2023-05-01 07:00:00
In the recent film by director Baz Luhrmann, the manager of Elvis Presley, “Colonel” Tom Parker, claims that, without him, the greatest rock n’ roll star would not have existed. This is partly true and partly not: Elvis wowed record labels, and thousands of teenagers, before Parker came on the scene.
Because this young man who turned the nervous wobble of his legs into a movement that brought thousands of teenagers to the brink of hysteria, had a captivating voice and won his Grammys more for gospel than for electric rock n’roll that he performed like no other. other.
He lived only 42 years, marked an entire era and, yes, thanks to “Colonel” Parker, he was one of the first singers to film thirty blockbuster movies and turn his name into a marketing stamp. Here, a small biography of a great one: Elvis Presley, el Rey global del rock and roll.
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. Owner of a unique charisma, he impacted the world public in the 50s./ (AP photo_permission by Elvis Presley Enterprises).
Elvis Aaron Presley He was born in 1935 into a humble family in Tupelo, Mississippi, United States. At the age of 11, his parents, Vernon and Gladys, gave him a guitar. They claim that he wanted a rifle, but they convinced him that music was a better pastime.
The Presley family moved to Memphis when the boy was 13 years old. The city was one of the most prominent musical centers in the United States and it was there that he finished high school. He soon became interested in pop, country, R&B, and gospel.
From this mixture of genres, one of the pioneers of rock n’ roll emerged, a rhythm of which, in a few years, would be the true king.
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. A spectacular singer but who was also shocked by the way he moved. Like in this photo from the 1957 movie Jail Rock./ AP Photo from MGM studios.
At the age of 19, Elvis gave his first concerts. To hide the fact that his legs were wobbling from sheer nervousness, he began to exaggerate that movement. For this reason, they would begin to know him as “Elvis Pelvis”.
But, sooner rather than later, he showed that he was much more than a young man with sensual movements in tight leather clothes, in the best James Dean style.
Elvis Presley: his great deeds, his movies, his most unforgettable songs
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. With a wonderful voice and a particular sensitivity in singing, Elvis is an icon of world music.
In 1954, he recorded his first songs with Sun Records, where he dazzled its president, Sam Phillips, and the following year, already with Parker as a representative, he signed with RCA and Paramount studios. Records and movies, part of the formula that would make him a superstar.
Thanks to the songs That’s All Right and Blue Moon of Kentucky, his music began to circulate on radio programs. From then on, Elvis Presley’s career was very dizzying.
In 1956 he recorded Heartbreak Hotel, a vinyl single that sold 300,000 copies in just three weeks. That same year, she released her first LP, Elvis Presley, which reached one million copies sold. It also appeared for the first time on a national television network, CBS.
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. Photo of a historical collection, with the vinyl of the SUN record label of the single That’s All Right, which played it on radio stations all over the world./ EFE/ Tannen Maury.
As if that were not enough, also in 1956 20th Century Fox, to whom Paramount had ceded the rights, released its first film Love Me Tender, a love drama set in the midst of the United States civil war, where he plays the role of Clint Reno, the youngest brother (of four) who stays to take care of his mother while his three brothers march off to war. A misinformation that his older brother, Vance Reno (Ridhard Egan) had been killed in the war, led Clint closer to marrying Vance’s fiancée, Cathy (played by Debra Paget). The single from the film’s soundtrack was soon a true hit. And on the screen, the image of Elvis melted the Americans.
As early as 1957, the artist was able to buy the mythical Graceland mansion in Memphis. But a year later, in full swing, he had to give up music for a while.
In 1958 he entered the army to be posted to West Berlin, where he stayed for two years and met Priscilla Ann Beaulieu. Back in Memphis, in 1967, he married Priscilla, with whom he would have a daughter, Lisa Marie (1968-2023).
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. Already in the Graceland mansion, Elvis with his wife Priscilla and their little Lisa Marie Presley, on February 5, 1968./ (AP Photo / Perry Aycock. File).
His greatest hits include the ballad Can’t Help Falling in Love, from the movie Blue Hawaii (1961); Are You Lonesome Tonight (1960); the rockers Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock (1957) and the also ballad Suspicious Minds (1969).
And Jailhouse Rock, or the “jail rock”, It marked an era, almost like a preview of the 80s video clips, Parker’s desire to make millions made Elvis the brand for all kinds of items.
In this film directed by Richard Thorpe, Elvis plays the young Vince Everett who, fallen in prison, lifts up the whole world to the sound of his unique songs.
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. Considered his best film, The Neighborhood Against Me, in 1958, along with Walter Matthau and Dolores Hart.
Then you would come many more films, among which would stand out the neighborhood against me (1958), considered the King’s best film, where Elvis plays Dany Fischer, a troubled young man from New Orleans who sings like few others, and who shines alongside Walter Matthau (in the role of the dark Maxie Fields), and Dolores Hart (beautiful like Nellie, Dany’s lover whose life will change).
In Fire star (1960), a solid dramatic western, Elvis Presley composes a young mixed-race man, Pacer Burton, the son of a white man and a Kiowa Indian woman, who will have to take sides when the Indians and the whites in Texas face off in a bitter war. It shines rigorously alongside performances by Barbara Eden (as Roslyn Pierce), Dolores del Río (as Neddy Burton) and Steve Forrest (as Clint Burton).
In 1964 Elvis Presley returned to fill the theaters with The Globetrotter, where Elvis plays Charlie Rogers, a young man who crosses the United States with his motorcycle and his guitar, looking for a destination and doing physical work. He is eventually hired by traveling carnival owner Maggie Morgan (splendid actress Barbara Stanwyck), who discovers that this boy’s singing talent can save her from ruin.
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. 1964 film with an invincible formula of the time: Elvis Presley singing like few others and filling the screen./ AP.
And so it is with Elvis singing his songs like nobody else, and falling in love with Maggie’s daughter, Cathy Lean (played by the young Joan Freeman). Youth, beauty, love and above all, songs were still the Elvis formula.
beginning of the end
Starting in 1964, the so-called “British invasion”, headed by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, greatly affected his popularity. In the 1970s, he practically limited himself to performing in Las Vegas, according to some biographers, to pay for Parker’s gambling addiction. On the other hand, he began to receive bad reviews and in his recitals he no longer aroused the charm of other times.
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. Elvis in a historic performance at New York’s Madison in June 1972. Despite his carelessness, his voice sounded immortal, as always. / Photo provided by George Kalinsky. (AP Photo, Great Moments in New York ad campaign.)
Affected by the consumption of all kinds of pills, Elvis was putting an unapproachable wall for his wife and daughter. Priscilla Ann Beaulieu, after much trying to support the family, achieved a divorce in 1973.
Elvis would later have two couples. And from time to time, more and more spaced, he would give unforgettable concerts. Many concerts from the 70s were held in the mythical Las Vegas. But in 1977, faced with an increasingly deteriorated Elvis, Colonel Parker planned tours of many concerts for several weeks across the United States.
The last concert that Elvis Presley gave was number 55 of that endless year. And it happened on June 26, 1977 in a packed Marquet Square Arena in Indianapolis and of which there is no professional filming. With nostalgia, many of the musicians remember that this was one of the best concerts of the year and that Elvis was beginning to feel better.
Who was Elvis: the global King of rock and roll. The end of a life, but not of a myth that is still heard around the world. memphis. The sadness of the day of the funeral. August 1977./ AP.
But nothing good would happen now. On August 16, 1977, his last partner, Ginger Alden, found him lifeless in the bathroom of the Graceland mansion. Elvis weighed 130 kilos and had died of a heart attack, caused by the mixtures of amphetamines that he consumed without any efficient control.
On October 3 of that year, 1977, the television special Elvis in Concert was broadcast, which we all remember as the last Presley singing, although those recordings had been made in June 1977 during the concerts in Omaha (Nebraska) and Radio City (South Dakota). ). In other words, before the last concert not filmed at the Marquet Square Arena in Indianapolis.
Elvis in Concert was the 6th album by Elvis Presley recorded live from the concerts. It was published by the record company RCA Victor. And it would be awarded triple platinum. And revered since then, as much as his filming of that last Elvis, the global King of rock and roll.
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