"Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) is the official United States policy on homosexuals serving in the military until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibits military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. The restrictions are mandated by United States federal law (). The policy prohibits people who "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because their presence "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." The act prohibits any homosexual or bisexual person from disclosing his or her sexual orientation or from speaking about any homosexual relationships, including marriages or other familial attributes, while serving in the United States armed forces. The act specifies that service members who disclose that they are homosexual or engage in homosexual conduct shall be separated (discharged) except when a service member's conduct was "for the purpose of avoiding or terminating military service" or when it "would not be in the best interest of the armed forces".

The "don't ask" part of the DADT policy specifies that superiors should not initiate investigation of a servicemember's orientation in the absence of disallowed behaviors, though credible and articulable evidence of homosexual behavior may cause an investigation. Violations of this aspect through unauthorized investigations and harassment of suspected servicemen and women resulted in the policy's current formulation as "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue, don't harass."

A congressional bill to repeal DADT was enacted in December 2010, specifying that the policy would remain in place until the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certified that repeal would not harm military readiness, followed by a 60-day waiting period. A July 6, 2011 ruling from a federal appeals court barred further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members. President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent that certification to Congress on July 22, 2011, setting the end of DADT for September 20, 2011.

Background

Sodomy has been grounds for discharge from the American military since the Revolutionary War, but the LGBT-related policies changed over the course of the 20th century. Lieutenant Gotthold Frederick Enslin was the first soldier discharged from the U.S. military (at that time, the Continental Army) for sodomy, in 1778.

As the United States prepared to enter World War II, the military added psychiatric screening to its induction process. At the time, psychiatry labeled homosexuality as an indicator of psychopathology, and this notion was added to military practices. The first time "homosexual" people were differentiated from "normal" people in the military literature was in revised army mobilization regulations in 1942. Whereas before the buildup to the war gay servicemembers were court-martialed, imprisoned and dishonorably discharged, in wartime commanding officers found it difficult to convene court-martial boards of commissioned officers and the administrative blue discharge became the discharge of choice for gay and lesbian personnel. In 1944, a new policy directive decreed that homosexuals were to be committed to military hospitals, examined by psychiatrists and discharged under Regulation 615-360, section 8.

In 1947, blue discharges were discontinued and two new classifications were created: "general" and "undesirable". Under such a system, a servicemember found to be gay but who had not committed any sexual acts while in service would tend to receive an undesirable discharge. Those found guilty of engaging in sexual conduct were usually dishonorably discharged. A 1957 U.S. Navy study known as the Crittenden Report dismissed the charge that homosexuals constitute a security risk, but advocated stringent anti-homosexual policies because "Homosexuality is wrong, it is evil, and it is to be branded as such." It remained secret until 1976. Fannie Mae Clackum was the first service member to successfully appeal such a discharge, winning eight years of back pay from the US Court of Claims in 1960.

From the 1940s through the Vietnam War, some notable gay servicemembers avoided discharges despite pre-screening efforts, and when personnel shortages occurred, homosexuals were allowed to serve.

The gay and lesbian rights movement in the 1970s and 1980s raised the issue by publicizing several noteworthy dismissals of gay servicemembers, with Sgt. Leonard Matlovich appearing on the cover of Time in 1975. The Department of Defense issued a 1982 policy (DOD Directive 1332.14) stating that homosexuality was clearly incompatible with military service. The policy garnered public scrutiny through the 1980s and 1990s, and it became a political issue in the 1992 U.S. presidential election with Bill Clinton and others citing the brutal murder of gay Navy petty officer Allen R. Schindler, Jr.

After Bill Clinton won the presidency, Congress rushed to enact the existing gay ban policy into federal law, outflanking Clinton's planned repeal effort. Clinton called for legislation to overturn the ban, but it encountered intense scrutiny by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of Congress, and portions of the public. DADT emerged as a compromise policy.

Origin

The policy was introduced as a compromise measure in 1993 by President Bill Clinton who campaigned on the promise to allow all citizens to serve in the military regardless of sexual orientation. At the time, per the December 21, 1993 Department of Defense Directive 1332.14, it was legal policy (10 U.S.C. § 654) that homosexuality is incompatible with military service and that persons who engaged in homosexual acts or stated that they are homosexual or bisexual were to be discharged. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, passed by Congress in 1950 and signed by President Harry S Truman, established the policies and procedures for discharging service members.

Congress overrode Clinton by including text in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994 (passed in 1993) requiring the military to abide by regulations essentially identical to the 1982 absolute ban policy. The Clinton Administration on December 21, 1993, issued Defense Directive 1304.26, which directed that military applicants were not to be asked about their sexual orientation. This is the policy now known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". The phrase was coined by Charles Moskos, a military sociologist.

The full name of the policy at the time was "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue." The "Don’t Ask" provision mandates that military or appointed officials will not ask about or require members to reveal their sexual orientation. The "Don’t Tell" states that a member may be discharged for claiming to be a homosexual or bisexual or making a statement indicating a tendency towards or intent to engage in homosexual activities. The "Don’t Pursue" establishes what is minimally required for an investigation to be initiated. A "Don’t Harass" provision was added to the policy later. It ensures that the military will not allow harassment or violence against service members for any reason.

At times beatings of gay personnel were severe and occasionally even fatal, as in the case of Allen R. Schindler, Jr.. In defense of his DADT policy, President Clinton cited U.S. Navy Radioman Third Class Schindler, brutally murdered by shipmate Terry M. Helvey (with the aid of an accomplice), leaving a "nearly-unrecognizable corpse". DADT has officially prohibited such behavior, but harassment continues.

In the midst of the 1993 controversy, the National Defense Research Institute prepared a study for the Office of the Secretary of Defense published as Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy: Options and Assessment. It concluded, in measured language, that "circumstances could exist under which the ban on homosexuals could be lifted with little or no adverse consequences for recruitment and retention" if the policy were implemented with care, principally because many factors contribute to individual enlistment and re-enlistment decisions.

In Congress, Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia led the contingent that favored maintaining the absolute ban on gays. Reformers were led by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who favored modification (but ultimately voted for the defense authorization bill with the gay ban language), and retired Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who argued on behalf of full repeal. After Congressional phone lines were flooded by organized anti-gay opposition, President Clinton backed off on his campaign promise to repeal the ban in favor of DADT.

Reservist exception

In September 2005, the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military – a think tank affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and renamed the Michael D. Palm Center in October 2006 – issued a news release revealing they had found a 1999 FORSCOM Regulation (500-3-3 RC Unit Commander's Handbook) that allowed the active duty deployment of Army Reservists and National Guard troops who say that they are gay or who are accused of being gay. U.S. Army Forces Command spokesperson Kim Waldron later confirmed the regulation and indicated that it was intended to prevent Reservists and National Guard members from pretending to be gay to escape combat.

Court challenges

DADT has been upheld by four of the federal Courts of Appeal, and in a Supreme Court case, Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. (2006), the Supreme Court unanimously held that the federal government could constitutionally withhold funding from universities if they refuse to give military recruiters access to school resources, in spite of any university nondiscrimination policies.

In 2004 a federal lawsuit challenging DADT was filed by the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation's largest Republican gay organization. The case went to trial in 2010, before Judge Virginia A. Phillips. Plaintiffs stated that the policy violates the rights of gay military members to free speech, due process and open association. The government argued that DADT was necessary to advance a legitimate governmental interest. Plaintiffs introduced admissions by President Barack Obama, from prepared remarks, that DADT "doesn’t contribute to our national security", "weakens our national security", and that reversal is "essential for our national security". According to plaintiffs, these statements alone satisfy their burden of proof and compel judgment in favor of Log Cabin Republicans on the due process claims.

On September 9, 2010, Judge Phillips ruled that the ban was unconstitutional, as a violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.

On October 12, 2010, Judge Phillips granted a worldwide, immediate injunction prohibiting the Department of Defense from enforcing or complying with the Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy, and ordered the military to suspend and discontinue any investigation or discharge, separation, or other proceeding that have been commenced under the policy. The Department of Justice responded with an appeal and a request for a stay of the ruling, a request which was denied by Phillips but granted by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on October 20.

On October 19, 2010, military recruiters were told they can accept openly gay applicants. On October 20, 2010, Lt. Daniel Choi, an openly gay man who had previously been honorably discharged under DADT, re-enlisted in the US Army. On October 20, 2010, a federal appeals court in California granted a temporary stay reversing a worldwide injunction against enforcement of the US military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy maintaining the DADT policy.

On November 1, 2010, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Judge Phillips' injunction pending appeal. The plaintiffs applied to the US Supreme Court to overrule the stay, but the Supreme Court did not intervene.

Following passage of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, the Justice Department asked the Ninth Circuit to suspend LCR's suit in light of the legislative repeal. LCR opposed the request, noting that gay personnel were still subject to discharge. On January 28, 2011, the Court denied the Justice Department's request. The Obama administration responded by requesting that the policy be allowed to stay in place while they completed the process of assuring that its end would not impact combat readiness. On March 28, the LCR filed a brief asking that the court deny the administration's request.

While waiting for certification, several service members were discharged under DADT at their own insistence, until July 6 when a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals re-instated Judge Phillips' injunction barring further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members. Oral arguments for appealing Judge Phillips' ruling that DADT is unconstitutional are to be scheduled for the week of August 29, 2011. On July 11, the appeals court asked the DOJ to inform the court if it intends to proceed with its appeal. On July 14, the Justice Department filed a motion "to avoid short-circuiting the repeal process established by Congress during the final stages of the implementation of the repeal." attorneys warned of "significant immediate harms on the government." On July 15, the Ninth Circuit restored most of the DADT policy. However, the new order continues to explicitly prohibit the government from discharging or investigating openly gay personnel.

Repeal

Military Readiness Enhancement Act

The Military Readiness Enhancement Act was a bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2005 by Rep. Martin T. Meehan with the stated purpose "to amend title 10, United States Code, to enhance the readiness of the Armed Forces by replacing the current policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces, referred to as 'Don't ask, don't tell,' with a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation." The bill was introduced again in 2007 and 2009.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010

[[File:DADT Repeal Senate.svg|thumb|right|The Senate passed S.4023 65-31 with all Democrats (except for one abstention) and 8 Republicans in support. ]] In his 2008 election campaign, President Barack Obama advocated a full repeal of the laws barring homosexuals from serving in the military. On October 10, 2009, Obama stated in a speech before the Human Rights Campaign that he will end the ban, but offered no timetable. As president, Obama said in his first State of the Union Address in 2010, "This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are." This statement was quickly followed up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen voicing their support for a repeal of DADT.

On March 25, 2010, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced new rules mandating that only flag officers may initiate discharge proceedings and imposing more stringent rules of evidence be used during discharge proceedings.

On May 27, 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Murphy amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 on a 234–194 vote that would repeal the relevant sections of the law 60 days after a study by the U.S. Department of Defense is completed and the U.S. Defense Secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the U.S. President certify that repeal would not harm military effectiveness. On the same day the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee advanced the identical measure in a 16–12 vote to be included in the Defense Authorization Act. The amended defense bill passed the U.S. House on May 28, 2010. On September 21, 2010, John McCain led a successful (Yea 56, Nay 43) filibuster against the debate on the Defense Authorization Act. The bill languished in the Senate until December.

In late November, the Pentagon published a comprehensive report on the issues associated with a repeal of DADT. The report indicated that there was low risk of service disruptions because of repeal of the ban. Gates, fearing that Courts would force a sudden change, encouraged Congress to act quickly to repeal the law so that the military could carefully adjust. Democrats in Congress quickly scheduled hearings to consider repeal of the law. On December 3, the Joint Chiefs of Staff appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to testify about repeal. While the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations, and Commandant of the Coast Guard said repeal would cause minimal disruption, heads of the Army, Air Force, and Marines opposed repeal because it would cause additional stress on combat focused forces during war.

On December 9, 2010, another filibuster prevented debate on the Defense Authorization Act during the lame duck session of Congress. Susan Collins of Maine voted in favor of cloture on the bill and Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted against cloture. Manchin stated that he did not support cloture because he had not yet consulted constituents on the issue, but said that the policy "probably should be repealed in the near future".

U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins introduced bill S.4022 on December 9, 2010, in reaction to the failure to open discussion on the Defense Authorization Act. It includes the policy-related portions of the Defense Authorization Act which are considered by Lieberman and Collins as more likely to pass as a stand-alone bill. The Washington Post compared it to a Hail Mary pass. The stand-alone bill H.R. 6520 was sponsored by Patrick Murphy and passed the House of Representatives via H.R. 2965 in a vote of 250 to 175 on December 15, 2010. On December 18, 2010, the Senate voted to end debate on S.4023, the Senate's bill identical to H.R.2965, via a cloture vote of 63–33. Prior to the vote, Sen. Lieberman gave the final argument in favor of repealing DADT and Sen. McCain argued against repeal. The final Senate vote was held later that same day, with the measure passing by a vote of 65–31.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates released a statement following the vote indicating that the planning for implementation of a policy repeal will begin right away, led by Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Clifford L. Stanley, and will continue until Gates believes he can certify that conditions are met for orderly repeal of the policy.

President Obama signed the repeal into law on December 22, 2010.

Implementation

The repeal act established a process for winding down the DADT policy. The President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must certify in writing that they have reviewed the Pentagon's report on the effects of DADT repeal, that the appropriate regulations have been reviewed and drafted and that implementation of repeal regulations "is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces". Once certification is given, a 60-day waiting period will begin before DADT is formally repealed.

Representative Duncan D. Hunter announced plans in January 2011 to introduce a bill designed to delay DADT repeal. Should his bill be adopted, all of the chiefs of the armed services would need to submit the certification currently required only of the President, Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs Chairman.

In January 2011, Pentagon officials stated that the training process to prepare troops for the repeal would begin in February and would proceed quickly, though it might not be completed in 2011. In May 2011, the US Army reprimanded three colonels for performing a skit in March 2011 at a function at Yongsan Garrison, South Korea that mocked the repeal.

While waiting for certification, several service members were discharged at their own insistence until a July 6 ruling from a federal appeals court barred further enforcement of the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members, which the military promptly did.

President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent the certification required by the Repeal Act to Congress on July 22, 2011, setting the end of DADT for September 20, 2011 A Pentagon spokesman said that servicemembers discharged under DADT will be able to re-apply to rejoin the military then.

Responses

Public opinion

According to a December 2010 Washington Post-ABC News poll 77 percent of Americans say gays and lesbians who publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be able to serve in the military. That number showed little change from polls over the two years, but represents the highest level of support in a Post-ABC poll. The support also cuts across partisan and ideological lines, with majorities of Democrats (86%), Republicans (74%), independents (74%), liberals (92%), conservatives (67%), white evangelical Protestants (70%) and non-religious (84%) in favor of homosexuals' serving openly.

A November 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of the American public favors permitting homosexuals to serve openly in the military, while less than half that number (27 percent) are opposed. According to a November 2010 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll 72% of adult Americans favor permitting people who are openly gay or lesbian to serve in the military, while 23 % oppose it. "The main difference between the CNN poll and the Pew poll is in the number of respondents who told pollsters that they didn't have an opinion on this topic – 16 percent in the Pew poll compared to only five percent in the CNN survey," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The two polls report virtually the same number who say they oppose gays serving openly in the military, which suggests that there are some people who favor that change in policy but for some reason were reluctant to admit that to the Pew interviewers. That happens occasionally on topics where moral issues and equal-treatment issues intersect."

A February 2010 Quinnipiac University national poll shows 57% of American voters favor gays serving openly, compared to 36% opposed, and 66% say the current policy of not allowing openly gay personnel to serve is discrimination, opposed to 31% who see no discrimination. A CBS News/New York Times national poll done at the same time shows 58% of Americans favor gays serving openly, compared to 28% opposed.

Military personnel opinion

In 1993, Comdr. Craig Quigley, then a Navy spokesman, said, "Homosexuals are notoriously promiscuous. If homosexuals are allowed to declare their sexual orientation openly heterosexuals who showered with gay men would have an 'uncomfortable feeling of someone watching.'"

A 2006 Zogby International poll of military members found that 26% were in favor of gays serving in the military, 37% were opposed, while 37% expressed no preference or were unsure. Of the respondents who had experience with gay people in their unit, 6% said their presence had a positive impact on their personal morale, 66% said no impact, and 28% said negative impact. Likewise, regarding overall unit morale, 3% said positive impact, 64% no impact, and 27% negative impact. As for respondents uncertain whether they had served with gay personnel, 2% thought gays would have a positive effect on personal morale, while 29% thought that they would have no impact and 48% thought that they would have a negative effect. Likewise, regarding overall unit morale, 2% thought that gays would have a positive effect on overall unit morale, 26% thought they would have no effect, and 58% thought they would have a negative effect. More generally, 73% of respondents said that they felt comfortable in the presence of gay and lesbian personnel.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili (Ret.) and former Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen spoke against the policy publicly in January 2007: "I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces," General Shalikashvili wrote. "Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job."

In December 2007, 28 retired generals and admirals urged Congress to repeal the policy, citing evidence that 65,000 gay men and women are currently serving in the armed forces and that there are over 1,000,000 gay veterans. On November 17, 2008, 104 retired generals and admirals signed a similar statement.

On May 4, 2008, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen addressed the graduating cadets at West Point, a cadet asked what would happen if the next administration were supportive of legislation allowing gays to serve openly. Mullen responded, "Congress, and not the military, is responsible for [DADT]." Previously, during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2007, Mullen told lawmakers, "I really think it is for the American people to come forward, really through this body, to both debate that policy and make changes, if that's appropriate." He went on to say, "I'd love to have Congress make its own decisions" with respect to considering repeal.

In an interview on CNN's State of the Union broadcast on July 5, 2009, Colin Powell said he thought that the policy was "correct for the time" but that "sixteen years have now gone by, and I think a lot has changed with respect to attitudes within our country, and therefore I think this is a policy and a law that should be reviewed." In the same program, Admiral Mullen said the policy would continue to be implemented until the law was repealed, and that his advice was to "move in a measured way... At a time when we're fighting two conflicts there is a great deal of pressure on our forces and their families."

Several gay servicemembers have written novels and nonfiction works about life in the military under DADT. In 2005, Rich Merritt released his memoir Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star, and in 2008 Brett Edward Stout released his first novel, Sugar-Baby Bridge. Openly gay servicemember Dan Choi, a founder of West Point's LBGT group Knights Out, made an appearance on the web-based documentary series In Their Boots, criticizing the U.S. military's neglect of servicemembers' families. As a linguist, Choi was among 59 gay Arabic speakers discharged by the military, along with 9 gay Farsi speakers discharged by the military up to June 2009, despite a shortage of translators for these languages.

In September 2009, Air Force Colonel Om Prakash sharply criticized the policy in an article published in Joint Force Quarterly. He argued that it is unsound for several reasons, including the complete lack of any scientific basis for the proposition that unit cohesion is compromised by the presence of openly gay personnel. The article won the Secretary of Defense National Security Essay competition for 2009. Speaking in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 2, 2010, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen denounced the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

In November 2010, the Defense Department published a comprehensive report on the effects of repeal. The report included the results of a survey of military personnel on bases throughout the United States and overseas, including 400,000 servicemembers and 150,000 military spouses. Overall, 70 percent of military personnel thought that integrating gays into the military would be positive, mixed, or of no consequence. However, 60 percent of personnel in the Marine Corps and combat specialties said that repealing the ban would be negative.

Scholars

In 1993, Gregory M. Herek, associate research psychologist at the University of California at Davis and an authority on public attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, testified before the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Representative Ron Dellums. Testifying on behalf of the American Psychological Association and five other national professional organizations (the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Counseling Association, the American Nursing Association, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States), Herek stated "My written testimony to the Committee summarizes the results of an extensive review of the relevant published research from the social and behavioral sciences. That review is lengthy. However, I can summarize its conclusions in a few words: The research data show that there is nothing about lesbians and gay men that makes them inherently unfit for military service, and there is nothing about heterosexuals that makes them inherently unable to work and live with gay people in close quarters." In his testimony, Herek reviewed existing scientific research concerning issues of unit cohesion and effectiveness and the fitness of lesbians and gay men for military service. He concluded that straight personnel can overcome their prejudices and adapt to living and working in close quarters with gays. Furthermore, he said gays are not inherently less capable of military service than are straight men and women. "The assumption that heterosexuals cannot overcome their prejudices toward gay people is a mistaken one," said Herek. Herek stated in 2008: "Today, as then (1993), the real question is not whether sexual minorities can be successfully integrated into the military. The social science data answered this question in the affirmative then, and do so even more clearly now. Rather, the issue is whether the United States is willing to repudiate its current practice of anti-gay discrimination and address the challenges associated with a new policy."

The American Psychological Association has stated:

On November 30, 2010 the Palm Center issued a joint statement from 30 professors and scholars (current and former academics at the Army War College, Naval Academy, West Point, Air Force Academy, Naval Post Graduate School, Naval War College, Air Command and Staff College and National Defense University as well as civilian universities including Harvard, Yale and Princeton) in response to the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Working Group Report on gays in the military. The statement read in part: }}

Barack Obama

During his presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama stated in an open letter that he "called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell". During 2009, President Barack Obama advocated a policy change to allow gay personnel to serve openly in the armed forces, agreeing with General Shalikashvili and stating that the U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops expelled from the military, including language experts fluent in Arabic, because of DADT.

Nineteen days after his election, Obama's advisers announced that plans to repeal the policy may be delayed until 2010, because Obama "first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus, and then present legislation to Congress."

In May 2009, a committee of military law experts at the University of California at Santa Barbara concluded that the President can issue an Executive Order to suspend homosexual conduct discharges. Obama's position was that he wanted Congress to change the law and not have the change come from executive action.

In July 2009, the White House and other Democrats reportedly pressured Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings to withdraw an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act () that would have prevented the military from using federal funds to expel gay servicemembers.

Obama's Justice Department continues to defend the gay ban in court, citing a "traditional" duty to enforce and defend all laws. In court documents, government lawyers agreed with the ruling of the Federal Appeals Court in Boston that DADT is "rationally related to the government's legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion." An appeal of this case brought by Captain James E. Pietrangelo II, Pietrangelo v. Gates 08-824, was subsequently rejected in June 2009 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Obama administration asked that the Supreme Court turn down the challenge to the policy.

On the eve of the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., October 10, 2009, Barack Obama stated in a speech before the Human Rights Campaign that he will end the ban, but he offered no timetable.

In January 2010, the White House and congressional officials started work on repealing the ban by inserting language into the 2011 defense authorization bill.

During President Obama's State of the Union Address on January 27, 2010, he claimed that he would work with Congress and the military to enact a repeal of the gay ban law. He had made similar statements during other speeches; however, his State of the Union speech was the first in which he definitively committed to repealing the law on a set timetable.

On November 30, 2010, the Department of Defense's Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) on DADT repeal issued its formal report outlining a path to implementation of repeal in the Armed Forces. The United States Senate took up two days of hearings on December 2 and 3, 2010 to discuss the CRWG report and interview Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen, and each of the Service Chiefs. During these hearings, President Obama undertook a surprise trip to Afghanistan to visit deployed servicemembers and was, therefore, unable to provide any direct statement of support for the Senate hearings while they were in the media spotlight.

Letter of support for maintaining DADT

Citing a letter signed by "over one thousand former general and flag officers who have weighed in on this issue," Senator John McCain of Arizona claimed that "we should pay attention and benefit from the experience and knowledge" of these officers. At the February 2, 2010 congressional hearing of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, McCain read directly from the letter, saying "We firmly believe that this law, which Congress passed to protect good order, discipline and morale in the unique environment of the armed forces deserves continued support." Servicemembers United, a veterans' group opposed to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", issued a subsequent report on the letter’s legitimacy. They found that the letter’s claimed signees included officers who had no knowledge of their inclusion, who had refused to be included, and even one instance of a widow signing the letter in the guise of her husband, a former general who had died before the survey was published. The average age of the officers listed in the letter was 74, the oldest was 98, and Servicemembers United noted that "only a small fraction of these officers have even served in the military during the 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' period, much less in the 21st century military."

Activist groups

Several gay rights groups have lobbied, started campaigns and issued reports in an effort to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In February 2010, the Human Rights Campaign launched its 'Repeal DADT Now Campaign' to mobilize grassroots support and target swing states. The Center for American Progress issued a report in March 2010 which claimed that eight specified changes must be made to the military's internal regulations to ensure that a repeal is implemented smoothly. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is dedicated to ending discrimination against military personnel affected by Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Gay rights groups were divided on whether a defense bill should pass in 2010 if it doesn't include a repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. The Center for Military Readiness and its founder Elaine Donnelly led opposition to repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Donnelly has argued that allowing gays to serve would degrade the quality of service.

Number of discharges

Since the policy was introduced in 1993, the military has discharged over 13,000 troops from the military under DADT. The number of discharges per fiscal year under DADT dropped sharply after the September 11 attacks and has remained comparatively low since. Discharges exceeded 600 every year until 2009. Unofficial statistics on the number of persons discharged per year follow:

36 15 12 10 14 12 19 14 29 – 15 16 – – – – 11 ≥156

Year	United States Coast Guard>Coast Guard	United States Marine Corps>Marines	United States Navy>Navy	United States Army>Army	United States Air Force>Air Force	! Total
1994	0	|	258	136	187	617
1995	|	69	269	184	235	772
1996	|	60	315	199	284	870
1997	|	78	413	197	309	1,007
1998	|	77	345	312	415	1,163
1999	|	97	314	271	352	1,046
2000	|	114	358	573	177	1,241
2001	|	115	314	638	217	1,273
2002	|	109	218	429	121	906
2003*	|	–	–	–	–	787
2004	|	59	177	325	92	668
2005	|	75	177	386	88	742
2006*	|	–	–	–	–	623
2007*	|	–	–	–	–	627
2008*	|	–	–	–	–	619
2009*	|	–	–	–	–	428
2010*	|	–	–	–	–	261
Total	|	≥889	≥3,158	≥3,650	≥2,477	13,650

*Breakdown of discharges by service branch not available

1994–2003, 2006, 2007 from Servicemembers Legal Defense Network – Annual Gay Discharges Under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue, Don't Harass"

2004–2005 from 365Gay.com – Military Discharging Two Soldiers Per Day For Being Gay Despite War Group Says

2008 from Continued discharges anger 'don't ask, don't tell' critics The Boston Globe, Bryan Bender – May 20, 2009

2000–2002 individual service numbers from Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, "Freedom to Serve"

Not accurate numbers of discharges under DADT due to some soldiers not disclosing their discharge. These statistics are only from those who came forward to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

Financial impact of policy

In February 2005, the Government Accountability Office released estimates on the cost of the policy. The GAO reported at least $95.4 million in recruiting costs and at least $95.1 million for training replacements for the 9,488 troops discharged from 1994 through 2003, while noting that the true figures might be higher.

In February 2006, a University of California Blue Ribbon Commission including Lawrence Korb, a former assistant defense secretary during the Reagan administration, former Defense Secretary William Perry, a member of the Clinton administration, and professors from the United States Military Academy at West Point concluded that figure should be closer to $363 million, including $14.3 million for "separation travel" once a servicemember is discharged, $17.8 million for training officers, $252.4 million for training enlistees and $79.3 million in recruiting costs. The commission report stated that the GAO didn't take into account the value the military lost from the departures.

Chaplains and religious groups

Chaplain groups and religious organizations are taking various positions concerning the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Some view that the policy must be withdrawn to make the military more inclusive. The Southern Baptist Convention is battling the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, warning that their endorsements for chaplains may be withdrawn if the repeal takes place. They take the position that allowing gay men and women to serve in the military without restriction will have a negative impact on the ability of chaplains who think homosexuality is a sin to speak freely regarding their religious beliefs. The Roman Catholic Church has called for the retention of the policy, but has no plans to withdraw its priests from serving as military chaplains. Sixty-five retired chaplains signed a letter opposing repeal, stating that repeal would make it impossible for chaplains whose faith teaches that same-sex behavior is immoral to minister to military servicemembers. Other religious organizations and agencies call the repeal of the policy a "non-event" or "non-issue" for chaplains, claiming that chaplains have always supported military service personnel, whether or not they agree with all their actions or beliefs.

See also

Sexual orientation and military service – for information on policies in military services internationally

Margarethe Cammermeyer – a retired colonel in the Washington National Guard and a gay rights activist

Holmes v. California National Guard

Daniel Choi – a former American Army Linguistic and gay rights activist against DADT

Darren Manzella – an Army medic and gay activist

Timothy R. McVeigh – the first person to favorably settle a case against DADT

Right to Serve Campaign – an organized effort to bring attention to DADT

Barry Winchell – an American soldier who was murdered by other soldiers while serving because he was thought to be gay

Witt v. Department of the Air Force

Invocation at DADT repeal Presidential Signing Ceremony

Notes

References

Bérubé, Allan (1990). Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two. New York, The Penguin Group. ISBN 0452265983 (Plume edition 1991).

Jones, Major Bradley K. (January 1973). "The Gravity of Administrative Discharges: A Legal and Empirical Evaluation" The Military Law Review 59:1–26.

Shilts, Randy (1993). Conduct Unbecoming: Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military Vietnam to the Persian Gulf. New York, St. Martin's Press. ISBN 031209261X

Further reading

Belkin, Aaron (2008). "'Don't Ask, Don't Tell': Does the Gay Ban Undermine the Military's Reputation?" Armed Forces & Society, Jan 2008; vol. 34: pp. 276–291

Bowling, Kirby L., Firestone, Juanita M., and Harris, Richard J. (2005). "Analyzing Questions That Cannot Be Asked of Respondents Who Cannot Respond" Armed Forces & Society, Apr 2005; vol. 31: pp. 411–437

Carter, Chad C. and Kolenc, Antony B. (2005). University of Dayton Law Review, Fall 2005.

Donnelly, Elaine (2007). "Constructing the Co-Ed Military," Duke University Journal of Gender Law and Policy, May 2007.

Johansson, Warren and William A Percy. (1994). Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press.

Levy, Yagil (2007). "The Right to Fight: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of Recruitment Policy toward Gays and Lesbians" Armed Forces & Society, Jan 2007; vol. 33: pp. 186–202

Moradi, Bonnie and Laura Miller, (2010). “Attitudes of Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans toward Gay and Lesbian Service Members,” Armed Forces & Society Vol. 36, no. 3 (April 2010)

Schaub, Gary Jr. (2010). "Unit Cohesion and the Impact of DADT" Strategic Studies Quarterly Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall 2010), pages 85–101

Zylbergold,Bonnie (2007). ">"The Key to Enlightenment: Semper-fi, a documentary about ex-marine Jeff Key, showcased at Frameline31", American Sexuality Magazine

External links

– National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994

Text of Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010

Category:1990s in LGBT history Category:1993 in military history Category:American political slogans Category:Clinton administration controversies Category:Clinton Administration initiatives Category:Discrimination in the United States Category:LGBT rights in the United States Category:Secrecy Category:Sexual orientation and the United States military Category:United States federal civil rights legislation Category:United States federal defense and national security legislation Category:United States military law Category:1993 in law Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:Homophobia

de:Don’t ask, don’t tell es:Don't ask, don't tell fa:نپرس، نگو fr:Don't ask, don't tell gl:Don't ask, don't tell it:Don't ask, don't tell he:אל תשאל, אל תספר nl:Don't ask, don't tell no:Don't ask, don't tell pl:Don't ask, don't tell pt:Don't ask, don't tell ru:Не спрашивай, не говори sr:Не питај, не причај sh:Don't ask, don't tell sv:Don't ask, don't tell th:ห้ามถาม ห้ามบอก vi:Không hỏi, không nói zh:不问，不说

Name	Shania Twain
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Eilleen Regina Edwards
Alias	Eilleen Twain (1967–1992)
Birth date	August 28, 1965
Birth place	Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Genre	Country, country Pop
Years active	1993–present
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, television personality
Label	Mercury Nashville
Website	www.shaniatwain.com }}

Shania Twain, OC (; born Eilleen Regina Edwards; August 28, 1965) is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. Her album The Woman in Me (1995), brought her fame and her 1997 album Come On Over, became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time. It has sold over 40 million copies worldwide and is the 9th best-selling album in the U.S. Her 4th album, titled Up! was released late 2002. To date it has sold 20 million copies worldwide.

Twain has won five Grammy Awards and 27 BMI Songwriter awards. She has had three albums certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and is the second best-selling artist in Canada, behind fellow Canadian Céline Dion, with three of her studio albums certified double diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Sometimes referred to as "The First Lady of Country Music", Twain has sold over 75 million albums worldwide and is ranked 10th best-selling artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era. She was also ranked 72nd on Billboard's "Artists of the decade" (2000–10). Most recently, Twain has her own TV series, Why Not? with Shania Twain, that premiered on the OWN on May 8, 2011. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 2, 2011.

Early years

Shania Twain was born Eilleen Regina Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, daughter of Sharon (née Morrison) and Clarence Edwards. Her parents divorced when she was two and her mother then moved to Timmins, Ontario with Eilleen and her sisters Jill and Carrie Ann. Sharon married Jerry Twain, an Ojibwa, and they had a son together, Mark. Jerry adopted the girls, legally changing their last name to Twain. When Mark was still in diapers, the Twains adopted Jerry's baby nephew, Darryl, after Darryl's mother passed away. Because of her connection to her stepfather, in the past, people had presumed Twain's ancestry was Ojibwa, but she stated in an interview that her biological father was part Cree. Through her maternal grandfather, she is a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier. Her maternal grandmother, Eileen Pearce, emigrated from Newbridge, Kildare, Ireland.

Eilleen Twain had a hard childhood in Timmins. Her parents earned little and there was often a shortage of food in the household. Eilleen did not confide her situation to school authorities, fearing they might break up the family. In the remote, rugged community, she learned to hunt and to chop wood. Sharon and Jerry's marriage was at times stormy, and from a young age, Eilleen witnessed violent fights between them. Sharon struggled with bouts of depression. In the summer of 1979, while Jerry was at work, at Eilleen's insistence, her mother drove the rest of the family south to a Toronto homeless shelter for assistance. Sharon returned to Jerry with the children in 1981. In Timmins, Twain started singing at bars at the age of eight to try to make ends meet, often earning twenty dollars between midnight and one in the morning performing for remaining customers after the bar had finished serving. Although she expressed a dislike for singing in those bars, Twain believes that this was her own kind of performing arts school on the road. She has said of the ordeal, "My deepest passion was music and it helped. There were moments when I thought 'I hate this'. I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived". Twain wrote her first songs at the age of ten, Is Love a Rose and Just Like the Storybooks which were fairy tales in rhyme. She states that the art of creating, of actually writing songs, "was very different from performing them and became progressively important".

In the early 1980s, Twain spent some time working with her father's reforestation business in northern Ontario, a business that employed some 75 Ojibwe and Cree workers. Although the work was demanding and the pay low, Twain said "I loved the feeling of being stranded. I'm not afraid of being in my own environment, being physical, working hard. I was very strong, I walked miles and miles every day and carried heavy loads of trees. You can't shampoo, use soap or deodorant, or makeup, nothing with any scent; you have to bathe and rinse your clothes in the lake. It was a very rugged existence, but I was very creative and I would sit alone in the forest with my dog and a guitar and would just write songs".

Music career

Career as Eilleen Twain

At 13, Eilleen was invited to perform on CBC television's the Tommy Hunter Show. While attending Timmins High and Vocational School in Timmins, she was also the singer for a local band called "Longshot" which covered Top 40 music.

After graduating from Timmins High in June 1983, Twain was eager to expand her musical horizons. After the demise of the band Longshot, Twain was approached by a cover band led by Diane Chase called "Flirt" and they toured all over Ontario. Twain also began taking singing lessons from Toronto-based coach Ian Garrett and would often clean his house in payment for her lessons. In the autumn of 1984, Twain's talents were noticed by Toronto DJ Stan Campbell who wrote about her in a Country Music News article: "Eilleen possesses a powerful voice with an impressive range. She has the necessary drive, ambition and positive attitude to achieve her goals". Campbell happened to be making an album by Canadian musician (and present-day CKTB radio personality) Tim Denis at the time and Twain was featured on the backing vocals of the song Heavy on the Sunshine. Campbell later took Twain to Nashville to record some demos, which Twain found particularly difficult to finance. She became acquainted with regional country singer Mary Bailey who had had some country chart success in 1976. Bailey had seen Twain perform in Sudbury, Ontario, saying "I saw this little girl up on stage with a guitar and it absolutely blew me away. She performed Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". Her voice reminded me of Tanya Tucker, it had strength and character, a lot of feeling. She's a star, she deserves an opportunity". Bailey later said "She sang a few songs that she had written, and I thought to myself, this kid is like nineteen years old, where does she get this? This is from a person who's lived sixty years". thumb|right|Lake Kenogami where Twain spent much time practicing in 1985. Bailey acquired the contract from Stan Campbell and Twain moved into Bailey's home on Lake Kenogami where she practiced her music every day for hours. In the fall of 1985, Bailey took Twain down to Nashville to stay with a friend, record producer Tony Migliore, who at the time was producing an album for fellow Canadian singer Kelita Haverland and Twain was featured on the backing vocals to the song Too Hot to Handle. She also demo-ed songs with Cyril Rawson but the demos were without success, partly due to Twain's wish to become a rock singer, not a country artist. After five months she returned to Canada and moved in with Bailey in a flat in downtown Kirkland Lake. There she met rock keyboardist Eric Lambier and drummer Randy Yurko and formed a new band, moving three months later to Bowmanville, near Toronto. In late summer 1986 Mary Bailey arranged for Twain to meet John Kim Bell, a half Mohawk, half American conductor who had close contacts with the directors of the Canadian Country Music Association. Bell recognized Twain's ability as well as her looks and the two began secretly dating. In the fall of 1986 Twain continued to express her desire to be a pop or rock singer rather than country, which led to her falling out with Mary Bailey for two years. Twain's first break finally came on February 8, 1987, when Bell staged a fundraiser for the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto where Twain performed with Broadway star Bernadette Peters, jazz guitarist Don Ross, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Her performance received little acclaim, but it convinced Bell, who hated pop music, that Twain should stay well away from it and concentrate on country music.

On November 1, 1987, Twain's mother and stepfather died in a car accident approximately 50 kilometres north of Wawa, Ontario. As a result Twain moved back to Timmins to take care of her younger siblings and then took them all to Huntsville, Ontario. There, she supported them by earning money performing at the nearby Deerhurst Resort.

1993–1994: Shania Twain

A couple of years passed and Twain's siblings got older and moved out on their own. Twain assembled a demo tape of her songs and her Huntsville manager set up a showcase for Twain to present her material to record executives. She caught the attention of a few labels, including Mercury Nashville Records, who signed her within a few months. During this time, she changed her name to Shania, an Ojibwa word which means "on my way".

Twain's self-titled debut album was released in 1993 in North America and garnered her audiences outside of Canada. The album only reached No.67 on the US Country Albums Chart, but it gained positive reviews from critics. The album failed to sell significant copies initially, although Twain's future success generated enough interest for the album to be certified platinum six years later by the RIAA, denoting sales of over a million. The album yielded two minor hit singles in the United States with "What Made You Say That" and "Dance with the One That Brought You". The album was more successful in Europe, where Twain won Country Music Television Europe's "Rising Video Star of the Year" award.

1995–1996: The Woman in Me and her breakthrough

When rock producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange heard Twain's original songs and singing from her debut album, he offered to produce and write songs with her. After many telephone conversations, they met at Nashville's Fan Fair in June 1993. Twain and Lange became very close within just weeks. Lange and Twain either wrote or co-wrote the songs that would form her second studio album, The Woman in Me. Ironically all the songs selected for The Woman in Me were rejected by Mercury Records for her first album. Record executives were stunned when they listened to the album. It was unlike anything else in country music.

The Woman in Me was released in the spring of 1995. The album's first single, "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" went to No.11 on the Billboard Country Chart. This was followed by her first Top 10 and No.1 hit single, "Any Man of Mine". Twain had further hits from the album, including the title track which peaked at No.14 and three additional No.1 hits: "(If You're Not in it for Love) I'm Outta Here!", "You Win My Love", and "No One Needs to Know". As of 2007, it had sold more than 12 million copies. The album was a quick breakthrough. Twain performed selected international venues and television shows with Nashville guitarist Randy Thomas (co-writer of the song "Butterfly Kisses") and Stanley T., formerly with the Beach Boys. Mercury Record's promotion of the album was based largely upon a series of sexy music videos.

The Woman in Me won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album as well as the Academy of Country Music award for Album of the Year; the latter group also awarded Twain as Best New Female Vocalist.

Worldwide success

1997–2001: Come On Over

In 1997, Twain released her follow-up album, Come On Over. This was the album that would establish her as a successful crossover singer. Slowly, the album started racking up sales. It never hit the top spot, but with the multi-chart hit single "You're Still the One", sales skyrocketed. Other songs like "Don't Be Stupid", "You've Got A Way", "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!", "That Don't Impress Me Much" and "From This Moment On" joined the 12 songs that eventually saw release as singles. "From This Moment On" is a duet with singer Bryan White and there was even a pop version as well.

The album stayed on the charts for the next two years, going on to sell 40 million copies worldwide, making it the biggest-selling album of all time by a female musician. It is also the eighth biggest-selling album by any type of artist in the US and the top selling country album in history. Songs from the album won four Grammy Awards during this time, including Best Country Song and Best Female Country Performance (for "You're Still the One" and "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!") for Twain. Lange won Grammys for "You're Still the One" and "Come on Over".

Despite the album's record sales it wasn't able to top the Billboard 200, peaking at #2. In 1999, the Come on Over album was remixed for the European market as a pop album with less country instrumentation and actually gave her the big breakthrough in Europe she and her producer husband (Robert John "Mutt" Lange) were looking for. Come on Over went to number 1 on the UK album charts for 11 weeks. It became the biggest selling album of the year in Great Britain and a bestseller in other big European markets as well, selling more than one million copies in Germany and nearly 4 million in the UK alone. The songs that had finally drawn European attention to the album were the pop remixed singles "That Don't Impress Me Much", a No.3 in the UK and Top 10 hit in Germany in the summer of 1999, and "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" which peaked at No.3 in both the UK and France in autumn of that year. Additionally, the album set the record for the longest ever stay in the Top 20 of the Billboard 200, remaining in the Top 20 for 99 weeks.

Twain's mainstream pop acceptance was further helped by her appearance in the 1998 first edition of the VH1 Divas concert where she sang alongside Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan and Aretha Franklin, and also by VH1's 1999 heavily aired Behind the Music, which concentrated on the tragic aspects of her early life as well as her physical attractiveness and Nashville's early resistance to her bare-midriff music videos.

In 1998, Twain launched her first major concert tour, aided by her manager Jon Landau, a veteran of many large-scale tours with Bruce Springsteen. The Come on Over Tour shows were enthusiastically received by audiences around the globe and answered critics who previously speculated that she could not perform live.

In 2000, Twain was initially scheduled to release a Christmas album, but plans to release one were cancelled later in the year.

Following the success of Come On Over, independent label Limelight Records released The Complete Limelight Sessions in October 2001. The album includes 16 tracks recorded in the late 1980s before Twain signed her record deal with Mercury.

2002–2004: Up!

After a change in management – QPrime replaced Landau — and a two year break, Twain and Lange returned to the studio. Up! was released on November 19, 2002. About a year later, Twain kicked off the Up! Tour in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on September 25, 2003.

Up! was released with three different discs – country/acoustic (green CD), pop/rock (red CD), and world/dance (blue CD). Up! was given four out of five stars by Rolling Stone magazine, and debuted at No.1 on the Billboard albums chart, selling 874,000 in the first week alone. It remained at the top of the charts for five weeks. Up! reached No.1 in Germany, No.2 in Australia and the Top Five in the UK and France. In Germany, Up! was certified 4x platinum and stayed in the Top 100 for one and a half years.

The international music disc was remixed with Indian-style orchestral and percussion parts recorded in Mumbai, India. The new versions were produced by Simon and Diamond Duggal, brothers from Birmingham, England. They were originally invited to contribute parts to the pop version of "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" which retained the Indian influence.

Twain's popularity in UK was reflected by numerous appearances on the long-running music show Top of the Pops, performing singles from Come on Over from 1999. In 2002 an entire special show was dedicated to her on sister show TOTP2, in which Twain herself introduced some past performances of her greatest hits and new singles from Up!

The first single from the album, "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" became a top 10 country hit in the US, after debuting at an impressive No.24 after only five days of airplay; but only made the Top 40 on the pop charts. It was a much bigger hit on the other side of the Atlantic, released in a pop version, the single hit No.4 in the UK. In Australia, Germany and France the song reached the Top 15 in each case. The follow-up single "Up!" reached the Top 15 in the US country charts but failed to reach the pop Top 40.

The second European single became the mid-tempo song "Ka-Ching!" (which was never released as a single in North America) with lyrics where Twain was criticizing unchecked consumerism. The song eventually became another smash hit in the important European markets, reaching No.1 in Germany and Austria and other European countries, the UK Top 10 and the Top 15 in France. The third single from the album would be the most successful in the US. The romantic ballad "Forever and For Always" was released as a single in April 2003 and peaked at No.4 on the country chart and No.1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and made as well the Billboard Top 20. Again success was even bigger on the other side of the Atlantic with "Forever and For Always" again reaching the Top 10 in both, the UK and Germany. Further singles were "She's Not Just a Pretty Face" a country Top 10 hit, while the last US single, "It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing", made the Top 20 on both Country and AC.

Due to the enormous European success of Up! and its first three singles, two more singles were released in the second half of 2003 with up-tempo "Thank You Baby" (#11 in the UK, Top 20 in Germany) and just before Christmas the romantic, acoustic ballad "When You Kiss Me", at least a minor hit in both territories. The title track "Up!" also saw a single release in a limited edition of European countries, such as Germany, in early 2004. In January 2008, Up! had sold 5.5 million copies in the U.S. and was certified by the RIAA as 11x platinum (the organization counts double albums as two units).

In 2003, Twain participated in the Dolly Parton tribute album Just Because I'm a Woman, covering Parton's classic "Coat of Many Colors", with backing vocals by Alison Krauss. The cover peaked at No.57 on the Hot Country Songs charts as an album cut. During the Super Bowl XXXVII halftime show Twain performed two songs, "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" and "Up!"

2004–2005: Greatest Hits

In 2004, she released the Greatest Hits album, with three new tracks. As of 2008, it has sold over four million copies in the U.S. The first single, the multi-format duet "Party for Two", made the country top ten with Billy Currington, while the pop version with Sugar Ray lead singer Mark McGrath made top ten in the United Kingdom and Germany. The follow-up singles, "Don't!" and "I Ain't No Quitter" did not fare as well. The former made Top 20 on Adult Contemporary, while the latter did not gain enough airplay to crack the Country Top 40.

In August 2005, she released the single "Shoes" from the Desperate Housewives soundtrack.

2006- present

At the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas on May 16, 2007, Twain said she was currently writing songs for a new album, and was doing a "lot of soul searching" and "indulging in the writing."

Twain joined Canadian singer Anne Murray on the song "You Needed Me" on Murray's Anne Murray Duets: Friends and Legends album released November 13, 2007 in Canada, and on January 15, 2008 in the U.S. On November 12, 2008 Twain made her first television appearance since her split from ex-husband Robert "Mutt" Lange, where she appeared as a surprise presenter at the 42nd CMA Awards.

In early January 2009, Internet forums were reporting that Twain was planning to make an announcement regarding her new album on January 26, 2009 but on the 22nd a spokesperson from Mercury Nashville told Country Weekly that no new album would be coming "anytime soon".

In June 2009, Twain released a letter to her fans explaining the delays in the release of her next album. In August 2009, at a conference in Timmins, Ontario, a spokesman for Twain's label said a new record from the singer is still "nowhere in sight". On August 17, 2009, EW announced that Twain would be a guest judge on American Idol in Chicago, for the show's August 30 and 31 episodes. On January 1, 2010, Twain carried the Olympic Torch through her hometown as part of the 2010 Winter Olympics torch relay.

Why Not? with Shania Twain; new album

In April 2010, Twain announced plans for her own TV show, entitled Why Not? with Shania Twain. The show debuted on May 8, 2011 on OWN. Twain returned to American Idol as a guest mentor for a week where the top 6 contestants showcased her songs. After the conclusion of the ninth season Twain was very close to becoming a judge but ultimately it was Jennifer Lopez who got the job.

More recently, in September 2010, it was confirmed that Twain was to release her first biography, From This Moment On, on May 3, 2011, and the cover work for the book was released on March 2, 2011.

On March 27, 2011, Twain was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Following her appearance, she revealed that she is writing music and that new music will be heard soon.

In May 2011, Twain confirmed in an interview with Perez Hilton that she will release her first new single in six years, "Today Is Your Day", after the finale of Why Not? with Shania Twain. Twain previewed the song in the first episode of the series. Twain worked with music producers David Foster and Nathan Chapman on the new song. In the next few months, Twain plans to return to the studio to finish her fifth studio album. "Today Is Your Day" was officially released to iTunes and country radio on June 12, 2011.

On June 8, 2011, at a press conference at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Twain announced that she will headline Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas for two years. Her show, titled Still the One, will begin on December 1, 2012.

In July 2011, fellow Canadian superstar Michael Bublé confirmed in a live video chat with fans that he recorded a duet of 'White Christmas' with Twain for his 2011 Christmas album.

Endorsements and other ventures

Twain's commercial ventures outside the music industry included a series of cosmetic ads in 1999 based on "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" for Revlon. She also starred in ads for Candie's shoes and Gitano jeans, who also sponsored her 1998–1999 Come On Over Tour.

In January 2005, Twain joined Scentstories by Febreze to create a limited edition scent disc with the proceeds going to America's Second Harvest.

Late in 2005, Twain partnered COTY to produce her namesake fragrance "Shania" by Stetson. A second fragrance was released in September 2007, called "Shania Starlight".

Personal life

Twain married music producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange on December 28, 1993, and they have a son, Eja (pronounced "Asia") D'Angelo who was born on August 12, 2001. On May 15, 2008, a spokesperson for Mercury Nashville announced that Twain and Lange were separating after Lange had an affair with Twain's best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud. Their divorce was finalized on June 9, 2010. On December 20, 2010, Twain's manager confirmed that Twain was engaged to Swiss business executive Frederic Thiebaud, the ex-husband of Marie-Anne Thiebaud. They married on January 1, 2011 in Rincón, Puerto Rico.

Twain practices Sant Mat, which calls for daily meditation and vegetarianism.

Awards and honours

In addition to her various awards for her singles and albums, Twain has received a number of personal honours:

She was named the 1999 Entertainer of the Year by both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association; Twain was the first non-US citizen to win the CMA award.

Twain was ranked No.7 in Country Music Television's 40 Greatest Women of Country Music in 2002. In 2003, Twain was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. The city of Timmins (located in Ontario, Canada) renamed a street for her, gave her the key to the city, and built the Shania Twain Centre in her honour. On November 18, 2005, Twain was invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada. Twain was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the Juno Awards on March 27, 2011. On June 2, 2011, Twain received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her star is the 2,442nd Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the Category of Recording.

Discography

;Albums

1993: Shania Twain

1995: The Woman in Me

1997: Come On Over

2002: Up!

;Compilations

2001: The Complete Limelight Sessions

2004: Greatest Hits

See also

Music of Canada

List of best-selling music artists

References

Further reading

External links

Shania Twain official website

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:Canadian contraltos Category:Canadian country singer-songwriters Category:Canadian expatriates in New Zealand Category:Canadian expatriates in Switzerland Category:Canadian pop singers Category:Canadian vegetarians Category:Canadian people of English descent Category:Canadian people of First Nations descent Category:Canadian people of Irish descent Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Juno Award winners Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Musicians from Ontario Category:Officers of the Order of Canada Category:People from Timmins Category:People from Windsor, Ontario Category:World Music Awards winners Category:Canadian people of French descent

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Name	Elvis Presley
Alt	A young man dancing, swiveling his hips. He has dark hair, short and slicked up a bit. He wears an unbuttoned band-collared jacket over a shirt with bold black-and-white horizontal stripes. Behind him, on either side, are a pair of barred frames, like prison doors.
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Elvis Aaron Presley
Birth date	January 08, 1935
Birth place
Death date	August 16, 1977
Death place
Genre	Rock and roll, pop, rockabilly, country, blues, gospel, R&B;
Associated acts	The Blue Moon Boys, The Jordanaires, The Imperials
Occupation	Musician, actor
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano
Years active	1953–77
Label	Sun, RCA Victor
Website	}}

Elvis Aaron Presley (, 1935 , 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13. He began his career there in 1954 when Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, eager to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience, saw in Presley the means to realize his ambition. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was one of the originators of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number one hit. He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.

Conscripted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He staged few concerts, however, and, guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood movies and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, after seven years away from the stage, he returned to live performance in a celebrated comeback television special that led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of profitable tours. In 1973, Presley staged the first concert broadcast globally via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii, seen by approximately 1.5 billion viewers. Prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at the age of 42.

Presley is regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century popular culture. He had a versatile voice and unusually wide success encompassing many genres, including country, pop ballads, gospel, and blues. He is the best-selling solo artist in the history of popular music. Nominated for 14 competitive Grammys, he won three, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36. He has been inducted into four music halls of fame.

Life and career

Early years (1935–53)

Childhood in Tupelo

Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to 18-year-old Vernon Elvis and 22-year-old Gladys Love Presley. In the two-room shotgun house built by his father in readiness for the birth, Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn. As an only child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an unusually tight bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church where he found his initial musical inspiration.

Presley's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix: On his mother's side, he was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman; one of Gladys's great-great-grandmothers was Cherokee. His father's forebears were of Scottish or German origin. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family. Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evidencing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by the landowner. He was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average". He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley's country song "Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, saw his first public performance: dressed as a cowboy, the ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received for his birthday his first guitar. He had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. 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."

Entering a new school, Milam, for sixth grade in September 1946, Presley was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar in on a daily basis. He would play and sing during lunchtime, and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played hillbilly music. The family was by then living in a largely African American neighborhood. A devotee of Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station WELO, Presley was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, a classmate of Presley's, who often took him in to the station. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar tuition by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was 12 years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.

Teenage life in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the public housing complex known as the Courts. Enrolled at Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me", in an effort to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher "agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn't appreciate his kind of singing." He was generally too shy to perform openly, and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy". In 1950, he began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Jesse Lee Denson, a neighbor two-and-a-half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, he began ushering at Loew's State Theater. Other jobs followed during his school years: Precision Tool, Loew's again, and MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew out his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. On his own time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing them. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Courts, he competed in Humes's Annual "Minstrel" show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with "Till I Waltz Again with You", a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: "I wasn't popular in school ... I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show ... when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, 'cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became after that."

Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and played by ear. He 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, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills. 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, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations 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 knew Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.

First recordings (1953–55)

Sam Phillips and Sun Records

In August 1953, Presley walked into the offices of Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". He would later claim he intended the record as a gift for his mother, or was merely interested in what he "sounded like", though there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer Peter Guralnick argues that he chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, "I sing all kinds." When she pressed him on whom he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, "I don't sound like nobody." After he recorded, Sun boss Sam Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man's name, which she did along with her own commentary: "Good ballad singer. Hold." Presley cut a second acetate in January 1954—"I'll Never Stand In Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You"—but again nothing came of it.

Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows. He explained to his father, "They told me I couldn't sing." Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver. His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he 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."

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused to a broader audience. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'" In June, he acquired a demo recording of a ballad, "Without You", that he thought might suit the teenaged singer. Presley came by the studio, but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session. }} The session, held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the last two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended in order to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed he was black. During the next few days the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.

Early live performances and signing to RCA

The trio played publicly for the first time on July 17 at the Bon Air club—Presley still sporting his child-size guitar. At the end of the month, they appeared at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming. Moore recalled, "During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild". Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as "really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something". Soon after, Moore and Black quit their old band to play with Presley regularly, and DJ and promoter Bob Neal became the trio's manager. From August through October, they played frequently at the Eagle's Nest club and returned to Sun Studio for more recording sessions, and Presley quickly grew more confident on stage. According to Moore, "His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He'd do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick." Presley made what would be his only appearance on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry on October 2; after a polite audience response, Opry manager Jim Denny told Phillips that his singer was "not bad" but did not suit the program. Two weeks later, Presley was booked on Louisiana Hayride, the Oprys chief, and more adventurous, rival. The Shreveport-based show was broadcast to 198 radio stations in 28 states. Presley had another attack of nerves during the first set, which drew a muted reaction. A more composed and energetic second set inspired an enthusiastic response. House drummer D.J. Fontana brought a new element, complementing Presley's movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs. Soon after the show, the Hayride engaged Presley for a year's worth of Saturday-night appearances. Trading in his old guitar for $8 (and seeing it promptly dispatched to the garbage), he purchased a Martin instrument for $175, and his trio began playing in new locales including Houston, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas.

By early 1955, Presley's regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a substantial regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought the singer to the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—Dutch-born, though he claimed to be from West Virginia—had acquired an honorary colonel's commission from country singer turned Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. Having successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold, he was now working with the new number one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow's February tour. When the tour reached Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. ... I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it." Presley made his television debut on March 3 on the KSLA-TV broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Soon after, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on the CBS television network. By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill"; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like "That's All Right", were in what one Memphis journalist described as the "R&B; idiom of negro field jazz"; others, like "Blue Moon of Kentucky", were "more in the country field", "but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both". This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley's music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country music disc jockeys would not play it because he sounded too much like a black artist and none of the rhythm and blues stations would touch him because "he sounded too much like a hillbilly." The blend came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".

Presley renewed Neal's management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, "It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we'd have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody'd always try to take a crack at him. They'd get a gang and try to waylay him or something." The trio became a quartet when Hayride drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose "Rock Around the Clock" had been a number one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.

At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year's most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000. Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract. Parker arranged with the owners of Hill and Range Publishing, Jean and Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all of the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forego one third of their customary royalties in exchange for having him perform their compositions. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.

Commercial breakout and controversy (1956–58)

First national TV appearances and debut album

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending the singer's by now customary backup of Moore, Black, and Fontana, RCA enlisted pianist Floyd Cramer, guitarist Chet Atkins, and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill out the sound. The session produced the moody, unusual "Heartbreak Hotel", released as a single on January 27. Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS's Stage Show for six appearances over two months. The program, produced in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. After his first appearance, on January 28, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA's New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins' rockabilly anthem "Blue Suede Shoes". In February, Presley's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart. Neal's contract was terminated and, on March 2, Parker became Presley's manager. RCA Victor released Presley's self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the evolving sound of rock and roll: "Blue Suede Shoes"—"an improvement over Perkins' in almost every way", according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B; numbers that had been part of Presley's stage repertoire for some time, covers of Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these "were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists ... who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B; versions of songs in the '50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases." It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks. While Presley was not an innovative instrumentalist like Moore or contemporary African American rockers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argues that the album's cover image, "of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar...as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music."

Milton Berle Show and "Hound Dog"

Presley made the first of two appearances on NBC's Milton Berle Show on April 3. His performance, on the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, prompted cheers and screams from an audience of sailors and their dates. A few days later, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when an engine died and the plane almost went down over Arkansas. Twelve weeks after its original release, "Heartbreak Hotel" became Presley's first number one pop hit. In late April, Presley began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The shows were poorly received by the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests—"like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party", wrote a critic for Newsweek. Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, taking in 15 cities in as many days. He had attended several shows by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Vegas, and was struck by their cover of "Hound Dog", a hit in 1952 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became the new closing number of his act. After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message on the letterhead of the local Catholic diocese's newspaper was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that "Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. ... [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. ... After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley's room at the auditorium. ... Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls ... whose abdomen and thigh had Presley's autograph."

The second Milton Berle Show appearance came on June 5 at NBC's Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour. Berle persuaded the singer to leave his guitar backstage, advising, "Let 'em see you, son." During the performance, Presley abruptly halted an uptempo rendition of "Hound Dog" with a wave of his arm and launched into a slow, grinding version accentuated with energetic, exaggerated body movements. Presley's gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. ... His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. ... His one specialty is an accented movement of the body ... primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway." Ben Gross of the New York Daily News opined that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley. ... Elvis, who rotates his pelvis ... gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos". Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation's most popular, declared him "unfit for family viewing". To Presley's displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as "Elvis the Pelvis", which he called "one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin' from an adult."

Steve Allen Show and first Sullivan appearance

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC's Steve Allen Show in New York. Allen, no fan of rock and roll, introduced a "new Elvis" in a white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang "Hound Dog" for less than a minute to a basset hound wearing a top hat and bow tie. As described by television historian Jake Austen, "Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd... [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition". Allen, for his part, later wrote that he found Presley's "strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing" and simply worked the singer into the customary "comedy fabric" of his program. Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. Later that night, he appeared on Hy Gardner Calling, a popular local TV show. Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, "No, I haven't, I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong. ... I don't see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it's only music. ... I mean, how would rock 'n' roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?"

The next day, Presley recorded "Hound Dog", along with "Any Way You Want Me" and "Don't Be Cruel". The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, the singer made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis at which he announced, "You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight." In August, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, ordered Presley to tame his act. Throughout the following performance, he largely kept still, except for wiggling his little finger suggestively in mockery of the order. The single pairing "Don't Be Cruel" with "Hound Dog" ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley's second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Leiber and Stoller, the writers of "Hound Dog", contributed "Love Me".

Allen's show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS's Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings. Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked the singer for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience. Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan recuperated from a car accident. Presley appeared in two segments that night from CBS Television City in Hollywood. According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Watching clips of the Allen and Berle shows with his producer, Sullivan had opined that Presley "got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants–so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. ... I think it's a Coke bottle. ... We just can't have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!" Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, "As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots." In fact, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style: screaming. Presley's performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad "Love Me Tender", prompted a record-shattering million advance orders. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.

Accompanying Presley's rise to fame, a cultural shift was taking place that he both helped inspire and came to symbolize. Igniting the "biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra ... Presley brought rock'n'roll into the mainstream of popular culture", writes historian Marty Jezer. "As Presley set the artistic pace, other artists followed. ... Presley, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture."

Crazed crowds and movie debut

The audience response at Presley's live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, "He'd start out, 'You ain't nothin' but a Hound Dog,' and they'd just go to pieces. They'd always react the same way. There'd be a riot every time." At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, 50 National Guardsmen were added to the police security to prevent crowd trouble. Elvis, Presley's second album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one. Assessing the musical and cultural impact of Presley's recordings from "That's All Right" through Elvis, rock critic Dave Marsh wrote that "these records, more than any others, contain the seeds of what rock & roll was, has been and most likely what it may foreseeably become."

Presley returned to the Sullivan show, hosted this time by its namesake, on October 28. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy. His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21. Though he was not top billed, the film's original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on his latest number one record: "Love Me Tender" had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. To further take advantage of Presley's popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The movie was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office. Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and jammed with them. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley material, he made sure the session was captured on tape. The results became legendary as the "Million Dollar Quartet" recordings—Johnny Cash was long thought to have played as well, but he was present only briefly at Phillips' instigation for a photo opportunity. The year ended with a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Presley merchandise had brought in $22 million on top of his record sales, and Billboards declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted. In his first full year on RCA, one of the music industry's largest companies, Presley had accounted for over 50 percent of the label's singles sales.

Leiber and Stoller collaboration and draft notice

Presley made his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance on January 6, 1957—on this occasion indeed shot only down to the waist. Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity. In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley "did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, with all stops out." To close, displaying his range and defying Sullivan's wishes, Presley sang a gentle black spiritual, "Peace in the Valley". At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley "a real decent, fine boy". Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1A and would probably be drafted sometime that year. Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: "Too Much", "All Shook Up", and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear". Already an international star, he was attracting fans even where his music was not officially released. Under the headline "Presley Records a Craze in Soviet", The New York Times reported that pressings of his music on discarded X-ray plates were commanding high prices in Leningrad. Between film shoots and recording sessions, the singer also found time to purchase an 18-room mansion eight miles (13 km) south of downtown Memphis for himself and his parents: Graceland. Loving You—the soundtrack to his second film, released in July—was Presley's third straight number one album. The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were then retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for Jailhouse Rock, Presley's next movie. The songwriting team effectively produced the Jailhouse sessions and developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his "good-luck charm". The title track was yet another number one hit, as was the Jailhouse Rock EP.

Presley undertook three brief tours during the year, continuing to generate a crazed audience response. A Detroit newspaper suggested that "the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you're liable to get killed." Villanova students pelted him with eggs in Philadelphia, and in Vancouver, the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage. Frank Sinatra, who had famously inspired the swooning of teenaged girls in the 1940s, condemned the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article, he decried rock and roll as "brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious. ... It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. ... This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore." Asked for a response, Presley said, "I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it. ... This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago."

Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis' Christmas Album. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley's request: "Santa Claus Is Back In Town", an innuendo-laden blues. The holiday release stretched Presley's string of number one albums to four and would eventually become the best selling Christmas album of all time. After the session, Moore and Black—drawing only modest weekly salaries, sharing in none of Presley's massive financial success—resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks later, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley's inner circle for some time. On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment to finish the forthcoming King Creole, in which $350,000 had already been invested by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis. A couple of weeks into the new year, "Don't", another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presley's tenth number one seller. It had been only 21 months since "Heartbreak Hotel" had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood mid-January. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be the last time they worked closely with Presley. A studio session on February 1 marked another ending: it was the final occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley. He died in 1965.

Military service and mother's death (1958–60)

On March 24, Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army as a private at Fort Chaffee, near Fort Smith, Arkansas. Captain Arlie Metheny, the information officer, was unprepared for the media attention drawn by the singer's arrival. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus; photographers then accompanied him into the base. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military stint, saying he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: "The Army can do anything it wants with me." Later, at Fort Hood, Texas, Lieutenant Colonel Marjorie Schulten gave the media carte blanche for one day, after which she declared Presley off-limits to the press.

Soon after Presley had commenced basic training at Fort Hood, he received a visit from Eddie Fadal, a businessman he had met when on tour in Texas. Fadal reported that Presley had become convinced his career was finished—"He firmly believed that." During a two-week leave in early June, Presley cut five sides in Nashville. He returned to training, but in early August his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis and her condition worsened. Presley was granted emergency leave to visit her, arriving in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure, aged 46. Presley was devastated; their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

After training at Fort Hood, Presley joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1. Introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant while on maneuvers, he became "practically evangelical about their benefits"—not only for energy, but for "strength" and weight loss, as well—and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, later including it in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley's wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity while in the service. He donated his Army pay to charity, purchased TV sets for the base, and bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit.

While in Friedberg, Presley met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla says that despite his worries that it would ruin his career, Parker convinced Presley that to gain popular respect, he should serve his country as a regular soldier rather than in Special Services, where he would have been able to give some musical performances and remain in touch with the public. Media reports echoed Presley's concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year hiatus. Armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the best-selling "Hard Headed Woman", and "One Night" in 1958, and "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number one "A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959. RCA also managed to generate four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis' Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

Focus on movies (1960–67)

Elvis Is Back

}} Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant on March 5. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans. On the night of March 20, he entered RCA's Nashville studio to cut tracks for a new album along with a single—"Stuck on You" was rushed into release and swiftly became a number one hit. Another Nashville session two weeks later yielded a pair of his best-selling singles, the ballads "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", along with the rest of Elvis Is Back! The album features several songs described by Greil Marcus as full of Chicago blues "menace, driven by Presley's own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis's singing wasn't sexy, it was pornographic." As a whole, the record "conjured up the vision of a performer who could be all things", in the words of music historian John Robertson: "a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold; a tempestuous, dangerous lover; a gutbucket blues singer; a sophisticated nightclub entertainer; [a] raucous rocker". Released only days after recording was complete, it reached number two on the album chart.

Presley returned to television on May 12 as a guest on The Frank Sinatra Timex Special—ironic for both stars, given Sinatra's not-so-distant excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley's first film since his return, was a number one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later. It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in Great Britain, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, on behalf of 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records. A 12-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley's next studio album, Something for Everybody. As described by John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that would define country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley himself over the next half-decade, the album is largely "a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis's birthright." It would be his sixth number one LP. Another benefit concert, raising money for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25, in Hawaii. It was to be Presley's last public performance for seven years.

Lost in Hollywood

Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy moviemaking schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical comedies. Presley at first insisted on pursuing more serious roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein—Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961)—were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. Among the 27 movies he made during the 1960s, there were few further exceptions. His films were almost universally panned; one critic dismissed them as a "pantheon of bad taste". Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. Hal Wallis, who produced nine of them, declared, "A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood."

Of Presley's films in the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs. The movies' rapid production and release schedules—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: "three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie". As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse". Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that he hated many of the songs chosen for his films. The Jordanaires' Gordon Stoker describes how Presley would retreat from the studio microphone: "The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn't sing it." Most of the movie albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll." Regardless of the songs' quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment. Critic Dave Marsh heard the opposite: "Presley isn't trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like 'No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car' and 'Rock-a-Hula Baby.'"

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley's soundtrack albums hit number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and "Return to Sender" (1962). ("Viva Las Vegas", the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished. During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top ten hit: "Crying in the Chapel" (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-movie albums, between the June 1962 release of Pot Luck and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art (1967). It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was "arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs."

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic movies and assembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. "By then, of course, the damage had been done", as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. "Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans."

Comeback (1968–73)

Elvis: the '68 Comeback Special

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. His forthcoming soundtrack album, Speedway, would die at number 82 on the Billboard chart. Parker had already shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra Timex show in 1960. He maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a Christmas special.

Recorded in late June, 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 audience—Presley's first live performances since 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. Director and coproducer Steve Binder had worked hard to reassure the nervous singer and to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC's highest rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, "There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock 'n' roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy." Dave Marsh calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance."

By January 1969, the single "If I Can Dream", written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album broke into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man." Binder said of Presley's reaction, "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, 'Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in.'"

From Elvis In Memphis and the International

}} 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. As described by Dave Marsh, it is "a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement." The album featured the hit single "In the Ghetto", issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley's first non-gospel top ten hit since "Bossa Nova Baby" in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: "Suspicious Minds", "Don't Cry Daddy", and "Kentucky Rain".

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?" In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley. He was scheduled to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley assembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and Sweet Inspirations. Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal. Parker, who intended to make Presley's return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.

Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, "Can't Help Falling in Love" (a song that would be his closing number for much of the 1970s). At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as "The King", Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." The next day, Parker's negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million. Newsweek commented, "There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars." Rolling Stone called Presley "supernatural, his own resurrection." In November, Presley's final non-concert movie, Change of Habit, opened. The double album From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. "Suspicious Minds" reached the top of the charts—Presley's first U.S. pop number one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television's Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as showgirl. She recalls of their encounter, "He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, 'Don't ever do that again.'" Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

Back on tour and meeting Nixon

Presley returned to the International early in 1970 for the first of the year's two month-long engagements, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage. In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record–breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome. In April, the single "The Wonder of You" was issued—a number one hit in Great Britain, it topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, as well. MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August for the documentary Elvis: That's the Way It Is. Presley was by now performing in a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live act. During this engagement, he was threatened with murder unless $50,000 was paid. Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge. The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts went off without incident.

The album That's the Way It Is, produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson notes, "The authority of Presley's singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound. With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B; left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop—perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis." After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a bizarre meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and his contempt for the hippie drug culture. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was therefore important he "retain his credibility". Presley told Nixon that The Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture. (Presley and his friends had had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles five years earlier.) On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he "felt a bit betrayed. ... The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him", a reference to Presley's death, hastened by prescription drug abuse.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard". The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization. Three new, non-movie Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was Elvis Country, a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, "the truest statement of all", according to Greil Marcus. "In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of 'Merry Christmas, Baby,' a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. ... If [Presley's] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life".

Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year. His gospel album He Touched Me, released that month, would earn him his second Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance. A 14-date tour commenced with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in LP form a week later. Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden became one of Presley's biggest-selling albums. After the tour, the single "Burning Love" was released—Presley's last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart. "The most exciting single Elvis has made since 'All Shook Up'", wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. "Who else could make 'It's coming closer, the flames are now licking my body' sound like an assignation with James Brown's backup band?"

Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of her moving in to Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her. Priscilla relates that when she told him, Presley "grabbed ... and forcefully made love to" her, declaring, "This is how a real man makes love to his woman." Five months later, Presley's new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18.

In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. Aired as scheduled on January 14, Aloha from Hawaii was the first global concert satellite broadcast, reaching approximately 1.5 billion viewers live and on tape delay. Presley's costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely associated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, "At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure." The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States. It proved to be Presley's last U.S. number one pop album during his lifetime.

At a midnight show the same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security men leapt to Presley's defense, and the singer's karate instinct took over as he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, "There's too much pain in me ... Stone [must] die." His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, "Aw hell, let's just leave it for now. Maybe it's a bit heavy."

Health deterioration and death (1973–77)

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Presley's divorce took effect on October 9, 1973. He was now becoming increasingly unwell. Twice during the year he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. Toward the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semicomatose from the effects of Demerol addiction. According to his main physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley "felt that by getting [drugs] from a doctor, he wasn't the common everyday junkie getting something off the street." Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever. Despite his failing health, in 1974 he undertook another intensive touring schedule.

Presley's condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers the singer's arrival at a University of Maryland concert: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.' He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?" Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. ... I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions". Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, "I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, 'Boss, why don't you just cancel this tour and take a year off...?' I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, 'It'll be all right. Don't you worry about it.'" Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. As cultural critic Marjorie Garber describes, he was now widely seen as a garish pop crooner: "in effect he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers."

On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son's financial affairs—fired "Memphis Mafia" bodyguards Red West (Presley's friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to "cut back on expenses". Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggest the singer was too cowardly to face the three himself. Another associate of Presley's, John O'Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits. However, Presley's stepbrother David Stanley has claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley's drug dependency. Presley and Linda Thompson split in November, 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.

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974. Parker sold RCA on another concert record, Elvis: As Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. Recorded on March 20, it included a version of "How Great Thou Art" that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.) Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker's attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.

}} For all the concerns of his label and manager, in studio sessions between July 1973 and October 1976, Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977). The story was similar with his singles—there were no major pop hits, but Presley was a significant force in not just the country market, but on adult contemporary radio as well. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. "My Boy" was a number one AC hit in 1975, and "Moody Blue" topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the AC in 1976. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his "apocalyptic attack" on the soul classic "Hurt". "If he felt the way he sounded", Dave Marsh wrote of Presley's performance, "the wonder isn't that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long."

Final year and death

Journalist Tony Scherman writes that by early 1977, "Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts." In Alexandria, Louisiana, the singer was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand". Presley failed to appear in Baton Rouge; he was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and the rest of the tour was cancelled. Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most touring commitments. In Rapid City, South Dakota, "he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk", according to Presley historian Samuel Roy, and unable to "perform any significant movement." Guralnick relates that fans "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Elvis, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books." A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes. "Way Down", Presley's last single issued during his lifetime, came out on June 6. His final concert was held in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena, on June 26.

The book Elvis: What Happened?, cowritten by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley's years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers. By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments—glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated, and possibly caused, by drug abuse.

Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour. That afternoon, Alden discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having "permanently changed the face of American popular culture". Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley's cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirers biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few days, "Way Down" topped the country and UK pop charts. Following an attempt to steal the singer's body in late August, the remains of both Elvis Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland's Meditation Garden on October 2.

Since 1977

Between 1977 and 1981, six posthumously released singles by Presley were top ten country hits. Graceland was opened to the public in 1982. Attracting over half a million visitors annually, it is the second most-visited home in the United States, after the White House. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Presley has been inducted into four music halls of fame: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001), and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (2007). In 1984, he received the W. C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation and the Academy of Country Music's first Golden Hat Award. In 1987, he received the American Music Awards' Award of Merit.

A Junkie XL remix of Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" (credited as "Elvis Vs JXL") was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over 20 countries, and was included in a compilation of Presley's number one hits, ELV1S, that was also an international success. In 2003, a remix of "Rubberneckin'", a 1969 recording of Presley's, topped the U.S. sales chart, as did a 50th-anniversary re-release of "That's All Right" the following year. The latter was an outright hit in Great Britain, reaching number three on the pop chart.

In 2005, another three reissued singles, "Jailhouse Rock", "One Night"/"I Got Stung", and "It's Now or Never", went to number one in Great Britain. A total of 17 Presley singles were reissued during the year—all made the British top five. For the fifth straight year, Forbes named Presley the top-earning deceased celebrity, with a gross income of $45 million. He placed second in 2006,, returned to the top spot the next two years, and ranked fourth in 2009. The following year, he was second with his highest annual income ever, $60 million, spurred by the celebration of his 75th birthday and the launch of Cirque du Soleil's Viva Elvis show in Las Vegas. In November 2010, Viva Elvis: The Album was released, setting his voice to newly recorded instrumental tracks. As of mid-2011, there were an estimated 15,000 licensed Presley products.

Presley holds the records for most songs charting in Billboards top 40 and top 100: chart statistician Joel Whitburn calculates the respective totals as 104 and 151; Presley historian Adam Victor gives 114 and 138. Presley's rankings for top ten and number one hits vary depending on how the double-sided "Hound Dog/Don't Be Cruel" and "Don't/I Beg of You" singles, which precede the inception of Billboards unified Hot 100 chart, are analyzed. According to Whitburn, Presley holds the record for most top ten hits with 38; per Billboards current assessment, he ranks second with 36 behind Madonna's 37. Whitburn and Billboard concur that The Beatles hold the record for most number one hits with 20 and that Mariah Carey is second with 18. Whitburn has Presley also with 18 and thus tied for second; Billboard has him third with 17. Presley retains the record for cumulative weeks at number one: alone at 80, according to Whitburn and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; tied with Carey at 79, according to Billboard. He holds the records for most British number one hits, with 21, and top ten hits, with 76.

Musical style

Influences

Presley's earliest musical influence came from gospel. His mother recalled that from the age of two, at the Assembly of God church in Tupelo attended by the family, "he would slide down off my lap, run into the aisle and scramble up to the platform. There he would stand looking at the choir and trying to sing with them." In Memphis, Presley frequently attended all-night gospel singings at the Ellis Auditorium, where groups such as the Statesmen Quartet led the music in a style that, Guralnick suggests, sowed the seeds of Presley's future stage act: }} As a teenager, Presley's musical interests were wide-ranging, and he was deeply informed about African-American musical idioms as well as white ones (see "Teenage life in Memphis"). Though he never had any formal training, he was blessed with a remarkable memory, and his musical knowledge was already considerable by the time he made his first professional recordings in 1954 at the age of 19. When Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met him two years later, they were astonished at his encyclopedic understanding of the blues. At a press conference the following year, he proudly declared, "I know practically every religious song that's ever been written."

Genres

Music scholar Paul Friedlander describes the elements of the rockabilly style, which he characterizes as "essentially ... an Elvis Presley construction", that the singer and his band mates developed at Sun Records: "the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country". Moore's guitar solo in "That's All Right", the group's first record, "a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion."

At RCA, Presley's rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, more heavily amplified electric guitars and a tougher, more intense manner. While he was known for taking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he also recorded songs in other genres from early in his career, from the pop standard "Blue Moon" at Sun to the country ballad "How's the World Treating You?" on his second LP to the blues of "Santa Claus Is Back In Town". In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP Peace in the Valley. Certified as a million seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his life. }} After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but the characteristic style was substantially toned down. His first post-Army single, the number one hit "Stuck on You", is typical of this shift. RCA publicity materials referred to its "mild rock beat"; discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it "upbeat pop". The modern blues/R&B; sound captured so successfully on Elvis Is Back! was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966–67 recordings as "Down in the Alley" and "Hi-Heel Sneakers". The singer's output during most of the 1960s emphasized pop music, often in the form of ballads such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", a number one in 1960. While that was a dramatic number, most of what Presley recorded for his movie soundtracks was in a much lighter vein.

While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the '68 Comeback Special, the sound of the show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He would record few new straight-ahead rock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they were "hard to find". A significant exception was "Burning Love", his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley's subsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations. His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul and funk. Much of Elvis In Memphis, as well as "Suspicious Minds", cut at the same sessions, reflected his new rock and soul fusion. In the mid-1970s, many of his singles found a home on country radio, the field where he first became a star.

Vocal style and range

Music critic Henry Pleasants observes that "Elvis Presley has been described variously as a baritone and a tenor. An extraordinary compass ... and a very wide range of vocal color have something to do with this divergence of opinion." He identifies Presley as a high baritone, calculating his range as two octaves and a third, "from the baritone low G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension in falsetto to at least a D-flat. Presley's best octave is in the middle, D-flat to D-flat, granting an extra full step up or down." In Pleasants' view, his voice was "variable and unpredictable" at the bottom, "often brilliant" at the top, with the capacity for "full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritone might envy." Scholar Lindsay Waters, who figures Presley's range as two and a quarter octaves, emphasizes that "his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all." Presley was always "able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers," writes Pleasants, and also demonstrated a remarkable ability to assimilate many other vocal styles.

Questions over cause of death

"Drug use was heavily implicated" in Presley's death, writes Guralnick. "No one ruled out the possibility of anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills ... to which he was known to have had a mild allergy." A pair of lab reports filed two months later each strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; one reported "fourteen drugs in Elvis' system, ten in significant quantity." Forensic historian and pathologist Michael Baden views the situation as complicated: "Elvis had had an enlarged heart for a long time. That, together with his drug habit, caused his death. But he was difficult to diagnose; it was a judgment call."

The competence and ethics of two of the centrally involved medical professionals were seriously questioned. Before the autopsy was complete and toxicology results known, Medical Examiner Dr. Jerry Francisco declared the cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that can be determined only in someone who is still alive. Allegations of a cover-up were widespread. While Presley's main physician, Dr. Nichopoulos, was exonerated of criminal liability for the singer's death, the facts were startling: "In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics: all in Elvis's name." His license was suspended for three months. It was permanently revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of over-prescription.

In 1994, the Presley autopsy was reopened. Coroner Dr. Joseph Davis declared, "There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death from drugs. In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack." Whether or not combined drug intoxication was in fact the cause, there is little doubt that polypharmacy contributed significantly to Presley's premature death.

Racial issues

When Dewey Phillips first aired "That's All Right" on Memphis radio, many listeners who contacted the station by phone and telegram to ask for it again assumed that its singer was black. From the beginning of his national fame, Presley expressed respect for African American performers and their music, and disregard for the norms of segregation and racial prejudice then prevalent in the South. Interviewed in 1956, he recalled how in his childhood he would listen to blues musician Arthur Crudup—the originator of "That's All Right"—"bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw." The Memphis World, an African American newspaper, reported that Presley, "the rock 'n' roll phenomenon", "cracked Memphis's segregation laws" by attending the local amusement park on what was designated as its "colored night". Such statements and actions led Presley to be generally hailed in the black community during the early days of his stardom. By contrast, many white adults, according to Billboards Arnold Shaw, "did not like him, and condemned him as depraved. Anti-negro prejudice doubtless figured in adult antagonism. Regardless of whether parents were aware of the Negro sexual origins of the phrase 'rock 'n' roll', Presley impressed them as the visual and aural embodiment of sex."

Despite the largely positive view of Presley held by African Americans, a rumor spread in mid-1957 that he had at some point announced, "The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." A journalist with the national African American weekly Jet, Louie Robinson, pursued the story. On the set of Jailhouse Rock, Presley granted him an interview, though he was no longer dealing with the mainstream press. He denied making such a statement or holding in any way to its racist view. Robinson found no evidence that the remark had ever been made, and on the contrary elicited testimony from many individuals indicating that Presley was anything but racist. Blues singer Ivory Joe Hunter, who had heard the rumor before he visited Graceland one evening, reported of Presley, "He showed me every courtesy, and I think he's one of the greatest." Though the rumored remark was wholly discredited at the time, it was still being used against Presley decades later. The identification of Presley with racism—either personally or symbolically—was expressed most famously in the lyrics of the 1989 rap hit "Fight the Power", by Public Enemy: "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me / Straight-up racist that sucker was / Simple and plain".

The persistence of such attitudes was fueled by resentment over the fact that Presley, whose musical and visual performance idiom owed much to African American sources, achieved the cultural acknowledgment and commercial success largely denied his black peers. Into the 21st century, the notion that Presley had "stolen" black music still found adherents. Notable among African American entertainers expressly rejecting this view was Jackie Wilson, who argued, "A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man's music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis." And throughout his career, Presley plainly acknowledged his debt. Addressing his '68 Comeback Special audience, he said, "Rock 'n' roll music is basically gospel or rhythm and blues, or it sprang from that. People have been adding to it, adding instruments to it, experimenting with it, but it all boils down to [that]." Nine years earlier, he had said, "Rock 'n' roll has been around for many years. It used to be called rhythm and blues."

Influence of Colonel Parker and others

Parker and the Aberbachs

Once he became Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker insisted on exceptionally tight control over his client's career. Early on, he and his Hill and Range allies, the brothers Jean and Julian Aberbach, perceived the close relationship that developed between Presley and songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller as a serious threat to that control. Parker effectively ended the relationship, deliberately or not, with the new contract he sent Leiber in early 1958. Leiber thought there was a mistake—the sheet of paper was blank except for Parker's signature and a line on which to enter his. "There's no mistake, boy, just sign it and return it", Parker directed. "Don't worry, we'll fill it in later." Leiber declined, and Presley's fruitful collaboration with the writing team was over. Other respected songwriters lost interest in or simply avoided writing for Presley because of the requirement that they surrender a third of their usual royalties.

By 1967, Parker had contracts with Presley that gave him 50 percent of most of the singer's earnings on recordings, films, and merchandise. Beginning in February 1972, he took a third of the profit from live appearances; a January 1976 agreement entitled him to half of that as well. Priscilla Presley noted that "Elvis detested the business side of his career. He would sign a contract without even reading it." Presley's friend Marty Lacker regarded Parker as a "hustler and a con artist. He was only interested in 'now money'—get the buck and get gone."

Lacker was instrumental in convincing Presley to record with Memphis producer Chips Moman and his handpicked musicians at American Sound Studio in early 1969. The American Sound sessions represented a significant departure from the control customarily exerted by Hill and Range. Moman still had to deal with the publisher's staff on site, whose song suggestions he regarded as unacceptable. He was on the verge of quitting, until Presley ordered the Hill and Range personnel out of the studio. Although RCA executive Joan Deary was later full of praise for the producer's song choices and the quality of the recordings, Moman, to his fury, received neither credit on the records nor royalties for his work.

Throughout his entire career, Presley performed in only three venues outside the United States—all of them in Canada, during brief tours there in 1957. Rumors that he would play overseas for the first time were fueled in 1974 by a million-dollar bid for an Australian tour. Parker was uncharacteristically reluctant, prompting those close to Presley to speculate about the manager's past and the reasons for his apparent unwillingness to apply for a passport. Parker ultimately squelched any notions Presley had of working abroad, claiming that foreign security was poor and venues unsuitable for a star of his magnitude.

Parker arguably exercised tightest control over Presley's movie career. In 1957, Robert Mitchum asked Presley to costar with him in Thunder Road, on which Mitchum was both writer and producer. According to George Klein, one of his oldest friends, Presley was offered starring roles in West Side Story and Midnight Cowboy. In 1974, Barbra Streisand approached Presley to star with her in the remake of A Star is Born. In each case, any ambitions the singer may have had to play such parts were thwarted by his manager's negotiating demands or flat refusals. In Lacker's description, "The only thing that kept Elvis going after the early years was a new challenge. But Parker kept running everything into the ground." The operative attitude may have been summed up best by the response Leiber and Stoller received when they brought a serious film project for Presley to Parker and the Hill and Range owners for their consideration. In Leiber's telling, Jean Aberbach warned them to never again "try to interfere with the business or artistic workings of the process known as Elvis Presley".

Memphis Mafia

In the early 1960s, the circle of friends with whom Presley constantly surrounded himself until his death came to be known as the "Memphis Mafia". "Surrounded by the[ir] parasitic presence", as journalist John Harris puts it, "it was no wonder that as he slid into addiction and torpor, no-one raised the alarm: to them, Elvis was the bank, and it had to remain open." Tony Brown, who played piano for Presley regularly in the last two years of the singer's life, observed his rapidly declining health and the urgent need to address it: "But we all knew it was hopeless because Elvis was surrounded by that little circle of people ... all those so-called friends". In the Memphis Mafia's defense, Marty Lacker has said, "[Presley] was his own man. ... If we hadn't been around, he would have been dead a lot earlier."

Larry Geller became Presley's hairdresser in 1964. Unlike others in the Memphis Mafia, he was interested in spiritual questions and recalls how, from their first conversation, Presley revealed his secret thoughts and anxieties: "I mean there has to be a purpose...there's got to be a reason...why I was chosen to be Elvis Presley. ... I swear to God, no one knows how lonely I get. And how empty I really feel." Thereafter, Geller supplied him with books on religion and mysticism, which the singer read voraciously. Presley would be preoccupied by such matters for much of his life, taking trunkloads of books with him on tour.

Sex symbol

Presley's physical attractiveness and sexual appeal were widely acknowledged. "He was once beautiful, astonishingly beautiful", in the words of critic Mark Feeney. Television director Steve Binder, no fan of Presley's music before he oversaw the '68 Comeback Special, reported, "I'm straight as an arrow and I got to tell you, you stop, whether you're male or female, to look at him. He was that good looking. And if you never knew he was a superstar, it wouldn't make any difference; if he'd walked in the room, you'd know somebody special was in your presence." His performance style, as much as his physical beauty, was responsible for Presley's eroticized image. Writing in 1970, critic George Melly described him as "the master of the sexual simile, treating his guitar as both phallus and girl." In his Presley obituary, Lester Bangs credited him as "the man who brought overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America." Ed Sullivan's declaration that he perceived a soda bottle in Presley's trousers was echoed by rumors involving a similarly positioned toilet roll tube or lead bar.

While Presley was marketed as an icon of heterosexuality, some cultural critics have argued that his image was ambiguous. In 1959, Sight and Sounds Peter John Dyer described his onscreen persona as "aggressively bisexual in appeal". Brett Farmer places the "orgasmic gyrations" of the title dance sequence in Jailhouse Rock within a lineage of cinematic musical numbers that offer a "spectacular eroticization, if not homoeroticization, of the male image". In the analysis of Yvonne Tasker, "Elvis was an ambivalent figure who articulated a peculiar feminised, objectifying version of white working-class masculinity as aggressive sexual display."

Reinforcing Presley's image as a sex symbol were the reports of his dalliances with various Hollywood stars and starlets, from Natalie Wood in the 1950s to Connie Stevens and Ann-Margret in the 1960s to Candice Bergen and Cybill Shepherd in the 1970s. June Juanico of Memphis, one of Presley's early girlfriends, later blamed Parker for encouraging him to choose his dating partners with publicity in mind. Presley, however, never grew comfortable with the Hollywood scene, and most of these relationships were insubstantial.

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. With its racially mixed origins—repeatedly affirmed by Presley—rock and roll's occupation of a central position in mainstream American culture facilitated a new acceptance and appreciation of black culture. In this regard, Little Richard said of Presley, "He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music." Al Green agreed: "He broke the ice for all of us." Presley also heralded the vastly expanded reach of celebrity in the era of mass communication: 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.

Presley's name, image, and voice are instantly recognizable around the globe. He has inspired a legion of impersonators. In polls and surveys, he is recognized as one of the most important popular music artists and influential Americans. "Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century", said composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. "He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything—music, language, clothes. It's a whole new social revolution—the sixties came from it." Bob Dylan described the sensation of first hearing Presley as "like busting out of jail".

A New York Times editorial on the 25th anniversary of Presley's death observed, "All the talentless impersonators and appalling black velvet paintings on display can make him seem little more than a perverse and distant memory. But before Elvis was camp, he was its opposite: a genuine cultural force. ... Elvis's breakthroughs are underappreciated because in this rock-and-roll age, his hard-rocking music and sultry style have triumphed so completely." Not only Presley's achievements, but his failings as well, are seen by some cultural observers as adding to the power of his legacy, as in this description by Greil Marcus:

Elvis Presley is a supreme figure in American life, 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.

Discography

A vast number of recordings have been issued under Presley's name. The total number of his original master recordings has been variously calculated as 665 and 711. His career began and he was most successful during an era when singles were the primary commercial medium for pop music. In the case of his albums, the distinction between "official" studio records and other forms is often blurred. In addition, for most of the 1960s, his recording career focused on soundtrack albums. In the 1970s, his most heavily promoted and best-selling LP releases tended to be concert albums. This summary discography lists only the albums and singles that reached the top of one or more of the following charts: the main U.S. Billboard pop chart; the Billboard country chart, the genre chart with which he was most identified (there was no country album chart before 1964); and the official British pop chart. In the United States, Presley also had five or six number one R&B; singles and seven number one adult contemporary singles; in 1964, his "Blue Christmas" topped the Christmas singles chart during a period when Billboard did not rank holiday singles in its primary pop chart. He had number one hits in many countries beside the United States and United Kingdom, as well.

Number one albums

rowspan="2"	Year	Album	Type	Chart positions
! style="width:60px;"	! style="width:60px;"			! style="width:60px;"
	style="text-align:left;"	studio/comp.	1	n.a.	1
style="text-align:left;"	studio	1	n.a.	3
	style="text-align:left;"	sound./studio	1	n.a.	1
	studio	1	n.a.	2
		studio	2	n.a.	1
style="text-align:left;"	soundtrack	1	n.a.	1
		studio	1	n.a.	2
style="text-align:left;"	soundtrack	1	n.a.	1
1962	style="text-align:left;"	studio	4	n.a.	1
1964	style="text-align:left;"	soundtrack	1	—	12
1969		studio	13	2	1
1973		live	1	1	11
1974		compilation	43	1	20
	1975	style="text-align:left;"	studio	47	1	21
1976		studio	41	1	29
		compilation	—	—	1
	studio/live	3	1	3
style="text-align:left;"	live	5	1	13
2002	style="text-align:left;"	compilation	1	1	1
2007		compilation	—	—	1

Number one singles

Year	Single	Chart positions
		! style="width:45px;"	! style="width:45px;"	! style="width:45px;"
		—	1	—
	1	1	2
	1	1	14
	1	1	2
style="text-align:left;"	1	1	2
style="text-align:left;"	1	3	11
	style="text-align:left;"	1	3	6
	1	1	1
style="text-align:left;"	1	1	3
style="text-align:left;"	1	1	1
	style="text-align:left;"	1	2	2
	1	2	2
	style="text-align:left;"	4/8	24/—	1
style="text-align:left;"	2/4	—	1
	1	—	4
	style="text-align:left;"	1	27	3
style="text-align:left;"	1	—	1
style="text-align:left;"	1	22	1
		—	—	1
style="text-align:left;"	1	—	1
align="left"	4/5	—	1
		2/23	—	1
	1	—	1
	5	—	1
align="left"	2	—	1
1963		3	—	1
1965		3	—	1
1969		1	—	2
1970		9	37	1
	style="text-align:left;"	31	1	6
	18	1	1
1981	style="text-align:left;"	28	1	43
2002	style="text-align:left;"	50	—	1
		—	—	1
	—	—	1
	—	—	1

Filmography

See also

Honorific nicknames in popular music

List of artists by total number of UK number one singles

List of best-selling music artists

Personal relationships of Elvis Presley

Notes

Although some pronounce his surname "PREZ-lee", Presley himself used the pronunciation of the American South, "PRESS-lee", as did his family and those who worked with him. The correct spelling of his middle name has long been a matter of debate. The physician who delivered him wrote "Elvis Aaron Presley" in his ledger. The state-issued birth certificate reads "Elvis Aron Presley". The name was chosen after the Presleys' friend and fellow congregation member Aaron Kennedy, though a single-A spelling was probably intended by Presley's parents in order to parallel the middle name of Presley's stillborn brother, Jesse Garon. It reads Aron on most official documents produced during his lifetime, including his high school diploma, RCA record contract, and marriage license, and this was generally taken to be the proper spelling. In 1966, Presley expressed the desire to his father that the more traditional biblical rendering, Aaron, be used henceforth, "especially on legal documents." Five years later, the Jaycees citation honoring him as one of the country's Outstanding Young Men used Aaron. Late in his life, he sought to officially change the spelling to Aaron and discovered that state records already listed it that way. Knowing his wishes for his middle name, Aaron is the spelling his father chose for Presley's tombstone, and it is the spelling his estate has designated as official. According to a third cousin of Presley's, one of Gladys's great-grandmothers was Jewish. There is no evidence that Presley or his mother shared this belief in a Jewish heritage. Syndicated columnist Nate Bloom has challenged the cousin's account, which he calls a "tall tale". Of the $40,000, $5,000 covered back royalties owed by Sun. In 1956–57, Presley was also credited as a cowriter on several songs where he had no hand in the writing process: "Heartbreak Hotel"; "Don't Be Cruel"; all four songs from his first film, including the title track, "Love Me Tender"; "Paralyzed"; and "All Shook Up". He received credit on two other songs to which he did contribute: he provided the title for "That's Someone You Never Forget" (1961), written by his friend Red West; Presley and West collaborated with another friend, guitarist Charlie Hodge, on "You'll Be Gone" (1962). Whitburn follows actual Billboard history in considering the four songs on the "Don't Be Cruel/Hound Dog" and "Don't/I Beg of You" singles as distinct. He tallies each side of the former single as a number one (Billboards sales chart had "Don't Be Cruel" at number one for five weeks, then "Hound Dog" for six) and reckons "I Beg of You" as a top ten, as it reached number eight on the old Top 100 chart. Billboard now considers both singles as unified items, ignoring the historical sales split of the former and its old Top 100 chart entirely. Whitburn thus analyzes the four songs as yielding three number ones and a total of four top tens. Billboard now states that they yielded just two number ones and a total of two top tens, voiding the separate chart appearances of "Hound Dog" and "I Beg of You". VH1 ranked Presley #8 among the "100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll" in 1998. The BBC ranked him as the #2 "Voice of the Century" in 2001. Rolling Stone placed him #3 in its list of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004. CMT ranked him #15 among the "40 Greatest Men in Country Music" in 2005. The Discovery Channel placed him #8 on its "Greatest American" list in 2005. Variety put him in the top ten of its "100 Icons of the Century" in 2005. The Atlantic Monthly ranked him #66 among the "100 Most Influential Figures in American History" in 2006. (1) The year given is the year the record first reached number one, rather than its original year of release. For instance, in 1974, Elvis' 40 Greatest, a compilation on the budget Arcade label, was the fourth highest selling album of the year in the United Kingdom; at the time, the main British chart did not rank such compilations, relegating them to a chart for midpriced and TV-advertised albums, which Elvis' 40 Greatest topped for 15 weeks. The policy was altered in 1975, allowing the album to hit number one on the main chart in 1977, following Presley's death. (2) Before late 1958, rather than unified pop and country singles charts, Billboard had as many as four charts for each, separately ranking records according to sales, jukebox play, jockey spins (i.e., airplay), and, in the case of pop, a general Top 100. Billboard now regards the sales charts as definitive for the period. Widely cited chart statistician Joel Whitburn accords historical releases the highest ranking they achieved among the separate charts. Presley discographer Ernst Jorgensen refers only to the Top 100 chart for pop hits. All of the 1956–58 songs listed here as number one U.S. pop hits reached the top of both the sales and, with three exceptions, the Top 100 charts: "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" (three), "Hound Dog" (two, behind its flip side, "Don't Be Cruel"), and "Hard Headed Woman" (two). (3) Several Presley singles reached number one in the United Kingdom as double A-sides; in the United States, the respective sides of those singles were ranked separately by Billboard. Whitburn calculates a total of six number one R&B; singles, including "Don't Be Cruel", released as a double A-side with "Hound Dog"; Billboards Keith Caulfield excludes "Don't Be Cruel".

Citations

References

Further reading

Allen, Lew (2007). Elvis and the Birth of Rock. Genesis. ISBN 1905662009.

Ann-Margret and Todd Gold (1994). Ann-Margret: My Story. G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0399138919.

Cantor, Louis (2005). Dewey and Elvis: The Life and Times of a Rock 'n' Roll Deejay. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 025202981X.

Dickerson, James L. (2001). Colonel Tom Parker: The Curious Life of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager. Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0815412673.

Finstad, Suzanne (1997). Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. Harmony Books. ISBN 0517705850.

Goldman, Albert (1981). Elvis. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070236577.

Goldman, Albert (1990). Elvis: The Last 24 Hours. St. Martin's. ISBN 0312925417.

Klein, George (2010). Elvis: My Best Man: Radio Days, Rock 'n' Roll Nights, and My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley. Virgin Books. ISBN 9780307452740

Marcus, Greil (1999). Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674194225.

Marcus, Greil (2000). Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternative. Picador. ISBN 057120676X.

Moscheo, Joe (2007). The Gospel Side of Elvis. Center Street. ISBN 1599957299.

Nash, Alanna (2010). Baby, Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him. It Books. ISBN 0061699845.

West, Red, Sonny West, and Dave Hebler (as told to Steve Dunleavy) (1977). Elvis: What Happened? Bantam Books. ISBN 0345272153.

External links

Elvis Presley Enterprises official site of the Elvis Presley brand

Elvis The Music official record label site

Elvis Presley Interviews on officially sanctioned Elvis Australia site

Elvis Presley Ancestry at Genealogy.com

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name	Billy Currington
background	solo_singer
birth name	William Matthew Currington
born	November 19, 1973 Savannah, Georgia, USA
origin	Rincon, Georgia, USA
instrument	Vocals, guitar
genre	Country
occupation	Singer-songwriter
years active	2003–present
label	Mercury Nashville
associated acts	Luke Bryan, Carson Chamberlain, Shania Twain
website	BillyCurrington.com }}

William Matthew "Billy" Currington (born November 19, 1973) is an American country music artist. Signed to Mercury Nashville Records in 2003, he has released four studio albums for the label: 2003's Billy Currington, 2005's Doin' Somethin' Right, 2008's Little Bit of Everything, and 2010's Enjoy Yourself. These four albums have produced nine singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including six #1 hits "Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right", "Good Directions", "People Are Crazy", "That's How Country Boys Roll", "Pretty Good at Drinkin' Beer", and "Let Me Down Easy". He has also charted as a duet partner on Shania Twain's single "Party For Two" and his own non-album single "Tangled Up", for a total of eleven Top 40 hits.

Early life and career

Billy Currington was born in Savannah, Georgia, raised in Rincon, Georgia, and currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He has four sisters (Lexie, Ann, Kim, and Kellie) and two brothers (Charles and Jason). When he was one and a half years old, his mother married Laurie (Larry) Currington. He also has a Chocolate Lab named Paco.

When he was a junior in Effingham County High School (Springfield, Georgia), Currington auditioned for a spot at Opryland, the renowned country music theme park located in Nashville, Tennessee, the country music capital. Failing the audition, after high school he moved to Nashville to pursue his career in country music. His first stint did not last too long, and he later sang for a bar named Cavalier Country Club in Georgia. In Nashville, Currington also worked for a concrete company, and also as a personal trainer. One of the clients he worked with as a personal trainer led Currington to recording demo tapes, as well as writing songs. He eventually had cuts by George Strait, Tracy Byrd, and Marty Raybon. After almost being offered to join RCA Records, he signed to Mercury Records in 2003.

Musical career

Billy Currington

His self-titled debut album was released in 2003. The first single was "Walk a Little Straighter" about his relationship with his alcoholic stepfather, including a chorus that Currington wrote when he was twelve years old. "Walk a Little Straighter" went on to peak at #8 that year on the Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart and established Currington as a major Country performer in Nashville. He first hit the Top 5 on the country charts with his second single, "I Got a Feelin'", also from his debut album.

He scored a third consecutive top 10 hit with Shania Twain in late 2004, on the song "Party for Two". The song was from Twain's Greatest Hits album and was released in two formats: a pop version with Mark McGrath as Twain's duet partner, and the country version, which featured Currington.

Doin' Somethin' Right

In 2005, Currington released a second album entitled Doin' Somethin' Right, which peaked at #2 on the Top Country Albums chart and #11 on the Billboard 200. Doin' Somethin' Right produced his first Number One in "Must Be Doin' Somethin' Right", followed by "Why, Why, Why" at #13 and another Number One in "Good Directions". Co-written by Capitol Records artist Luke Bryan, the latter was the #2 country song of 2007 according to the Billboard Year-End charts. Doin' Somethin' Right is certified platinum by the RIAA. Doin' Somethin' Right also featured "Lucille" which was a song Currington covered from original artist Kenny Rogers.

Little Bit of Everything

On July 19, Currington announced he had cancelled the rest of his 2007 tour dates because of laryngitis. His 2007 single, "Tangled Up", peaked at #30 in late 2007, and his third album was delayed. He also had to undergo therapy due to trauma induced by the abuse that he suffered as a child.

He was absent from the charts for nearly a year before the release of his next single, "Don't", in mid-2008. It was the first single from his third studio album, Little Bit of Everything, which was released on October 14. Currington co-wrote five of the songs on this album. "Don't" peaked at #2 on the country charts in early 2009. "People Are Crazy", co-written by Bobby Braddock and Troy Jones, was released as the second single from the album in March 2009 and this became his third Number One hit in July 2009. The third single to be issued, "That's How Country Boys Roll" became his fourth Number One hit in March 2010. The song was the first that Billy shared writing credit on to reach Number One.

On August 1, 2009, Billy Currington suffered a concussion at the Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose, Alberta after the stage on which he was performing collapsed during a massive wind storm that also injured Currington's bass guitarist and killed a spectator.

Enjoy Yourself

In May 2010, he released his tenth solo single overall, "Pretty Good at Drinkin' Beer", which hit #1 in September. Also written by Troy Jones, it was the first single from his fourth studio album, entitled Enjoy Yourself---which was released on September 21, 2010. The album's second single "Let Me Down Easy" went to radio on October 4, 2010 and reached #1 in 2011. The album's third single "Love Done Gone" released to country radio on April 18, 2011.

Awards and nominations

! Year	! Association	! Category	! Result
2005	Juno Award	Country Recording of the Year — "Party for Two" (with Shania Twain)
2006	CMT Music Awards	Hottest Video of the Year — "Must Be Doin' Something Right"
	Grammy Award
	Single Record of the Year — "People Are Crazy"
Song of the Year — "People Are Crazy"

Discography

References

External links

Official Site

Official Billy Currington UMG Nashville Artist Page

Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:American country singers Category:American male singers Category:People from Savannah, Georgia Category:People from Effingham County, Georgia Category:Musicians from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:Mercury Records artists

de:Billy Currington fr:Billy Currington it:Billy Currington

name	Bobby McFerrin
background	solo_singer
birth name	Robert McFerrin, Jr
born	March 11, 1950 Manhattan, New York
instrument	Vocals, piano, bass guitar, clarinet
genre	Jazz, Reggae, World Music, Classical Music
occupation	MusicianSongwriterConductorArrangerProducer
years active	1977–present
label	Manhattan RecordsBlue Note RecordsElektra RecordsSony Classical
associated acts	Chick CoreaHerbie Hancock
website	http://www.bobbymcferrin.com }}

Robert "Bobby" McFerrin, Jr. (born March 11, 1950) is an American vocalist and conductor. He is best known for his 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He is a ten-time Grammy Award winner.

Life

Bobby McFerrin was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of operatic baritone Robert McFerrin and singer Sara Copper. Robert Sr. was the first African American to be a regular with New York's Metropolitan Opera. Sara is a former soloist with regional opera companies and in Broadway shows, and is a professor emeritus of music at Fullerton College in Fullerton, California.

Bobby McFerrin was married to Debbie Green in 1975. They have three children.

McFerrin's song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" was a No. 1 U.S. pop hit in 1988 and won Song of the Year and Record of the Year honors. McFerrin has also worked in collaboration with instrumental performers, including pianists Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul, drummer Tony Williams, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Vocal technique

As a vocalist, McFerrin often switches rapidly between modal and falsetto registers to create polyphonic effects, performing both the main melody and the accompanying parts of songs. He makes use of percussive effects created both with his mouth and by tapping on his chest. McFerrin is also capable of multiphonic singing, as observed in his song "Drive" from the 2005 DVD Live in Montreal.

A notable document of McFerrin's approach to singing is his 1984 album The Voice, the first solo vocal jazz album recorded with no accompaniment or overdubbing.

In 1986, McFerrin was the voice of Santa Bear in "Santa Bear's First Christmas," and in 1987 he was the voice of Santa Bear/Bully Bear in the sequel "Santa Bear's High Flying Adventure." That same year, he performed the theme song for the opening credits of Season 4 of The Cosby Show, as well as the music for a Cadbury chocolate commercial.

In 1988, McFerrin recorded the hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy", which brought him widespread recognition across the world. However, the song's success "ended McFerrin's musical life as he had known it," and he began to pursue other musical possibilities – on stage and in recording studios. The song was used in George H. W. Bush's 1988 U.S. presidential election as Bush's 1988 official presidential campaign song, without Bobby McFerrin's permission or endorsement. In reaction, Bobby McFerrin publicly protested that particular use of his song, including stating that he was going to vote against Bush, and completely dropped the song from his own performance repertoire, to make the point even clearer.

In 1989, he composed and performed the music for the Pixar short film Knick Knack. The rough cut to which McFerrin recorded his vocals had the words "blah blah blah" in place of the end credits (meant to indicate that he should improvise). McFerrin spontaneously decided to sing "blah blah blah" as lyrics, and the final version of the short film includes these lyrics during the end credits. Also in 1989, he formed a ten-person "Voicestra" which he featured on both his 1990 album Medicine Music and in the score to the 1989 Oscar-winning documentary Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. The song "Common Threads" has frequently reappeared in some public service advertisements for AIDS. McFerrin also performed with the Vocal Summit.

As early as 1992, widespread rumors circulated that falsely claimed McFerrin committed suicide. The rumors intentionally made fun of the distinctly positive nature of his popular song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by claiming McFerrin ironically took his own life.

In 1993 McFerrin sang Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme for the movie Son of the Pink Panther.

In addition to his vocal performing career, in 1994 Mr. McFerrin was appointed as creative chair of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He makes regular tours as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras throughout the United States and Canada, including the San Francisco Symphony (on his 40th birthday), the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and many others. In McFerrin's concert appearances, he combines serious conducting of classical pieces with his own unique vocal improvisations, often with participation from the audience and the orchestra. For example, the concerts often end with McFerrin conducting the orchestra in an a cappella rendition of the "William Tell Overture," in which the orchestra members sing their musical parts in McFerrin's vocal style instead of playing their parts on their instruments. For a few years in the late 1990s, he toured a concert version of Porgy and Bess, partly in honor of his father, who sang the role for Sidney Poitier in the 1959 film version, and partly "to preserve the score's jazziness" in the face of "largely white orchestras" who tend not "to play around the bar lines, to stretch and bend". McFerrin says that because of his father's work in the movie, "This music has been in my body for 40 years, probably longer than any other music."

McFerrin also participates in various music education programs and makes volunteer appearances as a guest music teacher and lecturer at public schools throughout the U.S. McFerrin has collaborated with his son, Taylor, on various musical ventures. Taylor has recently been singing, rapping, and playing minimal keyboard accompaniment with Vernon Reid (leader-guitarist of Living Colour) in the eclectic metal-fusion-funk group Yohimbe Brothers.

In 2009, McFerrin and musician-scientist Daniel Levitin served as co-hosts of "The Music Instinct", a 2 hour award-winning documentary produced by PBS and based on Levitin's best-selling book This Is Your Brain On Music. Later that year, the two appeared together on a panel at the World Science Festival where McFerrin demonstrated audience participation with the ubiquitous nature of human understanding of the pentatonic scale by singing and dancing, and having the audience sing while following his movements.

In October 2010, Bobby McFerrin appeared on NPR's news quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me.

In February 2011, Bruce Hornsby noted that McFerrin is in the process of organizing a super-group to debut in 2012.

Discography

As leader

Bobby McFerrin (1982)

The Voice (1984)

Spontaneous Inventions (1987)

Elephant's Child (1987)

Simple Pleasures (1988)

Don't Worry, Be Happy (1988)

How the Rhino Got His Skin/How the Camel Got His Hump (1990)

Medicine Music (1990)

Play, with Chick Corea, 1992

Hush, with Yo-Yo Ma, 1992

Many Faces of Bird (1991)

Sorrow Is Not Forever (1994)

Paper Music (1995, Doick with the St. Paul Chamber orchestra)

Bang! Zoom (1996)

The Mozart Sessions, with Chick Corea, 1996

Circlesongs (1997)

Mouth Music (2001)

Beyond Words (2002) – featuring Chick Corea, Cyro Baptista and Richard Bona

Konzert für Europa -The Schönbrunn Concert (2004)

VOCAbuLarieS (2010)

As sideman

Pharoah Sanders, Journey to the One, 1980

Grover Washington, Jr., The Best Is Yet to Come, 1982

Various Artists, The Young Lions, 1983

Charles Lloyd Quartet, A Night in Copenhagen, 1984

Various Artists, A Tribute to Thelonius Monk, 1984

Chico Freeman, Tangents, 1984

Michael Hedges, Watching My Life Go By, 1985

The Manhattan Transfer, Vocalese, 1985

Joe Zawinul, Di•a•lects, 1986

Weather Report, Sportin' Life, 1985

Al Jarreau, Heart’s Horizon, 1988

Quincy Jones, Back on the Block, 1989

Laurie Anderson, Strange Angels, 1989

Gal Costa, The Laziest Gal in Town, 1991

Dizzy Gillespie, "To Bird With Love", 1992

Jack DeJohnette, Extra Special Edition, 1994

Yellowjackets, Dreamland, 1995

George Martin, In My Life, 1998 – on Come Together with Robin Williams

En Vogue, Masterpiece Theatre, 2000

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Little Worlds, 2003

Chick Corea, Rendezvous in New York, 2003

Wynton Marsalis, The Magic Hour, 2004

size2shoes, 2006 (free track)

Grammys

1985, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Another Night In Tunisia" with Jon Hendricks

1985, Best Vocal Arrangement for two or more voices, "Another Night In Tunisia" with Cheryl Bentyne

1986, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Round Midnight"

1987, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "What Is This Thing Called Love"

1987, Best Recording for Children, "The Elephant's Child" with Jack Nicholson

1988, Song of the year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, male, Record of the year, "Don't Worry, Be Happy"

1988, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, male, "Brothers"

1992, Best Jazz Vocal Performance, "Round Midnight"

References

External links

Snopes.com on the suicide rumour

Demonstration of the pentatonic scale, World Science Festival 2009

Bobby McFerrin

Category:1950 births Category:Living people Category:African American musicians Category:American conductors (music) Category:American jazz singers Category:California State University, Sacramento alumni Category:Musicians from New York City Category:Grammy Award winners

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