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Elvis Presley is among the biggest stars of the 20 century. He was born in 1935, in East Tupelo, Mississippi. His family was poor. They moved to Memphis, Tennessee in search of better opportunities.

What influenced Elvis and his music? First, there was his mother Gladys. For his eleventh birthday, Elvis wanted a rifle. Gladys convinced him to get a guitar. Then, there were the revivals, or religious meetings, he went to. They were highly emotional, with singing as well as preaching and prayer. Elvis was influenced by the gospel music sung and by the way the preachers stirred up the crowds’ emotions. Finally there was Memphis. It was the centre for blues music and had a radio station that played gospel and blues.

Elvis became a truck driver. One day in 1954, he stopped in at the Memphis Recording Studio and, just for fun, recorded a song. Sam Phillips, the studio head, heard the song and immediately recognized Elvis’s potential. On July 6, 1954, he made his first commercial records.

He tried to sing ballads, country songs, but the style that made him famous was discovered while fooling around in the studio. He brought more black content than others to the combination of blues and country music and he pushed the beat, adding an exciting urgency to the music.

By 1955 Elvis had three songs on the national charts and had signed a contract with RCA. Teenagers loved Elvis and rock and roll. The music critics of the time, however, were unimpressed. They found Elvis ‘unspeakably untalented and vulgar’. The music was called ‘atheistic’, ‘criminal’, and ‘a threat to democracy’. Yet his popularity only grew.

Elvis’s career was interrupted in the late 1950’s, when he went into army. When he came out, at his manager’s urging he turned to acting. Most of his films were not very good, but they were financially successful.

In 1968 Elvis returned to live performances. But to many people, these performances were like a bad imitation of his former self. Elvis also had problems in his personal life, as well as problems with his weight and with drugs.

The Beatles replaced Elvis in the early 1960s as the most important figures in rock. When asked about Elvis and rock, the Beatles’ John Lennon said simply, “Before Elvis there was nothing”.