Raised in Tupelo and first introduced as “The Hillbilly Cat,” then by RCA Victor as “the hottest new name in country music,” Elvis Presley built a revolutionary musical mix in which country remained a key ingredient throughout his career. Born in Tupelo on January 8, 1935, Elvis Aron Presley grew up in a household that valued country music, playing records by Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills and listening to Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe, and Roy Acuff on the radio. By age ten he was singing Red Foley’s “Old Shep” at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair at the fairgrounds there, and he received his first guitar the following year. During his high school years in Memphis, he took a secondary role in a local band playing songs by future label mates Eddy Arnold and Hank Snow. His first records at Sun Records in Memphis in the mid-1950s drew in roughly equal measure from country and R&B sources, and the rock ’n roll style he developed there with Scotty Moore, Bill Black, and producer Sam Phillips showed enough twang to become known as rockabilly. His Southern regional fame grew through regular appearances on the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, and touring with Hank Snow, Slim Whitman, and Faron Young helped lead to his signing with RCA Victor and then to global fame. Appearing on the country charts more than 50 times, with ten Number One country records, Presley consistently placed hits on country as well as pop charts, and songs such as “A Fool Such as I,” “Always On My Mind,” “There Goes My Everything,” and “Green, Green Grass of Home” became signature tunes for him. In the late 1950s, his hugely successful pop style and rock ’n roll’s appeal to younger audiences were seen as threats to country music’s future, yet the modernizing Nashville Sound that emerged in response adopted lush arrangements, rhythmic backing singers, and other elements from the Presley playbook created in Nashville studios, often with the same musicians. He continued performing country music throughout his career and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1998, twenty-one years after his death.
