Elvis

His hips are highly hypnotic, his riffs are truly timeless, and his voice is lively and full of feeling. Ultimately, his untimely death at 42 cemented his stratospheric skyrocket to stardom for centuries to come. For we can’t help falling in love with him. Almost everyone can agree there haven’t been quite as many artists as electrifying and eternal as Elvis. Well, we’ll come to know this iconic king on this week’s episode of FYI!

Transcript

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[Applause] his hips are highly hypnotic his rifts are truly timeless and his voice is lively and full of feeling ultimately his untimely death at 42 cemented his stratospheric skyrocket to stardom for centuries to come for we can't help falling in love with him almost everyone can agree there haven't been quite as many artists as electrifying and eternal as elvis well we'll come to know this iconic king on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music] hello hello hello and welcome to another exciting edition of fyi today we're going to look at an iconic figure someone that you don't even need to see his face you can just see his silhouette and you'll know exactly who i'm talking about ladies and gentlemen the king now let's not get mixed up here because we've got the king of pop who came after obviously michael jackson and we've got the king of rock and roll and before we get started i hate it when people ask me are you a beatles fan or an elvis fan and i say both i like them both and for different reasons so we'll find out a little bit about the beatles and the elvis connection because they met once but there are no pictures and there is no audio recording so we'll have to take their word for it but we're going to hear all about that a little bit later on i just want to remind you guys that every week there's a bonus episode where i share tons of interesting things about the subject we're taking a look at so if you want to have access to that bonus material and when i say bonus material you can get a bonus episode you can have classes with me every week where we review the episodes we have monthly master classes and more importantly we have created an amazing community of english explorers and if you want to find out more you can go over to patreon.com alberto alonso there are over a hundred of us learning english and laughing every week in fact i'll stop really quickly to send a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students candy catalina javier roberto david jose maria mila alex and edgar and don't forget about my interstellar students lucas isa paco diego and carmen you guys rock keep up the excellent work i've seen each and every one of you make progress so keep it up and if you guys are interested in joining our curious community we'll just go over to patreon.com alberto alonso okay where were we where were we well let's start with the intro because as you know i like to sprinkle some vocabulary in the intro and i started off by saying his hips i think you say hips are kadera in spanish shakira has a very famous song that's my hips don't lie no miente mi cadera well his hips were highly hypnotic i mean one of his nicknames was elvis the pelvis then i said his riffs which is a guitar riff are truly timeless that means you can listen to them in any generation and they are still awesome and then i said his voice is lively komuchavida and full of feeling and that's one thing i think we can all agree on whether you're an elvis fan or not the guy was really feeling it when he sang and then i said ultimately ultimately ultima in english is lately it's one of those false friends and beware of those false friends so i said ultimately his untimely death and an untimely death is when you die suddenly it's not expected his untimely death at 42. remember in english we don't say with 42 so you know at 42. well this cemented his stratospheric skyrocket and if something skyrockets it goes up really quickly and then i said to stardom and stardom is being famous for centuries to come and then i obviously quoted one of his songs for we can't help falling in love well thanks a lot elvis for teaching us that structure i can't help enjoying these podcasts remember it's i can't help plus the gerund plus the ing or you can just say i can't help it no lo puedo evitar and then i said almost everyone can agree that there haven't been quite as many artists as electrifying and eternal as elvis and then i said we'll come to know you gotta igual this iconic king so are you guys ready well here we go where are we going to start i think we should start at the beginning[Music] firstly he wasn't born in memphis tennessee i know many people think that and many people associate him with memphis tennessee and it's true he lived there but he wasn't born there he was born in your hair oh okay really bad joke well he was born in tupelo mississippi east tupelo to be exact and he was born right after his twin now i know what you're thinking wait a second how is that possible because i didn't know elvis had a twin well unfortunately his identical twin brother jesse was stillborn and to be stillborn means they die during birth so 35 minutes later elvis presley came out of the womb and he was not in good health neither was his mother so some would say that it's a miracle that he even survived because his brother his identical twin brother jesse never did and that also gave him a complex of sorts with his mother his mother said well they took away my other child so you're special you've got it all all the pressure all eyes on you and she gave it all to her son and he obviously gave it back to her as we know graceland was a gift to her so we'll see the importance of that brother that brother that he never had that he lost at birth will see that connection with his mother these are reoccurring themes in his life but this happened on january 8th 1935 that's when elvis presley was born and the world would change forever and elvis is a typical rags to riches story rags to riches means that he had nothing and he worked really hard and he became successful and all of this before he was 21 years old we're going to talk all about his success his downfall his comeback his death and many other interesting facts so he was very poor growing up in tupelo mississippi in fact they lived in a house that didn't have electricity it didn't have running water it was like a hunting house a shotgun house and you can go and visit that now in tupelo mississippi it's not in memphis it's a little bit out of the way it's about 175 kilometers away to be exact so if you go to memphis tennessee which i highly recommend because that's where beale street is and a lot of the places where elvis and many other artists got their start some would say the birthplace of rock and roll and since his family didn't have a lot of money elvis's father vernon worked a series of odd jobs odd jobs are unaffordable and then in 1938 his father was sentenced to three years in prison and what do you think he did to get three years in prison he forged a four dollar check the good thing is he only spent about a year behind bars and then he got out but in 1948 the presleys packed up their stuff and moved to memphis they were in search of better opportunities they knew that it couldn't get worse it could only get better and this is where elvis attended hume's high school and he even failed a music class isn't that funny elvis presley failed a music class even though as a child he played the guitar and danced and and he was always singing around the house i mean from a young age he loved music it was running through his blood he loved the music he heard in church that gospel music he loved the r b that what they would call colored music back in the day black music and even though he was a huge fan of music and performing he was still kind of a quiet kid an outsider right an outsider is somebody who doesn't really belong a misfit well then in 1953 he graduated which was huge in his family because he was the first person in his immediate family to earn a high school diploma and after graduation he worked at a machinist shop and drove a truck before launching his music career so he knew that he wanted to be a musician but he also knew that he needed money to get by and everything changed when he met a man named sam phillips the guy who ran sun records or as it's called sun studios these days and if you go to memphis and you don't go to sun studios you are missing out this is the birthplace of rock and roll so he submitted his recording and nobody really paid much attention to it but then a couple years later he got a call back and they said hey we want you to come in and do another session so he did he went into sun studio now this was a place that was already getting famous for producing jerry lee lewis roy orbison johnny cash and some of the biggest blues artists howlin wolf finally somebody said come on in we're gonna give you another chance to do a demo let's see how it sounds and they were in the studio and nothing was really coming out you know everything was just okay it was mediocre nothing that would turn heads and the band decided to take a break this was elvis and two other people and they decided to take a quick break but since they loved playing music during the break they started playing a blues song called that's all right and they started playing it but it was in a different tempo and it was just very different it didn't sound like a blues song and at that moment sam phillips poked his head out of the booth the control booth where the sound technicians are and said that's the sound that is the sound that's the sound i've been looking for and what was sam phillips looking for he was looking for a white artist that could sound black so he could sell this music to the masses because remember at that point in the united states especially in the south there was segregation it was not a good time for race relations so he said if i could find somebody who's i can i can sell as a white guy a clean-cut guy who's got that soul in his voice who can dance well i'm gonna make millions and he was right he was right now one of the funniest things is the first time he went into sun studio to do that initial recording they asked him they said well who do you sound like and he goes i don't sound like nobody now that's a double negative said yeah i don't sound like anybody but remember elvis was a rebel or was that all an image was he just a clean-cut boy from the south well we'll find out as today's episode goes on but if you haven't heard that song it is amazing you should listen to the original it's arthur crudup and the song is called that's all right and then listen to elvis's version and that's the first song he ever recorded and when we went to sun studio we stood on that spot there's an x that marks that spot and i held the microphone that elvis used to record that's alright mama that's all right with me that's alright mama anyway you please that's all right and that was when they knew he said sam phillips said this is my guy but just like these big soccer teams when they get a big big star eventually they have to sell that star so it wasn't until 1955 where sam phillips sold elvis's contract and he signed his first big contract now he sold him over to rca and this was the obvious choice because sun studios was limited they could only reach so many people and sam phillips truly believed that this guy could reach the masses and he was absolutely right so in 1955 elvis signed his first big record contract with rca records and it was negotiated by his manager colonel tom parker which we're gonna talk about him in the bonus episode today if you guys have seen the new elvis movie he's played by tom hanks let's talk about how much that cost the price was 35 000 i know that's nothing nowadays but we're talking 1955 and there was an additional 5 000 signing bonus for elvis but as we'll find out later colonel tom parker might have taken him to superstardom but he also took him for a ride litimo well he took 50 of everything elvis made now i don't know if you know what managers fees are but they're usually around 20 and elvis was a huge hit they say that there's no such thing as overnight success well elvis is the closest thing to overnight success his debut album titled elvis presley it was released in 1956 and its soared to soar as another way to say to skyrocket to the top spot on the music charts and that was also the first rock and roll album to ever hit the number one spot and it was unbeatable for 10 weeks straight oh and let's talk about that did elvis invent rock and roll no he was the first one that made it marketable but there were a lot of other people chuck barry you also had ike turner who were pioneers in rock and roll and by the way we have an episode on rock and roll if you'd like to give it a listen i mean it was incredible radio stations were playing his songs over and over people just called in requesting his songs at 20 he got his shot to be on tv and when i say shot it was a bust shot you get it the word shot is opportunity and yeah they couldn't show his pelvis on tv i don't know if you remember that but whoo and now now they show basically anything on tv but not back then so at 20 he was on tv at 21 he was the biggest star on the planet and he knew it's now or never oh sorry i had to do that and as with everybody who makes it con todd there were critics many critics panned elvis they said that he was horrible i'll quote one of the critics he said he cannot sing and his whole performance is crude and disgusting that's dorothy ricker of the tampa bay times well i'll tell you dorothy you can give your opinion but you were totally off another person says in a comparatively short time he will be forgotten well you know what i have to say to these critics don't be cruel to a heart that's true oh sorry hey so many elvis songs are perfect for the moment and remember we can learn how to pronounce the word cruel nos cruel in english it's like the e is not in the word don't be cruel a to a heart that's true i don't want no other love oh baby it's just you all my thing you know and then at the height of his fame when he couldn't get any more famous he was drafted to the army that's right he was drafted to the military and he spent two years in the military a 23 year old guy the most famous guy on the planet and he went into the army he was in the third armored division in friedberg west germany and even though he was a jeep driver and you know he did other things there he was partying like a rock star he lived off the base with some friends from the the memphis mafia as they're called his crew was called the memphis mafia and this was also a really important time for him because a well he started experimenting with pills and many know that that was probably what led to his demise but this is also where he met a 14 old girl named priscilla bulow now i know i'm mispronouncing that but you know who i'm talking about his future wife now he was 24 and she was 14. yeah elvis come on man so he waited supposedly they did not have pre-marital sex i don't know about that but uh 14 years old man i she's underage this is where you kind of look at elvis and say man okay you made some good decisions but you made some others that weren't as good well they finally got married in 1967 when she was of age but that didn't last too long because the couple divorced in 1973. she ended up going out with her karate instructor and we're going to talk a little bit about how karate was a huge thing in elvis's life so yeah he suggested you gotta go check out this instructor he's great and she agreed she said oh he is great but i get it she was sick of him he was a womanizer he was the most famous guy on the planet and she was just his wife and i guess that role can get very tiring in march of 1960 elvis was honorably discharged from active duty and he made his first post army movie and this was called the gi blues you know gi joe i think gi is general infantry soldado raso possibly gi blues which was ironic i know a lot of people think of elvis as a singer right as a dancer as a guitar player but he was also an actor i'm gonna ask you guys how many movies do you think elvis was in take a guess 31 movies between the years 1950s and 1972 he was in 31 movies and all of these movies had their soundtrack as well so this was another way that elvis kept making money hand over fist and remember as i said it wasn't an accident colonel tom parker saw a cash cow una gallina con huevos de oro i think you say now another interesting thing about elvis no matter how much money he had and how globally famous he was he never toured outside of north america what that's right he never toured outside of north america he gave a handful of concerts in canada in 1957 but he never went to europe or asia on tour and many people say that it was because his manager colonel tom parker was an illegal alien as they say argent and some would say that he was running from the law so it's kind of a weird situation here because he made so much money because of colonel tom parker but he also lost so much money because of colonel tom parker and as the 60s went on elvis was losing a bit of popularity why well you had all these other rock and roll acts coming up you had the beatles you had the rolling stones i mean bob dylan these guys were really rebels they weren't nice southern boys who would go to the army if they were drafted i mean can you imagine bob dylan going to the army no way it's against everything his songs and his philosophy is about so they decided it was time for a comeback special montada a comeback special which was on nbc in 1968 and well it worked people saw the original elvis the bad boy of rock and roll and he was back on the map he also had one of the most successful concert residencies in history playing an astounding 636 sold out shows in las vegas he appeared twice a night seven days a week and while some would say this led to his demise as well being exhausted being addicted to pills and painkillers and well sadly in 1977 june 26 1977 elvis gave his last show he was dead six weeks later they found him on his toilet with 14 drugs in his system that was august 16th 1977. and the cause of death is a heart attack but it was just i think a snowball effect it was the drugs the overeating the excess the success it was just a time bomb a ticking time bomb he had been hospitalized for exhaustion many times but the thing is some people say he didn't die that day some people say he faked his death well we're gonna find out more about that in the bonus episode we'll also talk about his legacy because like him or hate him he is one of the greatest selling solo artists ever and as i said he is an icon just his silhouette the sideburns sideburns son patillas and the bell bottoms he was an icon and will always be an icon but we'll find out more about the dark side of this icon in the bonus episode i sure hope you'll join us on this week's bonus episode of f y ah[Music][Music] you