#FridayFive The King & I Wish a Happy Birthday

 

It’s time for the #FridayFive again.  Today, I’m also helping my niece celebrate her 41st birthday. When she was just a baby, she fell in love with a music box that played Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”  Whenever we were in the car, she would cry unless we were listening to Elvis Presley. To this day, Elvis is still her favorite musician.

I shared this story with another blogger the other day, but I used to make an annual trek to Las Vegas. My gal pals and I decided to visit the Elvis Museum during one of these visits to Las Vegas. We were treated to a mid-day matinee with an Elvis impersonator. Our seats were front row, center stage.  During the show, ‘Elvis’ caught me snapping a photo of him, and he called me out with “Hey Lady! My eyes are up here!”  We flirted throughout the rest of the show and at the very end he reached down and wrapped his scarf around my neck and pulled me to the stage where he planted a big wet kiss on my cheek.

Wikipedia tells us:
Elvis Presley was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", or simply "the King".

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, when he recorded a song with producer Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was an early popularizer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who managed the singer for more than two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. He was regarded as the leading figure of rock and roll after a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines that coincided with the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, made him enormously popular—and controversial.

In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. In 1958, he was drafted into military service. He resumed his recording career two years later, producing some of his most commercially successful work before devoting much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and their accompanying soundtrack albums, most of which were critically derided. In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed televised comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley featured in the first globally broadcast concert via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii. Several years of prescription drug abuse severely damaged his health, and he died in 1977 at the age of 42.

Presley is one of the most celebrated and influential musicians of the 20th century. Commercially successful in many genres, including pop, blues and gospel, he is one of the best-selling solo artists in the history of recorded music, with estimated record sales of around 600 million units worldwide. He won three Grammys, also receiving the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame.

Please enjoy my niece’s top five favorite Elvis songs:

Love Me Tender



Viva Las Vegas



Memories



Kentucky Rain



Suspicious Minds



Happy Birthday, Lenae! Enjoy your special day!



Enjoy this playlist I've created for the post. Do you have any special memories of musicians? Tell me about them in the comments.

Will you be joining us for 2017 AtoZ Challenge?

Be sure to visit http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/ 
for all of the details

I've got a fun theme planned for this year, and I can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with!