Elvis Presley

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Pat H. Broeske

It is no accident that Elvis Presley's rise to fame in the 1950s was in tandem with the rise of rock 'n' roll, for the man and the music are indelibly linked. Though not the first rock 'n' roll star, Presley was the most prominent prophet of the pioneering musical form. Moreover, with his daringly unique style, delivery, and sound, he symbolized the cultural shakeup that rumbled throughout the era. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and social historian David Halberstam proclaimed, "In cultural terms, [Elvis's] coming was nothing less than the start of a revolution."

Presley himself was as complex and as conflicted as the decade he has come to represent. Though shy and beguilingly sweet offstage, his early onstage persona was swaggering, even leering, with performances marked by frenzied bumping and grinding and seemingly gravity-defying bolts, leaps, and slides. To the sexually repressed young people of the day, he was an emblem of rebellious liberation. To the terrified adult establishment, parents especially, he was initially viewed as the devil incarnate. At the time, no one could have predicted that rock 'n' roll would "last," or that Presley's stardom would not only endure, but also grow to mythic proportions following his death in 1977.

Known the world over by his first name, the American legend had decidedly humble beginnings. Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in a two-room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, following the stillborn birth of twin brother, Jesse Garon. The attending country doctor had to collect his fifteen-dollar fee through welfare. Scions of large, sharecropping families, Presley's parents were poor and uneducated. But Vernon and Gladys Presley indulged their precocious, tow-headed son, and Gladys went on to become a pivotal force in his early career. In fact, Presley was so devoted to her that he has often been depicted as a "mama's boy."

Drawn to music from early childhood, Presley was initially exposed to the gospel music that was inherent to the Deep South, and the Pentecostal church he attended in Tupelo. His musical horizons expanded in 1948 when he moved with his family to Memphis, Tennessee. Beale Street, home of the blues, was within walking distance of Lauderdale Courts, the public housing project that became home to the Presleys. Roadhouses were venues for hillbilly bands and cowboy singers. Churches and meeting halls echoed with spirituals. Local airwaves were also diverse. In defiance of the times, Presley avidly listened to so-called "race" stations, which played the music of African-American artists for their primarily African-American audience.

It was during high school that Presley began experimenting with his looks and dress style. At a time when others his age were wearing plaid shirts and blue jeans, he favored flashy "pimp"-type clothing. Colors not ordinarily worn by the era's males, including pink, were a Presley fashion favorite. His hair style was equally distinct. Though crewcuts were the rage, he wore his dark blond hair slicked back with rose oil. That "greaser" look would go on to become a "cool" statement in films and on television. But Presley was far from popular at school. Most students recoiled from the young man with the greasy-looking hair and the acne. His shyness, thick Mississippi accent, and a tendency to stutter, further hampered his status among both classmates and teachers, who were taken aback when he performed in a student show during his senior year. Most were unaware that he sang. But in fact, Presley was consumed by both music and ambition.

It was a July 1953 vanity recording, made just six weeks after high school graduation, that led to his introduction to Sun Records founder Sam Phillips. The blues-loving Phillips was known for recording "colored" artists, such as B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, and Big Ma Rainey. But what he was searching for, he used to say, was "a white man who can sing like a Negro." He sensed that Presley, with his wide-ranging voice, might be that person. Presley was working as a truck driver when Phillips teamed him with guitarist Scotty Moore and bass player Bill Black. Their potent chemistry resulted in a sped-up, rhythmically charged version of "That's All Right (Mama)," their first Sun recording. Popular local disc jockey Dewey Phillips, no relation to Sam, played the song multiple times on the night of July 10, 1954. Later that month, as an extra added attraction at a local "hillbilly hoe-down," Presley subconsciously exhibited the gyrating body movements that he would eventually make a trademark.

For the next year and a half, Presley and musicians Moore and Black, who were now Sun Records artists, were on an extended road trip. Traveling throughout east and west Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, they played high school auditoriums, Future Farmers of America halls, and backwater honky-tonks. One show found Presley performing atop a flat-bed truck parked at the second base of a baseball diamond. As his regional celebrity grew, disc jockeys and promoters alternately labeled him "the hillbilly cat," the "Memphis flash," a "bebop Western star," and even a "folk music fireball." But if his music was difficult to label, there was unanimity that Presley was one of a kind. Recalling the sensational impact of the early Presley, country music singer Bob Luman once related, "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 and he stood behind the mike 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 hadn't done anything yet, and these high school girls were screaming and fainting and running up to the stage, and then he started to move his hips real slow like he had a thing for his guitar. That was Elvis Presley when he was about 19, playing Kilgore, Texas. He made chills run up my back, man, like when your hair starts grabbing at your collar."