Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on 8 January 1935 in a two-room wooden house that his father Vernon had built himself in Tupelo, Mississippi. His twin brother Jesse Garon was stillborn half an hour earlier, so he grew up as an only child. The family lived in poverty: in 1938 Vernon spent eight months in prison for altering a cheque, and the family lost its home.

In November 1948 the Presleys moved to Memphis, where they lived in public housing at Lauderdale Courts. Elvis was given a guitar at eleven, sang in the Assembly of God church and listened to country, gospel quartets and the rhythm and blues of Beale Street. After graduating from Humes High School in 1953 he worked as a truck driver and paid out of his own pocket to record a disc for his mother at Sun Records.

On 5 July 1954 Sam Phillips of Sun Records called him back for a session with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. During a break he launched into a speeded-up version of 'That's All Right' by blues singer Arthur Crudup; Phillips recorded it and a local disc jockey played it over and over a few days later. The blend of blues, country and a driving rhythm was later called rockabilly and is regarded as one starting point of rock and roll.

His manager 'Colonel' Tom Parker, born Andreas van Kuijk in Breda in the Netherlands, arranged the move to RCA at the end of 1955. In 1956 came 'Heartbreak Hotel', 'Hound Dog' and 'Don't Be Cruel', television appearances watched by tens of millions and his first film. His hip movements drew protests from churches and newspapers; on his third appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, in January 1957, he was shown only from the waist up.

After his military service (1958–1960) Parker steered his career towards Hollywood: of his 31 feature films he made 27 in the 1960s, usually with an accompanying album. With the television special of December 1968, the sessions at American Sound Studio in Memphis ('Suspicious Minds', 'In the Ghetto') and the concerts in Las Vegas he returned to the stage. All three of his Grammy Awards were for gospel recordings.

Presley broke through in the segregated American South, shortly after the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Radio stations and charts were divided by colour: rhythm and blues counted as 'black' music, country as 'white'. Sam Phillips said he was looking for a white singer with the sound of a black artist, because such a singer would be played on the big stations.

Post-war prosperity gave teenagers money of their own and a culture of their own for the first time, with transistor radios, singles and a television in almost every home. Rock and roll became the sound of that generation and met resistance from parents, churches and local officials, with banned concerts and record burnings. That a singer was made a conscript soldier fitted the Cold War, in which the army ran on draftees.

His success showed record companies that teenagers were a market of their own and opened the door for artists such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly. For later musicians, from the Beatles to Bob Dylan, he was a starting point; John Lennon said that before Elvis there was nothing. At the same time the black writers and performers of songs he made famous often earned little from them: Arthur Crudup received hardly any royalties in his lifetime.

Whether Presley appropriated black music or made it widely known is still debated. He openly named artists such as Fats Domino and B.B. King as his models. A racist remark attributed to him in 1957 has never been traced to a source; he denied it that year in Jet magazine, and black colleagues spoke up for him. His sales figures are uncertain: the often-quoted half a billion records cannot be verified.

In the 1970s his health declined through obesity and a heavy dependence on prescribed sedatives and painkillers. He gave his last concert on 26 June 1977 in Indianapolis and was found dead at Graceland on 16 August. The cause of death was given as cardiac arrest; what part the drugs in his blood played has remained disputed. His doctor George Nichopoulos was acquitted in 1981 but later lost his licence.

Tens of thousands of people came to Memphis for his funeral. He is buried in the garden of Graceland, which opened as a museum in 1982 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2006. In 1986 he was among the first inductees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That he never performed outside North America is usually explained by the position of Parker, who had entered the United States without papers and did not dare leave the country.