50 facts about Elvis Presley: regarded as one of the most important figures of twentieth century popular culture

Elvis Aaron Presley was often referred to as "the King of Rock and Roll", or simply, "the King". Learn 50 facts about Presley.

1. Elvis' musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager.

2. In 1954, Elvis began his singing career with the legendary Sun Records label in Memphis.

3. In late 1955, his recording contract was sold to RCA Victor.

4. By 1956, he was an international sensation.

5. With a sound and style that uniquely combined his diverse musical influences and blurred and challenged the social and racial barriers of the time, he ushered in a whole new era of American music and popular culture.

6. He starred in 33 successful films, made history with his television appearances and specials, and knew great acclaim through his many, often record-breaking, live concert performances on tour and in Las Vegas.

7. Globally, he has sold over one billion records, more than any other artist.

8. His American sales have earned him gold, platinum or multi-platinum awards.

9. Among his many awards and accolades were 14 Grammy nominations (3 wins) from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award which he received at age 36, and his being named One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation for 1970 by the United States Jaycees.

10. Without any of the special privileges, his celebrity status might have afforded him, he honorably served his country in the U.S. Army.

11. Known the world over by his first name, he is regarded as one of the most important figures of twentieth century popular culture.

12. Elvis died at his Memphis home, Graceland, on August 16, 1977.

13. Elvis Aaron Presley was often referred to as "the King of Rock and Roll", or simply, "the King".

14. Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi as a twinless twin.

15. When he was 13 years old, he and his family relocated to Memphis, Tennessee.

16. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was an early popularizer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues.

17. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who managed the singer for more than two decades.

18. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States.

19. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.

20. In 1958, he was drafted into military service. He resumed his recording career two years later, producing some of his most commercially successful work before devoting much of the 1960s to making Hollywood movies and their accompanying soundtrack albums, most of which were critically derided.

21. In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed televised comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours.

22. In 1973, Presley was featured in the first globally broadcast concert via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii.

23. Several years of prescription drug abuse severely damaged his health, and he died in 1977 at the age of 42.

24. As an only child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother.

25. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.

26. Presley's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix, including Scots-Irish, Scottish, German, and some French Norman.

27. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance.

28. In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average".

29. 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.

30. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, was his first public performance: dressed as a cowboy, the ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth.

31. 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.

32. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new 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."

33. Entering a new school, Milam, for sixth grade in September 1946, Presley was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar in on a daily basis.

34. A devotee of Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station WELO, Presley was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, a classmate of Presley's, who often took him into the station.

35. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar tuition by demonstrating chord techniques.

36. When his protégé was 12 years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.

37. During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew out his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline.

38. Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and played by ear.

39. Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu.

40. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas.

41. Presley's only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career.

42. 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."

43. Though he never had any formal training, he was blessed with a remarkable memory, and his musical knowledge was already considerable by the time he made his first professional recordings in 1954 at the age of 19.

44. 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.

45. 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."

46. Scholar Lindsay Waters, who figures Presley's range as 2¼ 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."

47. Presley's name, image, and voice are instantly recognizable around the globe.

48. Television director Steve Binder, no fan of Presley's music before he oversaw the '68 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."

49. President Jimmy Carter remarked on his 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."

50. 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.

Source: elvis.com, Wikipedia.org