My two favourite men from the 50's era are Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. They are also two of the most influential and memorable artists of all time. These two also developed bad-boy reputations. They both established new kinds of music, had complicated love lives, became drug addicts, and never failed to entertain the public.
"A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It's my favorite part of the business, live concerts." - Elvis
Elvis was better known as The King of Rock and Roll. When he began he was young, hot and talented. Girls wanted him, guys wanted to be him, people were crazy about him. His first hit That's All Right, Mama is how he started his life-changing career in 1954. Presley was one of the originators of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. Prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at the age of 42. I really like Elvis because of his music, success, good looks, sex appeal, and passion.
“You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.” - Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Although he is primarily remembered as a country music artist, his songs and sound spanned many other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll, especially early in his career, as well as blues, folk and gospel, and has been deemed the philosophy-prince of American country music. Late in his career, Cash covered songs by several rock artists.
Johnny was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice, his rebelliousness, coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor, for his provision of free concerts inside prison walls, and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him the nickname, "The Man in Black". He traditionally started his concerts by saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."
Classic.
The man was a god.
