s, comic books became the easiest target to blame for the post-World War II rise of juvenile delinquency in America because certainly, society never believes anything is the fault of the establishment, itself, nor its parents, teachers, clergyman, politicians, etc. So in the early '50s, comic books were mounted on the cultural crucifix. To this day, I believe that the comic books as we know them would not have survived that attack had it not been for the emergence of Elvis Presley. Quickly, the finger turned and pointed at him, instead. Of course, this was followed by 45 RPM record burnings in cities across our nation. Over the decades, that witch-hunt of blame has moved from comic books to Elvis Presley to Saturday morning cartoons to rap to hip-hop to video games, because, again, nothing is ever the fault of society, itself....
  • Michael E. Uslam, American producer of the Batman films, in an article defending Stan Lee̪'s contributions after an attack on his legacy by Bill Maher, as published at the HollywoodReporter on November 20, 2018

V

• I know he didn't write songs but, to me, Elvis Presley was the complete artist. His voice, his song choice, his energy and attitude, his perfect hair and clothes: it felt like he'd been sent from another planet. It was incomprehensible to me that this was a man who made mistakes, or who felt sadness or loneliness. I recently visited his childhood home in Tupelo, Mississippi and it was in stark contrast to the life I'd imagined. To a child, he seemed invincible – and he made me feel it too. To watch Elvis and to listen to his songs was pure escapism and aspiration. "Blue Suede Shoes" was my first love. From as early as I can remember, I knew that if I could channel some of that raw power I saw in him, life would be better for it. I guess, like all of us, he was flawed as a man, but he was the perfect entertainer."
• UK singer, songwriter and guitarist Justin Young, frontman for The Vaccines, choosing his favorite musician of all time in an article published in the Guardian and entitled "Elvis Presley's power, Tina Turner's legs: musicians pick their biggest influences", as published on March 1, 2018.

• That's what rock'n'roll, born of blues and country music, channeled through charming, southern Christian men like Little Richard and Elvis Presley, has always done for us.
  • Siva Vaidhyanathan's review for the Guardian of the movie "Blinded by the light", about an Indian youngster influenced by the music of Bruce Springsteen, as published in their August 15, 2019 edition.

• Elvis Presley? He is the greatest rock & roller.
  • Hilton Valentine, guitarist for the Animals' answer when asked to provide a one-sentence impression of several important musicians, as noted in an article published by Forbes magazine' October 27, 2020 edition and entitled "Why Did The 60s Group The Animals Break Up At The Height Of Its Popularity?

• I was really happy about his success, because acceptance wasn't really too great in those days unless you were a schooled singer, so it opened up a whole new thing for young performers who had not studied voice but just had feel. It made me a little sad to think that here was a man who came along and probably made one of the greatest contributions to rock n roll music ever, and people would come in and criticise his shows, (In fact), for someone to have given that much joy to that many people, he shouldn't of had to do anything but walk out on that stage and just stand there. And I sometimes wonder if people in that sense are sadistic and wait to see you fall or hope to see you fall.
  • Frankie Valli's comments to reporter Heather Bernard at News Center 4,, and as broadcast on August 17, 1977.

• It is an honor for me to be with you, here where the most celebrated people have made history. In this iconic arena, think of this, here, where I stand, is where the King, Elvis Presley played for 80,000 screaming fans
  • JD Vance, introducing Donald Trump at his rally on Madison Square Garden, in NYC, on 26 October 2024.

• The only time I met him was in Las Vegas, at night, but what a time that was!!!
  • Mamie Van Doren, recounting her only encounter with Elvis, in an article published on Closer Weekly's April 5, 2020 edition

• Elvis sang black music because he loved it and he helped popularize it. His first single was one side Blues, one side Hillbilly and the combination defined Rock and Roll forever.
  • Steve Van Zandt's in his 24 January 2000 tweet.

• Oh I Go, I was going to die, join the 27 club, I had more pressure than anybody to record a song, even Elvis..
  • Vanilla Ice, in an interview in Vld RV, in 2023.

• When I was a very little girl, my aunt told me never to listen to Elvis Presley’s music. She asserted (forcefully, I might add) how Elvis (supposedly) said, “The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes.” My aunt also declared he stole black music, so, I now ask myself, why would an African American woman defend a white man she was raised to hate? I decided on a full study and complete unmasking of falsely reported news surrounding the life and career of Elvis Presley. The truth about the invented slur lies in white liberals owning media outlets like Sepia, magazine where they could make money exploiting statements and falsifying others because so many whites during the era openly made stupid remarks against black people. So when a black radio station decided to play Elvis' music and black people started acknowledging that they listened to and bought Elvis' records, white liberals went into panic mode and the slur was invented.
  • Joyce Rochelle Vaughn, African American writer, explaining how the matter of Elvis being a racist came about, as noted in the preface of her book "Thirty Pieces of Silver: The Betrayal of Elvis Presley" Justice Payne Publishing, USA, 2016 (713 pages, Illustrated, ISBN 978-0-9982708-1-4).

• Pope Francis sends me his personal CDs, classical but also tango, Elvis and Piaf...
  • Gian Guiodo Vecci, top columnist for Italy's Corriere della Sera,in an article published on January 13, 2022.

• There was a time when the B-side might save you. You put all that effort into making records and then not to give people an A-side and a B-side, I loved that. I used to go into someplace in Fargo and put the nickel in the jukebox, listen to Elvis on the jukebox for 4 days and then flip the record over. A lot of my stuff was B-sides and I was glad to have them. They paid the same as the A-side.
  • Bobby Vee, in an interview with Craig Moore, of Goldmine, as published on May 14, 2009

• I listen to Elvis Presley, Chainsmokers, Miranda Lambert, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift and Royal Blood.
  • Abhisit Vejjajiva, the 27th Prime Minister of Thailand, on his favourite musicians, as published on BKO on May 20, 2018.

• - My earliest connection with Elvis was that my substitute English teacher at Paxton High was Mae Axton, who seven months later would go on to write "Heartbreak Hotel". Mae was also a show promoter and in the late spring of 1955 she brought the Hank Snow Show to the Gator Bowl Baseball Stadium and that was how I met Elvis. Before the start of the show, I got backstage, talked to him for a long time and then I finally introduced myself to him. He then said "Well I'm Elvis Presley" and I thought 'Wow, that's a strange name' as I had never even heard his name before that. I was there actually to see Snow who headlined and so forth, but as soon as he hit the stage I knew who he was! I'd been thinking that he was just a guitar player but when he went out on stage they came out of the bleachers, pushed so hard you just couldn't hold them back. There just wasn't enough protection as this was a Country show. Elvis was bottom of the bill that day and he hadn't even had a major hit yet, so you wonder what Snow must have thought of the reaction. That day, on May 13, 1955, was the first time I had ever seen a show with so much screaming and fan input. I'd never seen anything like that. It was unbelievable.
  • Singer and Rock memorabilia collector Jimmy Velvet, recalling the day when he met the then 20 year old Elvis Presley before the start of his May 13, 1955 show at the Gator Bowl Baseball Park in Jacksonville Florida, a concert known as being the first Elvis riot of its kind, with some 7,000 people rushing the stage.

• Especially in the South, they speak about Elvis and Jesus in the same breath.
  • Writer Michael Ventura, LA Weekly

• The one thing that I envy is Bill Belew having the job of dressing Elvis Presley. That job I would've liked'.
  • Fashion designer Gianni Versace, as first reported by Esquire magazine, in an interview with Bill Belew in 2016.

• Well, 'Viva Las Vegas,' Is was fun for Sergio and I to don special race suits for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, as we drew inspiration from Elvis, iconic gold belts and all.
  • F1 World Champion Max Verstappen singing the words of the chorus for "Viva Las Vegas", after ending the Las Vegas 2023 Grand Prix at the #1 and #3 positions for thier spnsor Red Bull in a conversation with Christian Horner, its owner and CEO, over the team's radio after the race concluded on November 19, 2023.

• Not only are we thrilled to take viewers into one of America's most beloved private residences, home of the late, great Elvis Presley, we are also thrilled to put the soundtrack of his legendary career behind our romantic holiday movie.
  • Michelle Vicary, Executive VP of Hallmark in announcing country singer Kellie Pickler's 2018 Xmas movie, as published in SoundslikeNashville on May 25, 2018.

• While I was recuperating at Veterans' Hospital in Portsmouth, VA, I went to nearby Norfolk, where I first saw an up and coming singer named Elvis Presley perform at Hank Snow's All Star Jamboree. This experience changed my life. Seeing him on television, as well, I practically launched out of the hospital bed and onto the stage...
  • Singer Gene Vincent, from the archives of the Rockabilly Legends.

• After seeing "Jailhouse Rock", where Elvis gets out of jail and makes his own records, takes them to the radio stations himself to finally put his records in the stores, I then made records and put them in stores.
  • Singer Bobby Vinton as noted in brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/bobbyvinto241039.html?src=t_elvis_presley

• Yes, I believe I am an Elvis, the Elvis of Vallenato
  • Carlos Vives, explaining why the roots of Colombian music, especially from the Cienago Region, has traspassed all frontiers, as did Elvis', in an article entitled Carlos Vives, the Elvis Presley of Vallenato" as published in Latidobeat's February 16 2024 online edition

• Wide raging voices̠ː Singers with extensions from B1 to A5. Elvis Presley's B1 may be heard on the song "Such a Night" and on "Mystery Train" an A5 is reached towards the end. Later in his career, he developed a rich baritone voice which still mastered the higher register with immense power, such as on "American Trilogy", "Unchained Melody" or the joking "Little Darlin"
  • Chapter on Vocal Music as noted in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• I asked him how he felt about Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson from the Democratic National Convention, and about the Andrea Doria disaster, the Empire waistline in the world of fashion, and Pablo Casals, the world's greatest cellist. His answer was that he would rather keep his views to himself because he did not want to be labeled, so I left him alone. Later I found out that Elvis always enjoyed telling the story of how he managed to outsmart me and every other reporter by answering questions without really answering them.
  • Luther Voltz Jr, who interviewed Elvis for the Miami Herald on August 6, 1956. Had the interview taken place eight months later, Elvis could have at least spoken hours about the Andrea Doria, knowing as well as he did, as of April of 1957, one of the survivors, songwriter Mike Stoller.

• Long before the plans for an actual rock museum in Cleveland were hatched, a group headed by Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner and Atlantic Records' Ahmet Ertegun started off the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with two induction ceremonies-cum-concerts, in 1986 and 1987, bringing in a total of 25 blues-and-rock groundbreakers primarily from the ‘50s, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Presley is in fact rock’s greatest presence, shaking a country with a single-handed nuclear reaction of country, gospel, and the blues. Along with the Beatles, he is the epitome of pop stardom as well.
  • Vulture magazine's laud of Elvis, who they ranked amongst the top 5 Rock and Roll hall of Famers of all time, as published on their January 12, 2019 edition

• Any young man who calls his mother “baby” and speaks baby-talk with her must love her tenderly. But Elvis Presley didn't just love his mother – he worshiped her. In return, she inspired him to create a sound that would change popular music forever. It was Gladys who gave her son his first guitar for his 11th birthday, even though Elvis had preferred a bicycle. And it was his love for Gladys that prompted him to record his first song, My Happiness as a special birthday gift for her. The spiritual bond between mother and son had existed from the minute Elvis was born. On 8 January 1935 the then 22-year-old Gladys suffered a hemorrhage and barely survived giving birth to a set of twins. The first one, Jesse Garon, was stillborn, which led Gladys to believe that the surviving twin, Elvis Aaron, had inherited Jesse's soul. Elvis, she believed, was “the One”. Throughout his childhood she instilled in him how special he was. So when the studio receptionist at Sun Records asked Elvis what kind of singer he was, the 18-year-old answered, “I don’t sound like nobody.” The belief in her only son's special calling, whatever that would turn out to be, made Gladys very protective of Elvis. Over the objections of her husband, Vernon, she made sure he never spent a night away from home until he was 17. Once Elvis's musical career took off in a big way in 1956 things went south for his muse. Then, in 1958, when Elvis was drafted into the Army, she succumbed to a heart attack. After her death Elvis remained an incredibly successful artist. In 1977, at the age of 42, he died from an overdose of medications at Graceland. The date was 16 August – the very same day he had buried his beloved mother 19 years earlier and inconsolably wept, “Oh, God, everything I have is gone.”
  • Jenny Volvovski, Julia Rothman and Matt Lamothe, for the Telegraph in an article entitled "Behind every great man.....The women who made Elvis, Warhol and Nabokov great", as published on their 26 Oct 2014 edition.

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• He is the Elvis of Sea ice Science
  • About Peter Wadham, as noted in Greenpeace 's July 2010 edition.

• It was my mother's Elvis concerts from the 70's on VHS tapes that first drew me to the sheer thrill of an all-you-can-eat live performance. I just had this fascination for him. I was going to the Punters Club in Fitzroy but a lot of the bands I was watching were staring at their shoes, I mean shoe gaze was massive. Then I'd go home to my mother's Elvis' tapes and nobody was owning a spotlight like that, nobody. I wanted to start a band that was putting on show. I wanted to reward people for leaving their living rooms if they were going to come out to watch a band, let's give them something visual as well as a band that sounds good.
  • Henry Wagons, Australian singer/songwriter and frontman of the outlaw country rock band, Wagons, recalling what inspired him to become a rocker, in an article published by the Brisbane Times on February 8, 2018.

• I think about Elvis all the time.
  • Tom Waits, as found in TSOE, 2018

• I loved everything about him.I grew up with singers, dancers and comics. At 15, I discovered Elvis Presley. A girl whom I wanted to take to the prom showed me a magazine clipping of her "boyfriend." It was Elvis. This guy looked like a Greek god, and then I saw him on television. I loved everything about him, so I became a fan. I always wanted to stand in the same place he stood the night he caused all the commotion at the Ed Sullivan Theatre. May I?
  • Oscar winner Christopher Walken, in an article entitled The Religious Affiliation of Christopher Walken, as published in Adherents.com and a couple of years later, explaining to Dave Letterman the reasons why he wrote "Him", a play about Elvis.

• In fact, I first provided clothing for her during her first pregnancy in 1981, and continued to do so until her death in 1997. One such outfit, which Diana herself called her ‘Elvis Dress’, was worn by her both to the British Fashion Awards in October 1989 and then on an official visit to Hong Kong. The year of her passing away, the dress was bought for £81,203 at a benefit auction by The Franklin Mint, a company which produces memorabilia such as a portrait doll featuring her wearing this dress, thus making it one of the best-known of Diana's many outfits, and the second highest prized. The Mint returned the dress to the Diana Estate a few years later.
  • Designer Catherine Walker, describing the white silk strapless dress encrusted with pearls and sequins with a matching bolero jacket, which she designed with Elvis specifically in mind, as commissioned by Diana, the then Princess of Wales, and as noted in V&A Search the Collections online page.

• I had a 45 rpm record player, one of those that accommodated little records with big holes in the middle and with the capacity to hold, what, 10 or so records, to drop down one at a time, until all 10 had played. But that's too general for what I've been thinking about. Specifically, it's one of the songs, really the only song I can say with certainty that I played, over and over and over again. “Lavender Blue” by Sammy Turner. And it, and others, made me know I loved music — most all kinds excusing jazz and opera. And then, it was Elvis. Controversial Elvis Presley. Would my folks let me listen to his music or watch him on our little black and white television? Then, before we knew it, Elvis was too big to be avoided or ignored. You had to watch him...
  • Larry Walker, in an article for the Telegraph entitled "Just another silly love song", and published on Nov. 5, 2016.

• i) One day we are in a recording session, here at RCA B, and he was talking to one of the clean up guys. Then three RCA people from New York, with suits and they walked up to Elvis, but he paid no attention to them. The clean up guy stopped talking, but Elvis said "Go ahead, Sir". When he finished, the clean up guy shook his hand and thanked Elvis for talking to him. Then Elvis approached the guys from New York and said "Gentlemen, if you see me talking to somebody, don't interrupt me, don't even walk up to me, I know when it{s your turn and I will walk up to you. And that was the end of it. ii) The best I have ever seen him look was in 1967, at the Circle G Ranch. His hair was black to blonde like it was naturally, the colour of a fawn. Just as shiny as could be. He had a suit and shoes the same color of his hair, so he walked in and we were stunned. He had been out riding his horses, was tanned and his eyes shunned like diamonds. We couldn't believe it. We just stood there and looked at him. Finally, he said "Shall we dance?"
  • Singer Ray Walker of the Jordainaires, who backed him from 1956 onwards, i) in an interview in 2016, and ii) as published in the book, Elvis from those who knew him best.

• In constructing his own public image during the early 1950s, Elvis unconsciously appropriated, synthesised and ultimately capitalised upon images from a series of contemporary cultural icons. These ranged from Captain Marvel and Dean Martin to Jackie Wilson. ‘Cultural production’, states Madow, ‘is always (and necessarily) a matter of reworking, recombining, and redeploying already existing symbolic forms, sounds, narratives, and images’. To this effect – on the current standing of US publicity rights law – one could actually begin to question Elvis's right to call the Elvis image his own in the first place; however, few would deny that the Elvis whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The overall effect of his efforts was to create a unique image which had a fresh and vital meaning in post-war society. If there did not exist any rights of control over power of the creation of cultural symbols then there would be little financial incentive for individuals to spend the time, energy and resources to develop their ‘talents and produce works which ultimately benefit society as a whole Elvis signs and their multiple meanings are so strong that Elvis has, in effect, mediated his own celebrity culture beyond the grave.
  • David S. Wall UK Professor of Criminology at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds, in his article "Policing Elvis: Legal Action and the Shaping of Post-Mortem Celebrity Culture as Contested Space" as published in Research Gate Nets' September 2003 edition.

• We have to still care about Elvis because if we don't, then we don't like music. He was the big bang, the sun around which all the other planets circled ever since and when he went down, we lost the first and the best.
  • Mick Wall, UK writer, in the film The Day The Rock Star Died which premiered on October 16, 2018 AXS TV

• Basically, Elvis Presley was doing self-defense techniques because he couldn't spar, it was simply too dangerous. He had to preserve his voice, so contact to the face or neck was out. He also didn't want to risk breaking any bones, so he'd just train on and demonstrate self-defense moves like taking full-power shots to the stomach. He was a fine athlete, not a fighter, but that doesn't mean he wasn't able to fight, though. His technique —his side kick and his punches— looked as good as anybody else's. He wanted to do karate because he'd learned a bit of it in the Army and really liked it. The best part of working with him was beating up all of his people, like Red and Sonny West, Jerry Shilling and all the others. I just relegated them to pulp.
  • US kickboxing Champion Bill Wallace, in an article published in Black Belt magazine on March 20, 2011.

• Well, now wait. You say he has no talent and yet I think that you'll agree that he has been taken into the bosom of America in a certain sense and has been very well paid for it...
  • Mike Wallace, defending Elvis in an interview broadcast on November 16, 1957, with syndicated gossip columnist Elsa Maxwell, who seconds before had labelled Elvis as a "young, no talented, utterly unattractive man with a horrible face and with that lank hair that falls down driving young women all over the country in some sort of ecstasy"

• With the way he was marketed, he didn't even need to be able to sing the way he could. But Elvis had talent, plain and simple. The guy had a thousandth-octave range, and a variety in his vocal styles and approach, he could make more vocal tones, with just his voice, than a guitar player with 50 pedals and gadgets. If you never even saw the guy, you could plain feel, not just hear, the emotion and passion in his voice, and you are immediately taken in, one hundred percent. On the merit of vocals alone, he had more talent in the barbecue stuck in his teeth than the singers who sell millions of records do today.
  • Country singer Roger Wallace, in the web`s "Soapbox"

• A Presley motion picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood.”
  • Hal Wallis, Producer of nine of Elvis' films, as published in www.graceland.com

• This is something I've always wanted to do: Take an evening, invite an audience and just be me. What you can expect is me playing music, answering almost all questions anyone would ask (except the ones that may incriminate me), a big screen power point presentation put together and narrated by me, guitar shop talk, slide guitar 101, true stories of road craziness, playing more music and I’m particularly excited to talk about my Elvis experiences —what he meant to me and what I meant to him. We’ll conclude with a Town Hall Meeting, including a strategy and platform discussion for my candidacy to run for President of the United States in 2020 and sing ‘God Bless America’ or something else (Elvis would want that)."
  • Joe Walsh, formerly with the James Gang, Barnstorm, Eagles, The Party Boys, and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Bands, announcing his forthcoming appearance at the newly built Elvis Presley Guesthouse in Memphis, as published by Graceland com.

• Is it true Elvis took you often to tour the morgue? Why̞?
  • Barbara Walters's question to Priscilla Presley during her ABC TV 1985 interview.

• This era of biracial musical creation and consumption has been largely erased from popular memory. It lies buried beneath simplistic parables of white expropriation and exploitation of black culture in which Elvis Presley has become emblematic of centuries of uncompensated and unacknowledged white appropriation of black cultural ingenuity and labour. There is enormous moral power to this perspective and, to be sure, plenty of evidence of just such exploitation and theft. Nonetheless, it still makes for unpersuasive history and fails to help us to understand the significance of Elvis and the whole biracial rock-and-roll phenomenon that intersected with the dawn of the modern civil rights movement.
  • Brian Ward, for the Independent, in an article published on August 16, 2017.

• Arguably the finest recording found in all the Sun sessions, "Trying To Get To You"(1955), is a song that Presley made his own due to his hugely committed vocal, and the simple carefree abandon with which he performs it; at first, it feels like a classic country song with simple, elegant lyrics; but it is at the bridge – where Elvis really lets fly –, that the song is transformed from a lovely country lament, into deep blues; although the 1955 version is magnificent, Elvis manages to better it on his "1968 Comeback Special", in which he sings the song with so much intensity, it prompted critic Greil Marcus to exclaim "this is probably the finest rock and roll ever recorded.
  • Thomas Ward's review, for AllMusicGuide.com, of "Trying To Get To You", whose original version has now been confirmed, by BMG/RCA (which owns all the Presley Sun catalogue), as having been sang and recorded by Elvis while simultaneously playing the piano, with Sun Records' Sam Philipps immediately arranging the mix so that his rather loud (and then still amateurish) piano playing could not be heard in the final master take.

• i) I liked Dylan, the way he created a brilliant new style. I even gave him one of my silver "Double Elvis" paintings. Later on, though, I heard rumors that he had used it as a dart board up in the country. When I'd ask, ‘Why did he do that?’ I'd invariably get hearsay answers like ‘Listen to Like a Rolling Stone — I think you’re the ‘diplomat on the chrome horse, man.’. I didn't know exactly what they meant by that — I never listened much to the words of songs — but I got the tenor of what people were saying — that Dylan didn't like me ii) For forty-five minutes nonstop Ali raged on about prostitution on the steps of the White House, gravity, meteorites, jumping out of the window, Israel, Egypt, Zaire, South Africa, drugs, broken skulls, delusions, angel food cake, yellow hair, judgment day, Muslim morality, Jesus, boxing, Sweden, the Koran, friendship, and Elvis, relating it all to the central point that ‘man must obey the laws of God or perish!’”
  • Andy Warhol, i) commenting on what could have happened to the painting he gave Bob Dylan, who years later regretted having exchanged it for some furniture with his manager, Albert Grossman. Upon the latter's death, his wife sold it to the New York Museum of Modern Art for US$700,000. Still, that was small change when compared to what a similar "Double Elvis" sold for at Sotheby's in 2012, namely 37.5 million dollars, exactly fifty times what Grossman's widow got. Dylan was flabbergasted when he found out and ii) From Ali's lectures entitled Friendship and The Real Cause of Man's Distress:, 1967 and as noted in Victor Bockris in his book “The Perfect Interview: The Ali-Warhol Tapes.” Gadfly, Apr. 1999

• Elvis Presley existed not only as a flesh-and-blood person but also as millions of pictures on album covers and movie screens, in newspapers and magazines. He was infinitely reproducible. Similarly, through use of the silkscreen printing process, Warhol could produce as many Elvis paintings as he pleased.
  • The Andy Warhol Museum's official laud on Elvis Presley as a subject of Art.

• When we first met, I was like, 'OK, Pam, don't act a fool, but I was trying to keep my composure, because this was fricking Prince. It's like Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson. It doesn't get any higher than that."
  • Pam Warren, African American DJ also known as Pam the Funkstress and the Coup DJ, referring to his main client, Prince, in an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle in May of 2016, and as published by Billboard on her obituary, dated 23 December 2017.

• As a single woman, I could always spot a handsome man. Elvis Presley was one of the prettiest, yes, prettiest and nicest people I ever known. Pictures and videos of him really did not do him justice. In 1969, when I opened at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and he had opened at the International, I once went to see my aunt Cissy Houston (a member of Elvis' vocal backing group, the Sweet Inspirations), during one of their sound checks. Elvis was there and Cissy introduced me to him. He let me know he was a a fan of my recordings then had all the Vegas record stores place a photo of him inside of my albums. This he announced from the stage and added that anyone who bought any of my albums would find an autographed photo of him inside of it. That week I think I sold more albums in Las Vegas than I ever had. I will never forget this act of kindness. We lost an icon when he made his transition.
  • Dionne Warwick, recalling the time she met Elvis, as told in her auto-biography "My Life, As I See It", (pp 99-100), published in 2010. The story also dovetails nicely with that of her then ten year companion, actor Gianni Russo's account of Elvis, in Las Vegas, watching a western being shown on television with him, then drawing his real guns to make fun of the scenes they were watching, as noted in his auto biography entitled “Hollywood Godfather: My Life in the Movies and the Mob”.

• There would be no current popular music without Elvis. He not only synthesized everything that had come before him in a really unique way, but he influenced everybody who came after — so you can have Blake Shelton and Adam Lambert influenced by the same cat.
  • Don Was, Grammy-winning producer, in an interview with Rollingstone and published in their February 13, 2019 edition.

• I've just worked with this guy ( in reference to Austin Butler) on stage and I've never seen a work ethic like it.
  • Denzel Washington' s advice to director and producer Baz Luhrmann, whom he didn't even know, as to who should play the lead role in the 2022 Warner Brothers production of "Elvis" as noted in a E News article entitled "How a "Cold Call" from Denzel Washington helped Austin Butler score Elvis' role, and as published on their May 12, 2022 edition.

• i) Elvis Presley got the polio vaccine backstage on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, then publicized it on radio, and vulnerable teenagers flocked to follow. Today’s stars should, too. Another tool: incentives. President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on employers to give paid time off for vaccination; how about other inducements, such as bonuses?
  • The Washington Post's Editorial Board's opinion on advocacies for vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic, as stated in an article entitled "The US has vaccinated half its adults, the problem is the other half", and published on their April 21, 2021 edition

• Elvis' range was about two and a quarter octaves, as measured by musical notation, but his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all.
  • Lindsay Waters, Executive Editor for the Humanities at Harvard University Press, in his essay "Come softly, darling, hear what I say"

• I better watch out. I believe whitey's picking up on the things that I'm doing
  • Muddy Waters, after listening to Elvis' "Trouble" while unaware that it was written for Elvis by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoler, as noted in the book "Elvis Presley and the Politics of Popular Memory"

• In my seventeen years as doorman to the top hotel in Hollywood, the biggest star that ever stayed there was Elvis Presley. He was indeed one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. If I introduced any person to him, he would show the utmost courtesy and respect that they ever encountered. Sometimes, over the long years I felt that God had put him on this earth for a very special reason. When you use the phrase "a very special person", that was Elvis Presley, in my opinion.
  • Earl "The Pearl" Watson, African American doorman of the Knickerbocker Hotel from 1945 to 1962. In his bio entitled "Doorman To The Stars̊, he also talked about wanting to write an ENTIRE book dedicated to his positive memories of Elvis

• Whereas Ottawa has the unique distinction of being just one of three cities outside of the United States where Elvis Presley had a live performance, April 3 shall henceforth be known as Elvis Presley day in the capital.
  • Jim Watson, Mayor of Ottawa, as reported by CBC News on April 3, 2017, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Elvis' two sold out Ottawa shows in the Canadian capital.

• Keith Richards taught me rock and roll. We’d have nothing to do all day and we’d play these records over and over again. I learned to love Muddy Waters. Keith turned me on to how good Elvis Presley was, and I’d always hated Elvis up ’til then.
  • Charlie Watts, as quoted in his obituary published in CNBC's August 24, 2021 edition

• Elvis Presley. That lit the fuse for me.
  • Jim Weatherly, Former University of Mississippi Quarter Back and songwriter, in reference to what turned him away from a career in football and into one of music, as published on the Clarion Ledger on October 12, 2018.

• Everything is collectible, it seems, even human hair. Outbidding an international field of collectors, an unnamed Londoner paid $13,000 last week to purchase a lock of Napoleon's hair, reportedly snipped a day after the Emperor's death in 1821. For those in the know, that's a relative bargain, particularly in view of what collectors have spent on strands from another famous head, namely that of Elvis Presley, whose small jar of hair sold for $115,000 in 2002. (In fact), Presley's barber had reportedly saved his hair in a bread bag. "I have no idea what [the collector] intends to do with it," said a representative from the Chicago company, MastroNet, that held the internet auction.
  • The Week's collective answer to the question making up the headline of their article of July 6 of 2010 and entitled "Strands of glory: Is Napoleon's hair worth more than Elvis'?

• It was seeing Elvis Presley on The Milton Berle Show, before Ed Sullivan. I already was pretty musical and seeing Elvis and his band, particularly his drummer, D.J. Fontana, just kind of grabbed me. Then, of course, four or five months later, he was on The Ed Sullivan Show and everything just... well, that was the Big Bang.
  • Max Weinberg, drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and television personality, answering how he first got the rock and roll urge in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, as published on January 27, 2018.

• I went to see Col. Parker with the million dollars he'd asked me to put up, which I got in two days, from an investor since I didn't have a cent to my name, so that is when he introduced me to Elvis, as his promoter. And Elvis, who was actually two years older than me just said "Thank you very much, Sir". Anyways, by the time the two week tour wound up, in San Diego, I was a millionaire, too (LOL).
  • Rock promoter and Hollywood producer Jerry Weintraub, recalling how he made his first million dollars, in an interview with Charlie Rose on Nov. 10, 1998

• Is it 2018 and the subject is the Long Range Stand-Off Weapon (LRSO)? No, it's 1956 and the subject is the AGM-28 cruise missile. Choosing the same solution (for the same aircraft!) decades apart seems like eye-roll material, but modern drone makers can draw much inspiration from the older missile. By the mid 1950s Soviet air defenses could shoot down American bombers well before they got within bombing range of important targets, so in 1956 the Strategic Air Command (SAC) asked for a supersonic cruise missile big enough to carry an H-bomb several hundred miles, and small enough for a B-52 to carry along with its bomb load. The missile's onboard inertial navigation system let it place its 1.45-megaton W-28 warhead within two miles of its target at six-hundred-miles range. It ran like a scalded dog and took its name from the Elvis Presley tune—the "Hound Dog". Peak deployment spanned the 1960s into the middle 1970s, with up to 29 bomber wings carrying them on patrol. But as early as 1966 Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sought to retire them, so they went to the kennels in 1975 for dead storage, and the last one (save for a few museum displays) was scrapped about a year after Elvis himself died. They lingered long enough for their whiz-bang terrain-matching guidance system to become perfected and miniaturized in America's modern cruise missile weapons as deployed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Future drone motherships are certain to adopt and adapt its close bond with its owner— the fuel, thrust, electrical and data hosted by the motherships will be essential to swarms. The Hound Dogs will shed their fleas, indeed.
  • Steve Weintz, in an article entitled "The AGM-28 'Hound Dog' Cruise Missile: How the US Air Force Planned to Drop a Hydrogen Bomb on Russia", published in the National Interest on August 18, 2018.

• Elvis was probably the most important thing in music, maybe ever
  • Bob Weir, singer-songwriter and guitarist, founding member of the Grateful Dead, in an interview for ABC's Elvis Lives.}

• No one had any expectations, he being was such a strange, quiet fellow — so completely foreign, but he sang and read a scene from The Rainmaker and answered questions asked from off-screen — and it was phenomenal. It was amazing to be there, one of those life-changing experiences."
  • Screenwriter Allan Weiss, in his 2004 book "Elvis Presley: The Man. The Life. The Legend", in a specific reference to his being there with producer Hal Wallis on the day Elvis did his first screen test for Paramount, and as published on his obituary by The Hollywood Reporter on 3/27/2017

• When you picture past presidents of the United States, whom do you see? Perhaps you envision John F. Kennedy as a doting father playing with his children in the West Wing. Maybe you remember Richard Nixon as the smiling yet stiff leader who posed hand-in-hand with Elvis Presley in the Oval Office.
  • Haley Weiss for Artsy, in an article entitled ̊̊How White House Photographers Have Shaped the Image of the Presiden̊t̊ and published on their January 7, 2019 edition.

• I put Elvis Presley up there with Jolson and Sinatra, and I'll go one step further: Elvis was the greatest pop entertainer of the 20th century. Like Al Jolson, he gave his all when performing: He sang from his heart, his body, the very essence of his total being, when sharing what he felt."
  • Mort Weiss, Jazz clarinet musician, recalling his having shared a train with Presley when they were both 21 years old, as published on the February 25, 2012 online edition of Something else. at www.somethingelseviews.com

• He played the San Diego Arena in the spring, and my family lived in nearby La Jolla, so I went to the concert. "Heartbreak Hotel" was already a radio hit, and I couldn't get enough of it. Hearing that song was a real turning point for me as a teenager. When I saw him in action, he was mesmerizing, dressed as he was in a pair of loose trousers, loafers, a shirt and open jacket. When he moved, he was smoldering, his hair falling over his eyes, his tone sensual. His delivery on "Heartbreak Hotel" was also in a minor key, which always triggered a reaction in me. But it was when he slipped in those low-register Elvis-isms— you know, the huh-huh thing— it came from his body, not from his head. He had that emotional intensity that was impossible to resist.
  • Raquel Welch, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 25, 2013

• He a had a magic combination of looks and voice, and you can't discount how good looking he was as a young man and he was the guy who really brought black music into the vocabulary.
  • Jann Wenner, co-founder of RollingStone, in an interview for A&E's miniseries the Greatest 100 people of the millennium.

• He was almost at the point where he was being recognized as a national star, but not quite. I'll give you an example. Once, in a railroad station in Chattanooga, TN, we were waiting to change trains. Elvis went over to a magazine rack and picked up a movie magazine. He found a photo of himself inside and says to me 'Al, can I have a pen?' I gave him one and he scribbled his name inside the magazine. Then he goes over to the two girls working at the rack. He had the spread open to his picture, showing it to them. He's also looking back at me with a huge Cheshire Cat grin. Their reaction was 'That'll be 35 cents sir'. Then Elvis said to them 'No, this is for you. I'm Elvis Presley'. In the meantime, I'm capturing pictures of all of this, which is really what I wanted.
  • Alfred Wertheimer, who took over 2,500 images of Elvis in a period of eight shooting days, divided in two groups, the first in March of 1956, at the specific request of RCA, and then in late September of 1958 on the day he left for Germany, as a soldier in the U.S. Army, in an interview with EIN's online page on April 30, 2011.

• Can I talk to Elvis? said the caller. “This is Jimmy Carter”. Indeed it was the then President-elect calling from Atlanta, where he'd seen him the day before, to ask Elvis to be a youth spokesman. A few hours later, with the temperature near zero and the wind gusting to 30 mph, Elvis rousted his entourage and ordered everyone to the airport for the flight home. They got on the Lisa Marie, but the pilot couldn't get it started right away, so they all huddled together in blankets waiting for the plane to start and heat up. And then they get word of a bomb threat, so they had to sign papers authorizing it to take off anyway. As the plane rolled down the runway at Pittsburgh airport, we all just sat there in silence looking at each other and wondering if this was going to be it. Had that been “it,” Elvis would have gone out on a high note.
  • Tim Wesley from his book, “My Boxes: A Nostalgic Collection of Stories and Stuff,”

• It's our responsibility as musicians to keep pushing each other, to keep competing with each other. It's a really great competition. I see here artists like Beyonce and Alicia Keys and Rihanna and Chris Brown and Chris Martin, all in the same room, and we're going to push this music to the point where it was like in the 1960s and '70s, when the talk was about Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles. We (all) will be the new Beatles. We (all) will be the new Hendrix; (in fact) in any other industry, they'll tell you that you're supposed to do better than those in the past, so when you say, 'I want to be Elvis,' they say, 'What's wrong with you?' Well, I wanna be Elvis.
  • Kanye West, in accepting Best Album honors in the Rap & Hip-Hop category, at the American Music Awards, on November 23, 2008

• I once met a young man from Mexico who asked me why Elvis didn't like Mexican people because he'd heard the rumours that he had criticized his countrymen. I told him it was all lies and that Elvis loved Mexicans. He told me that Elvis was supposed to have said Mexicans were greasy haired people. I told him to remember that Elvis was the one who put stuff in his hair to make it greasy and he even died it black too. There were many reports about things Elvis was supposed to have said that he never did, in fact he was upset that he wasn't allowed to go into Mexico because of riots. On the set of Fun In Acapulco, Elvis got upset with the director,(Richard Thorpe, who had already directed him in "Jailhouse Rock") because he got onto a couple of the actors because they spoke broken English and even yelled, “Jesus Christ, can’t you get the lines right?”. Elvis took him aside and said, 'Sir, those people were hired by the producer and he knew how they spoke and also knew their language, but he wanted them and they're doing the best they can. Rehearse with them more or whatever but please don't be doing that. I don't like you doing that to them' and the director stopped it.
  • Sonny West, who was Elvis' bodyguard until 1976, in his autobiography Fame and Fortune.

• We had crew cuts, wore tee-shirts and blue jeans, Elvis had the long duck-tail, the long sideburns and he wore the loud clothes, and naturally he was a target for all the bullies. One day luckily I walked into the boys' bathroom at Humes High School and 3 guys were going to cut his hair just, you know, to make themselves look big or make them feel big or whatever, and I intervened and stopped it. And I guess that stuck because a couple of years later after Elvis had his first record he came over and asked me if I would like to go with him, I think it was Grenada, Mississippi or somewhere, and I went and I was with him from then on, except for a couple of years in the Marine Corps.
  • Red West, who went to high school with Elvis, then became one of his bodyguards until 1976, as told in an interview with Elvis Australia on May 29, 2008

• Warhol was fascinated by popular and celebrity culture, and Elvis undeniably represented the ultimate subject for the artist, even more than his iconic explorations of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor (As a result),there is an enormous number of works dedicated to Elvis realised by Warhol between 1962 and 1963.
  • Art critic Mark Westall, in an article published in FAD Magazine's August 4, 2024 edition, highlighting one of Andy Warhol's "Triple Elvis" being shown at the the Vitality of TimeExhibition, a cycle curated by Luca Massimo Barbero for Intesa Sanpaolo Gallerie d’Italia, in Naples, and which was presenting previously unseen works from the Intesa Sanpaolo Collection of 20th Century art in late August of 2024.

• Jimi is a huge Elvis fan, so we always start off by listening to 'Elvis’ Christmas Album'
  • About Little Big Town' s frontman Jimmy Westbrook, on why they chose to honor Elvis in their latest album, as noted by band member Karen Fairchild in an aryicle publushred at aol.com¿'s October 24, 2024 online edition.

• With his blue eyes he should photograph well with black hair.
  • Paramount's top make-up artist Wally Westmore's suggestion to producer Hal Wallis, after meeting Presley in early October of 1956, in preparation for his second movie, "Loving You", which was shot in Technicolor in early 1957. Wallis approved and his hair was then dyed black, as noted in za.pinterest.com/pin/268879040226515826/ on January 28, 2018. Wallis approved and his hair was then dyed black.

• We all know, of course, that Elvis was a philanthropist and humanitarian. The stories of his generosity are legendary. Yet here is a tidbit that I believe is a monumental testament to his true nature, one that most people have never heard. On Christmas Eves when most of us spend that entire special evening with our families, Elvis would leave the house and go to the local jail. He visited every prisoner no matter their race, gender, creed and the severity of the alleged crime and talked with every single one. I was told by the officers he would ask each one why they were there and how he could help them. And help them he did in any way he could. He took notes, planned what he would do for each and every one he could possibly do something for. Of course in most of our religions and particularly Christianity, we are taught that Jesus told us to comfort those in need, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, shelter the homeless etc. "I was in prison and ye visited me" is one that I venture to guess not many of us, even though we call ourselves Christian believers, would ever do. Elvis Presley not only believed what he was taught, but physically acted on those teachings. Most of us (including me) somehow decide this one instruction is just easy to ignore and/or better left "out" of our good deeds. Still, he kept contacting their families to see if they needed financial assistance. Were their children alright? Their husbands or wives̞? And he made certain they would be helped once they served their time and that they had proper representation in the court by a decent attorney. How many of us would do this at any time, let alone on Christmas Eves?
  • Soprano Kathy Westmoreland, the little girl with the high voice, as Elvis used to call her during the tours she accompanied Elvis in the 1970's, in an article entitled ̊"How Elvis Secretly Spent His Christmas Eves̊" 2011.

• Believe me, Benny just had this incredible electricity about him. He was the Elvis Presley of Cleveland.
  • Wayne Weston's laud of his early band mate Benjamin Orr, later founder of The Cars in an article entitled Let's go: Benjamin Orr & The Cars by Joe Milliken and published on Glide-s magazine December 21, 2019 8 edition.

• The voice is so melodious, and – of course, by accident, this glorious voice and musical sensibility was combined with this beautiful, sexual man and this very unconscious – or unselfconscious stage movements. Presley's registration, the breadth of his tone, listening to some of his records, you'd think you were listening to an opera singer. But...it's an opera singer with a deep connection to the blues, which leads me to the role of the great enunciator, because he delivered us the greatest cultural boon. Nobody ever did more for the American people. He gave them the great present of black music transmitted through his own sensibility, his own sensitivity. Of course Elvis was a different kind of white purveyor of black music because it was naturally black and it was real and he was a conduit. And America was really changed. I'm talking about American music and our culture in general. We owe far more to Elvis Presley than all the British groups put together."
  • Jerry Wexler, co-founder of Atlantic Records, whose bid of US$30,000 came up short of the US$35,000 offered by RCA, for the purchase of Elvis' contract with SUN Records in November of 1955.

• If Rock and Roll were a religion, Elvis was its most prolific disciple, responsible for more converts than anyone before or after him; if it had been country, Elvis was a Founding Father and his lyrics were the documents of freedom that helped to birth the nation; if it were a sickness, Elvis-itis would be the most potent and contagious virus known to man, infecting victims who just looked at his image, heard his voice or saw him perform in person or through a recording. But since Rock and Roll is music, we’ve all decided the world over to just call Elvis…the King.
  • A. C. Wharton African American Mayor of Shelby County, Tennessee, in commemoration of what would have been Elvis' 74th birthday, at the Graceland mansion, and as published by www.elvis.com, on 8th January 2009.

• The Star Wars movies belong in the same category as Elvis Presley movies: They’re popular yet are all but unwatchable — except that the Presley pictures evince a human touch".
  • Armond White's opening paragraph in reviewing "The Last Jedi" for the "National Review"'s December 15th edition.

• I'd heard that song many times. But that night in jail was the first time I really heard it. It was more important to me than any song I'd ever heard in my life. When he hit that hook in the song, "It's now or never," it was like someone grabbed me by my shirt, looked at me and said, "You asshole. You see where you're sitting, Barry? You're sitting in jail, and you can't stand it. You've got to change your life. It's your decision. It's now, or it's never." That's the way I read it. And when I got out, I told myself, Never again."
  • Barry White from an interview in Playboy magazine's April 2000 edition.

• In 1968, a “drive-by” wasn't a shooting, it was popping into the salon for a fast touch up. Elvis Presley came to my salon just to say hello sometimes. When he'd show up, the ladies leaped out of their shampoo pools, they wanted his attention so badly.
  • Carrie White, for LA Mag, in an article entitled "Hairdresser to the Stars Carrie White Recalls the Summer L.A. Changed Forever", as published on August 12, 2019.

• My father George C. White had gone to Yale for a year before he went to art school and I just wanted to go to Yale too. They allowed only three people a year in those days to major in theater and you had to audition and if you were accepted into the program, then you got a year's credit toward your master's degree. After college I joined the Army where, by chance, I met Elvis Presley, He was in the third army division, I was in the fourth but I ended up doing a show with him up on the Czech border in 1958. Because we were all freezing to death, we cooked up this show and Elvis said, ‘You’re in the theater, aren’t you, George?’ and I said I was, and he said, ‘Why don’t we put on a show and we can get out of guard duty? LOL. And we did.
  • George White, recalling the show they organized at the Mickey Bar in Grafenwöhr in December of 1958 in an article entitled "George White on Theater on the Record" as published in the August 1 2020 edition of the CT Examiner

• An 18-year-old Elvis Presley walked through the doors of the Memphis Recording Service at 708 Union Ave. in the summer of 1953. He carried a beat-up guitar that he'd had since the age of 11 and enough money to make a $3.98 record of his own voice. He sang two '30s ballads -- "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" -- hoping to catch the attention of Sam Phillips, who had started his own label, Sun. When he was done, Marion Keisker, who helped run the place with Phillips, typed his name on the back of a label for Sun act The Prisonaires, and Presley left with his acetate. For more than six decades, that record of Elvis singing "My Happiness" was kept by the family of the high-school friend Presley left it with, Ed Leek. As part of an auction, it was valued at approximately $100,000. It sold to an unknown Internet bidder for $300,000...
  • Identifying the bidder, musician Jack White, who had also appeared in a cameo role portraying Elvis in the movie "Walk Hard", as published by Billboard, on Jan. 15, 2015.

• Elvis' producer Felton Jervis was a good friend of mine. All of a sudden I released ‘Polk Salad Annie ’ and it was a big hit single and then Felton called and invited my wife & me out to Las Vegas to see Elvis perform it. He did a good version of it, which of course he recorded for the live album. We hung out with Elvis for two or three days and just sat back in the dressing room and talked. We played a little guitar together – he really liked music. Elvis said, “Man, I feel like I wrote that song”. I said “You know, the way you do it on stage, it feels like you wrote it”. Then, in 1974, I was living in Memphis and it was about 4 o'clock in the morning when my phone rings. This German voice says “Mr. White, we are down at Stax records do you have any more songs? We need to do some songs.” I said “Well, who in the hell is this, why you calling me at this time?” He explained that he was Freddy Bienstock, Elvis' publisher. I asked if Felton was down there and he said he was. So I got up & ran into my studio and ran off a copy of ‘For Ol’ Times Sake' & ‘I’ve Got A Thing About You Baby’ and one other and went down the studio. I drove all the way to downtown Memphis and was met in this low, dark alleyway by two shady men in hats & coats. They said in this thick German accent “Did you bring zee tapes?” and I was ushered into this little bitty room! It was so strange & freaky. A real seedy part of town and these guys in their 50s or 60s and they had a little reel-to-reel in this dark cubby hole. They sit me down on a chair & they played two bars of ‘For Ol’ Times Sake' and ‘I Got A Thing’ and they played the third song. They said “We like the first two. Now you can go!” I said, “Hey man, I’ve driven this far, where’s Felton?” They said, “You don’t need Felton. We like these songs. You can go!” But at this point luckily Felton walked in and took me into the studio with me & him and Elvis, so it was cool then. Wow!
  • Tony Joe White in a 2002 interview with Piers Beagley at EIN's website page.

• Virtually everything we hear on recordings and see on video and the concert stage can be traced to two icons: Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly.
  • John W. Whitehead, civil liberties and human rights advocate and founder of the Rutherford Institute, in his article ̊̊"The Day the Music Died: Remembering Buddy Holly (1936–1959)̊ , as published in Scoopʽs Tuesday, 5 February 2019 edition.

• He defined American culture to billions of adoring fans around the world. Elvis fused gospel, country, and rhythm and blues to create a sound all his own, selling more than a billion records. Elvis also served nearly 2 years in the United States Army, humbly accepting the call to serve despite his fame. He later starred in 31 films, drew record-breaking audiences to his shows, sent television ratings soaring, and earned 14 GRAMMY Award nominations. He ultimately won 3 GRAMMY Awards for his gospel music. Elvis Presley remains an enduring American icon 4 decades after his death.
  • The White House's Press release on November 10, 2018, announcing Elvis being one of seven honoured, in his case and that of two others, posthumously, with his country's highest civilian award, the 2018 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• As he concluded one of his dynamic and frenzied concerts an attempt was made to honor him by giving him an ornate crown. Uncharacteristically and courteously, Elvis stopped and said, “ I am not the King. There’s only one King, and that’s Jesus Christ.
  • Keith Whitehouse, Pastor of the Sutter Creek Baptist Church in an article entitled Elvis and Jesus, as published in the Amador Ledger's June 19, 2021 issue.

• Go ahead, moan all you like about Elvis. (But) this is still the single greatest rock & roll Christmas record ever made. Elvis' slurred, dirty, wailing delivery and Scotty Moore, Bill Black and DJ Fontana's walloping primitivo accompaniment put this over with a licentious zeal that never wears out its welcome. Although he favored gospel above all else, Elvis genuinely excelled as a blues singer (there simply ain't another white cat who can pull ‘em off as convincingly) and this wildly unlikely collision of atmosphere and theme rates as a minor, and altogether irresistible, masterpiece —
  • Jonny Whiteside's laud of "Santa Claus is back in town", as published in an article at LA Weekly, on December 2, 2016. The extraordinary piano playing heard on the recording is that of Dudley Brooks, the African American musician who worked with Presley in an additional 10 recording sessions, both before and after this particular one.

• Around the world the only three words that need no translation to convey their meaning are ̊"Jesus, Coke and Elvis"
  • Peter Whitmere's laud on Elvis, as noted on his 1996 book of the same name.

• We were booked to fly home the next day, but that night after the last show we got a telephone call from Colonel Tom Parker saying that Elvis would like to meet us on a film set at 2pm the next day. When we arrived Col. Parker met us and told us that Elvis had just gone out for a ride. Just then we heard what at first sounded like thunder coming from down the beach a long way off. As the sound got louder, we could see about 13 motorbikes side-by-side coming towards us. Elvis was in the centre of the riders as they roared onto the film set. What an entrance! I was spellbound! All together we had about two hours with Elvis. I told him that when I saw the first clip of him in "Jailhouse Rock", that's what got me into rock ‘n’ roll. We also talked about our tour of America. What a guy. A real gent. It was wonderful. A brilliant day.
  • Barry Whitwam, drummer for the UK band Herman’s Hermits on the day he and lead singer Peter Noone met Elvis in Hawaii, in an interview with the "Express And Star" published on January 19, 2018.

• It made me feel great to be with him. He fit in so easy. Driver, loader, gunner, and tank commander you had to learn all four positions. Seeing him operate a tank was normal. His parents, visited often and especially his mother was a great source of comfort to us young draftees, always telling us to take care of each other, like we were her children. When she passed away, he said he'd give everything he had to get her back, but he knew he couldn't do that. He showed me all the telegrams he got from celebrities, three books filled with them. Once in Germany we served in the 1st Battalion, 32nd Armor Regiment, 3rd Armored Division. Despite his fame, Elvis was always just one of the guys. In fact, he inspired the other men to be better, stronger soldiers. When things got tough you could be out at night, it's cold and raining and you're on guard duty, and he was out there, too. If he could do it, that made me feel like, OK, I can do this!" After serving two years, we both came home and I went to work for a flooring company, drove a dump truck and eventually became a building engineer for Memphis City Schools. With my wife we raised two daughters and they knew how proud I was to have serve alongside Elvis. One of my daughters laminated the famous photos of Elvis being inducted, with me right there behind him. I carry them everywhere, showing them even to strangers because I want everyone to know how good a person Elvis was. And I do smile when telling the story of the time I was drafted into the military with the most famous person on the planet. The years I spent with Elvis clearly had a lasting impact with me. He stuck with it, did his job as well as I did mine, and I appreciated that. It was great...
  • Nathaniel Wiggison, an African American from Memphis, TN, on his having served with Elvis in the Army, in an interview with wmcactionnews5, on March 28, 2018.

• What drew me to him was that his music was subversive. When the Beatles came around, grown-ups saw them as four mop tops, and didn’t take it very seriously. But when he came on the scene, it was different, the adults really didn’t like his stage performances and dancing. I soon asked for a guitar and got one for Christmas. It wasn’t an expensive guitar. A few years later my mom, who was a single mother, got me a nicer guitar when she saw I was very serious about it. It was a Harmony.
  • Canadian Rock-blues singer and songwriter David Wilcox, on his early decision to be a musician, as reported by the Cornwall Seeker on its July 14, 2017' edition

• My dad's head went into a fantasy, this idea of everything being better in America. Of course for his generation, that was very true. Everyone was going to drive in movies and drinking milkshakes and having hamburgers in America. We weren't doing things like that in the UK. I think a lot of that got caught up in the lyrics – all the kids in America are having a better, more interesting, more dangerous time than we were here. When Elvis and rock'n'roll was imported over from America, it was to a generation of kids whose parents had dealt with the war, and rationing, and they'd all been brought up in pretty poor conditions. So it was a great thing for the kids to dream about again. They dared to have an identity, for starters. They dared to dream through these great records imported from America. That's where the great love affair started for my father – as soon as he heard Elvis Presley record.
  • UK rocker Kim Wilde, recalling how her first hit, "Kids in America" written by her father Marty Wilde and her brother Ricky, came into being and as published on TEAMROCK, on 20 February 2018.

• Elvis was the blueprnt, he and ice cream blew my mind
  • Marty Wilde, talking about the things that amazed him when he was a boy, for the BBC's podcast on April 1, 2024.

• When he joined the U. S. Army in March of 1958, the Navy, the Air Force and the Pentagon were left disappointed. All the armed services had put considerable effort into being his choice. The Navy had gone so far as proposing a special “Elvis Presley company,” which would be drawn from Presley's buddies, and others from Memphis. If that wasn't enough, Elvis would also be assigned quarters entirely for his own use. The Army, also eager to win his favor, suggested he might be flown globally from base to base in order to boost the morale of the troops. The Pentagon, for its part, floated the idea of Elvis immediately joining the Special Services, thus sidestepping the need for regular training. But regular training was precisely what Presley wanted. He joined the army, but turned down all offers of special treatment. Private Presley he was, and was paid $78 a month. His last day of active duty was March 5, 1960.
  • Wolfgang Wild, curator, writing for Considerable, in an article entitled "Elvis in the Army: All shook up" as published on March 1, 2019

• I was 17, so I go to Hollywood for a few days, staying with Patti Page, whose husband was then choreographer for Elvis in "King Creole". So I watched the shooting one day, then Elvis came over and started talking to me, invited me to dinner, at his hotel, the Beverly Wilshire. So after dinner we end up in his bedroom. And when he found out I was a virgin, he just picked up his guitar and sat on his bed and sang to me for about two hours. He was gorgeous in those days. I couldn't wait to tell all my girlfriends.
  • June Wilkinson, English model and actress, known for her appearances in Playboy magazine, as published on the Orange County Register on the day after Hugh Hefner's passing.

• Overnight, or over a bite, you might say, the hand that's been punching out copy for the unconcerned becomes celebrated as the hand that was bitten by Elvis Presley. As a newspaper woman gnawed by the nation's top hound dog singer, I've been advised variously to sue for assault, take a rabies shot, inquire whether he brushes after every meal, or offer my paw to the museum. Yep, folks have really showed concern.
  • News reporter Betty Wilkirson, telling the Associated Press, which ran the story nationwide on July 3, 1956, that Elvis had bit her in the hand on June 28, 1956, as she asked him to pose for a photograph right after his appearance at College Park, in Charleston South Carolina.

• Those who would wall off cultures from “outsiders” are would-be wardens.
  • George Will, Pulitzer Prize commentator, highlighting Elvis' love for and appreciation of R&B music in an article published in various newspapers, including the Washington Post and the National Review on 13 May, 2017 and entitled "Today’s Left Would Have Called Elvis’s Music ‘Cultural Appropriation’"

• One evening Elvis Presley came backstage to see my show at Caesars Palace. I was in my dressing room with a few friends and well-wishers when Elvis arrived with his entourage. It was the first time I'd met him, and we got on very well; he was very gracious and polite, We talked about music and a few other things. After a while Elvis asked me to come over to his hotel, where he had some music he wanted to play for me. It was about 2:30 in the morning when we got back to Elvis's hotel, but as he opened the door of his suite, a wall of noise hit us. There must have been a hundred people in there. Elvis ignored them and led me through to a quieter room and started playing some of his favorite music: gospel About four in the morning I got up to go, but Elvis said, "Wait, I want to give you something." He went into the bedroom and came back with six or eight Navaho Indian belts with silver and turquoise buckles. "Pick one," he said. "I want you to have one." So I chose one, thanked him, and then headed back to my hotel. I still have the Navaho belt he gave me. I felt about it the way I did about those things my kids sometimes give me: You keep and proudly display them not because of what they are but because of who has given them to you.
  • Andy Williams, in his 2009 memoirs Moon River and me.

• I was in a large parking lot, on one side hosting a telethon I was involved in and the Monroe Civic Center, where Elvis was playing, on the other. He knew there was going to be a child in a wheelchair waiting for him, so he stopped on his way to his limo, totally tired, after the concert, but got oh his knees and placed a scarf around his neck. I felt like crying. Then he looked at me, I was 24, hugged me and told me a few stories one of them about how a co worker had encouraged him to record.
  • Anson Williams, in an interview in 2019, with Diana Lynn Band Candy, on YouTube.

• People talk of his range and power, his ability and ease in hitting the high notes. But the real difference between Elvis and other singers was that he could sing majestically in any style, be it rock, country, or R&B – because he had soul. He sang from the heart. And that is what made him the greatest singer in the history of popular music.
  • John Owen Williams, UK Record producer as published on on August 15, 2017, on the Conversation in an article entitled "Elvis’s voice: like Mario Lanza singing the blues"

• The first line of the record is sung without accompaniment, punctuated at the end by two beats, two chords on the piano. Exquisite. And this pattern is repeated through the verse, a Capella singing, piano crash, more a Capella singing; and then Elvis sings the chorus backed only by the beautiful, lonesome sound of a walking electric bass. The risk —only a great voice can hang out there that naked — is impressive and the payoff is phenomenal. None of which would matter, I suppose, if it weren't that the voice that this perfect and daring bit of accompaniment supports is nothing short of awesome; spirit is walking throughout this recording, just put it on the phonograph, and the room fills with ozone. Darkness and gloom drip joyfully from every rafter. This "Heartbreak Hotel" voice is an instant old friend; it intimately and unforgettably announces the arrival of something big.
  • Paul Williams, writing about Elvis' "Heartbreak Hotel", which ranked in fourth place in Crawdaddy magazine's list of "The 100 best singles of all time"

• He inspired me to become a performer, he is a legend. And what do I before I enter a stage? Everytime? Well, I take an Espresso and I pray to Elvis."
  • UK singer Robbie Williams, as published in http://www.elvis.net/whattheysay/theysayframe.html

• That there is a seat in the front in the concert of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Elvis Presley.
  • Robin Williams's reply to James Lipton, executive producer, writer and host of the series "Inside the Actors Studio" when asked what he would like God to say when he arrives in heaven, as broadcast on Lipton's edition of June 10, 2001

• He was so ahead of his time, and that's why he brought so many people together, with his music without it having it any racial barriers.
  • Serena Williams, US African American tennis player, in Elvis Elvis, an ABC 2002 special.

• Eminem is regarded as one of the most important artists in the history of the hip hop genre even though his albums haven't been as genre-defining as so many of his peers, and his music is only tangentially influential when compared to a Rakim, 2Pac, Jay-Z or Kanye. He's mostly important for providing white fans a credible entry point into the genre. And we're supposed to be okay with that. We're not supposed to view Eminem and Elvis Presley as comparable. We're supposed to see Em as authentic and Elvis as a vulture. But Elvis raved about Black artists from Jackie Wilson to Mahalia Jackson, topped the R&B charts (and country charts) regularly, made headlines for facing Black audiences in Memphis when festivals were still racially segregated, chummed around with Ike Turner and B.B. King, and James Brown called him his “brother.” You don't really see a divide between Elvis and Black audiences until the “shine my shoes” rumor starts circulating in 1957. But that quote was always just a rumor. I also found it interesting that Elvis was vilified for a bullshit quote while people like Eric Clapton got zero flak for a very real one. B.B. King talked about this repeatedly, but the lie is louder,
  • Stereo Williams, in an article published at the Daily Beast on December 22, 2018, as well as reference to the fact that for decades Elvis has been slandered for something he never actually said, while many others, including Eric Clapton, were given a free pass for quotes that were real.

• Elvis was the ideal in 'Orpheus Descending', and we were optimistic up to a point that he might make his first appearance on the stage, and then we hoped he would appear in a film. That was a madly delirious episode, because time, for the most famous people, simply has no meaning. People and things arrive at the slightest expression of desire or interest, and they disappear just as quickly. All questions are answered; every need fulfilled. He was elaborately polite with me: I think he saw me as some elder Southern gentleman who might give his father a loan at the bank downtown, but we soon saw that the discipline of a stage performance was beyond him. It was--and it is--frightfully boring for most people to show up and replicate and expand within a refined role. Still, I met him. I was in the presence. Diamonds and lard. There's your title.
  • Tennessee Williams, as told to James Grisson for inclusion in the latter's book ̊̊̊̊"Follies of God, Tennessee Williams and the women of the fog"

• I am not a part of that. To Louisville, I am f-ing Elvis Presley. So why would I pay anybody for anything?
  • professional basketball player Terrence Williams, as told to TMZSports, when questioned to comment on his being mentioned in Katina Powell's “Breaking Cardinal Rules” book, as one alleged to have paid $500 for sex.

• I'll be back in an hour
  • About doctor William Carlos Williams's words when taking a break in his hospital day room just in time to see Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show, as published in an article entitled "The long stem of connection", on the January 8, 2021 edition of plasticekphrasticdotcom

• I met Elvis Presley at the "Dick Clark Show" at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, a place where a great musical extravaganza with some of the greatest artists of the day would always appear. So, we were sitting in the audience and Jackie Wilson had just finished his set and then Dick Clark came out, but before he introduced the next act he wanted to announce someone special had arrived, "Ladies and Gentlemen" The lights went down and all of a sudden spotlights went to the back of the room. I looked around and it was Elvis, He was looking cool and wearing shades, snatched them off as if saying, "Hello Everybody!, then came walking down the aisle to his table and when he saw Louise, he stopped and said "Hi Louise. Hi Nikki" and they started talking. I stood up and he said "Hi." I said "Hi, I'm Pepe. It's nice to meet you." I shook his hand. He said something else to Louise, and then said "See you later" and went to his table. By the time I was in Las Vegas, I had already met tons of celebrities, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells, Dionne Warwick and Wayne Newton. I also met Ike and Tina Turner. I drank champagne with Adam Clayton Powell and I met Redd Foxx. But, when I saw Elvis, I said, now that man's a star. It was a different kind of thing."
  • Pepe Willie, African American Soul/Funk/R&B Singer/Musician/Producer and President of Pepe Music Inc who was Prince' former mentor, talking in a phone interview on May 12, 2013

• America loves a phoenix, and we sure got one when Elvis dusted off the ashes of his mid-‘60s movie career and put on black leather for the greatest of all network TV music specials. Thom Zimny has done a video re-edit on some of the performances and it’s more fun to watch all this material after reading the collection’s written oral history of how many ways the special could have gone wrong yet somehow, for once, went so beautifully right. And what joy it is to re-experience Elvis caught even fleetingly in hip-swiveling flight.
  • Chris Willman, writing for Variety in an article entitled "The 10 Best Music Boxed Sets of 2018", as published on their December 28, 2018 edition.

• I was with Sophia Loren in the Paramount Studios Commissary (in early 1958), where we were going to have lunch and suddenly she was on her feet as he had spied Elvis walking through. I don't think she had ever met him, but Italian enthusiasm cannot be denied. In a minute she was sitting on his lap, tousling his hair. The skirmish was over as quickly as it begun as she was only saying how much she liked his music. He was also aware that I was taking their pictures, so what could he do? What could any man do? Surrender...
  • Bob Willoughby, in his memoirs entitled "Bob Willoughby: A Cinematic Life" , on the day Elvis and Sophia Loren met.

• I was frightened by Elvis, I think because I was 10, but my sister Nancy loved him..
  • Ann Wilson, of the group Heart, as told to David Letterman on his 10/6/1982 show.

• I was recording with Terry Melcher at RCA Victor Records in 1975, so we were working on the song "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" when suddenly Terry said, “Hey, Elvis is in the next studio recording.” That was a big surprise to hear he was in the studio next to me. So I walked into the studio and said, “Hi, I’m Brian Wilson” and he goes, “Hello Duke.” I don't know why he called me Duke. I said, “Would you like to hear what I’m doing in the studio?” and he said yes. So we walked over to my studio and listened to what I was doing and then said he had to leave. It was a thrill to meet him. I liked Elvis Presley's songs, but never saw him live. I thought he was a very underrated singer, more of a star. He was really known more for his fame than his voice. I think he deserved more credit for his voice.
  • Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys, on meeting Elvis. as published in the book, Elvis from those who knew him best.

• There was a time when in some circles, people may not have thought it cool to say they were an Elvis fan, but I am, I loved him."
  • Carl Wilson, of the Beach Boys,in an interview in 1980, as reported by YouTube

• A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man’s music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis.”
  • Jackie Wilson, as noted in graceland.com.

• It is probable that he will eventually settle into the mainstream of popular singers. When he does he may well build a reputation as one of the most remarkable of white blues singers, possibly the first to invade successfully the field of country blues.
  • John S. Wilson, Jazz critic for the NYT, reviewing Elvis first two albums, as published on that paper's January 13, 1957 edition

• Elvis Presley would jump to my mind first if I could bring home someone from the past, to have dinner with...
  • Owen Wilson, in an interview supporting his starring in Disney's ‘Haunted Mansion’ as broadcast on July 25, 2023.

• Elvis Presley jerked his torturous way across the stage of the Municipal Auditorium on Sunday, sang eight or ten songs, thumped on a guitar, fell to the floor, knocked over microphones and set off a din of teenage squealing. At the evening performance he contorted his body in such a manner as to cause whole platoons to rush to the edge of the stage. In fact, he flings his limbs about and quivers in such a way as to make one think he might have a trick knee or hip, possibly from an old war injury...but this is not the case. This is just Elvis Presley....
  • Pen Wilson, reviewing for the Times-Picayune Elvis' two back to back New Orleans concerts on August 12, 1956, and as published on that paper on the following day.

• Big romance betwen Elvis and Mimi Roman
  • Walter Winchell, the then most influential gossip columnist and radio broadcaster in North America writing about an entirely non existent liaison between Mimi Roman and Elvis, as briefly stated on his syndicated column "On Broadway"'s March 20, 1956 edition, a fact which was also dismissed by Ms. Roman herself in a Novemnber 29, 2023 interview with The Guardian in which she indeed confimed their close friendship, but dismissed the alleged romance between them as typical of Winchell's gossiping mind.

• I was such a great fan of his, I saw all his movies, and always thought I would one day meet him. But I never did, so this is full circle for me.
  • Oprah Winfrey's words on the night she became the first person not a member of the Presley immediate family to sit, and have dinner at the Graceland dining room since his death, as the special guest of Lisa Marie, who asked her if she had been an Elvis fan. (Special Oprah show telecast on October 10,2006).

• I objected to Madonna's casting, because it made the project "an Elvis film."
  • Debra Winger's explanation over why she quit her starring role in director Penny Marshall's 1992 baseball film, "A League of Their Own."

• I knew him when he was quite young, in 1956, when he was dating Natalie Wood, and they would very inconspicuously wear white clothes and, if they went to the movies, everyone would be looking at them, and not the film. LOL. In my house, I have a couch where they would make up, and to this day, when I tell visitors about it, they can̪t believe it. It is the same couch.
  • Shelley Winters, in a 1979 interview on the making of the ABC film Elvis, where she plays Elvis̪ mother Gladys.

• Boris Yeltsin was best known for his role as the President of Russia, but he also had another unique claim to fame: Moscow's biggest Elvis Presley fan. According to sources, Yeltsin was a huge fan of Presley and would often listen to his recording of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” during times of stress, such as in August, 1991, when he prevented a coup by standing on top of a tank. But while Yeltsin loved Presley, he hated staples with an equal amount of passion, as reflected in a memo from a Yeltsin aide demanding that no one use staples on any papers given to their fearless leader, as "this practice holds up the President’s very decisions.”
  • Wireless's edition of April 24, 2007.

• I've done everything for Elvis that I possibly can to keep the legend going. That operation -which provided me with pouty lips, a jaunty chin and a more Presleyesque nose was just the beginning...
  • Dennis Wise, the first person to undergo plastic surgery to look like Elvis, in an article published in the Orlando Sentinel on January 4, 1987. His operation, in 1978, was the subject of international media headlines and, starting in 1980, he became a successful Elvis Tribute Artist.

• In early 1957, I flew to Hollywood to finally meet him. It was late in the day, and he had already recorded quite a few songs so, during a break in the session, I noticed him sitting alone in the corner, adlibbing some blues on the guitar. I wandered over to the piano next to him, sat down and joined in. He didn't look up, kept on playing and even changed keys on me, but I followed along. Then he looked up with that smile he was famous for, and asked who I was and what I was doing in the studio? I told him I had composed one of the songs he was about to record called 'Got A Lot O' Livin' To Do'. He immediately called out to his musicians and they recorded it on the spot. I never imagined the impact he was about to make on the world. Anyways, a couple of months later, I went to see one of the two Elvis shows he gave in Philly and the place was mobbed, girls with their feet dangling down from the balconies, everybody going crazy. I sat there and said 'This is a phenomenon! As a matter of fact while I was sitting there, a tomato went hurling through the air -Elvis was already on stage, and it hit and broke the strap on his guitar-. He stopped the show and said 'Hey, wait a minute! If somebody's got a problem up there, why don't you just come down here and we'll work it out'. Whoever threw it, wouldn't come down from the balcony, but the person sure got bood....
  • Ben Wiseman, Music composer best known for having written more songs recorded by Elvis (fifty seven) than any other songwriter in history, recalling his attending the Philly concert on April 5,1957,as noted in an interview with EIN.

• As many have observed, Palin’s rise was an important waypoint on the journey that brought America to the Trump era, and tribute acts like Greene and Cawthorn. By today’s standards, the “going rogue” brand pushed by the no-nonsense hockey mom from Walisa seems positively wholesome. And to revisit the outrage it generated feels a bit like watching those clips of Fifties prudes panicked about the damage Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips might be doing to teenage girls’ minds.
  • Oliver Wiseman, in an article entitled "Have the Republicans gone too far?,Sarah Palin has a lesson for outrage-hunting politicians", as published in UnHerd's April 7, 2022 edition.

• The quote, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” comes from a 1968 brochure for an Andy Warhol art exhibit in Sweden. In today’s social-media-obsessed culture, 15 minutes has been shaved to 15 seconds, the posting time for a TikTok video. Elvis Presley earned every minute of the fame and adulation showered upon him. He began his music career in the epicenter of the creative cauldron for indigenous American music: Memphis and his genius rested with his capacity to absorb and synthesize the blues, gospel, country and bluegrass music he heard growing up in nearby Tupelo, Mississippi. One way to evaluate the power of fame is to consider how long it lasts. Elvis has been dead for 45 years but it’s like he never died. After Santa Claus, I can’t think of another individual who has as many imitators. Graceland, Elvis’s cherished home in Memphis (3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard), is modest by today’s McMansion standards. Here on an almost 14-acre estate visited by 650,000 tourists annually rests Elvis’ vast collection of clothing, cars, motorcycles and airplanes. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006, the first site related to rock music to ever be given that honor.I saw it as an example of the American dream writ large, a classic Horacio Alger story, a stunning symbol of what it’s like to be born dirt poor and end up filthy rich. Elvis was a man blessed with dazzling gifts and cursed with debilitating addictions. Unlike unbelievably wealthy men of today such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos playing with their rocket ship boy toys, Elvis provided so much pleasure to so many, for so long that he earned the right to enjoy his baubles, bangles and beads.
  • Jay Wissot,in an opinion entitled "Elvis changed everything" and published in the Vail Daily's February 11, 2023 edition.

• He was a mild tempered, quiet, nice guy who treated everyone the same. I once overheard one of Elvis' friends at the time ask Elvis 'Why do you call him 'mister' -- he's just a black barbecue guy?' Elvis looked at him and said 'He's a man'. 'That', Withers says, 'Was the humility in his temperament'. 'Elvis was a great man and did more for civil rights than people know.
  • Ernest Withers, African American photo journalist as noted in the book "Elvis Presley and Racism | The Ultimate, Definitive Guide"

• Once when we'd been in the field for two months, the Company Commander asked us all to clean up. Elvis didn't quite make it into the barracks without being spotted by some cleaning women. They followed him upstairs right into the shower-room and a bunch of guys from privates all the way up to the Colonels joined the parade too. Right when he was taking a shower, people were shoving pieces of paper under the water for him to sign. He was laughing about it but he never could get away from people..
  • Lonnie Wolfe, 17 year old who ran away from home to join the US Army and ended up being deployed to the 3rd Armored Division, as told to ElivisinAustralia in an interview dated February 10, 2018.

• That boy made his pull from the blues, and if he stopped, he stopped, but he made his pull from there..
  • Howling Wolf, as published in Elvis.net

• It was like an EARTHQUAKE!!! In my neighborhood the whole place was shakin' when he came on. And I said how can a person possess that kind of power that it even comes off the tv and grabs me in this ghetto neighborhood? Back in those days if it was a white artist doing some of our music many would say "Well, they don't like our blacks so we don't like their singers either. They're nothing but copy-cats anyway.' But with Elvis we ALL were going crazy over him. And I said 'Man, this cat's really got something!"
  • Bobby Womack, singer-songwriter, musician, producer, instrumentalist, sideman in the Gospel, R&B, soul, rock and roll, doo-wop, funk, soul blues, rock and jazz categories, as noted in the documentary The Echo will never die.

• That September, Presley would make his legendary inaugural appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," singing a sultry version of "Hound Dog" with his swinging hips in all their vulgar, gyrating splendor. During a later appearance in January 1957, the variety show would famously edit the King from the waist down in order to protect impressionable young television viewers from his brazen sexuality. But then, it was far too late. America had a full-on dose of Elvismania, and there was nary a cure in sight.
  • Kenneth Womack, in an article entitled "Shelter in place with "Elvis Presley," a foundational classic rock album" as published in Salon's May 30, 2020 edition.

• In essence, because at that time the backward mental capability that many people had of judging a person because of their skin color, and it does still exist, but back then it was even worse, BUT because he actually was a Caucasian brother, Elvis was able to do away with all that thinking towards music.
  • Stevie Wonder, Soul, Funk and R&B prolific singer/songwriter, as quoted on the documentary 'Elvis Presley & The Black Community – That Echo Will Never Die'

• He really enjoyed doing the sessions and worked harder than he had done in years..
  • Bobby Wood, the American Sound Studio's top keyboardist and a member of the Memphis Boys, describing Elvis' feelings during the January and February of 1969 recording session which yielded, inter alia, "In the ghetto", "Suspicious Minds", "Don't cry daddy" and "Kentucky Rain" and as taped in an interview held in November of 2005 by Joe Chambers, Director of Nashville's Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum.

• Every morning when I woke up and looked out the window, there were at least two hundred kids lined up on the sidewalk outside, staring at the house. Some of them would stay there all day long, just trying to get a glimpse of him. And when he would go out, he was very sweet to them. A lot of people I know would get angry, or impatient -- but Elvis was very nice to them, spent as much time with them as he could.
  • Actress Natalie Wood, as published in quotes about education.com

• X-ray records felt like the real thing to (Soviet) rock-starved kids. When doing national service in Berlin, I came across a couple of bedraggled teenage Soviet soldiers who had just climbed over the fence. "Why did you want to take this risk?" I asked them, as they could so easily have been shot. ‘Because our officer won’t let us listen to Elvis Presley,’ one of them answered.
  • Excerpted from the book "How the Beatles rocked the Kremlin", by Leslie Woodhead, and as published by The Mail Online's 25 April, 2013' edition.

• You didn't make it before we came along, and if I wanted to back somebody, I would have picked somebody who can sing, like Elvis Presley.
  • Drummer Mick Woodmansey's way of telling David Bowie, with whom he then worked during the Spiders from Mars era, that they were not just a band, as he had suggested. From his autobiography published in October of 2016

• During the Louisiana Hayride in the mid-50s, my grandmother was in line to get a hamburger and Elvis Presley moseyed on up to her, small talked a bit and asked her out on a date. Being she was already with my grandpa, she declined, but for more than 60 years, she never let him forget it...
  • Kimberly Wooten, account manager for Rally Marketing, telling the Daily Advertiser about her mother's loyalty to her dad, and how she held him accountable, in an article published on the Daily Advertiser on June 5, 2108

• There are some artists that appear to be a clear step ahead when it comes to intellectual property protection, Elvis Presley and 50 Cent being leagues ahead when it comes to portfolio size amongst the top ten artists which were made part of the study
  • World Trademark Review's assessment of advances made by Elvis Presley Enterprises vis-a-vis the so called Intellectual Property protection in an article entitled ̊"From K-pop to Presley: inside the trademark portfolios of the music industry's biggest names" as published on their March 21, 2019 edition.

• Elvis Presley, in the midst of his 1968 comeback special, admitted “I’ve got to do this sooner or later, I may as well do it now, baby”. He then launched into Hound Dog ( via Heartbreak Hotel), which was what everyone wanted. I can't help keep thinking that Theresa May should have taken inspiration from this.She had to confront her ERG Leaver wing at some point, why not sooner (baby)? What could May have won, if she'd confronted her strong Leavers back far ago in 2016? What if she'd challenged them to a showdown not in Christmas 2018 but the summer or autumn, say, of 2016?
  • Ben Worthy, Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck College, in an article published by the Huff Post on December 3, 2018 and entitled "What if Prime Minister Theresa May had confronted her Brexit wing sooner?

• I remember on New Year’s Day of 2021 feeling, along with the ongoing uncertainty and lack of clear knowledge about the virus, a sense of hope. I also had no idea that a fair number of people would decide not to get vaccinated. I usually try not to judge people, but I grew up in a time when polio was at least as frightening as COVID has been the last couple of years. I remember a newspaper photo of Elvis Presley receiving his polio shot, an event that sent the vaccination rate into orbit all across the country. Elvis, for those who don’t remember, had just played the Ed Sullivan show and had something like a third of the entire nation watching. I’m pretty sure I was 12 when I saw the photo of Elvis getting his polio shot. I got my shot not so very long after that. Nobody took a picture of my shot, but having protection against polio sure gave my mom one fewer thing to fret over. I’m not much good at New Year’s resolutions. I decided in the coming year to simply try to stay safe and do everything I can to avoid putting anyone else at risk. That’s a resolution I think I can keep.
  • Terry Woster, in a column published on January 1, 2022, in the Mitchell Daily Republic

• Go into any Thai restaurant the world over and there will very likely be portraits and photos of King Bhumibol gazing down at diners with his benevolent smile, but one of the more common actually features him with Elvis Presley. The meeting came when lifelong music fan Bhumibol and his wife, Queen Sirikit, visited Hollywood’s Paramount Studios in 1960, while Elvis was filming G.I Blues. The king had been a fan of Presley for several years and was by then an accomplished saxophonist who later performed alongside jazz legend Lionel Hampton. In 1987, the late Hampton told the Thai magazine Sawasdee: “He is simply the coolest king in the land.”
  • Adam Wright, for the South China Morning Post, in an article published the day following King Bhumidol's death, at age 88, on 14 October 2016.

• The Frank Lloyd Wright fans!! Undoubtedly. Why? Because they're on the side of Nature and the others are on the side of an artificiality that is doomed.
  • Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's nonsensical reply to Mike Wallace's question on which group of youth, the Lloyds Wright fans, counted at the most in the thousands, or Presley fans, counted in the tens of millions, did Lloyd Wright think were to "inherit" the country in 1972, in an interview which took place on January 9, 1957. He had less than 2 years to live.

• My father wanted me to be like him, an Orthodox Jew. When I said I didn’t want to be, he said, ‘just don’t tell your children.’ I said, ‘you want me to pretend to be somebody I’m not?’ He said, ‘that’s exactly what I’m saying.’. Anyways, he was Elvis' proctologist, so on the day I was supposed to meet him, I got into trouble and he didn't allow me to. When Elvis died, my dad remembered him as a respectful Christian who helped Jews on the Sabbath....
  • Steve Wruble, as published in Broadway World's review of his one man show and as published in its May 6, 2022 edition.

• The peak of peak attention can be assigned and exact date: September 9, 1956, when Elvis Presley made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, at CBS. Its 82.6 percent share of viewers, out of a population roughly half of today' s, has never been equaled or bettered
  • Tim Wu, as noted in his 2016 book "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads"

• He is rock's greatest presence, shaking a country with a single-handed nuclear reaction of country, gospel, and the blues.
  • Rock critic Bill Wyman's laud of Elvis, who he ranked #4 in his list of the best and worst amongst the 214 members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as published in Hitsville on May 2, 2018

• Elvis was the kind of guy never looked past you, he looked right at you, was the warmest, most twinkling. He made you feel comfortable and at ease, which was amazing. He did not have any of that stuff where 'it's all about me'. He was a perfect gentleman. And he made you feel comfortable right away, at least he did with me. I'd go further and say that Elvis was clearly a guy with a rural or country attitude about life. He had that simple kinda point of view that said you stand up, you're polite to people. In spite of the money and the Cadillacs and all that, it was he and his pals, he never changed. And you could see that the minute he said hello to you. He was not a guy that would talk to you and look over your shoulder to see who else was in the room. Elvis Presley had a genuineness that was very noticeable and quite impressive the first time I met him. And Elaine and I went home really liking him and thinking 'what a terrific guy'. And everytime I saw him after that, he remembered everything, was always gracious and complimentary to people. It wasn't easy to get to see him, I mean, he had a very limited circle of friends. But when you did get in his company it was a real pleasure.
  • Steve Wynn, businessman and art collector and according to Wikipedia, one of the top 100 most influential people in the world, in a 2009 interview.

• In examining how rock, soul and R&B grew from the roots of gospel, our program on the Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul shall highlight such highly influential artists as Sam Cooke who transitioned from gospel to secular music Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her early rock stylings and Elvis Presley, who helped expose white audiences to gospel music. Examples of some of the most beloved contemporary pop music of the last 60 years from artists such as Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, and Ray Charles illustrate gospel music's influence. Gospel Roots of Rock and Soul also features exclusive live performances recorded by WXPN within the last year from gospel groups The Fairfield Four, The McCrary Sisters, and The Dixie Hummingbirds.
  • WXPN, the nationally recognized leader in Triple A radio, in an article published in wwwprwebcom̪s on January 15, 2019 edition.

X

• Elvis Presley Atomic Player B612 has a weight of just 130 grams, plays music from tablets, phones and virtual service: Apple Music, QQ Music. It has a radio as well. The device is made of aluminum, with a supply battery which can be used remotely for seven hours. The energy accumulator takes place via MicroUSB. Demand for the device has grown increasingly....
  • Xiaomi, the Chinese Corporation's description of the Elvis Presley Atomic Player, a set of their 2018 portable speakers,as published in The Silver Telegram's edition of August 26, 2018

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• After marvelling at the large portions of food, thick steaks and TVs in our various Canadian hotel rooms, we actually spend much of our time watching cartoons. In fact, spent my $100 advance, meant to last me for three weeks, right away, mostly on new skates, some bubble gum and the latest Elvis Presley album.
  • Alexander Yakushev, Twice Olympic and World ice hockey champion best known as the the player who scored most points for the Soviet Team that played Team Canada in the September 1972 Summit Series, in an article entitled "Yakushev finds Fame, almost 50 years later" as published in the Toronto Sun on November 9, 2018.

• We put all the photos we received into albums. I remember we got fan letters from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Cuba and from the Soviet Union. We got them from all over the world and I used to collect the stamps for my son. Elvis really loved reading the fan mail and seeing the albums, especially the girls. We got post cards from everywhere. We would save him a lot of letters if they were funny and thought he would enjoy them and he surely did.
  • Becky Yancey, Elvis' secretary from March 1962 to July 1975, from her 1978 book, My life with Elvis".

• My mother took me to see "Jailhouse Rock" when I was three. She loved Elvis. I guess I thought, like John Lennon, that that looked like a pretty good job. I bought my first Elvis record at seven. I got an old tennis racket and I'd go around the house playing it like a guitar, playing Elvis songs. I'd turn my collar up and do the lip sneer, the whole thing. I was a little boy being Elvis! I knew I was a little girl, but I was being myself. I never understood the gender difference, frankly. It never stopped me: I never thought, 'I'm a little girl, I can't do this.'
  • Susan Yasinski, lead singer and founder of Susan and the Surftones, explaining what drew her to rock music, at an early age, as published by Curve, a lesbian magazine on 20 September 2016.

• I was always mesmerized by strong, pure, beautiful voices, (and) Elvis' voice, the emotion in it, was unbelievable; I'd never heard anything like it, and I was listening to my parents' records, like "Heartbreak Hotel" and all the ’50 s stuff, the real raw Elvis...and that's how I gravitated into Patsy Cline, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.
  • Tricia Yearwood music superstar, telling Martin Bandyke of the Detroit Free Free Press who are her four biggest influences, as published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (27 May 2008).

• Elvis was my first piece of vinyl. It was also a gift when I was only 7 years old. Some things are just too amazing not to share with you all. Thank you Priscilla and thank you BAM I love you bro. I’ll cherish this forever and I love y’all!!”
  • Rapper Yelawolf's abridged Instagram text after receiving an Elvis ring as a present from his pal, stuntman and skater Bam Margera who, in turn had been given the ring by Priscilla Presley, as noted in All Hip Hop's February 11, 2023 online edition.

• I first heard him in 1959, when I was 27. My favourite song of his is “Are You Lonesome Tonight, a 1961 song in which I found solace, by playing it over, and over, and over again during the weeks preceding and following the aborted 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev .
  • Boris Yeltsin, the Russian Federation's first President, as detailed in John Heileman's article entitled "Rouble without a cause", published in the 1991 Autumn edition of "Modern Review"(foreword, page 5)

• He was rock and roll's biggest star, and he also tested the boundaries of how an entertainer should behave on stage. Elvis had the whole package: the looks, voice, charisma--he had it all. I see so many videos on YouTube showing younger Elvis fans reacting to Elvis' music in a positive way. So, it shows you that Elvis' legacy and appeal continue to endure.
  • Brandon Yip in his 2021 book Elvis Presley: ‘All Shook Up’ in Canada.

• Elvis had a brilliant ability to control the attack and ending of each note. If we listen the 1954 Sun Records recording of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" we can hear Elvis using a technique known as “glottal onset and offset” – in which the vocal folds in the larynx are closed at the start of a note and closed with extra emphasis at the end of the note – to achieve clarity of attack and an amazing rhythmic bounce in his vocal performance. That ability to drive the rhythm is also present in the 1963 hit "Viva Las Vegas" in which Elvis effortlessly accents the melody to give a rhythmic shape to each phrase.
  • Adrian York, Senior Lecturer in Commercial Music Performance, University of Westminster, in an article entitled Elvis voice, like Mario Lanza singing the blues, and published on the Conversation on August 17, 2017.

• When the question was asked, in March of 2018, “Who do you think is the greatest rock star of all time?” it yielded these results: Elvis Presley 36%, Michael Jackson 21%, John Lennon 9%, Jimi Hendrix 7%, Mick Jagger, 5% Bruce Springsteen 4%, Others 5%, Not sure 13%.
  • Results from a 2018 YouGov Ratings US poll, showing as they put it "Presley’s admiration and fame still at the top", forty one years after his death and published in News Legit's online edition of August 16, 2018-

• I asked him what did Dr. King think of the celebrity participation in the movement. He said that Dr King welcomed it because it helped give the movement more attention. Then he added a bonus by including stories of two of my other favorite singers who tragically, like Dr. King, died young themselves. I was astonished when the name Elvis Presley came up. Contrary to what some people believe, I never thought Elvis was racist. I knew that Elvis grew up poor and was heavily influenced by Black musicians. I even heard stories from other people that Elvis admired Dr. King. What I didn't know was that Elvis and Dr. King talked occasionally on the phone. Elvis even contributed money through various channels that filtered to the civil rights movement. Charles Evers, the brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, confirmed this as well. When Dr. King was killed in Memphis, Elvis was said to not just have been upset about Dr. King's death, but he was even more hurt that it happened in his hometown and just a stone's throw away from his Graceland estate. Elvis even inquired about attending Dr. King's funeral in Atlanta, but was talked out of it by others citing that he may be a distraction; it would delay filming and increase budget costs (and other security concerns because nobody could be certain that a riot may break out at the funeral at the time. Instead Elvis watched the funeral from his on-location trailer. According to his co-star at the time Celeste Yarnell who watched the proceeding with Elvis in his trailer, Elvis "felt a tremendous brotherhood with the black community because he grew up poor and he knew what it was like to live in poverty.He was also proud that many blacks embraced him as one of their own.
  • About Andy Young's knowledge on the thus far secret relationship between Dr. MLK Jr. and Elvis, as told by him to African American music critic Gary Butler, during a 2018 Q&A session with Andrew Young.

• I'm like Elvis Presley out here. I’m Swaggy Presley.
  • Nick Young, reacting after the Pepsi Center embraced him in a manner bordering on hysterical, as he was Elvis at The Ed Sullivan Show, and as reported on BSN dwebver on December 16, 2018.

Z

• Both "Elvis" and "Priscilla" present a vision of Elvis Presley framed by a third party, rather than one viewed directly, with the luxury of omniscience, by the person behind the camera. In "Elvis", Baz Luhrmann shapes Elvis’ story through the eyes of Parker, the man who helped make him and did more than his share to break him. And in "Priscilla", Elvis, for once, isn’t the center of attention; it’s Priscilla’s experience that matters. The suggestion of both movies is that Elvis Presley, like an eclipse of the sun, is too dazzling, too potentially disorienting, to be viewed without a filter...
  • Stephanie Zacharek, Pulitzer Prize winner, writing a combined review of "Elvis" and "Priscilla", as published in TIME magazine's October 27, 2023 edition in an artcle entitled "Finding the Essence of Elvis in Two Very Different Movies"

• He was the son of Afghanistan’s former prime minister, a prolific recording artist and a music idol for the masses. His music drew from Persian poetry as well as Indian classical styles, and it increasingly revealed a political edge, criticising the Soviet-backed Marxist regime who had seized power in Afghanistan following a 1978 military coup. There is some dream-like footage online of a 1970s gig at Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel, showing an energetic figure leading a multi-instrumental band. The performer’s hip looks (dark quiff and sideburns; loosened tie) and rollicking, psych-roots grooves reflect the ‘Afghan Elvis’ nickname he earned.
  • About Ahmad Zahir, whose life and still unaccounted death is being celebrated with a 2018 documentary as published in the BBC's December 7, 2018 edition.

• Some of those we have lost in 2019ː Elvis Presley (singer, actor, 84), perpetrator of the finest prank in history and of two of the best comeback concerts ever seen...
  • British comedian Andy Zaltzman's zany interpretation of what would have happened if Elvis had not died in 1977 but in 2019, as published in the iNews The Essential Daily Briefing Register for December 25, 2018.

• This is the mysterious part about music, the people who mean it, like Elvis, are generally the ones who are processing some kind of loss, and we connect to it.
  • Warren Zanes, musician and writer, as laid out in the notes for the 2018 HBO three hour documentary he directed and entitled "Elvis Presley: The Searcher"

• Elvis has just left the building, Those are his footprints, right there, Elvis has just left the building, To climb up that heavenly stair
  • Frank Zappa from his 1988 album "Broadway the hard Way"

• Can't you just imagine digging up the King? Begging him to sing?.
  • Warren Zevon, rock singer-songwriter and musician, in his song, "Jesus Mentioned".

• He is the Elvis of cultural theory
  • About Slavoj Žižek, as noted in the International Journal of Žižek Studies, 2011 Facebook page.

• Elvis' 1969 opening night in Las Vegas was his first time back on a live stage in more than eight years, playing the biggest showroom in the biggest hotel and drawing more people for his four-week engagement than any other show in Las Vegas history. His performance got rave reviews, “Suspicious Minds” gave him his first number-one hit in seven years, and Elvis became Vegas's biggest star. Over the next seven years, he performed more than 650 shows there, and sold out every one. Las Vegas was changed too. The intimate night-club-style shows of the Rat Pack, who made Vegas the nation's premier live-entertainment center in the 1950s and ‘60s, catered largely to well-heeled older gamblers. Elvis brought a new kind of experience: an over-the-top, rock-concert-like extravaganza, setting a new bar for Las Vegas performers, with the biggest salary, the biggest musical production, and the biggest promotion campaign the city had ever seen. In doing so, he opened the door to a new generation of pop/rock performers, and brought a new audience to Las Vegas—a mass audience from Middle America that the city depends on for its success to this day.
  • Richard Zoglin in his 2019 book "Elvis in Vegas: How the King of Rock 'n' Roll Reinvented the Las Vegas Show":

• What was the Strip like back then, or what was it like to see Elvis Presley.....
  • Lynn Zook, in her book Classic Las Vegas: A look back at the city 1956–1973

• I knew him when he was a kid. He used to play the guitar and go around with quartets and to Negro ‘sanctified’ meetings. He lived near the colored section, and people around here say he's one of the nicest boys they ever knew. He just doesn't impress me as the type of person who would say a thing like that.
  • W.A. Zuber, an African American, as told to reporter Louis Robinson and quoted in the latter's article debunking the rumor that Elvis was a racist, as published in Jet magazine's issue of August 1, 1957

• Jerry and I were big Elvis fans and the name held some fascination. We were also looking for someone who had never performed comedy, who could recite the most hilarious piece of dialogue without thinking the lines were MEANT to be funny. We saw a certain naïveté and inexperience in Priscilla Presley that we knew would work for what we had planned.
  • David Zucker, in a 1988 Los Angeles Times story, explaining why they cast Priscilla Presley in the Naked Gun series.

• No, many thanks but I am just a tourist here and prefer no photos are taken.
  • Mark Zuckerberg's reply to Rhonda Lamb, in charge of the tour operation and management around Elvis' Tupelo Birthplace and Museum, when she asked him whether he would like to appear as part of the usual group photos, as noted in the October 2, 2017, edition of the Clarion Ledger.

• I shall always regret not having seen Elvis Presley live...
  • Canadian politician Gene Zwozdesky, answering the Edmonton's Star question on what would it be a concert he would have liked to attend, as published in that newspaper on 20 August, 2016.

• Our childhood housekeeper kept us supplied with a handwritten list of records. And when our mom would go out shopping and say, “Kids, can I get you something?,” we'd say, “You going by the record store? Here’s the list.” And sure enough, it was Jimmy Reed. It was Larry Williams. It was Ray Charles. All the good stuff. My sister and I played the sides off of those records. We'd turn those 45 rpm singles white. And I remember my mom taking us to see Elvis Presley and that kind of did it ... we had the music bug. And then my father took me down to a recording session at ACA, that was Bill Holford's place. And he put me in a chair and he said, “I’ll be in the office if you need me. Stick around because there are some musicians gonna make a recording session.” And I was kind of enjoying it, and who should walk in but B.B. King and his band. So between seeing Elvis and watching B.B. King record, it was carved in stone.
  • ZZ Top' Billy F.Gibbons for Texas Monthly's January 7, 2019 edition.

In fiction and song

Do you know how hard it is to fake your own death? Only one man has pulled it off — Elvis...

• Do you know how hard it is to fake your own death? Only one man has pulled it off — Elvis.
  • "Mulder" in The X Files (1993) ^{[specific citation needed]}

• Gather 'round, cats, and I'll tell you a story, about how to become an All American Boy.
  • Bobby Bare, 1958, "The All American Boy".

• Elvis are you out there somewhere
  Looking like a happy man?
  In the snow with Rosebud
  And King of the Mountain.
  • Kate Bush in "King of the Mountain"

• I'd like to wake up in the morning
  and hear on CNN
  that Elvis lives again
  • Shania Twain in "When"

• Little hellions, kids feelin' rebellious,
  Embarrassed their parents still listen to Elvis.
  • Eminem in "Without Me"

• And as Charles de Gaulle made it into power, promising the colonial population in Algeria "the 1,001 nights", and even as the Bastille seemed like it was never, ever to be taken again yet, in spite of it all, the voice of Elvis kept singing "Good Rockin tonight"
  • portions of Claude Moine`s adaptation, in French (see below), of Eddy Mitchell`s cover of "Elvis' "Good Rocking tonight"

• Et Charles de Gaulle prenait le pouvoir, promettant les milles-et-une-nuits au pieds-noirs, et la Bastille en a tellement vu, qu'on ne l'y reprendra jamais, jamais plus, et la voix d'Elvis chante "Good rocking tonight"
  • "Et la voix D'Elvis" released by Eddy Mitchell (1977)

• Elvis is GOD!
  • "Mr. Rabbitte" in The Commitments (1991)

• So you were an artist. Big deal! Elvis was an artist. But that didn't stop him from volunteering for the military in time of service. And that's why he's The King, and you're a schmuck.
  • "Serendipity" in Dogma (1999)

• Elvis is everywhere. Elvis is everything. Elvis is everybody. Elvis is still the King.
  • Mojo Nixon in "Elvis is Everywhere"

• In Jailhouse Rock, he was everything rockabilly's about. Nah, nah, I mean, he is rockabilly: mean, surly, nasty, rude. In that movie, he couldn't give a fuck about nothin' except rockin' and rollin', livin' fast, dying young, and leaving a good-lookin' corpse, y'know?
  • Clarence Woorley in True Romance (1993)

See also

• Priscilla Presley
• Elvis (miniseries), biopic starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

External links

• Tout Elvis Presley
• Elvis.Com
• Elvis Presley on IMDb
• Elvis Aaron Presley
• ElvisCollector.info
• "Elvis Presley and the Impulse Towards Transculturation" CRAWDADDY! (Spring 2000)
• Elvis Presley Discography
• Only Christ is "The King", University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana (11/30/74). Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aZO85MVsPI