Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley is the figure most often called the King of Rock and Roll, the performer who took the sound of African American rhythm and blues, fused it with country, and pushed it into the American mainstream in the mid-1950s. Born Elvis Aaron Presley on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised from age thirteen in Memphis, Tennessee, he rose from deep poverty to become one of the best-selling and most influential artists in history, with an estimated 500 million records sold worldwide. His energetic, openly sexual stage style made him both a sensation and a target of controversy, and his influence on nearly every popular performer who followed is hard to overstate.

Sun Records and a new sound

Presley’s career began almost by accident. After graduating high school he worked as a truck driver, and in 1954 he recorded at the small Sun Records studio in Memphis, where owner Sam Phillips was looking to bring Black musical styles to a wider audience. Backed by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley cut “That’s All Right,” and within days a Memphis radio station had it in heavy rotation. The trio became pioneers of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven blend of country and rhythm and blues, and Presley began touring the South to growing, increasingly frenzied crowds.

A national sensation

In late 1955 the manager Colonel Tom Parker arranged the sale of Presley’s contract to RCA Victor, and the hits came fast. “Heartbreak Hotel” topped the charts in early 1956, followed by “Hound Dog,” “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Love Me Tender.” For roughly three years he dominated the pop charts and ushered in the age of rock and roll. His television appearances, especially on Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night show, drew enormous audiences, even as his hip-shaking performances scandalized older viewers and led some broadcasts to film him only from the waist up. He moved into film the same year, debuting in Love Me Tender.

The Army and the Hollywood years

At the height of his fame Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving from 1958 to 1960. He relaunched his recording career on his return, then spent much of the 1960s in Hollywood making lightweight musicals such as Blue Hawaii, Viva Las Vegas and dozens of others. The films were profitable and their soundtracks usually sold well, producing songs like “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” but critics derided most of them, and by the late 1960s his standing as a serious musical force had faded.

The comeback and the Vegas years

In 1968 Presley returned to form with a celebrated television comeback special that reminded audiences of his raw power as a live performer. It led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of profitable tours, and to one of his last great singles, “Suspicious Minds,” his final number one in 1969. In 1973 he staged Aloha from Hawaii, the first concert broadcast around the world by satellite, watched by a vast global audience. By then, though, his health and personal life were in decline.

Death and legacy

Presley died at Graceland, his Memphis home, on August 16, 1977, at age 42. His sudden death turned an already towering star into a mythic figure of American culture. He won three competitive Grammy Awards, all for gospel recordings, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at just 36. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018. Few artists have left a deeper mark: as John Lennon once put it, before Elvis there was nothing.

The voice and the influence

Presley was not a songwriter, but he was an interpreter of rare power, able to move between rockabilly, tender ballads, blues and gospel within a single album. His deep love of gospel music ran through his whole career and won him all three of his competitive Grammys. What made him revolutionary was partly cultural: at a tense moment in American race relations, a white Southern singer was openly drawing on Black musical styles and bringing them to a mass white audience, which opened doors, and stirred anxieties, in equal measure. In December 1956 he turned up at Sun Studio for an impromptu jam with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, a session remembered as the “Million Dollar Quartet” and a snapshot of the moment rock and roll was being born. Nearly every major performer who followed, from the Beatles to countless others, grew up in his shadow.

Graceland and the myth

Presley’s home, Graceland, opened to the public in 1982 and became one of the most visited private residences in the United States, a pilgrimage site for fans from around the world. Annual gatherings, tribute artists and a steady stream of reissues have kept his presence alive across generations, turning the man into something closer to a permanent fixture of American mythology than a figure fixed in his own era.

He rose in the mid-1950s alongside other rock and roll pioneers such as Bill Haley.

Most loved songs

A spread across his career. Each title opens through the in-site player.

Decades after his death, Presley’s recordings still define an era of music. If one of the King’s songs is stuck in your head, type it into the search box above to find the track.