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Elvis Quotes |
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"I wouldn't call any art bad, though there's a lot of it I don't get. I
like realism...though I can admire a good house paintin' job." - On Art |
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An American Phenomenon
Elvis Presley is widely credited with bringing rock and roll into
mainstream culture. According to Rolling Stone magazine "it was Elvis
who made rock 'n' roll the international language of pop." A PBS
documentary once described Presley as "an American music giant of the
20th century who singlehandedly changed the course of music and culture
in the mid-1950s." [1]. His recordings, dance moves, attitude and
clothing came to be seen as embodiments of rock and roll. Presley sang
both hard driving rockabilly and rock and roll dance songs and ballads,
laying a commercial foundation upon which other rock and roll musicians
would build. African-American performers like Little Richard and Chuck
Berry came to national prominence after Presley's acceptance among mass
audiences of white teenagers. Singers like Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly
Brothers, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison and others immediately followed in
his wake, leading John Lennon to later observe, "Before Elvis, there
was nothing."
 Elvis Presley at the Mississippi-Alabama State Fair, 1956
During the 1950s post-WWII economic boom in the United States, many
parents were able to give their teenaged children much higher weekly
allowances, signalling a shift in the buying power and purchasing
habits of teens. During the 1940s bobby soxers had idolized Frank
Sinatra but the buyers of his records were mostly between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-two. Presley triggered a juggernaut of demand for
his records by near-teens and early teens aged ten, twelve, thirteen
and up.
 At the 1956 Mississippi-Alabama State Fair
Presley's impact on the American youth consumer market was noted on the
front page of The Wall Street Journal on December 31, 1956 when future
Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Louis M. Kohlmeier wrote,
"Elvis Presley today is a business," and reported on the singer's
record and merchandise sales (this may have been the first time a
journalist described an entertainer as a business). Half a century
later, historian Ian Brailsford (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
commented, "The phenomenal success of Elvis Presley in 1956 convinced
many doubters of the financial opportunities existing in the youth
market."[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]
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Elvis Trivia |
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Billboard's Joel Whitburn declared Presley the "#1 act of the Rock
era", beating out The Beatles, based upon his dominance of Billboard's
list of top 100 singles artists since 1955. |
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A Phenomenon 
