LICEUL "HOREA, CLOCA I CRIAN" ABRUD

ELVIS PRESLEY
The King of Rock n Roll

LUCRARE PENTRU OBINEREA ATESTATULUI

LA LIMBA ENGLEZ

PROFESOR NDRUMTOR: ELEV:

OPROIU MIHAIELA CENUA DENISA-ELENA

-2017-
0
 LICEUL "HOREA, CLOCA I CRIAN" ABRUD

ELVIS PRESLEY
The King of Rock n Roll

LUCRARE PENTRU OBINEREA ATESTATULUI

LA LIMBA ENGLEZ

PROFESOR NDRUMTOR: ELEV:

OPROIU MIHAIELA CENUA DENISA-ELENA

-2017-

1
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Elvis Presley-The king of rock 'n' roll...................................................pag.1

Table of contents.............................................................................................pag2
Foreword...........................................................................................................pag.3
CHAPTER I - Early life...............................................................................pag.4
CHAPTER II -The raise and fall of a king............................................pag.4
1. Musical influences and first recordings .......................................pag.5
2. Military services and mother's death.............................................pag.5
3. Hollywood(acting, singing, dancig performance) ......................pag.6
4. 1968 comeback.......................................................................................pag6.
5. Death of a legend..................................................................................pag.7
CHAPTER III His legacy..........................................................................pag.8
Final conclusion..............................................................................................pag.9
Bibliography ..................................................................................................pag.10
Annexes..........................................................................................................pag. 11

FOREWORD
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 Music has always been a part of this world since the beginning and the people have shaped
it as they felt during time. We had traditional music, symphonic music and then in the early 1940s
more genres of popular music combined in the United States and rock and roll was born.
The young rebels of those years chose from blues, country music, jazz and gospel music
what they liked; elements that mixed together in an original style gave voice to their internal energy.
This trend created a generation the world had never seen. In the middle of all these a young boy was
learning how to play his guitar and working his voice, he realized that he was different from others.
Soon the whole world would notice. His name was Elvis Aaron Presley.
Being impressed by the so-called "King of rock 'n' roll" Elvis Aaron Presley, I made the
decision of gathering information on him and finally writing my paper.
I have structured it into three chapters. The first one is called "Early life". As the title
suggests, I presented his origins. He was born in 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi. Belonging to a
religious family and attending church, the young boy found his initial music inspiration there. In the
other two chapters I tried to summarize his career and explain a little bit about his music
performance, his life events, family and last but not least his death and unforgettable changes he
brought to entertainment industry.

CHAPTER I. Early life

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 Elvis Aaron Presley in the humblest of circumstances, was born to Vernon and Gladys
Presley in a two-room house, built by his father, in Tupelo, Mississippi on January 8, 1935. His
twin brother, Jessie Garon, was stillborn, leaving Elvis to grow up as an only child. Presley's
ancestry was primarily a Western European mix, including Scots-Irish, Scottish, German, and some
French Norman. When Elvis was 13 years old he and his parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee in
1948.
He followed Humes High School, and it is known that Presley was the subject of
bullying at school; classmates threw things at himrotten fruit and stuffbecause he was
different, because he was quiet and he stuttered and he was a mama's boy. After he graduated in
1953, Presley was still a rather shy person, a "kid who had spent scarcely a night away from home".
Not long after he finished school he occasionally worked evenings to boost the family
income.

"Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can't help
but move to it. That's what happens to me. I can't help it."

CHAPTER II.1. Musical influences

Presley made his first public performance in 1945 when he was ten at a singing contest
held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show where he sang Red Foley's "Old Shep".
After a few months he received his first guitar as a gift although that was not he wished for. 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."
Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and
played by ear. Initial influences came through his family's attendance at the Assembly of God, a
Pentecostal Holiness church. He also frequented record stores with jukeboxes and listening booths.
He knew all of Hank Snow's songs, and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy
Acuff , Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and many others, The Southern gospel singer Jake Hess, one
of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He 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. Like some of his peers, he may have attended
blues venues of necessity, in the segregated South, on only the nights designated for exclusively

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white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations, such as WDIA-AM, that played
"race records": spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues.
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.
On July 18, 1953, Presley went to the Memphis Recording Service at the Sun Record
Company, now commonly known as Sun Studios. He paid $3.98 to record the first of two double-
sided demo acetates, "My Happiness" and
"That's When Your Heartaches Begin".
After that, while he was working as a truck
driver for Crown Electric Company, one of
his friends, Ronnie Smith, proposed him to
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. After that, he started working with Sam Phillips
and this was the moment Elvis began his singing career with the legendary Sun Records label in
Memphis. In late 1955, his recording contract was sold to RCA Victor. By 1956, he was an
international sensation. 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.
Elvis reached the top of the country charts with "Mystery Train" in 1955. His first number
one song on the so-called "Hot 100" was "Heartbreak Hotel" (1956), which held that position for
seven of the twenty-seven weeks it was on the chart. This song also reached the top of the country
charts, and it became a symbol of his ability to combine country singing with rhythm-and-blues, as
well as with the new rage that had grown out of rhythm-and-blues: rock 'n' roll.

II.2. Military service and mother's death

In March 1958, Elvis was drafted into the US military as a private at Fort Chaffee, and
relocated later to Bad Nauheim, Germany. There he met and fell in love with 14-year old army
damsel Priscilla Ann Wagner (Priscilla Presley), whom he would eventually marry after an eight-
year courtship, and with whom he had his only child, Lisa Marie Presley. Elvis' military service and
the "British Invasion" of the 1960s reduced his concerts, though not his movie/recording income.
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 In early August, his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis and her condition rapidly
worsened. Presley, granted emergency leave to visit her, arrived in Memphis on August 12. Two
days later, she died of heart failure, aged 46. Presley was devastated; their relationship had
remained extremely closeeven into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and
Presley would address her with pet names.
After a few months passed by his mother's death, Elvis joined the 3rd Armored
Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1. 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.

II.3. Hollywood life

Through the 1960s, Elvis settled in Hollywood, where he starred in the majority of his
thirty-three movies, mainly musicals, acting alongside some of the most well known actors in
Hollywood. Presley launched a parallel career as a film actor, beginning with the musical western,
Love Me Tender (November 1956). The majority of Presley's films were musical comedies made to
"sell records and produce high revenues." He also appeared in dramatic films with musical
interludes, like Jailhouse Rock and King Creole and he even made one non-musical western,
Charro!
His American sales have earned him gold, platinum or multi-platinum awards for 131
different albums and singles, far more than any other artist. 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. Presley
movies were nevertheless popular, and he "became a film genre of his own".
Presley made his final acting appearance in the 1969 release Change of Habit. His last two
films were concert documentaries in the early 1970s, though Presley did continue to consider
dramatic movie roles.

II.4. 1968 Comeback

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. Recorded in late
June in Burbank, California, the Special, called simply 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 audiencePresley's first live performances since
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 1961. The live segments saw Presley clad in tight black
leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style
reminiscent of his early rock-and-roll days. Bill Belew,
who designed this outfit, gave it a Napoleonic standing
collar (Presley customarily wore high collars because he
believed his neck looked too long), a design feature that
he would later make a major trademark of the outfits
Presley wore on stage in his later years.
By January 1969, the single "If I Can Dream", written
for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack
album broke into the top ten. 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.

"Before Elvis there was nothing."

(John Lennon)

II.5. Death of a legend

Presley's divorce took effect on October 9, 1973. He was now becoming increasingly
unwell. Despite his failing health, in 1974 he undertook another intensive touring schedule. Presley
and Linda Thompson split in November 1976, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden.
He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his
friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again. Presley's final performance
was in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena, on June 26, 1977.
Presley first took drugs-which it is known that were the main reason why he died, but he
also had developed many health problems, some of them chronic- in the army, taking amphetamines
to stay awake on late shifts, though there are claims that pills of some form were first given to him
by Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips. Though Elvis's weight and drug dependency were increasing, Elvis
continued a steady flow of concert performances in sold-out arenas well into the 1970s.
Another tour was scheduled to begin August 17, 1977, but at Graceland the day before,
Presley was found on the floor of his bathroom by fiance, Ginger Alden. According to the medical
investigator, Presley had 'stumbled or crawled several feet before he died.' He was officially
pronounced dead at 3:30 pm at the Baptist Memorial Hospital.
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 A weight problem became evident in the late 1960s, and in private Elvis became
increasingly dependent on drugs, particularly amphetamines and sedatives. His personal doctor,
George Nichopoulos, would later be prosecuted, but acquitted, for prescribing and dispensing
thousands of pills and narcotics (illegal drugs) to him.

CHAPTER III. His legacy

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. Resident 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". And so, at the age of 21, within a year of his first appearance on American network
television, he was one of the most famous people in the world.
Elvis Presley is a supreme figure in American life even nowadays, 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.
Elvis continues to be celebrated as superstar and legend as much in death as he was in life.
Graceland Mansion, which he had purchased in 1957 for $102,500, is now the top tourist
attraction in Memphis and has attracted millions of visitors from both America and around the
world.
Presley became the first-ever inductee into three music halls of fame when it was announced
that he would be inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame on November 27, 2001, in Nashville,
Tennessee.

FINAL CONCLUSION
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. Elvis Presley is in the end one of the greatest artists of all time. The changes that he went
through during his career were controversial and also helped him become successful. Elvis changed
music genres during his career, his distinctive way of entertaining the audience, and many people
praise him as a great icon. Elvis Presley was a legend in rock and roll in life and he still is the king
of rock and roll even in death.
He had a modest childhood. Although he was a shy boy, he didnt miss the opportunity to
sing each time he had the occasion at school or at church. Finally, a man called Slim brought him on
Tupelo Radio Station describing him as "a crazy boy". In the meantime he started playing the guitar.
He never received formal music training or learned how to read music. He amazingly studied and
played by ear. He was very close to his mother; that's why his first songs, like "My Happiness" and
"That's When Your Heartaches Begin" where meant to be a gift for her. After he joined the army, his
mother with whom he had a very strong binding, died. He met his future wife Priscilla when he was
in Germany during his military services, and later they had a daughter named Lisa Marie.
After some alcohol and drug abuses, Presley divorced Priscilla in 1973, which marked the
beginning of the end. Because of all these abuses, in the afternoon of August 16, Elvis Presley was
taken to the emergency room of Baptist Memorial Hospital where the doctors declared him dead of
cardiac arrhythmia.
I chose this subject for writing my paper because rock 'n' roll is one of my favorite music
genres and I really find Elvis Presley's life very interesting though not everybody knows much
about it, but I strongly believe they should although he is one of the most iconic faces of America.
In my opinion, with his original and unique look, Elvis Presley will always remain the most
important figure of rock music. His voice and his lyrics are and will be listened to by generations
along centuries.

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 Bibliography

WEBSITES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley
http://www.elvis.com/
https://www.graceland.com/elvis/biography.aspx
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000062/bio
https://www.thoughtco.com/elvis-presley-profile-1779499
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/10815.Books_about_Elvis_Presley

BOOKS:

Elvis Day by Day: The Definitive Record of His Life and Music, Peter Guralnick
Biggest Elvis, P.F. Kluge
English Descriptive Grammar, Irina Panovf
The Death of Elvis, James P. Cole, Charles Thompson

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ANNEX 1
(Elvis Presley's house in Tupelo, Mississippi)

ANNEX 2
(Portrait of Priscilla, Lisa Marie and Elvis Presley)

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ANNEX 3

(Presleys first guitar)

ANNEX 4
(One of Elvis Presley's favourite cars)

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ANNEX 5

BURNING LOVE-ELVIS PRESLEY

Lord almighty
I feel my temperature rising
Higher higher
It's burning through to my soul

Girl, girl, girl

You gonna set me on fire
My brain is flaming
I don't know which way to go

Your kisses lift me higher

Like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky
With burning love

Ooh, ooh, ooh,

I feel my temperature rising
Help me, I'm flaming
I must be a hundred and nine
Burning, burning, burning
And nothing can cool me
I just might turn into smoke
But I feel fine

'Cause your kisses lift me higher

Like a sweet song of a choir
And you light my morning sky
With burning love[...]

http://www.metrolyrics.com/burning-love-lyrics-elvis-presley.html

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