39 Elvis Presley Quotes on Elvis

Elvis Presley quotes on elvis

71. 'I suppose you'd had to call him a lyric baritone, although with exceptional high notes and unexpectedly rich low ones. But what is more important about Elvis Presley is not his vocal range, nor how high or low it extends, but where its center of gravity is. By that measure, Elvis was all at once a tenor, a baritone and a bass, the most unusual voice I've ever heard'

72. 'I am reminded of a comment made shortly after the death of Elvis Presley by a musician he had worked with. He pointed out that despite an impressive vocal range of two and a half octaves and something approaching perfect pitch, Elvis was perfectly willing to sing off-key when he thought the song required it. Those off-key notes were art.'

73. 'He got even more maturity in his voice as he got older; I was often amazed at his range, just as one singer listening to another. He could sing anything. I've never seen such a versality, and in fact I don't see it today. Usually a voice can sing one way, but he had that ability about him, and he helped me to learn the importance of communication with an audience. He had such great soul. He had the ability to make everyone in the audience think that he was singing directly to them. He just had a way with communication that was totally unique'

74. 'Presley brought an excitement to singing, in part because rock and roll was greeted as his invention, but for other reasons not so widely reflected on: Elvis Presley had the most beautiful singing voice of any human being on earth. Presley, for some fans, was primarily a balladeer. 'Don't Leave Me Now' (1957), is a love song given distinctiveness by Presley's twangy enunciations, and sustained by the guitar and rhythm sections designed perfectly to complement the balladeer, filled out towards the song's end - as with so much of Presley- , with what one conveniently calls the heavenly choir, which wafts him home but never overwhelms the country lilt Presley gives his music.'

75. 'He would probably be considered a baritone, but he could reach notes that most baritone singers could not. Much of his abilities emanated from a very intense desire to execute a song as he wanted to do it, which meant that he really sang higher than he would normally be able to. When the adrenalin is going, and the song is really pumping, you can get into that mode where you can actually do things, vocally, that you couldn't normally do. So he had a tremendous range because of his desire to excel and be better, and that's why he could do a lot of things that most people couldn't.'

76. 'Elvis' initial hopes for a music career involved singing in a gospel male quartet. His favourite part was bass baritone, and he himself had an almost 3-octave vocal range... Yet to posterity's surprise, such a superlative and magnetic natural talent always remained humble --perhaps too humble to keep performing forever.'

77. 'Along with the rest of 'Deep Purple', I once had the chance to meet Elvis. For a young singer like me, he was an absolute inspiration. I soaked up what he did like blotting paper. It's the same as being in school - you learn by copying the maestro. His personality was also extremely endearing, his interviews were very self-effacing (and), he came over as gentle and was generous in his praise of others. He had a natural, technical ability, but there was something in the humanity of his voice, and his delivery. Those early records at the Sun Records label are still incredible and the reason is simple: he was the greatest singer that ever lived.'

78. ' Perhaps the only other voice to touch me ( Luciano Pavarotti's voice being the first), was the voice of Elvis Presley; to watch him perform as I did along with Carl (Palmer), and Keith (Emerson), both in 1971 and again later in 1976 was an absolutely awesome and breathtaking experience; like Pavarotti, Presley had the power to reduce most people to tears very quickly and indeed to move them to think very carefully about their inner spiritual beliefs; as far as singing is concerned, the human voice is a matter of the expression of passion in the understanding of the human condition and, upon seeing both of them perform, I very quickly came to realise that they were each capable of expressing more feeling, with their voices, than I had ever thought possible'.

79. 'In Elvis, you had the whole lot; it's all there in that elastic voice and body. As he changed shape, so did the world. His last performances showcase a voice even bigger than his gut, where you cry real tears as the music messiah sings his tired heart out, turning casino into temple. I think the Vegas period is underrated. I find it the most emotional. By that point Elvis was clearly not in control of his own life, and there is this incredible pathos. The big opera voice of the later years -- that's the one that really hurts me.'

80. 'The young Elvis Presley, without any doubt.'

91. 'I spoke to over 140 songwriters whose work Presley recorded, and most remarked about his uncanny ability to capture the essence and make it his own; like a musical geneticist, he drew from every strand of DNA in a songwriter's work, which ultimately helped shape his own distinctive personal interpretation; just listen to the wide stylistic swath of genre-hopping material he recorded during his career - from Junior Parker's amphetamine-paced rockabilly classic 'Mystery Train' and the poppin-perfect panache of Otis Blackwell's 'All shook up', to the down and dirty blues swagger of 'Reconsider baby' and the operatic grandeur of 'It's now or never'-; and then there were more controversial and socially conscious anthems ('If I can dream' and 'In the guetto'), and introspective 70's fare like 'Separate ways' and 'Always on my my mind'; right away, you can hear the breath of a master stylist who breathed new life into every song he cut'

92. 'He closes with a song called 'If I Can Dream,' a late contribution from vocal arranger Walter Earl Brown -- a plea for peace and understanding that in the murderous year of 1968 had a timely urgency --; dressed all in white, planted before his name in lights forty feet high, he folds his body into the song as if in pain, a pain he means to kill with hope; it is as raw and real as any performance I've ever seen, the beginning of the last phase of Presley's career and, if much of what followed look like decline, it was also an apotheosis; he had only nine years to live'.

93. 'The greatest voice of all time'.

94. 'Q Magazine bravely attempted to name the best and worst singers ever. They did a good job, wisely going big with Elvis as the top choice'

95. 'He had a musically textured rhythmic voice that had emotional intelligence; concentrate on his voice: sweet, remorseful, defiant, suggestive'

96. 'A singer, at work, is usually thinking only about making it through the song without flubbing it. Look what's involved:breathing plausibly, remembering the lyrics, nailing the high notes, staying with your band or chorus, maintaining a soulful facial expression and looking good. You might also be whacking a guitar. And -- because Presley did -- you also have to move, oscillate, arm-wrestle with the microphone, throttle it, skid across the stage on your knees, fling your head back and spread your arms; and then you want to salt it with what you possess of art...he flings his voice up beyond the grip of gravity, and then surrenders, like a skater in a leap.'

97. 'That the prime exponent of this new style of music should be a singer who possessed no prior professional experience was an anomaly; (in fact), not only were most of the mannerisms that would define his vocal style present at the creation - from the sudden swoops in register to the habit, derived from gospel singing, of starting his lines with a throat-clearing 'well' that gave whatever followed the feeling of a retort, but what was even more impressive was the extent to which his first professional recording was marked by the trait that has characterized every great popular singer: the absolute assertion of his personality over the song; from this, it might be concluded that Presley was simply a 'natural.', but the truth, as ever, was more complex than that'

98. '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 diverse as humanity itself and, because of that his popularity has transcended race, class, national boundaries, and culture. There is no simple answer about why that is so, all I can say is he had that magic. When Elvis Presley was first popular, many people said that he did not have a good voice. Almost everyone, today, knows that he did, but more people today should see him not simply as a performer, but as an artist with a great soul.

99. '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 first appearance on Stage Show, you'll witness a young confident singer with his own unique style. He would enhance his popularity with five more appearances on Stage Show (February 4, 11, 18; March 17, 24) and would become a superstar by the end of that year. On that historic television debut of January 28, 1956, the spotlight was first shown on the two people who had made it happen - the promoter and the performer - disc jockey Bill Randle and the new singing sensation, Electric Elvis.'

100. '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'.

111. 'He rarely over-sang when recording, delivering a vocal to suit the song. So, he can loudly accuse in 'Hound Dog' (1956), rasp and rage for 'Jailhouse Rock' (1957), bare his soul and beg on 'Any Day Now' (1969) and sound quietly, sadly, worldly-wise on 'Funny How Time Slips Away'. (1970). This gift may explain why his music endures so powerfully and why his performances remain so easy to hear'

112. 'With the way he was marketed, he didn't even need to be able to sing the way he could. But Elvis had talent, plain and simple. The guy had a thousandth-octave range, and a variety in his vocal styles and approach, he could make more vocal tones, with just his voice, than a guitar player with 50 pedals and gadgets. If you never even saw the guy, you could plain feel, not just hear, the emotion and passion in his voice, and you are immediately taken in, one hundred percent. On the merit of vocals alone, he had more talent in the barbecue stuck in his teeth than the singers who sell millions of records do today.'

113. 'A great, obscure, bluesy ballad that builds in intensity to a powerful ending, the song remains a hidden treasure in Presley's vast catalog; in 1968, while preparing for his comeback television special, he re-cut it, and that's some indication that he recognized the song's quality and his own affinity for it'.

114. ' That night at the 'Eagle's Nest', I remember, he was playing a D-18 Martin acoustic guitar and he was dressed in the latest teen fashion, but the thing I really noticed though, was his guitar playing. Elvis was a fabulous rhythm player. He'd start into 'That's All Right' , with his own guitar, alone, and you didn't want to hear anything else'

115. 'Elvis had a center of gravity that was low, but also set back and deep; his sexiest moves - legs lolling back and forth, smooth like jelly, hips rolling and tossing everywhere - were performed as if there were a paperweight on a string tied around his waist, and hung from his lower back; with his own weight adjusted to the back, he could free one leg to twist, pop, and jerk while maintaining perfect balance; Elvis' glory was in the shifting of his weight; when he gets going fast, the force of the shifts make his shoulders jerk so hard he looks like he is being electrocuted'

116. 'Elvis' early vocals, was a witches' brew of gospel swoops, falsetto shrieks, growls, howls, and scat...an anthem to human cockiness, to the healing, transcendent powers of the life-force...'

117. 'I was always mesmerized by strong, pure, beautiful voices, (and) Elvis' voice, the emotion in it, was unbelievable; I'd never heard anything like it, and I was listening to my parents' records, like 'Heartbreak Hotel' and all the '50 s stuff, the real raw Elvis...and that's how I gravitated into Patsy Cline, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.'

118. 'We can even hazard a little analysis as to what made his voice so appealing. 'That curious baritone,' one critic called it. Actually, that is inexact. The voice had mixed propensities, hovering between tenor and bass and everything in between. Even a convincing falsetto lay within his range. One thing he was not, ever, was 'Steve-'n-Edie', the polished, professionally accomplished Vegas artistes who once pronounced on an afternoon interview show (Mr. Lawrence enunciating the sentiment for himself and his partner/wife, Ms. Gorme), 'We don't really think of Elvis as a singer. But he was a star.' It is only when, years later, one gets past the indignation of hearing such apparent ignorance, that the sense of the observation becomes clear. A singer is someone like Steve Lawrence rolling effortlessly (and meaninglessly) through a shlock-standard like 'What Now, My Love?'. More or less like doing the scales. A star is the persona in whom one invests one's vicarious longings, a being who is constantly hazarding - and intermittently succeeding at - the impossible stretches that every soul wishes to attempt but lacks the means or the will to. It's not a matter of virtuosity.'

119. 'He never understood the artistic claims that were made for him, probably thought very little of the nature of his appeal, or his music; yet, as author Greil Marcus points out in 'Mystery Train', it is possible to see (all that) as a positive factor; Presley viewed 'rock and roll' as for the body, not the mind, so he recorded and performed accordingly; and, if much of his rock music sounds superficial, it was thanks to his undoubted vocal talent and extraordinary charisma that, at least, it was all gloriously superficial and celebratory; he knew better than to take it seriously and, in doing so, he become the consumate rock fugure, one that defined its spirit by delighting in its very limitations'

120. 'The voice of Elvis Presley is perhaps the most contested acoustical phenomenon in modern culture. I can understand why some listeners may prefer the original versions (of R&B artists) to Presley's covers, but it is more difficult to claim that these were immoral or unethical. In terms of vocal style and instrumental arrangement, Presley actually borrows relatively little, his appropriations (being) more straightforward, taking from the materials already protected by copyright: lyrics and melody. So, unless he can be criticized for not imitating an original R&B artist's rendition, we have to reevaluate Elvis' transgressions'

131. 'Elvis manages to pull off exponential, seismic shifts in energy, unleashing hoards of it through his voice whilst, within the space of a second, racing up the highest, most absolute vocal intensity; it's almost voyeuristic to see a single performer put so much energy; you look around to see if it's really possible; the voice just becomes a big tank panzering through the screen, punching in chorus after driving chorus and it is insanely, inexplicably thrilling seismic TV, bigger than the moon landing, a one-man volcano of energy; he makes it seem so damn effortless and, despite all the waiting and expected attention during the solo numbers, he always puts in an on-performance, the three unflagging takes of 'If I can Dream' all intense, committed; and he does this through vocal performance alone, not moves; this is probably one of the few times where the vocals mattered most to him, and it shows; after days of intense singing, he hardly even loses his voice; I challenge any current pop singer to match this three-day heavy intensity, this sheer rock and roll energy'

132. 'There was no model for Elvis Presley's success; what Sun Records head Sam Phillips sensed was something in the wind, an inevitable outgrowth of all the country and blues he was recording at his Union Avenue studio; enter Presley in 1954, bringing with him a musical vocabulary rich in country, country blues, gospel, inspirational music, bluegrass, traditional country, and popular music -- as well as a host of emotional needs that found their most eloquent expression in song; his timing was impeccable, not only as a vocalist, but with regard to the cultural zeitgeist: emerging in the first blush of America's postwar ebullience, Presley captured the spirit of a country flexing its industrial muscle, of a generation unburdened by the concerns of war, younger, more mobile, more affluent, and better educated than any that had come before; (as such), the Sun recordings were the first salvos in an undeclared war on segregated radio stations nationwide.

134. ' From the darkest of backgrounds, Elvis' voice emerges with such realism that you could take singing lessons, his vocals so irresistible and smooth, and with such startling definition, that the clearest and most concise way I can describe the experience, is that I never felt as though I was listening to a recording'

135. 'Elvis Presley's incendiary vocal performance of 'Baby, let's play house' (1955), hails from rockabilly's formative era, when the rules hadn't yet been cast in stone, and Elvis was still experimenting in overdrive, searching for the compelling sound that would catapult him to icon status in little over a year. Presley's slapback, echo laden hiccuping - briefly rendered 'a cappella' before the snarling low end guitar of Scotty Moore enters -, segues into an irresistibly lascivious declaration of lust, and a not-so-subtle hint of violence. Both of Scotty Moore's immaculately conceived, and executed solos were monstrously influential to the rockabilly idiom, copied by countless Southern axe-wielding teens. And Bill Black slaps his thundering upright bass so percussively, that no drummer was necessary'

136. 'Take 'My baby left me' (1956) by Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup, the black Mississippi sharecropper whose 'That's All Right' had literally been Elvis' first recording, in 1954. Crudup kept his blues in a bucket; Elvis put the lid on, and cooked; bar by bar, the song comes together; first comes D.J. Fontana's rapped-out drum riff, then a top-to-bottom run from Bill Black's stand-up bass, then the controlled gallop of Scotty Moore's lead guitar; then, last of all, Elvis singing in that imperious velvet growl of his, 'Yes, my baby left me! Never said a word'; it is the most underestimated song in the canon; there is lightning in that bucket, and it could drive a train, any train. It literally took us into a new age. Endow a university! Elvis was a university. Whoever those mystics are who teach that the universe began with sound could use him as their full curriculum'

137. 'You have no idea how great he is, really you don't. You have no comprehension - it's absolutely impossible. I can't tell you why he's so great, but he is'.

138. 'I wanted to look at Elvis the non-saint, as well as the nature of songs from the '50's, all that postwar optimism; he's iconic, a wonderful singer with an amazing body of work, but he's a bit like Billie Holiday, you're not 'allowed' to be critical'

140. 'Elvis was a (Gospel) singer par excellence. On 'Milky White Way', (1960), he' got the strength of a bassman and the sweetness of a tenor. The heritage we have in Elvis' gospel music is a gift to the world'.

141. 'What he actually did was take 'black' and 'white' music and transform them into this third thing; (in the final analysis), no one sang so many different kinds of music - rock, gospel, country, standards -, as well as Presley sang them, at such a high level, and for such a long time'