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Will Rodgers was an American stage and film actor, cowboy humorist, new paper columnist.he was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee nation Indian territory.

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William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 - August 15, 1935) was a Native American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in the Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma), and is known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son". As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was hugely popular in the United States for his leading political wit and was the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.

Rogers began his career as a performer on vaudeville. His rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that found general acclaim from a national audience with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted, for example, "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

Will Rogers caricature on a print advertisement for the film Down to Earth, from The Film Daily, 1932

One of Rogers's most famous sayings was "I never met a man I didn't like" and he even provided an epigram on this famous epigram:

When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident [] like." I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.

Rogers was born on his parents' Dog Iron Ranch in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory, near present-day Oologah, Oklahoma, now in Rogers County, named in honor of his father, Clement V. Rogers. The house in which he was born had been built in 1875 and was known as the "White House on the Verdigris River". His parents, Clement V. (Clem) Rogers (1839-1911) and Mary America Schrimsher (1838-1890), were both mixed-race with Cherokee ancestry, and considered themselves Cherokee. Rogers quipped that his ancestors did not come over on the , but they "met the boat". His mother was one quarter-Cherokee and born into the Paint Clan.

Unlike his father Clement's people, Mary's Cherokee relatives had been expelled from Georgia under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in an exodus known as The Trail of Tears. Of the 16,000 Cherokees driven to Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), 4,000 perished en route. She died of amoebic dysentery when Will was 10 years of age. His father remarried less than three years after her death.

Rogers was the youngest of eight children. He was named for the Cherokee leader Colonel William Penn Adair. Only three of his siblings, sisters Sallie Clementine, Maude Ethel, and Mary (May), survived into adulthood.

His father, Clement, was a leader in the Cherokee Nation. An attorney and Cherokee judge, Clement owned two slaves he had acquired from his father, and was a Confederate combat veteran of the American Civil War. He was promoted to regimental captain under Confederate colonel Stand Watie and fought at the Battle of Pea Ridge (1862).

Clement served as a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Rogers County, Oklahoma, is named in honor of him. He served several terms in the Cherokee Senate.

Roach (1980) presents a sociological-psychological assessment of the relationship between Will and his father during the formative boyhood and teenage years. Clement had high expectations for his son and wanted him to be more responsible and business-minded. Will was more easygoing and oriented toward the loving affection offered by his mother, Mary, rather than the harshness of his father. The personality clash increased after his mother's death when the boy was ten. Young Will went from one venture to another with little success. Only after Will won acclaim in vaudeville did the rift begin to heal. Clement's death in 1911 precluded a full reconciliation.

Will Rogers attended school in Indian Territory, at the Willie Halsel College at Vinita in 1895 and 1896, and then the Kemper Military School at Boonville over the 1897-1898 year. He was a good student and an avid reader of The New York Times, but he dropped out of school after the 10th grade. Rogers later said that he was a poor student, saying that he "studied the Fourth Reader for ten years". He was much more interested in cowboys and horses, and learned to rope and use a lariat.

In 1899, Rogers appeared in the St. Louis Fair as part of the Mulhall Rodeo. Near the end of 1901, when he was 22 years old, he and a friend left home hoping to work as gauchos in Argentina. They arrived in Argentina in May 1902, and spent five months trying to make it as ranch owners in the Pampas. Rogers and his partner lost all their money, and he later said, "I was ashamed to send home for more." The two friends separated and Rogers sailed for South Africa. It is often claimed he took a job breaking in horses for the British Army, but the Boer War had ended three months earlier. Rogers was hired at James Piccione's ranch near Mooi River Station in the Pietermaritzburg district of Natal.

Rogers began his show business career as a trick roper in "Texas Jack's Wild West Circus" in South Africa:

He [Texas Jack] had a little Wild West aggregation that visited the camps and did a tremendous business. I did some roping and riding, and Jack, who was one of the smartest showmen I ever knew, took a great interest in me. It was he who gave me the idea for my original stage act with my pony. I learned a lot about the show business from him. He could do a bum act with a rope that an ordinary man couldn't get away with, and make the audience think it was great, so I used to study him by the hour, and from him I learned the great secret of the show business-knowing when to get off. It's the fellow who knows when to quit that the audience wants more of.

Grateful for the guidance but anxious to move on, Rogers quit the circus and went to Australia. Texas Jack gave him a reference letter for the Wirth Brothers Circus there, and Rogers continued to perform as a rider and trick roper, and worked on his pony act. He returned to the United States in 1904, appeared at the Saint Louis World's Fair, and began to try his roping skills on the vaudeville circuits.

On a trip to New York City, Rogers was at Madison Square Garden, on April 27, 1905, when a wild steer broke out of the arena and began to climb into the viewing stands. Rogers roped the steer to the delight of the crowd. The feat got front page attention from the newspapers, giving him valuable publicity and an audience eager to see more. Willie Hammerstein saw his vaudeville act, and signed Rogers to appear on the Victoria Roof-which was literally on a rooftop-with his pony. For the next decade, Rogers estimated he worked for 50 weeks a year at the Roof and at the city's myriad vaudeville theaters.

Rogers later recalled these early years:

I got a job on Hammerstein's Roof at $140 a week for myself, my horse, and the man who looked after it. I remained on the roof for eight weeks, always getting another two-week extension when Willie Hammerstein would say to me after the Monday matinee, 'you're good for two weeks more'... Marty Shea, the booking agent for the Columbia, came to me and asked if I wanted to play burlesque. They could use an extra attraction....I told him I would think about it, but 'Burlesque' sounded to me then as something funny." Shea and Sam A. Scribner, the general manager of the Columbia Amusement Company, approached Rogers a few days later. Shea told Scribner Rogers was getting $150 and would take $175. "'What's he carrying?', Scribner asked Shea. 'Himself, a horse, and a man', answered Shea." Scribner replied, "'Give him eight weeks at $250'".

In the fall of 1915, Rogers began to appear in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic. The variety revue began at midnight in the top-floor night club of Ziegfeld's New Amsterdam Theatre, and drew many influential-and regular-customers. By this time, Rogers had refined his act. His monologues on the news of the day followed a similar routine every night. He appeared on stage in his cowboy outfit, nonchalantly twirling his lasso, and said, "Well, what shall I talk about? I ain't got anything funny to say. All I know is what I read in the papers." He would make jokes about what he had read in that day's newspapers. The line "All I know is what I read in the papers" is often incorrectly described as Rogers's most famous punch line, when it was his opening line.

His run at the New Amsterdam ran into 1916, and Rogers's growing popularity led to an engagement on the more famous Ziegfeld Follies. At this stage, Rogers's act was strictly physical, a silent display of daring riding and clever tricks with his lariat. He discovered that audiences identified the cowboy as the archetypical American-doubtless aided by Theodore Roosevelt's image as a cowboy. Rogers's cowboy was an unfettered man free of institutional restraints, with no bureaucrats to order his life. When he came back to the United States and worked in Wild West shows, he slowly began adding the occasional spoken ad lib, such as "Swingin' a rope's all right... if your neck ain't in it." Audiences responded to his laconic but pointed humor, and were just as fascinated by his frontier Oklahoma twang. By 1916, Rogers was a featured star in Ziegfeld's Follies on Broadway, as he moved into satire by transforming the "Ropin' Fool" to the "Talkin' Fool". At one performance, with President Woodrow Wilson in the audience, Rogers improvised a "roast" of presidential policies that had Wilson, and the entire audience, in stitches and proved his remarkable skill at off-the-cuff, witty commentary on current events. He built the rest of his career around that skill.

A 1922 editorial in The New York Times said that "Will Rogers in the Follies is carrying on the tradition of Aristophanes, and not unworthily." Rogers branched into silent films too, for Samuel Goldwyn's company Goldwyn Pictures. He made his first silent movie, Laughing Bill Hyde (1918), which was filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Many early films were filmed and produced in the New York area in those years. Rogers could make a film, yet easily still rehearse and perform in the Follies. He eventually appeared in most of the Follies, from 1916 to 1925.

Hollywood discovered Rogers in 1918, as Samuel Goldwyn gave him the title role in Laughing Bill Hyde.

A three-year contract with Goldwyn, at triple the Broadway salary, moved Rogers west. He bought a ranch in Pacific Palisades and set up his own production company. While Rogers enjoyed film acting, his appearances in silent movies suffered from the obvious restrictions of silence, as he had gained his fame as a commentator on stage. He wrote many of the title cards appearing in his films. In 1923, he began a one-year stint for Hal Roach and made 12 pictures. Among the films he made for Roach in 1924 were three directed by Rob Wagner: Two Wagons Both Covered, Going to Congress, and Our Congressman. He made two other feature silents and a travelogue series in 1927. After that, he did not return to the screen until beginning work in the ' talkies' in 1929.

Rogers made 48 silent movies, but with the arrival of sound in 1929, he became a top star in that medium. His first sound film, They Had to See Paris (1929), gave him the chance to exercise his verbal wit.

He played a homespun farmer ( State Fair) in 1933, an old-fashioned doctor ( Dr. Bull) in 1933, a small town banker ( David Harum) in 1934, and a rustic politician (Judge Priest) in 1934. He was also in County Chairman (1935), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935), and In Old Kentucky (1935). His favorite director was John Ford.

Rogers appeared in 21 feature films alongside such noted performers as Lew Ayres, Billie Burke, Richard Cromwell, Jane Darwell, Andy Devine, Janet Gaynor, Rochelle Hudson, Boris Karloff, Myrna Loy, Joel McCrea, Hattie McDaniel, Ray Milland, Maureen O'Sullivan, ZaSu Pitts, Dick Powell, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Mickey Rooney, and Peggy Wood. He was directed three times by John Ford. He appeared in four films with his friend Stepin Fetchit (aka Lincoln T. Perry): David Harum (1934), Judge Priest (1934), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) and The County Chairman (1935).

With his voice becoming increasingly familiar to audiences, Rogers essentially played himself in each film, without film makeup, managing to ad-lib and sometimes work in his familiar commentaries on politics. The clean moral tone of his films resulted in various public schools taking their classes to attend special showings during the school day. His most unusual role may have been in the first talking version of Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. His popularity soared to new heights with films including Young As You Feel, Judge Priest, and Life Begins at 40, with Richard Cromwell and Rochelle Hudson.

Rogers was an indefatigable worker. He toured the lecture circuit. The New York Times syndicated his weekly newspaper column from 1922 to 1935. Going daily in 1926, his short column "Will Rogers Says" reached 40 million newspaper readers. He also wrote frequently for the mass-circulation upscale magazine The Saturday Evening Post. Rogers advised Americans to embrace the frontier values of neighborliness and democracy on the domestic front, while remaining clear of foreign entanglements. He took a strong, highly popular stand in favor of aviation, including a military air force of the sort his flying buddy General Billy Mitchell advocated.

Rogers began a weekly column, titled "Slipping the Lariat Over", at the end of 1922. He had already published a book of wisecracks and had begun a steady stream of humor books. Through the columns for the McNaught Syndicate between 1922 and 1935, as well as his personal appearances and radio broadcasts, he won the loving admiration of the American people, poking jibes in witty ways at the issues of the day and prominent people-often politicians. He wrote from a nonpartisan point of view and became a friend of presidents and a confidant of the great. Loved for his cool mind and warm heart, he was often considered the successor to such greats as Artemus Ward and Mark Twain. Rogers was not the first entertainer to use political humor before his audience. Others, such as Broadway comedian Raymond Hitchcock and Britain's Sir Harry Lauder, preceded him by several years. Bob Hope is the best known political humorist to follow Rogers's example.

Radio was the exciting new medium, and Rogers became a star there as well, broadcasting his newspaper pieces. From 1929 to 1935, he made radio broadcasts for the Gulf Oil Company. This weekly Sunday evening show, The Gulf Headliners, ranked among the top radio programs in the country. Since Rogers easily rambled from one subject to another, reacting to his studio audience, he often lost track of the half-hour time limit in his earliest broadcasts, and was cut off in mid-sentence. To correct this, he brought in a wind-up alarm clock, and its on-air buzzing alerted him to begin wrapping up his comments. By 1935, his show was being announced as "Will Rogers and his Famous Alarm Clock".

In 1908, Rogers married Betty Blake (1879-1944), and the couple had four children: Will Rogers Jr., Mary Amelia, James Blake, and Fred Stone. Will Jr. became a World War II hero, played his father in two films, and was elected to Congress. Mary became a Broadway actress, and James "Jim" was a newspaperman and rancher; Fred died of diphtheria at age two. The family lived in New York, but they spent summers in Oklahoma. In 1911, Rogers bought a 20-acre (8.1 ha) ranch near Claremore, Oklahoma, which he intended to use as his retirement home. He paid US$500 an acre, equal to $15,704 per acre today.

From about 1925 to 1928, Rogers traveled the length and breadth of the United States in a "lecture tour". (He began his lectures by pointing out that "A humorist entertains, and a lecturer annoys.") During this time he became the first civilian to fly from coast to coast with pilots flying the mail in early air mail flights. The National Press Club dubbed him "Ambassador at Large of the United States". He visited Mexico City, along with Charles Lindbergh, as a guest of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow. Rogers gave numerous after-dinner speeches, became a popular convention speaker, and gave dozens of benefits for victims of floods, droughts, or earthquakes.

Rogers traveled to Asia to perform in 1931, and to Central and South America the following year. In 1934, he made a globe-girdling tour and returned to play the lead in Eugene O'Neill's stage play Ah, Wilderness!. He had tentatively agreed to go on loan from Fox to MGM to star in the 1935 movie version of the play. But, concerned about a fan's reaction to the "facts-of-life" talk between his character and the latter's son, he declined the role. He and Wiley Post made plans to fly to Alaska that summer.

Rogers was a Democrat but has historically been known as apolitical. He was friends with every president starting with Theodore Roosevelt, and he notably supported Republican Calvin Coolidge over John W. Davis in 1924. During the Republican Convention of 1928, while criticizing the party platform, Rogers welcomed the nomination of Kaw citizen Charles Curtis as vice president, although he felt the leadership had deliberately kept him from the presidency: "The Republican Party owed him something, but I didn't think they would be so low down as to pay him that way." Four years later, when the Republican leadership attempted to remove the more conservative Curtis from the Hoover ticket, Rogers defended him, and took credit with keeping him on the ticket: "I saved my 'Injun' Charley Curtis for vice presidency. The rascals was just ready to stab him when we caught 'em."

In 1932 Rogers supported Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was his favorite president and politician. Although he supported Roosevelt's New Deal, he could just as easily joke about it: "Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago."

Rogers served as a goodwill ambassador to Mexico, and had a brief stint as mayor of Beverly Hills, a largely ceremonial position that allowed Rogers to joke about do-nothing politicians such as himself. During the depths of the Great Depression, angered by Washington's inability to feed the people, he embarked on a cross country fundraising tour for the Red Cross.

Rogers thought all campaigning was bunk. To prove the point, he mounted a mock campaign in 1928 for the presidency. His only vehicle was the pages of Life, a weekly humor magazine. The campaign was in large part an effort to boost circulation for the struggling magazine. Rogers ran as the "bunkless candidate" of the Anti-Bunk Party. His campaign promise was that, if elected, he would resign. Every week, from Memorial Day through Election Day, Rogers caricatured the farcical humors of grave campaign politics. On election day he declared victory and resigned (he did not actually receive any state electoral votes).

Asked what issues would motivate voters? Prohibition: "What's on your hip is bound to be on your mind" (July 26).

Asked if there should be presidential debates? Yes: "Joint debate-in any joint you name" (August 9).

How about appeals to the common man? Easy: "You can't make any commoner appeal than I can" (August 16).

What does the farmer need? Obvious: "He needs a punch in the jaw if he believes that either of the parties cares a damn about him after the election" (August 23).

Can voters be fooled? Darn tootin': "Of all the bunk handed out during a campaign the biggest one of all is to try and compliment the knowledge of the voter" (September 21).

What about a candidate's image? Ballyhoo: "I hope there is some sane people who will appreciate dignity and not showmanship in their choice for the presidency" (October 5).

What of ugly campaign rumors? Don't worry: "The things they whisper aren't as bad as what they say out loud" (October 12).

After Rogers gained recognition as a humorist-philosopher in vaudeville, he gained a national audience in acting and literary careers from 1915 to 1935. In these years, Rogers increasingly expressed the views of the "common man" in America. He downplayed academic credentials, noting, "Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." Americans of all walks admired his individualism, his appreciation for democratic ideas, and his liberal philosophies on most issues. Moreover, Rogers extolled hard work in order to succeed, and such expressions affirmed American theories about how to realize individual success. Rogers symbolized the self-made man, the common man, who believed in America, in progress, and in the American Dream of upward mobility. His humor never offended even those who were the targets of it.

In the 1920s, the United States was happy and prosperous in various ways (leading to the nickname Roaring Twenties), but it also suffered from rapid change and social tensions. Some people were disenchanted by, and alienated from, the outside world. Many common people believed that World War I had resulted in extensive and largely senseless carnage, and they supported isolationism for the US. According to scholar Peter Rollins (1976), Rogers appeared to be an anchor of stability; his conventional home life and traditional moral code reminded people of a recent past. His newspaper column, which ran from 1922 to 1935, expressed his traditional morality and his belief that political problems were not as serious as they sounded. In his films, Rogers began by playing a simple cowboy; his characters evolved to explore the meaning of innocence in ordinary life. In his last movies, Rogers explores a society fracturing into competing classes from economic pressures. Throughout his career, Rogers was a link to a better, more comprehensible past.

In 1926, the high-circulation weekly magazine The Saturday Evening Post financed a European tour for Rogers, in return for publication of his articles. Rogers made whirlwind visits to numerous European capitals and met with both international figures and common people. His articles reflected a fear that Europeans would go to war again. He recommended isolationism for the United States. He reasoned that for the moment, American needs could best be served by concentrating on domestic questions and avoiding foreign entanglements. He commented:

America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can't confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.

"Rogers' philosophy was reactionary, dispiriting and provincial, despite every affectation of bonhomie and tolerance. It scorned ideas and the people who held them, it relied on vague evolution rather than direct action, its fixed smile concealed rigidity of opinion that middle America need not be disturbed from its own prejudices and limitations."-Film critic David Thomson in A Biographical History of Film (1976)

Rogers was famous for his use of language. He effectively used up-to-date slang and invented new words to fit his needs. He also made frequent use of puns and terms which closely linked him to the cowboy tradition, as well as speech patterns using a southern dialect.

Brown (1979) argues that Rogers held up a "magic mirror" that reflected iconic American values. Rogers was the archetypical "American Democrat" thanks to his knack of moving freely among all social classes, his stance above political parties, and his passion for fair play. He represented the "American Adam" with his independence and self-made record. Rogers furthermore represented the "American Prometheus" through his commitment to utilitarian methods and his ever-optimistic faith in future progress.

Will Rogers became an advocate for the aviation industry after noticing advancements in Europe and befriending Charles Lindbergh, the most famous American aviator of the era. During his 1926 European trip, Rogers witnessed the European advances in commercial air service and compared them to the almost nonexistent facilities in the United States. Rogers' newspaper columns frequently emphasized the safety record, speed, and convenience of this means of transportation, and he helped shape public opinion on the subject.

In 1935, the famed aviator Wiley Post, an Oklahoman, became interested in surveying a mail-and-passenger air route from the West Coast to Russia. He attached a Lockheed Explorer wing to a Lockheed Orion fuselage, fitting floats for landing in the lakes of Alaska and Siberia. Rogers visited Post often at the airport in Burbank, California, while he was modifying the aircraft. He asked Post to fly him through Alaska in search of new material for his newspaper column.

After making a test flight in July, Post and Rogers left Lake Washington in Renton, Washington in the Lockheed Orion-Explorer in early August and then made several stops in Alaska. While Post piloted the aircraft, Rogers wrote his columns on his typewriter. Before they left Fairbanks, they signed and mailed a burgee, a distinguishing flag belonging to the South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club. The signed burgee is on display at South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, California. On August 15, they left Fairbanks for Point Barrow.

About 20 miles southwest of Point Barrow, having difficulty figuring their position due to bad weather, they landed in a lagoon to ask directions. On takeoff, the engine failed at low altitude, and the aircraft plunged into the lagoon, shearing off the right wing, and ended up inverted in the shallow water of the lagoon. Both men died instantly. Rogers was buried August 21, 1935, in Forest Lawn Park in Glendale, California; it was a temporary interment. He was reinterred at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

Experts have studied the factors in the accident, and still disagree about it. Bobby H. Johnson and R. Stanley Mohler argued in a 1971 article that Post had ordered floats that did not reach Seattle in time for the planned trip. He used a set that was designed for a larger type of plane, making the already nose-heavy hybrid aircraft even more nose-heavy. But, Bryan and Frances Sterling maintain in their 2001 book Forgotten Eagle: Wiley Post: America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer that their research showed the floats were the correct type for the aircraft, thereby suggesting another cause for the crash.

In 1962, the town of Higgins, Texas (near a ranch where Rogers had worked in 1922), began an annual observance of Will Rogers Day, in honor of the cowboy philosopher, who remained a close friend of Frank Ewing, the son of his old employer.

Rogers was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.

Before his death, the state of Oklahoma commissioned a statue of Rogers, to be displayed as one of the two it has in the National Statuary Hall Collection of the United States Capitol. Rogers agreed on the condition that his image would be placed facing the House Chamber, supposedly so he could "keep an eye on Congress". Of the statues in this part of the Capitol, the Rogers sculpture is the only one facing the Chamber entrance-a stakeout location for camera crews looking to catch House members during and after voting. It is also a common background for reporters and lawmakers, with staff often directing the media to be at the "Will Rogers stakeout" at a certain time. According to some Capitol guides, each U.S. president rubs the left shoe of the Rogers statue for good luck before entering the House Chamber to give the State of the Union address.

A state appropriation paid for the work. It was sculpted in clay by Jo Davidson. He had been a close friend of Rogers. Davidson had the work cast in bronze in Brussels, Belgium. Dedicated on June 6, 1939, before a crowd of more than 2,000 people, the statue faces the floor entrance of the House of Representatives Chamber next to National Statuary Hall. The Architect of the Capitol, David Lynn, said there had never been such a large ceremony or crowd in the Capitol.

His birthplace at the Dog Iron Ranch is located two miles east of Oologah, Oklahoma. When the Verdigris River valley was flooded to create Oologah Lake as part of a major dam project, the Rogers house was preserved by being moved about mile (1.2 km) to its present location overlooking the original site.

The family tomb is at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum, constructed in nearby Claremore on the site purchased by Rogers in 1911 for his retirement home. On May 19, 1944, Rogers's body was moved from a holding vault in Glendale, California, to the tomb. After his wife Betty died later that year, she was also interred there. A casting of the Davidson sculpture that stands in National Statuary Hall, paid for by Davidson, was installed at the museum. Both the birthplace and the museum are open to the public.

Many landmarks were named in Rogers' honor: Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, where a recent expansion and renovation included the installation of a statue of Rogers on horseback in front of the terminal. The Will Rogers Turnpike is the section of Interstate 44 between Tulsa and Joplin, Missouri. Near Vinita, Oklahoma, a statue of Rogers was installed at the service plaza that spans the interstate.

Thirteen public schools in Oklahoma have been named for Rogers, including Will Rogers High School in Tulsa. The University of Oklahoma named the large Will Rogers Room in the student union for him. The Boy Scouts of America honored him with the Will Rogers Council and the Will Rogers Scout Reservation near Cleveland.

In 1947, a college football bowl game was named in his honor, but the event folded after the first year.

The Academy of Western Artists, based in Gene Autry, Oklahoma, presents an annual Will Rogers Medallion award for excellence in western literature.

The Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun is the name of an 80-foot observation tower on Cheyenne Mountain west of Colorado Springs, at the base of Pikes Peak near the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Rogers's California home, stables, and polo fields are preserved today for public enjoyment as Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades. His widow, Betty, willed the property to the state of California upon her death in 1944, under the condition that polo be played on the field every year; it is home to the Will Rogers Polo Club.

Several schools have been named for him: Will Rogers Elementary School in Santa Monica, Will Rogers Elementary School in Ventura, middle schools in Long Beach and in Fair Oaks.

Will Rogers Memorial Park, a small park at Sunset Boulevard and Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, was named after him, as is Will Rogers State Beach in the Pacific Palisades.

U.S. Route 66 is known as the Will Rogers Highway; a plaque dedicating the highway to the humorist is located at the western terminus of Route 66 in Santa Monica.

The California Theatre in San Bernardino is the site of the humorist's final show. He always performed in front of a special jewelled curtain and had two of them. While he was using one, he would send the other to the site of his next performance. The curtain used in his final show was retained by the California Theatre. Two memorial murals by Kent Twitchell were installed on the exterior of the fly loft. The California Theatre named one of its reception spaces as the Will Rogers Room.

The Will Rogers Memorial Center was built in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1936. It includes a mural, a bust and a life-size statue of Will Rogers on Soapsuds, titled Riding into the Sunset, sculpted by Electra Waggoner Biggs.

Riding into the Sunset, depicting Rogers riding his horse Soapsuds, on the campus of Texas Tech University

A casting of Riding into the Sunset stands at the entrance to the main campus quad at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. This memorial was dedicated on February 16, 1950, by Rogers' longtime friend, Amon G. Carter. Another casting is held at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, and a casting is located at the entrance of the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.

Before heading up to Alaska, Rogers played polo at a field in Seattle. This was his "last ride" on a horse, so a monument was erected next to the field in 1938. A small monument at the Renton airport commemorates the starting point of the fatal 1935 Post-Rogers flight. A memorial is also located within the city of Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska.

In 1936, the NVA Hospital located in Saranac Lake, New York was renamed as the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital by the National Vaudeville Artists association.

On November 4, 1948, the United States Post Office commemorated Rogers with a three-cent postage stamp. In 1979, it issued a United States Postal Service 15-cent stamp of him as part of the "Performing Arts" series.

In 1976, Rogers was among the historical figures depicted in the artwork Our Nation's 200th Birthday, The Telephone's 100th Birthday by Stanley Meltzoff for Bell System.

The airport for Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska (BRW), located about 16 miles (26 km) from the location of the fatal airplane crash, is known as the Wiley Post-Will Rogers Memorial Airport.

The Rogers-Post Site, overlooking the lagoon where the plane crashed, has two (or possibly one remaining) monuments. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. A plaque to Rogers and Post was also erected in Barrow.

The World War II Liberty Ship SS Will Rogers was named in his honor.

The final ship of the Benjamin Franklin-class submarines, USS Will Rogers (SSBN-659) was launched in 1966, and commissioned the following year.

On November 4, 2019, Google celebrated his 140th birthday with a Google Doodle.

Rogers was portrayed by A.A. Trimble in cameos in both the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld, and the 1937 film You're a Sweetheart.

Rogers was portrayed by his son, Will Rogers Jr., in a cameo in the 1949 film Look for the Silver Lining, as the star of the 1952 film The Story of Will Rogers, and as a voice-only cameo in The American Adventure at Epcot.

James Whitmore portrayed Rogers in eight runs of the one-man play Will Rogers' USA between 1970 and 2000, including a limited run on Broadway in 1974, and as a television film in 1972. Whitmore changed the monologue each time he performed it, using quotations from Rogers as commentary on events current at the time of the performance.

The Tony Award-winning musical The Will Rogers Follies, produced on Broadway in 1991, starred Keith Carradine in the lead role. Carradine also played Rogers in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.

One Day in 365 (1922, unreleased)

Hollywood (1923) - Himself

Jus' Passin' Through (1923, Short) - Jubilo

Hustling Hank (1923, Short) - Hank

Uncensored Movies (1923, Short) - Lem Skagwillow

Two Wagons Both Covered (1923, Short) - Bill Bunian / Joe Jackson

The Cowboy Sheik (1924, Short) - Two Straw Bill

The Cake Eater (1924, Short)

High Brow Stuff (1924, Short)

Going to Congress (1924, Short) - Alfalfa Doolittle

Don't Park There (1924, Short)

Big Moments From Little Pictures (1924, Short) - Himself / Rufus the bullfighter / Robin Hood / Son / Police Chief

(1924, Short) (part of the series) - Himself

Our Congressman (1924, Short) - Alfalfa Doolittle

A Truthful Liar (1924, Short) - Ambassador Alfalfa Doolittle

Gee Whiz Genevieve (1924, Short)

Tip Toes (1927) - Uncle Hen Kaye

A Texas Steer (1927) - Cattle Brander

Travelog Series

In Dublin (1927, Short) - Himself

In Paris (1927, Short) - Himself

Hiking Through Holland (1927, Short) - Himself

Hunting For Germans In Berlin (1927, Short) - Himself

Through Switzerland And Bavaria (1927, Short) - Himself

In London (1927, Short) - Himself

Roaming The Emerald Isle (1927, Short) - Himself

Prowling Around France (1927, Short) - Himself

Winging Round Europe (1927, Short) - Himself

Exploring England (1927, Short) - Himself

Reeling Down The Rhine (1927, Short) - Himself

Over The Bounding Blue (1928, Short) - Himself

Carnes, Mark C. Will Rogers and "His" America (2010).

Ketchum, Richard M. Will Rogers: His Life and Times (1973)

O'Brien, P. J. (1935). Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will Prince of Wit and Wisdom.

Robinson, Ray (1996).American Original: A Life of Will Rogers. 288 pp.

Rogers, Betty (1941). Will Rogers: His Story As Told By His Wife. 312 pp. Garden City Publishing Company, Garden City, New York.

Rollins, Peter C. (1984). Will Rogers: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood, 282 pp.

Sterling, Bryan B., and Frances N. Sterling (1989). Will Rogers' World.

Yagoda, Ben (1993). Will Rogers: A Biography excerpt and text search

Brown, William R. (1979). "Will Rogers and His Magic Mirror". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 57 (3): 300-25.

Coleman, Timothy S. "All We Know of Nation Is What We See in the Pictures: Will Rogers and the National Imaginary in 1920s and 1930s America". PhD dissertation, Wayne State U. 2003. 183 pp. DAI 2004 64(12): 4245-A. DA3116488 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Jenkins, Ronald Scott. "Representative Clowns: Comedy and Democracy in America". PhD dissertation Harvard U. 1984. 208 pp. DAI 1984 45(4): 1187-A. DA8416931 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Johnson, Bobby H. and R. Stanley Mohler. "Wiley Post, His Winnie Mae, and the World's First Pressure Suit". Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1971.

Roach, Fred, Jr. "Will Rogers' Youthful Relationship with His Father, Clem Rogers: a Story of Love and Tension". Chronicles of Oklahoma 1980 58(3): 325-42. ISSN 0009-6024

Roach, Fred; Jr. (1979). "Vision of the Future: Will Rogers' Support of Commercial Aviation". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 57 (3): 340-64.

Rollins, Peter C. "Will Rogers: Symbolic Man, Journalist, and Film Image". Journal of Popular Culture 1976 9(4): 851-77.

Rollins, Peter C. (1979). "Will Rogers, Ambassador sans Portfolio: Letters from a Self-made Diplomat to His President". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 57 (3): 326-39.

Smallwood, James M. (1988). "Will Rogers of Oklahoma: Spokesman for the 'Common Man'". Journal of the West. 27 (2): 45-49.

Southard, Bruce (1979). "Will Rogers and the Language of the Southwest: a Centennial Perspective". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 57 (3): 365-75.

Ware, Amy (2009). "Unexpected Cowboy, Unexpected Indian: The Case of Will Rogers". Ethnohistory. 56 (1): 1-34. doi:10.1215/00141801-2008-034.

Rogers, Will (1927). There's Not A Bathing Suit in Russia.

Rogers, Will (1982) [1928]. "He chews to run": Will Rogers' Life magazine articles, 1928. Stillwater: Oklahoma State University Press. ISBN 0-914956-20-5.

Sterling, Bryan and Frances (2001). Forgotten Eagle: Wiley Post: America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-0894-8.

Rogers, Will (1926). Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat to His President

Rogers, Will, and Joseph H. Carter. Never Met a Man I Didn't Like (1991) excerpt and text search

Rogers, Will. Will Rogers at the Ziegfeld Follies. ed. by Arthur Frank Wertheim, (1992). 288 pp.

Rogers, Will. Will Rogers' Weekly Articles. Vol. 1, The Harding/Coolidge Years, 1922-1925. ed. by James M. Smallwood, (1980). 431 pp.

Rogers, Will. Will Rogers' Weekly Articles. Vol. 2: The Coolidge Years, 1925-1927. ed. by Steven K. Gragert, (1980). 368 pp.

Rogers, Will. Will Rogers' Weekly Articles. Vol. 3: The Coolidge Years, 1927-1929. ed. by Steven K. Gragert, (1981). 304 pp.

Rogers, Will. Will Rogers' Weekly Articles. Vol. 4: The Hoover Years, 1929-1931. ed. by Steven K. Gragert, (1981). 278 pp.

Rogers, Will. Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams. Vol. l, The Coolidge Years, 1926-1929. ed. by James M. Smallwood, 1978. 453 pp.

Rogers, Will. Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams. Vol. 4, The Roosevelt Years, 1933-1935. ed. by James M. Smallwood, (1979). 457 pp.

Rogers, Will. Convention Articles of Will Rogers. ed. by Joseph A. Stout, 1976. 174 pp.

Rogers, Will. The Writings of Will Rogers. Volume 3: Illiterate Digest. ed. by Joseph A. Stout, Jr., 1974. 230 pp.

Rogers, Will (1948). Day, Donald (ed.). Autobiography of Will Rogers; Selected and Edited by Donald Day. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Rogers, Will. Rogers-isms: the Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference, (1919). Online at Project Gutenberg

Sterling, Bryan B., and Frances N. Sterling, eds. Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (And Writers, Politicians Comedians, Browsers) (1995).

The Papers of Will Rogers

Rogers, Will (1996). Steven K. Gragert and M. Jane Johansson (ed.). The Papers of Will Rogers: The Early Years : November 1879 - April 1904. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-2745-3. Online at archive.org

Rogers, Will (2000). Steven K. Gragert; M. Jane Johansson (eds.). Papers of Will Rogers : Wild West and Vaudeville, April 1904 -September 1908, Volume Two. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3267-9. Online at archive.org

Rogers, Will (2005). Steven K. Gragert; M. Jane Johansson (eds.). The Papers of Will Rogers: From Broadway to the National Stage, September 1915 - July 1928. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3704-9.

Rogers, Will (2005). Steven K. Gragert; M. Jane Johansson (eds.). The Papers of Will Rogers: From Broadway to the National Stage, September 1915 - July 1928. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3704-9.

Rogers, Will (2006). Steven K. Gragert; M. Jane Johansson (eds.). The Papers of Will Rogers: The Final Years, August 1928 - August 1935. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3768-1.

"The House That Jokes Built," Photoplay, July 1921, p. 36.

1. ^ Cunningham, Marie (August 15, 2010). "This Day in Beverly Hills History: Will Rogers, City's First Honorary Mayor, Dies at 55". Patch.

2. ^ Curtis, Gene (June 5, 2007). "Only in Oklahoma: Rogers statue unveiling filled U.S. Capitol". Tulsa World. Archived from the original on December 10, 2012.

3. ^ "RSU and Will Rogers Museum to Discuss Possible Merger" (Press release). Rogers State University. April 18, 2007. Archived from the original on November 7, 2007.

4. ^ Schlachtenhaufen, Mark (May 31, 2007). "Will Rogers grandson carries on tradition of family service". OkInsider.com. Oklahoma Publishing Company. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007.

5. ^ "Origin of County Names in Oklahoma". Oklahoma History Society's Chronicles of Oklahoma. 2:1, March 1924 (Retrieved January 18, 2009)

6. Fred Roach Jr., "Will Rogers' Youthful Relationship with His Father, Clem Rogers: a Story of Love and Tension", ^ Chronicles of Oklahoma 1980 58(3): 325-42. ISSN 0009-6024

7. Hoots, G. 2020. Lucille Mulhall and the Mulhall Wild West Show. Series Lucille Mulhall and the Mulhall Wild West Show. in Flint Hills Special Digital Magazine [Accessed March 23, 2022]; ^ https://flinthillsspecial.com/2020/12/04/lucille-mulhall-and-the-mulhall-wild-west-show/.

8. ^ "Chewing Gum and Rope in the Temple". The New York Times. October 3, 1915. p. 90.

9. ^ Rogers, Will (September 30, 1923). "Slipping the Lariat Over". The New York Times.

10. ^ "Will Rogers: Weekly Articles". www.willrogers.com. Will Rogers Memorial Museums. July 1, 2012. Archived from the original on July 1, 2012.

11. ^ Rogers, Will (December 31, 1922). "Slipping the Lariat Over (December 31, 1922)". The New York Times.

12. ^ "Will Rogers: Radio Pundit". www.willrogers.com. Will Rogers Memorial Museums. March 31, 2008. Archived from the original on October 15, 2008.

13. ^ "Will Rogers and American Politics". Rogers State University Public TV via Youtube. 2020. Archived from the original on March 28, 2022.

14. ^ Saavedra, Scott (August 2020). "Celebrities for President". RetroFan. United States: TwoMorrows Publishing (10): 14.

15. James M. Smallwood, "Will Rogers of Oklahoma: Spokesman for the 'Common Man'", ^ Journal of the West 1988 27(2): 45-49. ISSN 0022-5169

16. Peter C. Rollins, "Will Rogers, Ambassador sans Portfolio: Letters from a Self-made Diplomat to His President", ^ Chronicles of Oklahoma 1979 57(3): 326-39. Quote from Paula McSpadden Love, The Will Rogers Book, (1972) p. 177.

17. ^ Southard, Bruce (1979). "Will Rogers and the Language of the Southwest: a Centennial Perspective". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 57 (3): 365-75.

18. ^ Brown, William R. (1979). "Will Rogers and His Magic Mirror". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 57 (3): 300-25.

19. ^ Roach, Fred Jr. (1979). "Vision of the Future: Will Rogers' Support of Commercial Aviation". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 57 (3): 340-64.

20. Johnson, Bobby H. and R. Stanley Mohler, ^ "Wiley Post, His Winnie Mae, and the World's First Pressure Suit"., Annals of Flight, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1971.

21. ^ Sterling, Bryan and Frances (2001). Forgotten Eagle: Wiley Post: America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-0894-8.

22. ^ "Police Dept., police explorers strolls through the streets of the U.S. Capitol, stops for visits". The Anderson Independent-Mail. July 18, 2007. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.

23. ^ Raymond W. Smith (July 1983). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: Will Rogers Memorial Hospital". New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Archived from the original on January 27, 2012.

24. ^ "Stanley Meltzoff Archives: The 1976 Bell System Telephone Book Cover" JKL Museum of Telephony (December 19, 2015); retrieved March 16, 2021

25. Dennis McClellan, ^ "James Whitmore dies at 87; veteran award-winning actor brought American icons to the screen", Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2009.

"Humor's sober side: Being an interview with Will Rogers, another of a series on how humorists get that way by Josephine van der Grift," Bisbee Daily Review, October 15, 1922, p. 4.

O'Brien, P. J. (1935). Will Rogers: Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom. N.P.: Winston.[ISBN missing ]

"Claim Will Rogers Is Free To Insult Race Under Agreement". Kansas City (MO) Plaindealer, February 2, 1934, p. 2.

"Protest Will Rogers' Radio Speech". Pittsburgh Courier, January 27, 1934, p. 1.

Sterling, Bryan B., and Frances N. Sterling, eds. (1995). Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (And Writers, Politicians Comedians, Browsers). ISBN 0871317958

"Will Rogers Hurls Back A Second Insult". Baltimore Afro-American, February 3, 1934, p. 1.

All references to Will Rogers concerned with early life and the annual celebration in or around Higgins, Texas are taken from the Texas State Historical Association.

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William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 - August 15, 1935) was a Native American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in the Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma), and is known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son".

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Paul Newman was an American actor, film director, race car driver, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards including an academy award.

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Hank Williams was an American singer songwriter and musician. He was regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singer songwriter.

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Ms. Woodward, a Dallas reporter, witnessed the parade and bullets striking President Kennedy. Others who were in press cars in the presidential parade... read more

Ms. Woodward, a Dallas reporter, witnessed the parade and bullets striking President Kennedy. Others who were in press cars in the presidential parade or who went into the Texas School Book Depository with the police also talked about their memories of the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

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Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 - August 16, 1977), often referred to mononymously as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Known as the " King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Presley's energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, led him to both great success and initial controversy.

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family when he was aged 13. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on rhythm acoustic guitar, and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana joined to complete the lineup of Presley's classic quartet and RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage him for more than two decades. Presley's first RCA single, " Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. Within a year, RCA would sell ten million Presley singles. With a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records, Presley became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll; though his performative style and promotion of the then-marginalized sound of African Americans led to him being widely considered a threat to the moral well-being of white American youth.

In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. Drafted into military service in 1958, he relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. Presley held few concerts, however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. Some of his most famous films included Jailhouse Rock (1957), Blue Hawaii (1961), and Viva Las Vegas (1964). In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed television comeback special , which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. However, years of prescription drug abuse and unhealthy eating habits severely compromised his health, and Presley died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.

Having sold roughly 500 million records worldwide, Presley is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, rhythm & blues, adult contemporary, and gospel. He won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. He also holds several records, including the most RIAA-certified gold and platinum albums, the most albums charted on the Billboard 200, the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the UK Albums Chart, and the most number-one singles by any act on the UK Singles Chart. In 2018, Presley was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Life and career

1935-1953: early years

Childhood in Tupelo

Presley's birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Vernon Presley and Gladys Love ( née Smith) Presley in a two-room shotgun house that his father built for the occasion. Elvis' identical twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered stillborn thirty-five minutes before him. Presley became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.

Presley's father was of Irish, German, Scottish, and English origins, and a descendant of the Harrison family of Virginia. Presley's mother Gladys was Scots-Irish with some French Norman ancestry. She and the rest of the family believed that her great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was Cherokee. This belief was restated by Elvis's granddaughter Riley Keough in 2017. Elaine Dundy, in her biography, supports the belief.

Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, showing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. In 1938 they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check. He was jailed for eight months while Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his teachers regarded him as "average". He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley's country song " Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, was his first public performance. The ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else-by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and a pastor at the family's church. Presley recalled, "I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it."

In September 1946, Presley entered a new school, Milam, for sixth grade; he was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar to school. He played and sang during lunchtime and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played hillbilly music. Presley was a devotee of Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station WELO. He was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, who was one of Presley's classmates and often took him into the station. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar instruction by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was aged 12, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time but performed the following week.

Teenage life in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the public housing complex known as the Lauderdale Courts. Enrolled at L. C. Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him that he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me", to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher "agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn't appreciate his kind of singing". He was usually too shy to perform openly and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy".

In 1950, Presley began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Lee Denson, a neighbor. They and three other boys-including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette-formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, Presley began working as an usher at Loew's State Theater. Other jobs followed at Precision Tool, another stint at Loew's, and MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. In his free time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis' thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing those clothes. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Courts, he competed in Humes' Annual "Minstrel" Show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with " Till I Waltz Again with You", a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation:

I wasn't popular in school ... I failed music-only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show ... when I came onstage, I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, 'cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became in school after that.

Presley, who received no formal music training and could not read music, studied and played by ear. He also visited record stores that provided jukeboxes and listening booths to customers. He knew all of Hank Snow's songs, and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills. The Southern gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. Presley was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Presley listened to regional radio stations, such as WDIA, that played what were then called "race records": spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues. Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences-a necessity in the segregated South. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African-American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he had known Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated from high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.

1953-1956: first recordings

Sam Phillips and Sun Records

In August 1953, Presley checked into the offices of Memphis Recording Service, the company run by Sam Phillips before he started Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: " My Happiness" and " That's When Your Heartaches Begin". He later claimed that he intended the record as a birthday gift for his mother, or that he was merely interested in what he "sounded like", although there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer Peter Guralnick argued that Presley chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, "I sing all kinds." When she pressed him on who he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, "I don't sound like nobody." After he recorded, Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man's name, which she did along with her own commentary: "Good ballad singer. Hold."

In January 1954, Presley cut a second acetate at Sun-"I'll Never Stand in Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You"-but again nothing came of it. Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows, explaining to his father, "They told me I couldn't sing." Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver. His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, leader of Smith's professional band, which had an opening for a vocalist. Bond rejected him after a tryout, advising Presley to stick to truck driving "because you're never going to make it as a singer".

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring to a broader audience the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'" In June, he acquired a demo recording by Jimmy Sweeney of a ballad, "Without You", that he thought might suit Presley. The teenaged singer came by the studio but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session.

The session, held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to abort and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's " That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, 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. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for.

Three days later, popular Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips (no relation to Sam Phillips) played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the remaining two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed that he was black. During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass song, Bill Monroe's " Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A-side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.

Early live performances and RCA Victor contract

The trio played publicly for the first time at the Bon Air club on July 17, 1954-Presley still sporting his child-size guitar. At the end of the month, they appeared at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. Here Elvis pioneered ' Rubber Legs', his signature style dance movement that he is best known for. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming. Moore recalled, "During the instrumental parts, he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild". Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as "really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something".

Soon after, Moore and Black left their old band, the Starlite Wranglers, to play with Presley regularly, and disc jockey/promoter Bob Neal became the trio's manager. From August through October, they played frequently at the Eagle's Nest club, a dance venue on the second floor of the Clearpool recreation complex in Memphis. When Presley played his fifteen-minute sets, teenagers rushed from the pool to fill the club, then left again as the house western swing band resumed. Presley quickly grew more confident on stage. According to Moore, "His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He'd do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick." Amid these live performances, Presley returned to Sun studio for more recording sessions. Presley made what would be his only appearance on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry on October 2; after a polite audience response, Opry manager Jim Denny told Phillips that his singer was "not bad" but did not suit the program.

Louisiana Hayride, radio commercial, and first television performances

In November 1954, Presley performed on Louisiana Hayride-the Opry's chief, and more adventurous, rival. The Shreveport-based show was broadcast to 198 radio stations in 28 states. Presley had another attack of nerves during the first set, which drew a muted reaction. A more composed and energetic second set inspired an enthusiastic response. House drummer D. J. Fontana brought a new element, complementing Presley's movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs. Soon after the show, the Hayride engaged Presley for a year's worth of Saturday-night appearances. Trading in his old guitar for $8 (and seeing it promptly dispatched to the garbage), he purchased a Martin instrument for $175 (equivalent to $1,900 in 2022) and his trio began playing in new locales, including Houston, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas.

Many fledgling performers, like Minnie Pearl, Johnny Horton, and Johnny Cash, sang the praises of Louisiana Hayride sponsor Southern Maid Donuts, including Presley, who developed a lifelong love of donuts. Presley made his singular product endorsement commercial for the donut company, which was never released, recording a radio jingle "in exchange for a box of hot glazed doughnuts". Presley made his first television appearance on the KSLA-TV television broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Soon after, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on the CBS television network. By early 1955, Presley's regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas.

In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought him to the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker, born in the Netherlands, had immigrated illegally to the U.S. and claimed to be from West Virginia; he had acquired an honorary colonel's commission from the Louisiana governor and country singer Jimmie Davis. Having successfully managed the top country star Eddy Arnold, Parker was working with the new number-one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow's February tour. When the tour reached Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. ... I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it."

By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill"; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like "That's All Right", were in what one Memphis journalist described as the "R&B idiom of negro field jazz"; others, like "Blue Moon of Kentucky", were "more in the country field", "but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both". This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley's music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country-music disc jockeys would not play it because Presley sounded too much like a black artist and none of the R&B stations would touch him because "he sounded too much like a hillbilly." The blend came to be known as "rockabilly". At the time, Presley was variously billed as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".

Presley renewed Neal's management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, "It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we'd have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody'd always try to take a crack at him. They'd get a gang and try to waylay him or something." The trio became a quartet when Hayride drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose " Rock Around the Clock" track had been a number-one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.

At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year's most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000. Presley, now aged 20, was legally still a minor, so his father signed the contract. Parker arranged with the owners of Hill & Range Publishing, Jean and Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forgo one-third of their customary royalties in exchange for having Presley perform their compositions. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.

1956-1958: commercial breakout and controversy

First national TV appearances and debut album

Billboard magazine advertisement, March 10, 1956

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending his by-now customary backup of Moore, Black, Fontana, and Hayride pianist Floyd Cramer-who had been performing at live club dates with Presley-RCA enlisted guitarist Chet Atkins and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill in the sound. The session produced the moody, unusual " Heartbreak Hotel", released as a single on January 27. Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS's for six appearances over two months. The program, produced in New York City, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. After his first appearance, on January 28, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA Victor's New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins' rockabilly anthem " Blue Suede Shoes". In February, Presley's " I Forgot to Remember to Forget", a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart. Neal's contract was terminated, and, on March 2, Parker became Presley's manager.

RCA released Presley's self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the evolving sound of rock and roll: "Blue Suede Shoes"-"an improvement over Perkins' in almost every way", according to critic Robert Hilburn-and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presley's stage repertoire for some time, covers of Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these "were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists ... who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions of songs in the '50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases." It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for ten weeks. While Presley was not an innovative guitarist like Moore or contemporary African American rockers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argued that the album's cover image, "of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar ... as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music."

Milton Berle Show and "Hound Dog"

On April 3, Presley made the first of two appearances on NBC's The Milton Berle Show. His performance, on the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, California, prompted cheers and screams from an audience of sailors and their dates. A few days later, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when an engine died and the plane almost went down over Arkansas. Twelve weeks after its original release, "Heartbreak Hotel" became Presley's first number-one pop hit. In late April he began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The shows were poorly received by the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests-"like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party", wrote a critic for Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, taking in fifteen cities in as many days. He had attended several shows by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Vegas and was struck by their cover of " Hound Dog", a hit in 1953 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became the new closing number of his act.

After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message on the letterhead of the local Catholic diocese's newspaper was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that "Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. ... [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. ... After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley's room at the auditorium. ... Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls ... whose abdomen and thigh had Presley's autograph."

Presley's second Milton Berle Show appearance came on June 5 at NBC's Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour. Milton Berle persuaded Presley to leave his guitar backstage, advising, "Let 'em see you, son." During the performance, Presley abruptly halted an uptempo rendition of "Hound Dog" with a wave of his arm and launched into a slow, grinding version accentuated with energetic, exaggerated body movements. His gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. ... His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. ... His one specialty is an accented movement of the body ... primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway." Ben Gross of the New York opined that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley. ... Elvis, who rotates his pelvis ... gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos". Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation's most popular, declared Presley "unfit for family viewing". To Presley's displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as "Elvis the Pelvis", which he called "one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin' from an adult".

Steve Allen Show and first Sullivan appearance

Ed Sullivan and Presley during rehearsals for his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, October 26, 1956

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC's The Steve Allen Show in New York. Allen, no fan of rock and roll, introduced a "new Elvis" in a white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang "Hound Dog" for less than a minute to a basset hound wearing a top hat and bow tie. As described by television historian Jake Austen, "Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd ... [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition". Allen later wrote that he found Presley's "strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing" and simply worked him into the customary "comedy fabric" of his program. Just before the final rehearsal for the show, Presley told a reporter, "I'm holding down on this show. I don't want to do anything to make people dislike me. I think TV is important so I'm going to go along, but I won't be able to give the kind of show I do in a personal appearance." Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. Later that night, he appeared on Hy Gardner Calling, a popular local television show. Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, "No, I haven't, I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong. ... I don't see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it's only music. ... I mean, how would rock 'n' roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?"

The next day, Presley recorded "Hound Dog", along with " Any Way You Want Me" and " Don't Be Cruel". The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, Presley made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis, at which he announced, "You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight." In August, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, ordered Presley to tame his act. Throughout the following performance, he largely kept still, except for wiggling his little finger suggestively in mockery of the order. The single pairing "Don't Be Cruel" with "Hound Dog" ruled the top of the charts for eleven weeks-a mark that would not be surpassed for thirty-six years. Recording sessions for Presley's second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Leiber and Stoller, the writers of "Hound Dog", contributed " Love Me".

Allen's show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings. Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked Presley for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers-a record 82.6 percent of the television audience. Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan was recovering from a car accident. Presley appeared in two segments that night from CBS Television City in Los Angeles. According to legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Watching clips of the Allen and Berle shows with his producer, Sullivan had opined that Presley "got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants-so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. ... I think it's a Coke bottle. ... We just can't have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!" Sullivan publicly told , "As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots." In fact, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style: screaming. Presley's performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad " Love Me Tender", prompted a record-shattering million advance orders. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.

Accompanying Presley's rise to fame, a cultural shift was taking place that he both helped inspire and came to symbolize. The historian Marty Jezer wrote that Presley began the "biggest pop craze" since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra and brought rock and roll to mainstream culture: "As Presley 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."

Crazed crowds and film debut

Presley performing live at the Mississippi-Alabama Fairgrounds in Tupelo, September 26, 1956

The audience response at Presley's live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, "He'd start out, 'You ain't nothin' but a Hound Dog,' and they'd just go to pieces. They'd always react the same way. There'd be a riot every time." At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, fifty National Guardsmen were added to the police detail to ensure that the crowd would not cause a ruckus. , Presley's second RCA album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one on the billboard. The album includes "Old Shep", which he sang at the talent show in 1945, and which now marked the first time he played piano on an RCA session. According to Guralnick, one can hear "in the halting chords and the somewhat stumbling rhythm both the unmistakable emotion and the equally unmistakable valuing of emotion over technique." Assessing the musical and cultural impact of Presley's recordings from "That's All Right" through Elvis, rock critic Dave Marsh wrote that "these records, more than any others, contain the seeds of what rock & roll was, has been and most likely what it may foreseeably become."

Presley returned to The Ed Sullivan Show at its main studio in New York, hosted this time by its namesake, on October 28. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy. His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21. Though he was not top-billed, the film's original title-The Reno Brothers-was changed to capitalize on his latest number-one record: "Love Me Tender" had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. To further take advantage of Presley's popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The film was panned by critics but did very well at the box office. Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records, where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording, and had an impromptu jam session along with Johnny Cash. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley material, he made sure that the session was captured on tape. The results, none officially released for twenty-five years, became known as the " Million Dollar Quartet" recordings. The year ended with a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Presley merchandise had brought in $22 million on top of his record sales, and Billboard's declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted. In his first full year at RCA Victor, then the record industry's largest company, Presley had accounted for over fifty percent of the label's singles sales.

Leiber and Stoller collaboration and draft notice

Presley made his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance on January 6, 1957-on this occasion indeed shot only down to the waist. Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity. In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley "did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in , with all stops out." To close, displaying his range and defying Sullivan's wishes, Presley sang a gentle black spiritual, " Peace in the Valley". At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley "a real decent, fine boy". Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1-A and would probably be drafted sometime that year.

Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: " Too Much", " All Shook Up", and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear". Already an international star, he was attracting fans even where his music was not officially released. Under the headline "Presley Records a Craze in Soviet", The New York Times reported that pressings of his music on discarded X-ray plates were commanding high prices in Leningrad. Between film shoots and recording sessions, Presley purchased an 18-room mansion, Graceland, on March 19, 1957, for the amount of $102,500. The mansion, which was about 9 miles (14 km) south of downtown Memphis, was for himself and his parents. Before the purchase, Elvis recorded -the soundtrack to his second film, which was released in July. It was his third straight number-one album. The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were then retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for Jailhouse Rock, Presley's next film. The songwriting team effectively produced the Jailhouse sessions and developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his "good-luck charm". "He was fast," said Leiber. "Any demo you gave him he knew by heart in ten minutes." The title track became another number-one hit, as was the Jailhouse Rock EP.

Presley and costar Judy Tyler in the trailer for Jailhouse Rock, released in October 1957

Presley undertook three brief tours during the year, continuing to generate a crazed audience response. A Detroit newspaper suggested that "the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you're liable to get killed". Villanova students pelted the singer with eggs in Philadelphia, and in Vancouver the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage. Frank Sinatra, who had inspired both the swooning and screaming of teenage girls in the 1940s, condemned the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article, he decried rock and roll as "brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious. ... It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. ... This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore." Asked for a response, Presley said, "I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it. ... This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago."

Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis' Christmas Album. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley's request: " Santa Claus Is Back in Town", an innuendo-laden blues. The holiday release stretched Presley's string of number-one albums to four and would become the best-selling Christmas album ever in the United States, with eventual sales of over 20 million worldwide. After the session, Moore and Black-drawing only modest weekly salaries, sharing in none of Presley's massive financial success-resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks later, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley's inner circle for some time.

On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment to finish the forthcoming film King Creole, in which $350,000 had already been invested by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis. A couple of weeks into the new year, " Don't", another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presley's tenth number-one seller. It had been only twenty-one months since "Heartbreak Hotel" had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood in mid-January 1958. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be the last time Presley and the duo worked closely together. As Stoller later recalled, Presley's manager and entourage sought to wall him off: "He was removed. ... They kept him separate." A brief soundtrack session on February 11 marked another ending-it was the final occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley. He died in 1965.

1958-1960: military service and mother's death

Presley being sworn into the Army on March 24, 1958, at Fort Chaffee

On March 24, 1958, Presley was drafted into the United States Army at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. His arrival was a major media event. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus; photographers then accompanied him into the installation. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military service, saying that he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: "The Army can do anything it wants with me."

Between March 28 and September 17, 1958, Presley completed basic and advanced military training at Fort Hood in Texas, where he was temporarily assigned to Company A, 2d Medium Tank Battalion, 37th Armor. During the two weeks' leave between his basic and advanced training in early June, he recorded five songs in Nashville. In early August, Presley's mother was diagnosed with hepatitis, and her condition rapidly worsened. Presley was granted emergency leave to visit her and arrived in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure at age 46. Presley was devastated and never the same; their relationship had remained extremely close-even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

Presley, wearing the 3d Armored Division Shoulder Sleeve Insignia, poses atop a tank at Ray Barracks

On October 1, 1958, Presley was assigned to the 1st Medium Tank Battalion, 32d Armor, 3d Armored Division, at Ray Barracks, West Germany, where he served as an armor intelligence specialist. On November 27, he was promoted to private first class and on June 1, 1959, to specialist fourth class. While on maneuvers, Presley was introduced to amphetamines by another soldier. He became "practically evangelical about their benefits", not only for energy but for "strength" and weight loss, and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, training with Jürgen Seydel. It became a lifelong interest, which he later included in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley's wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier despite his fame, and to his generosity. He donated his Army pay to charity, purchased television sets for the base, and bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit. Presley was promoted to sergeant on February 11, 1960.

While in Bad Nauheim, Presley, aged 24 at the time, met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. Priscilla said that due to their age difference when they met, he told her: "Why, you're just a baby." They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla said that Presley was concerned that his 24-month spell in the military would ruin his career. In Special Services, he would have been able to give musical performances and remain in touch with the public, but Parker had convinced him that to gain popular respect, he should serve his country as a regular soldier. Media reports echoed Presley's concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year hiatus. Armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including " Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the bestselling " Hard Headed Woman", and " One Night" in 1958, and "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number-one " A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959. RCA also generated four albums compiling previously issued material during this period, most successfully Elvis' Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

1960-1968: focus on films

Presley returned to the U.S. on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged three days later. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans. On the night of March 20, he entered RCA's Nashville studio to cut tracks for a new album along with a single, " Stuck on You", which was rushed into release and swiftly became a number-one hit. Another Nashville session two weeks later yielded a pair of his bestselling singles, the ballads " It's Now or Never" and " Are You Lonesome Tonight?", along with the rest of Elvis Is Back! The album features several songs described by Greil Marcus as full of Chicago blues "menace, driven by Presley's own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis' singing wasn't sexy, it was pornographic." As a whole, the record "conjured up the vision of a performer who could be all things", according to music historian John Robertson: "a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold; a tempestuous, dangerous lover; a gutbucket blues singer; a sophisticated nightclub entertainer; [a] raucous rocker". Released only days after recording was complete, it reached number two on the album chart.

Presley with Juliet Prowse in G.I. Blues

Presley returned to television on May 12 as a guest on The Frank Sinatra Timex Special-ironic for both stars, given Sinatra's earlier excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

, the soundtrack to Presley's first film since his return, was a number-one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later; it reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in the United Kingdom, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, on behalf of twenty-four local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records. A twelve-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley's next studio album, Something for Everybody. As described by John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that would define country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley himself over the next half-decade, the album is largely "a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis' birthright". It would be his sixth number-one LP. Another benefit concert, raising money for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25 in Hawaii. It was to be Presley's last public performance for seven years.

Lost in Hollywood

Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy filmmaking schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical comedies. Presley initially insisted on pursuing higher roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein-Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961)-were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. Among the twenty-seven films he made during the 1960s, there were a few further exceptions. His films were almost universally panned; critic Andrew Caine dismissed them as a "pantheon of bad taste". Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. Hal Wallis, who produced nine of them, declared, "A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood."

Of Presley's films in the 1960s, fifteen were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another five by soundtrack EPs. The films' rapid production and release schedules-Presley frequently starred in three a year-affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: "three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie". As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse". Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that Presley disliked many of the songs chosen for his films. The Jordanaires' Gordon Stoker describes how he would retreat from the studio microphone: "The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn't sing it." Most of the film albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll". Regardless of the songs' quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment. Critic Dave Marsh heard the opposite: "Presley isn't trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like 'No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car' and ' Rock-A-Hula Baby'."

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley's soundtrack albums were ranked number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as " Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and " Return to Sender" (1962). (" Viva Las Vegas", the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished. During a five-year span-1964 through 1968-Presley had only one top-ten hit: " Crying in the Chapel" (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-film albums, between the June 1962 release of and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art (1967). It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was "arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs".

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic films and assembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. "By then, of course, the damage had been done", as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. "Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans."

1968-1973: comeback

Elvis: the '68 Comeback Special

The '68 Comeback Special produced "one of the most famous images" of Presley. Taken on June 29, 1968, it was adapted for the cover of Rolling Stone in July 1969.

Presley's only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career. Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, and none higher than number 28. His forthcoming soundtrack album, , would rank at number 82 on the Billboard chart. Parker had already shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra Timex show in 1960. He maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a Christmas special.

Recorded in late June in Burbank, California, the special, simply called Elvis, aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the '68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small audience-Presley's first live performances since 1961. The live segments saw Presley dressed in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days. Director and co-producer Steve Binder had worked hard to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC's highest-rated that season, captured forty-two percent of the total viewing audience. Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, "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 of rock 'n' roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy." Marsh calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance".

By January 1969, the single " If I Can Dream", written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album rose into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man." Binder said of Presley's reaction, "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, 'Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in.'"

From Elvis in Memphis and the International

Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio in eight years. As described by Marsh, it is "a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement." The album featured the hit single " In the Ghetto", issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart-Presley's first non-gospel top ten hit since "Bossa Nova Baby" in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: " Suspicious Minds", " Don't Cry Daddy", and " Kentucky Rain".

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker (equivalent to $223,000 in 2022) for a one-week engagement. He responded, "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?" In May, the brand-new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley. He was scheduled to perform fifty-seven shows over four weeks, beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley assembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and Sweet Inspirations. Costume designer Bill Belew, responsible for the intense leather styling of the Comeback Special, created a new stage look for Presley, inspired by his passion for karate. Nonetheless, Presley was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal. Parker, who intended to make Presley's return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, International Hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.

Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, "Can't Help Falling in Love" (a song that would be his closing number for much of his remaining life). At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as "The King", Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." The next day, Parker's negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million. commented, "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." Rolling Stone called Presley "supernatural, his own resurrection." In November, Presley's final non-concert film, Change of Habit, opened. The double album From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. "Suspicious Minds" reached the top of the charts-Presley's first U.S. pop number-one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television's Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as a showgirl. She recalled of their encounter, "He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, 'Don't ever do that again.'" Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

Back on tour and meeting Nixon

Presley returned to the International early in 1970 for the first of the year's two-month-long engagements, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album . In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record-breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome. In April, the single " The Wonder of You" was issued-a number one hit in the UK, it topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, as well. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August for the documentary Elvis: That's the Way It Is. Presley was performing in a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live act. During this engagement, he was threatened with murder unless (equivalent to $377,000 in 2022) was paid. Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge. The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 caliber pistol in his waistband, but the concerts succeeded without any incidents.

The album That's the Way It Is, produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson noted, "The authority of Presley's singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound. With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop-perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis." After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a meeting with U.S. President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and explained how he believed he could reach out to the hippies to help combat the drug culture he and the president abhorred. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was, therefore, important that he "retain his credibility". Presley told Nixon that the Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism. Presley and his friends previously had a four-hour get-together with the Beatles at his home in Bel Air, California, in August 1965. On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he "felt a bit betrayed. ... The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him", a reference to Presley's early death linked to prescription drug abuse. Later Elvis would call the White House to speak with President Jimmy Carter to request a presidential pardon for a friend who had not yet been tried.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard". The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization. Three new, non-film Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was Elvis Country, a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings The Wonderful World of Christmas, "the truest statement of all", according to Greil Marcus. "In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of " Merry Christmas Baby", a raunchy old Charles Brown blues.[...] If [Presley's] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life".

Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii

Presley (center) with friends Bill Porter (left) and Paul Anka (right) backstage at the Las Vegas Hilton on August 5, 1972

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film for that year's Golden Globe Awards. His gospel album He Touched Me, released that month, would earn him his second Grammy Award for Best Inspirational Performance, for that year's Grammy Awards. A fourteen-date tour commenced with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in an LP form a week later. Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden became one of Presley's biggest-selling albums. After the tour, the single " Burning Love" was released-Presley's last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart. "The most exciting single Elvis has made since 'All Shook Up'", wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. "Who else could make 'It's coming closer, the flames are now licking my body' sound like an assignation with James Brown's backup band?"

Presley came up with his outfit's eagle motif, as "something that would say 'America' to the world"

Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted-unbeknownst to him-in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of Joyce moving into Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her. Priscilla related that when she told him, Presley "grabbed ... and forcefully made love to" her, declaring, "This is how a real man makes love to his woman". She later stated in an interview that she regretted her choice of words in describing the incident, and said it had been an overstatement. Five months later, Presley's new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18. According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley's marriage "was a blow from which he never recovered". At a rare press conference that June, a reporter had asked Presley whether he was satisfied with his image. Presley replied, "Well, the image is one thing and the human being another ... it's very hard to live up to an image."

In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking television special, Aloha from Hawaii, which would be the first concert by a solo artist to be aired globally. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. On January 14, Aloha from Hawaii aired live via satellite to prime-time audiences in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as to U.S. servicemen based across Southeast Asia. In Japan, where it capped a nationwide Elvis Presley Week, it smashed viewing records. The next night, it was simulcast to twenty-eight European countries, and in April an extended version finally aired in the U.S., where it won a fifty-seven percent share of the TV audience. Over time, Parker's claim that it was seen by one billion or more people would be broadly accepted, but that figure appeared to have been sheer invention. Presley's stage costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely associated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, "At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure." The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the U.S. It was Presley's last U.S. number-one pop album during his lifetime.

At a midnight show that same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security personnel came to Presley's defense, and he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, Presley became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Mike Stone, Priscilla's lover, to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, Presley raged, "There's too much pain in me ... Stone [must] die." His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, "Aw hell, let's just leave it for now. Maybe it's a bit heavy."

1973-1977: health deterioration and death

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Presley's divorce was finalized on October 9, 1973. By then, his health was in serious decline. Twice during the year he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. Towards the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semi-comatose from the effects of a pethidine addiction. According to his primary care physician, George C. Nichopoulos, Presley "felt that by getting drugs from a doctor, he wasn't the common everyday junkie getting something off the street". Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever. Despite his failing health, he undertook another intensive touring schedule in 1974.

Presley's condition declined precipitously that September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembered his arrival at a University of Maryland concert: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.' He walked on stage and held onto the mic for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, 'Is the tour gonna happen'?" Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. ... I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions."

RCA, which had always enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley, began to grow anxious as his interest in the recording studio waned. After a session in December 1973 that produced eighteen songs, enough for almost two albums, Presley made no official studio recordings in 1974. Parker delivered RCA another concert record, Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. Recorded on March 20, it included a version of " How Great Thou Art" that won Presley his third and final Grammy Award for Best Inspirational Performance at that year's Grammy Awards. All three of his competitive Grammy wins - out of fourteen total nominations - were for gospel recordings. Presley returned to the recording studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker's attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile recording unit to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home. However, the recording process had become a struggle for him.

Final months

Journalist Tony Scherman wrote that, by early 1977, "Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Grossly overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts." According to Andy Greene of Rolling Stone, Presley's final performances were mostly "sad, sloppy affairs where a bloated, drugged Presley struggled to remember his lyrics and get through the night without collapsing ... Most everything from the final three years of his life is sad and hard to watch." In Alexandria, Louisiana, he was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand". On March 31, he canceled a performance in Baton Rouge, unable to get out of his hotel bed; four shows had to be canceled and rescheduled.

Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, Presley fulfilled most of his touring commitments. According to Guralnick, fans "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Presley, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books". Presley's cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how he would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of the billionaire recluse Howard Hughes.

" Way Down", Presley's last single issued during his lifetime, was released on June 6, 1977. That month, CBS taped two concerts for a television special, Elvis in Concert, to be broadcast in October. In the first, shot in Omaha on June 19, Presley's voice, Guralnick writes, "is almost unrecognizable, a small, childlike instrument in which he talks more than sings most of the songs, casts about uncertainly for the melody in others, and is virtually unable to articulate or project". Two days later, in Rapid City, South Dakota, "he looked healthier, seemed to have lost a little weight, and sounded better, too", though, by the conclusion of the performance, his face was "framed in a helmet of blue-black hair from which sweat sheets down over pale, swollen cheeks". Presley's final concert was held in Indianapolis at Market Square Arena, on June 26, 1977.

On August 16, 1977, Presley was scheduled on an evening flight out of Memphis to Portland, Maine, to begin another tour. That afternoon, however, his fiancée Ginger Alden discovered him in an unresponsive state on the bathroom floor of his Graceland mansion. Biographer Joel Williamson suggests that "involving a reaction to the codeine" he had taken "and attempts to move his bowels-he experienced pain and fright while sitting on the toilet. Alarmed, he stood up ... and fell face down in the fetal position." Drooling on the rug and "unable to breathe, he died." Attempts to revive him failed, and he was pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital at 3:30 p.m. He was 42 years old.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having "permanently changed the face of American popular culture". Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley's cousins, Billy Mann, accepted (equivalent to $87,000 in 2022) to secretly photograph the body; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer's biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 (equivalent to $507,000 in 2022) deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley's funeral was held at Graceland on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two young women and critically injuring a third. About 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few weeks, "Way Down" topped the country and UK singles chart. Following an attempt to steal Presley's body in late August, the remains of both Presley and his mother were exhumed and reburied in Graceland's Meditation Garden on October 2. Presley is buried alongside his parents, daughter, grandson and his paternal grandmother in the Meditation Garden at Graceland.

Cause of death

While an autopsy, undertaken the same day Presley died, was still in progress, Memphis medical examiner Jerry Francisco announced that the immediate cause of death was cardiac arrest. Asked if drugs were involved, he declared that "drugs played no role in Presley's death". In fact, "drug use was heavily implicated" in Presley's death, writes Guralnick. The pathologists conducting the autopsy thought it possible, for instance, that he had suffered " anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills he had gotten from his dentist, to which he was known to have had a mild allergy". A pair of lab reports filed two months later strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; one reported "fourteen drugs in Elvis' system, ten in significant quantity". In 1979, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht conducted a review of the reports and concluded that a combination of depressants had resulted in Presley's accidental death. Forensic historian and pathologist Michael Baden viewed the situation as complicated: "Elvis had had an enlarged heart for a long time. That, together with his drug habit, caused his death. But he was difficult to diagnose; it was a judgment call."

The competence and ethics of two of the centrally involved medical professionals were seriously questioned. Francisco had offered a cause of death before the autopsy was complete; claimed the underlying ailment was cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that can be determined only in someone who is still alive; and denied drugs played any part in Presley's death before the toxicology results were known. Allegations of a cover-up were widespread. While a 1981 trial of Presley's main physician, George C. Nichopoulos, exonerated him of criminal liability for his death, the facts were startling: "In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines, and narcotics: all in Elvis' name." Nichopoulos' license was suspended for three months. It was permanently revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of over-prescription.

In 1994, the Presley autopsy report was reopened. Joseph Davis, who had conducted thousands of autopsies as Miami-Dade County coroner, declared at its completion, "There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death from drugs. In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack." More recent research has revealed that Francisco did not speak for the entire pathology team. Other staff "could say nothing with confidence until they got the results back from the laboratories, if then. That would be a matter of weeks." One of the examiners, E. Eric Muirhead, "could not believe his ears. Francisco had not only presumed to speak for the hospital's team of pathologists, he had announced a conclusion that they had not reached. ... Early on, a meticulous dissection of the body ... confirmed [that] Elvis was chronically ill with diabetes, glaucoma, and constipation. As they proceeded, the doctors saw evidence that his body had been wracked over a span of years by a large and constant stream of drugs. They had also studied his hospital records, which included two admissions for drug detoxification and methadone treatments." According to biographer Frank Coffey and Dan Warlick, one of the physicians who were present at the autopsy, Presley's death was caused by a Valsalva maneuver due to constipation as a result of drug abuse. When using the toilet, "the strain of attempting to defecate compressed the singer's abdominal aorta, shutting down his heart."

Later developments

Between 1977 and 1981, six of Presley's posthumously released singles were top-ten country hits. Graceland was opened to the public in 1982. Attracting over half a million visitors annually, it became the second-most-visited home in the United States, after the White House. The residence was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Presley has been inducted into five music halls of fame: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001), the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (2007), and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (2012). In 1984, he received the W. C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation and the Academy of Country Music's first Golden Hat Award. In 1987, he received the American Music Awards' Award of Merit.

A Junkie XL remix of Presley's " A Little Less Conversation" (credited as "Elvis Vs JXL") was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over twenty countries and was included in a compilation of Presley's number-one hits, , which was also an international success. The album returned Presley to the top of the Billboard chart for the first time in almost three decades.

In 2003, a remix of " Rubberneckin'", a 1969 recording of Presley's, topped the U.S. sales chart, as did a 50th-anniversary re-release of "That's All Right" the following year. The latter was an outright hit in Britain, debuting at number three on the pop chart; it also made the top ten in Canada. In 2005, another three reissued singles, "Jailhouse Rock", "One Night"/"I Got Stung", and "It's Now or Never", went to number one in the UK. They were part of a campaign that saw the re-release of all eighteen of Presley's previous chart-topping UK singles. The first, "All Shook Up", came with a collectors' box that made it ineligible to chart again; each of the other seventeen reissues hit the British top five.

In 2005, Forbes magazine named Presley the top-earning deceased celebrity for the fifth straight year, with a gross income of $45 million. He was placed second in 2006, returned to the top spot the next two years, and ranked fourth in 2009. The following year, he was ranked second, with his highest annual income ever-$60 million-spurred by the celebration of his 75th birthday and the launch of Cirque du Soleil's show in Las Vegas. In November 2010, Viva Elvis: The Album was released, setting his voice to newly recorded instrumental tracks. As of mid-2011, there were an estimated 15,000 licensed Presley products, and he was again the second-highest-earning deceased celebrity. Six years later, he ranked fourth with earnings of $35 million, up $8 million from 2016 due in part to the opening of a new entertainment complex, Elvis Presley's Memphis, and hotel, The Guest House at Graceland.

In 2018, RCA/ Legacy released Elvis Presley - Where No One Stands Alone, a new album focused on Elvis' love of gospel music. Produced by Joel Weinshanker, Lisa Marie Presley and Andy Childs, the album introduced newly recorded instrumentation along with vocals from singers who had performed in the past with Elvis. It also included a reimagined duet with Lisa Marie, on the album's title track.

In 2022, Baz Luhrmann's film , a biographical film about Presley's life, was released in theaters. Presley is portrayed by Austin Butler and Parker by Tom Hanks. As of August 2022, the film had grossed $261.8 million worldwide on a $85 million budget, becoming the second-highest-grossing music biopic of all-time behind Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), and the fifth-highest-grossing Australian-produced film. For his portrayal of Elvis, Butler won the Golden Globe and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor. In January 2023, on what would have been Presley's 88th birthday, his 1962 Lockheed 1329 JetStar sold at an auction for $260,000. The plane sold at the Mecum Kissimmee Collector Car auction in Florida.

Influences

Presley's earliest musical influence came from gospel. His mother recalled that from the age of two, at the Assembly of God church in Tupelo attended by the family, "he would slide down off my lap, run into the aisle and scramble up to the platform. There he would stand looking at the choir and trying to sing with them." In Memphis, Presley frequently attended all-night gospel singings at the Ellis Auditorium, where groups such as the Statesmen Quartet led the music in a style that, Guralnick suggests, sowed the seeds of Presley's future stage act:

The Statesmen were an electric combination ... featuring some of the most thrillingly emotive singing and daringly unconventional showmanship in the entertainment world ... dressed in suits that might have come out of the window of Lansky's. ... Bass singer Jim Wetherington, known universally as the Big Chief, maintained a steady bottom, ceaselessly jiggling first his left leg, then his right, with the material of the pants leg ballooning out and shimmering. "He went about as far as you could go in gospel music," said Jake Hess. "The women would jump up, just like they do for the pop shows." Preachers frequently objected to the lewd movements ... but audiences reacted with screams and swoons.

As a teenager, Presley's musical interests were wide-ranging, and he was deeply informed about both white and African-American musical idioms. Though he never had any formal training, he had a remarkable memory, and his musical knowledge was already considerable by the time he made his first professional recordings aged 19 in 1954. When Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met him two years later, they were astonished at his encyclopedic understanding of the blues, and, as Stoller put it, "He certainly knew a lot more than we did about country music and gospel music." At a press conference the following year, he proudly declared, "I know practically every religious song that's ever been written."

Musicianship

Presley played guitar, bass, and piano; he received his first guitar when he was 11 years old. He could not read or write music and had no formal lessons, and played everything by ear. Presley often played an instrument on his recordings and produced his own music. Presley played rhythm acoustic guitar on most of his Sun recordings and his 1950s RCA albums. He played electric bass guitar on "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care" after his bassist Bill Black had trouble with the instrument. Presley played the bass line including the intro. Presley played piano on songs such as " Old Shep" and "First in Line" from his 1956 album . He is credited with playing piano on later albums such as From Elvis in Memphis and " Moody Blue", and on " Unchained Melody", which was one of the last songs that he recorded. Presley played lead guitar on one of his successful singles called " Are You Lonesome Tonight". In the 68 Comeback Special, Elvis took over on lead electric guitar, the first time he had ever been seen with the instrument in public, playing it on songs such as " Baby What You Want Me to Do" and " One Night". Presley played the back of his guitar on some of his hits such as " All Shook Up", " Don't Be Cruel", and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear", providing percussion by slapping the instrument to create a beat. The album Elvis is Back! features Presley playing a lot of acoustic guitar on songs such as " I Will Be Home Again" and " Like a Baby".

Musical styles and genres

Presley was a central figure in the development of rockabilly, according to music historians. "Rockabilly crystallized into a recognizable style in 1954 with Elvis Presley's first release, on the Sun label," writes Craig Morrison. Paul Friedlander described rockabilly as "essentially ... an Elvis Presley construction", with the defining elements as "the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country". In "That's All Right", the Presley trio's first record, Scotty Moore's guitar solo, "a combination of Merle Travis-style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion". While Katherine Charlton calls Presley "rockabilly's originator", Carl Perkins, another pioneer of rock'n'roll, said that "[Sam] Phillips, Elvis, and I didn't create rockabilly". According to Michael Campbell, the first major rockabilly song was recorded by Bill Haley. In Moore's view, "It had been there for quite a while, really. Carl Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson, and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old."

At RCA Victor, Presley's rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, more heavily amplified electric guitars and a tougher, more intense manner. While he was known for taking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he also recorded songs in other genres from early in his career, from the pop standard " Blue Moon" at Sun Records to the country ballad "How's the World Treating You?" on his second RCA Victor LP to the blues of "Santa Claus Is Back in Town". In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP Peace in the Valley. Certified as a million-seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his life.

After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but the characteristic style was substantially toned down. His first post-Army single, the number-one hit "Stuck on You", is typical of this shift. RCA Victor publicity referred to its "mild rock beat"; discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it "upbeat pop". The number five " She's Not You" (1962) "integrates the Jordanaires so completely, it's practically doo-wop". The modern blues/R&B sound captured with success on Elvis Is Back! was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966-67 recordings as " Down in the Alley" and " Hi-Heel Sneakers". Presley's output during most of the 1960s emphasized pop music, often in the form of ballads such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", a number-one in 1960. "It's Now or Never", which also topped the chart that year, was a classically influenced variation of pop based on the Neapolitan song "" and concluding with a "full-voiced operatic cadence". These were both dramatic numbers, but most of what Presley recorded for his many film soundtracks was in a much lighter vein.

While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the '68 Comeback Special, the sound of the show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He recorded few new straight rock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they had become "hard to find". A significant exception was "Burning Love", his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley's subsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations. His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul and funk. Much of Elvis in Memphis, as well as "Suspicious Minds", cut at the same sessions, reflected this new rock and soul fusion. In the mid-1970s, many of his singles found a home on country radio, the field where he first became a star.

Vocal style and range

Publicity photo for the CBS program Stage Show, January 16, 1956

The developmental arc of Presley's singing voice, as described by critic Dave Marsh, goes from "high and thrilled in the early days, [to] lower and perplexed in the final months." Marsh credits Presley with the introduction of the "vocal stutter" on 1955's " Baby Let's Play House". When on "Don't Be Cruel", Presley "slides into a 'mmmmm' that marks the transition between the first two verses," he shows "how masterful his relaxed style really is." Marsh describes the vocal performance on "Can't Help Falling in Love" as one of "gentle insistence and delicacy of phrasing", with the line "'Shall I stay' pronounced as if the words are fragile as crystal".

Jorgensen calls the 1966 recording of "How Great Thou Art" "an extraordinary fulfillment of his vocal ambitions", as Presley "crafted for himself an ad-hoc arrangement in which he took every part of the four-part vocal, from [the] bass intro to the soaring heights of the song's operatic climax", becoming "a kind of one-man quartet". Guralnick finds " Stand by Me" from the same gospel sessions "a beautifully articulated, almost nakedly yearning performance", but, by contrast, feels that Presley reaches beyond his powers on "Where No One Stands Alone", resorting "to a kind of inelegant bellowing to push out a sound" that Jake Hess of the Statesmen Quartet had in his command. Hess himself thought that while others might have voices the equal of Presley's, "he had that certain something that everyone searches for all during their lifetime." Guralnick attempts to pinpoint that something: "The warmth of his voice, his controlled use of both vibrato technique and natural falsetto range, the subtlety and deeply felt conviction of his singing were all qualities recognizably belonging to his talent but just as recognizably not to be achieved without sustained dedication and effort."

Marsh praises his 1968 reading of " U.S. Male", "bearing down on the hard guy lyrics, not sending them up or overplaying them but tossing them around with that astonishingly tough yet gentle assurance that he brought to his Sun records." The performance on "In the Ghetto" is, according to Jorgensen, "devoid of any of his characteristic vocal tricks or mannerisms", instead relying on the exceptional "clarity and sensitivity of his voice". Guralnick describes the song's delivery as of "almost translucent eloquence ... so quietly confident in its simplicity". On "Suspicious Minds", Guralnick hears essentially the same "remarkable mixture of tenderness and poise", but supplemented with "an expressive quality somewhere between stoicism (at suspected infidelity) and anguish (over impending loss)".

Music critic Henry Pleasants observes that "Presley has been described variously as a baritone and a tenor. An extraordinary compass ... and a very wide range of vocal color have something to do with this divergence of opinion." He identifies Presley as a high baritone, calculating his range as 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." In Pleasants' view, his voice was "variable and unpredictable" at the bottom, "often brilliant" at the top, with the capacity for "full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritone might envy". Scholar Lindsay Waters, who figures Presley's range as two-and-a-quarter octaves, emphasizes that "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." Presley was always "able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers", writes Pleasants, and also demonstrated a remarkable ability to assimilate many other vocal styles.

Public image

Relationship with the African-American community

When Dewey Phillips first aired "That's All Right" on Memphis' WHBQ, many listeners who contacted the station by phone and telegram to ask for it again assumed that its singer was black. From the beginning of his national fame, Presley expressed respect for African-American performers and their music, and disregard for the norms of segregation and racial prejudice then prevalent in the South. Interviewed in 1956, he recalled how in his childhood he would listen to blues musician Arthur Crudup-the originator of "That's All Right"-"bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw." The Memphis World, an African-American newspaper, reported that Presley, "the rock 'n' roll phenomenon", "cracked Memphis' segregation laws" by attending the local amusement park on what was designated as its "colored night". Such statements and actions led Presley to be generally hailed in the black community during the early days of his stardom. In contrast, many white adults "did not like him, and condemned him as depraved. Anti-negro prejudice doubtless figured in adult antagonism. Regardless of whether parents were aware of the Negro sexual origins of the phrase 'rock 'n' roll', Presley impressed them as the visual and aural embodiment of sex."

Despite the largely positive view of Presley held by African Americans, a rumor spread in mid-1957 that he had at some point announced, "The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." A journalist with the national African American weekly , Louie Robinson, pursued the story. On the set of Jailhouse Rock, Presley granted Robinson an interview, though he was no longer dealing with the mainstream press. He denied making such a statement: "I never said anything like that, and people who know me know that I wouldn't have said it. ... A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. Let's face it: I can't sing like Fats Domino can. I know that." Robinson found no evidence that the remark had ever been made, and on the contrary elicited testimony from many individuals indicating that Presley was anything but racist. Blues singer Ivory Joe Hunter, who had heard the rumor before he visited Graceland one evening, reported of Presley, "He showed me every courtesy, and I think he's one of the greatest." Though the rumored remark was discredited, it was still being used against Presley decades later.

The persistence of such attitudes was fueled by resentment over the fact that Presley, whose musical and visual performance idiom owed much to African-American sources, achieved the cultural acknowledgement and commercial success largely denied his black peers. Into the 21st century, the notion that Presley had "stolen" black music still found adherents.[example needed ] Notable among African-American entertainers expressly rejecting this view was Jackie Wilson, who argued, "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." Moreover, Presley also acknowledged his debt to African-American musicians throughout his career. Addressing his '68 Comeback Special audience, he said, "Rock 'n' roll music is basically gospel or rhythm and blues, or it sprang from that. People have been adding to it, adding instruments to it, experimenting with it, but it all boils down to [that]." Nine years earlier, he had said, "Rock 'n' roll has been around for many years. It used to be called rhythm and blues."

Poster for the film Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), visualizing Presley's sex symbol image

Presley's physical attractiveness and sexual appeal were widely acknowledged. "He was once beautiful, astonishingly beautiful", according to critic Mark Feeney. Television director Steve Binder, no fan of Presley's music before he oversaw the 1968 Comeback Special, reported, "I'm straight as an arrow and I got to tell you, you stop, whether you're male or female, to look at him. He was that good looking. And if you never knew he was a superstar, it wouldn't make any difference; if he'd walked in the room, you'd know somebody special was in your presence." His performance style, as much as his physical beauty, was responsible for Presley's eroticized image. Writing in 1970, critic George Melly described him as "the master of the sexual simile, treating his guitar as both phallus and girl". In his Presley obituary, Lester Bangs credited him as "the man who brought overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America". Ed Sullivan's declaration that he perceived a soda bottle in Presley's trousers was echoed by rumors involving a similarly positioned toilet roll tube or lead bar.

While Presley was marketed as an icon of heterosexuality, some cultural critics have argued that his image was ambiguous. In 1959, Sight and Sound's Peter John Dyer described his onscreen persona as "aggressively bisexual in appeal". Brett Farmer places the "orgasmic gyrations" of the title dance sequence in Jailhouse Rock within a lineage of cinematic musical numbers that offer a "spectacular eroticization, if not homoeroticization, of the male image". In the analysis of Yvonne Tasker, "Elvis was an ambivalent figure who articulated a peculiar feminised, objectifying version of white working-class masculinity as aggressive sexual display."

Reinforcing Presley's image as a sex symbol were the reports of his dalliances with various Hollywood stars and starlets, from Natalie Wood in the 1950s to Connie Stevens and Ann-Margret in the 1960s to Candice Bergen and Cybill Shepherd in the 1970s. June Juanico of Memphis, one of Presley's early girlfriends, later blamed Parker for encouraging him to choose his dating partners with publicity in mind. Presley never grew comfortable with the Hollywood scene, and most of these relationships were insubstantial.

Equestrian

Presley kept several horses at Graceland, initially because of Priscilla Presley. "He got me my first horse as a Christmas present - Domino," said Priscilla. The horse named Palomino Rising Sun was Presley' favorite horse, and there are many photographs of Presley riding him.

I know he invented rock and roll, in a manner of speaking, but ... that's not why he's worshiped as a god today. He's worshiped as a god today because in addition to inventing rock and roll he was the greatest ballad singer this side of Frank Sinatra -because the spiritual translucence and reined-in gut sexuality of his slow weeper and torchy pop blues still activate the hormones and slavish devotion of millions of female human beings worldwide.

-Robert Christgau
December 24, 1985

Presley's rise to national attention in 1956 transformed the field of popular music and had a huge effect on the broader scope of popular culture. As the catalyst for the cultural revolution that was rock and roll, he was central not only to defining it as a musical genre but in making it a touchstone of youth culture and rebellious attitude. With its racially mixed origins-repeatedly affirmed by Presley-rock and roll's occupation of a central position in mainstream American culture facilitated a new acceptance and appreciation of black culture.

In this regard, Little Richard said of Presley, "He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music." Al Green agreed: "He broke the ice for all of us."

President Jimmy Carter remarked on Presley's legacy in 1977: "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 his country." Presley also heralded the vastly expanded reach of celebrity in the era of mass communication: at the age of 21, within a year of his first appearance on American network television, he was regarded as one of the most famous people in the world.

A group of Elvis impersonators in 2005

Presley's name, image, and voice are recognized around the world. He has inspired a legion of impersonators. In polls and surveys, he is recognized as one of the most important popular music artists and influential Americans. American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said, "Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything-music, language, clothes. It's a whole new social revolution-the sixties came from it." John Lennon said that "Nothing really affected me until Elvis." Bob Dylan described the sensation of first hearing Presley as "like busting out of jail".

For much of his adult life, Presley, with his rise from poverty to riches and fame, had seemed to epitomize the American Dream. In his final years, and following the revelations about his circumstances after his death, he became a symbol of excess and gluttony. Increasing attention was paid to his appetite for the rich, heavy Southern cooking of his upbringing, foods such as chicken-fried steak and biscuits and gravy. In particular, his love of fried peanut butter, banana, and (sometimes) bacon sandwiches, now known as "Elvis sandwiches", came to symbolize this characteristic. According to the media scholar Robert Thompson, the sandwich also signified Presley's enduring all-American appeal: "He wasn't only the king, he was one of us."

Since 1977, there have been numerous alleged sightings of Presley. A long-standing conspiracy theory among some fans is that he faked his death. Adherents cite alleged discrepancies in the death certificate, reports of a wax dummy in his original coffin, and accounts of Presley planning a diversion so he could retire in peace. An unusually large number of fans have domestic shrines devoted to Presley and journey to sites with which he is connected, however faintly. Every August 16, the anniversary of his death, thousands of people gather outside Graceland and celebrate his memory with a candlelight ritual. "With Elvis, it is not just his music that has survived death", writes Ted Harrison. "He himself has been raised, like a medieval saint, to a figure of cultic status. It is as if he has been canonized by acclamation."

On the 25th anniversary of Presley's death, The New York Times asserted, "All the talentless impersonators and appalling black velvet paintings on display can make him seem little more than a perverse and distant memory. But before Elvis was camp, he was its opposite: a genuine cultural force. ... Elvis' breakthroughs are underappreciated because in this rock-and-roll age, his hard-rocking music and sultry style have triumphed so completely." Not only Presley's achievements but his failings as well, are seen by some cultural observers as adding to the power of his legacy, as in this description by Greil Marcus:

Elvis Presley is a supreme figure in American life, one whose presence, no matter how banal or predictable, brooks no real comparisons. ... The cultural range of his music has expanded to the point where it includes not only the hits of the day, but also patriotic recitals, pure country gospel, and really dirty blues. ... Elvis has emerged as a great artist, a great rocker, a great purveyor of schlock, a great heart throb, a great bore, a great symbol of potency, a great ham, a great nice person, and, yes, a great American.

Achievements

Having sold about 500 million records worldwide, Presley is one of the best-selling music artists of all time.

Presley holds the records for most songs charting in Billboard's top 40 (115) and top 100 (152), according to chart statistician Joel Whitburn, 139 according to Presley historian Adam Victor. Presley's rankings for top ten and number-one hits vary depending on how the double-sided "Hound Dog/Don't Be Cruel" and "Don't/I Beg of You" singles, which precede the inception of Billboard's unified Hot 100 chart, are analyzed. According to Whitburn's analysis, Presley holds the record with 38, tying with Madonna; per Billboard's current assessment, he ranks second with 36. Whitburn and Billboard concur that the Beatles hold the record for most number-one hits with 20, and that Mariah Carey is second with 19. Whitburn has Presley with 18: Billboard has him third with 17. According to Billboard, Presley has 79 cumulative weeks at number one: alone at 80, according to Whitburn and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with only Mariah Carey having more with 91 weeks. He holds the records for most number-one singles on the UK chart with 21 and singles reaching the top ten with 76.

As an album artist, Presley is credited by Billboard with the record for the most albums charting in the Billboard 200: 129, far ahead of second-place Frank Sinatra's 82. He also holds the record for most time spent at number one on the Billboard 200: 67 weeks. In 2015 and 2016, two albums setting Presley's vocals against music by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, If I Can Dream and The Wonder of You, both reached number one in the United Kingdom. This gave him a new record for number-one UK albums by a solo artist with 13, and extended his record for longest span between number-one albums by anybody-Presley had first topped the British chart in 1956 with his self-titled debut.

As of 2023, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) credits Presley with 146.5 million certified album sales in the US, third all time behind the Beatles and Garth Brooks. He holds the records for most gold albums (101, nearly twice as many as second-place Barbra Streisand's 51), and most platinum albums (57). His 25 multi-platinum albums is second behind the Beatles' 26. His total of 197 album certification awards (including one diamond award), far outpaces the Beatles' second-best 122. He has the 9th-most gold singles (54, tied with Justin Bieber), and the 16th-most platinum singles (27).

In 2012, the spider Paradonea presleyi was named in his honor. In 2018, President Donald Trump awarded Presley the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.

Discography

A vast number of recordings have been issued under Presley's name. The total number of his original master recordings has been variously calculated as 665 and 711. His career began and he was most successful during an era when singles were the primary commercial medium for pop music. In the case of his albums, the distinction between "official" studio records and other forms is often blurred. For most of the 1960s, his recording career focused on soundtrack albums. In the 1970s, his most heavily promoted and bestselling LP releases tended to be concert albums.

Filmography

Explanatory notes

References

General sources

Further reading

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Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 - August 16, 1977), often referred to mononymously as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Known as the " King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.

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- the Beatles were very big band in the 60s.

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-Go go boots were a big thing on the 60s.

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-there were all styles of clothes but hippies wore big flowey Clothes.

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'60s hippies were a single piece in a tumultuous decade of social change. Rapidly advancing technology, musical revolution, major conspiracy theories, and booming Civil Rights movements all converged in the 1960s, and the effect made waves. That said, the '60s weren't quite "The Sixties" as they're remembered until about halfway through the decade.

After nearly twenty years of postwar prosperity, JFK's assassination in 1963 and escalation in the Vietnam War set the stage for unrest among the American people. Perspectives across the nation shifted to ones of vulnerability, loss of innocence, and even mistrust. From this came a surge of protests, skepticism, and political activism from the younger generation in particular. With a growing influence and a wild sense of self expression, these students developed into the iconic counterculture of the 1960s - hippies. Their anti-fashion silhouettes, Flower Power prints, psychedelic colors, peace signs, long hair, and flared pants were radical fashion statements that took America by force in the mid 1960s... until they became the norm in the mid '70s, that is.

Why did that happen? How did that happen so quickly? Believe it or not, it had a lot to do with clothes. This article details a brief history of '60s hippies, while the second half delves into the development and influence of '60s hippie fashion. If you'd like to skip to the fashion part of the article, scroll down or click here.

Who were 1960s Hippies?

If you had asked a businessman in the late 1960s, he wouldn't have painted a pretty picture. Hippies at the time were typically seen as dirty, drug-addled college drop-outs who didn't know how the world worked. Their penchant for disruption put them at odds with a nation still stuck in the white picket fence suburbia of 1950s culture. While their style and ideals would grow increasingly more popular in the late 1960s, the "hippie" label always carried with it a rather dirty reputation. From the press and the public alike came accusations of drug abuse, corruption of youth, political extremism, conspiracy, and an association with cult leader Charles Manson in the later years.

The reality wasn't quite so stark. Hippies of the 1960s were free-spirited, predominantly white upper-middle class students from liberal colleges, notably Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Their roots and inspiration came from the '50s Beat Generation and its anti-establishment, anti-materialism, and pro-obscenity lines of thought. It was hippies themselves who popularized the use of psychedelics, created experimental music as self-expression, and forged a more upbeat philosophy on the richness of life, experience, and harmony. Hippie hedonism and in-the-moment values could be summarized by one of their own key phrases: "if you like it, do it."

Looking back at them today, hippies are remembered mostly as a group of peace advocates. Their political leanings are credited with defining the "New Left" as well as modern environmentalism, and you have them to thank for the popularity of organic foods, tie dye, yoga, light-wash jeans, bohemian fashion, and the omnipresence of that "live and let live" attitude. Even over fifty years later, '60s hippies hold enough social influence and appeal to generate neo-hippie communities both in person, in fashion, and online.

History of the 60s Hippie Movement

In 1964, author Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters took a painted-up school bus from California to New York in an acid-fueled, psychedelic road trip. 1965 marked the word "Hippie" first appearing in a newspaper, referencing the "hipster" community of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. By 1967 there were countless names (and insults) for this emerging group of youth - hippy, drug freak, drop-out, flower child, Vietnik, Yippie, treehugger, and countless others. There was also just as much division among them.

Very little initially unified 60s hippies as a subculture, much less as a political group. Perspectives were almost universally progressive, though not always political. Instead, they mostly revolved around sexual liberation, drug use, and the importance of "breaking out of it" - or expanding horizons. The divide between hippie activists and the politically detached hippies put both protests and "why bother?" anti-protests from various groups under the hippie name. This and constant infighting only added to the disorganization of hippies as a whole.

The foundation of a more standard hippie identity, as well as their recognition as a 1960s counterculture, began with the Human Be-In of 1967. Students from various campus groups came together and unified under the mutual rejection of the Vietnam War, government authority, and reigning middle class values. Further, they voiced support of artistic expression, experimental drugs, spiritual transcendence, harmony with nature, and communal brotherhood. Many early hippies rejected this new identity and the way things were turning - that they were too political, not political enough, too involved in drugs, and countless other complaints came from the fringes. But with this new cohesive role, the hippie influence took off. Resistance was silenced by the sheer numbers of new hippies flooding San Francisco to join the movement.

More be-ins, festivals, and protests were organized in what grew to be known as the '67 Summer of Love. By the end of the year, there were so many hippies that the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was beyond capacity and many were left sleeping on the streets. By the end of the decade, hippies had become a cultural commodity.

While there is no official date marking the end of the hippie movement, there were many factors contributing to its quick decline in the early '70s. The Woodstock Music Festival of 1969 was such a massive success that it showed the profitability of the music industry - the event actually lost money, but its popularity fueled others to produce more concerts with better planning. Music festivals, a major aspect of hippie culture, began powering themselves with cash instead of good vibes. In the same window of time, major Hippie musicians such as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died of drug overdose. Drug addiction and the consequences of drug use among hippies became impossible to ignore, communes dissolved, and the movement itself once again lost its footing.

Perhaps the biggest contributor to the end of the hippies in the '70s, however, was its own overwhelming success. By the early-mid 1970s, America had changed. Opposition to the Vietnam War was the majority perspective, Civil Rights movements had made massive advancements, and that "disruptive" hippie anti-fashion became, well, fashionable. With the Fall of Saigon in 1975, "flower power" became pop culture, and reacting to that pop culture came the new counterculture - punks and metalheads.

Hippie Fashion

1960s hippie fashion wasn't always flares and tie dye shirts. As a matter of fact, the foundation of what hippies wore, particularly in the beginning, was similar to Beatnik or early Mod fashion. Color palettes were toned down, patterns (if present) were basic, and outfits were overall simple. Workshirts, drainpipe trousers, mohair sweaters, tee shirts, and canvas shoes made up a majority of the early hippie wardrobe for both men and women.

These early hippie outfits were made distinct with an "accent" piece such as a garish Western shirt, a non-matching hat, or bright rubber rain boots. Day-Glo paint was also used to paint bodies, faces, hands, and clothes.

Go here for more about 60s mod fashion for women that you can adapt into early 60s hippie outfits. Look here for men's 60s outfit ideas.

Seeking the role of anti-fashion, this "cleaner" hippie look would evolve just as quickly as it took for people to adjust to it. In the five years between 1964 and 1969, hippie fashion did a full 180. Pants became flared and baggy, colors grew saturated, and psychedelic patterns such as paisley and mandalas were inescapable. 1968 was the height of flower power and trippy hippie fashion, and it began seeping into the mainstream.

Jeans could be bleached, studded, adorned with patches, torn up, and then painted over. As soon as "ridiculous" was established, it would become popular, then it was on to "even more ridiculous" to produce the same effect. Dedicated hippies who sought to look "way out" fought hard to stay ahead of an ever-rising standard that they themselves were setting.

In a time of disruption, the hippies were an endless source of inspiration for new trends, silhouettes, and colors for fashion designers. Their rebelliousness and stylistic emphasis on drawing attention would pave the way for a decade of groovy 1970s individuality, loudness, and casualwear.

Influences and Motifs of 1960s Hippie Fashion

The evolution of hippie fashion was sculpted by the passions, perspectives, and backgrounds found within the movement. While it would be impossible to name everything to ever influence their clothing style, the primary ones were as follows:

Asia. Like beatniks, hippies took heavy inspiration from the East - particularly its religion and iconography. Silhouettes went loose and flowy with tunics, kaftans, kimono shawls, and light crisp fabric clothes. Rich ethnic prints were popular for any article of clothing, and Eastern dyeing techniques were adapted to make the iconic hippie tie dye. Dharmic symbols, Buddha, and the Taoist yin-yang were used often in fabric prints, art, stencils, and jewelry. In 1968, The Beatles took a trip to India that would make the Asian influence even more popular, both with hippies and in mainstream fashion.

Psychedelia. Hippie culture was heavily immersed in psychedelic substances such as LSD and psilocybin (magic mushrooms). From the widespread use of these psychedelics came an appreciation for "trippy" art, which in turn popularized bright colors and kaleidoscopic, far-out patterns. Clothes were also lightened for both comfort and ease of functioning while high.

Mother Nature. Prairie dresses and flower power were key to making a statement in both anti-war and environmental protesting. Flowers, feathers, hemp rope, leather, linen, straw, and recycled fabrics gave even more earthy and natural aspects to wardrobes as hippies began living closer to nature. This eco movement came from both environmentalism and a psychedelic feeling of oneness with the world.

Militaria and Bikers. Many Vietnam veterans who returned home joined the hippie movement, introducing field jackets, vests, utility coveralls, and patches into hippie style. Bikers, a fellow counterculture group with a heavy veteran presence, also wore practical clothes and introduced rugged biker boots, leather goods, vests, and jackets. Military surplus stores were cheap, accessible, and the best source for clothes endorsed by both groups. The iconic hippie bell bottom jeans began as Navy bell-bottom trousers sold at surplus stores.

Western Clothes and Workwear. Chambray shirts, bolo ties, henleys, mechanic's trousers, and Western shirts were accessible, baggy, and durable. Westernwear with more Native American style such as fringe jackets and moccasins had even greater appeal for their ruggedness and unconventional appeal. Denim, both pants and jackets, became a staple of hippie clothing for men and women.

Contrarianism. When the Hell's Angels were the meanest thing to ride the streets in 1964, hippies befriended and associated with them. When a man was arrested in 1968 for wearing an American flag patch, hippies across the nation began wearing the stars and stripes. Antique clothing was very out of style and could be found cheap, so it was worn often. Whatever the populace rejected, the hippies embraced. A surprising amount of savvy went into being the antithesis of society!

Mainstream hippie fashion. By 1970, you could head to your favorite department store and find light blue flare jeans, a groovy paisley shirt, and maybe even a purple bandanna or printed shawl. Hippie-style clothes were the next big thing, and finding certain aspects of it grew much easier when they caught on with designers. In addition to adding some uniformity to the hippie look, it also sanitized hippie fashion into something far less chaotic to appeal to a wider buyer base.
Pictures of 60s Hippies:
Up next, we will dive into the specifics of Hippie Fashion for women and men.

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Hippies in the 60s : Fashion, Festivals, Flower Power

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Who were the 60s hippies? What was the inspiration for 60s hippie fashion? Dive into the 1960s hippie movement, fashion, fesitvals and flower power.

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-In the 60s there was big hair everywhere.