'Each singer (of the so-called folk variety), is recognized as much from its characteristic sound, as from what they actually sing or play, and they manipulate tone colour with a virtuousity that owes nothing to either the classical, or the Tin Pan Alley tradition; one thinks, for example, of the voice of Elvis Presley, an expressive vehicle, shifting from high to low tones, groaning, sluring, and producing breathless changes of rhythm; to many listeners, the voice may have seemed crude, but its folk inmediately resided in its crudeness'.

'I believe he was already assured of his ability as a performer since he had been perfecting his style on the road for more than a year. If you look at that fi…

'There comes a point when the voice starts to wash over you. You get inside of it, start to really hear what he's doing, and you realise his singing has this e…

'Presley's voice was remarkable in the sense that, through it, he touched people in a way only great artists can do. (In fact), the people he touched are as di…

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is somet…

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Underneath all his writing there is the settled determination to use certain words, to take certain attitudes, to produce a certain atmosphere; what he is seei…