Elvis Presley (1935-1977) was discovered by a certain Marion Keisker, the receptionist at Sun Records, a small record label in the southern United States. “Good ballad singer. Hold,” she wrote down next to his name before passing it to Sam Phillips, his boss.
At first, Phillips wasn’t too impressed. He got nervous, didn’t tune in and danced with jerky movements; In addition, his style was more like that of a hillbilly, which would be the American synonym for “country bumpkin,” than that of a serious musician. Until he saw him perform a blues, and he realized that it was just what he was looking for, a white man who sang like a black man.
The rest is history. In 1955 he signed a contract with RCA Records, which made him a national phenomenon with songs such as Blue Suede Shoes, Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog, Do n’t Be Cruel and Love Me Tender. He had born rockabilly, a mixture of country music and African-American rhythm and blues, and above all, the first rock and roll star as a rebellious phenomenon of young people and for young people.
Not everyone liked it; to the least, to the Puritans of the South. The police saved him from a lynching, and the director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover, received letters from citizens concerned about the effect he had on the chastity of adolescents.
“Pelvic-shaking Elvis,” TV host Ed Sullivan called him, and Frank Sinatra called his style “brutal, ugly, degenerate and full of vice,” a “rotten-smelling aphrodisiac.”
Even so, neither of them wanted to give up their media pull. Sullivan invited him – several times – to his program (The Ed Sullivan Show), and Sinatra to a television special he made in 1960 on the occasion of the singer’s return from his military service.
Many, including himself, thought that after his two years as a sergeant in Germany he would no longer be able to recover his career. In fact, in the sixties he almost ruined it by getting involved in wanting to be an actor, something that only gave him mediocre roles and ballads that were not for him. The impasse lasted until 1968, when he finally found his way back home; from that time are Suspicious Minds, In the Ghetto or Burning Love.
He was again at the zenith of fame when the famous meeting with President Richard Nixon in the White House took place, which fueled the legend of the old rocker. In front of a visibly uncomfortable Nixon, Presley said that he hated drug culture and hippies, asked for a medal for his patriotic efforts, and attacked the Beatles for being “un-American.” Years later, Paul McCartney would say: “The most ironic thing is that we took [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him.”
He was referring to his addiction to prescription medications (mainly painkillers), which worsened after 1973, when his light began to go out. In 1977, his weight had gotten out of control, he was sick and on the verge of becoming a caricature of himself, like those that swarm around Las Vegas today, when Ginger Alden, his girlfriend at the time, found him dead in the hospital. bathroom floor.
