Word: elvises
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
It was only an audition. That's why there were no drums, no backup singers and no expectations. Sam Phillips had heard about a good-looking local kid who favored ballads, knew a few guitar chords and was blessed with the ostentatiously original name Elvis Presley. In his search for...
Phillips asked two trusted session musicians--guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black--to provide backup, and at 7 p.m., after a few minutes of small talk and nervous laughter, Phillips arranged the trio in a circle. Then he asked Elvis what he wanted to play. There was more nervous...
With the formalities suspended, Elvis picked up a guitar and started goofing around, playing an old blues song by Arthur (Big Boy) Crudup called That's All Right. Except Elvis wasn't singing the blues. He sounded almost euphoric, and the rhythm was all wrong--far too frenetic. There were...
To the reporters who were there, of whom I was one, covering the event for TIME, the noise was what seemed new. Surely these kids were louder, more frenzied, than Frank Sinatra's fans had ever been, or even Elvis Presley's. Sullivan made a pact with them before the...
But Elvis knew. Earlier in the day he had wished the Beatles well in a telegram that couldn't help being symbolic. Elvis spoke as a product of the '50s. After the watershed Sullivan show, '60s pop culture, and all that it portended, both exhilarating and tragic, was in full...