Elvis Presley.

It's the birthday of Elvis Presley, born in Tupelo, Mississippi (1935).
He learned to play the guitar when he was twelve but never really
learned to read music. He just knew how to mimic what he heard. He
loved all kinds of music and his friends said that he could reproduce
perfectly almost anything he heard on the radio.

But he'd grown up in a strictly religious family and his favorite music
was gospel. He sang in his local church choir and later took his
girlfriend to see local gospel performances. She later said that she
was embarrassed by how he would sing along with the performers.

He had no clear ambition to become a professional musician. After high
school he got a job as a truck driver for the Crown Electric Company
and he began studying to become an electrician. His career as a
recording artist only came about because of his love for his mother.

At the time, the Sun Record Company had a special recording studio
where anyone could come in and pay a small fee to record personal
records for themselves. In the summer of 1953 Elvis scraped together
four dollars to record two songs, "My Happiness" and "That's When Your
Heartaches Begin" as a present for his mother. When the woman at the
front desk asked him what kind of a singer he was he said, "I sing all
kinds." She asked him who he sounded like and he said, "I don't sound
like nobody."

The recording engineer that day liked Elvis's voice and somehow those
recordings made their way into the hands of producer Sam Philips who
specialized in recording "hillbilly music." Philips called Elvis back
into the studio to see if he might have some real talent. Elvis sang a
few slow ballads, which were his favorite songs to sing, and Sam
Philips wasn't too impressed. And then, in between takes, Elvis and the
other musicians started fooling around and singing a blues tune called
"That's All Right, Mama." Sam Phillips asked them to start over from
the beginning and recorded the song. He then rushed the record to the
biggest DJ in Memphis.

When Elvis found out that the song, which he considered a joke, would
be on the radio, he was so embarrassed that he hid in a local movie
theater until his parents made him come home. That night the DJ in
Memphis played Elvis's new song on the radio for the first time, and he
received forty-seven phone calls and seventeen telegrams asking to play
the song again. In the following week Memphis stores sold some 6,000
copies of the record. A few weeks later Elvis sang the song at a local
music show at an outdoor park. He was extremely nervous while singing
the song and started shaking his leg in rhythm to the music. The girls
in the audience went crazy.

Elvis went on to record 149 songs that made the top 100 in the
Billboard's pop charts including "Heartbreak Hotel," "Hound Dog,"
"Jailhouse Rock" and "Are you Lonesome Tonight?"

Elvis Presley said, "Some people tap their feet, some people snap their
fingers, and some people sway back and forth. I just sorta do 'em all
together, I guess."