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- Duration: 3:17
- Updated: 26 Dec 2012
- published: 16 Oct 2006
- views: 8033359
- author: ZanyBear
I'be been bitten by the bug and I am coming down with oh
Something that can't be cured
There aint a doctor in this town who is more qualified than you
Yeah to be so adored
So tell me what do you prescribe for these symptoms
A heart beating faster and work is a disaster
I'm lovesick when you're not around
Check me over
When strong hands and healing
I'm dancing on the ceiling
Fever sure has got me good
What you do when fever takes hold
I can't help but need this drug
Don't you feel the fever like I do
Feel the fever
I am ready for the news so tell me straight
Hey doctor just what do you diagnose
There aint a surgeon like you any place in all the world
So now, shall I remove my clothes
So tell me what do you prescribe for these symptoms
A heart beating faster and work is a disaster
I'm lovesick when you're not around
Check me over
When strong hands and healing
You give me
You give me fever
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
Listen to me baby, hear every word I say
No one can love you the way I do
'Cause they don't know how to love you my way
You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
My eyes light up when you call my name
'Cause I know you're gonna treat me right
Bless my soul I love you, take this heart away
Take these arms I'll never use
And just believe in what my lips have to say
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you should know
Fever isn't such a new scene
Fever started long ago
You give me fever, fever
You give me, you give me fever
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet, she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said Julie baby, you're my flame
He gave her fever
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
My eyes light up when you call my name
'Cause I know you're gonna treat me right
Fever, with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you should know
Fever isn't such a new scene
Fever started long ago
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said, daddy oh don't you dare
He gives me fever
With his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his Misses
Daddy, won't you treat him right
Fever, when you kiss them
Fever, if you live and learn
Fever, 'til you sizzle
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night.
Ev'rybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said 'Julie, baby, you're my flame
Thou giv-est fever when we kisseth
Fever with the flaming youth
Fever I'm afire
Fever ye I burn for sooth'
Captain Smith and Pocahantas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said 'Daddy, o, don't you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his misses,
Oh daddy, won't you treat him right'
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever 'til you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Oh, woo, oh
You give me fever
Fever, oh, oooh
Hoo, oh
You give me fever
Fever in the morning
Fever when it's late at night
You give me fever (fever)
Fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
You give me fever (fever)
Fever in the evening
Fever all through the night
You give me fever, yeah (fever)
Fever when you're with me
Fever when you love
He's so sweet
He's so good to me
He's so intelligent
He's so confident
My baby's so damn sexy (oh)
My baby put the fever on me (oh)
My baby knows just what to do (oh)
You got me boilin past a hundred and two (oh)
You give me a fever
Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
Ooooh
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever (fever)
When you kiss me and fever when you hold me tight (fever)
You give me fever
In the mornin and fever all through the night
My baby's so damn sexy (oh)
My baby put the fever on me (oh)
My baby knows just what to do (oh)
And got boilin me past a hundred and two (oh)
Give me a fever
Oooh
Everybody's got a fever
That is somethin you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
And Juliet felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said Julie baby you're my flame
Thou give me fever
When we kisseth
A fever with the flaming youth
Fever I'm on fire
Fever yeah, I burn forsooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said Daddy, oh don't you dare
He gives me fever
With his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever
I'm his Mrs.
And Daddy won't you treat him right
Now that you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give ya fever
Be it fahrenheit or centigrade
They give ya fever
When ya kiss em
Fever if you live ya learn
Fever until you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Fever
Til ya sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to...
Burn
Lover, Where Have You Gone
I'll Bleed My Eyes Out
'til The Water Forgets To Run
Joker, Sing Me Your Song
Show Me The Weather
Now The Story Is Said And Done
I'm All Right
I'm Just Waiting For You On The Edge Of The World
I Don't Care
If It Takes Me A Million Years
Whisper, Silence The Dawn
I Feel Your Footsteps
Now The Party Has Just Begun
I Wonder, Where Have You Gone
I'll Weed The Night Out
'til The Fever Is Dead And Gone
The pain sets in
Love turns to hate
Fear lies and wait
Fever, fever
Your flesh begins to crawl
Night time takes it all
So you think you're moving on
Fever, fever
When you're choosing between the night
And the light of day
Your body's confused
There's nothing to lose
Fever, fever
Your flesh begins to crawl
Night time takes it all
So you think you're moving on
Fever, fever
Fever, fever
Your flesh begins to crawl
Night time takes it all
So you think you're moving on
Fever, fever
Pressure's gone and the pain sets in
Love turns to hate
Fear lies and wait
Fever, fever
Fever, fever
Your flesh begins to crawl
Night time takes it all
So you think you're moving on
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever, in the the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
The moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever, in the the morning
Fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said "Julie baby you're my flame"
Thou givest fever, when we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever, I'm afire
Fever yea I burn forsooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her Daddy tried to kill him
She said "Daddy-O don't you dare"
You give me fever, with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his Misses
Oh daddy won't you treat him right
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade
They give you fever, when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever, till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Neverrr know how much I love you (woo!)
Neverrr know how much I care (No I.D.)
And when you put your arms around me
I get the fever that's so hard to bare
You give me fever
Uhh, here go that arrogant, stuffy head, cold leave you achin
from asses ah-shakin all night to rest well medicine
It's that {FE-VER} take two of these, call me in the mornin
You gon' still feel sick, cause it's that {give you that fever}
I give 'em all the plague, I'm awfully paid
And still make a cold starve for days
Never the type that ran, whatever the fight I'm in
You half-hearted, but I take this medicine like a man
For that {FE-VER} that keep these niggaz sweatin bullets
Clack clack, naw them the ones that you caught for tryin to pull it
This that {FE-VER} somebody warn the industry
'Fest on FIRE, and burnin in the third degree
'Til they murder me, five-oh get no words from me
And if they do then that's perjury
{FE-VER} Hot like hot sauce
Uhh, we got we got that fe-verrr
Play women so false, flick your drawers off
Fuh, fuh-fuh, we got that fe-verrr
{FE-VER} Hot like hot sauce
Uhh, we got we got that fe-verrr
Play women so false, flick your drawers off
Yeah we got, we got that fe-verrr
Hmm, left the path to wipe sweat from his brow
Except that his smile'll infect crowds
Hot as Hades, I got a lot of ladies strippin down to they drawers
Hittin the floor like OWWWW
That's him, and by him I mean me
By me, you seem weak homey like yo' heart pump green tea
I stack greenbacks then lean back, scorchin hot
My torch'll leave yo' ass charcoal black, I got that {FE-VER}
You better listen to them old wives' tales
I can look in yo' eyes, you high as hell for that {FE-VER}
Rhymefest Peligrino, I quench thrist
Niggaz better act like that bitch work
I'm workin progress (the pimp's back) youse a work in progress
You feelin the son/sun, respect my hotness
So many fine chicks shit's gettin monotonous
But still I love the way that she shakes her maracas for that
Step in the club with my swagger, niggaz get bruised & then battered
Grind mode is what I'm reppin and yep!
Hot as the grease when it sizzle and pop in your eye
Now you shrivel and chickens be gigglin like {give you that fever}
Yeah homey, I makes that club turn to a sweatbox
Like 50 horny Jamaicans with dreadlocks
30 chicks in the lobby, probably 5 of 'em ready to party
Cause I'm an ol' funny nigga like Redd Foxx
But this is more than jokes, y'all niggaz sorta broke
You can never be hot as me, you can't even afford a coat
I got that {FE-VER} ha-ha-ha-hot as hellfire, brimstone
Stiletto brim hats, bitches with gems on
Niggaz with Timbs on, Jenny Jones to Jim Jones
I get the d-down like syndrome
I get r-round like rims on, the ghetto King Kong that sing songs
and made a BILLION DOLLARS ON RINGTONES~!
FE-VER! Everybody's, got that fever, give you that fever
FE-VER! Everybody's, got that fever
FE-VER! Everybody's, got that fever, give you that fever
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
My eyes light up when you call my name
'Cause I know you're gonna treat me right
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you should know
Fever isn't such a new scene
Never know how much I love you,
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me,
I get a fever that’s so hard to bear
You give me fever, when you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning, fever all through the night.
Sun lights up the daytime,
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name,
Because, I know your gonna treat me right
You give me fever, when you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning, fever all through the night.
Everybody’s got the fever,
That is something you all know
Fever isn’t such a new thing,
Fever started long ago.
Romeo loved Juliet, Juliet she felt the same,
When he put his arms around her,
He said, ‘Julie baby you’re my thing’
You give us fever, when we kisseth,
Fever with the flaming youth
Fever, I’m on fire, Fever yea, I burn forsooth.
Captain Smith and Pocahontas, had a very mad affair
When her Daddy tried to kill him,
She said, Daddy-o don’t do that
He gives me fever, with his kisses,
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I’m his misses, Daddy won’t you treat him right.
Now you’ve listened to my story,
And here’s a point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever,
Be it farenheight or centigrade
They give you fever, when you kiss them
Fever if you live your life
Fever ’til you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn...
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that’s so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Ev’rybody’s got the fever
that is something you all know
Fever isn’t such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I’m gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said, Julie baby, you’re my flame
Thou givest fever when we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever, I’m afire
Fever, yea I burn forsooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said Daddy-o don’t you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I’m his Missus,
Oh daddy, won’t you treat him right
Now you’ve listened to my story
Here’s the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever
when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever
when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Ev'rybody's got the fever
that is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said Julie, baby, you're my flame
I give us fever
when we kissin'
Fever with that flaming youth
Fever I'm on fire
Fever yeah I burned for sooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said Daddy, oh, don't you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his missus,
Oh daddy, won't you treat him right
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Never know how much I love you
You'll never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a feeling that's so hard to bear
(CHORUS)
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever, when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Listen to me, baby
And hear every word I say
You know that no one
Can love you the way that I do
Because they don't know how
To love you my way
(CHORUS)
Bless my soul, I love you
Take this hurt away
Take these arms that
I'll never, never use
Believe in what my
Lips have to say
(CHORUS)
Sun lights up the day time
The moon lights up the night
You know I light up
When you call my name
Because I know you're
Gonna treat me right
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night.
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Ev'rybody's got the fever
that is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said Julie, baby, you're my flame
I give us fever when we kissin'
Fever with that flaming youth
Fever I'm on fire
Fever yeah I burned for sooth'
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said Daddy, oh, don't you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his mistress,
Oh daddy, won't you treat him right'
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
When I get home from my job
I turn on my T.V.
But I can't keep my mind on the show
When I lay down at night
I don't get no sleep
So I turn on the radio
But, Lord, the only thing I hear
Is you whisperin' in my ear
The words that you used to say
Well, now the days grow longer
My love grows stronger
And the fever gets worse every day
I got a fever for a girl
He's got the fever
Oh, he's got the fever
Nothing that a boy can do
When he's got the fever for a girl
He's got the fever
Oh, he's got the fever
Left this little boy blue
I can remember comin' home
See you standin' at the stove
With the dishes on the table
Dinner ready to go
Or maybe out to a movie show
Something that you'd like to see
Oh, you were my sun in the morning
And my moon at night
When you put your arms around me
Made me fell alright
Well, now the days grow longer
And my love just grows stronger
And the fever gets so bad at night
I got a fever for a girl
He's got the fever
Oh, he's got the feverNothing that a boy can do
When he's got the fever for a girl
He's got the fever
Oh, he's got the fever
Left this little boy blue
It's gonna be alright, now
If I can make it to the morning
I'm gonna be alright, now
If I can just make it to the morning
It's just this long and lonely nights
Everytime I close my eyes
All I see is her face
Everytime I shut my eyes
All I see is her face
But I'm gonna be alright, now
I'll be alright, now
When I shut down all the lights
When I turn off all the lights
When I turn down all the lights
And when I lay my head on the pillow
I can't stop myself in thinking
"Baby, where are you tonight?"
"Where is she tonight?"
I just stopped listening to your story
As if I paid attention once.
And I never once felt more alive,alive,alive - ALIVE.
Speeding up the pace on the machine.
Calling radio and magazines.
Preaching to the ordinary ones.
Yes Teaching all the ordinary ones.
It gives me fever.
I just stopped listening to your story.
And I'll start forgetting all at once.
And I never once felt more alive,alive,alive - ALIVE.
Speeding up the pace on the machine.
Calling radio and magazines.
Hate my job can't wait to cut the chain.
I love speaking to slow and the insane.
It gives me fever.
I just stopped listening to your story.
And I'll turn the tables all at once.
Speeding up the pace on the machine.
Calling radio and magazines.
My clock is ticking fast upon my wrist.
I wanna slow it down so I'll put it on my fist.
Fever.....Fever....Fever...I get Fever...Fever
I'd spend my days alone
I used to stay at home
Lost in seclusion there.
Like I was in a cell
A captured heart as well
Surrounded by despair.
Darkness filled my soul
Losing all control.
Down on the streets below
Bright city lights would glow.
The energy would rise
And through the heat I'd gaze
Still counting empty days.
With fire in my eyes
Living through this hell
Can I break this spell.
Fever. You set my soul on fire.
Fever. You fill me with desire.
Fever. You always get it right.
Fever. All day and all night.
Then one night as I walked
I heard your body talk
I saw a shooting sta
In some magnetic trance
Our beating hearts would dance
And crash down from afar.
Oh how strange fate is
Never dreamed of this.
So destiny has brought us
Oh so close together
We were like angels in the night
e dream
At last I'll be with you forever.
And all at once it feels so right.
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever, when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever, when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet, she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said, "Julie, baby, you're my flame"
Thou givest fever when we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever, I'm afire
Fever, yeah, I burn for sooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said, "Daddy, oh, don't you dare"
"He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his misses
Daddy, won't you treat him right", go
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever, if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Why do you wanna know everything
Why do you need a plan in your mind
Why do you smile if you don't want to
Why do you act if this is all true
How can you keep your wish inside you
How can I just forget about you
When I could never lie to you
When I could never hide it from you
Even if I'd only give you silence
You would know
What's taking place in my mind
But your world has got the fever
You're killing it with your reasons
Your world has got the fever
And you step on it and don't see it
Why do we end up being so lonely?
Now where have your eyes gone if nothing scares you
Why is this all just never enough
To make you happy
To stop your thinking
'cause your world has got the fever
You're killing it with your reasons
Your world has got the fever
And you step on it and you don't see it
Think I'm falling give me your hand
Think I'm falling give me your hand
Think I'm falling give me your hand
Think I'm falling give me your hand
I was walking when I saw a bird in the sky
And I followed its flight with my eyes
I felt like I could take myself up there
And it just made me smile inside
And it just made me fall in love
With everything
But your world has got the fever
You're killing it with your reasons
Your world has got the fever
And you step on it and don't see it
But your world has got the fever
You're killing it with your reasons
Your world has got the fever
And you step on it and don't see it
Your world has got the fever
It is shaking and you jump on it
But your world has got the fever
You're killing it with your reasons
Your world has got the fever
Your world has got the fever
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime moon
Lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is somethin' you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said, "Daddy, oh, don't you dare?"
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever I'm his Mrs
Daddy, won't you treat him right
Now you listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Bring it Fahrenheit or centigrade
We give you fever when you kiss 'em
Fever when you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle what a lovely way to burn
He's got a split finger wrap
And his rope's pulled way too tight
He's got a lunatic smile
'Cause he's really drawn deep tonight
He's got a fever, fever, fever, fever
Grab a hold of anything and hold on tight
It hits you like the venom from a rattlesnake bite
We're all here 'cause he's not all there tonight
He takes one last breath
And time turns inside out
Then the gate busts open
To the world he dreams about
He's got fever, fever, fever, fever
Stick a rope on anything 'cause he don't care
He'd even take a ride in an electric chair
We're all here 'cause he's not all there tonight
He says it's really kinda simple
Keep your mind in the middle
While your butt spins 'round and 'round
Take heed to Snakey's preachin'
Keep liftin' and reachin'
And ridin' like there ain't no clowns
What he loves might kill him
But he's got no choice
He's a different breed
With a voice down deep inside
That's screamin' he was born to ride
He's got a fever, fever, fever, fever
Fever makes you crazy 'cause it makes no sense
Like runnin' from your shadow out of self defense
But he won't run and baby he can't hide
He thinks the odds are even leavin' one hand tied
He gets tired of hangin' on so tight
I know you think he's crazy well I think you're right
We're all here 'cause he's not all there tonight
Never know how much I love you.
Never know how much I care.
When you put your arms around me,
I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
You give me fever when you kiss me.
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever in the morning.
Fever all through the night.
Sun lights up the daytime,
And moon lights up the night.
I light up when you call my name,
And you know I'm gonna treat you right.
You give me fever when you kiss me.
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever in the morning,
And fever all through the night.
Everybody's got the fever.
That is something you all know.
Fever isn't such a new thing.
Fever started long ago.
Romeo loved Juliet.
Juliet, she felt the same.
When he put his arms around her,
He said, "Julie, baby, you're my flame.
Thou giveth fever when we kisseth.
Fever with thy flaming youth.
Fever, I'm afire.
Fever, yeah, I burn, forsooth."
Cap'n Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair.
When her daddy tried to kill him,
She said, "Daddy, oh, don't you dare.
He gives me fever with his kisses.
Fever when he holds me tight.
Fever, I'm his missus,
So Daddy, won't you treat him right."
Now you've listened to my story,
Here's the point that I have made:
Chicks were born to give you fever,
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade.
They give you fever when you kiss them.
Fever if you live and learn.
Fever 'til you sizzle.
What a lovely way to burn.
What a lovely way to burn.
What a lovely way to burn.
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever, that's so hard to bear
You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever, in the morning
And fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And I know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever, in the morning
Fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet, she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said "Julie Baby, You're my flame"
Thou givest fever,
When he kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever, I'm afire
Fever, yeah I burn forsooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her Daddy tried to kill him
She said, "Daddy, Oh, Don't you dare!"
He gives me fever
With his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his Misses
Oh Daddy, won't you treat him right?
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Love was meant to give you fever
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade
It gives you Fever, when you're kissing,
Fever, if you live, you learn
Fever, 'till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
It's hot as hell in here
Everybody wants to lose control
The music's turned up loud
The lights, we'll turn them low
Wound up like a hurricane
And my head's about to explode
Can't wait to self destruct
Can't wait to let it go
Whoa, she hits the stage
Whoa, she makes me crave
So come and get my money
Whoa
I can feel your fever taking over
Can you see your fever taking over me?
I can feel your fever taking over
Got a dirty feeling that you're the remedy
Whoa, come on
So I'm looking for a spark
I've got a body to reignite
Don't worry you won't get burned
So don't, don't put up a fight
Push hard to breaking point
And I'm ready to overload
No limits and no regrets
It's time to sell my soul
Whoa, you're all I want
Whoa, you're all I need
So come and take my money
Whoa
I can feel your fever taking over
Can you see your fever taking over me?
I can feel your fever taking over
Got a dirty feeling that you're the remedy
That you're the remedy
Come here, you naughty girl
You're such a tease
You look so beautiful
Down on your knees
Keep on those high heel shoes
Rip off all your clothes
You smell so fucking good
It makes me lose control
Losing control, you're all I want
Selling my soul, you're all I need
Losing control, you're all I want
I can't let you go, whoa
I can feel your fever taking over
Can you see your fever taking over me?
I can feel your fever taking over
Got a dirty feeling that you're the remedy
a desert road from vegas to nowhere
some place better than where you've been
a coffee machine that needs some fixing
in a little caf
Never know how much I love you,
Never know how much I care.
When you put your arms around me,
I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
You give me fever,
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
Fever all through the night.
Sun lights up the daytime
And moon lights up the night..
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
And fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliette
Juliette she felt the same
When he put his arms around her he said,
"Julie, Baby , you're my flame
"Thou giveth fever
"When we kisseth
"Fever with thy flaming youth
"Fever! I'm afire,
"Fever, yeah, I burn, forsooth."
Cap'in Smith and Pocahontas had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said,
"Daddy, oh, don't you dare!
"He gives me fever
"With his kisses
"Fever when he holds me tight
"Fever! I'm his missus, So
"Daddy, Won't you treat him right?"
Now you've listened to my story,
Here's the point that I have made:
Chicks were born to give you fever,
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade
They give you fever
When you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever! 'till you sizzle
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
There's a fever
On the freeway
In the morning
In the morning
And the lover
Smiling for me
Without warning
Without warning
There's an outlaw
On the highway
And she's falling
And she's falling
Man I must have been blind
To carry a torch
For most of my life
These days I'm hanging around
You're out of my heart
And out of my town
There's a fever
On the freeway
In the morning
In the morning
And the lover
Smiling for me
While she's falling
While she's falling
Man I must have been blind
To carry a torch
For most of my life
These days I'm hanging around
You're out of my heart
And out of my town
There's a fever
On the freeway
In the morning
In the morning
And the lover
Smiling for me
Without warning
Without warning
Man I must have been blind
To carry a torch
For most of my life
These days I'm hanging around
You're out of my heart
Ooooh
You give me fever
Fever ooh
OOh
You give me fever
Fever in the morning
Fever when it's late at night
You give me fever
(fever)
Fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
You give me fever
(fever)
Fever in the evening
Fever all through the night
You give me fever, yeah
(fever)
Fever when you're with me
Fever when you love me right
He's so sweet
He's so good to me
He's so intelligent
He's so confident
My baby's so very sexy
(uh huh)
My baby put the fever on me, uh
(uh huh)
My baby knows just what to do
(uh huh)
You got me boilin past a hundred and two
(uh huh)
You give me fever oooh
oh, uh
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I catch a fever that's so hard to bare
You give me fever
(fever)
When you kiss me and fever when you hold me tight
You give me fever
(fever)
In the mornin and fever all through the night
My baby's so damn sexy
(uh huh)
My baby put the fever on me
(uh huh)
My baby knows just what to do
(uh huh)
And got boilin past a hundred and two
Give me a fever
oooooh
Everybody's got a fever
That is somethin you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
And Juliet felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said "Julie baby you're my flame"
Thou give me fever
when we kisseth
a fever with the flaming youth
Fever I'm on fair
Fever yea a burn peruses
Cap'n Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said "Daddy, oh don't you dare"
He gives me fever
With his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever
I'm his Mrs.
And Daddy wont you treat him right
Now that you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give ya fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give ya fever
When ya kiss em
An fever if you live in learn
Fever until you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Fever
Til ya sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely to...
burn
fever
Here i going girl-s it noda toy
Just listen my story just let u
Going on i ma-ge you feverhellip;
Jinshi-reun kkamahke tadeu-reo-ga-go urireul
Keu so-ge kadwo dujiman geodaran haneul kadeukhi peojyeo
I-nneun pisbite kkumeurirheoman ganeunka keureohke sarajyeo kadeon
Yongmangi sesangeul hyang-hae sorichinda shimjangeul u-llineun eumag so-ge
Keu so-ge ppajyeodeu-reo eodumdo ije nareul makjineun mothae
Sesange balghyeojil truth keojiseun eop-seo modu ikyeo nael tenikka
I ma-ge you fever i do i do i ma-ge you fever
Taeyangi eodumeul hwahnhi bitu-go (going to hot zone turn off the cell
phone)
Saeroun nae-ili shijakdwaeht-jiman (just throw ya hands off here i going
Ajikdo jamane kadeukcha i-nneun neo nae ane yeol-jeon-gi kkeojil jurara-nna
Eodum sok chimmugeul jikyeo-on my story sesangeul hyang-hae
Sorichinda urineun i sesang pyeonkyeonso-ge keu so-ge deouk
Binna chanranhan nareul deo karil-sun eop-seo sesange balghyeojil
Truth ginjang-hae ije jin-cha nal bo-ge twehl tenikka
I ma-ge you fever i do i do i ma-ge you fever
Urineun i sesang pyeonkyeon so-ge keu so-ge deouk binna
Chanranhan nareul deo karil-sun eop-seo sesange balghyeojil truth
Ginjang-hae ije jin-cha nal bo-ge twehl-tenikka shimjangeul u-llineun
Eumakso-ge keu so-ge ppajyeodeu-reo eodumdo ije nareul makjineun
Mothae sesange balghyeojil truth keojiseun eop-seo modu
There he goes
My baby walks so slow
Sexual tic tac toe
Yeah I know we both know
It isn't time
But would he be m-mine
We'll never get too far
Just you me and the bar
Silly menage a trois sometimes
Would he be m-mine
Would he be m-mine
Could you be m-mine
Oh baby light's on
But your mom's not home
I'm sick of laying down alone
With this fever, fever yeah
I want it all
Now I'm gonna get you alone
Give you a fever, fever yeah
There it goes
You stole my soul and so
'Cause sweetheart
No-no-nobody a know-know-knows
They're occupied
Tell me you'll be m-mine
Let's get inside your car
Just you me and the stars
Kinda menage a trois sometimes
Would he be mine?
Would he be mine?
Could you be mine?
Oh baby light's on
But your mom's not home
I'm sick of laying down alone
With this fever, fever yeah
I want it all
Now I'm gonna get you alone
Give you a fever, fever yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah
Oh baby your light's on
But your mom's not home
I'm sick of laying down alone
With this fever, fever yeah
I want it all
Now I'm gonna get you alone
Give you a fever, fever yeah
Fever, fever, yeah
( Little Willie John Cover )
Never know how much I love you
never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever
I'm on fire
Daddy won't you treat me right
Romeo love Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said "Julie baby you're my flame"
You give me fever
With your kisses
Fever, if you really care
Fever
....
Daddy, won't you treat him right
Everybody's got the Fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said "daddy oh don't you dare"
He gives me fever
With his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his Mrs.
Daddy, won't you treat him right
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you Fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever
When you kiss'em
Fever if you live and learn
Fever, I'm on fire
But what a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Never know how much I love you
You never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a feeling that I just can't bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Bless my soul I love you
Take this heart away
Take these arms I never use them
And just believe what my lips have to say
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Listen to me baby
Hear every word I say
No one can love you the way I do
Because they don't know how to love you my way
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
The sun lights up the daytime
The moon lights up at night
My eyes light up when you call my name
Because I know, you're gonna treat me right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
You give me fever
You give me fever, oh yeah
[Intro:]
Fever's got me sweating and you know I'm burning up
[Verse 1:]
Hey you, did you turn up the heat
It's getting hotter and I'm growing weak
Maybe it's because you're standing close to me
I'm coming down with something feverishly
[B Verse 1:]
I think my body's in shock
It just don't know what to do
I feel my temperature rising
Past one hundred and two
Fever, fever, fever, fever
[Chorus:]
Fever, turning up the heat
Fever, come on and get sick with me
Gimme what you got 'cause you know it's getting hot
Fever, I'm turning flush
Fever, I'm burning up
Fever's got me sweating and you know I'm burning up
[Verse 2:]
Fever's got this thing that I just can't shake
I tried to sweat it out but it would not break
My heart has taken all the heat that it can take
Just let it burn me up for heaven's sake
[B Verse 2:]
Hot to the touch
To the nth degree
Thermometer's reading
About infinity
[Bridge:]
Blow up the phone lines
'Cause I'm already at the red line
Somebody call me up the New York Times
This fever's gonna make the headlines
Wendy Page :
Comes this feeling from a distance
Like a fever or a flame
Takes me over
Let it just fly
This star has wings and now so have I
Close my eyes ready for sleep
Let it rise up from the deep
Your name I remember
Your name I remember
Like a fever or a flame
Just like a fever or a flame
And you are gone
But not forgotten
In the distance but not forgiven
This human heart still feels the same
But you consume it
Just like a fever or a flame
Your name I remember
Your name I remember
Like a fever or a flame
Just like a fever or a flame
And my pillow you are again
In my dreams still you talk
The mystery of you
And what you used to do
Still remain
Just like a fever or a flame
Just like a fever or a flame
Close my eyes I’m ready for sleep
Let it rise up from the deepest deep
Your name I remember
Your name I remember
Like a fever or a flame
Just like a fever or a flame
Your name I remember
Your name I remember
Like a fever or a flame
Just like a fever or a flame
I know I wish you home again
I know I wish you home again
Comes this feeling from a distance
Like a fever or a flame
It takes me over let it just fly
This star has wings and now so have I
Your name I remember
Your name I remember
Fever i know you've come to take my love
Go away
Fever i know your face just like a dove
Fly away
Fever turn the lights out
Take a different road
Let us be
Fever i know you've come to take my love
Go away
Fever i know in god i shouldn't trust
He's so far away
Fever turn the lights out
Take a different road
Let us be
Fever take a different route
Travel a different road
Let us be
Fever i know you've come to take my love
I just stopped listening to your story
As if I paid attention once.
And I never once felt more alive,alive,alive - ALIVE.
Speeding up the pace on the machine.
Calling radio and magazines.
Preaching to the ordinary ones.
Yes Teaching all the ordinary ones.
It gives me fever.
I just stopped listening to your story.
And I'll start forgetting all at once.
And I never once felt more alive,alive,alive - ALIVE.
Speeding up the pace on the machine.
Calling radio and magazines.
Hate my job can't wait to cut the chain.
I love speaking to slow and the insane.
It gives me fever.
I just stopped listening to your story.
And I'll turn the tables all at once.
Speeding up the pace on the machine.
Calling radio and magazines.
My clock is ticking fast upon my wrist.
I wanna slow it down so I'll put it on my fist.
Never know how much I loved you
Never know how much I cared
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night.
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said 'Julie, baby, you're my flame
Thou giv-est fever
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chick were born to give yu Fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you Fever
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that’s so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Ev’rybody’s got the fever
that is something you all know
Fever isn’t such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I’m gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said, Julie baby, you’re my flame
Thou givest fever when we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever, I’m afire
Fever, yea I burn forsooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said Daddy-o don’t you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I’m his Missus,
Oh daddy, won’t you treat him right
Now you’ve listened to my story
Here’s the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
When I’m with you….
When I’m with you….
When I’m with you….
When I’m with you, there’s only one thing I wanna do
That’s everything I can to make your dreams come true
Let me look in your eyes so we can lose ourselves together
Ecstacy’s the place where I’ll take you forever
And if it’s way past Mt. Everest
I’ve got the stamina to prove this body never rests
I’m capable to make your appetite insatiable
And your release is beyond belief
I need an independent woman
Whose with me because she wants to be with me
To caress and suggest to her how I’ll fulfill her
Deepest and innermost erotic secrets
So on the hush, we keep ‘em just between the two of us
It’s more than just lust
So, I’ll hold you in the highest esteem, Miss Diva.
Come and cool me down, because you give me fever.
Yes, Love. You give me fever.
And since you are the one I want to soothe
Tell me how I can soothe you and where I can soothe you
Groove you – Move you to be uninhibited with what you do
Then we’ll unwind when we reach Cloud Nine
Cuz I treat you with the utmost respect
Some candlelight – dinner for two – as I massage your intellect
And now I have one question to ask
How do you grow more beautiful as each day pasts?
It’s true that my words defy definition
And my definition’s defined to always blow your mind
So if you find an impulse you just can’t stop
And the heat is too much we can both sweat it off
And when I take you there
I’ll care for every need that you can conceive
So the next time I see you I just might surprise you, Miss Diva.
Because you give me fever.
Yes, Love. You give me fever.
In the heat of the moment don’t try to contain it
You know I can’t resist when you call out my name
I’ll work wonders when I trace your figure
There’s more than one way that I can make your body shiver
And deliver a Utopian experience just for us
There aren’t words that can do you justice
So when I take you there,
And the passion overflows with each breath of air
Enjoy the moment for I’m built to last
And the feeling that envelops you at last
I’ll take you in my warm embrace
And whisper sweet nothings with a smile on my face
You and I are destined to be lovers
Under the covers with a fire named desire
Come and cool me down, Miss Diva.
The rush is so much, that with a single touch you give me fever.
Yes, Love. You give me fever.
Everybody run when the main man come he ain't no novice no fingers an'
thumbs hi, hi, hi, hi no, no, no, no he comes to spread a little fever
then away he blows when the main man talk everybody know his name one
man with a mission and a taste for pain hi, hi, hi, hi no, no, no, no he
injects a little fever then away he blows he get busy in the mornin'
before the world turns on a man inspired by a vision he sell to everyone
hi, hi, hi, hi no, no, no, no he come to spread a little fever then away
he blows he went down to the water got to bless the mob he gonna lead us
to the slaughter can you guess his job? Hi, hi, hi, hi no, no, no, no
When the clocks strike
at last you gotta be in fever
I've gotta leave home too
when the last train's gone
We slide in the tattered town
and we float on the edge of time
Screaming eyes and glowing fever
When the ghost of the town
rolls around in fever
And the sky spreads a hundred thousand tears
A dealer's mumbling
a prayer bells are jangling a hell off a lay
When bells ring out you find me in fever
Well, just keep on movin
the full moon tells you where to go
Well, just keep on moving
'cause the devil's never gonna say:
you're wrong
There's a poet with his poem
what a poor boy!
He's stumbling with his muse right beside
He offers his poem some wine
his eyes have infernal shine
this fallen minstrel singing of fever
Heaving sin in my skin is shaking in fever
The fall in your arms gets hot
it's sweating love
We drift on the breath of the night
A million sighs in the pale yellow light
the need is begging for fever
Well, just keep on moving
The full moon tells you where to go
Well, just keep on moving
'cause the devil's never gonna say:
Never know how much I love you,
Never know how much I care.
When you put your arms around me,
I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
You give me fever,
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
Fever all through the night.
Sun lights up the daytime
And moon lights up the night..
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
And fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliette
Juliette she felt the same
When he put his arms around her he said,
"Julie, Baby , you're my flame
"Thou giveth fever
"When we kisseth
"Fever with thy flaming youth
"Fever! I'm afire,
"Fever, yeah, I burn, forsooth."
Cap'in Smith and Pocahontas had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said,
"Daddy, oh, don't you dare!
"He gives me fever
"With his kisses
"Fever when he holds me tight
"Fever! I'm his missus, So
"Daddy, Won't you treat him right?"
Now you've listened to my story,
Here's the point that I have made:
Chicks were born to give you fever,
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade
They give you fever
When you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever! 'till you sizzle
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
Without trace we can hide
Let the fever turn the tide
If the audience knew, they would laugh too
I'll see you later behind the cage
I'm falling off a higher stage
I'm getting lost in my head as you lie in bed to
Find a way out of this mess and run away with me
Keep having fun Remember we're on the run with the fever
Oh little girl from far away
It's nice to see you're back again
If you only knew, you would laugh too
See you soon in the usual place
Don't think that anyone will find our space
We can throw away yet another day to
Find a way out of this mess and run away with me
Keep having fun Remember we're on the run with the fever
Have another lethal dose Don't hide away from me
Keep having fun Remember we're on the run with the fever
Without trace we can fall
The audience will call
But they won't see neither you nor me no more
And when the fever wipes the last
We'll fade into the past
But we'll still be here without a fear to
Find a way out of this mess and run away with me
Keep having fun Remember we're on the run with the fever
Have another lethal dose Don't hide away from me
Never know how much I love you,
Never know how much I care.
When you put your arms around me,
I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
You give me fever,
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
Fever all through the night.
Sun lights up the daytime
And moon lights up the night..
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
And fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliette
Juliette she felt the same
When he put his arms around her he said,
"Julie, Baby , you're my flame
"Thou giveth fever
"When we kisseth
"Fever with thy flaming youth
"Fever! I'm afire,
"Fever, yeah, I burn, forsooth."
Cap'in Smith and Pocahontas had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said,
"Daddy, oh, don't you dare!
"He gives me fever
"With his kisses
"Fever when he holds me tight
"Fever! I'm his missus, So
"Daddy, Won't you treat him right?"
Now you've listened to my story,
Here's the point that I have made:
Chicks were born to give you fever,
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade
They give you fever
When you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever! 'till you sizzle
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
In an open field at dusk
To footfalls, I awoke
Marching ants across my temple zone
Their feet had no intention
They followed some magnetic draw
Prisoners of their destination
From the slats of the factory come
(where once they did make rails)
Old dad's peculiar songs
He didn't know I was listening
So he crowed out nice and long
To the spiders and the lumber and the dust of his conquests
and his hunger and his loss
I heard his feet rejoice
I heard him tap his cane
As if he had his own revue
On stage at the _____
I caught his words in my open mouth
I gagged and choked and spit them out
I heard him turn as he did hear
My tiny heartbeat in his ear
I was already running
Oh, I heard him coming
Shrapnel spinning from his wheels
The sounding arms rake for my heels
I know then roll and hit my face
And I said these magic words
My dove is home
Her breast is warm
My dove is home
And I said these magic words
I've fallen down and out of the anthill for days
My dove is home
Her breast is warm
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever
In the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever
In the morning
Fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her,
He said Julie, baby, you're my flame.
Thou givest fever
When we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever, I'm a fire
Fever, yay, I burn forsooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him,
She said daddy, no, don't you dare
He gives me fever,
With his kisses, fever when he holds me tight
Fever I'm his Mrs.
Daddy, won' t you treat him right
Now you've listened to my story,
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Be it farenheit or centigrade
They give you fever
When you kiss them
Fever if you live, you learn
Fever, till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn.
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night.
Ev'rybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Romeo loved juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said 'julie, baby, you're my flame
Thou giv-est fever when we kisseth
Fever with the flaming youth
Fever I'm afire
Fever yea I burn for sooth'
Captain smith and pocahantas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said 'daddy, o, don't you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his misses,
Oh daddy, won't you treat him right'
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
DESTROY ME
As WANT turns to NEED
You MURDER ME
Just to WATCH me BLEED
I live inside... my own MAKE BELIEVE
I SACRIFICE... what you can't see
I'm HISSING MAD
And I'm DRIPPING WET
I have no FATHER
I have no PET
And I'll be DAMNED
The day I die
Your ANTI MUSE
Your ANTI LIE
[chorus]
CAN I SPEAK?
I will DESTROY
IF I SPEAK
It will DESTROY
HOW I SPEAK...
I will DESTROY
WHEN I SPEAK...
It will DESTROY you
Another LOVER, anther MAN
Another VICTIM of CIRCUMSTANCE
I close my eyes
With NO REGRET
I know your name BABY
But I FORGET
My MOUTH is CRUEL
And my LIPS are mean
I'm DIRTY MINDED
And I'm OBSENE
But I'll be SAVED
The day I die
I'll be your MUSE
I'll be your LIE
[Repeat chorus]
I see GOD and he's MY FRIEND
But THE DEVIL'S standing next to HIM
HE says MY NAME and I feel so WEAK
Just like a MONSTER who cannot SPEAK
I'm like a MONSTER.... When I SPEAK
Am I a MONSTER... when I SPEAK?
Your just a MONSTER... when we SPEAK
So I'm a MONSTER when I SPEAK... can I SPEAK?
I'll be your MONSTER when we SPEAK and I SPEAK to DESTROY...
SPEAK AND DESTROY.... SPEAK AND DESTROY
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever (you give me fever) when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight (you give me fever)
Fever ... in the mornin'
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the day time
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
'cause I know you're gonna treat me right
You give me fever (you give me fever) when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight (you give me fever)
Fever ... in the mornin'
Fever all through the night (WOW!!)
Everybody's got the fever
That is somethin' you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long time ago
(You give me fever)
Baby, turn on your love light (yeah, yeah)
Let it shine on me (yeah, yeah)
Well, baby, turn on your love light (yeah, yeah)
And let it shine on me (yeah, yeah)
Well, just a little bit higher (yeah, yeah)
And just a little bit brighter, baby (yeah, yeah)
You give me fever (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
You give me fever (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
You give me fever (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
You give me fever.
END OF THE McCOYS 1965 VERSION
Alternative verses found in Peggy Lee's 1958 version:
NOT verified by this
transcriber but thought to be correct.
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said, "Julie baby you're my flame"
Thou givest fever when we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever Im on fire
Fever yea I burn forsooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said "Daddy oh don't you dare"
"He gives me fever with his kisses"
"Fever when he holds me tight"
"Fever, Im his missus"
"Daddy won't you treat him right?"
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
We give you fever when we kiss you
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn, ah
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the mornin', a fever all through the night
Sun lights up the day time
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever, when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the mornin'
A fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is somethin' you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said, "Julie baby you're my flame"
Thou givest fever, when we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever I'm on fire
Fever yeah I burn forsooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said, "Daddy oh don't you dare"
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his missus
And daddy won't you treat him right?
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when we kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
Oh what a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
I see the weakness in your knees
Feel the lust down in your jeans
A fever's coming over me
Need someone to set me free
Need someone to set me free
I say exactly what I mean
But words are never what they seem
I'll make you rock and then you'll roll
Bring a little funk and soul
Said I'll bring a little funk and soul
I'll love you a little bit harder
I'll make you beg for more
I'll take you a little bit higher
Baby I love you, I want you, I need you
I gotta, gotta have it
So if I haven't made it clear
I'll scream your name for all to hear
I'll touch your skin and make you sweat
I'm one mistake you won't regret
Said I'm one mistake you won't regret so
I'll love you a little bit harder
I'll make you beg for more
I'll take you a little bit higher
Baby I love you, I want you, I need you
Baby I love you, I want you, I need you
I gotta, gotta have it
I see the weakness in your knees
Feel the lust down in your jeans
A fever's coming over me
You gotta set me
You gotta set me
You gotta set me
Gotta set me
Gotta set me
I'll love you a little bit harder
I'll make you beg for more
I'll take you a little bit higher
Baby I love you, I want you, I need you
I love you, I want you, I need you
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever, when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever, when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet, she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said, "Julie, baby, you're my flame"
Thou givest fever when we kisseth
Fever with thy flaming youth
Fever, I'm afire
Fever, yeah, I burn for sooth
Captain Smith and Pocahontas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said, "Daddy, oh, don't you dare"
"He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his misses
Daddy, won't you treat him right", go
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Chicks were born to give you fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever, if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Look in the mirror
You, I'm a hero
You give me fever
Fever
Slowly with passion
Boy have attraction
Nobody's trying to stop me x2
Refren :
But I can fall
I can fall
Your the reason that I'm crying
And i dream
I can dream that I'm with you
Look in the mirror
You,I'm a hero
You give me fever
Fever
Slowly with passion
Boy have attraction
Nobody's trying to stop me x2
Refren :
But I can fall
I can fall
Your the reason that I'm crying
And i dream
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever thats so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night.
Evrybodys got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isnt such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know Im gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Romeo loved juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said julie, baby, youre my flame
Thou giv-est fever when we kisseth
Fever with the flaming youth
Fever Im afire
Fever yea I burn for sooth
Captain smith and pocahantas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said daddy, o, dont you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, Im his misses,
Oh daddy, wont you treat him right
Now youve listened to my story
Heres the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
I'm walking through the night
Walking through the night street
In the cool of the evening
I can fell my body heat
Moon rise to meet me
The night is a promise
I feel it to the core
Young and hungry on the street
Watching the score
CHORUS :
Fever, fever fever -
I'm walking through the night street
I'm walking through the night
Down past and old café
Walking to I don't know where
Watching the nine to fivers
Struggling to get their share
The night is young - the time is right
I'm a night street warrior
And the eyes in my head shine
With fever
CHORUS :
I'm a night street warrior
I'm walking through the night
Hum, hum, hum
Well I'm moving with the night street
Oh well I'm flowing with the night street
I'm dancing with the night street
I'm all a shiver with the night street
Fever
CHORUS :
I'm a night street warrior
I'm walking through the night
Hum, hum, hum
Well I'm moving with the night street
Oh well I'm flowing with the night street
I'm dancing with the night street
I'm all a shiver with the night street
(words & music by John Davenport - Eddie Coole)
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night.
Ev'rybody's got the fever
that is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said 'Julie, baby, you're my flame
Thou giv-est fever when we kisseth
Fever with the flaming youth
Fever I'm afire
Fever yea I burn for sooth'
Captain Smith and Pocahantas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said 'Daddy, o, don't you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his misses,
Oh daddy, won't you treat him right'
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Last-night you died, I have never cried this much from a dream, I was sure it was real.
Last-night I'm sure my heart missed a beat at the thought of you leaving this place.
It's made me feel like something has ended, don't let this happen again for real, I can't shift this shadow from over my shoulders, please let me open my eyes.
Last night you died, I have never tried this much to awaken from a dream.
It's made me feel like something has ended, don't let this happen again for real, I can't shift this shadow from over my shoulders, please let me open my eyes.
There he goes
My baby walks so slow
Sexual tic-tac-toe
Yeah I know we both know
It isn't time, no
But could you be m-mine?
We'll never get too far
Just you, me and the bar
Silly menage a trois, sometimes
Would you be m-mine?
Would you be m-mine?
Would you be m-mine?
Oh baby, light's on
But your mom's not home
I'm sick of laying down alone, hey
With this fever, fever, yeah
My one and own
I wanna get you alone
Give you fever, fever, yeah
There it goes
You stole my soul and so
'Cause, sweetheart
No-no-nobody a-kno-kno-knows me
Or can find
Time to be m-mine, mine
Lets get inside your car
Just you, me and the stars
Kind of menage a trois, sometimes
Would you be m-mine?
Would you be m-mine?
Would you be m-mine?
Oh baby, light's on
But your mom's not home
I'm sick of laying down alone, hey
With this fever, fever, yeah
My one and own
I wanna get you alone
Give you fever, fever, yeah
Yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah
You burn me, burn me up
Baby yea, yea
baby you're mine
Baby you're mine,
mine,
you're mine
Oh baby, light's on
But your mom's not home
I'm sick of laying down alone
With this fever, fever, yeah
My one and own
I wanna get you alone
I got this fever that I can't sweat out
Oh baby light's on
But your mom's not home
I'm sick of laying down alone
With this fever, fever, yeah
My one and own
I wanna get you alone
Yeah give you fever, fever yeah
Give you my f-f-fever my f-fever
Give you my f-f-fever my f-fever
Give you fever, fever, yeah
I got a rip in my pants and a hole in my brand new shoes
I got a Margarita nose and a breath full of Mad Dog Booze
I got the fever, fever, fever, fever
Yeah, they threw me outa jail I tell ya it ain't fair
I tried to kiss the judge from the electrica' chair
Yeah we're all here cause we're not all there tonight....
The guitar's cranked and the bass man's blown a fuse
And when the whole gang bangs tell me then what's you're excuse?
Fever gives ya lust with an appetite
It hits ya like the fangs from a rattlesnake bite
We're all here cause we're not all there tonight!
We can't run away from trouble
There ain't no place that far
But if we do it right at the speed of light
There's the back seat of my car, caviar
I was feelin' so high I forgot what day
Now I'm feelin low down even slow seems way too fast
And now the booze don't work and the drugs ran out of gas
The buzz that you be gettin' from the crack don't last
I'd rather be O.D.in' on the crack of her ass
Yeah we're all here cause we're not all there tonight
My first time ever lover
We fell asleep out on the lawn
And when I woke up I was all alone
Makin' love to the Crack of Dawn
So yo, I beg yo pardon sir
The gangster of love rides again
Fever may be Hell and a cross to bear
As long as I'm in heaven honey I don't care
You look so good baby look so fine
I tell you you're the image of the perfect crime
You gets so tired holdin' on so tight
If you think you're goin' crazy well you may be right
(words & music by John Davenport - Eddie Coole)
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night.
Ev'rybody's got the fever
that is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said 'Julie, baby, you're my flame
Thou giv-est fever when we kisseth
Fever with the flaming youth
Fever I'm afire
Fever yea I burn for sooth'
Captain Smith and Pocahantas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said 'Daddy, o, don't you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his misses,
Oh daddy, won't you treat him right'
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever till you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night.
Ev'rybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Sun lights up the daytime
Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night
Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said 'Julie, baby, you're my flame
Thou giv-est fever when we kisseth
Fever with the flaming youth
Fever I'm afire
Fever ye I burn for sooth'
Captain Smith and Pocahantas
Had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said 'Daddy, o, don't you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses
Fever when he holds me tight
Fever, I'm his misses,
Oh daddy, won't you treat him right'
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks fever
Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade
They give you fever when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever 'til you sizzle
What a lovely way to burn
What a lovely way to burn
Never know how much I love you,
Never know how much I care.
When you put your arms around me,
I get a fever that's so hard to bear.
You give me fever,
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
Fever all through the night.
Sun lights up the daytime
And moon lights up the night..
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right
You give me fever
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
And fever all through the night
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Romeo loved Juliette
Juliette she felt the same
When he put his arms around her he said,
"Julie, Baby , you're my flame
"Thou giveth fever
"When we kisseth
"Fever with thy flaming youth
"Fever! I'm afire,
"Fever, yeah, I burn, forsooth."
Cap'in Smith and Pocahontas had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said,
"Daddy, oh, don't you dare!
"He gives me fever
"With his kisses
"Fever when he holds me tight
"Fever! I'm his misses, So
"Daddy, Won't you treat him right?"
Now you've listened to my story,
Here's the point that I have made:
Chicks were born to give you fever,
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade
They give you fever
When you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever! 'till you sizzle
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
Never knew how much I loved you
Never knew how much I cared
When you put your arms around me
I get a fever that's so hard to bare
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever
In the morning
Fever all through the night
Listen to me baby
Hear every word I say
No one can love you the way I do
Cause they don't know how to love you my way
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever
In the morning
Fever all through the night
You know I love you baby
Take these arms away
Take this heart and never use it
Just believe what my hips have to say
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever
In the morning
Fever all through the night
Sun lights up the daytime
The moon lights up the night
My eyes light up when you call my name
Cause I know you're gonna treat me right
You give me fever
When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever
In the morning
I'm not a beauty queen
Travelling in a limousine
I'm a girl but don't call me baby
Who the fuck is VIP?
Living life in luxury
I don't care so just call me crazy
Can you give it out?
Don't stop just take it to the limit
Watch me boy it's spinning around this time
Hush, hush, running to the night, feel alive
I just can't get enough, when I'm with you
'Cause your fever, makes me feel so good
Turn it up boy you make your move
See I'm burning but it feels so good
Can't get enough when I'm with you
You got fever, but it feels so good
Turn it up baby make your move
Keep me burning 'cause it feels so good
I don't need no Superman
Trying to tell me who I am
Know it all's a driving me crazy
Nothing ever is for sure
I can't take this anymore
All I want is yes or no baby
Can you give it out?
Don't stop just take it to the limit
Watch me boy it's spinning around this time
Hush, hush, running to the night feel alive
I just can't get enough, when I'm with you
'Cause your fever, makes me feel so good
Turn it up boy you make your move
See I'm burning but it feels so good
Can't get enough when I'm with you
You got fever but it feels so good
Turn it up baby make your move
Keep me burning 'cause it feels so good
It's so hot, do it, do it real good
Can't stop, do it, do it real good
It's so hot, do it, do it real good
Can't stop, do it, do it real good
It's so hot, do it, do it real good
Baby, you got fever
Can't stop, do it, do it real good
Baby, you got fever
It's so hot, do it, do it real good
Baby, you got fever
Can't stop
I just can't get enough, when I'm with you
'Cause your fever, makes me feel so good
Turn it up boy you make your move
See I'm burning but it feels so good
Can't get enough when I'm with you
You got fever but it feels so good
Turn it up baby make your move
He's got a split finger wrap
And his rope's pulled way to tight
He's got a lunatic smile
'Cause he's really drawn deep tonight
He's got a fever, fever, fever, fever
Grab a hold of anything and hold on tight
It hits you like the venom from a rattle snake bite
We're all here 'cause he's not all there tonight
He takes one breath
And time turns inside out
Then the gate busts open
To the world he dreams about
He's got a fever, fever, fever, fever
Stick a rope on anything 'cause he don't care
He'd even take a ride on the electric chair
We're all here cause he's not all there tonight
He says it's really kind of simple
Keep your mind in the middle
While your butt spins 'round and 'round
Take heed to Sankey's preachin'
Keep liftin' and reachin'
And ridin' like there ain't no clowns
What he loves might kill him
But he's got no choice
He's a different breed
With a voice down deep inside
That's screamin' he was born to ride
He's got a fever, fever, fever, fever
Fever makes you crazy 'cause it makes no sense
Like runnin' from your shadow out of self-defense
He won't run and baby he can't hide
He thinks the odds are even leavin' one hand tied
He gets so tired of hangin' on so tight
I know you think he's crazy well I think you're right
Another headache
Another heartbreak
I try to sleep it all of
But it wont take
Another turn around
Another let-down
I see your lips move but there's no sound
Another small finsish
I'm gettin' lost in it
I just can't keep my head from spinning
I can't make this work right with or without it
Why can't you just
Make your mind up I'm dizzy
You only ever disappoint me
Your making me sick when you don't speak
Boy your always giving me fever, fever
Fever, fever, fever
Boy your only giving me fever, fever,
Fever, fever, fever
Boy your always giving me
Another cold sweat
Another regret
Another thing that I want but I wont get
Another nice try
Another alibi
There's not a nice way to say this
It's goodbye
Another easy come
Another easy go
Another worry down
If you say so
I can't make this work right
With or without it
Why can't you just
Make your mind up I'm dizzy
You only ever dissapoint me
You're making me sick when you
Don't speak
Boy you're always giving me
Fever, fever, fever, fever, fever
Boy your only giving me fever, fever, fever, fever, fever
Boy you're always giving me fever, fever, fever, fever
Fever
Boy you're awlays giving me
My heart's in repair what you say
I don't care as long as you
Just say something
Let me know where I stand
Am I in command
Or should I just run
Where hiding
Make you're mind up I'm dizzy
You only ever dissapoint me
You're making me sick when you
Don't speak boy you're always
Giving me OH!
Make you're mind up I'm dizzy
You only ever dissapoint me
You're making me sick
When you don't speak
Boy you're always giving me
Fever, fever, fever, fever, fever,
Boy you're only giving me fever, fever, fever,
Fever, fever!
Boy you're always giving me
Fever, fever, fever, fever, fever, boy you're only giving me
Fever
Boy you're always giving me fever fever fever fever fever fever!
If I fall apart on you now
Would you hold me?
If I fall apart on you now
Would you cave in, too?
I am afraid
And I just can't seem
To reach out and touch you
Because you still don't believe
Fall apart
So when you gonna make up
Your mind?
Are you hearing me
Cause if I fell apart on you now
You would cave in, too
My heart is empty
I need to be filled
Come take these tears
Just one last time
Within your wings
Help me to fly
I'm waiting for you
I'm ready for you to be real
I'm ready
To fall apart
Feel me slipping
Fall apart
It's time to let go
Time to be real
I'm taking my hands off
The steering wheel
I'm ready to fall apart
Ready to fall apart, baby
It'll break your fucking heart
Your miserable heart
Oh, I got your fever
I got your fever
I feel it inside me, sickened
Sickened
Temperature rising, sickened,
Sickened
An analog medical thermometer showing a temperature of 38.7 °C or 101.7 °F |
|
ICD-10 | R50 |
---|---|
ICD-9 | 780.6 |
DiseasesDB | 18924 |
eMedicine | med/785 |
MeSH | D005334 |
Fever (also known as pyrexia[1]) is a common medical sign characterized by an elevation of temperature above the normal range of 36.5–37.5 °C (98–100 °F) due to an increase in the body temperature regulatory set-point.[2] This increase in set-point triggers increased muscle tone and shivering.
As a person's temperature increases, there is, in general, a feeling of cold despite an increasing body temperature. Once the new temperature is reached, there is a feeling of warmth. A fever can be caused by many different conditions ranging from benign to potentially serious. There are arguments for and against the usefulness of fever, and the issue is controversial. With the exception of very high temperatures, treatment to reduce fever is often not necessary; however, antipyretic medications can be effective at lowering the temperature, which may improve the affected person's comfort.
Fever differs from uncontrolled hyperthermia,[1] in that hyperthermia is an increase in body temperature over the body's thermoregulatory set-point, due to excessive heat production and/or insufficient thermoregulation.
Contents |
Temperature Classification | |
---|---|
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Normal | 36.5–37.5 °C (97.7–99.5 °F)[3] |
Hypothermia | <35.0 °C (95.0 °F)[4] |
Fever | >37.5–38.3 °C (99.5–100.9 °F)[1][5] |
Hyperthermia | >37.5–38.3 °C (99.5–100.9 °F)[1][5] |
Hyperpyrexia | >40.0–41.5 °C (104–106.7 °F)[6][7] |
Note: The difference between fever and hyperthermia is the mechanism. | |
A wide range for normal temperatures has been found.[5] Fever is generally agreed to be present if the elevated temperature is caused by a raised set point and:
In healthy adult men and women, the range of normal, healthy temperatures for oral temperature is 33.2–38.2 °C (91.8–100.8 °F), for rectal it is 34.4–37.8 °C (93.9–100 °F), for tympanic membrane (the ear drum) it is 35.4–37.8 °C (95.7–100 °F), and for axillary (the armpit) it is 35.5–37.0 °C (95.9–98.6 °F).[9] Harrison's textbook of internal medicine defines a fever as a morning temperature of >37.2°C (>98.9°F) or an evening temperature of >37.7°C (>99.9°F) with the normal daily temperature variation is typically 0.5°C (0.9°F).[10]
Normal body temperatures vary depending on many factors, including age, sex, time of day, ambient temperature, activity level, and more. A raised temperature is not always a fever. For example, the temperature of a healthy person rises when he or she exercises, but this is not considered a fever, as the set-point is normal. On the other hand, a "normal" temperature may be a fever, if it is unusually high for that person. For example, medically frail elderly people have a decreased ability to generate body heat, so a "normal" temperature of 37.3 °C (99.1 °F) may represent a clinically significant fever.
The pattern of temperature changes may occasionally hint at the diagnosis:
A neutropenic fever, also called febrile neutropenia, is a fever in the absence of normal immune system function. Because of the lack of infection-fighting neutrophils, a bacterial infection can spread rapidly; this fever is, therefore, usually considered to require urgent medical attention. This kind of fever is more commonly seen in people receiving immune-suppressing chemotherapy than in apparently healthy people.
Febricula is an old term for a low-grade fever, especially if the cause is unknown, no other symptoms are present, and the patient recovers fully in less than a week.[13]
Hyperpyrexia is a fever with an extreme elevation of body temperature greater than or equal to 41.5 °C (106.7 °F).[14] Such a high temperature is considered a medical emergency as it may indicate a serious underlying condition or lead to significant side effects.[15] The most common cause is an intracranial hemorrhage.[14] Other possible causes include sepsis, Kawasaki syndrome,[16] neuroleptic malignant syndrome, drug effects, serotonin syndrome, and thyroid storm.[15] Infections are the most common cause of fevers, however as the temperature rises other causes become more common.[15] Infections commonly associated with hyperpyrexia include: roseola, rubeola and enteroviral infections.[16] Immediate aggressive cooling to less than 38.9 °C (102.0 °F) has been found to improve survival.[15] Hyperpyrexia differs from hyperthermia in that in hyperpyrexia the body's temperature regulation mechanism sets the body temperature above the normal temperature, then generates heat to achieve this temperature, while in hyperthermia the body temperature rises above its set point.[14]
Hyperthermia is an example of a high temperature that is not a fever. It occurs from a number of causes including heatstroke, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, malignant hyperthermia, stimulants such as amphetamines and cocaine, idiosyncratic drug reactions, and serotonin syndrome.
A fever is usually accompanied by sickness behavior, which consists of lethargy, depression, anorexia, sleepiness, hyperalgesia, and the inability to concentrate.[17][18][19]
Fever is a common symptom of many medical conditions:
Persistent fever that cannot be explained after repeated routine clinical inquiries is called fever of unknown origin.
Temperature is ultimately regulated in the hypothalamus. A trigger of the fever, called a pyrogen, causes a release of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). PGE2 then in turn acts on the hypothalamus, which generates a systemic response back to the rest of the body, causing heat-creating effects to match a new temperature level.
In many respects, the hypothalamus works like a thermostat.[20] When the set point is raised, the body increases its temperature through both active generation of heat and retaining heat. Vasoconstriction both reduces heat loss through the skin and causes the person to feel cold. If these measures are insufficient to make the blood temperature in the brain match the new setting in the hypothalamus, then shivering begins in order to use muscle movements to produce more heat. When the fever stops, and the hypothalamic setting is set lower; the reverse of these processes (vasodilation, end of shivering and nonshivering heat production) and sweating are used to cool the body to the new, lower setting.
This contrasts with hyperthermia, in which the normal setting remains, and the body overheats through undesirable retention of excess heat or over-production of heat.[20] Hyperthermia is usually the result of an excessively hot environment (heat stroke) or an adverse reaction to drugs. Fever can be differentiated from hyperthermia by the circumstances surrounding it and its response to anti-pyretic medications.
A pyrogen is a substance that induces fever. These can be either internal (endogenous) or external (exogenous) to the body. The bacterial substance lipopolysaccharide (LPS), present in the cell wall of some bacteria, is an example of an exogenous pyrogen. Pyrogenicity can vary: In extreme examples, some bacterial pyrogens known as superantigens can cause rapid and dangerous fevers. Depyrogenation may be achieved through filtration, distillation, chromatography, or inactivation.
In essence, all endogenous pyrogens are cytokines, molecules that are a part of the innate immune system. They are produced by phagocytic cells and cause the increase in the thermoregulatory set-point in the hypothalamus. Major endogenous pyrogens are interleukin 1 (α and β),[21] interleukin 6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Minor endogenous pyrogens include interleukin-8, tumor necrosis factor-α, tumor necrosis factor-β, macrophage inflammatory protein-α and macrophage inflammatory protein-β as well as interferon-α, interferon-β, and interferon-γ.[21]
These cytokine factors are released into general circulation, where they migrate to the circumventricular organs of the brain due to easier absorption caused by the blood–brain barrier's reduced filtration action there. The cytokine factors then bind with endothelial receptors on vessel walls, or interact with local microglial cells. When these cytokine factors bind, the arachidonic acid pathway is then activated.
One model for the mechanism of fever caused by exogenous pyrogens includes LPS, which is a cell wall component of gram-negative bacteria. An immunological protein called lipopolysaccharide-binding protein (LBP) binds to LPS. The LBP–LPS complex then binds to the CD14 receptor of a nearby macrophage. This binding results in the synthesis and release of various endogenous cytokine factors, such as interleukin 1 (IL-1), interleukin 6 (IL-6), and the tumor necrosis factor-alpha. In other words, exogenous factors cause release of endogenous factors, which, in turn, activate the arachidonic acid pathway.
PGE2 release comes from the arachidonic acid pathway. This pathway (as it relates to fever), is mediated by the enzymes phospholipase A2 (PLA2), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), and prostaglandin E2 synthase. These enzymes ultimately mediate the synthesis and release of PGE2.
PGE2 is the ultimate mediator of the febrile response. The set-point temperature of the body will remain elevated until PGE2 is no longer present. PGE2 acts on neurons in the preoptic area (POA) through the prostaglandin E receptor 3 (EP3). EP3-expressing neurons in the POA innervate the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH), the rostral raphe pallidus nucleus in the medulla oblongata (rRPa), and the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus . Fever signals sent to the DMH and rRPa lead to stimulation of the sympathetic output system, which evokes non-shivering thermogenesis to produce body heat and skin vasoconstriction to decrease heat loss from the body surface. It is presumed that the innervation from the POA to the PVN mediates the neuroendocrine effects of fever through the pathway involving pituitary gland and various endocrine organs.
The brain ultimately orchestrates heat effector mechanisms via the autonomic nervous system. These may be:
In infants, the autonomic nervous system may also activate brown adipose tissue to produce heat (non-exercise-associated thermogenesis, also known as non-shivering thermogenesis). Increased heart rate and vasoconstriction contribute to increased blood pressure in fever.
There are arguments for and against the usefulness of fever, and the issue is controversial.[22][23] There are studies using warm-blooded vertebrates[24] and humans[25] in vivo, with some suggesting that they recover more rapidly from infections or critical illness due to fever. A Finnish study suggested reduced mortality in bacterial infections when fever was present.[26]
In theory, fever can aid in host defense.[22] There are certainly some important immunological reactions that are sped up by temperature, and some pathogens with strict temperature preferences could be hindered.[27]
Research[28] has demonstrated that fever assists the healing process in several important ways:
Fever should not necessarily be treated.[30] Most people recover without specific medical attention.[31] Although it is unpleasant, fever rarely rises to a dangerous level even if untreated. Damage to the brain generally does not occur until temperatures reach 42 °C (107.6 °F), and it is rare for an untreated fever to exceed 105 °F (41 °C).[30] Some limited evidence supports sponging or bathing feverish children with tepid water.[32] The use of a fan or air conditioning may somewhat reduce the temperature and increase comfort. If the temperature reaches the extremely high level of hyperpyrexia, aggressive cooling is required.[15] In general, people are advised to keep adequately hydrated.[33] Whether increased fluid intake improves symptoms or shortens respiratory illnesses such as the common cold is not known.[34]
The antipyretic ibuprofen is effective in reducing fevers in children.[35] It is more effective than acetaminophen (paracetamol) in children. Ibuprofen and acetaminophen may be safely used together in children with fevers.[36][37] The efficacy of acetaminophen by itself in children with fevers has been questioned.[38] Ibuprofen is also superior to aspirin in children with fevers.[39] Additionally, aspirin is not recommended in children and young adults (those under the age of 16 or 19 depending on the country) due to the risk of Reye's syndrome.[40]
About 5% of people who go to an emergency room have a fever.[41]
Fever phobia is the name given by medical experts to parents' misconceptions about fever in their children. Among them, many parents incorrectly believe that fever is a disease rather than a medical sign, that even low fevers are harmful, and that any temperature even briefly or slightly above the oversimplified "normal" number marked on a thermometer is a clinically significant fever.[42] They are also afraid of harmless side effects like febrile seizures and dramatically overestimate the likelihood of permanent damage from typical fevers.[42] The underlying problem, according to professor of pediatrics Barton D. Schmitt, is "as parents we tend to suspect that our children’s brains may melt".[43]
As a result of these misconceptions parents are anxious, give the child fever-reducing medicine when the temperature is technically normal or only slightly elevated, and interfere with the child's sleep to give the child more medicine.[42]
Pyrexia is from the Greek pyr meaning fire. Febrile is from the Latin word febris, meaning fever, and archaically known as ague.
Fever is an important feature for the diagnosis of disease in domestic animals. The body temperature of animals, which is taken rectally, is different from one species to another. For example, a horse is said to have a fever above 101.0 °F (38.3 °C).[44]
In species that allow the body to have a wide range of "normal" temperatures, such as camels,[45] it is sometimes difficult to determine a febrile stage.
|
Peggy Lee | |
---|---|
in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943) in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943) |
|
Background information | |
Birth name | Norma Deloris Egstrom |
Born | Jamestown, North Dakota |
May 26, 1920
Died | January 21, 2002 Bel Air, Los Angeles, California |
(aged 81)
Genres | Traditional pop, jazz |
Occupations | Singer, actress, songwriter |
Years active | 1941–2000 |
Labels | Decca Records Capitol Records |
Peggy Lee (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002) was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and performer. She wrote music for films, acted, and created conceptual record albums—encompassing poetry, jazz, chamber pop, and art songs.
Contents |
Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh of eight children of Marvin Olof Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad, and his wife Selma Amelia (Anderson) Egstrom. Her mother died when Lee was just four years old.[1] Her father was Swedish American and her mother was Norwegian American.[2]
Lee first sang professionally over KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She later had her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her a "salary" in food. Both during and after her high school years, Lee sang for paltry sums on local radio stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy, of WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota (the most widely heard station in North Dakota), changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee.[citation needed] Thereafter, Lee left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17.
She returned to North Dakota for a tonsillectomy, and later made her way to Chicago for a gig at The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel East. There, she was noticed by bandleader Benny Goodman. According to Lee, "Benny's then-fiancée, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into The Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening she brought Benny in, because they were looking for a replacement for Helen Forrest. And although I didn't know, I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn't like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing." She joined his band in 1941 and stayed for two years.
In 1942 Lee had her first #1 hit, "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place", followed by 1943's "Why Don't You Do Right?" (originally sung by Lil Green), which sold over a million copies and made her famous. She sang with Goodman's orchestra in two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl.
In March 1943 Lee married Dave Barbour, a guitarist in Goodman's band. Peggy said, "David joined Benny's band and there was a ruling that no one should fraternize with the girl singer. But I fell in love with David the first time I heard him play, and so I married him. Benny then fired David, so I quit, too. Benny and I made up, although David didn't play with him anymore. Benny stuck to his rule. I think that's not too bad a rule, but you can't help falling in love with somebody."
When Lee and Barbour left the band, the idea was that he would work in the studios and she would keep house and raise their daughter, Nicki. But she drifted back to songwriting and occasional recording sessions for the fledgling Capitol Records in 1947, for whom she produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "It's a Good Day" (1948). With the release of the US #1-selling record of 1948, "Mañana", her "retirement" was over.
In 1948 Lee joined Perry Como and Jo Stafford as a rotating host of the NBC Radio musical program Chesterfield Supper Club.[3][4] She was also a regular on NBC's Jimmy Durante Show.
She left Capitol for a few years in the early 1950s, but returned in 1953. She is most famous for her cover version of the Little Willie John hit "Fever" written by Eddie Cooley and John Davenport,[5] to which she added her own, uncopyrighted lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet," "Captain Smith and Pocahontas") and her rendition of Leiber and Stoller's "Is That All There Is?". Her relationship with the Capitol label spanned almost three decades, aside from her brief but artistically rich detour (1952–1956) at Decca Records, where in 1956 she recorded one of her most acclaimed albums, Black Coffee. While recording for Decca, Lee had hit singles with the songs Lover and Mister Wonderful.
Lee is today internationally recognized for her signature song "Fever". She had a string of successful albums and top 10 hits in three consecutive decades. She is regarded as one of the most influential jazz vocalists of all time, being cited as a mentor to diverse artists such as Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Madonna, and Dusty Springfield. Lee was also an accomplished actress.
In her 60-year-long career, Peggy was the recipient of three Grammy Awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award), an Academy Award nomination, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Award, the President's Award, the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Living Legacy Award[6] from the Women's International Center. In 1999 Lee was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.[7]
Lee was a successful songwriter, with songs from the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp, for which she also supplied the singing and speaking voices of four characters.[8] Her collaborators included Laurindo Almeida, Harold Arlen, Sonny Burke, Cy Coleman, Duke Ellington, Dave Grusin, Quincy Jones, Francis Lai, Jack Marshall, Johnny Mandel, Marian McPartland, Willard Robison, Lalo Schifrin and Victor Young.
She wrote the lyrics for:
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Her first published song was in 1941, "Little Fool". "What More Can a Woman Do?" was recorded by Sarah Vaughan with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. "Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)" was no.1 for 9 weeks on the Billboard singles chart in 1948, from the week of March 13 to May 8.
Lee was a mainstay of Capitol Records when rock'n'roll came onto the American music scene. She was among the first of the "old guard" to recognize this new genre, as seen by her recording music from The Beatles, Randy Newman, Carole King, James Taylor and other up-and-coming songwriters. From 1957 until her final disc for the company in 1972, she produced a steady stream of two or three albums per year which usually included standards (often arranged quite different from the original), her own compositions, and material from young artists.
Lee starred and sang in the hit films The Jazz Singer, Disney's Lady and the Tramp, and Pete Kelly's Blues, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.[9]
In 1952 Lee played opposite Danny Thomas in a remake of the early Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer. In 1955 she played an alcoholic blues singer in Pete Kelly's Blues, for which she received an Academy Awards nomination.[9] In 1955 Lee did the speaking and singing voices for several characters in Disney's Lady and the Tramp movie: she played the human "Darling" (in the first part of the movie), the dog "Peg", and the two Siamese cats "Si" and "Am".[8] In 1957 Lee guest starred on the short-lived ABC variety program, The Guy Mitchell Show.
In the early 1990s she retained famed entertainment attorney Neil Papiano to sue Disney for royalties on Lady and the Tramp. Lee's lawsuit claimed that she was due royalties for video tapes, a technology that did not exist when she agreed to write and perform for Disney. Her lawsuit was successful.
Never afraid to fight for what she believed in, Lee passionately insisted that musicians be equitably compensated for their work. Although she realized litigation had taken a toll on her health, Lee often quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson on the topic: "God will not have his work be made manifest by cowards."
She also successfully sued MCA/Decca with the assistance of noted entertainment attorney Cy Godfrey.
Lee was married four times; each marriage ended in divorce:
Lee continued to perform into the 1990s, sometimes in a wheelchair.[10][11] After years of poor health, Lee died of complications from diabetes and a heart attack at age 81. Her body was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles' Westwood, Los Angeles, California neighborhood. On her marker in a garden setting is inscribed, "Music is my life's breath."
She was not featured in the memorial tribute during the 2002 Academy Awards ceremony. When her family requested she be featured in the following year's ceremony, the Academy stated they did not honor requests and Lee was omitted because her contribution to film and her legacy were not deemed significant enough, although she had been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Pete Kelly's Blues. Her family pointed out that, although she had been omitted, R&B singer/actress Aaliyah, who died a few months earlier, was included though having been in only one moderately successful film, Romeo Must Die (Queen of the Damned had yet to be released). The Academy provided no comment on the oversight.
Lee was nominated for 12 Grammy Awards, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit "Is That All There Is?" In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lee is a recipient of North Dakota's Roughrider Award; the Pied Piper Award from The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP); the Presidents Award, from the Songwriters Guild of America; the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement, from the Society of Singers; and the Living Legacy Award, from the Women's International Center. In 1999 she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 2003, "There'll Be Another Spring: A Tribute to Miss Peggy Lee" was held at Carnegie Hall.[12] Produced by recording artist Richard Barone, the sold-out event included performances by Cy Coleman, Debbie Harry, Nancy Sinatra, Rita Moreno, Marian McPartland, Chris Connor, Petula Clark, and others. In 2004 Barone brought the event to a sold-out Hollywood Bowl,[13] and then to Chicago's Ravinia Festival, with expanded casts including Maureen McGovern, Jack Jones and Bea Arthur. The Carnegie Hall concert was broadcast on NPR's "Jazz Set".
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Year | Title | Chart Positions [17] | |
---|---|---|---|
US Pop | US AC | ||
1941 | "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" | 25 | — |
"Winter Weather" (w/ Art Lund) | 24 | — | |
"Blues in the Night" | 20 | — | |
"Somebody Else is Taking My Place" | 1 | — | |
"My Little Cousin" | 14 | — | |
"We'll Meet Again" | 16 | — | |
"Full Moon" | 22 | — | |
"The Way You Look Tonight" | 21 | — | |
1943 | "Why Don't You Do Right" | 4 | — |
1945 | "Waitin' for the Train to Come in" | 4 | — |
1946 | "I'm Glad I Waited for You" | 24 | — |
"I Don't Know Enough About You" | 7 | — | |
"Linger in My Arms a Little Longer, Baby" | 16 | — | |
"It's All Over Now" | 10 | — | |
1947 | "It's a Good Day" | 16 | — |
"Everything's Moving too Fast" | 21 | — | |
"Chi-baba, Chi-baba (My Bambino, Go to Sleep)" | 10 | — | |
"Golden Earrings" | 2 | — | |
1948 | "Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)" | 1 | — |
"All Dressed up with a Broken Heart" | 21 | — | |
"For Every Man, There's a Woman" | 25 | — | |
"Laroo, Laroo, Lili Bolero" | 13 | — | |
"Talking to Myself About You" | 23 | — | |
"Don't Smoke in Bed" | 22 | — | |
"Caramba! It's the Samba" | 13 | — | |
"Baby, Don't Be Mad at Me" | 21 | — | |
"Somebody Else is Taking My Place" (re-issue) | 30 | — | |
"Bubble Loo, Bubble Loo" | 23 | — | |
1949 | "Blum Blum, I Wonder Who I Am" | 27 | — |
"Similau (See-Me-Lo)" | 17 | — | |
"Bali Ha'i" | 13 | — | |
"Riders in the Sky (A Cowboy Legend)" | 2 | — | |
1950 | "The Old Master Painter" (w/ Mel Torme) | 9 | — |
"Show Me the Way to Get out of This World" | 28 | — | |
1951 | "(When I Dance with You) I Get Ideas" | 14 | — |
1952 | "Be Anything (But Be Mine)" | 21 | — |
"Lover" | 3 | — | |
"Watermelon Weather" (w/ Bing Crosby) | 28 | — | |
"Just One of Those Things" | 14 | — | |
"River, River" | 23 | — | |
1953 | "Who's Gonna Pay the Check" | 22 | — |
"Baubles, Bangles, & Beads" | 30 | — | |
1954 | "Where can I go Without You" | 28 | — |
"Let Me Go, Lover" | 26 | — | |
1956 | "Mr. Wonderful" | 14 | — |
"Joey, Joey, Joey" | 76 | — | |
1958 | "Fever" | 8 | — |
"Light of Love" | 63 | — | |
"Sweetheart" | 98 | — | |
1959 | "Alright, Okay, You Win" | 68 | — |
"My Man" | 81 | — | |
"Hallelujah, I Love Him So" | 77 | — | |
1963 | "I'm a Woman" | 54 | — |
1964 | "In the Name of Love" | 132 | — |
1965 | "Pass Me By" | 93 | 20 |
"Free Spirits" | — | 29 | |
1966 | "Big Spender" | — | 9 |
"That Man" | — | 31 | |
"You've Got Possibilities" | — | 36 | |
"So, What's New" | — | 20 | |
"Walking Happy" | — | 14 | |
1967 | "I Feel it" | — | 8 |
1969 | "Spinning Wheel" | — | 24 |
"Is That All There Is?" | 11 | 1 | |
"Whistle for Happiness" | — | 13 | |
1970 | "(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story" | 105 | 26 |
"You'll Remember Me" | — | 16 | |
"One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round" | — | 21 | |
1972 | "Love Song" | — | 34 |
1974 | "Let's Love" | — | 22 |
Book: Peggy Lee | |
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. |
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Elvis Presley | |
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Publicity photo for Jailhouse Rock (1957) |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Elvis Aaron Presley |
Born | Tupelo, Mississippi, U.S. |
January 8, 1935
Died | August 16, 1977 Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. |
(aged 42)
Genres | Rock and roll, pop, rockabilly, country, blues, gospel, R&B |
Occupations | Musician, actor |
Instruments | Vocals, guitar, piano |
Years active | 1953–77 |
Labels | Sun, RCA Victor |
Associated acts | The Blue Moon Boys, The Jordanaires, The Imperials |
Website | elvis.com |
Elvis Aaron Presleya (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 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 the most important popularizer 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.[1][2][3][4] 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.
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Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to 18-year-old Vernon Elvis and 22-year-old Gladys Love Presley.[5] 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.[6]
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.[7]b His father's forebears were of Scottish[8] or German[9] 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.[10][11] 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.[12]
In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average".[13] 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.[14] 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.[15][16] 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."[17]
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.[18] 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.[19] 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.[20]
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.[21] 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."[22] He was generally too shy to perform openly, and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy".[23] 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.[24] That September, he began ushering at Loew's State Theater.[25] Other jobs followed during his school years: Precision Tool, Loew's again, and MARL Metal Products.[26]
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.[27] 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."[28]
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[29] and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills.[30] The Southern Gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style.[31][32] 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.[33] He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.[30] 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.[34] He certainly listened to the regional radio stations that played "race records": spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues.[35] Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas.[36][37] B.B. King recalled that he knew Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street.[38] By the time he graduated high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.[39][40]
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."[41] 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.[42]
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."[43] Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time.[44] In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver.[45] 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."[46]
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.'"[47] 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.[48]
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Presley transformed not only the sound but the emotion of the song, turning what had been written as a "lament for a lost love into a satisfied declaration of independence."[49]
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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.[50] Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his Red, Hot, and Blue show.[51] 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.[52] 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.[53]
The trio played publicly for the first time on July 17 at the Bon Air club—Presley still sporting his child-size guitar.[54] 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.[55] 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".[56] 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".[56] 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,[57] 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."[58] 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.[59] 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.[60] House drummer D.J. Fontana brought a new element, complementing Presley's movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs.[61] 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.[62]
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.[63][64] 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."[29] 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".[65] 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."[66] 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".[67]
Presley renewed Neal's management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser.[68] The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year.[69] 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."[70] 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.[71]
At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year's most promising male artist.[72] 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.[73]c Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract.[74] 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.[75]d By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.[76]
On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville.[79] 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.[80] The session produced the moody, unusual "Heartbreak Hotel", released as a single on January 27.[79] 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.[81] Neal's contract was terminated and, on March 2, Parker became Presley's manager.[82]
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Presley exhorts guitarist Scotty Moore during his break. "Let's go, cat!" was in the Perkins original. "Aw, walk the dog!" is all Elvis.
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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."[83] It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks.[79] 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."[84]
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.[85] 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.[86] 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.[87] Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures.[88] He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, taking in 15 cities in as many days.[89] 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 1953 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became the new closing number of his act.[90] 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."[91]
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."[92] 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.[92] Presley's gyrations created a storm of controversy.[93] 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."[94] 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".[95] Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation's most popular, declared him "unfit for family viewing".[96] 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."[97]
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".[98] 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.[99] Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career.[100] 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?"[95]
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."[101] 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.[102] 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.[103] 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".[104]
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.[105] The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience.[106] Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan recuperated from a car accident.[96] 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!"[107] Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, "As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots."[105] 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.[108][109] Presley's performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad "Love Me Tender", prompted a record-shattering million advance orders.[110] 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.[96]
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."[111]
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Presley's definition of rock and roll included a sense of humor—here, during his second Sullivan appearance, he introduces one of his signature numbers.
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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."[112] 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.[113] 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."[114]
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.[96] 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.[88] 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.[115] 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,[116] and Billboard's declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted.[117] 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.[110]
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.[109][118] 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."[96] 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".[119] Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1A and would probably be drafted sometime that year.[120]
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.[121] 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.[122] 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".[123] 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.[124] A Detroit newspaper suggested that "the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you're liable to get killed."[125] Villanova students pelted him with eggs in Philadelphia,[125] and in Vancouver, the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage.[126] 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."[127] 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."[128]
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.[129] 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.[130][131] 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.[132] 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.[133] 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.
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.[134] 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."[135]
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."[136] 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;[137] 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.[138]
After training, Presley joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1.[139] 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.[140] The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, later including it in his live performances.[141] 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.[142]
While in Friedberg, Presley met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship.[143] 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.[144] 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.[145] 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.[146] 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.[147]
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Presley broke new stylistic ground and displayed his vocal range with this number one hit. The quasi-operatic ballad ends with Presley "soaring up to an incredible top G sharp."[148]
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Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant on March 5.[149] 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.[150] 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.[151] 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."[152] 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".[153] 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.[154]
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.[155] A 12-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley's next studio album, Something for Everybody.[156] 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."[157] 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.[158]
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.[159] His films were almost universally panned; one critic dismissed them as a "pantheon of bad taste".[160] Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. Hal Wallis, who produced nine of them, declared, "A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood."[161]
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".[162] As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse".[163] Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that he hated many of the songs chosen for his films.[164] 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."[165] 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."[166] Regardless of the songs' quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment.[167] 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.'"[114]
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."[168]
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.[169] 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."[170]
Presley's only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career.[173] 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.[174] 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.[175]
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.[176] The show, NBC's highest rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience.[177] 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."[178] Dave Marsh calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance."[179]
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."[177] 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.'"[177]
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Beginning with his American Sound recordings, soul music became a central element in Presley's fusion of styles. Here, he revels in lyrics full of sexual innuendo.[180]
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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."[181] 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?"[182] 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.[183] 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.[184]
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).[185] 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."[186] 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.[187] 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."[188] Rolling Stone called Presley "supernatural, his own resurrection."[189] 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.'"[190] 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.[191]
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.[192] In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record–breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome.[193] 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.[194] 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.[195][196]
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."[197] 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.[198]
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,[199] exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture.[200] (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.[201]
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.[202] 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.[203] 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.[204] 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".[205]
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.[206] 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?"[207]
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.[209] 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."[210] Five months later, Presley's new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him.[211] Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18.[212] According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley's marriage "was a blow from which he never recovered."[213]
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.[214][215][216] 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."[217] The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States.[218] 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."[219]
Presley's divorce took effect on October 9, 1973.[220] 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."[221] Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever.[222] Despite his failing health, in 1974 he undertook another intensive touring schedule.[223]
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?"[224] 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".[225] 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.'"[225] 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."[226]
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".[227][228][229] 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.[230] However, Presley's stepbrother David Stanley has claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley's drug dependency.[231] Presley and Linda Thompson split in November, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden.[232] 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.[233]
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.[234] Parker sold RCA on another concert record, Elvis: As Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis.[235] Recorded on March 20, it included a version of "How Great Thou Art" that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award.[236] (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.[237] In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home.[238] Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.[239]
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An R&B hit for Roy Hamilton in 1955 and a pop hit for blue-eyed soul singer Timi Yuro in 1961, Presley's deep soul version was picked up by country radio in 1976.[240]
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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).[241] 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.[242] 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".[243] "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."[244]
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."[245] In Alexandria, Louisiana, the singer was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand".[246] 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.[246] 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."[247] 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."[248] 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.[249] "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.[250] 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.[251] 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.[221]
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.[252]
President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having "permanently changed the face of American popular culture".[253] 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.[254] Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement.[255] Presley left her nothing in his will.[256]
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.[257] Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother.[258] Within a few days, "Way Down" topped the country and UK pop charts.[242][259] 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.[255]
Between 1977 and 1981, six posthumously released singles by Presley were top ten country hits.[242] 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.[260] It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.[261]
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.[262]
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.[263] 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.[264] He placed second in 2006,[265] returned to the top spot the next two years,[266][267] and ranked fourth in 2009.[268] 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.[269] In November 2010, Viva Elvis: The Album was released, setting his voice to newly recorded instrumental tracks.[270][271] As of mid-2011, there were an estimated 15,000 licensed Presley products.[272] He was again the second-highest-earning deceased celebrity.[273]
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;[274] Presley historian Adam Victor gives 114 and 138.[275] 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.e According to Whitburn's analysis, Presley and Madonna share the record for most top ten hits with 38;[276] per Billboard's current assessment, he ranks second with 36.[277] 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;[276] Billboard has him third with 17.[278] Presley retains the record for cumulative weeks at number one: alone at 80, according to Whitburn and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame;[279][280] tied with Carey at 79, according to Billboard.[281][282] He holds the records for most British number one hits, with 21, and top ten hits, with 76.[283][284]
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."[285] 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:
The Statesmen were an electric combination ... featuring some of the most thrillingly emotive singing and daringly unconventional showmanship in the entertainment world ... dressed in suits that might have come out of the window of Lansky's. ... Bass singer Jim Wetherington, known universally as the Big Chief, maintained a steady bottom, ceaselessly jiggling first his left leg, then his right, with the material of the pants leg ballooning out and shimmering. "He went about as far as you could go in gospel music," said Jake Hess. "The women would jump up, just like they do for the pop shows." Preachers frequently objected to the lewd movements ... but audiences reacted with screams and swoons.[286]
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.[287] At a press conference the following year, he proudly declared, "I know practically every religious song that's ever been written."[126]
Presley was a central figure in the development of rockabilly, according to music historians. "Rockabilly crystallized into a recognizable style in 1954 with Elvis Presley's first release, on the Sun label", writes Craig Morrison.[288] 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".[289] 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."[289]
At RCA, Presley's rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, more heavily amplified electric guitars[290] and a tougher, more intense manner.[291] 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.[292] Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his life.
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From How Great Thou Art (1967), a traditional song popular in the black gospel tradition. The arrangement evokes "the percussive style of the 1930s Golden Gate Quartet."[293][294]
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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".[295] 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".[296] 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.[297]
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".[298] 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.[299]
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."[300] 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."[300] 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."[300] 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."[301] 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.[300]
"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."[302] 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."[303]
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.[304] Allegations of a cover-up were widespread.[303] 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.[221]
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."[221] Whether or not combined drug intoxication was in fact the cause, there is little doubt that polypharmacy contributed significantly to Presley's premature death.[304]
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.[52] 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."[36] 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".[36] Such statements and actions led Presley to be generally hailed in the black community during the early days of his stardom.[36] 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."[305]
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.[36][306] 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."[307] Though the rumored remark was wholly discredited at the time, it was still being used against Presley decades later.[308] 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".[309]
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.[306] Into the 21st century, the notion that Presley had "stolen" black music still found adherents.[308][309] 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."[310] 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."[311]
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.[312] 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.[313] 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.[314]
By 1967, Parker's contracts with Presley gave him 50 percent of most of the singer's earnings from recordings, films, and merchandise.[315] Beginning in February 1972, he took a third of the profit from live appearances;[316] a January 1976 agreement entitled him to half of that as well.[317] Priscilla Presley noted that "Elvis detested the business side of his career. He would sign a contract without even reading it."[318] 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."[319]
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.[320] Although RCA executive Joan Deary was later full of praise for the producer's song choices and the quality of the recordings,[321] Moman, to his fury, received neither credit on the records nor royalties for his work.[322]
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.[323]
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.[324] According to George Klein, one of his oldest friends, Presley was offered starring roles in West Side Story and Midnight Cowboy.[325] In 1974, Barbra Streisand approached Presley to star with her in the remake of A Star is Born.[326] 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."[319] 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".[162]
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".[327] "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."[328] 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".[329] 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."[330]
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."[331] Thereafter, Geller supplied him with books on religion and mysticism, which the singer read voraciously.[332] Presley would be preoccupied by such matters for much of his life, taking trunkloads of books with him on tour.[221]
Presley's physical attractiveness and sexual appeal were widely acknowledged. "He was once beautiful, astonishingly beautiful", in the words of critic Mark Feeney.[333] 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."[334] 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."[335] In his Presley obituary, Lester Bangs credited him as "the man who brought overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America."[336] 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.[337]
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".[338] 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".[339] 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."[340]
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.[190] Presley, however, never grew comfortable with the Hollywood scene, and most of these relationships were insubstantial.[341]
His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense, and he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor of his country.
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.[4] 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.[342] 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.[343] 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."[344] Al Green agreed: "He broke the ice for all of us."[345] 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.[346]
Presley's name, image, and voice are instantly recognizable around the globe.[347] He has inspired a legion of impersonators.[348] In polls and surveys, he is recognized as one of the most important popular music artists and influential Americans.f "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."[349] Bob Dylan described the sensation of first hearing Presley as "like busting out of jail".[345]
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."[350] 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.[351]
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[275] and 711.[333] 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.g In the United States, Presley also had five or six number one R&B singles and seven number one adult contemporary singles;h 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.[241][352] He also had number one hits in many countries beside the United States and United Kingdom.
Year | Album | Type | Chart positions | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
US[353] | US Country[354] | UK[259][355] | |||
1956 | Elvis Presley | studio/comp. | 1 | n.a. | 1 |
Elvis | studio | 1 | n.a. | 3 | |
1957 | Loving You | sound./studio | 1 | n.a. | 1 |
Elvis' Christmas Album | studio | 1 | n.a. | 2 | |
1960 | Elvis Is Back! | studio | 2 | n.a. | 1 |
G.I. Blues | soundtrack | 1 | n.a. | 1 | |
1961 | Something for Everybody | studio | 1 | n.a. | 2 |
Blue Hawaii | soundtrack | 1 | n.a. | 1 | |
1962 | Pot Luck | studio | 4 | n.a. | 1 |
1964 | Roustabout | soundtrack | 1 | — | 12 |
1969 | From Elvis in Memphis | studio | 13 | 2 | 1 |
1973 | Aloha from Hawaii: Via Satellite | live | 1 | 1 | 11 |
1974 | Elvis: A Legendary Performer Volume 1 | compilation | 43 | 1 | 20 |
1975 | Promised Land | studio | 47 | 1 | 21 |
1976 | From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee | studio | 41 | 1 | 29 |
1977 | Elvis' 40 Greatest | compilation | — | — | 1 |
Moody Blue | studio/live | 3 | 1 | 3 | |
Elvis in Concert | live | 5 | 1 | 13 | |
2002 | ELV1S: 30 #1 Hits | compilation | 1 | 1 | 1 |
2007 | Elvis the King | compilation | — | — | 1 |
Year | Single | Chart positions | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
US[276] | US Country[356] | UK[259][355] | ||
1956 | "I Forgot to Remember to Forget" (reissue) | — | 1 | — |
"Heartbreak Hotel" | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
"I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" | 1 | 1 | 14 | |
"Don't Be Cruel" | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
"Hound Dog" | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
"Love Me Tender" | 1 | 3 | 11 | |
1957 | "Too Much" | 1 | 3 | 6 |
"All Shook Up" | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
"(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" | 1 | 1 | 3 | |
"Jailhouse Rock" | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
1958 | "Don't" | 1 | 2 | 2 |
"Hard Headed Woman" | 1 | 2 | 2 | |
1959 | "One Night"/"I Got Stung" | 4/8 | 24/— | 1 |
"A Fool Such as I"/"I Need Your Love Tonight" | 2/4 | — | 1 | |
"A Big Hunk o' Love" | 1 | — | 4 | |
1960 | "Stuck on You" | 1 | 27 | 3 |
"It's Now or Never" | 1 | — | 1 | |
"Are You Lonesome Tonight?" | 1 | 22 | 1 | |
1961 | "Wooden Heart" | — | — | 1 |
"Surrender" | 1 | — | 1 | |
"(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame"/"Little Sister" | 4/5 | — | 1 | |
1962 | "Can't Help Falling in Love"/"Rock-A-Hula Baby" | 2/23 | — | 1 |
"Good Luck Charm" | 1 | — | 1 | |
"She's Not You" | 5 | — | 1 | |
"Return to Sender" | 2 | — | 1 | |
1963 | "(You're The) Devil in Disguise" | 3 | — | 1 |
1965 | "Crying in the Chapel" | 3 | — | 1 |
1969 | "Suspicious Minds" | 1 | — | 2 |
1970 | "The Wonder of You" | 9 | 37 | 1 |
1977 | "Moody Blue" | 31 | 1 | 6 |
"Way Down" | 18 | 1 | 1 | |
1981 | "Guitar Man" (remix) | 28 | 1 | 43 |
2002 | "A Little Less Conversation" (JXL remix) | 50 | — | 1 |
2005 | "Jailhouse Rock" (reissue) | — | — | 1 |
"One Night"/"I Got Stung" (reissue) | — | — | 1 | |
"It's Now or Never" (reissue) | — | — | 1 |
Book: Elvis Presley | |
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Elvis Presley |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Elvis Presley |
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Little Willie John | |
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Little Willie John circa 1955 Little Willie John circa 1955 |
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Background information | |
Birth name | William Edward John |
Born | Cullendale, Arkansas |
November 15, 1937
Origin | Detroit, Michigan, United States |
Died | May 26, 1968 Walla Walla, Washington |
(aged 30)
Genres | Rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, doo-wop |
Occupations | Singer, songwriter |
Instruments | Vocals |
Years active | 1955–1966 |
Labels | King Records |
William Edward John (November 15, 1937 - May 26, 1968),[1] better known by his stage name Little Willie John, was an American R&B singer who performed in the 1950s and early 1960s. Many sources erroneously give his middle name as Edgar.[2] He is best known for his popular music chart successes with songs such as, "All Around the World" (1955), "Need Your Love So Bad" (1956) and "Fever" the same year, the latter covered in 1958 by Peggy Lee.[3]
He was born in Cullendale, Arkansas, one of ten children, his family moving to Detroit, Michigan when he was four so that his father could pursue factory work. In the late 1940s, the eldest children, including Willie, formed a gospel singing group, and Willie also performed in talent shows, which brought him to the notice of Johnny Otis and, later, musician and producer Henry Glover. After seeing him sing with the Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams orchestra, Glover signed him to a recording contract with King Records in 1955. He was nicknamed "Little Willie" John for his short stature.[4]
His first recording, a version of Titus Turner's "All Around the World", was a hit, reaching # 5 on the Billboard R&B chart. He followed up with a string of R&B hits, including the original version of "Need Your Love So Bad", written by his elder brother Mertis John Jr. One of his biggest hits, "Fever" (1956) (Pop #24), was more famously covered by Peggy Lee in 1958. However, John's version alone sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[5] Another song, "Talk to Me, Talk to Me" recorded in 1958, reached #5 in the R&B chart and #20 in the Pop chart, and also sold over one million.[6][7] A few years later it was a hit once again by Sunny & the Sunglows. He also recorded "I'm Shakin'" by Rudy Toombs,[8] "Suffering With The Blues", and "Sleep" (1960) (Pop #13).[6] In all, John made the Billboard Hot 100 a total of fourteen times. A cover version of "Need Your Love So Bad" by Fleetwood Mac was also a hit in Europe. Another of his songs to be covered was "Leave My Kitten Alone", (1959). The Beatles recorded a version in 1964, intended for their Beatles for Sale album, but it went unreleased until 1995.
Willie John was known for his short temper and propensity to abuse alcohol, and was dropped by his record company in 1963.[4] In 1966, he was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Washington State Penitentiary for a fatal knifing incident following a show in Seattle. He appealed against his conviction and was released while the case was reconsidered, during which time he recorded what was intended to be his comeback album, but owing to contractual wrangling and the decline of his appeal, it was not released until 2008 (as Nineteen Sixty Six).[9] Little Willie John died in 1968 at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. Despite counter claims, the official cause of death was listed in his death certificate as a heart attack.[2]
His interment was in Warren, Michigan's Detroit Memorial Park East.
Little Willie John was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
He was the brother of singer Mable John, who recorded for Motown and Stax, and the father of Keith John, a long time backing vocalist for Stevie Wonder.[8]
James Brown, who early in his career had opened shows for John, recorded a tribute album, Thinking about Little Willie John... and a Few Nice Things.
Robbie Robertson, former lead guitarist for The Band, referenced John in a song on his 1987 self-titled album titled "Somewhere Down the Crazy River."
A biography, Fever: Little Willie John; A Fast Life, Mysterious Death and the Birth of Soul, written by Susan Whitall with Kevin John (another son of Little Willie John) was released in 2011 by Titan Books.
Year | Title | Label & Cat. No. |
U.S. R&B[10] | U.S. Pop[11] |
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1955 | "All Around the World" | King 4818 |
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1956 | "Need Your Love So Bad" / "Home at Last" | King 4841 |
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1956 | "Fever" / "Letter from My Darling" | King 4935 |
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1956 | "Do Something for Me" | King 4960 |
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1958 | "Talk to Me, Talk to Me" | King 5108 |
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1958 | "You're a Sweetheart" | King 5142 |
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1958 | "Tell It Like It Is" | King 5147 |
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1959 | "Leave My Kitten Alone" | King 5219 |
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1959 | "Let Them Talk" | King 5274 |
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1960 | "A Cottage for Sale" | King 5342 |
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1960 | "Heartbreak (It's Hurtin' Me)" | King 5356 |
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1960 | "Sleep" | King 5394 |
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1961 | "Walk Slow" | King 5428 |
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1961 | "Leave My Kitten Alone" (reissue) | King 5452 |
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1961 | "The Very Thought of You" | King 5458 |
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1961 | "Flamingo" / "(I've Got) Spring Fever" | King 5503 |
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1961 | "Take My Love (I Want to Give It All to You)" / "Now You Know" | King 5516 |
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Ella Fitzgerald | |
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photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1940 |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Ella Jane Fitzgerald |
Also known as | First Lady of Song, Lady Ella |
Born | Newport News, Virginia |
April 25, 1917
Died | June 15, 1996 Beverly Hills, California |
(aged 79)
Genres | Swing, traditional pop, vocal jazz |
Occupations | Vocalist |
Instruments | Piano |
Years active | 1934-1993 |
Labels | Capitol, Decca, Pablo, Reprise, Verve |
Website | Official website |
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella", was an American jazz and song vocalist.[1] With a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
Fitzgerald was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook.[2] Over the course of her 59-year recording career, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.
Contents |
Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald.[3] The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother went to Yonkers, New York, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. She and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday School.[4][5]
In her youth Fitzgerald wanted to be a dancer, although she loved listening to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters. She idolized the lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying, "My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it....I tried so hard to sound just like her."[6]
In 1932, her mother died from a heart attack.[3] Following this trauma, Fitzgerald's grades dropped dramatically and she frequently skipped school. Abused by her stepfather, she was first taken in by an aunt [7] and at one point worked as a lookout at a bordello and also with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner.[8] When the authorities caught up with her, she was first placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, the Bronx.[9] However, when the orphanage proved too crowded she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York, a state reformatory. Eventually she escaped and for a time was homeless.[7]
She made her singing debut at 17 on November 21, 1934, at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. She pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its famous "Amateur Nights". She had originally intended to go on stage and dance but, intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead in the style of Connee Boswell. She sang Boswell's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection," a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of US$25.00.[10]
Fitzgerald married at least twice, and there is evidence that she may have married a third time. In 1941 she married Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and local dockworker. The marriage was annulled after two years.
Her second marriage, in December 1947, was to the famous bass player Ray Brown, whom she had met while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie's band a year earlier. Together they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances, whom they christened Ray Brown, Jr. With Fitzgerald and Brown often busy touring and recording, the child was largely raised by her aunt, Virginia. Fitzgerald and Brown divorced in 1953, bowing to the various career pressures both were experiencing at the time, though they would continue to perform together.[6]
In July 1957, Reuters reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in Oslo. She had even gone as far as furnishing an apartment in Oslo, but the affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months hard labor in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman to whom he had previously been engaged.[3]
Fitzgerald was also notoriously shy. Trumpet player Mario Bauza, who played behind Fitzgerald in her early years with Chick Webb, remembered that "she didn’t hang out much. When she got into the band, she was dedicated to her music….She was a lonely girl around New York, just kept herself to herself, for the gig."[3] When, later in her career, the Society of Singers named an award after her, Fitzgerald explained, "I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do. I think I do better when I sing."[10]
Already visually impaired by the effects of diabetes, Fitzgerald had both her legs amputated in 1993.[3] In 1996 she died of the disease in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 79. She is buried in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.[11] The career history and archival material from Ella's long career are housed in the Archives Center at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History while her personal music arrangements are at The Library of Congress. Her extensive cookbook collection was donated to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University while her published sheet music collection is at the Schoenberg Library at UCLA.
In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb there. Webb had already hired singer Charlie Linton to work with the band and was, The New York Times later wrote, "reluctant to sign her....because she was gawky and unkempt, a diamond in the rough."[6] Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University.
She began singing regularly with Webb's Orchestra through 1935 at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs with them, including "Love and Kisses" and "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)". But it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a song she co-wrote, that brought her wide public acclaim.
Chick Webb died on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed "Ella and her Famous Orchestra" with Ella taking on the role of nominal bandleader. Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 sides with the orchestra before it broke up in 1942, "the majority of them novelties and disposable pop fluff".[6]
In 1942, Fitzgerald left the band to begin a solo career. Now signed to the Decca label, she had several popular hits while recording with such artists as the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and the Delta Rhythm Boys.
With Decca's Milt Gabler as her manager, she began working regularly for the jazz impresario Norman Granz and appeared regularly in his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts. Fitzgerald's relationship with Granz was further cemented when he became her manager, although it would be nearly a decade before he could record her on one of his many record labels.
With the demise of the Swing era and the decline of the great touring big bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of bebop led to new developments in Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. It this in was period that Fitzgerald started including scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled, "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."[10]
Her 1945 scat recording of "Flying Home" arranged by Vic Schoen would later be described by The New York Times as "one of the most influential vocal jazz records of the decade....Where other singers, most notably Louis Armstrong, had tried similar improvisation, no one before Miss Fitzgerald employed the technique with such dazzling inventiveness."[6] Her bebop recording of "Oh, Lady be Good!" (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.[citation needed]
Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's JATP concerts by 1955. She left Decca and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her.
Fitzgerald later described the period as strategically crucial, saying, "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was 'it', and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman ... felt that I should do other things, so he produced The Cole Porter Songbook with me. It was a turning point in my life."[6]
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, released in 1956, was the first of eight multi-album Songbook sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the Great American Songbook. Her song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook was the only Songbook on which the composer she interpreted played with her. Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: "The E and D Blues" and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald (the only Songbook track on which Fitzgerald does not sing). The Songbook series ended up becoming the singer's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture. The New York Times wrote in 1996, "These albums were among the first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration."[6]
A few days after Fitzgerald's death, New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that in the Songbook series Fitzgerald "performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as Elvis's contemporaneous integration of white and African-American soul. Here was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians."[8] Frank Sinatra was moved out of respect for Fitzgerald to block Capitol Records from re-releasing his own recordings in a similar, single composer vein.
Fitzgerald also recorded albums exclusively devoted to the songs of Porter and Gershwin in 1972 and 1983; the albums being, respectively, Ella Loves Cole and Nice Work If You Can Get It. A later collection devoted to a single composer was released during her time with Pablo Records, Ella Abraça Jobim, featuring the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim.
While recording the Songbooks and the occasional studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per year in the United States and internationally, under the tutelage of Norman Granz. Granz helped solidify her position as one of the leading live jazz performers.[6]
In the mid-1950s, Fitzgerald became the first African-American to perform at the Mocambo, after Marilyn Monroe had lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. The incident was turned into a play by Bonnie Greer in 2005. There are several live albums on Verve that are highly regarded by critics. Ella at the Opera House shows a typical JATP set from Fitzgerald. Ella in Rome and Twelve Nights In Hollywood display her vocal jazz canon. Ella in Berlin is still one of her best selling albums; it includes a Grammy-winning performance of "Mack the Knife" in which she forgets the lyrics, but improvises magnificently to compensate.
As Will Friedwald noted,
Unlike any other singer you could name, Fitzgerald has the most amazing asset in the very sound of her voice: it's easily one of the most beautiful and sonically perfect sounds known to man. Even if she couldn't do anything with it, the instrument that Fitzgerald starts with is dulcet and pure and breathtakingly beautiful. As Henry Pleasants has observed, she has a wider range than most opera singers, and many of the latter, including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, are among her biggest fans. And the intonation that goes with the voice is, to put it conservatively, God-like. Fitzgerald simply exists in tune, and she hits every note that there is without the slightest trace of effort. Other singers tend to sound like they're trying to reach up to a note - Fitzgerald always sounds like she's already there. If anything, she's descending from her heavenly perch and swooping down to whatever pitch she wants.[12]
Henry Pleasants, an American classical-music critic, wrote this about her:
She has a lovely voice, one of the warmest and most radiant in its natural range that I have heard in a lifetime of listening to singers in every category. She has an impeccable and ultimately sophisticated rhythmic sense, and flawless intonation. Her harmonic sensibility is extraordinary. She is endlessly inventive... it is not so much what she does, or even the way she does it, it's what she does not do. What she does not do, putting it simply as possible, is anything wrong. There is simply nothing in performance to which one would take exception... Everything seems to be just right. One would not want it any other way. Nor can one, for a moment imagine it any other way.[13] Fitzgerald had an extraordinary vocal range. A mezzo-soprano (who sang much lower than most classical contraltos), she had a range of “2 octaves and a sixth from a low D or D flat to a high C flat and possibly higher”.[13]
Verve Records was sold to MGM in 1963 for $3 million and in 1967 MGM failed to renew Fitzgerald's contract. Over the next five years she flitted between Atlantic, Capitol and Reprise. Her material at this time represented a departure from her typical jazz repertoire. For Capitol she recorded Brighten the Corner, an album of hymns, Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas, an album of traditional Christmas carols, Misty Blue, a country and western-influenced album, and 30 by Ella, a series of six medleys that fulfilled her obligations for the label. During this period, she had her last US chart single with a cover of Smokey Robinson's "Get Ready", previously a hit for The Temptations, and some months later a top-five hit for Rare Earth.
The surprise success of the 1972 album Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72 led Granz to found Pablo Records, his first record label since the sale of Verve. Fitzgerald recorded some 20 albums for the label. Ella in London recorded live in 1974 with pianist Tommy Flanagan, guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Keter Betts and drummer Bobby Durham, was considered by many to be some of her best work. The following year she again performed with Joe Pass on German television station NDR in Hamburg. Her years with Pablo Records also documented the decline in her voice. "She frequently used shorter, stabbing phrases, and her voice was harder, with a wider vibrato", one biographer wrote.[3] Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances in 1993.[14]
In her most notable screen role, Fitzgerald played the part of singer Maggie Jackson in Jack Webb's 1955 jazz film Pete Kelly's Blues. The film costarred Janet Leigh and singer Peggy Lee. Even though she had already worked in the movies (she had sung briefly in the 1942 Abbott and Costello film Ride 'Em Cowboy), she was "delighted" when Norman Granz negotiated the role for her, and, "at the time....considered her role in the Warner Brothers movie the biggest thing ever to have happened to her."[3] Amid The New York Times' pan of the film when it opened in August 1955, the reviewer wrote, "About five minutes (out of ninety-five) suggest the picture this might have been. Take the ingenious prologue ... [or] take the fleeting scenes when the wonderful Ella Fitzgerald, allotted a few spoken lines, fills the screen and sound track with her strong mobile features and voice."[15] Fitzgerald's race precluded major big-screen success. After Pete Kelly's Blues, she appeared in sporadic movie cameos, in St. Louis Blues (1958), and Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960). Much later, she appeared in the 1980s television drama The White Shadow.
She made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on The Frank Sinatra Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and alongside other greats Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé, and many others. Perhaps her most unusual and intriguing performance was of the 'Three Little Maids' song from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta The Mikado alongside Joan Sutherland and Dinah Shore on Shore's weekly variety series in 1963. A performance at "Ronnie Scott's" jazz club in London was filmed and shown on the BBC. Fitzgerald also made a one-off appearance alongside Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey on a 1979 television special honoring Bailey. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with Karen Carpenter on the Carpenters' television program, Music, Music, Music. [16]
Fitzgerald also appeared in TV commercials, her most memorable being an ad for Memorex. In the commercials, she sang a note that shattered a glass while being recorded on a Memorex cassette tape. The tape was played back and the recording also broke the glass, asking "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" She also starred in a number of commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, singing and scatting to the fast-food chain's longtime slogan, "We do chicken right!"[17] Her final commercial campaign was for American Express, in which she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz.
Fitzgerald's most famous collaborations were with the trumpeter Louis Armstrong, the guitarist Joe Pass, and the bandleaders Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
Fitzgerald had a number of famous jazz musicians and soloists as sidemen over her long career. The trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie, the guitarist Herb Ellis, and the pianists Tommy Flanagan, Oscar Peterson, Lou Levy, Paul Smith, Jimmy Rowles, and Ellis Larkins all worked with Ella mostly in live, small group settings.
Possibly Fitzgerald's greatest unrealized collaboration (in terms of popular music) was a studio or live album with Frank Sinatra. The two appeared on the same stage only periodically over the years, in television specials in 1958 and 1959, and again on 1967's A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim, a show that also featured Antonio Carlos Jobim. Pianist Paul Smith has said, "Ella loved working with [Frank]. Sinatra gave her his dressing room on A Man and His Music and couldn't do enough for her." When asked, Norman Granz would cite "complex contractual reasons" for the fact that the two artists never recorded together.[3] Fitzgerald's appearance with Sinatra and Count Basie in June 1974 for a series of concerts at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas was seen as an important incentive for Sinatra to return from his self-imposed retirement of the early 1970s. The shows were a great success, and September 1975 saw them gross $1,000,000 in two weeks on Broadway, in a triumvirate with the Count Basie Orchestra.
Fitzgerald won thirteen Grammy awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement in 1967.
Other major awards and honors she received during her career were the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Medal of Honor Award, National Medal of Art, first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award, named "Ella" in her honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing.[18] Across town at the University of Southern California, she received the coveted[citation needed] USC "Magnum Opus" Award which hangs in the office of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation.
Fitzgerald was a quiet but ardent supporter of many charities and non-profit organizations, including the American Heart Association and the City of Hope Medical Center. In 1993, she established the "Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation", which continues to fund programs that perpetuate Ella's ideals. The Foundation's mission and goals, as well as many of the organizations that receive support, can be found at the official Ella Fitzgerald Foundation website Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation. The Foundation also runs a Children's Book Program in memory of Miss Fitzgerald; called "A Book Just For Me!", it provides over 100,000 brand-new books each year to disadvantaged children.
In 1997, Newport News, Virginia created a music festival with Christopher Newport University to honor Ella Fitzgerald in her birth city. The Ella Fitzgerald Music Festival is designed to teach the region's youth of the musical legacy of Fitzgerald and jazz. Past performers at the week-long festival include: Diana Krall, Arturo Sandoval, Jean Carne, Phil Woods, Aretha Franklin, Freda Payne, Cassandra Wilson, Ethel Ennis, David Sanborn, Jane Monheit, Dianne Reeves, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Ramsey Lewis, Patti Austin, and Ann Hampton Callaway
Callaway, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Patti Austin have all recorded albums in tribute to Fitzgerald. Callaway's album To Ella with Love (1996) features fourteen jazz standards made popular by Fitzgerald, and the album also features the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Bridgewater's album Dear Ella (1997) featured many musicians that were closely associated with Fitzgerald during her career, including the pianist Lou Levy, the trumpeter Benny Powell, and Fitzgerald's second husband, double bassist Ray Brown. Bridgewater's following album, Live at Yoshi's, was recorded live on April 25, 1998, what would have been Fitzgerald's 81st birthday.
Austin's album, For Ella (2002) features 11 songs most immediately associated with Fitzgerald, and a twelfth song, "Hearing Ella Sing" is Austin's tribute to Fitzgerald. The album was nominated for a Grammy. In 2007, We All Love Ella, was released, a tribute album recorded for the 90th anniversary of Fitzgerald's birth. It featured artists such as Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, k.d. lang, Queen Latifah, Ledisi, Dianne Reeves, Linda Ronstadt, and Lizz Wright, collating songs most readily associated with the "First Lady of Song". Folk singer Odetta's album To Ella (1998) is dedicated to Fitzgerald, but features no songs associated with her. Her accompanist Tommy Flanagan affectionately remembered Fitzgerald on his album Lady be Good ... For Ella (1994).
Fitzgerald is also referred to on the 1987 song "Ella, elle l'a" by French singer France Gall and the Belgian singer Kate Ryan, the 1976 Stevie Wonder hit "Sir Duke" from his album Songs in the Key of Life, and the song "I Love Being Here With You", written by Peggy Lee and Bill Schluger. Sinatra's 1986 recording of "Mack the Knife" from his album L.A. Is My Lady (1984) includes a homage to some of the song's previous performers, including 'Lady Ella' herself. She is also honored in the song "First Lady" by Canadian artist Nikki Yanofsky.
In 2008, the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center in Newport News named its brand new 276-seat theater the Ella Fitzgerald Theater. The theater is located several blocks away from her birthplace on Marshall Avenue. The Grand Opening performers (October 11 & 12, 2008) were Roberta Flack and Queen Esther Marrow.
There is a bronze sculpture of Fitzgerald in Yonkers,created by American artist Vinnie Bagwell, the city in which she grew up. It is located southeast of the main entrance to the Amtrak/Metro-North Railroad station. A bust of Fitzgerald is on the campus of Chapman College in Orange, California. On January 10, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that Fitzgerald would be honored with her own 39-cent postage stamp. The stamp was released in April 2007 as part of the Postal Service's Black Heritage series.[19]
Year | Film | Role | Notes and awards |
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1942 | Ride 'Em Cowboy | Ruby | |
1955 | Pete Kelly's Blues | Maggie Jackson | |
1958 | St. Louis Blues | Singer | |
1960 | Let No Man Write My Epitaph | Flora |
Book: Ella Fitzgerald | |
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ella Fitzgerald |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ella Fitzgerald |
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