专八人文知识需知的美国名人--“猫王”埃尔维斯·普雷斯利

专八人文知识需知的美国名人--“猫王”埃尔维斯·普雷斯利

　　英语专八人文知识涵盖的知识面较广，考生们需要平时多积累小常识，这样在专八考试中才能游刃有余，新东方在线整理了专八人文知识需知的美国名人系列知识点供考生们参考。

　　猫王，埃尔维斯·普雷斯利，(Elvis Aron Presley，1935.1.8-1977.8.16)美国摇滚乐史上影响力最大的歌手，有摇滚乐之王的誉称。20世纪50年代，猫王的音乐开始风靡世界。他的音乐超越了种族以及文化的疆界，将乡村音乐、布鲁斯音乐以及山地摇滚乐融会贯通，形成了具有鲜明个性的独特曲风，强烈的震撼了当时的流行乐坛，并让摇滚乐开始如同旋风一般横扫了世界乐坛。

　　Elvis Aaron (or Arona) Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he iswidely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" orsimply "the King".

　　Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13.He began his career there in

　　1954 when Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, eager to bring the sound of African American music toa wider audience, saw in Presley the means to realize his ambition. Accompanied by guitarist ScottyMoore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was one of the originators of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arrangedby Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCAsingle, "Heartbreak

　　Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number one hit. He became the leading figure of the newlypopular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-toppingrecords. His energized interpretations of songs, many from

　　African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.

　　Conscripted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years laterwith some of his most commercially successful work. He staged few concerts, however, and,guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood movies andsoundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, after seven years away from thestage, he returned to live performance in a celebrated comeback television special that led to anextended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of profitable tours. In 1973, Presley staged thefirst concert broadcast globally via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii, seen by approximately 1.5 billionviewers. Prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 atthe age of 42.

　　Presley is regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century popular culture. He had aversatile voice and unusually wide success encompassing many genres, including country, popballads, gospel, and blues. He is the best-selling solo artist in the history of popular music.Nominated for 14 competitive Grammys, he won three, and received the Grammy LifetimeAchievement Award at age 36. He has been inducted into four music halls of fame.

　　Commercial breakout and controversy (1956–58)

　　First national TV appearances and debut album

　　On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending the singer'sby now customary backup of

　　Moore, Black, and Fontana, RCA enlisted pianist Floyd Cramer, guitarist Chet Atkins, and threebackground singers, including

　　Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill out the sound. The session produced themoody, unusual "Heartbreak

　　Hotel", released as a single on January 27.Parker finally brought Presley to national television,booking him on CBS's Stage Show for six appearances over two months. The program, producedin New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and JimmyDorsey. After his first appearance, on January 28, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA's NewYork studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins' rockabilly anthem"Blue Suede Shoes". In February, Presley's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", a Sun recordinginitially released the previous August, reached the top of the

　　Billboard country chart.Neal's contract was terminated and, on March 2, Parker became Presley'smanager.

　　RCA Victor released Presley's self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previouslyunreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There weretwo country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the evolving soundof rock and roll: "Blue Suede Shoes"—"an improvement over Perkins' in almost every way",according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presley's stagerepertoire for some time, covers of Little

　　Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these "were the most revealing ofall. Unlike many white artists ... who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions ofsongs in the '50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocalcharacter but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases." It became thefirst rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks.While Presley wasnot an innovative instrumentalist like Moore or contemporary African American rockers Bo Diddleyand Chuck Berry, cultural historian

　　Gilbert B. Rodman argues that the album's cover image, "of Elvis having the time of his life onstage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar...as the instrumentthat best captured the style and spirit of this new music."

　　Musical style

　　Influences

　　Presley's earliest musical influence came from gospel. His mother recalled that from the age of two,at the Assembly of God church in Tupelo attended by the family, "he would slide down off my lap,run into the aisle and scramble up to the platform. There he would stand looking at the choir andtrying to sing with them." In Memphis, Presley frequently attended all-night gospel singings at theEllis Auditorium, where groups such as the Statesmen Quartet led the music in a style that,Guralnick suggests, sowed the seeds of Presley's future stage act:

　　The Statesmen were an electric combination ... featuring some of the most thrillingly emotivesinging and daringly unconventional showmanship in the entertainment world ... dressed in suitsthat might have come out of the window of Lansky's. ... Bass singer

　　Jim Wetherington, known universally as the Big Chief, maintained a steady bottom, ceaselesslyjiggling first his left leg, then his right, with the material of the pants leg ballooning out andshimmering. "He went about as far as you could go in gospel music," said Jake Hess. "The womenwould jump up, just like they do for the pop shows." Preachers frequently objected to the lewdmovements ... but audiences reacted with screams and swoons. As a teenager, Presley's musicalinterests were wide-ranging, and he was deeply informed about African American musical idioms aswell as white ones (see "Teenage life in Memphis"). Though he never had any formal training, hewas blessed with a remarkable memory, and his musical knowledge was already considerable bythe time he made his first professional recordings in 1954 at the age of 19. When Jerry Leiber andMike Stoller met him two years later, they were astonished at his encyclopedic understanding ofthe blues.At a press conference the following year, he proudly declared, "I know practically everyreligious song that's ever been written."

　　Genres

　　Music scholar Paul Friedlander describes the elements of the rockabilly style, which he characterizesas "essentially ... an Elvis

　　Presley construction", that the singer and his band mates developed at Sun Records: "the raw,emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the stringband and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country". Moore's guitar solo in

　　"That's All Right", the group's first record, "a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is amicrocosm of this fusion."

　　At RCA, Presley's rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, moreheavily amplified electric guitars and a tougher, more intense manner. While he was known fortaking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he alsorecorded songs in other genres from early in his career, from the pop standard "Blue

　　Moon" at Sun to the country ballad "How's the World Treating You?" on his second LP to theblues of "Santa Claus Is Back In Town".

　　In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP Peace in the Valley. Certified as amillion seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospelperiodically for the rest of his life.

　　After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but thecharacteristic style was substantially toned down. His first post-Army single, the number one hit"Stuck on You", is typical of this shift. RCA publicity materials referred to its "mild rock beat";discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it "upbeat pop". The modern blues/R&B sound captured sosuccessfully on Elvis Is Back! was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966–67recordings as "Down in the

　　Alley" and "Hi-Heel Sneakers". The singer's output during most of the 1960s emphasized popmusic, often in the form of ballads such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", a number one in 1960.While that was a dramatic number, most of what Presley recorded for his movie soundtracks wasin a much lighter vein.

　　While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the '68 Comeback Special, the sound ofthe show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He would record few new straight-aheadrock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they were "hard to find". A significant exceptionwas "Burning Love", his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley'ssubsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations.His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul andfunk. Much of Elvis In Memphis, as well as "Suspicious Minds", cut at the same sessions, reflectedhis new rock and soul fusion. In the mid-1970s, many of his singles found a home on countryradio, the field where he first became a star.

　　Vocal style and range

　　Music critic Henry Pleasants observes that "Elvis Presley has been described variously as a baritoneand a tenor. An extraordinary compass ... and a very wide range of vocal color have something todo with this divergence of opinion." He identifies Presley as a high baritone, calculating his range astwo octaves and a third, "from the baritone low G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension infalsetto to at least a D-flat. Presley's best octave is in the middle, D-flat to D-flat, granting an extrafull step up or down." In Pleasants' view, his voice was "variable and unpredictable" at the bottom, "often brilliant" at the top, with the capacity for "full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritonemight envy." Scholar Lindsay Waters, who figures Presley's range as two and a quarter octaves,emphasizes that "his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts,grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender,to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem ofhow to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all." Presley was always "able toduplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the blackrhythm-and-blues and gospel singers," writes Pleasants, and also demonstrated a remarkable abilityto assimilate many other vocal styles.

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