| Rock music is a popular music usually played on electronically amplified instruments and characterized by a persistent heavily accented beat, much repetition of simple phrases, and often country, folk, and blues elements. |
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John Lennon, never a falsely modest man, once said that without Elvis, there was no Beatles. Indeed, the rockabilly craze ignited by Elvis was the formative influence on each of the four young beatles-in-waiting as tolk, and blue to be what they eventually became.
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The Beatles, in particular Lennon and Paul McCartney, were not just interpreters in the way that Elvis and most rockers before had been, they were musicmakers in every sense of the term, crafting songs with pen and performance. It's not so much that they laid down new rules for would-be rock stars; they exposed new possibilities. The years that have passed since John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr disbanded in 1970 have only served to confirm: There was never anything like the Beatles. There hasn't been anything like them since. |
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Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, he began his singing career with the legendary Sun Records label in Memphis. In late 1955, his recording contract was sold to RCA Victor. By 1956, he was an international sensation. With a sound and style that uniquely combined his diverse musical influences and blurred and challenged the social and racial barriers of the time, he ushered in a whole new era of American music and popular culture. Elvis died at his Memphis home, Graceland, on August 16, 1977.
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