Elvis Presley
He was born in a two-room house in Mississippi, sang in church and listened to the blues of black musicians on the radio. At nineteen he walked into the Sun studio in Memphis and cut “That’s All Right” — the 1954 record from which most listeners date rock and roll. Two years later came television, the top of the charts and a public scandal over the way he moved on stage. Then two years in the army in Germany, a decade of interchangeable films, the return with the television concert of 1968, Las Vegas and endless touring. He died in August 1977 at forty-two, with about a billion records sold by then.
He was born in Tupelo on 8 January 1935 at 04:35 Central time; the hour is on his birth certificate. His twin brother Jesse was stillborn half an hour earlier.