The rosary (from Latin ''rosarium'', meaning "rose garden") or "garland of roses" is a traditional Catholic devotion. The term denotes the prayer beads used to count the series of prayers that make up the rosary. The prayers consist of repeated sequences of the Lord's Prayer followed by ten prayings of the Hail Mary and a single praying of "Glory Be to the Father" and is sometimes accompanied by the Fatima Prayer; each of these sequences is known as a ''decade''. The praying of each decade is accompanied by meditation on one of the Mysteries of the Rosary, which recall the life of Jesus Christ.

The traditional 15 Mysteries of the Rosary were standardized, based on the long-standing custom, by Pope St. Pius V in the 16th century. The mysteries are grouped into three sets: the joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, and the glorious mysteries. In 2002, Pope John Paul II announced five new optional mysteries, the luminous mysteries, bringing the total number of mysteries to 20.

The term has come to be used to refer to similar beads in other religions.

Theological significance

The rosary is part of the Catholic veneration of Mary, which has been promoted by numerous popes, especially Leo XIII, known as "The Rosary Pope", who issued twelve encyclicals and five apostolic letters on the rosary and added the invocation ''Queen of the most Holy Rosary'' to the Litany of Loreto. Pope Pius V introduced the rosary into the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar as the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, celebrated on October 7. Most recently, on May 3, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI stated that the Rosary is experiencing a new springtime: "It is one of the most eloquent signs of love that the young generation nourish for Jesus and his Mother." To Benedict XVI, the rosary is a meditation on all important moments of salvation history. Before him, Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter ''Rosarium Virginis Mariae'' built on the "total Marian devotion" pioneered by Saint Louis de Montfort. Pope Pius XII and his successors actively promoted the veneration of the Virgin in Lourdes and Fatima, which is credited with a new resurgence of the rosary within the Catholic Church.

The theologian Romano Guardini defined the Roman Catholic emphasis on the rosary as "participation in the life of Mary, whose focus was Christ". His statement echoed the view that in Roman Catholic Mariology the path to Christ is through Mary, with Mariology being inherent in Christology; a sentiment also expressed by saints such as Louis de Montfort who was a strong rosary advocate. Pope Leo XIII also viewed the rosary as a vital means to participate in the life of Mary and to find the way to Christ (see the section on ''Rosary Pope'' below).

Many similar prayer practices exist in other Christian communities, each with its own set of prescribed prayers and its own form of prayer beads, such as the prayer rope in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. These other devotions and their associated beads are usually referred to as "chaplets". The rosary is sometimes used by other Christians, especially in Lutheranism, the Anglican Communion and the Old Catholic Church. Other Protestants, however, such as Baptists and Presbyterians, do not use it and actively discourage their members from using this method of prayer.

Devotions and spirituality

Devotion to the rosary is one of the most notable features of popular Catholic spirituality. Pope John Paul II placed the rosary at the very center of Christian spirituality and called it "among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation."

Saints and popes have emphasized the meditative and contemplative elements of the rosary and provided specific teachings for how the rosary should be prayed, for instance the need for "''focus'', ''respect'', ''reverence'' and ''purity of intention''" during rosary recitations and contemplations.

From the sixteenth century onwards, rosary recitations often involved "picture texts" that assisted meditation. Such imagery continues to be used to depict the mysteries of the rosary. Saints have stressed the importance of meditation and contemplation. Scriptural meditations on the rosary build on the Christian tradition of Lectio Divina, (literary ''divine reading'') as a way of using the Gospel to start a conversation between the soul and Christ. Padre Pio, who was devoted to the rosary, said: "''Through the study of books one seeks God; by meditation one finds him.''"

References to the rosary have been part of a number of reported Marian Apparitions spanning two centuries. The reported messages from these apparitions have influenced the spread of rosary devotions worldwide. In ''Quamquam Pluries'' Pope Leo XIII related rosary devotions to Saint Joseph and granted indulgences for adding a prayer to St. Joseph to the Rosary during the month of October.

History

There are differing views on the history of the rosary. According to tradition, the rosary was given to Saint Dominic in an apparition by the Blessed Virgin Mary in the year 1214 in the church of Prouille. This Marian apparition received the title of Our Lady of the Rosary. In the 15th century it was promoted by Blessed Alanus de Rupe (aka Alain de la Roche or Saint Alan of the Rock), a learned Dominican priest and theologian, who established the "15 rosary promises" and started many rosary confraternities. However, most scholarly research suggests a more gradual and organic development of the rosary.

The practice of meditation during the praying of the Hail Marys is attributed to Dominic of Prussia (1382–1460), a Carthusian monk, who called it "Life of Jesus Rosary" The German monk from Trier added a sentence to each of the 50 Hail Marys, using quotes from scriptures. In 1569, the papal bull Consueverunt Romani Pontifices by the Dominican Pope Pius V officially established the devotion to the rosary in the Catholic Church.

From the 16th to the early 20th century, the structure of the rosary remained essentially unchanged. There were 15 mysteries, one for each of the 15 decades. In the 20th century the addition of the Fatima Prayer to the end of each decade became more common. There were no other changes until 2002 when John Paul II instituted five optional new Luminous Mysteries.

Rosary beads

The rosary provides a physical method of keeping count of the number of Hail Marys said. The fingers are moved along the beads as the prayers are recited. By not having to keep track of the count mentally, the mind is more able to meditate on the mysteries. A five decade rosary contains five groups of ten beads (a decade), with additional large beads before each decade. The Hail Mary is said on the ten beads within a decade, while the Our Father is said on the large bead before each decade. A new mystery is meditated upon at each of the large beads. Some rosaries, particularly those used by religious orders, contain 15 decades, corresponding to the traditional 15 mysteries of the rosary. Both five and 15 decade rosaries are attached to a shorter strand, which starts with a crucifix followed by one large, three small, and one large beads before connecting to the rest of the rosary.

The praying of the rosary is started on the short strand, reciting the Apostle's Creed at the crucifix, an Our Father at the first large bead, three Hail Marys on the next three beads (for faith, hope and charity), then a Glory be to the Father on the next large bead. The praying of the decades then follows. Although counting the prayers on a string of beads is customary, the prayers of the rosary do not actually require a set of beads, but can be said using any type of counting device, by counting on one's fingers, or by counting by oneself without any device at all. Since the beginning of the 21st century, some people have begun to pray the rosary on their iPods or by watching rosary meditations on YouTube or other websites.

right|thumb|left|A sterling silver rosary.The beads can be made from a wide variety of materials including wood, bone, glass, crushed flowers, semi-precious stones such as agate, jet, amber, or jasper, or precious materials including coral, crystal, silver, and gold. Rosaries are sometimes made from the seeds of the "rosary pea" or "bead tree". Today, the vast majority of rosary beads are made of glass, plastic, or wood. Early rosaries were strung on strong thread, often silk, but modern ones are more often made as a series of chain-linked beads. Our Lady's Rosary Makers produce some 7 million rosaries annually that are distributed to those in economic and spiritual need.

It is especially common for beads to be made of material with some special significance, such as jet from the shrine of St. James at Santiago de Compostela, or olive seeds from the Garden of Gethsemane. Beads are sometimes made to enclose sacred relics, or drops of holy water. A set of blessed rosary beads is a sacramental.

In addition to a string of beads the rosary comes in other forms for ease of use. A ring rosary is a finger ring with eleven knobs on it, ten round ones and one crucifix. A rosary bracelet is one with ten beads and often a cross or medal as well. The most modern form is the rosary card. A rosary card is either one with a "handle" that moves like a slide rule to count the decade, or it has a whole rosary with bumps similar to Braille.

Rosary beads are at times used to say Roman Catholic rosary based prayers which do not primarily involve the Hail Mary and the mysteries of the rosary. Examples include the Chaplet of Divine Mercy introduced by Saint Faustina Kowalska and the Rosary of the Holy Wounds introduced by the Venerable Sister Mary Martha Chambon. These prayers often use rosary beads, but their words and format do not correspond to the usual mysteries. Both Saint Faustina Kowalska and the Venerable Sister Mary Martha Chambon attributed these prayers to Jesus as part of their visions of Jesus Christ.

== Mysteries of the rosary == The Mysteries of the rosary follow the life of Christ from the Annunciation to the Ascension. They are meant as meditations on the life of Christ. The meditations are known as the ''Joyful'' (sometimes ''Joyous'') ''Mysteries''; the ''Sorrowful Mysteries''; and the ''Glorious Mysteries''. Each of these Mysteries has within it five different stages of Christ's life to be contemplated. Pope John Paul II, in his apostolic letter ''Rosarium Virginis Mariae'' (October 2002), recommended an additional set called the ''Luminous Mysteries'' (or the "Mysteries of Light"). Traditional Catholics who prefer the original fifteen mysteries point to the belief that the Rosary is Mary's Psalter, containing 150 Hail Marys in its body for the 150 Psalms. Moreover, traditional Catholics sometimes do not pray the Luminous Mysteries of John Paul II because they assert that the Holy Rosary with its fifteen mysteries was instituted directly by the Mother of God. Traditional Catholics hold that if Mary instituted 150 Hail Mary's with fifteen distinct mysteries, then not even a Pope can "add" to what she commanded - just as a Pope could not also "add" extra Psalms to the Bible. This belief is also based on the vision of Our Lady of Fatima, which speak of 150 Hail Mary's and "one third of the Rosary" being only five decades. The ''Luminous Mysteries'' bring the total to 200 Hail Mary's, which would contradict Mary's words. Moreover, advocates of the traditional fifteen decade Rosary note that it parallels Saint Paul's threefold progression of his argument in Philippians 2: 5-11, namely the Incarnation, the Passion, and the Exaltation of Christ corresponding to the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries.

Various other "mysteries" exist; in the German-speaking countries a fifth set of mysteries had become more common before the 1920s, the so-called "Comforting Mysteries", which have an eschatological dimension, meditating Christ as Universal King.

Joyful Mysteries

# The Annunciation. Fruit of the Mystery: Humility # The Visitation. Fruit of the Mystery: Love of Neighbour # The Nativity. Fruit of the Mystery: Poverty (poor in spirit), Detachment from the things of the world, Contempt of Riches, Love of the Poor # The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. Fruit of the Mystery: Purity, Obedience # The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple. Fruit of the Mystery: True Wisdom and True Conversion, Piety, Joy of Finding Jesus

Luminous Mysteries

# The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Fruit of the Mystery: Openness to the Holy Spirit, the Healer. # The Wedding at Cana. Fruit of the Mystery: To Jesus through Mary. The understanding of the ability to manifest-through faith. # Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Fruit of the Mystery: Trust in God (Call of Conversion to Messiah) # The Transfiguration. Fruit of the Mystery: Desire for Holiness # The Institution of the Eucharist. Fruit of the Mystery: Adoration

Sorrowful Mysteries

# The Agony in the Garden. Fruit of the Mystery: Sorrow for Sin, Uniformity with the will of God # The Scourging at the Pillar. Fruit of the Mystery: Mortification, Purity # The Crowning with Thorns. Fruit of the Mystery: Contempt of the world, Courage # The Carrying of the Cross. Fruit of the Mystery: Patience # The Crucifixion. Fruit of the Mystery: Salvation, Forgiveness

Glorious Mysteries

# The Resurrection. Fruit of the Mystery: Faith # The Ascension. Fruit of the Mystery: Hope and desire for ascension to Heaven # The Descent of the Holy Spirit. Fruit of the Mystery: Holy Wisdom to know the truth and share with everyone, Divine Charity, Worship of the Holy Spirit # The Assumption of Mary. Fruit of the Mystery: Grace of a Happy Death and True Devotion towards Mary # The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Fruit of the Mystery: Perseverance and Crown of Glory, Trust in Mary's Intercession

Days of praying

{| class=wikitable ! Day of praying!! With the Luminous Mysteries !! Without the Luminous Mysteries |- | Sunday || The Glorious Mysteries || Advent and Christmas: The Joyful Mysteries
Lent to Palm Sunday: The Sorrowful Mysteries
Ordinary Time, Easter to Sunday before Advent: The Glorious Mysteries |- | Monday || The Joyful Mysteries || The Joyful Mysteries |- | Tuesday || The Sorrowful Mysteries || The Sorrowful Mysteries |- | Wednesday || The Glorious Mysteries || The Glorious Mysteries |- | Thursday || The Luminous Mysteries || The Joyful Mysteries |- | Friday || The Sorrowful Mysteries || The Sorrowful Mysteries |- | Saturday || The Joyful Mysteries || The Glorious Mysteries |}

Approved form

A sign of the cross on the Crucifix and then the Apostles' Creed;

An Our Father on the first large bead;

A Hail Mary on each of the three small beads with the following intentions (the theological virtues):

# For the increase of faith

# For the increase of hope

# For the increase of charity

A Glory Be to the Father;

Announce the mystery

An "Our Father" on the large bead

A "Hail Mary" on each of the adjacent ten small beads;

A "Glory Be to the Father";

(The Fatima Prayer is commonly added here, as a pious addition: "O My Jesus, Forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven. Especially those most in need of thy mercy.")

Again an Our Father on the next large bead, followed by ten Hail Marys on the small beads, the Glory Be to the Father, (and Fatima Prayer, cf. below) for each of the following decades;

In conclusion, Hail Holy Queen and a sign of the cross.

Common pious additions

Many people add a praying of the Fatima Decade Prayer at the end of each Decade. Others add a praying of a pious Eucharistic prayer "O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine" at the end of each decade in honor of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. In the practice of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, they have an additional decade for the intentions of the students or the Blessed Virgin Mary.

A pious German custom is to insert a phrase in the middle of each Hail Mary (after "... Blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus ... "), which refers to the specific mystery being meditated upon. This custom was incorporated into St. Louis de Montfort's second method out of his five Methods of Praying the Rosary.

In the practice of the Dominican Order, the opening prayers of the rosary mirror the opening of the Divine Office:

# In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. # Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. # Blessed art Thou among women, and Blessed is the Fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus. # O Lord, open my lips. # And my mouth will proclaim Your praise. # Incline Your aid to me, O God. # O Lord, make haste to help me. # Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Rosary Novena

The "54-day Rosary Novena" is an uninterrupted series of Rosaries in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, reported as a revelation by Fortuna Agrelli of Our Lady of Pompeii at Naples in 1884. For thirteen months Fortuna Agrelli had endured dreadful sufferings and torturous cramps; she had been given up by the most celebrated physicians. On February 16, 1884, the afflicted girl and her relatives commenced a novena of Rosaries. The Queen of the Holy Rosary favored her with an apparition on March 3. Mary, sitting upon a high throne, surrounded by luminous figures, held the divine Child on her lap, and in her hand a Rosary. The Virgin Mother and the holy Infant were clad in gold-embroidered garments. They were accompanied by St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena. The throne was profusely decorated with flowers; the beauty of Our Lady was marvelous. Blessed Virgin said: ''"Child, thou has invoked me by various titles and hast always obtained favors from me. Now, since thou hast called me by that title so pleasing to me, 'Queen of the Holy Rosary,' I can no longer refuse the favor thou dost petition; for this name is most precious and dear to me. Make three novenas, and thou shalt obtain all."''Once more the Queen of the Holy Rosary appeared to her and said, ''" Whoever desires to obtain favors from me should make three novenas of the prayers of the Rosary, and three novenas in thanksgiving."''

The Novena consists of five decades of the Rosary each day for twenty-seven days in petition; then immediately five decades each day for twenty-seven days in thanksgiving, whether or not the request has been granted.The meditations vary from day to day. Now with the new mysteries the table is changed. On the first day meditate on the Joyful Mysteries; on the second day the Light Mysteries; on the third day the sorrowful Mysteries; on the fourth day meditate again on the glorious Mysteries; and so on throughout the fifty-four days.

Rosary and Scapular

"The Rosary and the Scapular are inseparable" were words attributed to the Virgin Mary by Lucia Santos, one of the three children who reported the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima in 1917 and later the Pontevedra apparitions in 1925, Fátima, Portugal and Pontevedra in Galicia, Spain. In these apparitions, the Virgin Mary reportedly called herself ''The Lady of the Rosary'' and in one of the final Fátima appearances on October 13, 1917 had a Brown Scapular in one hand and a Rosary in the other. ''The Lady of the Rosary'', reportedly encouraged the praying of the Rosary and the wearing of the Brown scapular.

Throughout history, the Rosary and the Scapular as Roman Catholic Sacramentals for devotions and prayers have been supported, encouraged and linked by a number of Catholic figures such as popes, saints and cardinals and specific promises and indulgences have been associated with them.

Following their joint growth in the 18th and 19th centuries, by the early 20th century the Rosary and the devotional Scapular had gained such a strong following among Catholics worldwide that the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1914 stated: "''Like the Rosary, the Brown Scapular has become the badge of the devout Catholic''." In the mid 20th century, the United States "Scapular Magazine" helped enroll one million Americans to pray the Rosary based on the Our Lady of Fatima messages. The Rosary and the devotional scapular continue to be linked in the 21st century.

''Rosary Pope''

One of the forces that drove the spread of the rosary during the 19th century among Roman Catholics was the influence of the ''Rosary Pope'', a title given to Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) because he issued a record twelve encyclicals and five Apostolic Letters on the rosary, instituted the Catholic custom of daily rosary prayer during the month of October, and in 1883 added the invocation ''Queen of the most Holy Rosary'' to the Litany of Loreto.

Leo XIII, the Rosary Pope, explained the importance of the rosary as the one road to God, from the father to the Son, to his Mother, and from her to the human race. He emphasized that no human creature can change this and therefore there exists only one road for the faithful, to the mother and from her to Christ and through Christ to the father. The rosary is a vital means to participate in the life of Mary and to find the way to Christ. This emphasis on the path ''through Mary to Christ'' (which was also a basis for some of Louis de Montfort's writings) has since been a key direction in Roman Catholic Mariology, with Mariology being viewed as inherent in Christology, and the rosary paving that path.

Rosary as a family prayer was supported by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Ingruentium Malorum: "The custom of the family praying of the Holy Rosary is a most efficacious means.

Single-decade rosaries

England and Ireland were severed from Rome under Henry VIII by 1540. In Ireland, where separate allegiance to Rome still existed, severe legal penalties were prescribed against practicing Roman Catholics. Small, easily hidden rosaries were used to avoid identification. Sometimes rather than a cross, other symbols of specific meanings were used:

Hammer: nails of the cross;

Nails: crucifixion;

Spear: wound;

Halo: crown of thorns;

Cords: scourging;

Chalice: Last Supper;

Rooster: crowing/resurrection.

These rosaries, especially the smaller ring-type, have since become known as soldiers' rosaries, because they were often taken into battle by soldiers, most notably during World War I. These single-decade rosary variations can be worn as a ring or carried easily. A rosary ring is a ring worn around the finger with 10 indentations and a cross on the surface, representing one decade of a rosary. This is often worn as jewelry (such as Basque ring rosary) and used through the day. Some ring rosaries use a small bearing on the inside of the ring to permit easy turning. A finger rosary is similar to a ring, but is a bit larger. Rosaries like these are used by either rotating or just holding them between a finger and thumb while praying. A hand rosary is a decade in a complete loop, with one bead separated from ten other beads, this is meant to be carried while walking or running, so as not to entangle the larger type. Credit card-sized Rosaries have also appeared, especially among members of militaries, where holes or bumps represent the prayers and the persons praying move their fingers along the bumps to count prayers.

Single-decade rosaries are also called chaplets.

Wearing the Rosary

One Catholic catechism instructs the faithful to wear the rosary as "it will help them to love Jesus more" and serve as a "protection from Satan." Many households who cannot afford Christian artwork or a crucifix often hang up a rosary in their place. George Washington Browlow, a painter, often delineated people wearing the rosary in his artwork.

Many religious orders wear the rosary as part of their habit. A rosary hanging from the belt often forms part of the Carthusian habit. A person may be wearing a rosary as a statement of faith, to keep it handy for praying throughout the day, or to avoid losing it. Nevertheless, Canon 1171 asks individuals to treat all sacramentals reverently.

Penance or reparation

Praying the rosary may be prescribed by priests as a form of penance after confession. Penance in this form is not generally intended as a "punishment"; rather, it is meant to encourage reflection upon and spiritual growth from past sins.

Some forms of the Roman Catholic rosary are aimed at reparation ''for the sins of others''. An example is the Rosary of the Holy Wounds first introduced at the beginning of the 20th century by the Venerable Sister Mary Martha Chambon, a Roman Catholic nun of the ''Monastery of the Visitation Order'' in Chambéry, France. This rosary is somewhat similar in structure to the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, is said on the usual rosary beads and is intended as an Act of Reparation to Jesus Christ for the sins of the world.

Power and promises

The rosary has been featured in the writings of Roman Catholic figures from saints to popes and continues to be mentioned in reported Marian apparitions, with a number of promises attributed to the power of the rosary.

As early as the 15th century, through Saint Dominic and Blessed Alan de Rupe the Blessed Virgin Mary made 15 specific promises to Christians who pray the rosary. The Fifteen rosary promises range from protection from misfortune to meriting a high degree of glory in heaven. In support of this statement Cardinal Patrick Joseph Hayes of New York provided his imprimatur to this effect.

In the 18th century, the French priest Louis de Montfort elaborated on the importance of the Rosary and its power in his widely read book the Secret of the Rosary. He emphasized the power of the Rosary and provided specific instructions on how it should be prayed, e.g. with ''attention'', ''devotion'' and ''modesty (reverence)'', with reflective pauses between the beads and smaller pauses between phrases of the prayers.

Manufacturing and distribution

Rosaries are in rare cases made of expensive materials from gold and silver to mother of pearl and Swarovski black diamond designs. Yet most rosaries used in the world today for praying are made of simple plastic or wooden beads connected by cords or strings. Roman Catholic missionaries in Africa have reported that rosaries made of tree bark have been used there for praying for the lack of conventional rosaries. It is widely reported that the demand for rosaries in third world countries far outweighs the supply.

Plastic beads are inexpensive to make, but not easy to assemble. Hence the major cost component for making simple rosaries is the assembly effort. A large number of inexpensive rosary beads are manufactured in Asia, especially in China and Taiwan, although Italy has a strong manufacturing presence in moderate cost and high end rosaries.

Assembled rosaries are often purchased as retail religious items. Yet literally hundreds of millions of rosaries have been made and distributed free of charge by Roman Catholic volunteers worldwide. A number of rosary making clubs exist around the world for the purpose of making and distributing rosaries to missions, hospitals, prisons, etc. free of charge. The largest such non-profit organization in the United States is Our Lady's Rosary Makers whose 17,000 members annually distribute roughly 7 million free rosaries. Many other volunteer-based clubs and groups exist worldwide and distribute tens of millions of free rosaries every year.

Controversy in the Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church

In recent years, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has embarked on a campaign of de-Latinization reforms. These include the removal of the stations of the cross, the rosary and the monstrance from their liturgy and parishes. In response a group, the Society of Saint Josaphat (abbreviated as SSJK) has formed, with a seminary in Lviv. It currently has thirty students enrolled and is affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X.

Critics claim that the SSJK's liturgical practice favours severely abbreviated services and imported Roman Catholic devotions over the traditional and authentic practices of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Proponents counter that these symbols and rituals, influenced long ago by their Polish Roman Catholic neighbors, have been practiced by Ukrainian Greek Catholics for centuries. To deny them today is to deprive the people of a part of sacred heritage which they have learned to regard as their own.

Anglicanism

The use of the Roman Catholic Rosary is also fairly common among Anglicans of Anglo-Catholic churchmanship. Many Anglo-Catholic prayer books and manuals of devotion contain the Roman Catholic Rosary along with other Marian devotions. The public services of the Anglican churches, as contained in the Book of Common Prayer, do not directly invoke the Blessed Virgin or any other saint in prayer, and the thirty-nine Articles of Religion reject the practice of praying to saints, but many Anglo-Catholics feel free to do so in their private devotions. Anglicans who pray the Roman Catholic Rosary tend not to use the Luminous Mysteries or the Fatima decade prayer.

Anglican prayer beads, also known informally as the "Anglican Rosary", are a recent innovation created in the 1980s. They consist of four "weeks" (the equivalent of a decade) of seven beads each. The weeks are separated from each other by single beads termed "cruciform beads." A variety of different prayers may be said, the most common being the Jesus Prayer.

No "power and promises" are associated with the Anglican Prayer Beads by those who pray on them. The Anglican Prayer Beads are not a Marian devotion, and there are no appointed meditations. Although it is sometimes called the "Anglican rosary," it is distinct from the Holy Rosary of Our Lady as prayed by Catholics, Anglicans, and other Western Christians.

Lutheranism

The Lutheran Church encourages its members to pray the Rosary. However, though the Lutherans follow the same format of the Rosary as the Roman Catholics, each "Hail Mary" is replaced with the "Jesus Prayer". The only time the "Hail Mary" is said is at the end of the Mysteries on the medal, where it is then replaced with the "Pre-Trent" version of the prayer (which omits "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death"). The final "Hail Mary" can also be replaced by reciting of either the ''Magnificat'', or Martin Luther's "Evangelical praise of the Mother of God".

Churches named for the Rosary

:''For a larger gallery of church images, please see'': Rosary church gallery.

A number of churches around the world are named after the Rosary. These range from small churches in Poland, Brasil or Hong Kong to key basilicas at Lourdes and Fatima with millions of pilgrims per year.

Gallery of Rosary in Marian art

Since the 17th century, the Rosary began to appear as an element in key pieces of Roman Catholic Marian art, often in art that depicts the Virgin Mary. Key examples include Murrillo's ''Madonna with the Rosary'' at the Museo del Prado in Spain, and the statute of ''Madonna with Rosary'' at the church of San Nazaro Maggiore in Milan. Several Roman Catholic Marian churches around the world have also been named after the rosary, e.g. ''Our Lady of the Rosary Basilica'', in Rosario Argentina, the ''Rosary Basilica'' in Lourdes and ''Nossa Senhora do Rosário'' in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

See also

Rosary-based prayers

Methods of praying the rosary

Saint Louis de Montfort's Secret of the Rosary

Our Lady's Rosary Makers

Rosary Pope (Pope Leo XIII)

Encyclical, Ingruentium Malorum, by Pope Pius XII (on reciting the rosary)

Apostolic letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae (Rosary of the Virgin Mary), by Pope John Paul II

The Angelus

Legion of Mary

Catholic devotions

Anglican devotions

Prayer beads

Prayer rope

Japa mala or Juzu for Asian prayer beads

Buddhist prayer beads

Tasbeeh for Islamic prayer beads

Ecumenical Miracle Rosary for a rosary that can be used by all Christians

References

Further reading

'' Beads and Prayers: The Rosary in History and Devotion'' by John D Miller, Continuum, 2001, ISBN O860123200.

''Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy: A Consideration of the Rosary'' by J. Neville Ward (Doubleday, 1973); revised as ''Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy: Meditations on the Rosary'' (Seabury Classics, 2005) - an ecumenical Methodist minister's book on the Rosary. ISBN 1-59628-012-3

''Rosary of Our Lady of Sorrows'', Friar Servants of Mary, Chicago, Illinois, 1990.

"Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages" by Anne Winston-Allen (1997, Pennsylvania State University Press) - the most current source in English on the history and development of the Rosary in its earliest years. ISBN 0-271-01631-0

''The Lourdes Pilgrim'', by Oliver Todd, Matthew James Publishing, 2003, p. 41.

''God Alone: The Collected Writings of St. Louis Marie De Montfort'', by Saint Louis de Montfort, Montfort Publications, 1995 ISBN 0-910984-55-7

Pope Pius XII Rosary encyclical ''Ingruentium Malorum '' on the Vatican website

Pope Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation, ''Marialis Cultus'', To Honour Mary, 2 February 1974.

Pope John Paul II Apostolic Letter ''Rosarium Virginis Mariae'' on the Vatican website

External links

"Rosary" from the ''Catholic Encyclopedia''

Handy PDF Downloadable Rosary Pamphlets The Traditional 15 Mysteries.

How to recite the Holy Rosary Printer-friendly PDF document (includes prayers, bead use, mysteries) -

PDF Rosary Downloads with Meditations Traditional 15 plus 5 Luminous Mysteries. -

Rosary Prayer Guide: How to Pray the Rosary -

Guide to Making a Knot Rosary -

Perpetual Web Rosary A continuing and interactive online Rosary -

Come Pray the Rosary A perpetual, interactive online Rosary with video

Ecumenical Miracle Rosary

Category:Marian devotions Category:Roman Catholic prayers Category:Rosary Category:Christian terms

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name	Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation
birth name	Rita Antoinette Rizzo
birth date	April 20, 1923
birth place	Canton, Ohio, United States
known for	Eternal Word Television Network
religion	Roman Catholic }}

Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, PCPA (born Rita Antoinette Rizzo on April 20, 1923) is an American Roman Catholic nun who founded the Eternal Word Television Network. In 1944 she entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, a Franciscan religious order for women, as a postulant, and a year later she was admitted to the order as a novice. She went on to found a new house for the order in 1962 in Irondale, Alabama, where the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) is headquartered, and in 1996 she initiated the building of the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of the Angels monastery in Hanceville, Alabama. Mother Angelica hosted shows on EWTN until she suffered a stroke in 2001. She continues to reside at the monastery in Hanceville.

Early childhood

The future Mother Angelica was born Rita Antoinette Rizzo, on April 20, 1923, in Canton, Ohio. She was the only child of John and Mae Helen Rizzo (née Gianfrancesco). Her father abandoned the family when Rita was very young, and her parents divorced in 1929. Her mother maintained full custody of Rita, but struggled with chronic depression and poverty. Her maternal grandparents kept Rita at times.

Rita's childhood was marred by poverty and unhappiness as she grew up during the Great Depression. Looking back upon this time in her life, Angelica described herself and her mother as being "like a pair of refugees. We were poor, hungry, and barely surviving on odd jobs before Mother learned the dry cleaning business as an apprentice to a Jewish tailor in our area. Even then, we pinched pennies just to keep food on the table."

By the age of 16, Rita realized that her mother's dry-cleaning job was a dead end; so she began searching for work for her mother. Through Rita's efforts, her mother got a better job that provided some relief from their dire poverty.

Reports of miracles

By 1941, a stomach ailment from which Rita had suffered since 1939 required medical attention. By November of that year, x-rays revealed serious abnormalities in her stomach and intestines. The pain continued to worsen, with no alleviation. Doctors were unable to do anything to relieve her suffering or remedy the ailment. Once again, Mae and Rita turned to their faith.

By her own report, after praying a novena, Rita still suffered from severe abdominal pain. She went to bed the night of January 17, 1943, with doubts about the entire episode. During the middle of the night, she experienced the worst stomach pain yet, although it lasted only a moment. The next morning, Rita found that she had no pain whatsoever. She believed that God had performed a miracle. This experience profoundly touched Rita's life and led her to a very deep love for God. Angelica traces her lifelong commitment to God to this healing.

Early adulthood and religious vocation

After graduating from high school in 1941, Rita tried many odd jobs. She began working at Timken Roller Bearing Company. Following work each day, she would stop at a local parish and pray the stations of the cross. She regularly attended Mass.

One evening in the summer of 1944, Rita stopped at a church to pray. Kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, Rita felt God was calling her to be a nun. She sought guidance from a local parish priest who encouraged her to begin visiting convents. Her first visit was to the Sisters of St. Joseph in Buffalo, New York. This active order felt, however, that Rita was better suited for a contemplative order. She also visited Saint Paul's Shrine of Perpetual Adoration, a facility operated by an order of cloistered contemplative nuns, located in Cleveland, Ohio. When visiting this Order, Rita felt as if she were at home. The Order accepted her as a postulant, asking her to enter on August 15, 1944.

The one heartache that Rita suffered was leaving her mother, who was very much opposed to her daughter's pursuing the religious life. So Rita secretly planned her departure. On August 14, she wrote her mother a letter. When Mae found it on the morning of August 15, Rita had already arrived at her destination. In part the letter read: "When you receive this letter, I will be in Cleveland. I have entered the Adoration Monastery at 40th and Euclid. You know it better as St. Paul's Shrine.... Something happened to me after my cure. What it was, I don't know. I fell completely in love with Our Lord. To live in the world for these past nineteen months has been very difficult. I love you very much and I have not forgotten what you have done for me. Please trust Him ... I ask your blessing that I may reach the heights I desire. I love you very much."

Early religious life

On August 15, 1944, Rita Antoinette Rizzo became Sister Rita, when she arrived at Saint Paul's Shrine in Cleveland and entered the Adoration Monastery of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration (a cloistered contemplative order).

As a postulant, Sister was introduced to the religious life. She joined the nuns in prayer, adoration, and manual labor. Among her early assignments were working in the laundry, baking altar breads, working in the kitchen, and cleaning floors. Before long, though, Rita's knees began to cause her problems; so her work assignments were altered. On November 8, 1945, Rita was invested as a Poor Clare nun. She received the brown Franciscan habit and white novice veil. She received a new name and title: Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation.

During her time as a novice, a wealthy couple offered their mansion to the nuns so that a new foundation could be established. Their mansion was located in Canton, Ohio, Angelica's hometown.

Final vows and leadership in the convent

After the move to Sancta Clara Monastery in Canton, her knee problem was alleviated. On January 2, 1947, Angelica made her first profession of vows. On January 2, 1953, Sister Angelica made her solemn profession of vows.

Amid her caring for the spiritual needs of the novices and her other duties, Angelica continued to help with the household chores. One such chore was scrubbing the floor with an electric scrubbing machine. While performing this task one day, she had a serious accident. Losing her balance on the soapy floor, Angelica fell to her knees and was flung against the wall back first. Her spine was seriously injured. In the following months the injury worsened, and the pain was quite unbearable. Finally nearly two years after the accident, she was hospitalized and fitted with a body cast. Six weeks of traction proved to be no help, and so surgery followed.

The night before the operation, fearing the worst, Angelica prayed: "God! You didn't bring me this far just to lay me out on my back for life. Please, Lord Jesus, if You allow me to walk again I will build a monastery for Your glory. And I will build it in the South!" After four months of hospitalization, Angelica was released, able to walk again.

Founding of Our Lady of the Angels

Keeping the pledge she made before her surgery, Angelica began making preparations to establish a new monastery. After seeking all necessary permissions and raising funds by making and selling fishing lures, Angelica and four other sisters headed south. Our Lady of the Angels Monastery was officially established in Irondale, Alabama, on May 20, 1962.

The first postulant to be received was Mae Francis (Sister Mary David), Angelica's mother. A few months later Sister Mary Veronica, the former Abbess of the Sancta Clara Monastery, transferred to Our Lady of the Angels Monastery.

Founding of EWTN

By 1976, Angelica had written 50 booklets and recorded 150 audiocassette teaching tapes. When she was given the opportunity to make videotape programs for television, she realized the impact television could have in spreading the Catholic faith. She also gained national attention with her speeches. She began taping a local Catholic teaching series for airing local CBS affiliate Channel 42 WBMG (now WIAT). Shortly afterward, Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network wanted to begin airing her program over his satellite network CBN (now ABC Family Channel). Additionally, Christian television WCFC 38 (now WCPX) out of Chicago began airing her program in 1977. She visited their station as a guest on ''Among Friends'', a local Christian show produced locally by that station. After that visit, she stated, "I must have one of these."

In the late 1970s, WBMG was scheduled to air a controversial movie from the CBS Network. Angelica refused to continue producing shows at that station unless they chose to preempt it. WBMG refused, so she ended the show temporarily. Shortly after, she was a guest on Jim Bakker's PTL Club. At that time she taped a few shows to air there as well as on CBN and WCFC. She visited there periodically throughout 1978 and 1979. At that point she began the vision of building her own cable channel.

In 1980, a garage behind the monastery was converted into a television studio. Angelica was then able to tape her programs without leaving the monastery. They continued to air on various Christian stations while she began planning to buy satellite space to launch her own Catholic Cable channel. After many problems and glitches, Angelica signed on her cable channel on August 15, 1981, and named it Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). This service aired via satellite to cable companies and home satellite dishes as it still does today.

Initially, EWTN was on the air from 7 pm to 12 midnight daily. EWTN televised mass weekly, ''Mother Angelica Live'' (a talk show), Catholic shows produced from various Catholic groups, children's Christian programs, ''Life Is Worth Living'' with Bishop Sheen, praying of the rosary, Lutheran dramas like ''This Is the Life'', public domain movies, cooking shows, and a few 1950s westerns. Angelica was frequently seen on the network teaching or taking questions from viewers via telephone. She hosted the "Mother Angelica Live" television program which aired on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

EWTN expanded to 12 hours a day in 1985 and 24 hours a day in 1987. By 1986, EWTN phased out the secular programs and began airing only religious programming. In 1991, EWTN began running the mass every day. In 1992, Angelica also founded WEWN to broadcast Catholic programs worldwide via short-wave radio. In 1992, EWTN began mixing Latin into some parts of the mass, which is still done today. On Christmas of 1993, Mother Angelica and her nuns began dressing in a more traditional habit and veil, including the wimple. The theming of the channel began to focus more on Catholic traditions and began to be perceived as less ecumenical.

EWTN has become a voice for American conservative and traditional Catholics, with its position on religious and social issues often mirroring that of Pope John Paul II. With the emphasis on tradition, Angelica has had feuds with some members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Most famous is the feud over a pastoral letter written by Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles over teachings surrounding the Eucharist and the liturgy. After this dispute, EWTN added a large theology department with conservative priests, theologians, deacons, and lay people to make sure EWTN is in line with the teachings of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1996, Angelica began groundbreaking on a new Monastery in Hanceville, Alabama, called the Shrine Of The Most Blessed Sacrament (see insert). It was built with private donations. The nuns moved to this shrine in 1999. The friars remained in Irondale. When the shrine was completed in 1999, the daily mass was telecast from there. In 2000, the daily mass telecast originated from Irondale. EWTN airs several benediction services from that monastery.thumb|240px|right|Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Hanceville, Alabama Reruns of her old ''Mother Angelica Live'' show appear regularly on the network. Also, reruns of her 70's show, that aired on CBN and PTL, now called "Catholic Classics", air regularly on EWTN.

Later Years

Angelica stepped down from control of EWTN in 2000 and handed control to a board of lay people. In 2001, she suffered health setbacks, especially strokes.

Angelica had "multiple strokes suffered just after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," leaving "her with slightly slurred speech, some unresponsive facial muscles and the need to wear an eye patch over one eye because she is unable to close the eye lid."

In response to the terrorist attacks she made a statement expressing empathy for the victims, praising President Bush's speech to the U.S. Congress, and calling for justice on the conspirators. She went on identifying "pornography, abortion, child prostitution, the spread of drugs, the destruction of youth by an immoral media and the suppression of religious expression in public places as 'other' terrorism that must be addressed." She condemned abortion saying it had "deprived the nation of millions of people who would otherwise be there to defend the nation."

On September 25, 2001 she returned to taping her show twice a week. On Christmas Eve, she suffered another stroke. While this stroke did reverse the facial effects of the early strokes (ending the need for an eye-patch), it also partially paralyzed the right side of her body and affected her speech. Angelica began speech therapy but stopped hosting television programs.

Angelica taped a recitation of ''The Holy Rosary with Mother Angelica and the Nuns'' in 2003 which airs regularly. With the exception of the occasions when the cameras pan over to Angelica and her nuns during the live benediction services, she stopped making live appearances on EWTN at the end of 2001.

As of 2011, Angelica is still living in the monastery. She is the second oldest nun. She participates in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament a few hours a day at the shrine.

Recognition

''Time Magazine'' once described Angelica as "arguably the most influential Roman Catholic woman in America." ''Mother Angelica's Private and Pithy Lessons from the Scriptures'' by Raymond Arroyo was listed November 2, 2008 on the ''New York Times'' Best Sellers list of advice and how-to books.

Books

In 1973, Angelica began writing booklets on the spiritual life. She has since authored 53 books, which are published and distributed by Our Lady of the Angels monastery.

''Journey into Prayer''

''In the Shadow of His Light''

''In His Sandals''

''The Father's Splendor''

''I Am His Temple''

''The Fruits of His Love''

''The Promised Woman'' ISBN 978-1557940155

''Sons of Light''

''Three Keys to the Kingdom''

''Inside the Kingdom''

''His Silent Presence''

''Jesus Needs Me''

''The Divine Personality of Jesus''

''Ad Lib with the Lord''

''Living Prayer''

''Dawn on the Mountain''

''My Life in the Rosary''

''To Leave and Yet to Stay''

''The Healing Power of Suffering''

''No Greater Love''

''Living Way of the Cross''

''Knowing God's Will''

''Two Wills—His and Mine''

Mini-Books

''Sharing God Together''

''Sentinels Before the Bread of Life''

''Encounter with Jesus through the Holy Spirit''

''My Life in the Sacraments''

''The Mass in My Life''

''Mi Vida En El Rosario''

''Sweeping the Temple Clean''

''Love is Not Loved''

''Holiness is For Everyone''

''Jesus My Savior''

''In Praise of Goodness''

''Kidi-Book and Kidi-Kolor-Book Series''

''Come. Follow Me''

''Healing Your Faith VS Faith Healing''

''Why Do You Stay Away?''

''His Pain—Like Mine''

''Holiness In Action''

''Holiness in a Nutshell''

''The Gift of Life''

''My Mother — the Church''

''Notre Dame: Our Catholic University''

''The Family Spirit''

''Spiritual Hangovers''

''The Living Sacrament - Matrimony''

''Sympathetic Generosity''

''Rambling Thoughts''

''Struggle of a Soul's Purification''

''Before Time Began''

''Praying into Prayer''

References

External links

Updates from EWTN on Mother Angelica

Bashing Mother Angelica

''Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve and a Network Of Miracles'', a biography and a ''New York Times'' bestseller by EWTN's ''The World Over'' host, Raymond Arroyo

Audio Archives of Mother Angelica Live

Nun of the Media, Oil Portrait Painting of Mother Angelica by Artist Mark Sanislo

The Nuns Gift Shop

Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Hanceville, Alabama

Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word

Category:1923 births Category:Living people Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American Roman Catholic nuns Category:American television evangelists Category:Cullman County, Alabama Category:Franciscan nuns Category:People from Canton, Ohio Category:People from Cullman County, Alabama Category:Poor Clares Category:Roman Catholic activists Category:Roman Catholic writers Category:Stroke survivors Category:Recipients of the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice

de:Mutter Angelica es:Madre Angélica pl:Matka Angelica simple:Mother Angelica

Name	Dame Vera Lynn
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Vera Margaret Welch
Born	March 20, 1917East Ham, London, England
Genre	Traditional pop
Years active	1935–present
Label	UK Decca/London, HMV}}

Dame Vera Lynn, DBE (born Vera Margaret Welch on 20 March 1917) is an English singer and actress whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II. During the war she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops. She became known, and is still referred to, as "The Forces' Sweetheart"; the songs most associated with her are "We'll Meet Again" and "The White Cliffs of Dover". She remained popular after the war, appearing on radio and television in the UK and the United States and recording such hits as "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart" and "My Son, My Son". In 2009 she became the oldest living artist to make it to No. 1 on the British album chart, at the age of 92. She has devoted much time and energy to charity work connected with ex-servicemen, disabled children and breast cancer. She is still held in great affection by veterans of the Second World War and in 2000 was named the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the twentieth century.

Early life

Vera Lynn was born Vera Margaret Welch on 20 March 1917 in East Ham in the county of Essex. When she began performing publicly at the age of seven, she adopted her grandmother's maiden name (Lynn) as her stage name. Her first radio broadcast, with the Joe Loss Orchestra, was in 1935. At this point she was being featured on records released by dance bands including those of Loss and of Charlie Kunz. In 1936 her first solo record was released on the Crown label, "Up the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire". This label was absorbed by Decca Records in 1938. After a short stint with Loss she stayed with Kunz for a few years during which she recorded several standard musical pieces. In 1937, she moved to the aristocrat of British dance bands, Bert Ambrose.

War years

In 1939, during the Phoney War, the Daily Express asked British servicemen to name their favourite musical performers: Vera Lynn came out top and as a result became known as 'the Forces' Sweetheart'.

In 1941, during the darkest days of World War II, Lynn began her own radio programme, ''Sincerely Yours'', sending messages to British troops serving abroad.

She is best known for her 1942 recording of the popular song "We'll Meet Again", written by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles; the nostalgic lyrics ("We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day") were very popular during the war and made the song one of its emblematic hits. She also appeared in the 1943 film of that name. Her other great wartime hit was "The White Cliffs of Dover", words by Nat Burton, music by Walter Kent. Contrary to later reports, she neither sang nor recorded "Rose of England" during this time and it was only in 1966 when her producer, David Gooch, selected it for her album ''More Hits of the Blitz'' that she became familiar with it. The album itself was a follow-up to ''Hits of the Blitz'' produced by Norman Newell.

During the war years she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops. In 1985 it was announced that she would receive the Burma Star for entertaining British guerrilla units in Japanese-occupied Burma. She is one of the last surviving major entertainers of the war years.

Post-war career

thumb|right|150px|Vera Lynn in 1973 Lynn's Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart became the first record by a British performer to top the charts in the United States, remaining there for nine weeks. She also appeared regularly for a time on Tallulah Bankhead's U.S. radio programme, ''The Big Show''. "Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart", along with "The Homing Waltz" and "Forget-Me-Not", gave Lynn a remarkable three entries on the first UK Singles Chart, a top 12 (which actually contained 15 songs owing to tied positions).

Her popularity continued in the 1950s, peaking with "My Son, My Son", a number-one hit in 1954 which she co-wrote with Gordon Melville Rees. In 1960 she left Decca Records after nearly 25 years, and joined EMI. She recorded for EMI's Columbia, MGM and HMV labels. In 1967, she recorded "It Hurts To Say Goodbye", a song which hit the top 10 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart."

Vera Lynn was the subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions, in October 1957 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre, and in December 1978, for an episode which was broadcast on 1 January 1979, when Andrews surprised her at the Cafe Royal, London.

She hosted her own variety series on BBC1 in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was a frequent guest on other variety shows, notably The 1972 ''Morecambe & Wise'' Christmas Show. In 1972 she was a key performer in the BBC anniversary programme Fifty Years Of Music. In 1976 she hosted the BBC's A Jubilee Of Music, celebrating the pop music hits of the period 1952-1976 to commemorate the start of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee year. For ITV she presented a 1977 TV special to launch her album ''Vera Lynn in Nashville'', which included pop songs of the 1960s and country songs.

The Royal Variety Performance included appearances by Vera Lynn on three occasions: 1960, 1975 and 1986.

Lynn is also notable for being the only artist to have a chart span on the British single and album charts reaching from the chart's inception to the 21st century — in 1952 having three singles in the first ever singles chart, complied by New Musical Express, and most recently having a #1 album with ''We'll Meet Again — The Very Best Of Vera Lynn'' (see below).

Honours

Lynn was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1959, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1975.

Charity work

In 1953 Lynn formed the cerebral palsy charity SOS (The Stars Organisation for Spastics) and became its chairperson.

The Vera Lynn Charity Breast Cancer Research Trust was founded in 1976, with Lynn its chairperson and later its president.

In 2002 Lynn became president of the cerebral palsy charity The Dame Vera Lynn Trust for Children with Cerebral Palsy, and hosted a celebrity concert on its behalf at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.

On 19 August 2008 Lynn became the Patron of the Forces Literary Organisation Worldwide for ALL, a charitable not-for-profit organisation which helps those affected by war.

On 16 November 2010 Dame Vera Lynn became Patron of The Dover War Memorial Project, a voluntary not-for-profit group remembering the Fallen from Dover, Kent, England.

Later years

Lynn sang outside Buckingham Palace in 1995 in a ceremony that marked the golden jubilee of VE Day. This was her last known public performance.

The United Kingdom's VE Day Diamond Jubilee ceremonies in 2005 included a concert in Trafalgar Square, London, in which Lynn made an unannounced appearance. She made a speech praising the veterans and calling upon the younger generation always to remember their sacrifice and joined in with a few bars of "We'll Meet Again". Following that year's Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance, Dame Vera encouraged the Welsh mezzo-soprano singer Katherine Jenkins to assume the mantle of "Forces' Sweetheart".

In her speech Lynn said, "These boys gave their lives and some came home badly injured, and for some families life would never be the same. We should always remember, we should never forget, and we should teach the children to remember."

In September 2008 Lynn helped launch a new social history recording website, "The Times of My Life", at the Cabinet War Rooms in London.

On 3 September 2009 Andrew Castle hosted Lynn on GMTV to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Britain's declaring war on Germany. At the end of the interview she sang a verse from "We'll Meet Again," at Castle's request.

Her autobiography ''Some Sunny Day'' was published in August 2009, when Lynn was 92. She had written two previous memoirs: ''Vocal Refrain'' (1970) and ''We'll Meet Again'' (1989).

On 18 February 2009, ''The Daily Telegraph'' reported that Lynn was suing the British National Party (BNP) for using "the White Cliffs of Dover" on an anti-immigration album without her permission. Her lawyer claimed the album seemed to link Lynn, who does not align with any political party, to the party's views by association.

On 13 September 2009 Lynn became the oldest living artist to make it into No. 1 in the British album chart, at the age of 92, passing such veterans of music as American jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong and French singer Charles Aznavour. Her collection ''We'll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn'' entered the chart at number 20 on 30 August, and then climbed to number 2 the following week, before reaching the top position., outselling both the Arctic Monkeys and the Beatles. In its third week the album went gold with sales of over 100,000.

Year

Album

Chart Positions

Certifications

Sales

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2009

Compilation album>Compilation Album

* Released: August 25, 2009

* Label: Decca Records

* Formats: Compact Disc

1

48

8

83

18

8

28

10

21

UK: Gold

*New Zealand: Gold

United Kingdom>UK: 240,000+

Personal life

In 1941 Lynn married Harry Lewis, a clarinetist and saxophonist, whom she had met two years earlier. They had one child, Virginia Penelope Anne Lewis. Harry Lewis died in 1999.

Lynn has lived in Ditchling in Sussex since the early 1960s.

Recording career

Vera Lynn made her solo recording debut with the song "Up The Wooden Hill To Bedfordshire" in February 1936. The 9" 78rpm single was issued on the Crown Records label, which went on to release a total of 8 singles recorded by Vera Lynn and Charles Smart on organ. Early recordings include "I'm in the Mood for Love" and "Red Sails in the Sunset".

In 1938 the Decca label took over control of the British Crown label and the UK based Rex label, they had also issued early singles from Lynn in 1937, including "Harbour Lights". In late September 1939 Vera Lynn first recorded a song that continues to be associated with her, the song "We'll Meet Again was originally recorded with Arthur Young on the Novachord. Throughout the 1940's and 50's the Decca label issued all of Vera Lynn's records, including several recorded with Mantovani and His Orchestra in 1942 and with Robert Farnon, from the late 1940's. Firstly they were only available as 78rpm singles, which only feature two songs an A and a B-side. In the mid 1950's Decca issued several EP singles, which featured between two and four recordings per side, such as ''Vera Lynn's Party Sing Song'' from 1954 and singles were issued on two formats the known 78prm 10" and the recently introduced 45rpm 7" single. In the late 1950s Lynn recorded four albums at Decca, the first; ''Vera Lynn Concert'' remains her only live recording ever to be issued on vinyl.

In 1960, after more than 20 years at Decca Records, Lynn signed to the US based MGM Records, in the UK her recordings were distributed by the His Masters Voice label, later EMI Records, several albums and stand alone singles were recorded with Geoff Love & His Orchestra, Norman Newell also took over as Lynn's producer in this period and remained with her until her 1976 ''Christmas with Vera Lynn''. Recording at EMI Records up until 1977, Lynn released thirteen albums with material as diverse as traditional Hymns, pop and country songs, as well as re-recording many of her known songs from the 40's for the albums ''Hits of the Blitz'' (1966), ''More Hits of the Blitz'' and ''Vera Lynn Remembers - The World at War'' (1974). In the 1980s two albums of contemporary pop songs were recorded at the Pye Records label, both included covers of songs previously recorded by such artists as Abba and Barry Manilow.

In 1982 a stand alone single "I Love This Land" (Falklands War song) was issued and in 1984 Horatio Nelson Records issued Vera Lynn's last recordings made before her retirement. The album ''Vera Lynn Remembers'', produced by Harry Lewis, Lynn's husband, features 17 re-recordings of songs known and associated with Vera Lynn over her 50 year recording career.

Discography

Original albums

style="width:10%;"	Year	Album title	Other notes
1955	''Vera Lynn Concert''	Live recording. Issued on the Decca label
1956	''If I Am Dreaming''
1958	''The Wonderful World of Nursery Rhymes''
1959	''Vera Lynn Sings...Songs Of The Tuneful Twenties''
1960	''Sing With Vera''
1960	''Yours''
1961	''As Time Goes By''
1962	''Hits of the Blitz''
1963	''The Wonderful Vera Lynn''
1964	''Among My Souveniers''
1966	''More Hits of the Blitz''
1970
1972	''Unforgettable Songs by Vera Lynn''
1972	''Favourite Scared Songs''
1974	''Vera Lynn Remembers - The World at War''
1976	''Christmas with Vera Lynn''
1977	''Vera Lynn in Nashville''
1979	''Thank You For the Music (I Sing The Songs)''
1981	''Singing To the World''
1984	''Vera Lynn Remembers''

Charted albums

!Date	!Album	!UK Chartposition
21 Nov 1981	''20 Family Favourites''
9 Sep 1989	''We'll Meet Again''
30 Aug 2009	''We'll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn''
30 May 2010	''Unforgettable''

Charted singles

!Date	!Title	!UK Chartposition
	"Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart"
"Forget-Me Not"
"The Homing Waltz"
5 Jun 1953	"The Windsor Waltz"
15 Oct 1954	"My Son, My Son"
8 Jun 1956	"Who are We"
26 Oct 1956	"A House with Love in It"
15 Mar 1957	"The Faithful Hussar (Don't Cry My Love)"
21 Jun 1957	"Travellin' Home"

Films

''We'll Meet Again'' (1943)

''Rhythm Serenade'' (1943)

''One Exciting Night'' (1944)

''Venus fra Vestø'' (1962)

In popular culture

Both Lynn and "We'll Meet Again" feature in Pink Floyd's 1979 album ''The Wall''. They are directly cited in the track "Vera". In the live version of ''The Wall'', ''Is There Anybody Out There: The Wall Live 1980-1981'', "We'll Meet Again" opens the concert before the show starts. It serves as a link between band member Roger Waters and his father, who was killed during World War II. The film ''The Wall'' begins with Lynn singing "The Little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot."

Lynn and the words "We'll meet again some day" are mentioned in the Kinks' song "Mr. Churchill Says".

The final scene of Stanley Kubrick's ''Dr. Strangelove'' features "We'll Meet Again" playing as many nuclear explosions are set off.

One of the episodes of the TV documentary series The World at War is named after one of Lynn's songs "It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow," which dealt with the Burma Campaign. Ms. Lynn herself reminisced visiting the British troops in Burma, and a snippet of the song is included amidst the struggles of the British Forces in dealing with the mud and the monsoon.

In Gary Numan's song 'War Songs', there is a line that reads "Old men love war songs, I'm Vera Lynn".

In the British campaign of Call of Duty 3, there are two SAS Jeeps. One is named "Vera", and the other is named "Lynn".

Scottish band Travis have a song called "U16 Girls" with the following line: "I met a girl in Paris, she talked like Vera Lynn."

During a ''Street Talk'' segment on ''The AFL Footy Show'' in 2009, an elderly Englishman claiming to be Vera Lynn's brother appeared before Sam Newman on the streets of St Kilda. Although there was no way to prove his claim, it was expected to be true because of his striking physical resemblance as well as his knowledge of her songs.

In the movie ''Hellboy'', during Professor Broom's confrontation with Rasputin, a recording of Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" plays in the background (according to the closed-captioning).

The name Vera Lynn is cockney rhyming slang for "skin", a cigarette paper used for roll-ups. This was immortalised in the song "Ebeneezer Goode" by the Shamen with the line "Anyone got any Veras? Lovely!"

The punk band the Sex Pistols are noted for coming onstage to the Lynn version of the song "There'll Always Be an England". It is also the name of their only live DVD.

English rock band the Libertines used Lynn's song "We'll Meet Again" as their walk-on music during their 2010 reunion concerts.

Lynn is the subject of "The Yip! Song" by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians.

Lynn is mentioned among several memories of the Second World War in When the Wind Blows (graphic novel) and the animated film adaptation.

In an episode of 'Allo 'Allo Herr Flick bugs General von Klinkerhoffen's golf bag. When trying to pick up what the General is saying, Lynn's White Cliffs of Dover is heard leaving Herr Flick to remark, ''That damn woman, she gets everywhere''.

"We'll Meet Again" is played at the close of ''The Singing Detective''.

The character of Lynn Minmay in the anime series Super Dimension Fortress Macross is based on Vera Lynn.

In the Futurama episode "A Big Piece of Garbage" Lynn's song "We'll Meet Again" is sung over the closing credits.

In the 1984 film "The Hit", "We'll Meet Again" is sung by the gangsters on trial to witness Terence Stamp as he leaves the courtroom. It serves as a way of telling Stamp's character that he is a marked man for testifying against his friends.

Publications

Lynn, Vera (1975). ''Vocal Refrain''. London: W.H. Allen

Lynn, Vera and Cross, Robin (1989). ''We'll Meet Again''. London: Sidgwick & Jackson

Lynn, Vera (2009). ''Some Sunny Day''. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780007318155

References

External links

Q&A; with TIME Magazine in September 2009

2002 BBC article

2009 article in The Guardian (1)

Dame Vera Lynn Trust for Children with Cerebral Palsy

Dame Vera Lynn March 2010 interview

One-hour radio programme on France Culture in June 2007 (listen)

Vera Lynn Biography

The Discography of Vera Lynn at Discogs.com

Category:1917 births Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:English female singers Category:Living people Category:People from Ditchling Category:People from East Ham Category:Traditional pop music singers Category:The Wall (rock opera)

cy:Vera Lynn da:Vera Lynn de:Vera Lynn es:Vera Lynn fa:ویرا لین fr:Vera Lynn hr:Vera Lynn it:Vera Lynn he:ורה לין nl:Vera Lynn ja:ヴェラ・リン no:Vera Lynn pl:Vera Lynn pt:Vera Lynn ru:Линн, Вера simple:Vera Lynn fi:Vera Lynn sv:Vera Lynn th:วีรา ลินน์

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, working with Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African American music to a wider audience. 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 multiple 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 his first guitar for his birthday; 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 played and sang 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 ''Opry''s 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 Los Angeles. 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 at its main studio in New York, 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 ''Billboard''s 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. His arrival was a major media event. 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."

Soon after Presley commenced basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, he received a visit from Eddie Fadal, a businessman he had met on tour. According to Fadal, 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. In early August, his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis and her condition swiftly worsened. Presley, granted emergency leave to visit her, arrived in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure, aged 46. Presley was devastated; their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

After training, 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. 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 generated 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 in Burbank, California, the special, called simply ''Elvis'', aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the '68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small 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 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. According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley's marriage "was a blow from which he never recovered."

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 Mike 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 Enquirer''s 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 ranked 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. He was again the second-highest-earning deceased celebrity.

Presley holds the records for most songs charting in ''Billboard''s 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 ''Billboard''s unified Hot 100 chart, are analyzed. According to Whitburn, Presley holds the record for most top ten hits with 38; per ''Billboard''s 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

Presley was a central figure in the development of rockabilly, according to music historians. Katherine Charlton calls him "rockabilly's originator". "Rockabilly crystallized into a recognizable style in 1954 with Elvis Presley's first release, on the Sun label", writes Craig Morrison. Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as "essentially ... an Elvis Presley construction": "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". In "That's All Right", the Presley trio's first record, Scotty Moore's guitar solo, "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 ''Billboard''s 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's contracts with Presley gave him 50 percent of most of the singer's earnings from 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 the 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 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 Sound''s 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. 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 also had number one hits in many countries beside the United States and United Kingdom.

Number one albums

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
style="text-align:left;"	4/5	—	1
		2/23	—	1
	1	—	1
	5	—	1
style="text-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

Elvis Presley Enterprises

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 (''Billboard''s 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"; ''Billboard''s 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.

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

Elvis Presley 1955 interview material on ''Pop Chronicles''

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