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The King was born Elvis Aaron Presley, 8 January 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. He died on 16 August 1977, in Memphis, Tennessee.

The elder of twins, his younger brother, Jesse Garon, was stillborn, a tragedy that partly contributed to the maternal solicitude dominating his childhood and teenage years. Presley's first significant step towards a musical career took place at the age of eight when he won $5 in a local song contest performing the lachrymose Red Foley ballad, "Old Shep."

His earliest musical influence came from attending the Pentecostal Church and listening to the psalms and gospel songs.

By the age of 13, Presley had moved with his family to Memphis, and during his later school years began cultivating an outsider image, with long hair, spidery sideburns and ostentatious clothes. After leaving school he took a job as a truck driver, a role in keeping with his unconventional appearance.

In spite of his rebel posturing, Presley remained studiously polite to his elders and was devoted to his mother. Indeed, it was his filial affection that first prompted him to visit Sun Records, whose studios offered the sophisticated equivalent of a fairground recording booth service. As a birthday present to his mother, Gladys, Presley cut a version of the Ink Spots''My Happiness', backed with the Raskin/Brown/Fisher standard 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin'.

In Presley, Phillips saw something that he had long dreamed of discovering: a white boy who sang like a negro. Presley's debut disc on Sun was the extraordinary 'That's All Right (Mama)
b-side, 'Blue Moon Of Kentucky'

Local response to these strange-sounding performances was encouraging and Phillips eventually shifted 20,000 copies of the disc.
It was on 10 January 1956, a mere two days after his 21st birthday, that Presley entered RCA's studios in Nashville to record his first tracks for a major...