Rock ‘n’ Roll

There is a piece of film from July 1, 1956, in which a 21-year-old Elvis Presley sits alone in a hotel room, talking down a telephone line to a New York newspaper columnist. It looks like nothing much. It is, in fact, extraordinary — because in a career of more than twenty years, that broadcast … Read more

On June 9, 1972, Elvis Presley sat down in a ballroom at the New York Hilton to face a room full of reporters. It was a big moment: he was about to play Madison Square Garden, and he hadn’t performed live in New York since his television appearances back in the 1950s. Everyone expected the … Read more

In March 1972, Elvis Presley walked into a Hollywood studio in one of the worst slumps of his career. He hadn’t had a Top 10 single in nearly two years.  His marriage had collapsed the month before. Somebody put a rocking, up-tempo song in front of him called “Burning Love” — and Elvis flatly didn’t … Read more

Ask most people to name Elvis Presley’s biggest song, and they’ll say “Hound Dog,” or “Jailhouse Rock,” or “Suspicious Minds.” All wrong. The biggest-selling single of his entire career — around 20 million copies worldwide — is a slow, sweeping love song where he sings almost like an opera tenor.  It’s called “It’s Now or … Read more

It was 1955. Elvis Presley was 20 years old, and almost nobody outside the South knew his name yet. He was riding around in a car with two other musicians, playing in high school gyms, at county fairs, and at little country music shows. Most nights the crowd came to see somebody else, not Elvis. … Read more

In 1968, Elvis Presley was in trouble. Not money trouble. Not health trouble. Something worse for a singer. People had stopped taking him seriously. For years he had been making movies instead of music, and the wild young man who once shook up America had turned into a face on a poster. So Elvis picked … Read more

He wrote, “Don’t Be Cruel.” He wrote, “All Shook Up.” He wrote, “Return to Sender.” He wrote “Great Balls of Fire” for Jerry Lee Lewis and co-wrote “Fever.”  If you have ever sung along to fifties rock and roll, you have sung his words. His name was Otis Blackwell — and in his entire life, … Read more

In January 1964, Elvis Presley became the owner of a piece of American history. It was the USS Potomac, the presidential yacht of Franklin D. Roosevelt — the boat FDR had used to escape Washington, conduct government business in private, and, during the Second World War, to reach a top-secret meeting with Winston Churchill.  Elvis … Read more

In 1992, the United States government did something it had never done before. It printed millions of ballot papers, sent them to post offices across the country, and asked the American people to settle a question of enormous national importance. Not a law. Not a candidate. Which picture of Elvis Presley should go on a … Read more