The King and The Colonel
Elvis / In cinemas from Friday 24 June
It’s hard to overstate the level of the adulation that irrevocably changed the life of Elvis Aaron Presley. Or, by pre-internet era standards, the speed at which it happened. In 1954, Presley, then just a young hopeful, launched into a cover of blues singer Arthur Crudup’s ‘That’s All Right’ at Sun Records in Memphis. This was the new sound for which Sun’s owner, Sam Phillips, had been searching.
By 1956, Presley’s fame was such that four of his singles, beginning with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, hit number one on the Top 100. More than this, Elvis was a cultural phenomenon, the man who brought the excitement of rock’n’roll to the wider world. As John Lennon once quipped, “Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles.”
